Visions Across the Veil

by Gretchen S. B.

  "This is much quicker than I assumed I would hear from you, Harold," Narcissa answers the phone.

  Much to her surprise Harold doesn’t banter in response. His voice comes over the phone quietly and that sets her on the alert from the get-go. "I wanted to call you back and let you know not to send those materials to me," he whispers into the phone.

  Narcissa stops watching her guests and moves further away towards the front door. His whispering when he is normally boisterous sets off several warning bells in her head.

  "Why not, Harold? Are you in trouble?"

  A heavy sigh comes over the phone, telling her he’s under a great deal of stress and isn’t sure he wants to go into the whole story. "Not immediately. I've been followed the last week or two—maybe longer—that’s when I noticed it. There is a red MP and a black MP, as well as a Shapeshifter, a young Warrior, and a Werewolf who looks so young I'm not sure if he isn't still in his second puberty. They watch the house and follow me coming and going. They're not exactly subtle and when I approached the Werewolf and the Shapeshifter to ask them what the hell they thought they were doing, the two of them disappeared. Now it's just been the young Warrior and the two MPs. I don't know if they're intercepting my mail or not but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I've already sent a letter to the Council letting them know what's happening. I'm assuming from your reaction you don't know any of this—it hasn't been circulated yet. Which I find concerning should the situation escalate."

  Harold's words worry Narcissa. Is whatever is coming for her aiming for Harold first?

  "I've had a bad feeling for a few weeks now," Narcissa confides. "I haven't been able to identify it and I wonder whether you being followed is part of it."

  There’s shuffling on the other end of the phone before Harold responds, "I wouldn't be surprised. I think this goes beyond a bad feeling or two and beyond me. I don't know what's happening but I don't think it's in our favor. Have you spoken to Rex?"

  Narcissa nods before she realizes he can’t see her. "Yes. He seemed normal, though suspicious that I wanted to give him some of my surplus."

  There is a snort. "That isn't the only reason I'm calling you. I was down at the docks early this morning to meet up with another MP to get his opinion on the young men following me and to get some fish, whatever they happen to have caught this morning. There was a young man on the docks. He was tying up a sailboat in one of the rental stalls. He had sun-streaked blonde hair and once I walked by him I knew for certain he was a Warrior. Definitely deep into a Second Life. As I walked by him a second time I accidentally brushed against him and got a vision. It's a vision I really think you should see. Are you near any of your summoning supplies? I think we both have to run the spell at the same time for me to project it to you from such a long distance."

  His determination makes Narcissa even more nervous. Sharing of vision takes a lot of power, especially when doing it across such a vast distance as Vancouver is from Boston.

  "No, I am not but I have two guests with me that I can send to get the supplies. Hold on a moment."

  She walks around the corner and sees that her two guests haven’t moved from the table but are no closer to each other. They are not speaking as Bandits sits typing something on his phone and HJ is still writing out her account of what happened to her this morning. Rolling her eyes, she clears her throat to get their attention. Both heads look up at her inquisitively.

  "I need a favor. This call is going to take a few moments, so I need the two of you to get the ingredients for two spells. One to send HJ's letter to the Council and two for a shared vision spell. I assume you know what's needed for both of those, HJ?"

  HJ nods very slowly; she clearly knows exactly how much power it is going to take to run the spell, but she doesn’t let on beyond the gentle widening of her eyes.

  Narcissa nods at the acknowledgment, grabs her key out of her pocket, and throws it at Bandit. "Help her, it's going to take more than one person to carry everything."

  She watches Bandit catch the key as the two of them stand from the table and Bandit opens the back door. Narcissa holds her breath as Bandit puts his hand out to let HJ go first. HJ took off the jacket she was wearing and her shirt dips low in back. As Narcissa watches, his hand starts to move gently towards her back to guide her out to the shed. It seems to happen in slow motion and then finally Narcissa lets out an aggravated grunt as his hand makes contact with the back of HJ’s shirt. It isn’t skin-to-skin contact so it won’t initiate the flash. She can only hope they somehow come into contact with each other while gathering the supplies. Just like that, she was the only one in the house and she puts the phone back up to her face.

