Page 3 of The Rebel Seer

If there’s no hope, then I don’t care what happens. I can take this chance or stay here all of my days. Waste away until I don’t even remember who I used to be, where I came from. “You are welcome, Harry Wharton.”

There’s the slightest feel of tension in my chest and then the world goes hazy and I’m not sure what’s happening. Darkness fills my eyes and I fall back. The last sight I see is the water ghost moving in, looming above me like she’s trying to find a way in, too.

When I wake, I’m lying on my bed with the vaguest recollection of a visitation. But I can’t quite remember from who.

“Shy? Are you there? It’s Harry.”

I force myself to sit up and put a hand on my chest. It’s warm but not in an unpleasant way. I feel…stronger. Like some place that was empty is now filled.

Harry. Harry Wharton. He’s going to help me. I can hear Harry in my head. His lyrical accent is warm and friendly, and suddenly I’m not so alone. “You made it.”

I can feel the man smile. “I did, darlin’. And now we’re going to get you out of here. I’ll do everything I can.”

I feel far more centered than before, like whatever we did dispelled the effects of the drugs. I can think again. And be sarcastic. “I wish you could get rid of the Drowning Woman.”

“I don’t think she’s here,” Harry says. “I saw something odd before, but it’s gone now.”

I turn and he’s right. For the first time in over a year, she’s not here.

I breathe a sigh of relief and start to listen to my new mentor.

Chapter One

Frelsi, the rebel encampment, Iceland

Six years later

Shy

I remember when I saw my first ghost. I call her the Drowning Woman. It was one year after my entire family was murdered by Myrddin’s witches. I’m fairly certain he didn’t do the deed himself. He was busy killing vampires at the time. A group of psychics would be easy to kill as long as he found a way to dampen their powers of prophecy. It was my auntie who saw into the future. It’s funny the things you remember years later. She’d been sick for weeks. It’s how I know the whole idea that Myrddin simply took advantage of the mistakes the queen and king made is false. He might have not planned for the king to fall into his trapped painting, but he intended to take over. Why else would he have cursed the only woman in the world who might have been able to see his plans?

Up until that moment, I had not a hint of power. My cousins manifested early. So did my sister. I worried I was going to be the only Davis without power.

And then I was simply the only Davis.

I should have died with them. We lived in this rambling old house in the woods. We were close enough that we could get to Dallas within an hour, but far enough out that it felt like the country. I miss the house with its sounds and smells and rich laughter coming from every room. When I close my eyes, I’m there, surrounded by obnoxious siblings and cousins. By wise aunts and uncles, and my parents who loved me. I can still smell my mother’s cooking. She used to say her caramel cake recipe came from a famous and very dead pastry chef she met in her travels.

The Davis family was known throughout the supernatural world for our mental and spiritual gifts. My father could move heavy objects with nothing more than a thought. I had uncles who could astral project across the planet. They worked for some scary men from time to time. One aunt could hear sounds from other planes of existence. She described it as a radio playing in her head. I always thought that would be weird, but she enjoyed it since apparently the people who lived in our house on the other plane were extremely dramatic.

My mother was a medium. She could see and speak to the dead. It’s not like what you see on television. At least not some programs. She didn’t need a séance or to hold something the dearly departed once owned. That’s called psychometry, and you do not want it. My cousin thought she was picking up a hunting knife once and spent two hours screaming because it belonged to a serial killer.

“You’ll find your power, Shy,” my mother would always say.

She didn’t tell me my power would lead me to a mental institution.

She certainly didn’t tell me the first ghost I would ever see would be the most terrifying vision, nor that she would still be hanging around so many years later.

“She’s back.” Josie Albertson stands to my left, her hands on her hips as she watches the Drowning Woman from a distance. “I wonder what she wants. You ever talk to her? Anytime I try to get close, she disappears.”

I can see her out of the corner of my eye even as I stand in the garden of the home I share with Lily Tucker and Hannah Jenkins. I love a good garden, and no one takes a garden quite as seriously as a witch. I stand among the herbs and flowers and vegetables they’ve spent half a year growing, and in the background, I see ghosts.

I turn to Josie, who is a fairly recent addition to the dead of Frelsi. Not that there are many. We’re a community of supernatural creatures and located in an isolated part of the world. Josie showed up a few months before, having fallen into a crevice while attempting to climb the mountain we live in. She presents as most ghosts do, with some form of how she died printed on her body. In her case, her left side is always stained with blood, and her left arm bends at an odd angle. She’s got a really nasty knot on her head. Other than that, she could be any sarcastic tourist who happened to die, find herself in a supernatural world, and freak out.

When I first saw her, I calmed her down, asked her the salient questions. There are a few when dealing with the dead. Do you see a light being the most important. Josie was adamant. Yes, it was there, but she wasn’t going through. I explained about how every soul has a limited amount of time to complete the whole death journey before things go sideways. She was cool with it, and we’ve been hanging ever since.

“No,” I admit and kneel down to start harvesting the mugwort Lily told me is needed for the spell of protection she intends to work before we leave this place. “She’s the oddest spirit I’ve ever seen, and when she gets close, it’s hard to look at her. I can’t see her face through the water. I know she’s not the scariest-looking being I’ve ever come up against, but I fear her more than all the rest of you combined.”

Josie huffs. “I don’t know. That dead thing freaks me out.” Her head tilts as she watches the Drowning Woman, whose limbs move in and out, every finger dripping with blood.

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