Storm of Visions (20 page)

“You can’t blame her for wanting that.”

“Of course I can,” Jacqueline said lightly. Picking up her glass, she looked, swirled, and sniffed the wine. “This has a beautiful strawberry color. The nose is cherry, but more floral than fruit.”

The two smiled at each other, clicked the glasses, and sipped together.

“Ahhh.” Irving half closed his eyes in appreciation. “Burgundy-esque with cherry notes.”

“And what a finish! If this is representative of your wines, I can’t see that there’s anything wrong with your storage.”

“A little past its prime, though.” He poured his glass full, held out the bottle for her.

She let him fill her glass. “It
is
a ’97 pinot. It would have been at its peak two or three years ago.”

He applied his fork to his salad. “Help yourself to the antipasto plate.”

While she sampled the prosciutto, the cantaloupe, the black peppercorn cheese, the roasted vegetables, he polished off the pasta, the salad, and half the bread. Both agreed the pinot went down easily. The Chateauneuf-du-Pape was wonderful, but Jacqueline said it was too expensive, and they had a spirited discussion about value versus cost. The zinfandel . . .

She frowned. “The zinfandel smells a little smoky, and not in a good way.”

He sniffed the wine. “I don’t get that at all.”

She lifted her nose out of her glass and sniffed the air. “It’s in the room. It smells like something electrical shorting out. I hope there’s no problem with your wiring.” A fire was the last thing they needed.

“I can’t smell smoke. And it’s certainly not the wine.” He tasted it. “This is excellent, deserving of all its praises.”

Jacqueline sniffed again. Irving was right. The smoky scent had vanished.

Jacqueline took a cracker to clear her palate, tried the zin, and agreed with Irving’s assessment. In her opinion, this was the best of the three. And by the time she had finished three glasses of wine, half of Irving’s tiramisu and the ruby port he insisted she try, she was mellow enough to say, “Irving. There’s nothing wrong with your wine or your wine storage. So why did you ask me up here?”

“I never can fool you, can I?” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes suddenly sharp.

With a shock, she realized the wine that had mellowed her had not affected him in the least.

He went right after his goal. “It’s time to release your fears and become the seer you were meant to be.”

She slapped her palm to the table. “I knew it! I knew we were having this pleasant little stroll down memory lane for a reason!”

“Do you get a shock when you hit your hand like that? Can you feel that tattoo speaking to you?” He watched her, his dark eyes alive with a probing curiosity.

“No. I can’t feel it speaking to me.” Standing, she stalked over to the curio cabinet and stared blindly at the contents. Then she realized what she was looking at, and asked, “What are you doing with a collection of shrunken heads?”

“I was given them on my trip to New Guinea.”

She looked around the bedroom again. He owned texts and treasures that belonged in museums—and why? “When I came in, I asked where you got all this stuff. You never answered me.”

“Some are mine, collected while on my travels. Some my Chosen Ones brought me as souvenirs. Some I was lucky enough to borrow from the Gypsy Travel Agency and thus save from the blast.”

“Because . . . ?” She trolled the shelves, finding more and more precious manuscripts, relics, and oddities.

“I’ve been doing research on speechless communication. It’s a marvel that occurs so rarely among the gifted that some say it doesn’t exist.”

She stopped and stared at a display of uncut crystals. Gems? “Does this have to do with the lady whose nose had been split down the middle?”

“I don’t know. Does it?”

She swung around in a fury. “That is really irritating. If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t ask it.”

“I don’t have answers, either, and I need them.” Irving was suddenly intense, the formidable leader who had guided the Gypsy Travel Agency through disaster to stability. “I need to know what happened yesterday, and how. Until this team chooses a leader, I can direct you, but I need a focus, and you are the only one who can provide it. Find the place where you should be and
see
.”

“Sure. It’s easy.
Go to the attic, Jacqueline. Don’t worry about what’s up there
.”

“The attic?” It was almost funny to see Irving go on alert, like an English pointer at a bird.

“When I was little, I was afraid of your attic. I thought there was something up there that would get me.” He still had that wide-eyed, I’m-on-the-scent expression, and she sighed. “Really, Irving. It was a kid thing.”

“All seers have a place where they can best call their visions in. Where they can control them. Where all is clear. Zusane needed to be near the earth. She told me when she had her first vision, she was locked in the cellar.”

“Locked in the cellar? Who would have locked her in the cellar?” Jacqueline caught a whiff of smoke again. She looked around, but saw nothing. “Are your smoke alarms working?”

“McKenna replaced the batteries last month. Stop trying to change the subject.” Irving pointed one finger at the ceiling. “Perhaps you need to be close to the sky. To go
up
.
Up
to my attic.” Then in a totally prosaic tone of voice, he said, “If it doesn’t work, what are you out?”

“Nothing. I guess.” But that attic still creeped her out, and the smell of smoke was getting stronger. “Why don’t you bug Tyler? He’s a psychic, too.”

“I intend to. But you . . . you are destined to be the greatest psychic we’ve ever had.”

“What if I just want to be an oenophile?”

“You can be that, too. You can be whatever you want. Those roles are like clothes you don and discard. But a seer is who you are in your soul.” Using both his large hands to pluck the crystal ball off its stand, he held it up for inspection. The globe glowed in the sunlight, colors moving, melding, sliding over its smooth surface and vanishing into thin air.

Jacqueline couldn’t take her gaze off it.

