I scratched my head and propped a pillow behind me. ‘Talking in my sleep, I guess.’ I glanced at my bedside clock. ‘Hey, it’s four o’clock in the morning. What’s wrong? Was there a murder? Please don’t say there’s been a murder.’
Christine let out a sigh. ‘No. No murder. But I had to talk to you, Wanda. I had another vision tonight. Now, I know you don’t want to know anything about this prophecy, so I’ve made an executive decision. It’s time.’
I was beginning to feel a tad more alert. And the more awake I became, the more details I began to take in. Christine looked wired. Her skin was glistening with perspiration. Her eyes were wide, her hands were shaking, and she smelled like she’d just taken a bath in some coffee. ‘You’ve been up all night, haven’t you? How much coffee have you drunk?’
She shrugged. ‘Five cups. Maybe fifteen. Look, how fast my heart is racing isn’t the point. The point is, this can’t wait anymore. Your mother said we should wait until you came to terms with things. She wanted to give you a chance to settle into the idea that there’s a prophecy about you. But what if it’s already starting? What if it’s happening right now? Wanda, I have to show you. I’m burning to tell you everything I’ve learned.’ She let out a crazed laugh. ‘Burning. Hah! If only you knew.’
Among all of the details I was noticing, the two that stood out most were the bowls on either side of my bed. Two scrying bowls. One was the bowl she used for water. The other was the one she used when she was looking into the flames.
Before I could tell her whether I wanted to go ahead or not, she was reaching into her bag and pulling out a smaller bag. She opened it up and scattered sand into the fire bowl. Then she took a deep breath and said, ‘This first vision isn’t like anything I’ve recorded before. I wasn’t able to record it. Not in the usual way. I had to improvise, so just … stay back a second. Oh.’ She snapped her fingers and a small fire-extinguisher appeared on my bed. ‘Almost forgot – that’s just in case things go wrong. Okay. You ready?’
I swallowed. ‘No. Not even remotely.’
‘Well.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m doing it anyway.’
I thought about using a freezing spell on her until she calmed down but, honestly, I had the feeling that nothing would stop her now. She stood up, and it was then that I noticed that her green eyes weren’t so green anymore. They were a bright, burning orange. In fact, all of her seemed to be glowing. And there was a crackling sound, too, almost as though she were alight from within.
The perspiration wasn’t merely glistening on her skin now. Her forehead was dripping with sweat. And then, in the centre, that orange glow got stronger, and stronger, and stronger … Right where her third eye was situated, a small ball of flame burst out.
I gasped as the fireball went whizzing around the room. I knew about a dozen dousing spells, but right then I couldn’t think of a single one, so I picked up the fire-extinguisher instead.
‘No.’ Christine shook her head. ‘It’s actually going much better than I thought. I’m just trying to get it to behave. Wait a minute … wait a minute …’
I did wait a minute. I’d say I probably even waited two, while the ball of flame spun and spun around my bedroom. Finally it came to a halt, and then shot down into the bowl. Christine let out a sigh of relief, and waved her hand over the bowl.
‘Watch,’ she said.
And even though I thought this was just about the worst idea ever, I watched.
≈
I was looking at Gabriel Godbody the Twentieth. Although his facial features were the same, the way he was dressed made him look like a much younger man. He had on jeans and a Nirvana T-shirt, and his hair fell in smooth brown waves to his shoulders.
A woman was standing in front of him – a willowy woman with long, waist-length red hair and piercing blue eyes. There were tattooed symbols all along her arms, and in her bronze garb she had the look of an ancient warrior. She also had the look of someone I’d met at least once before, but I could ask Christine about that when the vision ended.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ she demanded.
He smiled evenly. ‘My dear Cassandra. How lovely to see you again. Now, seeing as you are a seer, you ought to know perfectly well why I’ve brought you here. Your last vision proved correct. My joining with my lovely wife produced an excellent child. His power is strong. He will follow in my footsteps. But … I want more. I want a line that will carry on into eternity. An heir with whom I shall continue to shape the world to my bidding. So tell me – what do I have to do to make that happen?’
Cassandra’s nostrils flared. ‘I told you before – I will give you no more news of the future. You’re undeserving, Gabriel. You’re a despicable man.’
‘That might be true to your way of seeing things,’ he replied. ‘But to my way of seeing things, I am simply a man who likes to get things done. So tell me – what news of my future line? Who is the next match who will strengthen my legacy? Come, Cassandra – I know you’ve had a particularly strong vision. I could sense it all the way across the world.’
She flounced across the room and sat in a chair by the fire, curling her lips as she looked at a dead, stuffed wolf. ‘You really ought to redecorate you know. It’s bad enough that you are an undead thing – but must you surround yourself with nothing but death?’ She sighed. ‘But yes, I did have a particularly strong vision. A prophecy, you might say. But you know as well as I do, Gabriel – the future is not set in stone. What I have seen may not necessarily come to pass.’
He took a seat across from her. ‘Oh, it will come to be – if I will it so. Now spit it out and tell me – unless you want me to go after the ones you love?’
She brought her eyes to his, a look of pure hatred burning there. ‘You think yourself an angel, Gabriel. But you are nothing but a pathetic little man. Yes, I shall tell you. And as usual, you shall make people’s lives a misery as you try to make it come to pass. The vision I saw was one of a child. A girl who will be born to Beatrice Wayfair and Aengus McCumhaill. She will have the look of the original Wayfarer, and her power, too.’
Gabriel licked his lips, greed shining in his eyes. ‘Yes, yes, tell me more.’
‘She will get her power late, later than almost any before, and when she gets it, it will be as though she has had it all her life. And during her life, a great evil will come. An evil that will create another war, more bloody and horrific than the War of the Enclaves. And when this great evil comes, the child will have a difficult decision to make. There will be a great sacrifice. She will need to choose whether to end this evil, or to let it live.’
