The Girl Who Sees

What happened in The Girl Who Sees?

Sasha Urban I’m an illusionist, not a psychic. Going on TV is supposed to advance my career, but things go wrong. Like vampires and zombies kind of wrong. My name is Sasha Urban, and this is how I learned what I am.

What tropes are in The Girl Who Sees?

• dangerous-supernatural-protectors
• forced-mentorship
• found-family-with-secrets
• hidden-supernatural-society
• Mystery
• prophetic-dreams
• Psychic
• reluctant-seer
• supernatural-council-trial
• undead-necromancer-threat
• Urban Fantasy

Where does The Girl Who Sees fall in Sasha Urban?

Book 1 of Sasha Urban. Reading order

What should I read next?

Misfortune Teller by Dima Zales.

Chapters

2. Chapter 2

   Sasha, a twenty-four-year-old mentalist battling severe stage fright, prepares in a dressing room for her debut on the popular talk show Evening with Kacie. Senior producer Darian Rutledge corners her with a video exposing her secret illusion methods, blackmailing her into ambiguity about her psychic claims—neither confirming nor denying—in exchange for keeping the footage private. As part of their bargain, Darian demands to know how she performed the Queen of Hearts card trick; Sasha counters by requesting the video file, securing it moments before showtime. Despite Valium and her roommate Ariel's support, Sasha's terror mounts as she faces the live studio audience of one hundred, knowing millions will watch at home. The chapter closes with her stepping onto the stage, paralyzed by dread just before her performance.

3. Chapter 3

   Sasha performs on Kacie's live television show, using memory manipulation to make the host choose the Queen of Hearts—matching Sasha's forearm tattoo—then predicting a tragic newspaper headline from a sealed envelope. The audience erupts in awe as Darian, a knowing observer in the VIP section, initiates applause. Despite her triumph, Sasha battles stage fright and physical distress, her body suddenly flooded with intense energy that shifts from euphoria to agony. As the applause reaches its peak, she convulses and collapses, consciousness fading in front of millions of viewers, leaving her fate—and the true nature of her powers—hanging in the balance.

4. Chapter 4

   The chapter opens with the protagonist, a stage magician, frozen on a couch while a commercial plays in the audience. When a sickly, gray-skinned man erupts from the crowd and vaults onto the stage, chaos breaks loose. Security scrambles to intercept, but the attacker’s jerky yet powerful movements overwhelm them. Cornered, the protagonist improvises a weapon from her stiletto heel, but the strike lands astray in the man’s chest. In retaliation, the creature seizes her throat with supernatural strength, throttling her into unconsciousness as darkness claims her. The chapter ends on a cliffhanger of apparent death.

5. Chapter 5

   Sasha wakes from a nightmare only to find herself trapped in a live TV studio when a gray-skinned, pain-resistant attacker emerges—exactly as she dreamed. Security guards led by the hypnotic Gaius brutally dismantle the creature, but producer Darian orders a mass memory wipe of the audience to hide the supernatural breach. Gaius uses his mirror-eyed glamour to subdue Sasha, collects a hair sample, and deposits her at her apartment with her fierce roommate Ariel. Though physically unharmed, Sasha is left shaken by the violence and the implication that she—a Cognizant not under the Mandate—faces execution from the Council for this exposure. The chapter ends with her collapsing into sleep, the trauma unresolved and the threat of the Council looming.

6. Chapter 6

   A disembodied consciousness floats through a sterile morgue at 5:29 a.m., witnessing mortician Beatrice perform a macabre ritual. Dressed for a cocktail party amid the stench of death, Beatrice carves glowing symbols into corpses and reanimates them with crackling energy, programming a delay before they rise. Meanwhile, she video-calls a mysterious patron who offers her protection under the Mandate—a supernatural legal framework that shields her kind but cannot erase the ancient hatred between seers and vampires. Beatrice bargains for half a million dollars and instructions to turn her own body into fertilizer should she die on the job. As bolts of multicolored lightning animate the dead, the observer realizes this grisly spectacle is merely a dream, waking just as Beatrice departs into the morning.

