“I’ve brought someone with me,” Mira said once the locks started clicking.
The door opened a few inches before a chain caught it. Barney looked out, and then closed the door again and slid off the chain.
When you think seer, you think little old man, but Barney was almost the exact opposite. He was tall—more than a head taller than Mira and a few inches taller than Ian was—and skinny. The interesting part was that, although he was around thirty, he looked like he was in his fifties.
There’s a reason people think seers are old men. They age fast. They live the average human life, barring any accidents, but they reach their wise old ages early and stay there.
“Knew he’d want to start with me,” Barney said. “Come on into the living room.”
“I didn’t see you the other night,” Mira said. “I was worried you wouldn’t know.”
“John filled me in and everyone always wants to see the seer first.” He didn’t seem put off by their presence. Instead, he stood tall and sounded proud. “They want to know what we know and see what we see.”
The entire apartment was neat and clean.
“This is Detective Burke,” Mira said. “He’d like to ask you a few things.”
Ian did his cop thing and asked a bunch of questions. First, about Sally, although he said nothing that Mira didn’t already know, and then about the others.
“I knew Helen, of course,” Barney said. “Everyone knew Helen and Sally. And Karen, well, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her.”
“You knew her?” Mira asked.
“She moved to the city years ago,” Barney said. “Caught wind of us and joined us one night.”
“Us?” Ian asked.
“The community,” Barney said. “She came to a gathering, not a full-blown conclave mind, but a gathering. She left early and didn’t come back.”
“Conclave?” Ian asked.
“I’ll explain the terminology later,” Mira whispered. “I don’t remember her,” she said to Barney. “Why did she leave early?”
“She was older,” Barney said. “Lived a bit too much in the past, I think. She didn’t take well to some of the others that were around.”
“Any of them in particular?” Ian asked.
“Well, there’s Lance, of course. Most people have an issue with him, at least at first. Karen was a banshee, though. We have a lot of witches in the area, and witches and banshees go together like fire and water.”
“A banshee? What do banshees do?”
Barney frowned and looked at Mira.
“Wrong question,” Mira said under her breath.
Ian looked uncomfortable.
Mira, worried he was going to ask the same question in a different way, asked a few questions of her own. “Have you seen Karen since then?” Remembering who she was talking to, she added, “either physically or otherwise?”
“No,” Barney said.
Mira was about to ask something else, when Barney’s eyes appeared to become unfocused. Beside her, Ian shifted and started to say something. Mira put her hand on his knee, gripping slightly, cutting off what he was about to say.
Being a witch this close to Barney, Mira could feel a cool wisp of the Ether as it pooled around him. She imagined movement in the Ether—witches from the past that hadn’t come back. She shivered, and then relaxed her hand when the air began to stir and the ethereal atmosphere evaporated.
Then she noticed her hand, still on Ian’s knee, and drew away. She could feel her face turn red and resolutely did not look at Ian.
Although he was back in the here and now, Barney looked thoughtful.
Mira cleared her throat.
“Sorry,” Barney said, focusing in on them again, “you were saying?”
“The other names weren’t familiar to you?” Mira asked.
“No,” Barney said, and then he hesitated.
“You’re certain?” Mira asked. “It looked like you remembered something.”
“I’m certain, but…” Barney glanced at Ian, who was watching the exchange. “It’s not likely, but I may have written something down.”
“A journal?” Mira asked. There was no way she’d mention her journal to others and was surprised that anyone else would.
“Come with me,” Barney said.
Mira stood up, but Ian lingered behind, hesitant.
“Both of you are welcome,” Barney said without turning around.
Chapter 13
Barney led Mira and Ian into a small bedroom that had been converted into an office. Stacks of cardboard filing boxes lined the walls. Barney took a notebook off his desk and flipped through it, taking a moment to jot down a note. He then opened a box and began inspecting others.
Mira peeked into the box he’d opened and saw it was filled with the notebooks. The notebooks were all the same brand, color, and type.
“I keep it all,” Barney said, while digging through the box and inspecting notebooks. “The past ten years are in this room.”
“That’s a lot of journaling,” Mira said.
“When I was a kid, my parents took me to a doctor. He wasn’t sure what to do with me, but said it would be a good idea to write it all out. The visions, I mean. Get them out of my head. He was right, too. Between this, and now that I’m older, the occasional spelled tea from Tyler or your shop, I get by.”
Ian looked at Mira, and she could see the questions starting to swim around his mind. When she was sure Barney wasn’t looking at them, she shook her head slightly, hoping to cut off any questions in front of Barney.
“Take a look if you’d like,” Barney said without looking up. He waved to the other boxes in the room. “Try not to mix them up.”
Mira lifted the cardboard lid off one of the boxes, hesitant to jump in and look through Barney’s personal journals. There were markings on the lid. She lifted out one of the notebooks and found similar markings on the cover. They were a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols.
“What are these?” Ian asked, motioning to the lid where he examined similar writing.
