Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Eighteen

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter EIGHTEEN

WHISPERS OF KINGS

A loud and irritable buzzing sound awoke Leocardo as his phone rang in his pocket. It took him a moment to register what it was so he missed the call before he could answer it. He pulled it out and when he saw that it was Ana, he placed the phone down and rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms. With his head resting in his hands, he felt a wave of tiredness wash over him and he rested there half-conscious. He did not want to wake up to see his sister in a coma.

He tried to recall his dream. There had been some kind of tower and he knew Odette was at the top. He climbed the never ending spiral staircase. The air thinned as he went higher and he gasped for breath. He stumbled as he tried to climb further, but felt a powerful drowsiness that overtook him. It had been the same feeling as when he had first arrived in Nevaeh, but this time he knew it was Edaion that had sedated him. He struggled against the drowsiness; he hated it so much. He detested the feeling of being drugged. As he felt his eyelids weigh down over his eyes, he tried to teleport to the top, to where Odette waited for him to return. “Don’t forget me,” he begged, trying to hurry. His vision blurred.

Leocardo snapped himself awake and wiped his mouth. The dream had unnerved him, would Edaion separate him and Odette? He rose to his feet, looked over to his sleeping sister, and his heart faltered. He left the room. In his pockets he still had the premonitions he had taken from Ana. The buildings meant something. There was purpose to the damaged premonition. Ana preferred to look at the faces, the ghosts behind them, but he knew Odette was not a medium, she was a seer.

Leocardo went to Daisy’s home. He was not sure if she would accept him again. The last time he had been there he had left rather abruptly. He hoped she did not think he did not appreciate the information she had provided. His knuckles rapped on the door.

Daisy answered and pursed her lips when she saw who it was. “Hello, again.”

“Hi, I’m sorry about how I left last time but…what you told me…it really meant a lot to me,” he insisted. “I can’t tell you why it upset me either.”

“That’s alright, boy,” she patronized. She began to close the door.

“Wait,” he urged, reaching out to stop the door from closing. Her eyes widened, afraid. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to know if you can interpret this drawing. I need help.”

“Yes, yes you do.”

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Seventeen

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter SEVENTEEN

CONSTRICTING WEB

The emptiness of the apartment threatened to consume him. It was painful to pass Odette’s room or glance at it. The scents of her perfumes had faded, and he even missed her angry slamming of cupboards and doors. Somehow he managed to sleep for a handful of hours before waking up early and going to the pool again, unsure of what else he could do to clear his mind. On the way, he teleported, increasing the distance with each jump. He didn’t want to tell people about his gift until he had good control over it.

When Leocardo arrived at work, he saw Nate there as well and received a brief but firm brotherly embrace from him.

“Thanks Leo, I owe you one.” Nate’s face broke into a smile.

“Peter hired you, not me.”

“I owe you one. I’ll buy you a round, you choose!” Nate insisted.

Nate held Leocardo’s gaze for a moment, his eyes watering before marching off to work. Leocardo could see that he had done more than provide a job for Nate.

Work proved to be more of a blessing than a burden. There was a monotonous rhythm which he found familiar, easy and rewarding. It kept him from dwelling on the fact that there had been no calls from the hospital. Since Nate had been called back to work again, there was a new, uplifting mood at the bar. Whispers emerged between the co-workers, excluding Leocardo.

“Are you going to do anything?” Elizma asked Nate in soft tones, but Leocardo heard it. He hoped they were not trying to hide things from him.

“I don’t know…with Odette’s situation it’s really hard. I just got my job back. Usually Ana pushes me to do something, but she’s been somewhere else lately.” Nate’s voice grew too soft and Leocardo assumed Nate made a comment about him. “I don’t blame them, but yeah, I think I’ll call off the small party at the bar. It’s not the time for a party.”

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Sixteen

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter SIXTEEN

SILENT BEAUTY

Next thing he knew he could feel someone softly breathing, they were close to his face. His eyes opened and he saw Ana dozing. A thin, streak of drool from her parted pink lips had dripped onto the pillow. He smiled and reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear before placing his hand back under his head. His back ached from sleeping on the hard floor, but he didn’t care. Her face scrunched up and slowly, her eyelashes fluttered open.

Ana’s shocked eyes said it all. “You have to go,” she whispered, scrambling to her feet.

