“She’s gone,” Peggy whispered, dropping her hands to her sides. “Jane. So much … love …”
“Did you … hear? Do you remember?”
Peggy shook her head.
Benjamin settled my necklace around my neck.
“That wasn’t a ghost,” I whispered, reaching up and touching the lowest coins where they felt heavy against my breastbone.
“What do you mean?” Benjamin asked.
I shook my head, unable to answer. Unable to articulate the feeling or the idea that Jane Hawthorne had somehow managed to tie herself, her spirit … her soul to this plane of existence. Then she had waited for me to reach out to her. Because she’d died before she had the chance to articulate the vision she’d just somehow channeled through me?
The idea of that even being possible was staggering, overwhelmingly inconceivable … and I was a necromancer. I dealt with death. I might not make a living at it yet, but I would eventually. “Soul magic,” I murmured.
Peggy wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go back to your place while we wait to hear from Liam and Jasmine, hey? It’s closer. If we ask nicely, Gabby might make us brownies. We’re going to need the fuel.”
Gabby grunted. “I’ll need ingredients.”
I allowed the twins to draw me away, looking back only as we hit the path.
Benjamin was lingering by the columbarium, jotting notes in his notebook. “Coming, Ben?”
He nodded absentmindedly. “I think a witch might be able to fix the scratches on the stone. And the oracle will want to have the plaque properly engraved. I’ve noted its exact location.”
“Thank you. I’ll ask Burgundy. And mention it to Rochelle.”
He tucked the notebook away in his bag, picked up the candle and tin I had unintentionally abandoned, and sauntered after us.
Still completely drained, I forced myself to text Rochelle from the back seat of the Jeep, being as concise as possible. I could elaborate in person.
I found your mom.
She said to tell you that she ‘sees you.’ She said you’d know what she means.
But she won’t be coming back. She’s moved on.
And she did something. Something about releasing a vision.
I suspect you might know about that already.
Message sent, I snoozed. Benjamin was bent over his notebook in the seat beside me, his black-inked handwriting filling page after page. In the front seats, Peggy chatted quietly with Gabby as she drove.
I was okay. I would have to ask Peggy later what exactly she’d picked up from Jane’s spirit — if anything. And I wasn’t certain how up front I wanted to be about allowing the spirit of an oracle to possess me. But since my mother never bothered to question me, and since everyone else was either missing in action or worried about those missing in action, I doubted the subject would come up.
Either way, I’d broken a cardinal rule by removing my necklace. But thankfully, I appeared to still be alive. I was completely certain that was due to Jane Hawthorne’s intentions, though, not my own abilities. I wasn’t going to be repeating the activity soon, if ever.
We were a block from my house when my phone pinged. I glanced at the screen, expecting a text from Rochelle. It was Jasmine.
>Ready for you. Meet me by the statue of the running guy. Bring Ben and the twins.
Terry Fox.
>Sure. Whoever. Let me know when you’re near. I’ll come get you.
We’re about fifteen minutes away.
“Hey,” I said. “Liam and Jasmine are ready for us.”
Peggy turned around in her seat, blinking her big blue eyes in my direction. “Operation rescue mission is a go?”
“Undead turtle reconnaissance is a go. Assuming I can get Ed through the elves’ wards. And even if I can, it’s not like he can drag Jade out of the stadium.”
“That part will get worked out, Mory.” Peggy smiled softly. “Still, it’ll be nice to be doing the rescuing. We’ve never been on that side of a situation before.”
“Yeah. I hear you.”
I pulled Ed out of my satchel, holding him against my chest as I settled back against the seat and closed my eyes. I was fairly certain we were nowhere near whatever the finale was going to be with the elves. Fallen warriors or no fallen warriors. But even getting ten minutes sleep would help me face whatever was coming.
2
Rochelle
Buzz.
