Bastian took Chloe’s hand and bowed over it politely, and again, his stuck up air seemed to be gone, replaced by charm that seemed to be working on Chloe, but I for one found annoying. “It is lovely to meet you, Miss Quinn.”
“Thank you,” Chloe answered with a coy tilt of her head.
Ugh… Come on Chloe, don’t get sucked in to his crap…
“Shall we then?” Jocelyn asked stepping off toward the house as the rest of us followed behind, though Chloe took a bit longer to move.
“I like your car,” she said to Bastian, still blushing.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve had it about a year now.”
“It’s lovely…”
I grabbed Chloe’s shoulders and physically turned her away from Bastian and the car. “Let’s go Chloe,” I groaned, guiding her toward the house. “Trust me, his ego doesn’t need it,” I told her, glaring back at Bastian when he chuckled, which only made him laugh harder. Jerk.
We made our way up to the cottage door, though I had to admit, the word “cottage” was a bit misleading. Yeah, the stone walls and ivy gave it a country sort of feel, but when I thought of a “cottage” I pictured something more like what Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma would have lived in, not a two story building that could have comfortably housed a family of six or more. Once inside it looked even less like what one would find in the country, with a state of the art kitchen, modern electronics including a huge flat screen TV in the living area, and fireplace with a pushbutton starter. Not going to lie, I’d have been more than happy to spend the last few weeks of my life in a place like this.
As Bastian led us from room to room, Jocelyn looked over everything carefully, until finally we reached a bedroom on the upper level and he stopped. “This is it,” Jocelyn said. “This was the room he was in during the memory I saw. It is arranged a bit differently, but I recognize the book case and the window. This is the one.”
“OK,” I said, glancing around. “Now what?”
“Now,” Jocelyn said, looking between Chloe and me, “I think we should do a practice run. Start with something simple just to get a feel for it, and we can go on from there.”
“Oh,” Chloe said, hearing her cue and stepping up next to me. “OK, well, first thing we need is a date to visit.” She stood perfectly still for a moment, her eyes glazing over slightly. “Hmmm…” she said after a long pause. “I’m trying to find a date for you to try, but all the days I keep checking are the same and no one is here. There is nothing for you to see.”
“The house is empty most of the time,” Bastian said from the corner. “Try a Monday – that is when the housekeeper is supposed to be here.”
Chloe’s eyes glassed over. “Ah,” she said after a moment, “there she is. OK, Becca, what you need to do is… I guess you’d… hmm…”
“Yes?”
“I’m not sure, I suppose you’d start the way you always start.” She motioned back and forth between us, trying to make her point.
I reached out with my ability and joined it with hers. “Done.”
“Do you feel anything?” she asked.
“Not really, but then I never do.”
She pursed her lips, looking a bit unsure. “All right… Well, what I do is think of the date in a certain way, and then that day will appear in place of everything you see now. It will become the only thing you can see.”
“What do you mean by ‘a certain way’?”
“I… don’t really know. I just… it’s like…” She bit her lip, thinking.
“Take your time,” Jocelyn said as she struggled for the right words.
“Aye, it’s not easy, is it?” Anderson said. “I couldn’t describe how to impart for the life of me.”
That gave me an idea. I’d become good at Imparting and to do that all I had to do was think the words I wanted to say and direct them through the ability I was assuming. Maybe the date thing would work the same way.
“What was the date?” I asked Chloe. “Let me try something.”
“The second of October this year.”
With a long breath I pictured the date in my mind, forcing the thought through the bright hazy glow of mine and Chloe combined abilities, and suddenly everything around me began to change. It was almost as if the world were made of tiny tiles, each one flipping over in a rippling wave then realigning themselves to reveal a similar but still very different image of the room I was in. Jocelyn, Alex, and everyone else who had been crammed in the space a second ago disappeared, and the door which we had shut behind us now appeared to stand open. There was a broom and dustpan leaning against the right-hand wall that had not been there before, and a portly woman in high-waisted jeans and faded sweatshirt suddenly stood at my shoulder, spraying cleaner on the window that was right behind me, and scared the ever-loving out of me.
“Oh!” I yelped as I stumbled backwards. And then in a flash, it was all gone. The woman, the broom, the open door, all vanished leaving me tripping backwards into the desk, everything in the room back to the way it was when I’d started.
An instant later the room erupted with questions as five pairs of hands shot toward me.
“Becca?”
“Whoa there, lass!”
“What just happened?”
“Are you all right?”
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said to the last question, as I regained my balance. “I saw it… or I saw something. There was a woman cleaning the window…”
“Yes!” Chloe beamed, clapping her hands excitedly. “That was it! You did it!”
“And on the first try too,” Mr Anderson commented. “Well done!”
“It wasn’t too hard,” I told them. “It was actually a lot like Imparting. But what happened?” I turned to Chloe. “Why did everything just vanish like that? I mean, I was scared when I saw her so close, but it only caught me off guard, I didn’t break our connection or anything.”
