Page 161 of The Shadowed Oracle
To the very last seconds of Karis’s long, storied life.
The blade drove down into the Oracle’s back.
“Forgive me,” Karis said, and fell to his knees.
Ingrid felt the air being siphoned from her. She lurched, stumbled, her feet swept from under her as she was pulled back with a force so charged that her eyesight failed her.
Her ears rang with the hum of an earthquake, the darkness somehow grew blacker, and through the void she went. Falling, tumbling, spinning until she was brought to a halt that turned her stomach, and she was again floating in a familiar place.
The street outside her old home. The building she’d return to night after night, stiff and smelling of alcohol from work, to hide away and suffer in solitude.
She looked up to the sixth floor, to her apartment, her cold and lonely isolation. The light was on, and a flicker of a shadow danced on the barren wall. It was her, but not her. She was again struck by just how quickly her world had become two worlds. How swiftly her life had changed, leaving this old one unrecognizable.
Though the scene’s stimulus ended there. There was nothing but an empty road and deafening silence all around her. She rounded, panning the landscape for any onlookers, but only found one singular car parked on the street. It was a plain thing,off-white and boxy, so inconspicuous it reeked of mischief the longer you looked at it.
Ingrid moved closer. The tint made it impossible to see a face, but as she approached the driver’s side, she noticed the window was slightly cracked. She moved closer, lowered her head to peek inside, feeling the threads of her magic connecting moments.
Her power brought her to that forest first, so when she found the same hooded male slouched over a lit-up screen from an old phone, she would know. This was her tormentor. Her dark shadow, at the very moment he’d sent her that first message.
The one that had started this all, and Karis’s killer—they were one and the same.
She stared intensely at the cloaked man, silently luring him to raise his chin and show himself, to look up at the window, up to her—or rather, the her from the past. It was only a matter of time, she thought. A stalker, after all, wasn’t much of a stalker if he didn’t watch his prey.
So she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
But the stranger just sat there, hunched in the black leather seat. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he was asleep. Bored, even. The only move he made was to grip the knife, the same knife he’d used to kill Karis. It was more visible now, and Ingrid could read the marking on it clearly: G.C.
Initials. A clue to his identity. If the blade wasn’t stolen, this might’ve been the only piece she needed to find him, to track him down and make him pay for what he’d done.
She glared at the knife, the carved letters, then back to the shadowed visage, waiting for him to show himself.
But the vision had other plans.
Ingrid bent nearly in half as her power pulled her from behind at the waist, whisking her off again.
The wait wasn’t long. The void appeared and disappeared in seconds, and she found herself again in front of a familiar building on Earth, standing directly next to that same car. It was as if she’d been teleported alongside it, alongside her hooded hunter. Only the surroundings had changed.
The lights of The Boneyard glistened in the cloudless night. Patrons packed the patio and spilled out into the waiting area outside the entrance, chatting and smoking before their table was ready. Ingrid cut through the crowd with her eyes, but couldn’t find Franky or herself.
She looked back at the car. The window was no longer cracked. All she could see was a rough outline of the male and a light from the dashboard. Ingrid moved in as closely as the vision would allow. The light, however, was the only thing she could make out. It was so big and bright that it couldn’t have been the radio or the information system screen.
It was a computer, mounted over the passenger airbag. The light from it flickered, fading in and out. The magic allowed her to lean in, but the hold it had on her previously caused Ingrid to anticipate more resistance. She flung herself at it, slamming against a wall of unseen energy where the car window should’ve been.
She threw her hands to her face like she was about to sneeze, rubbing at the strange sensation lingering on her nose.
Really?She cast the question into the sky.I can traverse time, but not car windows?
What good were these visions if she couldn’t go where she pleased? See what she needed to see?
Show me his face!she begged.Then let me go back! Send me back to Dean!
He was waiting for her, no doubt worried. The visions only registered as a second or two in the perspective of those around her, but this time, before this vision took hold, she had heard Dean’s plea. Heard him calling her name in a panic.
Send me back!she asked again.
