I See You (Oracle 2) (2 page)

“Two pairs of pants, ten T-shirts, and twenty-five socks,” Chi Wen said.

“Twenty-five? Really? Damn.” I settled down on the bench next to the far seer, near enough to not be rude but far enough away that we wouldn’t accidentally touch. Even this close, I could feel the magic that constantly emanated from him like a field of electricity, buzzy hum and all.

Chi Wen, his eyes still locked to the dryer in front of him, shifted his hand until it hovered over my lap. He was still cupping my fugitive butterfly tattoo.

I’d been resting my left arm on my thigh, but for some reason, I now turned it palm up as if to accept the offering of the butterfly.

No.

The tattoo was on my wrist again.

The far seer closed his empty hand with a satisfied sigh. “Time to see, fledgling.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer.
 

I waited, a thousand questions on my mind. Questions about the butterfly, about my oracle magic, and about ‘seeing.’ But I waited. Not to put the old guy up on a pedestal, but every second with him was precious. In a completely different way from how every second with Beau was precious.

Chi Wen was like me. Well, like me with a thousand years of experience being me. He saw. I was fairly certain he was way stronger than the old-man visage he wore like a comfortable hoodie. I was also fairly certain he could read my thoughts, and maybe even make me think or do things … not that I’d caught myself doing anything weird.

“What do you mean?” I finally asked again. The question was a tense whisper that I wanted to temper the moment I let it loose. “Time to see? Have I been not seeing for a reason?”

“For a rest.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as the ramifications of his simple words hit me. “You took the visions? Stopped them?”

“No,” Chi Wen said. “Magic moves where it wills. I simply pushed it into a different direction.”

“The tattoos,” I muttered. I’d been sketching a crazy amount of tattoos lately, and not even ones I wanted to get. Thankfully, they had sold well in my Etsy shop — Rochelle’s Recollections — because I was running out of vision drawings to sell. Though I felt I had to charge way less for a simple smudged image.

“The drawings, yes. But now you must once again see more fully.”

“Why?” I cried, then immediately swallowed the rest of the anticipated pain that had attempted to bleed into my protest. “Never mind. I know there is no why.”

“There is always the question.”

“But it isn’t for me to ask.”

“It’s for you to know.”

Right. The oracle sees all, but doesn’t judge … I was a conduit and an interpreter. “Jade Godfrey,” I whispered. “Jade needs me to see?”

“Soon,” Chi Wen said. “Events are accumulating.”

“And the tattoos? The butterfly?”

“You are an oracle by birth. Perhaps rechanneling the oracle power has opened up other possibilities.”

“What possibilities?” I snapped. I hated being scared. Every second word coming out of Chi Wen’s mouth was piling one fear onto another.

The old man grinned. “The drying has completed.”

The dryer pinged, then slowed.

“Show-off,” I muttered.

Chi Wen chuckled. I stood to pull the clean clothing out of the machine, ignoring my shaky legs. Moving and doing were always good distractions.

“You will survive,” Chi Wen said, his tone casual as if we were still discussing the drying and not my possibly impending death.

“Yeah,” I said, attempting to match his tone and failing. “And Beau?”

He didn’t answer.

I shoved the laundry into my already half-full basket, then locked my gaze to the far seer’s. “And Beau?” I growled.

His grin widened. “The boy, too. For now.”

“We all die, right?”

“We do. But I was concerned … for a moment.” He stood up and started shuffling toward the door of the laundromat without another word.

“So you did what?” I called after him. I darted back to grab my jeans and butterfly patches off the ironing board, then returned the still-cooling iron to the counter.

Ah, hell. Despite the old-man pretense, he was already gone.

“I’ll be right back!” I yelled at Sid and Lina, grabbing my satchel out from underneath the bench and sprinting after my cryptic mentor. I never assumed he did it deliberately — the infuriating, all-over-the-place conversations and weird segues. He just had too much in his head. I knew what that felt like, and I wasn’t the far seer of the guardians. Guardians who supposedly watched over the entire world and all the magic in it.

I couldn’t have been more than an insignificant speck in the universe of magic that constantly flooded the far seer’s brain. Yet he had shown up in Yachats, Oregon, to chat with me in a laundromat.

Well, he had shown up, then disappeared.

