by Krista Wolf
“In fact—”
A door opened behind her. Kara spun around in her chair, just in time to see a tall figure step into the room.
“Oh hell no.”
Two
The visitor looked like he’d just arrived from outside. He sported a fur-lined coat wrapped in leather, and a pair of thick, rawhide gloves. He was tall and imposing. Rugged and chiseled. His cargo khakis, stained but not dirty, were held up by a large belt buckle of oiled brass.
“Mr. Rhodes,” said Xiomara. “It’s about fucking time you arrived. Welcome back. Now get the hell over here.”
The man’s great brown boots clapped along the manor’s timeworn floor as he made his way over. He walked with a swagger and arrogance that most would mistake for an air of cool confidence. But Kara knew better.
“Say hello to Ms. LoPresti.”
The man grinned devilishly. “Hello Ms. LoPre—”
“Fuck you Logan.”
He looked good. Better than good, actually. His face was almost exactly as she remembered it; handsome but not pretty, with thick eyebrows and full, come-kiss-me lips. He was taller than she remembered him. Broader too, though she imagined he might’ve filled out some over the last six years.
Six years! Has it really been that long?
Yes, she supposed it had. She was nineteen when they’d met, and on her very first assignment with the Order. Kara had been so optimistically unjaded back then, so overly eager to please. And she’d fallen hard for him. Very hard.
Too hard.
Logan was her superior, and that alone was bad, but he was also five years her senior. The whole thing was stupid and she knew it, even then. But she’d done it anyway. She did lots of things anyway.
“Did you feed her yet?” Logan was asking Xiomara. He sank heavily into the chair next to Kara. “Because she gets cranky when she’s hungry.”
“Shut up Rhodes,” the old woman snarled. “Jesus Christ, a half-minute in and you’re both acting like ten-year olds already. Do I need to send a babysitter along with the two of you?”
Kara looked at him through her peripheral vision, not wanting to give him even the satisfaction of a curious glance. There was too much history. Too much bad blood.
“Good to see you too,” he sighed.
She couldn’t help but think back to all those years ago. Logan had charmed her. Seduced her… or at least that’s how she remembered it. The truth however, was harder to pin down. Over time, Kara found herself wondering whether she shouldered more of the responsibility than she originally gave herself credit for. That maybe she were to blame for some of what happened. Even just a little.
Screw that, she thought angrily to herself. You were nineteen. Just a kid.
“Are you done?” Xiomara was asking them. She paused dramatically, and for several tense moments the only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire. When neither of them answered she took up her chair again. “Good,” she sighed. “Let’s get on to business.”
She opened the folder and pulled out several large photographs of an old hotel. Kara found herself leaning forward… alarmingly close to where Logan happened to be leaning forward as well.
“The hotel Averoigne has a long history of paranormal occurrence, dating all the way back to its construction. Reports from the original time periods are sparse, but in the last half century the owners have been keeping more detailed records.”
Xiomara slid a second file out from within the first. “This list,” she said, “is a compilation of eyewitness accounts and event summaries.”
“That’s a lot,” said Logan.
“A metric fuck-ton,” Xiomara agreed. “And this is after all the bullshit ‘tourist’ sightings were weeded out. All the hotel guest ‘I think I saw something’ nonsense from the drunks, the wishful thinkers, and those Godforsaken ‘ghost hunting’ bloggers.”
Logan thumbed through the file, frustratingly too fast. Photographs and handwritten papers whipped by. Kara fought the urge to rip it from his hand.
“In the fall and winter,” Xiomara continued, “activity ramps up. Sightings are more corporeal. More significant. It’s worst in the weeks leading up to the holidays. And it ends—”
“Right after the solstice,” Kara chimed in.
Xiomara nodded. “Exactly.” A hint of jasmine-scented oil came with the movement. “On the nose.”
