Page 70 of Guardian

“That’s okay.”

“What happened to you after your parents’ death?”

“My grandmother raised me.”

“I’m glad you had family to take care of you.” He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for a nine-year-old to go into the foster care system.

“Yeah, I had Grandma.” Despite the positive words, there was a sadness in her voice that made Logan look at her. “But then she died, too. I was fourteen.”

“Only fourteen?” Logan put his hand on her arm and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry.”

“She wasn’t that old, you know, for a grandmother.”

“Cancer?” he guessed.

To his surprise, Winter shook her head. “Something with the heart, they think. After her death, I went to a foster family. When my foster father got transferred to Wilmington, they petitioned the court to let me move out of state with them. So I left Detroit behind. Never went back.”

“So you’re originally from Detroit? Wasn’t it hard to leave everything behind, your friends, the memories of your family?”

The smile she gave him was bittersweet. “Not really. The earlier memories, those were good ones. But the time with my grandmother…”

“Didn’t you like her?”

“I loved her. But things were difficult. She was sick. Or at least the doctors thought she was sick. They diagnosed her with some mental illness that has a Latin name I can’t pronounce. But after everything that happened in the last few days, I don’t believe anymore that she was mentally ill. I think she was a psychic, too. I think I inherited my gift from her.”

Logan’s heartbeat accelerated. “What makes you think she was a psychic?”

“She was always talking about seeing things that weren’t there. The doctors thought she was having hallucinations. I mean after what Wesley and Charles said, I think “psychic” would fit the bill, don’t you?”

He nodded slowly. Unfortunately, Winter’s grandmother also fit the description of somebody he knew. “How long ago did your grandmother die?”

“It’ll be twenty years this December.”

Logan swallowed away the lump that was rising in his throat. Twenty years. “And she lived in her home in Detroit at the time?”

Winter shook her head. “She wasn’t at home anymore. They’d put her in a mental hospital. They thought she’d get better…”

Logan didn’t hear the rest of the sentence, because his heart was thundering in his ears. The psychic he’d killed was Winter’s grandmother. Because of him, because of what he’d done, Winter had ended up in foster care. Without family.

Guilt barreled into him. Pain slammed on top of it, suffocating him.

What had he done?

He’d killed the grandmother of the woman he loved. Winter would never forgive him for this. Still, he had to tell her. He had to confess what he’d done. He couldn’t let her sit next to her grandmother’s murderer without her knowledge.

“Winter…” His voice trailed off.

“Oh, what’s that?” She suddenly bent down to pick something up from underneath the coffee table.

He recognized the stuffed toy in her hand. “Oh, one of Julia’s toys,” he said automatically.

“Oh God, no!” Clutching the toy, Winter shot up.

Alarmed, Logan jumped up and gripped her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

But Winter wasn’t looking at him. She was looking through him. He knew instantly what it meant. She was having a vision.

Her face distorted in horror, her eyes widening, tears brimming in them, while her lips quivered. “No,” she murmured. “No, please, no!”