He understood her reaction and tried not to take her demands personally. He clambered to his feet, nodding as he went.

“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, and went to collect the papers strewn over the ground.

Ana pushed him over to the glass paneled windows which Leocardo had thought were only walls. Ana clicked something and the window opened wide enough to let him out. The air was cold, and snow was piled on the ground. Ana gave him instructions on how to escape without being caught. He could guess how serious the consequences would be for her if he was caught sneaking out. If any of her family members had found them only the most corrupt ideas would influence their thoughts, and he was sure he would not be allowed over anymore, despite his innocent intentions.

She pushed him out to the garden and he turned around, acting on impulse, and rested his hand on her lower back. He stared at her and leaned in, brushing his nose against hers. He loved her floral scent and her soft skin. After a few moments of silence, she whispered, “You have to go.”

There was a soft sound of protest from his lips as he continued one second longer. He pulled away and whispered, “I’ll see you soon.”

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Fifteen

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter FIFTEEN

TORN BY TURMOIL

Leocardo ran into the hospital with barely any breath in his lungs. He saw Ana pacing back and forth with a blanket wrapped around her.

“Where is she?” he managed to gasp as he hurried toward her. Ana looked pale, but she still glowed in Leocardo’s eyes. She had found Odette.

“She is in isolation and unconscious. No one is allowed to see her until they know what is wrong.”

“What about Cielo? Was she with her?”

“Nate has Cielo. Give me your keys.” Ana offered to get some things from the apartment for Odette. “You can stay here in case she wakes up before I get back.”

Leocardo fumbled with his keys in his pocket, disorientated. The keys shimmered as he placed them in her hand. He took her hand in his, not yet ready to let her go. “But she’s alive, she’s okay?” he asked, trying to make sure that Odette was within one of these sterile white rooms, that she was in the hands of expert doctors.

“She is alive…I’ll be back.”

He stared at her with his eyes wide, panicked with fear. “Don’t take long,” he whispered as he brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. Ana was gone from sight within seconds and Leocardo had just enough energy to reach the chairs and slump into one, nearly falling unconscious.

He drifted in and out of consciousness as exhaustion and a need for sleep joined forces within his system. The adrenaline receded, and his eyelids struggled to stay open. To try and keep himself awake, his eyes flickered from the pristine white floor to his foot, and then to the people around him, doing anything he could to forget the gut wrenching experience he had just been put through, the endless streets, the constant stop and start motions, the wet cheeks and fractured speech.

Leocardo’s eyes flickered open and he saw Ana before him. “Hey…how long have you been there?”

“I just got back. Leo…I need to talk to you.” His exhausted brain had trouble paying attention to her words as she launched into dialogue without letting him fully wake up first.

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Fourteen

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter FOURTEEN

LOST AROMA

The library was not a good place to find out about the royal family’s dirty history. Everything he found had shed the Dawsons’ lineage in good light, of happy childhoods and honest rulings. The only corruption he could find was about 1902 in a book about Edaion Council history. Rather than wasting time on the royals he decided to investigate more about the word ‘seer’ and the woman who had been murdered.

Once again every book he grabbed that was remotely what he was looking for had history painted in happy golds and pure silvers. The search for the word took him to an interesting find; there was a legend about seers in Edaion. The legend involved some kind of cat and mouse game between the seers and an unknown other, but it became all so fantastical, even for Edaion standards, that Leocardo lost interest.

If Theodore had investigated the word seer it would have been for the crude meaning of the word, an individual with the gift of foresight. Maybe he was not looking at seer at all, it could have been the word below that Leocardo had not memorized.

Leocardo rose in a state of irritation, and marched toward the help desk. Before leaving he thought he would ask the only living thing amongst the dead pages of history, apart from himself, in the room. The man at the desk greeted him. His acne appeared to have multiplied since their last encounter.

Leocardo hesitated. “There are so many history books here… This might be a stupid question but do you know anything about the woman who was murdered in 1902? She was involved in the royal family versus council fiasco.”

The young man scratched his chin, irritating the red raw pimples. “I don’t, but my sister loves Edaionien history. She would probably know. She comes back from her work break in ten minutes. Do you mind waiting?”

