Free Protector (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 5) by Christine Pope

disapproval in it. “So I’m a coward.”
    “Would a coward have fought back against a warlock such as Matías?” Maya shook her head, then went on, “‘Coward’ is too simple a word to use here, I think. I can understand why you would not want to tell anyone of the gifts that had come to you, for in some ways I think it is even more difficult to be the seer of a clan than to be its prima, or one of its elders. The visions can intrude when you do not wish them to, and everyone, even the prima herself, will be coming to you for advice.”
    “So what should I do?” Caitlin asked, and hated herself for the quaver of worry she heard in her voice.
    Maya smiled sadly, then reached out to touch Caitlin’s hand. Only briefly, and even that gentle brush felt more like the whisper of a frail, bird-like wing than actual fingers. “You will have to ask yourself whether the lives of your friends are worth revealing your gift to your clan. Because I will tell you, Caitlin McAllister, that this is only the beginning. You cannot hide what you are, or even a part of it. You must embrace it fully. It is your sight that can save them…if you’ll let it. For if you do not, nothing else on earth can save them.”
    This was the thing she’d feared all along, that the visions and feelings and vague sensations of foreboding were the only things that might somehow lead her to wherever Danica and Roslyn had been taken. And even then it might be too late, if Matías and his cronies determined that the powers they were summoning needed a greater sacrifice than just a few drops of innocent blood.
    “I don’t — I don’t know how to use it,” Caitlin whispered at last. “I’ve spent so many years trying to hide it that now…I guess I’m afraid to even try tapping into it.”
    “That’s not surprising,” Maya said, and instead of sounding disapproving, her tone was gentle, if a little sad. “But your gift wants to manifest itself, which is why you’ve had visions, even if you’ve tried to suppress them. All you must do is take down the barriers you’ve built up.”
    All . Caitlin thought of the past six years, of how she’d tried to close her mind down whenever those unwanted images began to pop into it. That didn’t always work, of course; instead, her gift had edged its way into her dreams, or the unguarded moments when she was thinking of something else entirely. But it had never abandoned her, and had even tried to protect her, back there at the bar when Matías and Jorge and Tomas approached her and her friends. If only she had trusted in it more.
    Seeming to sense her inner turmoil, Maya said, “Let it move through you now. Don’t try to direct it. Think of your gift as a river — it knows where it must flow. Trying to redirect it will only cause harm. And remember — always remember — that your gift is part of you. It is not some alien thing attempting to act on you from outside.”
    That was a little more reassuring. Even so, Caitlin didn’t quite know what she should be doing with herself. Should she close her eyes? Choose one object in the room and focus on it? Always before, the visions had come without her bidding them, without even knowing exactly where they had come from.
    But then it didn’t matter, because the room around her suddenly seemed to blank out. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was more as if another image overlaid the one she had just been seeing, obscuring the leather couch and the faded Persian rug on the floor, the dancing waters of the fountain outside in the courtyard. Instead, she saw a small room, around the same size as the living room in the apartment she shared with Danica in Flagstaff, similarly furnished in the kind of shabby hand-me-downs that Danica had referred to as “early Salvation Army.”
    And there was Danica herself, sitting on a truly hideous plaid sofa, with Roslyn next to her. Both girls had their eyes open, and yet Caitlin had the uneasy feeling that neither of