Chloe looked down, her face falling a bit. “Sorry, that’s my fault.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You moved your foot when you stumbled. I can’t move while I time walk, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
“Any move at all of your foot will do it. You can move just about anything else – your arms, your head, your waist – just so long as your feet don’t move.”
“Got it,” I smiled, feeling guilty for having brought up her shortcomings in front of so many people. “Let’s go again.”
For the next few minutes I tested my new ability, picking different dates, then moved on to learning how to choose the time of day, though Chloe’s lack of power made that part a bit more difficult. Finally, I came back to the present time, feeling more comfortable and even enjoying myself, but the fun wasn’t to last. Much as I was still dreading the task ahead, I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Are you ready?” Jocelyn asked when I glanced his way after a nervous breath.
“I guess.” As ready as I was going to get, anyway.
He walked over to the desk against the wall next to me, reaching into his vest pocket as he went and pulling out a worn leather pouch. My throat tightened slightly when I finally saw the Iris as he drew it from the pouch and set it down on the desk with a gentle metallic thunk.
“Just take it slow and you’ll be fine,” he said to me quietly before turning back to the group. “Bastian, do you happen to know the date that Ciaran passed, or perhaps just a general timeframe to give her a starting point?”
“It was when you were in the States, right? So coming up on four years ago?” I asked, hoping we could get at least a little more specific than just the four months he spent in school with me or we might be there all night.
“It was November third,” he said confidently, though there was a hint of sadness there too.
I nodded and Jocelyn returned to his spot by the door and waited quietly with the others, while I looked down at the small hunk of metal and
stone sitting on the desk waiting for me. Honestly, I hadn’t even seen the thing since that afternoon in Aimirgin Hall back at St Brigid’s when it both saved me and almost killed me, and much as I wanted to be able to play the role of tough chick in front of all the eyes I felt on me, I was having a hard time making my hand go near it.
“OK,” I sighed, trying to kick my bravado up a notch. “Here goes. If I inadvertently kill anyone, allow me to apologize ahead of time.”
“She’s kidding, right?” I heard Bastian whisper.
“Sure, sure,” Mr Anderson whispered back. Then after a pause added, “Though you may want to step back a bit… just in case.”
Great. Thanks Anderson.
Gritting my teeth I lifted my hand with every intention of grabbing hold of the thing and getting this over with, but against my will my fingers stopped shy and came to a rest on the surface of the table while I prayed that it looked to everyone else like I’d meant to do that and hadn’t chickened out. I could do this, damn it, I knew I could! Nothing was going to happen, nothing bad anyway, it was all just in my head. But frustratingly enough, knowing that something is only in your head doesn’t make it any easier to get past – even though it seems like it should.
My fingers twitched, trying to work up the nerve for their second try, when suddenly a shadow fell over the desk between my hand and the Iris and quickly shaped itself into script.
“Don’t worry, Leannán. You’ve got this.”
I smiled with a silent sigh as the words dissolved away as quickly as they came. I did have this. I might have been unsure, but Alex wasn’t, and even when I couldn’t totally count on myself, I knew I could always count on him. So long as he had my back, everything would be fine.
With Alex’s support to push me, I locked my stance, held my breath, reached out, and took the Iris.
CHAPTER 19
The effect was instantaneous. The barest touch of my finger on the Iris made the curtain of fog around my mind fall like a wet blanket, and in a blink, everything was as clear and bright as cut glass. I held my breath for a second as I waited for discomfort, or pain, or chaos, or any of the other things that had occurred at one point or another during my previous Iris encounters, but there was nothing. All I felt was a freeing clarity that felt as natural as breathing.
I scanned out around me with my newly heightened sense and felt the presence of the other abilities in the room, marveling at the change in them. The individual glows from each of them that were fuzzy only a moment ago, were now concentrated and crisp globes of radiating power. The difference in the before and after was like comparing a cotton ball to a marble. Or maybe stars would have been a better comparison, as now I was no longer limited to the five other Holders in the room, but to Holders across the country and beyond, each of their abilities spread out across my mind like stars in a clear night sky.
Charged up as I was, it took almost no effort at all to find Chloe’s ability and lock onto it. The Iris made the link between us strong as a steel cable, fusing our abilities together, charging and magnifying the gifts of time walking as they flowed into me, transforming me into a full-fledged Time Walker. I took the date Bastian provided and pushed it through my new ability and watched as the world around me shifted, this time with a smooth and confident transition that no longer felt fragile and shaky, but stable and strong.
As the room around me began to change and the day of Ciaran’s death came into view, the first thing I noticed was the considerable change in light. The curtain over the only window in the room was drawn, allowing only thin slivers of light in through the gaps in the fabric, while the only other light came from a small lamp with a dim bulb sitting on top of a chest of drawers. I turned to get a better look at the second half of the room and, after noting with relief that the images didn’t disappear the moment I moved my feet, I found that the largest changes in the scene had occurred on and around the desk and bed area. A plethora of pill bottles and other medical paraphernalia now lay strewn across the desktop, and what wouldn’t fit there was stacked on the desk chair and on the edges of several of the bookshelves. Around all the makings of the pseudo-pharmacy were piles of books, pens, papers, notebooks and all sorts of other things laying haphazardly in, on, and all over pretty much everything else in the room. In a word, it was a mess.
