Something inside me felt weird, slightly off.  Please, oh please, don’t let me have a vision.  Not now.  Not in front of all these people. My legs felt wobbly as I zipped up my coat and stepped out onto the platform, following the herd of people toward the exit.

For fifteen minutes I tried to catch a cab, with no luck.  So I started walking, instead.  It was that gut instinct again, pulling me somewhere, toward…something.  My heart began to race in anticipation while a nervous buzz in my ears reduced the city’s noises to a faint hum.  Ten minutes passed, then twenty.  I realized I had walked south instead of north, and too far east.  And yet I kept walking, on and on, as if I were in a trance.  A light fog had rolled in, giving the night an almost surreal feel to it, and still I walked on, entirely in the wrong direction.

On purpose.

A quarter hour or so later, I blinked hard, as if waking up from a dream, and looked around.  This was an unfamiliar part of the city—an area I’d never been to before.  The lower east side, maybe?  Somewhere near Battery Park?  I wasn’t sure.  Wherever I was, there wasn’t much besides some run-down looking storefronts, everything-for-a-dollar stores and stuff like that, mostly barred up for the night.  Probably not safe, I told myself.

And then my vision began to tunnel, as if I were about to have one of my episodes. I swallowed hard, fully expecting the onslaught of strange feelings that accompanied my visions.  But they never came.  Instead I simply began to walk, focused on a spot in the distance, maybe four or five blocks over.

My heart was pounding, keeping rhythm to the sound of my boot’s heels against the sidewalk.  Faster, faster…

I was entirely aware of the fact that I was being drawn somewhere, against my will, and yet I made no move to stop, to shake it off.  I was supposed to go wherever I was headed—I was sure of it.  I began to jog, my overnight bag jostling against my hip.  I heard footsteps, saw the barest hint of a figure up ahead.  I was following them, the footsteps.  Keeping pace.

Looking around, I noticed a flyer taped to a post beside me:  Learn to Write a Novel in A Week, it promised.  So familiar.  Everything seemed so familiar, as if I’d been here and done this before.  And yet I was sure I’d never been on this particular street in this particular part of the city before.

Except in the vision, I realized.  The one I’d had when I first came to Winterhaven.  Of course—I was following Aidan.  I stopped, midway down a deserted block.  To my right was an alley of some sort.  He’d turned down the alley, and I was supposed to follow him.

Cupping my hands to my mouth, I called out his name.

“All alone, pretty girl?”

Startled, I spun toward the voice.  There was a man standing beside the curb, leering at me in the moonlight, his clothing shabby and torn and reeking of smoke and beer and something sharp that I couldn’t identify.

No, this was wrong. In the vision I’d been following Aidan, not some junkie.

“I got some good stuff, if you wanna share,” he said, holding up a baggie.  I saw the glint of steel in his hand—a knife, maybe.

I was breathing way too fast to respond—short puffs through parted lips making clouds of smoke in the cool night air.

“Nah?  Maybe you just want to have some fun, then?”

I swallowed convulsively, terrified.  I knew I should run—scream and run, as loud and as fast as I could.  But I was frozen, unable to move a single muscle.

He reached toward me, dirty fingers clutching at my coat’s sleeve.  And that’s when the world turned upside down.