Harbinger

by Emme DeWitt

  “Seriously?” I asked the room.

  Ig paused with his licking, his eyes rolling to mine briefly before continuing.

  A heavy sigh escaped me. I left my new personal bodyguard to finish his bath as I refocused on my new boredom breaker—figuring out the common link between Elevated books, preferably before any other Elevated hooligans walked away with my hidden stash.

  Thirty-Three

  Ig’s bright green eyes twitched at my every move. I had piled all the marked books on the desk, much as Ms. Xavier had done with those in her office. Even with the sizable surface area of the behemoth of a desk, I had to make several columns on the floor as well. My fingers flicked lightly through the onion skin pages of a cartography book, while Ig’s pupils bounced back and forth.

  “Do you have anything to add, or are you just trying to be a nuisance?” I said aloud to him.

  Ig’s tail flicked once. He even gave me one of his slow blinks. My concentration kept breaking, thinking he was about to interject at any moment.

  I snapped the book shut and set it to the side. My fingers steepled in front of my face, and I began what had become our habitual staring match. I hadn’t been timing them, but I would estimate about once an hour, I couldn’t handle the cat’s intense scrutiny any longer, and I just had to give it back to him. At least for a few minutes.

  “Are you going to at least fetch us dinner?” I said again, breaking the silence with the rhetorical question.

  Ig blinked at me, his tail still.

  “Thought not,” I mumbled, pulling a new volume toward me. “How am I supposed to go out and get food unseen and then sneak back in? Huh? Riddle me that?”

  I muttered to myself, wishing I had a human sounding board. Sure, Evangeline was a little difficult because her ability to understand my train of thought caused us to skip ahead, leaving some thoughts unfinished and rough. Adele would humor me with my manic thought webs, but she was always good at playing devil’s advocate. Without them, I was left arguing myself to a cat. Somehow, it was more humiliating than I expected.

  Ig’s eyes flashed at me.

  “If you’re an Elevated psychic cat, I’m quitting right now,” I warned him. “Humans are bad enough. I don’t need to start exploring zoology as well.”

  Ig gave me another slow blink. I stuck my tongue out at him. The feeling was mutual.

  “What I need is some sort of codex that will break the cypher of these ridiculous books,” I said aloud. “There are too many variables to find the common link by hand. It’s not even guaranteed we have all the volumes either.”

  Through the columns of books, I thought I saw Ig sigh in annoyance. He jumped down from his perch, finding a discarded notebook to sit on. I raised my eyebrow at him, questioning his seating choice when there were multiple comfortable couches and armchairs scattered around the room. Ig began to clean himself again, so I pulled my eyes away from him for privacy.

  “It could be by date,” I said to myself. “Or subject. The titles seem innocuous enough. Authors too. They could all be pseudonyms for all we know.”

  I grabbed a few of the volumes closest to me. I squinted at the random sample. Some of the embossed letters had foil, but not all. The material must have changed over time, however, because the wear and discoloration only showed on some of the older volumes. I opened several of them, checking the dates to see if that confirmed my hypothesis.

  No. The tarnished ones had dates as late as 1980. An untouched gold leaf volume was dated 1936.

  Well, that was a bust.

  The gold leaf one caught my eye. Sleep Disorders Among Young Adults: International Edition.

  I snorted, thinking immediately of Adair. I better hide this one well.

  The next gold leaf volume I came across made my forehead crease. The Complete Body Language Dictionary. My fingers searched the nearest stack for all the gold leaf embossed books. The titles brought to mind either Adair or Evangeline immediately.

  Influencing Influencers.

  A History of Biphasic Sleep.

  The Ultimate Dream Encyclopedia.

  Aura Reading for Beginners.

  My eyes slid to Ig. He sat at attention facing me, his eyes unblinking.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  His mouth opened wide in a yawn.

  I snorted. “Apparently not.”

  I made quick work of reordering the piles. Standing up, the four separate piles still had a few columns on the floor, and the books were stacked to my shoulders. I paused, wishing for the tenth time this evening that Evangeline were here. I itched at the need I felt, but realistically her knowledge extended far past mine in the world of the Elevated. I needed her as a search engine to help me figure out where to go from here.