“Not at all,” Leocardo replied, enthused. Unable to sit still, he paced the corridors, running his fingers along the books or shuffling them to one side. After ten minutes Leocardo darted back to the help desk to find a woman in her early thirties with a badge on her sweater.

Leocardo rested his arms on the desk. “Hello, I’m Leocardo. Your brother told me you knew a lot about Edaionien history.”

“My name is Kate,” she smiled warmly, a pair of dimples emerged. “I do, what would you like to know?”

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Thirteen

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter THIRTEEN

NIBBLING UNCERTAINTY

‘Edaion, 1902’. He typed it into the library computer search engine. His finger rhythmically tapped the mouse as he waited on the slow connection. The internet provided him few answers. Edaion had little published online and he had the nagging feeling most of their history had been inked into books.

Leocardo looked behind his shoulder to find a solid wall. He could not help but feel that people were watching him, or knew what he had done at the Dawson manor. He had never been a criminal, and although his actions were petty, he felt like a serial criminal on the run. How would he face Ana? What if she accepted his date proposal he had put onto her calendar? He should have waited until after he broke into her brother’s office to think about returning back to the crime scene.

His head slumped into his hands. What if the entire Dawson family found out? There were probably cameras in Theodore’s office and he was the idiot who walked right into it. He glanced up from his hands and saw that the search engine had provided him with little results. ‘1902, Edaion’ was not very descriptive at all.

He decided to take a different approach and tried the library database. He found that there was a history book that described events that occurred in 1902. ‘Timeline of the Edaion Council’. He paced the hallways until he found the right section and then fingered through the volumes until he found it. It was thinner than what he had imagined. His eager fingers clamped shut around it.

Leocardo opened it immediately and flicked through until he found the chapter he wanted, ‘The Early 1900’s’. It told him nothing, it generalized history so much that even history professors would’ve yawned. He flicked to the index and found that 1902 was in a special section titled ‘Scandals’.

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Twelve

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter TWELVE

GUILTY ITCH

Ana looked at him silently. The concerned look Ana gave him did nothing to comfort him. Suddenly, he realized why she wore it.

“Not even your family can leave?” His voice faltered as the truth hit him.

Ana’s words soothed him as she re-enforced the need to not be afraid. “Most people only have one gift, I have two. They are both weaker than someone with only one, but it is unique. I am sure that as soon as we figure out what Odette’s gift is, that it can be managed, just like any other gift, it’s just…stronger, has a longer reach than most people.”

Leocardo was still enraged with helplessness and the desire to protect his sister. How could he have been brought here against his will? If only he could lash out against something or someone but he wasn’t angry at anyone, it was this island, it was this situation. A wave of calm swept over him. Listening to Ana’s words comforted him to the point where he felt his body relax into his seat. The soft material molded around his weight as he leaned his back against the chair. He apologized. “I’m just really worried, but as you said, she’s just different and apparently powerful.” He bit his tongue to keep from admitting how much he hated this place.

“I cannot imagine what you are going through with all of this uncertainty; I do not think anything bad of you because of it. It is not unreasonable to want to run, just…impossible.” Ana’s words continued to soothe.

Ana shuffled the papers back together into the folder. As Ana filed the drawings away, he saw an image of an illustrated Aurora from Sleeping Beauty that gave him ominous chills.

*

The throbbing silence of the library was all that accompanied him. Ana had left for work. His mind wandered to the conversation they had before she left, with the drawings temporarily abandoned. He discovered that Ana’s sweet cravings were for pancakes rather than the expected chocolate. Also, recently she had been nursing Nate through his unemployment dilemma. Apparently Nate had been a long-term friend of the family, first close to Tatiana until one day she tossed him aside, bored.

Leocardo sighed, pacing the room when he noticed a desk he had paid little attention to earlier; it had a few uninteresting documents and an obsessively color-coded calendar with Ana’s name scrawled along the top. Leocardo immediately shielded his eyes to respect her privacy, but curiosity corrupted his innocent intentions as he leaned over and examined what she was doing for lunch on Friday.

Leocardo could envision bringing Ana close in an embrace, breathing in her long blonde hair. His arms ached to circle her waist. He could imagine her laughter, as if coated in smooth honey. She was the kind of girl that he could like without hesitation. She oozed compassion and tenderness. Would it be wrong to like her as more than a friend? Would Odette care?

