creepy hollow 05 - a faerie's revenge by rachel morgan Read Free Book Online Page B

any kind of chance with her.
    Gemma sees me approaching and stands. Rick gets to his feet and Gemma introduces the two of us. “Calla’s curious about the life of a Seer,” Gemma tells him. “I said she should come and ask you herself.”
    “Oh, sure,” Rick says with a good-natured laugh as we sit. “As long as you’re not about to ask me why the Seers didn’t see The Destruction coming.”
    “Oh no, don’t worry,” I assure him. “Gemma explained that one to me already.” I rub my hands along my legs, not sure what to ask now that I finally have the opportunity. “So … I was thinking that I don’t know all that much about how it works. As guardian trainees, we receive assignment details on scrolls, and that’s pretty much all I know about your end of the process. I don’t even know what it’s like when you actually have a vision.”
    “It’s … disorienting,” Rick says. “We get pulled into it, as if we’re really there, and then thrown back to the present. We get used to it after a while, but sometimes it still results in dizziness and nausea.”
    I lean forward on my knees. “And you can’t control what you See, right?”
    “Well, no, but we can influence it. We have to direct our thoughts a certain way, focus on certain ideas so we’re more open to seeing the important things. It’s also difficult to control the length of a vision. Sometimes I’ll see barely a flash of something, and other times it’s longer.”
    “That’s part of your training as well, isn’t it?” Gemma says.
    “Yes.” Rick groans. “We have to try and immerse ourselves in the visions so they last longer and we see more details, but it’s tough. Even the instructors can’t always get it right. The other day one of them Saw a fire-breathing dragon in a setting that looked like the foyer downstairs, but it was only about two seconds of a vision, so it was totally useless.”
    “That’s a bit scary,” Gemma says. “I didn’t think anything could get inside this Guild.”
    “Exactly, which means it probably wasn’t the foyer. So with a vision like that where there’s no useful information at all, you have to just move on. Hopefully if it’s something really important, someone else will See it in more detail.”
    “And then how do you record these visions?” I ask.
    “We have mirrors with special enchantments in them, like these ones here.” Rick stands and removes the nearest mirror from the wall. As he sits down with it, I see what I missed before: these mirrors don’t reflect anything. “Once I’ve had a vision,” he says, “I just need to recall it while using the right magic, and it will be transferred to the mirror so other people can see it. If it’s something a guardian needs to take care of, and if it has enough details to be useful, like place and time, then everything is written down. Then someone higher up, a Seer who’s already graduated, decides what level of guardian or guardian trainee the vision is sent to.”
    “Okay,” I say, nodding. “At least I have a better understanding now of how it all—Oh.” I stop talking and pull away from Rick as his body goes rigid, his head tilts back, and his eyes flutter back and forth behind his eyelids. Somewhat afraid, I look at Gemma. “A vision?” When she nods, I ask, “Does this happen often?”
    “Fairly often, I guess. It freaked me out a bit in the beginning, but I’m used to it now.”
    Rick recovers with a shake of his head. “Sorry about that,” he says as he lifts the mirror with both hands. He chants some foreign words while staring directly at it. He turns the mirror to face Gemma and me, and in its surface I see a woman with smudges of dirt on her face and strands of silver in her messy black hair. She laughs—and then she lunges forward, fury flashing in her silver eyes, her arm outstretched as if to grab us. Gemma and I pull back in fright, but the scene vanishes from the mirror. Then it begins