I See Me (28 page)

I saw the future. Well, I assumed I saw the future. Though how, I had no idea. ‘Magic’ was what everyone had been suggesting, but that word — that concept — was generic enough that it didn’t actually supply me with any true understanding. Was magic energy? The energy I felt as electricity when I touched Beau, Jade, and Blackwell? Energy from where?

And why me? What purpose did the visions have?

Was I a harbinger? A messenger? If so, whose messages was I relaying? And, again, why?

And — pushing aside thoughts that were too large to comprehend while standing in the middle of a deserted parking lot, freezing, dizzy and surrounded by wolves — what had I just agreed to with Blackwell?

The sorcerer collected things. Magical artifacts. I’d seen evidence of these devices three times now. The amulet, the amplifier in the restaurant, and the half-circlet that somehow gave him access to my visions.

He also collected people. He desperately wanted Jade Godfrey.

And he’d just collected me.

I stood there in the parking lot while the wolves did their tracking thing, awash in questions and piecing together what few answers I could. The white haze of the visions had lifted, though I was still chilled to the bone and drained. Really, really drained. I also kind of wished I’d retained more of the numbness, because my right arm was starting to throb again where I’d wretched it falling out of the bathroom window.

Despite feeling like crap, I really wasn’t interested in standing around waiting anymore. I didn’t think werewolves could talk in wolf form, but I imagined others would arrive soon.

Maybe they’d want answers, or maybe they’d be pissed with me. I didn’t really care either way.

I didn’t need all the answers to all of my huge questions to know where I wanted to be. Besides not wanting to be here anymore, I mean.

I also wasn’t interested in testing the theory of whether or not I’d thwarted the vision or merely delayed it. I needed the necklace — and Beau — to be nowhere near this parking lot, ever.

So I turned and walked away. The wolves let me go with barely a glance. I guess they’d already proven I was easy to track.

Each step I took back to Beau was less shaky than the first.

I started to walk back the way I’d come, but when it came time to turn up toward the bus stop, I kept walking. I figured the road I was on was parallel to the main road, so that I’d see the bus when it passed. Though it wasn’t like I could sprint the block or more to catch it, so my logic was definitely flawed. Still, I didn’t feel like changing directions.

I wondered where the werewolves had parked. I wondered if they changed shape in their cars. If they did, where did their clothes go? I couldn’t remember what had happened to Beau’s clothing when he turned into his tiger.

I wondered if the wolves could track Blackwell when he just disappeared like that. Could they track the magic of the amulet he wore?

I wondered if they were going to come after me.

But I couldn’t get worked up about any of it. I was so tired, bone-tired, and yet I felt light.

I felt free. I felt ready.
 

The sun came out from behind the low cloud to warm my back with a kiss of heat just before it finished setting. I pulled my tinted glasses out of my bag and slid them over my sun-sensitive eyes. It was an automatic sort of gesture, because I didn’t really need them.

A few cars sped by in both directions, but the bulk of the traffic stayed on the main road to my right. I passed a few houses with large front lawns as I walked. Not all the driveways were paved, and some of the porches needed paint.

My phone pinged, and I checked it to find a text message from Blackwell. I was really hoping it would be from Beau, even though he didn’t have a phone.

>
I look forward to our next meeting, Rochelle
.

So the wolves hadn’t gotten the sorcerer. I should be worried about that, shouldn’t I? Did I want the shapeshifters to get Blackwell? I didn’t even know what the sorcerer had done to them, or to Jade Godfrey. I didn’t really want to know. I just wanted to be in the Brave with Beau.

I was going to buy Beau a phone. No, I was just never going to leave his side again. Then I didn’t have to worry about being able to call him.

An old Chinese man was walking toward me. I would have sworn I could see the street empty for blocks ahead, but I hadn’t noticed him until he was only about two houses away. Maybe he’d crossed onto the sidewalk from one of the driveways.

I could see that the guy was a character even fifty or so feet away from him. He was wearing a white dress and flip-flops. I was cold in my jeans and hoodie, so he must be freezing. But he was smiling away like the world was his playground.

Maybe he was crazy. I didn’t mind crazy. I still wasn’t completely sure I wasn’t living in a fantasy world myself. I was still working through all that in my beleaguered mind.