  "I sent them to get the supplies. It'll probably take them about five minutes; do you want to give me the gist of what you saw?"

  One of Harold's skills is seeing possible futures. Odds are if he saw something, it is one of the many branches that could come from the current timeline they’re on.

  "I think you need to see it and make your own determination on what you think. I don't want to sway your thoughts one way or the other."

  "You know how ominous that sounds, right?" she asks a little snider than she means to be.

  She hears a grunt. "Yes, I understand exactly what it sounds like, but that doesn't make it any more or less true. Also I believe this is a vision you will want to see alone." He puts a lot of added emphasis on that last word.

  It is the emphasis that concerns Narcissa. What could possibly be in the vision he doesn’t want others to see? To be fair, he doesn’t know who her company is, but he also didn't ask. This makes her think it doesn’t matter who her guests are, Harold still wants her to see it alone.

  "All right, let me clean off the table so I can set things up properly in the kitchen. I'm going to put you down as I do it but forgive me if I don't put you on speakerphone, as I think it will cause less questions."

  There’s some rustling on the other end of the phone. "Perfectly fine. I'm getting all the ingredients ready on my end now, so I can be completely set up by the time you start since my end of the connection needs to be set up first. Just hop back on when you're ready."

  Narcissa clears off the table, removing everything except the stack of Harold's books and his medallion. As a thought occurs to her, she peers through the blinds at her window and sees the shed door open. Her guests are still preoccupied with the ingredients she needs so she moves to the pile of Harold's books and removes one of the thin ones then straightens the pileup as if nothing happened. As quickly as her body lets her she goes straight upstairs to her room and hides it in a drawer.

  If this trip doesn’t cause the flash or simmer up some kind of attraction between HJ and Bandit then she’ll hide that text, find it tomorrow, and manufacture a reason for Bandit to go to HJ. She knows Bandit well enough to know he’ll bring it there in person, even if he heckles her for forgetting it. Maybe with him handing it off they’ll accidentally brush hands, or the interaction will cause something. Either way, it is as much a backup plan as she can think of under the circumstances.

  As quickly as she can she heads back downstairs to sit at the table, grabbing her phone in the process, making it look like she was there all along.

  She sits not a moment too soon as the back door opens and both HJ and Bandit walk in with their arms full of various herbs, bags, and bottles. There is also her large summoning bowl, the green and blue swirled ceramic bowl that has been in her family for more decades than Narcissa has practiced magic.

  "Thank you for getting all of that. I know this is rude but I need the two of you out of the room for this spell. The vision being conveyed to me is private and I've been instructed no one else should see it."

  Bandit immediately grows wary and curious while HJ simply nods and grabs her jacket off the back of the chair.

  "Of course. We can wait outside while you do what you need to do. Right, Bandit?" The last was a little sharp, letting Narciss
a know their trip to the shed probably wasn’t as companionable as she hoped.

  Without an ally, Narcissa can tell Bandit feels weird about being the only one with a nosy curiosity about what is going on. He lets out a huff and opens the door; once again he and HJ step outside.

  Narcissa leans back and bends one of the blinds ever so slightly so she can see part of HJ's back as the two of them stand out on the patio. She knows it’s useless, but she hopes the two of them make a connection while stuck outside in her backyard.

  She puts all the ingredients together, including more than the usual amount of oil considering the vast distance she and Harold span. When she was younger she did spells like this without including enough liquid. The liquid dried with the spell, meaning the bowl dried out before the vision was complete it blinked out and was harder to reconnect. Ever since that one mistake she always adds more than she thinks she’ll need by a generous amount. Usually it means there is some waste afterwards, but she'd rather that than the alternative.

