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It is a quiet February evening in New Orleans. The humid air, thick with the scent of beignets and river water, hangs heavy inside the old St. Jude Church. Dust motes dance in the faint glow cast by a single, high-up window, swirling around Tandy and Tyrone. They are alone, surrounded by the solemn silence of worn pews and faded plaster saints. Outside, the world moves on, but here, time seems to stop. They stand in the center aisle, far apart, yet their eyes are locked, a connection so profound it feels like a physical pull.
Tandy breaks the silence first, her voice a fragile whisper in the vast space. “So… you have these visions?”
Tyrone nods, his hands clenched at his sides. He looks down, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the polished floor. The truth feels too big for this small moment. He takes a deep breath, the words finally tumbling out. "Yeah. It's... it's like a path. They always lead me to a specific person, but they also protect me somehow. I don't know how to explain it. It's like my fear gives them shape, and then they stop something bad from happening. It’s a lot." He looks up, his gaze searching her face, needing her to understand this thing he can’t even begin to understand himself.
Tandy takes a small, hesitant step forward. A ghost of a smile touches her lips, a shared knowing. “I get that,” she says. “My light, it's different. It's not a path. It’s… a release.” She holds out her hand, the air shimmering around it. "When I lose hope, when I get to a place where I think I can’t go on, these daggers appear. It’s like all the pressure just… leaves me. It feels like a breath after holding it for too long. My body just lets go."
She looks at her hand, watching the faint glow. Her voice drops lower, the words spoken more to herself than to him. "It’s like when you’re really, really, really scared, but you finally get away. It's that feeling. That jolt of relief. The kind that runs through you from your head to your toes. You know, like… like sex.”
Tyrone's eyes go wide. The words hang in the air between them, sharp and unexpected. His mind stumbles, a chaotic mess of surprise and a strange, unfamiliar heat. He is completely, utterly silent. The old church seems to hold its breath with him. Tandy, lost in her own thoughts, doesn't even notice. She just watches the light fade from her hand, her expression distant, as if reliving a private moment no one else is supposed to see.
A new kind of tension fills the space. Not fear, not anger. It’s vulnerability.
Tandy finally looks up, her gaze meeting his, and the mood shifts. “I’ve never told anyone that,” she says, her voice barely audible. “Not even Liam.”
Tyrone’s shoulders slump a little in relief. "Me neither," he admits. "My mom and dad… they think I'm crazy. I don't even talk to Evita about it.” The confession is a small, quiet miracle. This shared secret, this bond over something so impossible, feels more intimate than any conversation they have ever had.
Tandy takes another step, and then another, closing the space between them. “What do you think would happen,” she asks, her eyes wide and full of a nervous, reckless energy, “if we touched again? Like back in the graveyard?”
He doesn’t have an answer. All he knows is that he wants to find out.
Slowly, carefully, she reaches out her hand. Her fingers tremble slightly in the air. He raises his own hand to meet hers, the distance shrinking until only a whisper of air separates their palms. The air between them crackles with a silent, unseen energy. It's a magnetic pull, an undeniable force that hums through their veins. They close their eyes, the anticipation building to an unbearable point. Their fingers are just about to brush, a hair's breadth from connection.
Then, everything shatters.
A blinding, violet-white light explodes from the space between their hands, a silent, concussive force that doesn't just push Tyrone back, it seems to tear him apart and then instantly reassemble him. One moment, he is standing in the center aisle, and the next, he's crumpled against the far wall of the church, a good forty feet away. The sensation is like being unzipped and zipped back up in a fraction of a second, leaving him breathless and disoriented.
Across the vast, empty expanse, he hears a pained gasp and then a cough.
"Tandy?" he yells, his voice raw, echoing strangely in the quiet. "Tandy, are you okay?"
He pushes himself to his feet, a wave of dizziness passing over him.
"I don't know!" she yells back, her voice just as strained. "What the hell was that?!"
The distance feels impossibly vast. The church, which once felt so intimate, now seems like an empty cavern designed to keep them apart. They stand on opposite sides of the room, yelling at each other, separated by the very power that brings them together.