Gabriel leant forward. ‘More. You must tell me more. I don’t care about some sacrifice. I care about what she can be to me. To my line.’
‘There is no more,’ Cassandra said with a sigh. ‘I have told you all I know. But as to what she means to your line … well, nothing, unless you’re arrogant enough to make it so. She is the only child I have envisioned with the power you desire, the only one close enough to Gabriel junior’s age to someday become his wife. But it won’t work. She’ll never love him. She’ll love another. She’ll treat your little Gabriel with all the contempt he deserves, and she will never be his wife.’
Gabriel senior cocked his head to the side and gave a little shrug. ‘Who said love has to be involved in a marriage? If she is what you say, then I have no doubt I can make her love him. Love potions are a bit of a hobby of mine.’
Cassandra narrowed her eyes. ‘So I’ve heard. You take such joy in your hobby, in fact, that you’ve already used it to split up the people who would have been this child’s parents. Good luck sorting out that mess.’
‘Oh, I’ll sort it out,’ he replied with a snigger. ‘You should know by now – people do exactly what I want them to do.’
A spark leapt out of the blazing fire and landed on the rug by Cassandra’s feet. She looked down at the spark and smiled. When it finally fizzled out of existence, she brought her eyes back to Gabriel. ‘I�
��ve told you what you wanted. Now, I want you to assure me – is my family safe?’
For a moment he said nothing, just left her sitting there. Even though she held her head high and proud, I could see the worry she felt.
Just when it seemed he was about to say something else, the flames in Christine’s bowl swayed violently, and then burned away to nothing.
I felt my eyes blink wildly, and I clasped Christine’s hand in mine. ‘Was that …?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was Granny. Well, my great great great … you know who I mean. And no – until I envisioned this little moment from the past, I didn’t know that Granny was Gabriel senior’s seer. But let’s leave the past for a moment, shall we? Once I’d seen that vision, I searched more. I searched for what it meant to your future.’ She clicked her fingers and an ice-cube tray appeared. She pulled over her water-filled bowl, and dropped in one of the Frozen Stares. ‘And this is what I found.’
≈
There was nothing coherent about this vision. It wasn’t even one single moment. Christine dropped in ice-cube after ice-cube, just like the frustrating fragments she showed us when we were searching for Alicia’s and Caitlyn’s killers.
In the first vision, I was standing in the Longest Library at Crooked College, and I wasn’t alone. Will Berry stood in front of me, his head bent down to mine as we kissed.
Next I saw a body, face-down on the floor of a room I didn’t recognise. It was a woman’s body, judging by the shape, and the long blonde hair. I was standing over her, my face ashen as I said, ‘I’m so sorry, Will. She’s dead.’
Next I saw a familiar I hoped I’d never see again – that haughty white poodle of Mandy’s. Except he wasn’t haughty anymore. He was just as dead as the blonde woman, and he was lying next to an open grave while Will and I dug the soil.
Christine touched my shoulder and whispered, ‘This is the last one,’ as she dropped her final Frozen Stare into the water.
I was in another library, but this one was unrecognisable to me. It was vast, almost as vast as the Longest Library, and every surface was covered with books. Smoke lay heavy in the air, and shadows seemed to move towards me. The pages of the books fluttered, and whispers flew through the air as the books begged me to open them, to read them, to unleash their spells upon the world.
But I was ignoring them, throwing book after book aside as I searched for just one. Just one book: a large, worn-leather tome. Even now, sitting on my own bed, in my own house, far away from that unknown library, I knew that book. I knew it like it was my destiny. I knew it like I knew myself. As the me in the future searched for the book, the me in the now pointed into the bowl and said, ‘It’s there. It’s there in the corner.’
The me in the future couldn’t have heard the me in the past. Could she? Could … I? Good goddess, this was as confusing as it was frightening. But whether the me in the future heard or not, there she was – no, there I was, in the bowl of water, walking to the far corner of that dark library, and picking up the book I knew I would. A book that, even through the medium of Christine’s vision, made me shiver with fear.
I wanted to see more. I wanted to know more. I wanted to open that book. I wanted to know what happened in that library, but … there was nothing more to see.
Christine squeezed my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Wanda. I know it’s all confusing. But I had to show you. I had to. You understand, don’t you? If what Cassandra’s prophecy said is true, then you need to prepare. You could be facing a great evil soon, Wanda. And you need to know what that evil might be.’
I looked away from her, clutching at the edges of my bedclothes, wondering how I could reply. I loved Christine. I had known her as long as I’d been alive. And now she had burst into my bedroom in the wee hours of the morning, only to show me a big, confusing mess. Because that was the only thing that a vision of the future could be. Just like Cassandra said, the future isn’t set in stone. I had my ideas about what one or two of those fragment-visions could mean, but in truth they could mean anything.
Christine hadn’t given me some great revelation. All she had done was fill my mind with fear and confusion. And I didn’t want to live like that. I didn’t want to be afraid of what might happen. Because how could I even begin to plan for might?
Eventually, I managed to smile at her and say, ‘Y’know what? I think I need to make you a cup of tea and a veggie bacon sandwich, and then get you home to bed.’
She gave me an unsteady nod, and we made our way out of my bedroom and down the stairs.
≈
You’ve reached the end of Rocking Out. Wanda’s next adventure, Acting Up, will be released in the summer of 2018. If you’d like to receive an email update when it’s out, you can join my mailing list by clicking this link: http://www.subscribepage.com/z4n0f4
Or visit my website and sign up there: https://aaalbright.com
And if you’re looking for another dose of magic in the meantime, why not check out the first book in my Riddler’s Edge series, A Little Bit Witchy, available now in all Amazon stores.
Rocking Out Page 17
