Raintree: Oracle (Raintree 4)

Just that afternoon Duncan had asked her, “Are your royal cousins better than you? Stronger? More capable of control?”

When she’d hesitated he’d answered for her.

“No, they are not.”

She wished she could believe him.

Echo was about to start the final song of the set when a warning tickle in the back of her brain caught her attention. A niggling feeling, the kind you get when you sense that someone is watching. But this was different. It was deeper; it was a part of her.

It was

the warning Duncan had been telling her to keep watch for. A vision was coming, and she did not want that to happen in front of the handful of customers that remained in the pub. Duncan would be able to explain it away, she imagined, whisking her away and telling everyone she had a medical condition, but she needed to learn to handle this on her own. That’s why she was here!

It took great effort, but she smiled, set the guitar aside and said good-night. Her fingers trembled; her vision began to turn gray at the edges, taking away her peripheral vision. Her knees went weak. She eased down off the stage carefully, watching her step. One step, then another. Please, please, not yet. She headed for the door that opened on the stairway that would lead to the room where Duncan slept. It was her closest escape route—her only chance of getting away from prying eyes before the vision took her.

She heard voices behind her as she placed her hand on the doorknob. They seemed far away, and might as well have been spoken in a foreign language. A few words reached her brain. Strange girl. Guitar. Another ale. Raintree...

If she could just get to the bed. Shoot, she’d be satisfied just to make it beyond this door...

And she did. Barely.

Echo closed the door behind her, took two steps—difficult steps, as her legs now felt like lead and her knees shook—and dropped to the stairs. There was just enough control in her fall to keep her from hurting herself.

Forehead resting on one wooden step, hands pressed to another, she closed her eyes and let the vision come. Instead of fighting it, instead of trying to force it down and back, she embraced the scene playing in her head. It was beyond hard to embrace the very thing she’d spent a lifetime fighting, but she took a deep breath and allowed herself to go there, to live in the moment.

Fire, again. God, she hated fire most of all. The heat, the way her lungs burned, the air being sucked away...

But this time there was some semblance of discipline, a sense that she was amid the flames and at the same time not, as if she were having a vivid dream. She made herself survey the scene as if she were truly distanced from it.

She stood in a building—a warehouse, by the looks of it—engulfed in flames. She was at the center; she saw it all. Fire licked at the walls and danced on the ceiling. White-hot fire climbed and danced as if it were a living thing. It looked to her as if the entire building was made of wood that begged to be kindling. The ceilings were high. The walls were awash with graffiti, garish colors in an otherwise colorless place.

In the distance, she heard a faint scream. Who was calling? Where were they? Was she too late again? There was a small explosion, and heat washed over her in a wave that almost threw her to the ground. For a few seconds she had managed to stay in control, but now she could not breathe. She was going to burn; she was going to die here, along with the person she was meant to save...

Suddenly she was not alone. Duncan stood beside her, stoic as ever. Judging by the expression on his face and the easy way he breathed, he was not at all alarmed.

“You’re not really near the fire,” he said calmly. “You cannot feel the heat.”

She knew he was right, but with each second that passed it seemed more real. “I can feel it.”

He took her shoulders in his big hands and turned her about so she faced him. They were rarely so close. She had to tilt her head back to see his eyes. Reflections of flames danced there.

“Where are we?” he asked sharply. “When are we?”

“I don’t know...”

Instead of being frustrated with her failure, he remained calm. “You do, love. It’s there.” He tapped her forehead with one finger. “It’s here.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The air she took into her lungs was cool, fresh, not at all heated. She smelled Duncan, not the fire and smoke that would not, could not, harm her. His scent was pleasant; it was his and his alone. He smelled like man and wood polish and grass. He smelled a little like the beer he served but, as far as she could tell, never consumed.

Again, in the distance, that scream. It sounded like a child.

“You can’t do the boy any good if you panic.” Finally, he began to show a hint of frustration. Just a hint. “Where. When?”

Echo took a deep breath of cool, Duncan-scented air, and with it she drew on his calmness. She searched her own mind deeper than she had before. She wasn’t in the warehouse; the fire did not threaten her. She was a watcher, sent here by whatever force had gifted or cursed her with this ability.

“Atlanta,” she said. “A Peachtree...something.”

“Peachtree what, love?” Duncan whispered.