Free Miles to Go by Laura Anne Gilman Page A

and tried to flap her hand at him, to tell him to shut up. He must have taken the hint because he didn’t say anything more, although he still had a hand on her arm, somewhere outside the vision.
    The street was nice, the houses in decent repair, what she could see in the night. Was it tonight? She looked up, and checked the moon, hanging high in the black. Tonight, or close enough. Tonight or tomorrow. But where?
    She needed more. Needed to see more.
    Unable to move from where the vision had dropped her, she couldn’t turn to see the cross-street, but it was narrow, almost like an alley, and had more houses on it, smaller ones, almost like cottages. Carlyle, she read off the nearest street sign, squinting to read the letters.
    Not enough.
    You’re a storm-seer. Genevieve had explained it to her, the two of them sitting on a bench in Central Park. The sky had been bright blue, the air clear and cool. Genevieve had said it was safer to talk about it then. We all pull power from current, the magic that run along electricity, but you have an extra gift. Current carries things with it. Memories. Images. You can see them. You can pull them from the current, before they even happen.
    More current. She reached for the power she could feel racing overhead, riding along those lightning flashes out at sea. All those years of denying she saw anything, trying to fit in, it seemed almost wrong how easy it was to find the current, bring it in toward her…
    Too much, too many conflicting sparks. She fell to her knees, the current prickling painfully up and down her spine, unable to settle, and the vision was lost.
    “Ellen. Ellen, come on. Come with me. No, it’s okay,” and he was talking to someone else now, his voice pitched away from her, “She’s ok, I think that last beer did her in.”
    She wanted to protest, but her knees felt like rubber and her head was burning and all she really wanted to do was lie down somewhere until the fireworks scrambling inside her settled down and behaved.
    “You did something with current, didn’t you? And it burned you. It’s okay, you’re going to be okay.”
    Yes. She knew that. She was the Talent here, not him, and she opened her mouth to say that, but all that came out was a harsh gasp.
    “Come on, sit down.” And she was being lowered onto a bench, and Danny was sitting next to her, his arm around her shoulders.
    “I Saw,” she said, barely a whisper. “I saw…her. One of the girls. She’s alive, she’ll be alive, but I don’t know about the others.” The last time she had seen someone twice, it had been Genevieve…and the one missing from that second vision had already died, although she hadn’t known it at the time.
    “And I saw… outside. Outside where she is.” Although she didn’t know for certain the cellar was on that street, why else would she be seeing it? “A street. Hamlin? No, Carlyle. Carlyle Court.”
    She felt him shift, reaching for something, and then he swore under his breath. “You scorched my cell.” There was no condemnation in his voice, just resignation. “No way to get a new one before morning. But the street, it’s near here?”
    She nodded. “Yeah. Not here, the town’s not like this one.” The town they’d driven through had cottages the same size, but they were clearly rentals, more run-down, nowhere near as carefully tended. “I could see the beach from there, sort of. Down the end of the road. A private beach? Not like this.”
    “Beach town, nicer, Carlyle Court. Okay.” His arm left her, and she opened her eyes to see him watching her intently, his face in shadows from the streetlamp hanging over them. “You okay?”
    “Yeah.” The current had settled, finally, and she no longer thought she was going to throw up. She didn’t want to try standing up just yet, though.
    “All right. Hang tight for a minute.”
    She wasn’t sure what that meant, to hang tight, but she was all right with sitting there while he went off,