He was about twenty feet in front of me now, grinning at me like we knew each other. I wondered if I’d ever seen a person as old as him before. Yet, he walked … lightly. He wasn’t gliding or anything, but there was something about him … something more.

“We meet,” he said when he was about ten feet away. I’d been about to step to the side to skirt around him. I’d already averted my eyes so to not accidentally engage whatever weirdness he might have going on in his head.

He reached out his hand, but not for me to shake. It was almost as if he expected to grab something.

I tripped. With my head cranked to the side to look at the old guy, I hadn’t seen that the driveway I was crossing was cracked right down the middle. I twisted my ankle. I threw my hands forward as I realized I wasn’t going to get my other foot underneath me in time. I fell.

My left elbow connected with the old guy’s outstretched hand.
 

A jolt of electricity ran up my arm.

I got my other foot under me just as the shockwave hit my brain and everything went blurry. My legs went to jelly.

“Sorry, sorry,” the old man said. His Asian accent was crazy-thick. He was holding me aloft, as if I wasn’t only an inch or so shorter than him and probably just as heavy. He was sturdy underneath the old man skin.

I got my legs sorted back underneath me as I straightened. He let go.

I stared at him. For someone so old, his almost-white hair was thick and his back was straight. He was wearing a robe, not a dress as I’d assumed. It was long enough to hit the tops of his sandaled feet, mostly white with some simple gold embroidery at the edges of the cuffs and neckline.

“You caught me.”

“Yes.”

“You knew I was going to fall.”

“Big crack in pavement.”

“You gave me a shock when you touched me.”

“Did I?”

He was grinning at me so heartily that I started to think I’d imagined the electric shock and the hazy vision.

I turned away. The sidewalk stretched endlessly in front of me. But I didn’t keep walking.

Why was I walking down this road anyway? The bus would have had me back in Portland by now.

I looked back at the Asian man. He nodded his head, encouragingly.

“I’m Rochelle … Hawthorne Saintpaul.”

“Yes. Daughter of Jane Hawthorne, the Oracle of Philadelphia, and Kai Lei, a sorcerer of Hong Kong.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Or maybe that was what it felt like when a long-lost fragment of your life snapped into place.

“I’m Chi Wen,” the old man continued, as I swayed before him like I was ready to drop in a faint. “Far seer of the guardian nine.”

“Guardian of what?” I heard myself whisper, though I wasn’t currently formulating any thoughts in my empty, empty mind.

“The world and all the magic within it.” Chi Wen laughed as if his assertion wasn’t exactly as insane as it sounded.

“You knew my parents?”

“No. I’m sorry, fledgling. I did not. Shall we continue to walk? I’m enjoying the feeling of the setting sun on my face.”

Completely mute, I pivoted and followed after him in the direction I’d just come. We walked, me a step behind for a block or more.

At some point, I spoke. “There are wolves up ahead.”

“Yes,” he replied gleefully. “Interesting creatures. I will soon meet one who runs with the warrior’s daughter — her hair intrigues me — but today is not that day.”

Warrior’s daughter … Far seer … guardian of all the magic in the world … Jane the Oracle of Philadelphia …

“Green hair. Kandy,” I blurted. My voice was shaky. But then, so was I.

Chi Wen nodded but said nothing else.

“Jade Godfrey …” I said. “She said she knew someone like me.”

“She said she knew someone like me.” Chi Wen repeated my sentence word for word, yet there was a correction of my phrasing in there somewhere. I didn’t catch whatever he was emphasizing though. Maybe the ‘me?’ It might have been his accent, or it might have been my inherent unwillingness to be corrected.

We walked for a few more blocks. I could see the strip mall up ahead, but it wasn’t close enough for me to distinguish the barbershop yet.

“So … this is all real?”

Chi Wen took a deep breath, and slowly lifted his arms like wings to the sides. “You feel the air in your lungs, yes?”

“Yes.”

“The stone underneath your feet?”

“Pavement, but yes.”

Chi Wen stopped and gazed down at the ground for a moment. “Pavement,” he said.

He didn’t move.

A car passed us, then another.