∞

The far seer wasn’t on the sidewalk, not in either direction. He also wasn’t wandering down the middle of the street, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to be doing so. Yachats might be a tiny town built around two miles of Interstate 101, which was carved along the edge of the West Coast of the United States. But it was tourist season, so getting mowed over by a massive RV was always a possibility.

Chi Wen usually said goodbye if a conversation was over. I hated leaving my things behind unprotected, but I hazarded a guess and darted down Fourth Street toward Ocean View Drive and the Seaside Walk.

Yachats was pretty. Quaint, even, but in a real-life-real-people sort of way. Tourism might be the area’s biggest industry, but the town itself wasn’t overtly picturesque. A few dozen single-level homes on large lots, a couple of pretty white-painted churches, a small library, and a few restaurants made up the bulk of the town. What made the area truly beautiful was the raging ocean with its gray-sand beach a block to the west.

And that was where I was guessing the far seer of the guardians would head.

I’d taken only a few steps off the road and up the dry grass that bordered the dune blocking my sight of the sandy beach, when a tall, dark-haired teen wearing a green printed T-shirt and black leather pants fell into step beside me.

“Hi,” he said. “Rochelle.”

My sneakered feet slipped in the sand underneath the dry grass, but I managed to stop myself from following through with a face plant. A few more completely ungraceful steps brought me to the top of the dune. The cool wind blowing from the savage ocean pounding the beach twenty-five feet away hit me, actually buffeting my clothing.

Somewhat anchored on this sandy perch, I turned to look at the teen. His face was lifted to the wind, squinting into the sun. His dark hair was long enough to be wild in the breeze. He was tall and broad shouldered, though not as tall as Beau. He was also some-part Asian, as I was.

Magic rolled off him, prickling the exposed skin of my right arm, neck, and face. This power came with a different tenor than that of Beau’s or the far seer’s, but it was no less intense.

“Don’t know you, man,” I said.

He turned to look down at me, an easy smile spreading across his handsome face. “I’m Drake. The far seer’s apprentice.”

He held out his hand as if to shake. I hesitated to take it. I shifted my glasses up until they sat on my head and I snared his brown-eyed gaze. He didn’t flinch at my eyes — but then, he was the far seer’s apprentice, so I doubted that he would. I always liked to try to rattle intimidatingly powerful people, though.
 

Drake’s smile widened. He leaned into me with his hand still extended between us. “What do you see, tiny oracle?”

“You’re the apprentice. You tell me.” I dropped my glasses back down over my eyes. The sun was way too bright to bother with any further attempt to discomfort Drake. Plus, I got the idea pretty quickly that he wasn’t easy to shake up.

Drake threw his head back and laughed. I swore the sand underneath my feet shifted with the magic that now rumbled off him. I glowered at this display, but the expression didn’t have any effect on the teen.

“So you’re a dragon?” I asked.

“I am.”

“And you’re here why?”

“The far seer wished us to meet.”

“Why now? Are you new?”

Drake chuckled. “No. Are you going to shake my hand? I understand it’s a polite gesture between humans.”

“That matters to you?”

“It does.”

“I thought Adepts didn’t touch.”

Drake’s constant grin widened again. “I suppose that Adepts who fear their power or the magic of others might not touch.”

Taking his words as a challenge, I firmly wrapped my hand around his. Our pale skin was almost the same tone. Magic shifted between us, but he didn’t let go.

“Are we related somehow?” I asked.

He tilted his head, considering the question. “I don’t think so.”

I loosened my hold and he let my hand drop. I turned back to survey the beach.

Chi Wen had appeared from who-knows-where and was now standing a couple of dozen feet away at the edge of the surf. He’d lost his boots somewhere and appeared to be curling his bare toes in the wet sand.

“The far seer rarely walks the earth these days. Except for visiting you, Rochelle Hawthorne.” Drake’s use of my birth name felt deliberate and pointed. Though only because it was odd to think of myself as anything other than Rochelle Saintpaul. I hadn’t even known my mother’s last name until Blackwell had informed me of my parentage over a year ago.

“And why am I so important?”

“I thought you might tell me.”

I turned to look up at the young dragon. He was watching the far seer. “Do you see?” I asked.

Drake rolled his shoulders. “Not yet. But I will.”