The city of Vancouver was laid to waste. Ruined. Swathed in harshly edged charcoal grays, smoldering, crumbled buildings spread from the shoreline to the mountains. Not a speck of green among the fallen towers.
Buzz.
I twisted my ankle in the concrete rubble, stumbling but managing to not fall and impale myself on the twisted rebar that jutted out everywhere. I wasn’t quite sure where I was standing. I wasn’t quite sure I was actually in the city at all.
Buzz.
A whisper of darkness slipped up my spine, chilling me through and through. A presence loomed behind me. A dreadful echo of the section of my soul I thought I’d walled off. A future I had hoped I’d thwarted.
I slowly pivoted, already knowing what I would see perched on the towering pile of rubble rising to my right. I wrapped my right hand tightly over my left, crushing my fingers in my grasp, covering the diamond-speckled wedding ring I wore. My mind screamed for me to look away, to look anywhere else.
Buzz.
I was wrong. I had expected the demon with its glowing crimson eyes, viciously sharp teeth, and wickedly curved talons. And the black-scaled beast was there, perched on a pile of steel girders, concrete, and glass … so, so much shattered glass everywhere. Knee high in some places.
It was the girl I hadn’t expected.
She was slim and tall, around eight or nine. Her tousled white hair hung halfway down her back, raggedly hacked off at the ends as though she’d cut it herself. Dressed head to toe in mismatched shades of gray, she practically blended in with the crumbling concrete. Except for her hair and the demon by her side.
The girl reached up and scratched the black beast underneath its chin. It curled its spiked tail around her ankles and purred.
The sound ground into my bones. I shuddered, gasping.
The demon swiveled its broad, flat head, pinning me with flaming eyes.
Rochelle. Its voice screeched through my mind. My Rochelle.
The girl spun to face me, crouching beneath the demon’s chest as if she expected the creature to protect her. As if it were hers.
As if it were her demon, not mine.
Her skin was light brown. Her features were desperately familiar. But it was her eyes that made me lightheaded. Her eyes were brilliant white.
The white of oracle magic.
My magic.
My heart stopped beating, even as it somehow crammed itself into my throat.
The girl wore a silver whip twined around her waist. The whip that had belonged to my grandmother, Win. The whip I was fairly certain was currently in the sorcerer Blackwell’s possession.
The whip that was supposed to have been mine to wield.
The girl’s whited-out gaze flicked around, looking everywhere at once but seeing nothing.
“Mom?” she whispered.
She couldn’t see me.
I wasn’t standing there at all.
“Mom?!”
Buzz.
My phone was buzzing.
With text messages.
I was dreaming.
No … I was having a vision.
I opened my eyes.
I was in the living room, where I had fallen asleep on the couch. Beside me, Beau was snoring quietly, his head tilted back at a harsh angle.
The white of the vision threatened to take my sight, and I almost let it. I almost allowed my insistent magic to overwhelm my rational mind. Because of the girl. Because I wanted to see her. Again and again.
Instead, I focused on the present, settling my hands across my swollen be
lly and listening to Beau breathe. I felt the firmness of my taut skin through my T-shirt. And knowing that my baby slumbered curled within me edged the vision farther away, clearing my eyesight until all I saw was the dimly lit living room. The TV was on, still playing whatever movie Beau had been watching when he must have fallen asleep after me. I took a deep breath, gently rubbing my belly and the child slowly growing within, still three months from being ready for this world.
My baby. Beau’s and mine.
My child … with my demon, my whip, in a future destroyed.
I squeezed my eyes closed. It wasn’t the time to shut down. It wasn’t the time to make guesses, to jump to conclusions. I knew better.
“Beau,” I whispered.
Beau stood. One moment he was asleep, then he was standing over me and awake. Ready for anything.
“I need to draw,” I said, reaching up with both hands so he’d help me off the couch.
“Is it bad?” he asked.
I met his dark aquamarine gaze. Desperate to keep the terror threatening to pull me under at bay, I could only nod.
It was bad.
