Free I See You (Oracle 2) by Meghan Ciana Doidge Page B

forgotten I was currently barefoot.
    I couldn’t see any street or business signs. Ettie didn’t appear to have any marks on her or to be carrying anything, but it wasn’t like I could look through her pockets.
    Had she jumped? Or had she been thrown through the window?
    I stepped around her, thinking I might be able to see more of the building. It was funny how quickly I could accustom myself to stepping around a dead body. I blamed TV for my insensitivity.
    But as I stepped away, the mist of the oracle magic flooded my mind’s eye, taking my sight with it once again.
    I was back in the Brave. Not that I could see anything yet.
    I was shaking, vibrating with energy that didn’t feel like it belonged to me. I was still hunkered down. I stretched my legs out before me, just able to press my toes against the edge of the bench seat of the dinette and my upper back against the kitchen cabinets.
    My trembling gradually eased in this position. Or, rather, it fled the rest of my body as it focused down my left arm, then accumulated in my hand. Well, that was new. Or maybe this was the first time I’d been calm enough after a vision to notice.
    I was still mist-blind as I rolled forward onto the balls of my feet, then climbed onto the dinette bench seat. I pushed my laptop carefully out of the way and tugged my sketchbook toward me.
    My left hand felt as though it was on fire as I found a piece of charcoal in my satchel, then applied it to what felt like a blank page in my sketchbook. Just the act of pressing the charcoal to the page eased the energy burning in my palm.
    I wondered when my sight would come back, but then the thought disappeared as I began to capture the vision on paper. Pressing the charcoal to the page was enough to release the magic that had flooded my body and mind. I didn’t need to see.  
    I sketched Ettie, the shattered glass, and what I’d seen of the building and the window through which Beau’s sister had fallen. Or been pushed … or thrown.
    My sight cleared.
    The Brave was dark. I reached for and turned on the nearest light without lifting the fingers of my left hand from the page before me. I was working on a close-up of Ettie’s face, smudging carefully to define her skeletal structure. I’d go back and refine the other sketches over the next couple of days.
    I still couldn’t get her eyes right. Perhaps I shouldn’t worry about it, but I felt as if I was missing something.
    Ettie was dead. So maybe I couldn’t get her eyes right because she no longer existed behind them, filling those murky brown orbs with energy.
    Maybe such thoughts were way over my pay grade right now. According to Chi Wen, I was a function of magic, but not simply a tool or a recorder. I was an interpreter.
    Still just a cog in the wheel of fate, though.
    But how could I believe in fate, in Chi Wen, and even in my otherworldly love for Beau yet not believe — or, rather, not submit — to the notion of my life being controlled or even dictated by a higher power?
    What was missing from Ettie’s eyes? Her soul? Was I so arrogant to believe that I could see such a thing? That when I sketched Blackwell and Jade, I could capture the pure essence that fueled them?
    I was exhausted. I wasn’t going to solve such huge questions — questions that had plagued humanity since … well, forever — with scrawled lines on paper.
    I placed the charcoal I still clutched in my left hand down on the lime-green Formica of the table. Every edge of the remaining nub was smooth and rounded.
    The door swung open and the Brave dipped to the right.
    I flipped the sketchbook closed. Though with both of my hands covered in charcoal from smudging and shading, it would be completely obvious I’d been sketching.
    I lifted my gaze as Beau entered the Brave. He was smiling, obviously content from his run. His white teeth were a stark contrast against his smooth mocha skin.
    I wasn’t going to be able to hide the sketchbook from him. I