I shuffled my feet. I wasn’t sure if … maybe he’d gone to sleep? With his eyes open in a completely creepy fashion?

“You …” My voice cracked. I started again, speaking louder. “You were saying?”

Chi Wen began walking again without warning. I stumbled after him.

“I like the sun,” he said. “Most dragons do not, except the warrior. Jade’s father enjoys the beach.”

Yeah, I didn’t follow that segue.
What did he and Jade’s father have to do with dragons? And wait, dragons were real now? Like fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding dragons with wings and scales and wickedly long claws?

Chi Wen held his right hand to the side at hip height, palm up.

For a moment, I thought I was supposed to take it. Then I tripped again. I caught my fall this time, without his help. I’d never felt so clumsy in my life.
 

He withdrew his hand.

“You are weary,” he said without turning his head. That was an easy enough assessment to make just by looking at me. “You were not ready for the sorcerer’s request.”

I was lagging behind, both in the conversation and the walk. I jogged a couple of steps to catch up to him. He was walking with his eyes closed. I opened my mouth to admonish him, as if he was some child. Then I snapped it shut.

He chuckled.

“I’m confused,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I am helping. You are not absorbing. Shall I speak slower?”

“God, no. You could pick up the pace.”

“I do not believe you could follow if I were to walk faster.”

I sighed. Then I walked into him as he pivoted to stop directly in front of me. It was like hitting a brick wall and bouncing off. I stumbled back but managed not to fall. I’d cracked my forehead against his, and along with a wallop of pain, I got that burst of electricity again.

Magic. That was what a hell of a lot of magic felt like.

“First lesson, for hasty fledgling,” the old man said.

“I’m not hasty at all,” I countered while I rubbed my sore forehead. “I’m steady. I’m focused.”

“Hasty fledgling,” he repeated. “What do you see when you look at me?”

“Old Chinese guy.”

“Look closer.”

“Wrinkles, kind of gnarly teeth.”

His smile expanded. Then, so quickly that I didn’t register the movement until he withdrew his hand, he tapped me lightly between the eyes. “You are using the wrong eye.”

I frowned. I didn’t like hokey crap. Just because I was willing to take the leap that magic actually existed, that didn’t mean I was going to get all spiritual or metaphysical.

“And be truthful with yourself, fledgling.”

That pissed me off further. I was always truthful to myself … at least I always tried to be.

But I’d asked the questions. I wanted answers. So I’d jump through his hoops.

I looked at Chi Wen more closely. He stood about two feet away and was maybe an inch taller than me. “White … gold,” I murmured. “All around you. Is that … magic?”

The old man shrugged. “Aura reading. A basic skill that your kind should manifest early.”

I gritted my teeth at the ‘your kind’ part of the statement. I had no idea if he was dissing me or not, and normally I wouldn’t put up with that garbage. But I was slightly worried about the pavement-staring-thing happening again. He’d been about to tell me something that I thought might be important — like how I could figure out what was real and what wasn’t real — when I’d distracted him by correcting his word choice. I wasn’t going to derail him a second time.

“What do you see when you look at me?” I asked him.

His smile widened until it was almost impossibly large for his tiny face. This expression informed me that I didn’t want to know the answer.

“What color?” I amended.

“White,” he answered. “All around you, but especially in your eyes.”

He could see through my tinted glasses. I knew that shouldn’t have surprised me. But I was getting the feeling he could also see inside my head, and that freaked me out.

“I’m a seer?”

“An oracle by birth.” I wasn’t sure that was an entire answer, but I pressed forward with my initial line of questioning, hoping to keep him on track.

“Same as you?”

“No.”

“You don’t see the future?”

“I do.”

“But we’re not the same.”

“No.”

Could he be more frustratingly enigmatic? Probably not. Based on his choice of outfit and the ever-present smile, I had a feeling it was kind of his shtick.

“Why do I see what I see … Blackwell and Jade Godfrey. And not, like, anyone I know, or public figures, or whoever?”

“Magic sees magic, not the mundane,” Chi Wen answered. “Perhaps the sorcerer and the warrior’s daughter are the most powerful Adepts within your sphere. Or perhaps magic has its own reason, only to be revealed when it comes to pass.”