  Once everything is mixed she says a few words from a spell she knows by heart, not as well as some of the others, but enough to be able to stumble through it and remember as she goes. Once it glows she picks up the phone and puts it next to her ear. "All right, Harold. I just have the final incantation left."

  "All right, start when you hear me end," he responds. He chants and once his side of the spell is complete, Narcissa repeats the words.

  Within a second of the last syllable Harold snaps into focus through the mirror created from air, hovering much like the vision of Lloyd's grave, only this is about the size of a laptop screen.

  "Are you ready?" Harold asks. It’s more of a rhetorical question because he puts his hand up to his side of the liquid mirror and a fuzzy picture appears and takes a moment or two before it solidifies.

  Once the picture is clear, dread drops like a rock in Narcissa stomach. What she sees is clearly the young man Harold bumped into. It’s Buccaneer. With him stands a much thinner Narcissa. Then the vision plays.

  "You had no way of knowing they were feeding off your power," Buck whispers as if trying to console the vision of herself Narcissa saw.

  "It doesn't matter. I'm one of the strongest MPs in the Kingdom. I should've seen it coming. I should've known. I should've felt the power drain and assumed it was more than just age." Her voice is angry and spiteful.

  Buccaneer reaches out to her and wraps her in a hug. "When you decided to go into hiding we bound some of your power, by we, I mean the other MPs, in order to make you less visible. We had no way of knowing you were being betrayed and instead of binding your power they were taking it. This isn't your fault. We didn't know there was a traitor in the Council."

  Before her vision self can respond there is a loud bang like something hitting a wall. The vision shakes and the noise Narcissa recognizes as a gun firing rings through the vision. She watches herself collapse into Buccaneer’s arms like a rag doll. Then there is another bullet noise. She watches in horror as this vision of her, the her that went into hiding as her husband suggested, is shot in the back by a coward.

  Buccaneer screams and runs outside of the field of vision, putting her body slowly on the ground. Knowing he can’t save her, clearly his plan is to avenge her. Scuffling happens out of the line of sight and a moment later Buccaneer's body flies through the air and Narcissa watches in horror as a magic weapon she’s only seen in storybooks, the Sword of Winter, comes in to view and slices Buccaneer in half. Just as the sword was prophesied to do, each end of the cut frosts over as if Buccaneer is a window and not a person.

  The sword retreats and Narcissa can’t see who is wielding it. The vision goes dim and Harold reappears, slowly moving his hand out of view.

  Narcissa notices she is shaking, unsure of how long she has been. Horror at what Harold showed her is almost too much. It isn’t her own death that bothers her but Buccaneer’s. It isn’t easy to get the jump on a Warrior but clearly whoever was outside the field of vision did.

  Lloyd told her going into hiding would save her from this impending doom. Now she isn’t entirely sure. Maybe there are outcomes where everything turns out fine, but she doesn’t know if she can risk one of the pirates to save herself. This is clearly a scenario where she took the advice and hid, making herself blend in as a normal MP. She has no idea why she would have the Council bind her powers. But learning there is a traitor in their midst and that the Sword of Winter was no longer a myth but reality and belongs to the opposite side of the fight makes her blood run cold.

  "I can see from your face you picked up the same things I did from the vision."

  Narcissa nods slowly, trying to calm her body down from the shaking as the adrenaline warns her something needs to be done. "There's a traitor on the Council. That means none of us are safe. It also explains why they wouldn't be telling people you're being followed. That means it has to be somebody in the line that receives Intel from other MPs. There are only three of us that do that."

  Harold nods in return. "The traitor is either Patrick, April, or Esther," Harold whispers almost as if saying it out loud made it truer.

  It never occurred to Narcissa to not trust any of those three MPs. But now she isn’t so sure. She also doesn’t know how many members of the Council are a problem. This is bad, very, very, bad. And at this point she has no idea what she can do to stop it.

  "Is there somewhere you can hide? Can you lose them and disappear for a while until we know what's going on?" Narcissa proposes although she’s pretty sure she already knows the answer.