7. Chapter 7

   Sasha wakes at 5:20 a.m. disoriented, uncertain whether her triumphant TV debut on *Evening with Kacie*—which racked up four million views overnight—was real or a Valium-induced hallucination. After confirming the heavy makeup still on her face, she grapples with the possibility of a neurological issue before settling on the drug interaction with grapefruit and alcohol as the likely culprit. Over banana pancakes with roommates Ariel and Felix, she performs an impromptu card-and-knife illusion, revealing the mechanics behind her viral earthquake prediction while dodging questions about her methods. Their banter masks simmering tensions: Ariel’s undisclosed PTSD and medication use, Felix’s unspoken feelings for Sasha, and Sasha’s frustration that her friends undervalue her dream of becoming a household-name magician. The morning ends abruptly when a frantic text from hedge-fund boss Nero Gorin demands she report immediately for an 8:00 a.m. conference presentation, threatening her job.

8. Chapter 8

   Sasha is racing to work when her elderly neighbor Rose begs for help with her dying cat, Luci. Opting to delay her commute, Sasha shepherds the ailing Persian to the vet on her Vespa, fending off a video call from her mother—who demands twelve thousand dollars for a first-class flight to Paris—and a stern check-in from her boss Nero, who dismisses her act of kindness as being taken advantage of. Weaving through Manhattan traffic with her uncanny Spidey sense, Sasha ignores her phone while a growing premonition of danger sharpens her focus on the road ahead.

9. Chapter 9

   Sasha Urban narrowly escapes a collision between an express bus and a Crown Victoria while rushing her injured cat, Lucifur, to the vet after the feline swallowed Rose's door key. At Dr. Katz's clinic, Rose authorizes an endoscopy to remove the gastric foreign body, buying Sasha time to race across the city—only to get drenched in a fishy roadside puddle by a yellow cab. Now disheveled and reeking, Sasha arrives at the Gorin Fund just in time to be thrust onto the One Alpha stage to pitch Rapid Rabbit Biotech's new focus drug, Focusall. As three hundred investors stare at her, her debilitating stage fright threatens to overwhelm her, leaving her frozen at the podium with only Nero's quiet support keeping her from collapsing.

10. Chapter 10

    Sasha collapses during a high-stakes presentation and is carried backstage by her formidable boss, Nero, who summons the firm's therapist, Lucretia Rossi. In an intimate office session, Lucretia guides Sasha through breathing techniques to ease her panic, drawing out a buried childhood trauma about being lost at JFK airport. Though medical tests confirm Sasha is physically fine, Nero insists on a hospital check and replaces her destroyed phone, handing her cash for the deductible. After learning her cat Lucifur is ready for pickup from the vet—where a swallowed key was surgically removed—Sasha rides her Vespa through Chinatown, only to sense she is being tailed by a silver Dodge Charger, leaving her alert and uneasy as the chapter closes.

11. Chapter 11

    Sasha is ambushed on her Vespa by two gray-skinned men in a high-speed chase through Manhattan, culminating in a violent crash at a Duane Reade pharmacy that leaves one attacker impaled yet the other survivors pursuing. Fleeing to collect her sedated cat Lucifur from the vet, she finds temporary refuge at Rose’s Battery Park apartment, where she meets Vlad—a devastatingly handsome man posing as Rose’s nephew but clearly her secret, much younger lover. Over buckwheat dinner, Sasha senses the taboo chemistry between them while wrestling with paranoia about whether her attackers are supernatural serial killers or delusions. The chapter closes on a suffocating cliffhanger: the two gray-skinned men materialize in the elevator outside her door, one still bearing a fatal wound yet very much alive, trapping her in an inescapable nightmare.