“Filing system.” Barney said. “Only I know the code. I’m not stingy with what I know, though. Some seers hide it, but not me. I put it out there.”
Barney dropped a notebook and opened up his laptop. He went straight to a site called Postsfromtheether.com. Mira and Ian looked over his shoulder while he scrolled through some recent entries.
Barney was a blogger.
“I don’t put everything up.” Barney said. “I learned early on that no one wants to hear that you stared at a light bulb for twenty minutes before it went out. Only big things go up here.”
Twenty minutes with the Ether pulled around him sounded like a nightmare to a witch.
Barney was kind of a recluse, a very nice one, but solitary all the same. Even at meetings, he seemed distant. Because of that, Mira had never expected so much computer aptitude. She was impressed.
“How far back do you want to look?” Barney asked, moving around his boxes.
Ian took a moment to respond. “I’m not quite sure how this works. What you do, I mean. Knowing anything you may have, uh, seen from the past three months or so, would be a good place to start.”
“There are four or five notebooks that may be of use, then,” Barney said, handing two to Ian before moving to another box.
Mira mused that, however he filed his notebooks, they weren’t necessarily in chronological order.
“That’s a lot of notebooks,” Ian said, flipping through a few pages of Barney’s neat handwriting. “Would it be possible to take them with me?”
Looking unsettled, Barney began to stammer. “I, um, I, uh, I don’t know.”
Ian glanced at Mira with a worried look in his eye, unsure if he’d asked the wrong thing again.
“It wouldn’t be for long,” Mira jumped in. “Maybe Ian could get them copied or something?”
“I could get them back to you tomorrow,” Ian added.
“Tomorrow
?” Barney looked a little calmer. “Tomorrow. Right. That— that might be okay. Tomorrow morning?”
“If the copies aren’t done, I’ll bring them back anyway,” Ian said.
Mira hoped that Ian was being truthful. Did cops lie to get what they needed? For Barney’s sake, she hoped he would have them back.
“Let me see.” Barney went to the notebook on his desk and flipped to a blank page. He made a few notes before looking the notebook over, checking his filing marks, and setting the book aside.
Barney moved to the closet and opened it. Inside were other boxes, different from the ones that littered the room. When Mira got a look inside, she could see that they were filled with the same notebook.
There must have been ten more boxes of empty journals hidden away inside.
Her interest in the unused books didn’t go unnoticed.
“They discontinued the first notebooks I used,” Barney said. “I couldn’t let that happen again.”
“It looks like you have enough to last a long while, then,” Mira said, some nervousness leaking into her voice.
“Definitely,” Barney said. “My parents keep the rest.”
Mira only nodded and hoped even more intensely that Ian would have the notebooks back when he said they would.
Barney set up his new notebook, and once he was satisfied, he handed that one, along with four others, over to Ian.
Feeling the cool atmosphere of the Ether return, Mira took a step outside the room and watched Barney once again gaze into the unknown. Ian watched her, but stayed where he was, looking unsure if he should move or not. This time, it lasted longer and the pool of Ether was thicker. Mira ended up stepping farther back, sensing unseen movement.
“Excuse me,” Barney said when he focused back in on the present. He blinked and looked around. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“You’ve been a great help,” Ian said. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you,” Barney said. “I’ll see you out.”
“Thank you for everything, Barney,” Mira said. “Is there... do you have everything you need? I can bring more tea by if you’d like.”
Barney beamed. “Tyler dropped some off this morning. If he hadn’t been in such a rush, you would have seen him leaving.”
“Well, let either of us know when you want more,” Mira said.
Mira and Ian bundled up and thanked Barney again.
Once outside, Mira was thankful for the naturally cold air. It might scour the skin when the wind blows, but it also stripped away lingering sensations of the Ether.
Seeing Barney had given her an idea, though. The tea that Barney sometimes used blocked a seer’s power. Since that involved the Ether, it might help her with the balance spell for Emmit. Inspiration and ideas jumbled together in her head to the point that she hadn’t heard Ian.
“What?” Mira asked.
He looked at her, and she could see the concern, but he appeared to be struggling with it.
Looking away, Ian flipped through one of the notebooks. “These might help.”
“Maybe,” Mira said. She’d have to think about the spell later. “Barney said he didn’t remember anything, though.”
“Yes, but you mentioned that he doesn’t always know what it is he’s seeing.” Ian shrugged and handed the notebooks over to Mira. “They aren’t real evidence. We’ll take them down to Copy Shop and get copies made.”
“A store? Don’t you have a copy machine at the station?”
Ian blushed a bit. “There’s always someone getting something copied. Plus, I don’t think I want other officers reading through this. Word might get around.”
Mira wasn’t certain if it was the binding spell, or if Ian was uncomfortable about something strange getting around the office. Peering close at Ian as he drove across town, she saw that the spell had settled in quite well, but some areas still existed where Ian rebelled. Hopefully he wouldn’t push too hard. The harder the struggle, the worse the results could be. Still, she wasn’t too concerned, yet. In a few days, if the spell weren't permanent, then she would worry.