  Ig finally vacated the discarded notebook in favor of a better spot. My eyes were drawn back to the bright green cover, which stuck out garishly against the prism of blues and silvers in the room. I walked over to pick it up, finding it filled with my poor attempts at Spanish. In the margins, I had doodled a few geometric patterns. It must have been an audio quiz. My eyes caught on the Elevated symbol. I must have drawn it subconsciously along with the triangles and geometric tile borders I had inked.

  I tossed the notebook near my bag and returned to my piles. Grabbing the nearest book, my fingers traced the spine again. My thumb caught on the bottom, and I turned the volume over to see what it was.

  The Elevated symbol stared back at me. I drew the symbol in the air, remembering Evangeline mentioning the Dawn of Eight story she had promised to tell me once I understood the planes a little better. Without context, she had warned, the story was doomsday at best and easy to dismiss.

  My fingers tapped at the points. Eight points. Eight sides.

  Evangeline’s handwriting came to mind. Her sketch had been confiscated with the other research paraphernalia in the study cubicle, but I remembered her words.

  “Relative, temporal, vitality, sentient,” I mumbled. The four piles of books stood ominously on the desk and surrounding floor space. “Bingo.”

  I scooped the entire gold leaf pile to the ground and starting grabbing them one by one. Both Adair and Evangeline were Elevated on the Sentient plane. Using their duality of consciousness and unconsciousness, I sorted the books further into two piles. Evangeline’s pile snagged on the edge of the circular rug that bordered the looming desk.

  Using Evangeline’s sketch as a map, I placed her pile across the desk from Adair’s. My eyes pinged back and forth between the two piles I had separated, noticing that while the paper colors varied from cream to butter, the jackets were all the same. Evangeline’s pile was a deep forest green, while Adair’s was a deep midnight blue. Some were more faded than others, but the colors remained within a few shades.

  “Fitting,” I said, rubbing the mini bruises on my arms from the corners of the newly sorted piles of books.

  I surveyed the remaining piles, realizing my ignorance was vaster than I had admitted. My eyes traced down the titles in each pile, trying to find any more obvious connections than the colors of the covers. While it had proven true for one Elevated plane, I needed something more substantial to link the others. The only other Elevation I had any familiarity with was my own. Nothing seemed to scream banshee at me, and I circled the table again.

  Then a title caught my eye. I’d seen it before. Had it been in Ms. Xavier’s piles?

  Echolocation in Pacific Sea Mammals

  My hand went to my throat. I doubted my scream had anything to do with sonar, but it was definitely more than normal human vocal sound waves. My eyes caught on a few more books in the same pile, and I pulled them so quickly, the tower slid slowly down, causing the remaining books to crash in a landslide on the floor.

  A Choir of Wolves: Vocalization in North American Lupine Packs

  10 Easy Steps to Training Your Dog

  Dia De Los Muertos: A History

  Death Masks in Tribal Communities

  G
rief and Loss: A Short Story Anthology

  I clawed at all the books, the titles overwhelming me, the tarnished foil glittering at me against the ebony covers. I felt all the blood rush to my head.

  And stupidly, my first instinct was to stand up.

  My knees locked. I felt my weight shift back to my heels, and I was unable to rock back to balance myself. My shoulder crashed against the floor first, and the rest of my body followed in a heap.

  I realized I was gasping. My chest fought hard against my crossed arms, trying desperately to rise to pull in enough air. Tears streamed from my eyes, and I felt an overwhelming sadness come over me.

  Inwardly, I groaned.

  If I’d known Winter was soundproof, I wouldn’t have cared if a song overcame me.

  But it wasn’t soundproof. And if I sang, everyone would know exactly where I was hiding.

  The heat of the song burned in my gut, trickling slowly up my throat like unruly bile. I sucked my lips in, biting down hard on them to avoid any sound escaping. I had to overcome this. I could not be ruled by the songs and their timeline. I needed to take control of my life.