“Soon?”

“Hopefully not in your lifetime.”

“That’s nasty.”

He laughed. “I’m not wishing you ill. But even if your magic makes you long-lived, I hope to not assume the mantle of the far seer for a hundred years or so. That would be a long life even for a sorcerer-bred oracle.”

“Oh.” My mind reeled at the chunk of info he’d just delivered in a few dozen words. I was standing beside the next far seer. “So … Chi Wen isn’t immortal?”

“No.”

“Is Jade Godfrey going to ‘assume a mantle’ as well?”

Drake turned to look at me. “No.”

“Because she isn’t a full dragon?”

“Not all dragons become guardians.”

“What makes you so special?”

“You tell me. You’re the oracle.” He laughed as he half-stepped, half-surfed down the other side of the dune and crossed toward the far seer.

“I’m not playing games!” I yelled as I scrambled after him.

“Neither am I,” he called back, raising his voice over the wind.

Chi Wen stepped back from the water’s edge and turned to us as we crossed to him — me still trailing after Drake. I couldn’t see the far seer’s boots anywhere nearby. In fact, the beach was empty, which was strange for the middle of July. It felt like I was walking toward the edge of the world, pressing into the wind and finding my footing more easily on the hard-packed wet sand.

Drake bowed formally before the far seer, which gave me pause. I hadn’t really known I was supposed to do that sort of thing in the presence of the guardian.

They exchanged some words that I thought at first I couldn’t hear properly because of the wind. But then as their voices filtered through my brain, I realized they weren’t speaking English. Cantonese, maybe.

Drake turned back to me, bowing swiftly and more shallowly than he had to the far seer. “We are well met, Rochelle Hawthorne, Oracle of the Brave.”

I narrowed my eyes at the young dragon, not at all amused by whatever joke he was making at my expense. Then I realized he was referencing the 1975 Brave Winnebago I called my home, combining that with my magic to give me a formal title of sorts. Feeling like an idiot, I bowed back and mimicked his formal address. “We are well met, Drake, apprentice to Chi Wen, the far seer of the guardian nine.”

“I’m at your disposal. A call to Jade Godfrey will bring me to your side.”

“I don’t exactly have the dowser on speed dial.”

“You will,” Drake said.

My stomach bottomed out at this assertion. Jade equaled chaos and mayhem. I preferred to keep her out of my head and my phone for as long as possible.

Drake smiled as if he might be picking up on what I was feeling. Then he nodded toward the far seer and stepped past me the way we’d come. I turned to watch him walk away.

“Your apprentice, eh?” I asked Chi Wen.

The old man didn’t answer. He’d turned back to the raging surf.

“Why did you want us to meet?” I raised my voice against the wind, spitting a hank of hair out of my mouth. “Why now?”

The far seer took so long to answer that I thought he might not have heard me. Then he said, “I didn’t care for the meeting I saw.”

“Sorry? You saw us meeting and you decided to change it? You told me the future was immutable. You told me it was dangerous to try to manipulate it?”

“Destiny is immutable. The future is fluid.”

I snorted. “For you, you mean. And the dangerous part?”

Chi Wen turned to look at me. His Buddha smile was firmly in place. “What is dangerous for some isn’t dangerous for others.”

“Drake, you mean. He’s powerful, strong. I could feel his magic.”

“And now you will see him.”

“Because you think my oracle powers pick up on the strongest magical signatures I come into contact with?”

“Or those most relevant to you. May I look at your sketchbook?”

“Here?”

“If you please.”

Grumbling, I pulled my sketchbook out of my hand-painted satchel. How he was going to look at it in all this wind, I didn’t know. But our conversations got way too convoluted if I questioned him too much.
 

I handed the almost-full book to the far seer, barely keeping its pages closed within my grip. But as soon as he touched the sketchbook, those pages stilled as if the wind didn’t exist.
 

I grumbled some more as Chi Wen flipped through my latest tattoo ideas. I didn’t really get how magic worked at all. You’d think there’d be some sort of manual for newbies, though I got the impression that oracles were pretty rare and usually trained by a family member. Since I didn’t have any family — other than Beau — that wasn’t an option for me. And Beau was enough anyway. I could pick up all the other stuff I needed to know slowly, steadily. If I even really needed to know it.