Nayeli jerked awake in her bed. Still somewhat dazed from being pulled from her dream so quickly, she looked around at the lavender walls of her room.
Something was… off. Wrong.
She closed her eyes and centered herself in a way that had become second nature some time ago. When she was younger, they discovered that Nayeli had both the blessing and the curse of being able to sense and take on the feelings of others. If she was around too many people with strong emotions, good or evil, she internalized it and took it on herself.
Skyler had helped teach her to erect shields around herself to guard against the unwanted emotions. Nayeli had done it so often that it was almost second nature now, and took very little concentration.
Once her "bubble" was in place, Nayeli got up from the bed and looked out at the sun streaked skyline of Manhattan. She was home, not the castle, so she was able to make out individual cars on the busy streets below. Frowning, she wondered if it was someone in distress down there that had woken her.
Uneasy, she made her way out of her room and crossed the hallway to her brother's room. As quietly as she could, she opened the door and peeked inside.
She wrinkled her nose at the "boy smell" inside, lingering from sweaty clothes and dirty socks most likely, but with the door opened, it slowly lessened to a tolerable level.
She picked her way to her brother's bed, thankful once more that Liam was tidy. At least she wouldn't have to worry about picking her way through a teenage boy debris field. She shuddered.
She had been warned to not believe everything she saw in movies or television, but boys Liam's age had a reputation for having dirty and trash covered rooms.
Somehow, she lucked out and seemed to have gotten an awesome big brother who seemed to be the exception.
She knelt next to Liam's bed and gently shook his shoulder.
"Liam," she whispered.
"Hmmm, what?" Liam muttered, opening his eyes just enough to see her face in the darkened room. "What's up, Ellie?"
"I don't know," Nayeli admitted. "Something just feels wrong."
Liam grunted and yawned. "Nothing's wrong, El. You know that if something was wrong, Skyler would come and take us to the castle to be safe, right?"
"Yeah," Nayeli admitted reluctantly. "But…"
"Here," Liam said, scooting to the far side of his bed. "Climb in and tell me about it."
Nayeli, as she had much of her life when something unsettled her, caped her wings tightly around her shoulders, crawled into her brother's bed and told him what was bothering her.
Before she was done, however, Liam was snoring lightly.
Nayeli sighed and gathered the pillow from under her head and cuddled it to her chest.
Something was wrong. Just because alarms weren't sounding and people weren't whisking them off to the castle, didn't mean that something wasn't right.
Closing her eyes, she tried to go back to sleep.