Logan scratched at his chin, and Kara risked a glance. His stubble had gone slightly grey in places — a sprinkle of salt in the pepper of his beard. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light.
“What about after the solstice?”
“Nothing,” said Xiomara. “The place goes silent for months. Activity is negligible until summer.”
Kara grumbled. “So we don’t have much time.”
“No,” the Head of the Order agreed. “Especially not for any of your schoolgirl bullshit.”
She closed the file and leaned back. Opening a drawer, Xiomara drew forth a wafer of something small and thin. She unwrapped it slowly as they looked on, then popped it into her mouth.
“It’s chocolate,” she explained, as they stared on expectantly. “Just another one of my indulgences.” She glanced specifically at Kara as if to say ‘piss off’.
“So that’s it?” Logan asked. “We head up there to… document? Investigate?”
“You’re there to find out what the fuck is going on,” Xiomara barked. “And tell us why it all happens now, this week, right before the winter solstice.” She turned to face Kara. “You’re the Order’s premiere clairvoyant. You should be able to discern something of the hotel’s past. Why it’s like this, what made it this way. I don’t care if you have to talk to the fucking bricks! I want answers.”
Kara nodded dutifully. “And him?” she asked, jerking a thumb at Logan. “Why am I stuck with the burden of this—”
“He’s our best precognitive medium,” Xiomara cut in. “He’s there to keep you out of trouble. To recognize where and when you’ve pushed too far.”
The old woman’s expression went suddenly serious. The anger, the defiance, the annoyance… it fell away all at once, like a heavy curtain.
“You both watch out for each other,” Xiomara said evenly. “No bullshit. There are forces at work within the Averoigne you’ll need to treat very carefully. Delicately…” Her voice trailed off in an almost trance-like state. For the first time, Kara and Logan actually looked at each other.
“Here.” Mechanically, Xiomara slid two small stacks of cash across the desk. “Take whatever other resources you require. There’s more if you need it.” Then, in a lower voice: “And the Order’s arranged for additional help, too.”
Kara slipped one of the stacks into a jacket pocket, her face scrunched in confusion. “Additional help?”
“Just go,” said Xiomara. She unwrapped another wafer of chocolate and slid it into her mouth. “I’m tired of you both already.”
Logan stood up from his chair to leave. Kara however, remained seated.
“Listen…”
She decided to take one more shot. This time with sugar and honey, instead of a shotgun.
“You know I work best alone,” she implored Xiomara. “I always have, all throughout my tenure here. And my reputation speaks for itself.”
The old woman stared back at her impassively. Maybe she was savoring the chocolate. Tasting it. Allowing the tiny wafer to melt on her tongue.
“Give me this assignment,” demanded Kara. She jerked her head toward Logan. “And send him elsewhere.” She lowered her voice without knowing why. “Surely you don’t need the both of—”
Xiomara’s eyes flared. Her mouth twisted into the same expression Kara imagined she’d have if she’d just bit down on a lemon.
“GO!”
Three
Kara was nine when it first happened. Or at least, the first time she remembered it happening.
She’d been at her grandmother’s. Sitting in the old house, the one her great-grandfather had
built, down by the lake. One minute Kara was eating ice cream at the kitchen table, just daydreaming. Staring past the yellow-orange curtains that framed the window, into the bright blue sky.
The next minute, she was gone.
Or rather, her surroundings were gone. Kara was still there. Still seated at the table, still eating ice cream. Only she was now somehow outside. No curtains, no window… just the lake.
When she looked down, it was like being in a dream. Her bowl, her spoon… everything was fuzzy and disjointed. Nothing had clear edges. Like it was there, but also not there — somehow at the same time.
At first she’d been scared, almost to the point of panic. But then a strange sense of calm stole over her, and Kara found she could feel the warmth of the sun. She could hear the sounds of the insects, the birds, the wind. The sounds of summer.
That’s when she saw him: the man in the faded red hat.