“Jade?” he asked.
I shook my head. But then I paused, thinking of the ruined city. Thinking of the vision I’d had of Jade two nights before and of the feeling of being desperately angry but utterly lost that had come with it.
Oh, God.
“Maybe,” I whispered.
Maybe it was Jade. Maybe whatever was going on with Jade was going to destroy the city, was going to alter the future so … so … that my child was guarded by a demon without me … or Beau.
Since the vision that had partially manifested at the dance club, I’d seen nothing. Nothing of Jade. Not after seeing her surrounded by mist, lost in the deep, dark fog. Unreachable. And no sign of any of the other Adepts that called Vancouver home. Not even when I’d touched Mory in the cemetery yesterday. I had actively tried to read the necromancer and gotten … more of that nothing.
And in that nothingness, I thought I might be looking toward my own death. A death I couldn’t see, wouldn’t see coming. Unless … unless I could see it by seeing my child … abandoned, perhaps even orphaned, in a ruined city …
Tears slipped down my cheeks and I started to shake. My breath was coming fast and hard. I was panicking. Panic wasn’t helpful. Tears solved nothing. But … I … I …
Beau gripped my shoulders. “Tell me. Tell me, love. Let me help.”
“Beau … Beau …” I reached for him, clutching him, feeling his strength and finding my own. The baby shifted in my belly, nestled between us.
“We’ll fix it,” Beau murmured, slowly caressing my hair. “That’s why you see. So we can fix it.”
I nodded against his chest. I didn’t know enough to panic yet. I had more to see. “I’m going to need a new sketchbook.”
Instead of breaking contact with me, Beau swept me up in his arms. Carrying me through the house that was too large for just the two of us, he climbed the stairs and brought me to my studio.
I settled at the desk at the window that overlooked the chicken coop, rather than going to the easel I used for large-scale sketches. In between car projects and helping out with renovations, Beau had spent the year prepping and fencing a garden area that was going to surround the main coop and run. He had just finished building a grow-out coop for chicks we’d hatched in late October. They were almost ready to come out of the brooder in the garage.
Pulling a new set of charcoals out of the middle desk drawer, I had to angle my body to get close enough to rest my left elbow on the desk. Beau set a fresh sketchbook in front of me. I reached out and touched his hand before he could withdraw it, taking further comfort in his warmth and the firmness of his skin. He was real. He was present. My present. And together, we would tackle the future.
“Beau,” I whispered, looking up to meet his gaze. “She … she’s magnificent.”
He knelt, pressing his hand across my belly. “She? Our daughter?”
“Yes. I think so. Around nine years old …”
Beau swallowed harshly, realizing that whatever I’d seen, whatever had wrenched such an unusual emotional display from me — my second in as many days — had to do with our daughter.
Two nights before, I’d seen something having to do with the dowser, Jade Godfrey, while we’d been celebrating her bachelorette party and the elves had shown up in force. But I wasn’t able to articulate the vision. I couldn’t even draw it — the dowser trapped in an endless fog, somehow captured by some unknown power … and filling me with a fear of the elves’ gemstones that I still didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense. Not at the time the vision hit, and not any time since. Not even when I’d sat with a blank page before me and charcoal in my hand for hours as soon as I’d gotten home, safely ensconced behind wards that had been erected to protect me.
And now this vision of the nine-year-old girl with Beau’s face, my magic — and a ruined city around her. And protected by the demon? My demon.
The white mist that preceded every vision threatened the edges of my peripheral vision.
Leaving one hand on my belly, Beau cupped his other hand to my face. “We’ll do whatever it takes.” He looked grim, determined. “Promise me, Rochelle. Whatever it takes.”
“Yes. Whatever it takes. Whatever the cost.”
He cleared his throat, stopping himself from asking more. He’d see the details in black and white soon enough. “I’ll get you some water.”
“Thank you.”
He rose, brushing a kiss against my forehead.