  As I lay on the floor, beating myself up mentally for getting too caught up in other things to work on controlling my own Elevation, I felt a bump on my lower back. I rolled over slightly so I was on my back.

  Ig jumped onto my stomach, and the surprise impact caused me to cry out.

  I smacked my hand back over my mouth, trying to stifle the few notes of the song that had leaked out. My throat constricted in rebellion, and the burning sensation intensified from my abdomen all the way up to my throat.

  Then Ig began to knead my stomach.

  I tried to brush him away, but my dominant hand was clenched tightly over my mouth. Ig continued to knead my stomach, and the heat spiked in agitation.

  Stop! I screamed at him in my mind. My eyes bugged out in nonverbal meaning, but Ig ignored me. Soon, he was pouncing with his forelegs in harmony, and I wriggled underneath him to throw him off.

  The song’s pressure was building in my throat, and I couldn’t hold it anymore.

  “Stop!” I screamed, the edge to my voice making me cringe, but Ig froze. “Get off me. Now.” Ig leapt off immediately. I sat up, bracing my weight against my arms.

  The song still swirled in my throat, distorting my voice, just as it had in the dreamscape. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been able to speak during a song. My concentration was still on Ig, but I felt a sense of power I’d never felt before. The burning was bearable now, but I wasn’t sure why.

  It was still a horribly inconvenient time to let loose a song. Whoever was about to die would have to wait a little bit until I was in a safer space to let it out.

  I moved into a crouch, standing up slowly. The song still swirled in my abdomen, but it was manageable. I took several steadying breaths through my nose, daring to let air hiss out of my mouth. Ig stared at me with rapt attention, still frozen from my scolding.

  Slowly, I felt the burning in my throat lessen, the intensity trickling back into my stomach. I pushed it down until it felt like it was concentrated in a low and tight enough spot. Then I let it go. Any pressure I had used to force it down in my mind let it go.

  The urge to sing disappeared immediately.

  I stood awkwardly in the study, surrounded by an avalanche of books, my hands out to brace myself for the vertigo that had disappeared as soon as I’d released the song. My eyes fell on Ig, whose tail was flicking back and forth merrily.

  “You’re still an asshole,” I said, my voice slightly hoarse. “Do that to me again, and I’ll blast you with a banshee scream.” Ig sneezed at me and disappeared out of sight.

  My fingers hooked in my mouth, and I worried at the quicks of my nails. Even though I should be celebrating my small victory, I didn’t know how long the song would stay buried. Or if I could repeat the exercise.

  I shook out my hands, drawing them away from my mouth. My fingers reached for the nearest volume. Then another.

  While my brain sorted through exactly what had just happened, I would mindlessly sort. Each decision I made, moving books into smaller and smaller piles, helped calm my jangling nerves. By the time the desk was clear, the books sorted and positioned on the round woven rug around the desk, I felt stable again.

  My stomach growled.

  Sighing, I grabbed my bag. Ig guarded the door as menacingly as a small black cat could.

  “Move,” I said. “I’m hungry. Even you don’t want to fight me when I’m hungry.”

  Ig sneezed again, moving aside.

  I twisted the doorknob quickly, leery of getting burned again. Nothing happened.

  I swung my head out into the hall to check for signs of life but found the darkened hallway abandoned.

  Ig darted out ahead of me, and I made sure the door shut behind me.

  Then I heard voices.

  “Ig!” I called out in a hoarse whisper. His head poked out from behind a stack of books, green eyes surveying me. “Come here.”

  He slunk over, his tail twitching. I crouched down and pulled the old skeleton key from my boot. I hooked it onto his collar, tucking it on the inside so it wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone.

  “Do me a favor and keep an eye on this for me,” I said, looking sternly into his flashing eyes. “There’s some very important stuff in there. Make sure not just anyone gets in, deal?”

  Ig sneezed in my face, darting behind the nearest stack before I could straighten.

  “For not being able to say anything, he sure says a lot,” I muttered to myself, wiping the cat sneeze from my face. My stomach grumbled again, and I headed for the stairs.