“I am not one of the Chosen Ones. But my mother’s great-great-grandmother was an African slave imported into the Bahamas to work the cane, and she knew her voodoo. My father’s grandmother was Romany. She made her living with this”—Irving lifted the ball high—“traveling from town to town, enticing the women into her tent to tell their fortunes. The globe is nothing special, something she tossed into a trunk when she was traveling, and most of what she said was hokum, of course. But sometimes, I don’t know why or how, she did see the future. Maybe she saw it in this globe. Maybe she simply had a gift. Take it. See what you can do with it. Consider it a present.”

“With strings attached.” Going to him, she knelt at his feet and looked up into his dark eyes. “Why should I do this thing?”

Taking her wrists, he stripped off her gloves. He placed the globe between her palms, and put his hands over hers. “Jacqueline, if you don’t help us, we are destined to fall, and all the children like you, the children who are abandoned and without hope, will go straight to the devil. Please. We need you. Will you help us?” He looked so fragile, so ancient, so appealing. . . .

Then, from the depths of his soul, a painful cry of anguish. “Most of those people who died yesterday were young enough to be my children or my grandchildren or my great-grandchildren.” He faltered. Tears welled in his eyes, and he fumbled for his handkerchief. “I should have died first.
I should have died first
.” Putting his hand to his face, he sobbed out loud.

It was a horrible, gut-wrenching sound, torn from a man deceptively strong, a man who never broke down, a man now tortured and in pain.

Jumping to her feet, Jacqueline placed the globe on its stand. Sitting on the arm of his chair, she put her arm around his shoulders, trying to impart comfort where none could be found. “I never realized that you thought that way,” she whispered.

He blew his nose. He lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot, tears still wet the creases in his cheeks, and he looked suddenly as old as his age. “You’re young, but . . . can you understand? I have been preparing myself to pass into the next world, hoping that I’ve lived a good, productive life, that I did my best, that I was leaving a legacy. Instead, I’ve lost everything I’ve built for the last sixty years.”

“The Gypsy Travel Agency.”

“No. Not the institution. That never mattered. I built that so the people, the Chosen Ones, those talented, gifted few, could fulfill their destinies and do good. I took a personal interest in each one of them. I was so proud of them.” He thumped his chest, his voice grew gruff, and again he fought for composure. “Now they’re gone. Jesse and Monica and Olivia. Jack, Kevin and Natalie. Fred, Mildred, Erin, Carol, Owen. So many gone; their names are written on my heart. They were my children, and no father should ever have to see his children die.”

Damn him. He meant it. She knew he did. He had always lived and breathed the Gypsy Travel Agency and its secret mission. He knew every employee, every travel guide, every one of the Chosen Ones. He sent e-mails for each birthday, he praised each achievement and he congratulated each one on each marriage and offspring. And now, with their deaths, the old man’s hopes and dreams were shattered.

“All right.” Jacqueline, heir to the same gift and sign as the world’s first seer, picked up the crystal ball. “I’ll do it.” She walked to the door, opened it, hesitated, and turned back.

Irving watched her with such hope on his face and tears in his eyes.

She said, “But damned if I ever come up to share wine with you again, Irving Shea.”

C
rystal ball in hand, Jacqueline stepped into the attic. She’d played here when she was a kid. Large, bright, and empty, it hadn’t changed.

The walls and floor were painted white. Dust motes floated along on the sun rays pouring through the big windows on the west side and covered everything in a fine layer. A door on the far wall led to another room like this one, and a storage closet filled the corner.

She’d run through this room, pulling a toy dog on a leash. She’d played with her dolls, and read her books.

Then one day, when she was eight, she’d stopped coming. She didn’t remember why. She only remembered being afraid.

Now she wasn’t afraid. She was a little tipsy. She was a lot disgruntled. The smell of smoke tainted the air, and that stupid crystal ball was not only heavy; it was so slick, she tucked it under one arm to keep from dropping it.

Wandering through the big room to the cupboard, she opened it. Old coats hung on hangers, and old drapes were folded on the shelves. She went to the door and tried the knob, and looked inside. The room beyond matched this one—the same windows, the same sunlight, the same cupboard—but the shadows seemed deeper. She couldn’t see a source of the smoke, though, so she shut the door and meandered into a square of sunshine on the floor.

She held the crystal ball in the light and watched the colors, blue, gold, green, slide across the shiny surface.

Zusane effortlessly slipped in and out of her visions, but mostly Jacqueline felt silly trying. How did a person bring on a vision? Chant? Do yoga breathing? Perform a rain dance?

The wine had relaxed her. That would probably help. . . .

This wasn’t going to work, and worse, the smell of smoke was getting stronger. She should go back downstairs and tell McKenna that they had a wiring problem or something up here. It could cause a real problem if a fire started, and they didn’t need any more problems. The explosion was enough. . . .

Man, this was boring.

The smoke made Jacqueline’s eyes feel funny, and she was briefly alarmed.

Then the colors disappeared from the surface of the crystal ball. Deep in its center, a flame glowed red, followed by a blast of yellow. The globe slid out of her hand. In slow motion, it twirled in the air and landed on the floor with such a heavy thud shards of wood blew into the air—and froze in motion.

The world became sepia-toned, and she realized . . .

This was it. A vision. Irving was right. She might not want to, but she had the ability.
This was a vision.

Then someone screamed in her ear, high and panicked and pure terror. The shriek jerked Jacqueline back to the real world, but when she looked . . . she wasn’t in the attic.

She stood in the aisle of an airplane, a private jet with a dozen luxurious seats set around tables and a flickering fifty-inch television dominating one wall. A young woman stood in front of it in a black silk YSL gown, arms at her side, fists clenched. She was the one screaming. And screaming. And screaming.

Jacqueline recognized this plane. She’d been on it before, with Caleb on the way from California to New York City.