First Visions: Second Sight Book One

Chapter One

Kate Edwards stared listlessly out of her living room window on a rainy August afternoon. Her best friend, Julie Mitchell, was yammering into her ear about a random party she had attended the night before. Any minute her disinterest would likely be discovered and Julie would sound off a round of expletives in her ear.

Julie had asked her to go, but Kate rarely attended parties. Her anti-social streak began years ago and she seldom ventured out of her front door. While she had turned twenty-one this past autumn, she had only gone to a bar once and never to a club. Julie was pretty much the only good friend she talked to on a regular basis.

While Julie resided in her own apartment in their town of Franklin, Kate lived at home with her mother. Franklin is a small town in New Jersey, located about an hour from New York City. Although the majority of people from Franklin are members of the working middle-class, a smattering of the residents are definitely part of the upper-crust. Julie's own father became a wildly successful New York attorney who now pays the rent on his daughter's recently-acquired apartment.

Franklin was the type of town that seemed to live inside its own little bubble. Although a few high-crime areas bordered the city limits, Franklin locals pretended everything was sunshine and roses. While murders and rapes were taking place outside of the town, neighbors acted like a family not mowing their lawn for two weeks was cause for alarm.

Julie and Kate had become fast friends when they were assigned to be roommates at nearby Thompson College. After a brief freshman year, Kate dropped out the following spring. However, this summer she had begun taking classes online to earn a bachelor's degree in English. Her father, Robert, had not been subtle in pointing out how completely useless he thought obtaining an English degree was. Her response explaining how she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life yet hadn't seemed to earn her any brownie points either.

"Earth to freakin' Kate, come in Kate," Julie was saying into her cell phone. Kate's lack of social skills surprisingly had yet to frighten her away.

"I'm sorry," she apologized quickly. "What were you saying?"

"I said, don't you think I was right to be furious with Gage for getting completely plastered and unable to drive us home?" Julie repeated with a definite edge to her voice. Julie was a gorgeous brunette who had a large social circle. Why she even bothered with Kate was a mystery. A social butterfly with a ton of zingers in her back pocket was a more appropriate sidekick for Julie—not a social pariah whose idea of fun was to watch old movies in her pajamas with her mother.

Kate's sheltered life had nothing to do with her appearance. She would categorize herself as pretty in almost a non-descript way. Average height, average weight and, with the help of some well-placed padding, average breasts. Her light brown hair hung past her shoulders when it wasn't styled in the ponytail which she usually wore when lounging around her house. It was naturally wavy and she only broke out the straightening iron for special occasions. Kate had inherited her hazel eyes from her mother, who loved to use Kate as her test dummy and highlight them with the help of the mail order make-up products she sold.

"Definitely," she agreed, trying to muster up some enthusiasm for the conversation with Julie. Kate jumped at the sound of the doorbell. "Hold on a sec, Julie. Somebody's here."

Gazing through the peephole, she spotted a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties getting drenched on her doorstep. His dark hair was plastered against his forehead and the rain pelted against him at a continuous pace, but Kate still was able to do a quick once-over. He was fair and the dark hair gave him a striking appearance. She was startled at how attractive he appeared even through the distortion of the peephole glass. He wore a dark blue button-down with a gray tie and she wondered if he was a door-to-door salesman. Well, whatever he was selling, Kate thought, she was buying.