  Even though it was late, I was certain I could find something in the kitchens. I needed as many carbs as possible and definitely several cups of coffee to survive my new research project. I would get to the bottom of this whole Elevated thing even if it killed me, but preferably with a stomach full of bagels and coffee.

  Thirty-Four

  My shoe hit solid ground, and I found myself on the main path. I shoved my hands in my armpits, trying to hold off the chill in the darkening fall air. I paused, taking a look at the evening sky, a muted blue violet streaked with clouds. I sighed, trying to let out any remaining tension to clear my mind. We had work to do tonight. My breath fogged in front of me, and I watched as it was slowly dispersed by the breeze.

  I sighed again at my latest view, finding it cluttered with an unwanted visitor.

  “No, Mags. Just, no,” I said before she could open her mouth.

  “You don’t even know why I’m here!” she cried, her arms crossed in indignation. Could she possibly be sulking right now?

  My eyes narrowed, daring her to continue. She fidgeted but then straightened her shoulders in a more commanding posture.

  “We could’ve been friends, you know. Good friends,” said Mags. “Even though it seems like you aren’t the friend type.”

  “I have friends,” I countered stupidly. I was losing feeling in my toes from the cold, and I was tired. The back of my mind where Evangeline’s scold would have come through remained silent. She was still asleep, and I was on my own.

  “They can’t understand you like I do. Like we do,” Mags said.

  A chill ran up my spine, and I tried to sense the area around me. It was too dark, and the moonlight was blocked by another wisp of cloud. How many was “we?”

  “Just because you and I have supernatural abilities does not mean we automatically sit at the same lunch table or are required to be bridesmaids in each other’s weddings,” I said, my jaw grinding my chattering teeth.

  “Clearly.” She sniffed. “It’s just a shame, that’s all. Doing it the hard way.”

  “Doing what the hard way?”

  “Oh, we’ll be friends. We’ll be friends real soon,” Mags said, tapping the Future eye temple. “You’re just not going to like the interim.”

  “What are you even—”

  Adair swung int
o view, and I saw his eyes flicker with silver before everything went black. The further I fell into darkness, the less I could feel the cold gravel beneath my limbs and the night air on my stinging cheek as I was lifted into the air.

  “Dammit!” I screamed into the stillness of the dreamscape. I appeared in a crouched stance, and I took a moment to punch the ground furiously with all the frustration and humiliation I felt. As my energy drained and the punching slowed, I rested my forehead on the ground, my knees sliding to the forest floor in an attempt to brace the rest of my bodyweight.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I whispered into the soil. “I really, really don’t have time for this.”

  I sat back on my heels, staying low to the ground. I could collapse. I could throw the biggest tantrum known to man right here for as long as I wanted. No one would see. No one would care.

  I growled, discarding the idea. No matter how much I wanted to shout “not fair” at the top of my lungs, it wouldn’t change a thing. Resting my chin on my knees, I wrapped my arms around my hunkered body to comfort myself a little bit.

  I had been duped a second time, and the sting was even worse. I imagine I might feel the same if I lived to be old enough to not control my bowels. The haunting fear of not being able to control one of the most basic instincts given to us. Adair was going to get his eardrums blown out the next time I woke up. He had way too much fun putting me under.

  I smirked. Yet again, though, I was not where he wanted me to be. Sure, my physical body was unconscious and easily moved. I hoped they cared for my body and hooked it up to an IV. I wouldn’t last long here without it. They wanted me; they didn’t want me dead. However, they also wanted me in a controllable dimension, and that clearly was never going to happen.

  Laughing aloud, I rejoiced in Adair’s failure. I imagined him being berated by Mags for completely ruining their not-so-well-laid plans.

  The sky above me matched the sky I had left, dark and clouded over. I felt the mists moving around and below my hips. In the distance, I saw the slight flickering of the night visitors at their posts. Looking around, I realized I didn’t recognize this particular section of the dreamscape. It seemed cloudier than before, so I hoped against hope it was just because of that and not because it had expanded. Evangeline’s range could expand all it wanted. I did not need more acres of dead people to watch.