He was a big man, gentle-looking and soft, with a broad, gap-toothed smile. A warm smile. The kind of smile only truly good people had. The kind of happiness that was impossible to fake.
The man looked at her. Looked past her. That part Kara was always unsure of — whether or not he actually did see her. There were times she knew in her heart that he couldn’t have. But also times when she swore that he did.
He walked past her, and for a split second his features came into sharp focus. Angular nose. Brown pants and suspenders. His expression still plastered with the same deliriously happy grin.
There was a rush of sound, and noise, and suddenly Kara was back again. Sitting in her grandmother’s kitchen. Eating vanilla ice cream out of a plastic Tupperware bowl.
All she remembered after that was the screaming. It had taken forever just to calm her down.
It was several months before she saw him again, this time in an old, black and white photograph hung in her grandmother’s room. The man stood wearing the same suspenders, wielding the same gap-toothed grin. Kara didn’t have the slightest doubt as to who he was. Though he was missing the hat, it was unmistakably him.
The man, she’d eventually learn, was her great-uncle Amos — one of three brothers who’d helped her great-grandfather build the lake house. When she described what she’d seen, no one believed her. Everyone had brushed it off with placating smiles.
“You probably saw the photograph before,” her mother had said. “And forgot you saw it. Or maybe you’re just remembering it strangely.”
Kara almost bought into that idea. That is, until she mentioned the red hat. Whenever she talked about that part of her vision, her grandmother’s face always went grave. She refused to talk about it… but she knew that hat. And moreover, she knew that Kara knew too.
For the rest of her life — all two and a half years of it — her grandmother had looked at her the same way one looks at an unpredictable dog… one that could bite at any time. There was still love, still affection, but also a distance. An unspoken wariness that drove an unfortunate wedge between them.
It was the only aspect of her clairvoyance Kara would ever truly regret.
From there it happened again, although infrequently, over the years. Kara would see people, places, even events… all where there was nothing to see. “It’s like a bunch of stuff that’s already happened,” she’d said, describing it to friend once. “Echoes of the past. Brief flashes of things that used to be.”
All of her friends laughed it off. Not one of them believed her. They didn’t see things the way her grandmother did, and that was just fine with Kara.
When she was twelve, Kara watched the apparition of an old woman pass through her classroom. This happened every day for a solid week; same woman, same time, same class. Curiosity eventually overrode caution, and Kara found herself raising her hand… and getting excused to the bathroom, so she could follow her.
The strangely-garbed woman led her through a series of hallways, and then down into a broken and abandoned part of the school. There, hidden beneath an old floorboard, Kara unearthed a whole purse full of gleaming gold coins. A purse she knew was there only because she’d watched the apparition put it there… so many, many years ago.
The district took possession of the coins immediately, leaving Kara with one as a souvenir. But the story made headlines. There was enough of the ten-dollar gold eagles to rebuild the gymnasium, and everyone had called her ‘gold digger’ for the rest of her school career.
Not long after that, she saw Xiomara for the first time.
The old woman looked pretty much the same as she did now, small and frail, her silver-black hair pulled tightly back over her tiny head. She showed up in strange places; at stores in the mall, in seats at the movie theater, even once in the audience during her junior high school play. It was easy to pick her out among the crowds, as she wore an seemingly endless array of bright, multi-colored robes. And always, she’d be looking at her. Staring at Kara intently through her wire-rimmed glasses.
It wasn’t until her sophomore year of high school that Kara actually had the guts to approach her. She walked straight up to the old woman in the parking lot of a convenience store, and asked her what the hell she wanted. And Xiomara had grinned — a full blown smile — before uttering those first four words: “It’s about fucking time.”
It was Xiomara who told Kara all about her gift, and how it was a blessing and not a curse. She explained that her visions were among the most important and wondrous things in the world, and that she shouldn’t ever feel badly about them.
Somehow, she knew everything.
