Page 110 of The Shadowed Oracle
The memory of Francesca wasn’t concluded for years. Ingrid remembered that now. She remembered it all. When Ingrid had turned fifteen, the same age Francesca was when she was left to fend for herself in the real world, she’d gone looking for her. After all the dismissive lies from the sisters, all the muted, shameful avoidance from her supervisors, she went looking for answers in the only place she knew where to look. The library. The index of newspaper clippings. Her only resource.
Body of teen found in Muir Woods identified. Francesca Ortiz, 16.
Ingrid could see the headline so clearly. Feel how devastated and depleted she was, and had been, slouching in that library chair. All those years she’d wondered about her friend, all the fantasies she’d had about meeting her one day on the outside, when the two of them were grown up, living the lives they chose. It was all for nothing.
Six months after Francesca had taken the blame for Ingrid, she was dead. Murdered.
And it was all her fault.
No.
I can’t…
I don’t want this…
I can’t take this back…
Please!
Ingrid snapped back into her body.
She blinked rapidly, adjusting to the bright color seeping into her wet and reddened eyes before looking to Dean.
Somehow, in the hour it felt like she’d been gone, he hadn’t even noticed she’d been absent. He’d missed all the obvious signs of peril she was exhibiting, his hand still wringing the back of his neck, as if time had stopped. The moment she was whisked away into her vision, all else had seemingly halted. The sun itself paused mid-air, waiting for the magic Ingrid rode in on to bring her back to the present.
“I’ve been distant,” he said bluntly, suddenly. “I want to apologize for that, too.”
She lifted her hand in protest, to slow him down, to try and tell him what had just happened to her, but all she could manage was a few fingers weakly raised toward him.
“I didn’t want to be away from you. Really. I wanted to be by your side.” His voice was eerily quiet. “I just… I had to stay away. If I got caught, you couldn’t know about what I was doing. I had to keep all of you out of it. Not just you.”
His eyes finally shifted to her, like he was begging for her forgiveness. She had to have missed something. The splitting headache was dissipating, but she hardly felt realigned in her own body. Part of her wondered if she was still inside a vision. That the magic was somehow showing her glimpses of alternate realities. Or snippets of the future.
“What do you mean?” she managed. “I don’t?—"
“I had to.” He cut her off, speaking fast. “I had to lie. Had to keep you out of it.” His lips quivered, struggling to say whatcame next. “I found the portal. I went deep into the castle, late, that first night. And I found it.”
“But the guards?” Ingrid didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until Dean answered.
“I was cloaked. Thought if there was ever a time to use the spectis weed, it was then. To see if I could go back without having to put all of you through this.” He made a small gesture to the ship, to the crew on the other side. “I drugged the guards, and I went through the portal. But what I saw, it wasn’t home. Not anymore. Not how we remember it. What I saw…”
The sheer terror on his face made Ingrid wish that the visions hadn’t stopped at all. That this wasn’t real, only a mutation of the haunted memories she’d just reawakened.
“Earth is a shell of itself,” Dean said. “I thought the portal had some kind of security spell. That maybe Nestor or Ballius had hexed it. Made it so any unauthorized Viator were sent to a place where nothing could survive. But I was wrong. There was no spell, no trick. I was somewhere in South America, whatever country it used to be. Whatever it was before Makkar’s army turned it to ash.” He sucked in a long breath. “I walked for two hours until I found civilization. Found a phone, but none of the emergency lines Karis set up were working. I couldn’t get through to anyone from our side. Hopefully, they’ve gone underground. Realistically, they’ve been torn to shreds.”
Ingrid blurted, “Home? San Bruno? You mean our home?”
Franky.
Her thoughts instantly went to her friend. She hadn’t told him about the threat, hadn’t warned him about Makkar’s army of invisible Wranes and well-disguised world-walkers. She didn’t know how. Didn’t spend the time he deserved to come up with a story, anything to get him into hiding.
“Franky is okay,” Dean said hurriedly. The words acted like a vacuum, cleaning away all the horrid questions lingering onIngrid’s lips. “I was able to call him. The States are intact. Not nearly as bad as…” Dean stopped himself, not wanting to linger on the image. “The conversation was brief, and I couldn’t say much, but he sounded okay. Alarmed, but okay.”
It wouldn’t do. She needed more. A fuller picture. “What do you mean,okay? Where is he? How the hell did you contact him?"
“He was at a safe house. There aren’t many in the area, so it was easy. Military police are patrolling the streets for survivors in almost every major city and its surroundings. San Francisco. Los Angeles. Chicago.”
“But before,” Ingrid asked. “Before that. What happened?”
