Chapter 1.

"Can anybod-eeeeee find meeeeeee, somebody toooooo… love?" The singer on the karaoke was truly terrible and Eli rubbed his eyes wearily. If this had ever appeared in one of his visions, he definitely would've had words with Him upstairs, he thought. He looked to the bottom of his liquor glass and drained the amber liquid. Looking at his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, he tapped his foot impatiently and waited for his brother, Nate, to arrive. Trust him to be late.

"Carlo? Your absolute strongest whiskey, on the rocks if you please." A British accented female voice next to him roused him from thinking about Nate, and he looked at her.

"Do I know you?"

"I don't think so." The woman hadn't even looked at him and yet she had already rebuffed him. Eli looked her up and down. She wasn't overly remarkable, just another girl in another bar. Red dress, black shoes, blonde hair clipped up behind her head. She took the whiskey and downed it in a single gulp, before smiling at him and lowering her gaze.

"I was rude, I'm sorry. I'm a little stressed right now. Jitters and all that." She made the most adorable face and Eli grinned.

"It's okay. Um, I'm Eli."

"Oh! I'm uh, I'm Alex. And no, not post-op Alex, haha." She looked nervous and fiddled with her fingers. Eli looked confused.

"Post-op Alex? So you're a…?" Alex suddenly looked mortified.

"Oh God no. I didn't mean… I'm not… Oh God." She blushed bright red, turned around and knocked over the whiskey glass she'd been drinking from, throwing ice all over the bar and smashing the tumbler into a thousand pieces of shattered crystal. Eli felt her embarrassment and tried to help her, succeeding only in cutting his own finger on one of the chips.

"Ouch!" Alex took his finger and stared at it, tongue poking out the side of her mouth.

"This? This is gonna hurt." And then, without warning, she sucked the glass out of his finger and spat it out onto the side. Eli clenched his eyes shut in pain, and when he opened them he realised where he knew Alex from.

"It's in his kiss, that's where it is!" Eli looked around him and saw Alex lying on a beach in a 1960's style bikini, bopping her head to the beat of the music along with her chorus of muscle-bound Marines. They picked her up and carried her across the beach to set her down on the side of a juice stop as she continued singing the hit Cher song. Then suddenly, a terrible whistling sound filled the air and the chorus hit the dirt as a large bomb fell and landed directly in front of Eli. Suddenly, he was being shaken.

"Eli? Are you okay?" Alex's big green eyes were filled with concern as he snapped back to reality.

"Yeah, I guess the shock of seeing blood must've hit me. I've always been a tad squeamish." Eli smiled weakly at Alex and she grinned back, before a man in a tuxedo approached her.

"Alex? You're up."

"Oh, okay. Give me two seconds?" The man in the tuxedo nodded and she smiled apologetically at Eli. "I'm so sorry I made you cut your finger! And that I made you black out. And that I made you feel uncomfortable when I was being a bad person. And… well, I'm just sorry." She grinned again and walked off, and he lost sight of her.

Five minutes later, Nate finally turned up, and they sat down at a table to watch the night's entertainment – a cabaret style performance that Nate had been raving about for weeks. They each got a beer and Eli had just finished telling him about his injured finger when a polite applause started up and the curtains were pulled on the tiny stage. Eli did a double take when he realised that the girl on the stage was someone he knew.

"Thank you. Well I don't know what you're all expecting, but I know that the karaoke performances weren't what you were all hoping for." She smiled at the quiet laughter that rippled around the room. "But I'm your entertainment for the night, and I hope I can impress you if they didn't. My name is Alexandra Green, and my guest pianist tonight is Gary Hadden. Thank you very much, and we hope you enjoy the show." She smiled again and took the microphone off the stand as a gentle drum beat kicked off, and the introduction to 'Chain of Fools' played out.

"Nate, that's the girl who hurt my finger! That's her!" He pointed at Alex and she saw him, reeled with shock and then recovered herself as Nate hit his hand.

"Don't point!" Nate hissed. "You'll distract her!" Eli looked down and then continued to watch the rest of the show in silence. But what did the vision mean?