Later on, Kara would realize the old woman picked up on her gold coin story, and had been keeping tabs on her ever since. It was scary at first, but it was nice to finally be believed. Besides, the old woman seemed harmless. Kara had questions about her abilities, and Xiomara had answers. Hell, she was the only one with answers.
They began spending time together, and that’s where Kara learned just how special she was. Xiomara taught Kara how her abilities could be commanded, directed, even somewhat controlled. When the visions occurred, she showed her how to sharpen the details. To enhance and focus on things. It was like owning an expensive amplifier for a long time, and finally having someone show you what all the knobs and dials were for.
“Clairvoyance,” the woman had told her at their second meeting. “The ability to see things as they happened, or as they will happen.”
The old woman studied Kara’s reaction carefully. She remembered shaking her head.
“But I can’t—”
“Your specific ability is retrocognition,” Xiomara had said. “The ability to see the past exactly as it happened. Sort of like watching an old movie — you can watch and listen, but you can’t change what happened.” Her face crossed with a dark expression, but only for a moment. “In that regard, you may have the strongest retrocognitive connection we’ve ever seen. Perhaps in all the history of the Order.”
Kara could remember shaking all over, unable — or rather unwilling — to accept the truth. Part of her screamed that such a thing shouldn’t be possible. But a bigger part of her told her what she already knew; that everything the woman was describing, she’d somehow been experiencing for years.
Xiomara wouldn’t talk about the Hallowed Order, at least not yet. Her foul-mouthed mentor lent her a sympathetic ear, gave her comfort, and dispensed advice. She told Kara not to speak of her abilities, or of herself, to anyone else. Then, after less than a week, she left.
“You’re still a child,” Xiomara had smiled during their last meeting. “But come see me when you’re grown.”
She’d folded something into her hand then, a small token carved from bone or ivory. On one side was an elaborate symbol. On the other, an address — somewhere in upstate New York — scratched into the surface.
It was an address Kara would visit shortly after her eighteen birthday.
Four
It was past two o’clock in the morning when the car finally pulled up to the hotel. Kara opened the d
oor before the driver even rolled to a stop; that’s how eager she was to get away from Logan.
“Shit, that’s a lot of snow.”
Her unwanted companion had a tendency to talk a lot. In fact, he hardly shut up. Kara had tried sleeping on the way up, but being near Logan it was difficult. The only real rest she’d gotten was when he was busy reading the file.
“Any idea when this storm’s supposed to let up?” Logan was asking the driver. The man shrugged as he unloaded their things. Kara grabbed her bag the second it emerged, then forged on through the blowing snow.
For a second she stopped to look up. The hotel Averoigne was an impressive sight, even after well more than a century. Graceful arches and gables jutted forth, flanked by winged balconies and a rounded double entrance. Perched on a cacophony of steeply peaked rooftops, dozens of chimneys poked upward, defying the snow.
This place is old, she thought. Something out of a movie. Hell, it even looked like it was haunted.
“Don’t worry,” Logan remarked snidely. He was standing beside her, struggling with two bags in one hand and a bunch of equipment in the other. “I got it.”
“Great,” Kara smirked wickedly. “At least you’ll be good for something.”
She stomped through the front doors and into the lobby. Instantly she was impressed. Tall columns stretched to a beautifully-arched ceiling, three stories high. The upper floors were cut out with wrap-around landings, railed off by ornately-carved balusters and polished corner pieces. The lighting up there was poor, though. The second, and especially the third floor, seemed lost in shadows.
The front desk wasn’t far to the left. Kara crossed the polished oak floor, past plush seating areas made up of furniture long past its prime. At least the place was warm. A tremendous stone fireplace spanned the middle of the opposite wall. Even now, at this crazy hour, it roared with flames.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The woman at the desk was startled out of what might’ve been sleep. Her silver hair didn’t just have a bluish tinge to it — Kara saw actual blue. She looked unfortunately like she could’ve been built with the hotel.
