AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What are you doing in here?” says a voice, snapping me out of my trance.
Startled, I turn around to see a nurse looking at me with raised eyebrows and arms folded across her chest.
“I… I came to visit Miss Williams. Where is she?”
“She insisted on being discharged this morning, and the doctor agreed.”
Of course he did – he assumed it was only a fainting fit.
“Okay, thanks,” I reply and leave immediately. I can’t help wondering why Kate didn’t tell me she’d been discharged. Why did she just leave?
I have a bad feeling. I walk quickly along the corridors, and my heart beats faster and faster. The closer I get to Kate’s room, the more the hollow feeling in my stomach intensifies.
I sprint the last few yards, and as I reach out to open her door, I pause. For a moment, I don’t dare to breathe as I listen keenly to the noises coming from her room. A whooshing, whirring sound that at first, I can’t explain. But my subconscious seems to have a hunch because one word flashes through my mind: magic.
I’m about to open the door when I hear a voice say, “I was intending to finish you off in the infirmary. It was the perfect opportunity after you suffered that unexplained episode because they would have attributed your death to that. But now, I’ll have to do it this way.”
I fling the door open and momentarily freeze on the spot. So many things are happening before my eyes that I struggle to process them all or even believe what I’m seeing.
Kate’s sitting on the floor of her room. The shutters are closed. In front of her is a ceramic bowl with smoke rising out of it. An unusual nutty smell hangs in the air. Lights rise up from the bowl and float around the room, and when I take a closer look at them, I see the details. Faces, places – like little pieces cut from photos. Are they memories? Or snippets of visions?
All that would be enough to alarm me, but the really horrifying thing is the other person in the room. Mr. Brian is holding Kate by the sweater, glaring at her with hatred and holding a knife to her throat. When I charge in, he looks at me in horror.
Gray can’t help Kate. He’s pinned to the floor by a huge predatory bird. But Yoru doesn’t hesitate. My little fox launches himself at Mr. Brian and hurls a fireball at him. He has to let go of Kate to dodge it – which is a good start. The knife slips out of his hand as he raises his arms and commands his key spirit. It rears up and throws itself in front of its master, quenching the flames with a torrent of water. A gigantic wave surges over me, sweeping me off my feet and spinning me around. I manage to grab hold of the closet.
Meanwhile, Mr. Brian is focused on Kate again. “I’ve had enough! I spent so long trying to figure out how to take you out of the game, and believe me, I didn’t want to kill you. But now I see it’s the only way. You’re a seer, I’m sure of it now, and that makes you a danger to me. You have to die!”
I can tell from his expression that he’ll stop at nothing. He bends down, picks up the knife, and raises it over his head, and now there’s nothing holding me back. I jump up, run at him, and pray that I’ll get to him in time. At the same time, I take out my key and try to summon a door the way Noah taught me. I throw myself on the floor, slide across it, and drag Kate with me as I open the door that’s just appeared in front of us. We tumble through it and then comes the fall. Deep, endless. But I cling to the hope that it’ll get us to safety.
Chapter 31
Islowly struggle to my feet. We’re in the Odyss. All around us are the glowing doors. Yoru is sitting beside me, looking up at me intently. Gray is with Kate, still poised in his attacking pose to protect her. Nobody else is here, so I exhale with relief. But we still need to get out of here as fast as possible.
I go to Kate and help her up.
“What the hell just happened? What kind of spell was that, and what did Mr. Brian want from you?” Okay, fine, the last part was obvious, and the memory of it sends an icy shiver up my spine.
“I… I was trying to bring on a vision with a ritual,” Kate explains slowly, pushing a strand of hair out of her face. She looks tense. Her hands are shaking. “I didn’t know what else to do. I need to get the visions out before they burst out of me unexpectedly and destroy parts of my memory.” She looks at me with big imploring eyes.
I get why she did it. But I wish she’d talked to me first. “You could have told me,” I say, unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
Meanwhile, I reach out to summon a door through which we can disappear. I don’t know where it’ll lead us, but what’s important right now is to get away from this place.
“I didn’t want to drag you into it.” She sighs and walks a few steps. “Also… it’s hard to explain, but this is something I have to deal with on my own. I need to work on myself and my powers. No one can help me with that.”
I look at her and feel torn. In a way, I understand what she means, but I want her to know that I’m always willing to help her.
“I was halfway through the ritual when my door opened, and Mr. Brian came in. He didn’t say much, just that he’d gone to the infirmary and was surprised to find that I discharged myself. And that it made no difference now. I didn’t understand what he wanted from me. But the way he looked at me…” She shakes her head at the memory. “I was so scared. And then he attacked me. I don’t know how he knows about my gift.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” says a voice in the darkness behind us.
A figure slowly emerges out of the shadows. My heart contracts in fright. I instinctively position myself in front of Kate and retreat back a few steps with her. I can still feel the weight of the door that I was about to pull toward me. I try to maintain the connection and not let go of it, but it’s hard now that my attention is divided.
Mr. Brian advances. His huge bird is fluttering around him. “Many years ago, I acquired a seal that reacts to the powers of a seer. It was a precautionary measure after I was threatened by a seer a while back, and I realized that I would probably cross paths again with her or some other seer in the future.”
I’m reminded of the letter from Kate’s mom. So her warning did put him on guard, but evidently, she never sought him out. Why not? Did he abandon his plans? I find that hard to believe.
“The seal warns me when a seer is nearby. You experienced firsthand how it works. The closer you get to me, the stronger the reaction. At first, I was really confused because after the first incident, it didn’t happen again for a while. But I suppose that’s because your powers awakened only recently and haven’t fully developed. Still, I couldn’t take any risks. I couldn’t allow you to see those things, and it was only a matter of time before you did. As a seer, you can home in on events that relate to the people close to you – events that are significant for them and their life story. And since your friend is a relative of Frida…” He glares at me. “…I knew that you’d uncover my secret. I needed to keep your friend away from you. That way I had a much better chance of getting to you and stopping you.”