12. Chapter 12

    Sasha flees down her apartment corridor, pursued by two gray-skinned assailants who appear to be walking embalmed corpses. When one throttles her against the wall, Vlad intervenes with savage, gruesome efficiency, tearing the attackers apart with his bare hands. Barricaded inside with her roommate Ariel, Sasha discovers the killers bore ritualistic carvings and phone-holder scars linked to the visions she's been having. Rather than call the police, Ariel enlists Pada, a dispassionate cleanup specialist summoned by Vlad, to erase all evidence of the massacre before their squeamish roommate Felix returns. As Sasha demands to know why Ariel is hiding the truth about the attackers—evidenced by blood trickling from Ariel's eyes, nose, and ears—the chapter closes on a chokehold of secrets and unanswered questions about who commands these undead killers.

13. Chapter 13

    Sasha finds her friend Ariel bleeding from her nose and eyes whenever she tries to speak about a dangerous secret. After cleaning up the kitchen and sharing a tense hug, Ariel convinces Sasha to sleep it off, claiming she's in shock. Exhausted from days of sleep deprivation after her TV performance, Sasha collapses into bed but awakens as a disembodied consciousness drifting through Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. There she witnesses nurse Beatrice—previously seen in a morgue—callously overdose patient Amie Descanso with morphine and begin harvesting her body with a butterfly knife for a fresh corpse. The nightmare ends with Sasha waking in a cold sweat, leaving her to question whether the vision was prophecy or mere dream, and what secret Ariel is physically unable to utter.

14. Chapter 14

    She wakes at 9:07 a.m. cursing her forgotten blinds and alarm, the sleep deprivation leaving her furious and aching. A fingerprint bruise on her neck—an ugly souvenir from yesterday's attack—forces her to rummage for a turtleneck before calling in sick to work. With roommates Ariel and Felix absent and her phone dead, she can only stare at her chinchilla, Fluffster, whom she researches as a possible domovoi. Over oatmeal, she spirals through theories about the TV stage assault: the gray-skinned attacker, Beatrice's resurrection of embalmed corpses, and the mirror-eyed assailants. As a professional illusionist trained to debunk the supernatural, she resists the terrifying conclusion her nightmares suggest—that she may actually be psychic, and that her subconscious knew details of the attack she couldn't possibly have known. The chapter closes on her unresolved dread, the question of her own power hanging in the air like the unclosed blinds.

15. Chapter 15

    Sasha Urban grapples with the implications of her prophetic dream, which predicts the murder of a patient named Amie Descanso at Maimonides Hospital. After confirming the woman exists in room 4128, she races against time to intervene, but a dead phone battery and an uncooperative ride-share driver leave her stranded and anxious. Arriving sixteen minutes late, she navigates the hospital with desperate confidence, her analytical mind warring with adrenaline-fueled dread. As she stands before the door to room 4128, hand trembling, the chapter ends on the knife-edge of whether she can still save Amie from Beatrice's necromantic ritual or if the prophecy has already sealed its tragic outcome.

16. Chapter 16

    The narrator discovers Amie dead in her hospital bed—no pulse, no breath, tampered equipment offering no proof of life—only to realize from Beatrice's earlier visions that the blood carvings on the sheets were meant to delay, not prevent, her reanimation. When Amie's corpse sits up and begins moving with unnatural speed and smoothness, the narrator flees through the hospital and into the Manhattan streets, pursued by a cadaver that moves faster and smells less dead than the walking dead from before. Cornered at the 50th Street D-train platform with Amie's hand gripping his jacket, he makes a desperate leap onto the tracks as the train barrels in, gambling his life on a split-second escape from a fate he failed to prevent.

17. Chapter 17

    The narrator lands from a desperate leap onto the Brooklyn-bound tracks, banking on an approaching train to eliminate the pursuer Amie. When the train strikes her, the narrator flees the station to avoid scrutiny, only to turn and find Amie crawling between the rails—alive, mutilated, and moving on all fours with a missing leg and hand. Adrenaline and horror propel the narrator into a sprint through the streets, pursued by the sound of bone against pavement. Cornered, the narrator confronts the transformed Amie at an open store cellar, steeling themselves for a final desperate stand as the creature leaps toward them.