Book Review: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

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Storm Front
The Dresden Files, Book 1

by Jim Butcher

genre: urban fantasy, crime

Summary

Harry Dresden is a wizard. In the yellow pages, paranormal investigations, consulting, the whole nine-yards, publicly practicing wizard. “Normal” people mock him and the White Council has him on their watch list. He’s broke and technology likes to malfunction around him; the more modern an object, the more likely it is to jam. He’s not athletic, but he’s become well acquainted with stairs in order to avoid using the elevator.

When someone breaks the first rule of magic, “Thou Shall Not Kill Using Magic,” Dresden is blamed, the White Council is likely to vote a death sentence, and Dresden has less than 48 hours before he becomes the next victim.

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Eleven

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter ELEVEN

Weight of the Curse

Leocardo walked up to the Dawson manor door and fiddled with the inner material of his jean pockets. The curiosity about his gift was eating him alive. He knocked and was relieved to see Ana as the door swung open, his eyes brightened as he saw her.

“Hello, come on in.” She stepped aside. It was spacious and beautiful inside the Dawson manor. There was a vintage flavor to the furniture and decorating. Without avail she led him to their large collection of books in a modest room.

“Over here is where we keep the more sensitive material,” she explained as she moved toward a shelf in the back. “These shelves are historical records documenting what powers have shown up before, how common they are…things like that.”

He looked around at the multitude of volumes, totally lost.

“It’s a bit embarrassing, but…apart from helping Odette of course, I really just want to…I guess…I want to know what I have,” he said trying not to sound stupid again but was unsure what to say. She called it ‘magic,’ Theo used the term ‘gifts,’ and he thought of them as ‘powers’, but they all sounded surreal in his mind.

Ana opened a number of volumes before deciding on one which was concerned with the dormancy of gifts.

“It may be that your gift is still dormant,” she consoled, “but you have a gift otherwise the dogs would not have let you in.”

“The dogs?” he questioned suddenly very curious, taking the book from her hands, half wishing he had touched her hand in the same motion. “They weren’t checking me for drugs?”

She laughed, “No, they were not checking for drugs. They help separate immigrants from tourists. They seem to be more sensitive to knowing who has been gifted and who has not than any other animal and so far they have never been wrong.”

His memory was hazy as he thought back; it seemed so long ago, but he did faintly remember the dogs circling them contently. He felt relieved. This information confirmed he was gifted.

Blind Sight: Leocardo | Chapter Ten

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Blind Sight: Through The Eyes Of Leocardo Reyes

Ermisenda Alvarez

Chapter TEN

BRISK BEGINNINGS

A month had passed since Odette’s release from the hospital and Leocardo was finding peace in routine. Odette seemed to be doing well in school and spent an increasing amount of time with Ana amongst her other school friends. The normal school year had ended, but a special three-week program was in session for youth and immigrants who needed training on controlling their gifts. Odette had gone for the first week and sporadically the second. Then it was decided that she should not waste their time, or hers until she had an idea what gift had been bestowed on her.

“They say I shouldn’t bother going anymore,” Odette sighed, throwing her bag onto the floor. Finding a place on the sofa next to Cielo, she brought the dog in for a tight cuddle.

Leocardo wasn’t sure what to say. He was angry at the teachers in that program but they weren’t trying to be mean. They were just being honest.

“It’s not like we’re leaving this place anytime soon. You’ll find out your gift soon enough,” he tried to encourage her.

“At least you don’t know what yours is either. That gives me hope.” Odette said.

Leocardo rolled his eyes but smiled. “Gracias. You’re too kind.”

“Or maybe we just have terrible genes. Eyesight has already failed me,” Odette sighed. Leocardo didn’t like how her sadness had painted her words.

Growing up, Leocardo often thought about how hard it must have been for Odette to manage her blindness. But in time he learned that she did not really find it to be a burden because she had never experienced sight to start with. Still, she had known she was different to others. She was special, but not the way a teenager wants to be. He knew she hated being pitied or coddled. He considered walking over and giving her a hug as well, but then decided it would be overkill.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Theodore said that this place brought us here for a reason. We must both have gifts. And you’re meant to have something special.”

From the corner of his eye, Leocardo noticed Odette biting her lip pensively. There was a small smile tugging at her lip. He saw her mouth the word ‘special’.