“Enough, you old shrew!” a voice rasped, making me jump. My head snapped toward the bed where a man was laying down as a woman stood over him, appearing to have just finished administering some sort of medication.
The woman tried to smile despite her obvious irritation. “If you’d be so kind as to hold yourself still, it wouldn’t be so difficult, Mr Shea.”
Mr Shea. It was him.
“Becca?” I heard Jocelyn’s voice call me from what now appeared to be only an empty patch of air. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I whispered, then remembering that Ciaran and the woman weren’t really there and couldn’t hear me, I repeated in a normal speaking voice. “Yes. It worked, Ciaran’s here, I see him. There is a woman here too, his nurse I think. He’s,” I paused with a grin, “calling her names while she’s trying to give him a shot.”
“That sounds about right,” I heard Bastian chuckle quietly from his corner. “Old boy never did like to be tended to or fussed over.”
“Can you see anything on the nightstand to the right of the bed?” Jocelyn asked. “That is where he was writing in the memory.”
I stepped around the nurse who was gathering up her things from the edge of the bed. “No,” I said, scanning the tiny table, “nothing, just a glass of water.”
“There now,” the nurse said, piling some trash and empty dinnerware onto a tray. “You have a rest, and if the rain holds off, we can have a walk this afternoon.”
“I don’t want a bloody walk, now be gone woman!” Ciaran yelled from the bed, the effort of raising his voice winding him so much that he slumped back against his pillows as he tried to catch his breath.
“All right, all right,” the nurse sighed, shaking her head. “I’m going, don’t upset yourself.”
As the door clicked shut, I looked around, not sure what I should do. Since there was nothing on the nightstand as of yet, then I had to have arrived at a point in the day before he’d written the first portion of the prophecy, but what exactly did that mean? Was I going to have to just sit here for God knows how long and wait it out? Was there a fast forward feature to this time walking thing? Maybe if I–
“Sorry about that one,” Ciaran suddenly said as he stared blankly at the ceiling above his bed, still huffing and puffing a bit. “She has a tendency to prattle on.”
Who was he talking to? I looked around to see if there was someone else in the room that I had missed, but it was only him. Was he talking to himself? Praying out loud, maybe? They had said that he’d gone a little crazy toward the end; maybe he’d lost it and actually thought there was someone with him.
“Thirty seven after ten,” he continued, looking over to the clock that sat on one of the higher bookshelves. “That’s the time that very clock had on its face in the vision where I watched you arrive. That’s how I knew you’d come. How I know you’re here.”
Again I looked around. “Who’s here…?”
“What is it?” Jocelyn asked.
“I don’t know,” I shook my head. “He’s talking to someone.”
“I didn’t want to stay here, in this cottage,” Ciaran continued, “but when I saw this room, I knew that this was where I was supposed to be. I knew this was where you would come and I had to be here when you did. I’ve been waiting for you, Rebecca.”
My eyes popped open with a gasp as every hair on my body prickled. It was me – he was talking to me.
“What’s wrong?” I heard Jocelyn ask, but I shushed him quickly and stepped closer to Ciaran’s bed.
“Many months ago,” Ciaran went on, “I received a vision of your arrival. You used the Iris to enhance the ability you garnered from yo
ur friend in order to come and see me here. That is how I found out about you. About who you are and what you can do.”
“Oh my God… this is so creepy…” I breathed, barely believing what I was hearing.
“What’s happening?” Jocelyn asked again.
“He’s talking to me,” I told them all. “He’s actually talking to me. He knew we were coming and that I was going to find him.”
“Really?” Chloe whispered.
“What did he say?” Bastian asked.
“That’s incredible!” Anderson said.
I silenced them all with a quick raise of my hand just as Ciaran spoke again. “Not only do I know that you are here,” he continued, “but I also know why.” He reached under the blankets and pulled out a black book that was so old it looked as though it might fall apart at any moment. He opened the front cover and took out a small folded piece of paper, holding it out in front of him. “You came for this.”
He paused a moment, then reached up behind himself and took hold of the large round topper to the left hand post of his headboard and began to unscrew it until the entire wooden ball came off into his hand. He brought it down to rest in his lap, then rolled the little piece of paper he’d taken from the book and slid it into the hole on the bottom of the post head. “I have never read it,” he said, straining to return the post head to the top of the headboard, using all of his quickly waning strength to twist it back into place, “but I know it is what you have come for. It will still be in there waiting for you when you arrive,” he said, seeming oddly confident. With a raspy sigh, he sank back onto his pillows, once again winded and breathing heavily. “May it serve you well.” His eyelids began to fall. “Good luck Rebecca,” he whispered as the last of his energy seemed to give out.
My stomach tightened as I began to panic, only one thought rambling through my mind. Oh God, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, I cannot stand here and watch someone die without completely freaking out, please don’t die…
The Seers Page 20