18. Chapter 18

    Sasha traps the snarling Amie in a locked cellar and hires body-disposal expert Pada L'Shick to dispose of the creature for eight thousand dollars, the encounter leaving her shaken and sweating. In a taxi, a driver recognizes her as the girl from Evening with Kacie who predicted an earthquake, triggering her growing dread that the paranormal is real. A breathing exercise spirals into a vision where she stands in a circular ceremonial chamber before hooded Councilors. A truth-detecting collar clasped around her neck glows green for honesty and red for lies as Councilors Chester, Darian, Kit, and Vlad interrogate her about her Cognizant status and unknown biological parents. Overwhelmed by public speaking anxiety, she collapses—but remains conscious, watching her own body from above as the proceedings end unresolved.

19. Chapter 19

    Sasha awakens from a terrifying vision-dream in which a secret Council of Cognizants votes to execute her for accidentally breaking the Mandate. As she recovers in a cab, she discovers that Darian has vanished—his phone disconnected and email deleted—fueling her fear that the vision was real rather than a nightmare. Desperate for answers, she breaks into her neighbor Rose's empty apartment using a hidden lockpick disguised as a tongue piercing, only to find Rose and her cat gone without trace. Retreating to her own apartment and finding no response from her roommate Ariel, Sasha barges into Ariel's room and comes face-to-face with a gun pressed against her forehead, leaving her life hanging in the balance.

20. Chapter 20

    Sasha Urban, a fledgling illusionist and Cognizant, is forcibly restrained by her best friend Ariel, who believes she's rescuing someone from danger she won't explain. Using skills honed for stage escapes—tongue picks, rope techniques, and a scarf blindfold rigged to peek—Sasha breaks free and tails Ariel through the streets of Brooklyn to JFK Airport. After a tense standoff where Ariel once again points a gun, Sasha bargains her way into the mission, enduring a blindfolded trek through a hidden terminal door. They step through a massive purple plasma gate and arrive in an alien world, leaving Sasha to wonder if her visions of the Council will keep her alive in whatever comes next.

21. Chapter 21

    A young magician, blindfolded and led by her companion Ariel, is dragged through a surreal alien landscape of purple skies and pink clouds across a mirrored plain to a blue warp gate that deposits them at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas—thousands of miles from their JFK origin—in mere minutes. Her phone reveals they have lost over ten minutes to time dilation, and electronic compasses spin wildly in the otherworldly realm. They travel to the Luxor Hotel, where Ariel intends to confront Beatrice, a necromancer working amid ghoulish plastinated corpses at a closed anatomical exhibit. When Beatrice attempts to animate the dead to attack, Ariel draws a gun, but the revived corpse shields her as electricity arcs through the room, leaving the confrontation violently unresolved.

22. Chapter 22

    Ariel and I are pinned down in a macabre museum of animated cadavers while hunting the necromancer Beatrice. Every display case hides another reanimated corpse—conductor, athletes, even a grotesque maternal figure—and each encounter leaves us more battered than the last. When Beatrice summons a spectral steed and rider to cut off our flank, we fight back-to-back, trading gunfire and blades against the unliving exhibits. The chase tightens until Beatrice is cornered, but she unleashes a fresh wave of minions just as we close in, buying herself another escape. As I dodge a flying basketball that shatters my nose, I’m haunted by a darker certainty: a vision promises my death at the Council, and I’m terrified this detour might rewrite that fate. The chapter ends on a cliffhanger of escalating dread and unfinished vengeance.

23. Chapter 23

    The narrator awakens amid a battlefield of reanimated corpses, where their ally Ariel fights to carve an escape route through the encircling dead. When a spear pierces Ariel's chest, she presses a bloodied knife into the narrator's hand and urges them to flee—only for the necromancer Beatrice to pour energy into Ariel's fallen body, reanimating her as a fresh killing machine. The transformed Ariel seizes the narrator, shattering their arm, while other cadavers pin them in a cruciform hold. As Beatrice delivers a final, almost sympathetic thrust to the narrator's heart, both defenders fall in the same breath, leaving the necromancer's victory complete but the battle's cost devastatingly personal.

