After Orlando took her out and started in with the last candidate — one Phoebe didn’t care to stick around for, not liking his looks or his all-too friendly attitude having just met Orlando — she finished her espresso in a one-shot gulp, and then made her way quickly out of the facility. Rushed past the security at the main doors, then out into the lobby. To the glass doors, she looked out into the traffic, to the light rain falling from a late-day clouded sky. Shafts of slanting sunlight filtered through and gave off an otherworldly atmosphere, as mist rose from the hot streets and multi-colored umbrellas dotted the sidewalks in a subdued pageant of motion and light.
There. The woman was huddled under an awning beside a sign for the bus. Probably just missed it, Phoebe thought, seeing it was ten after six and they were promptly on the hour at that stop.
She approached, wrapping herself in her windbreaker, not bothering with the hood. The rain was light and refreshing, and something about that last candidate, his eyes… Phoebe was just fine letting the rain wash her face clean.
“Victoria?”
The woman didn’t turn. Her eyes were wet, but more from tears, Phoebe suddenly realized.
“I understand now.” Victoria spoke without taking her eyes off some distant vantage point. “I see it. I see everything.”
Frowning, Phoebe stood just outside the shelter of the awning, getting progressively more soaked as she moved slowly into the woman’s path. “What do you see?”
“I know.”
Her eyes were near white. Lids trembling, her fingers came to her lips. “He can’t…he thinks it was a game, just shutting me out so he can take my place.”
“Orlando? Ma’am, my husband was in no way…”
“Not him, the other.”
“What?” Phoebe took a step back after initially thinking she should reach out to her, touch her shoulder, reassure her. But she knew that look. Victoria was either a great faker, or was seeing something.
Before she could take another instinctual step back, Victoria’s hand shot out and grasped Phoebe’s wrist. The eyes rolled back and met hers.
“Ask the right questions!”
Phoebe tried to pull away.
“Ask!”
“What questions?”
“Why did I see so clearly? Every card, every single goddamned card. I saw them all — and I’m never wrong!”
“But you were wrong,” Phoebe said. “I was watching and listening. Every single card, you were wrong. I even staggered your responses to see if possibly you were seeing the future draws, which believe me, has happened with some gifted that way, but no. Sometimes, hell, you even said images that weren’t in the deck.”
“Then ask yourself why!”
Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t have time for that. I just…”
“Wanted to see if I was ok?”
“Well…”
“Or did you sense something yourself? You know I didn’t fail.”
“But…”
Her eyes pleaded. “I didn’t. Someone else beat me, made me see the wrong things.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Ask!” She gripped Phoebe’s wrist now with both hands. “Because this is more than just me not making your little team.”
“Little? Have you been watching the news? Have you—”
Then it hit her. Maybe the espresso, which had a habit of allowing her to multi-task and focus on many things at once, kicked in, but she finally did ask the question. Deep down inside, way down into her center, her focus.
Asked.
And answered.
The card lifts…and Victoria’s vision sweeps around like a hawk on a gentle circular flight pattern, and sees it perfectly. “A goat,” she says, and that’s the visual on the card.
Only, it flickers and as her sight goes round, it returns to the wavy lines.
Again she swoops around for a look at the next card, which one moment is a circle, the next a triangle.
Victoria answers right…which is wrong.
WHY?
Comes Phoebe’s voice, and the vision shifts.
Out in the waiting room. The last candidate, head down, muttering to himself so quiet, almost inaudible. “Goat…triangle…sphere…”
And the words, their echoes form psychic vibrations visible in this state, fluttering in the air out towards the room, towards Victoria.
A flash and she’s back.
“Oh my god…”
“You see?” Victoria asked. “I didn’t, not until now, until I got out and questioned it all. I saw those cards, saw them so clear, with no doubt in my mind. The same as I’ve seen hundreds of true visions in my life, from back on the bayou when I first glimpsed a gator under the boat a mile away… the same instant it reared up and took off my father’s arm, dragged him under and ate the rest at its leisure.”
Phoebe swallowed hard, and again tried to pull away.
“But that ain’t all. Ask more.”
“What else is there?” Phoebe tried to sound calm but supportive. “If this is real, then he’s a threat, and I’ve got to get back there.”
“Not yet. You’ve got to see the rest. What I just saw.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to ask. I don’t understand, can’t process all this yet.”
Victoria squeezed again and prevented Phoebe from slipping away.
“It concerns…your twins.”
Phoebe froze. The rain belted down on her now, and she couldn’t be certain she heard that right. Forget about how this person knew she had children, but the twins?
And then it struck again, like an invisible tsunami to her cerebral cortex.
A city in flames, wreckage of skyscrapers sliding apart. The sky crimson with devilish fingers of smoke ascending through great crevasses in the pavement. Flashes of mobs, armies fighting without weapons, facing off and flaying each other’s skin and muscle with but a look. Images of robed men looking on from ice-capped peaks as the world shudders. One of them raises a child high — an infant — as another, wearing a black robe comes forth holding the baby’s twin.
And a knife, already scarlet and dripping.
Electricity sparkles across the sky, shooting from all directions, like a spider-web net, electrifying the atmosphere and conducting…spreading…
Absolute devastation throughout the world.
The black-hooded one pauses as his eyes reflect dancing lightning.
Familiar eyes, cold and calculating, yet tinged with a sense of celebration as if he has just won the ultimate game.
“Boris!”
Phoebe bursts back to the present.
“Oh my god!”
“You see, you see?” Victoria at last let her go.
And Phoebe grabbed her in turn. “We have to get back there, have to warn Orlando, have to…”
She stopped short, staring at Victoria. “No, wait, we can’t…Oh god I don’t know what to do. If that’s a real future, what if it’s a warning? If…if by going back there he’ll sense us and start all this madness?”
Victoria looked at her with helpless eyes, and Phoebe had a moment of sadness for her. Up until today she was likely just hoping for a new job, a place to use talents that had so far only brought her pain and misery, and now she was about to be thrust into some version of Hell, and might have a bigger role to play than she ever imagined.
“We can’t go back.”
“Why not?”
“Not yet,” Phoebe said. “Shit, he may already be scrying us, but hopefully not. Either way, it’s too dangerous. Can’t do it, not without a Shield.”