I turned back to the desk, flipping the sketchbook open and pressing fresh charcoal to the first page.
Effortlessly, the white of my oracle magic flooded forward at my bidding, enveloping my mind, taking my sight.
And I drew.
I drew the future. And with every stroke, every smudge, curve, and hard edge, I swore to unmake it.
Destiny be damned.
Whatever it took. Whatever the cost.
By the time the grip of the vision had eased, it was the deep dark of early morning outside my window. It wasn’t all that cold out, but I found myself wishing for a reason to build a fire and hunker down, hide away from the world.
From the battle for the future.
A war that might have already started — and that might already have been way beyond my ability to shape.
I slumped back in my chair. Beau peeled out of the darkness to my right. He’d been sitting on the love seat, waiting to feed me. To make sure I was okay.
And I was. Just shaky.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“About 2:00 a.m.” He held out a plate of sliced apple, and I eagerly plucked one off the plate.
It wasn’t really a good time of year for apples, but Beau had built a cold storage space in the unheated garage that currently also housed the chicks and two of his project cars. It helped the apples keep longer. Back in October, he had taken me — along with a toy wagon he’d borrowed from our neighbors’ children — to the UBC Apple Festival, where he’d proceeded to buy me a half-dozen of every variety they offered while I laughed at all the stares his indulgence had drawn. Normally, it was his looks that drew attention. But that sunny afternoon, it had been an epic mound of apples in a sturdy plastic wagon that had everyone amused.
“Mmm,” I said, nibbling on a slice of a yellow-skinned, creamy-fleshed apple appreciatively. “Aurora Golden Gala. I think this might be my favorite.”
Beau knelt down next to me, reaching up to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I know. I have three trees on order from the nursery already. I was going to tell you on your birthday.”
I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck, curling forward to press my forehead against his. “Beau …”
He pressed another piece of apple into my free hand, even though my fingers were caked in charcoal. “I also ordered a Gala, a Salish, a Granny Smith, and an Ambrosia.”
“That’s a lot of
apple trees. Way more than we discussed.”
“They’re all dwarf or semidwarf. So high yield but smaller trees. I haven’t been able to source a Rubinette or a Belle de Boskoop yet. The Thompsons might be able to help. At least with sourcing some scion wood from Summerland. I know you liked the Boskoop for making applesauce.”
“That’s the apple Jade used for her first batches of Clarity in a Cup.” The dowser, who owned and ran a bakery when she wasn’t facing off against elves and getting trapped in some sort of endless fog in my visions, had created a cupcake that reminded her of the way my magic tasted to her.
I savored the apple as I chewed, and allowed myself to wonder if the oracle magic that the girl in my vision wielded would taste the same to Jade as mine did. Except if the future I’d just sketched came to pass … well, I couldn’t imagine that Jade was going to be alive to see it.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Beau brushed a soft kiss against my forehead as he murmured soothingly, “I’m going to plant the apples all around the coops. And when they grow a bit and branch out, you can free-range the chickens without worrying so much about hawks and eagles.”
I let out a shuddering breath. Then I took and ate another slice of apple from the plate. “Okay … okay.”
“And I think we should add a couple of plum trees and maybe pear? We can talk about varieties.”
“Okay.” I straightened in my seat, snagging another piece of apple from the plate. Then I turned my attention to my sketchbook. It was still open to the last page. I flipped it closed. The edges of the paper were dark with smudged charcoal fingerprints. I looked down at my hands. My skin was evenly blackened almost to my wrists. “Did you look?”
“You know I didn’t.”
I nodded.
“Mory has been texting.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to warm you some apple juice.” He straightened, turning to leave.
“No, wait. I’m … I’m not sure we have the time.”
Beau paused, waiting in the darkness.
I didn’t know what to say. I felt drained. Visions didn’t usually come with timelines attached, but I somehow knew we had to keep moving forward. Quickly.
Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things That Byte (Dowser 8.5) Page 10