24. Chapter 24

    The narrator awakens bodiless, witnessing the necromancer Beatrice reanimate his own corpse before snapping back to consciousness. Haunted by a recent psychic vision of his own death at a Council meeting, he recognizes that his foresight has already altered the timeline—and now he must prevent the grim fate he witnessed. When Beatrice's reanimated corpses close in, he deliberately triggers the future he saw by tackling his companion Ariel, causing the undead to pile onto her instead. But when a thrown spear bears down, Ariel violently shoves him clear, becoming swarmed by the horde herself. Pinned between two skeletal attackers and facing Beatrice's blade, the narrator confronts the same deadly pattern from his vision as the butterfly knife finds his chest, leaving him suspended between life and the death he tried to outwit.

25. Chapter 25

    The chapter erupts in a visceral battle against the necromancer Beatrice, whose reanimated cadavers swarm the narrator and Ariel. After a brutal knife fight leaves Beatrice dead and Ariel critically bleeding, a hypnotic vampire named Gaius arrives with his black-suited team. Using mirrored eyes that command obedience, he silences the narrator with threats regarding a forthcoming Council interrogation, then stabilizes Ariel through an intimate vampire blood-feeding that leaves her euphoric. While the narrator succumbs to a drugged haze, Gaius magically heals their wounds and escorts them to a circular chamber scented with sage incense. There, the narrator faces the Council alive, realizing with dread that they are about to be interrogated under a truth-enforcing polygraph stone and voted to death.

26. Chapter 26

    Sasha Urban faces a tribunal before the supernatural Council in a dreamlike Colosseum, terrified of a death sentence. Her hedge fund boss, Nero Gorin—revealed as a Council member—fastens a truth-detecting stone necklace around her neck that glows green for honesty and red for lies. Under interrogation by Plaintiff Chester, she manages to stay calm using breathing techniques and reveals that she unknowingly performed illegal mentalism on a TV show. When the Enforcers confirm that necromancer Beatrice is dead, Sasha deduces that Chester was Beatrice's employer by dialing a "Jester" contact from the dead woman's phone, causing Chester's phone to ring in the chamber. The revelation exposes Chester's hypocrisy and possible Mandate violation, shifting the Council's focus from punishing Sasha to voting on leniency while considering new proceedings against Chester.

27. Chapter 27

    Sasha Urban survives a hostile Council hearing where she is granted leniency after Chester—her probability-manipulating accuser—is stripped of his Council seat. Escorted by the vampiric Herald Gaius to the Mandate Rite chamber, she learns the brutal truth about Cognizant society: belief fuels their power, and the Mandate will silence her illusionist career forever. When Darian and Nero compete to become her Mentor, the hedge fund vampire Nero wins by default, cementing Sasha's professional future. As the ritual begins on a stone slab beneath Bach's organ music, the giant officiant brands her with a plasma staff, sending her into agony and blackness—leaving her survival and sanity uncertain.

28. Chapter 28

    Sasha Urban awakens after surviving the Rite, now officially bound to the Mandate and displaying its tell-tale aura. As she prepares for her Jubilee—a formal Cognizant recognition ceremony—she learns the rules of her new existence: secrecy enforced by lethal consequences, and a world of parallel Otherlands. At the fund, a viral video debunks her TV psychic prediction, destroying her stage career, while her Mentor Nero unexpectedly funds a lavish makeover and a fifty-percent raise. At the Jubilee, Councilor Kit shape-shifts into Nero to seduce her in a fog-shrouded dance, then morphs through other friends before being rejected. Seer Darian reveals he orchestrated 'accidents' to keep her alive, and Felix confesses to leaking her existence. The chapter closes with Sasha welcomed into the Cognizant fold, dreading the dangerous 'interesting times' ahead.

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