  Harold is shaking his head before she finishes speaking. "I already spoke to several of my counterparts on the Council whom I trust and another high level MP or two. If there really is someone on the Council behind this there probably isn't anywhere I can go that they won’t find me. I've been fortifying the house, but I'm not one hundred percent sure what I can do beyond that."

  Absently Narcissa brings up her hand and plays with her wedding ring through her shirt. Touching it doesn’t bring her the comfort it usually does. "You and I need to keep in contact. We need to check in with each other. We also need to check in with Rex and a few other high-level practitioners we know. Everyone needs to be aware of the situation. They need to be on the lookout just in case."

  "Agreed. For now I will let you get back to your guests and I will make some phone calls. I will call you back tomorrow afternoon and we can see what each other has."

  Narcissa puts her hand over the bowl, getting ready to close out the spell. "Until tomorrow then." She waits a beat before waving her hand across the bowl and breaking the connection.

  Leaning back in the chair, Narcissa stares straight ahead, looking at where the portal to Harold was. There is a spy in the Council who is trying to accomplish something, they don’t know what, but something. This is not a problem that can be solved in a matter of weeks. It will take work even with a lot of them chipping away at it. From what Lloyd told her that's time she doesn’t have.

  That jogs her memory to the future lovebirds outside and she leans over on the chair and knocks on the window and fixes the blind.

  Within a moment both of them walk back in. HJ looks somewhat irritated and Bandit looks pleased with himself. Clearly the pirate has been irritating the younger woman.

  Narcissa doesn’t have time to think about that now; she needs to warn HJ. It’s possible the Council already knows about what HJ wants to report. It would be irresponsible of Narcissa not to pass that information on to the white MP.

  Narcissa directs her attention to HJ, motioning for the younger woman to take a seat. HJ's expression grows wary as she slowly pulls out the chair she occupied before. Out of the corner of her eye, Narcissa sees Bandit also sat down, much faster than HJ did. His centuries-old mind racing to try and calculate what could possibly have Narcissa this concerned. Both he and his brother Buck have survived as long as they did by having keen minds and being able to read people well. Bu
t Narcissa knows in this particular circumstance odds are he won’t come up with the right answer.

  She directs her full attention to HJ. "I'm afraid I have some bad news. That was a counterpart of mine across the country who sees the future sometimes. He brushed against someone and got a rather disturbing vision. In the vision it talks about a traitor on the Council.

  "He also told me he has been followed for more than a week and he reported it to the Council. I haven't heard anything about it, which means somebody is stopping the flow of information to the rest of the members.

  "Both he and I are going to be reaching out to as many of our contacts as possible to see if there's something we can do about the situation. Honestly if his vision is correct, I'm concerned there might not be a lot we can do. I think you should warn your sisters about what happened and corral Lucia and the other local MPs you trust together. I think you communicating and looking out for each other until we can ferret out who the traitor in the Council is your best bet at avoiding this MP you went out with. I think if you're all talking to each other it will be harder to get past any single one of you.”

  Fear washes across HJ's face as she processes the information. "How clear was the vision?"

  One of HJ's sisters receives visions of the future so HJ knows first-hand that the clearer the vision, the more likely it is to come to pass.

  "It was by no means the clearest vision I've ever seen from him. But it was clear enough I could see the details, so it is more likely than unlikely," Narcissa responds.

  She can tell HJ doesn’t like that answer, and she waits as the younger woman's mind whirls.

  "Are there only a handful of people who handle communications into the Council?"

  Narcissa closes her eyes and nods at the younger woman's assessment. "Yes, there are three. Three possible traitors. And as soon as I get you on your way I'm going to be contacting as many people as possible to see if we can narrow that down. I felt it was fair to let you know I won’t be sending in your letter to the Council. Odds are this traitor is aware of the store already, and even if they're not, I don't want to give a traitor more allies than they already have. I will however circulate it amongst the people I know I can trust. Again I'm sorry this will not have the outcome we hoped for."