“About the question with the banshee,” Ian said, “where did I go wrong?”
It took her a moment to remember. “You asked him what a banshee does.”
“And?” Ian asked.
“Well, what do humans do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What skills or traits do they have?” Mira asked, trying to press the point.
“That’s different,” Ian said. “We don’t have anything we’re known for. There’s nothing collectively as a group that sets us apart.”
“Really? Barney’s a seer. He’s human.”
“But that’s not a common trait.”
“For supernaturals, it’s kind of the same way. If you look at a book, it will say something about a banshee’s scream. At least I think that’s a banshee. Anyway, there may have been one or two banshees in history that screamed and killed someone. Unless you are a banshee, you can’t really say what it is that they do.”
Ian appeared to mull that around a bit, but wasn’t ready to give up. “What about witches? You’re known for spells, right? That’s a trait you all have.”
“No,” Mira said. “For you to say that is an assumption. Not every witch does magic. In fact, there are some witches that couldn’t do magic if they wanted to.”
“Werewolves?” Ian said.
“They don’t all shift. One person is different from another, same as humans.”
“Wouldn’t a non-shifting werewolf be just a human?” Ian looked confused.
“No. It’s not turning into a wolf that makes them a werewolf. Yes, most of them change, but not all.”
“But if most of them do, couldn’t you just say that most of them do? I mean, it’s a pretty defining trait.”
“Supernaturals learned long ago not to lump everyone together. It’s why so many people got killed in the past. When people hunted werewolves, a lot of wolves and humans died as well. Same with witches. Most of the people killed weren’t supernaturals.”
“Okay, how about a seer? You could tell me what a seer does, right?”
“Yes, but only because they are one subset of human. And only because witches work with seers a lot.”
“I was going to ask about that, too. The tea?”
“Seers see what they do by peering into the Ether. Witches can help minimize that—give them a break from the visions.”
“He seems to do okay with them,” Ian said, nodding toward the notebooks. “He even shares them.”
“Would you want to see something else all the time? Not knowing when it would come or how long it would stay? Then not knowing if it was true or not? It’s enough to drive a person crazy.”
“Good point,” Ian said.
If Mira went into Copy Shop and asked for something to be ready by the next morning, she’d probably be laughed out of the building. When Ian flashed his badge, he was assured that the notebooks would be copied and that all their work remained confidential. They even offered scanning services. Mira was thoroughly impressed, until she discovered scanning was just one extra button to press and Ian had to buy a memory stick. Copying service didn’t come cheap, but it came quick.
“Tell me about John Parnell,” Ian said once they returned to the car.
“He’s an insurance agent,” Mira said. “Sally and I used to talk with him quite a bit. I think he’s pretty close to William and Tyler as well.”
“And he’s the psychic?” Ian asked.
“He is a psychic, yes.”
“I bet he does well in the insurance industry.”
“He does,” Mira said, “but not for the reasons you’re thinking.”
“I suppose you supply him with the same tea Barney gets,” Ian said.
“No. Barney stares into the Ether and sees random futures. John predicts the future, although sometimes he lives in the future as well. Most of the time, though, it’s his futu
re.”
“He lives in the future?” Ian asked.
“Sort of. Sometimes John runs a little faster than those around him do. If he does that, just keep asking questions and he’ll meet up with you again.”
“I’m not going to pretend I understood any of that.”
“I’m not an expert in seers or psychics.” Mira realized she was confusing Ian worse than he had been. “Treat him like you would anyone else.”
The agency John worked for was downtown. A fast elevator took them up to the thirtieth floor, where the doors opened to a smiling receptionist. Ian looked ready to flash his badge until Mira nudged in front of him and asked if John was available.
“My sister used to work here,” Mira told Ian while the receptionist contacted John. “Well, not here exactly. There’s a cubicle farm on the floor below. She worked there.”
“Used to?” Ian asked.
“She hated missing so much time with the kids while commuting.”
Ian only nodded and looked around.
“You two can go back, John is in his office,” the receptionist said.
“Thank you,” Mira said. She received instructions to get to John’s office. “What’s up?” Mira asked when Ian remained quiet on the way to the office.
“You know I’ll want to talk to your sister, right?” Ian asked.
Mira shrugged. “Fine by me. I know she’s not involved.”
“You’re certain of that?” Ian asked.
“Yep. She’s the good one.”
Ian grinned and lowered his voice. “Good witch bad witch?”
She chuckled. “Something like that. There’s a reason you found me on file and not her.”
“Now that you mention it, there weren’t many details about why you started to work for the authorities.”
“There’s his office,” Mira said, ignoring the implied question. “Ready?”
“Sure thing.”
John met them at the door, wringing his hands. “Good afternoon. Please, take a seat.” He shut the door behind them before settling in behind his desk. “What can I do for you?”
Mira smiled, hoping to calm his nerves. “This is Detective Ian Burke. We’re making the rounds.”
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