Amethyst and Jade

January 3, 2:45pm
Ms. Davis is a toad!  Actually, she’s worse.  Scientists wonder what’s living down in the
deep dark bottom of the ocean, down where there’s no light and no warmth, but they don’t even know that one of their mystery creatures has crawled up onto land to run North Seattle Middle School’s newspaper club.
‘I’m sorry emalie… la la la… but I just don’t think we should publish an article about
your cousin’s death… la blah lala,’ croaks the toad, ‘I know you’re upset, but vampires?…  too
de-loo de-loo… Maybe I should talk to your father…’
She says it like she’s so caring, but she’s just another demon.  With those giant glasses,
like two fishbowls, with a brown piranha in each one, leering out at me.  We know it’s your fault, they say.  Thanks.
I
HATE
HER.
Well, Amey and Jade (my other new kitty), I’m in a rage now.  Been down here in the
basement tearing up pictures of its house… Shredding them, watching them fall to the floor like snow, along with my tears.  What a stupid girl who took these photos.  What a stupid believer.
And do you want to know the worst part?  I still believe!!!!  Idiot!!!  After I tore apart all
my silly vampire pictures, do you know what I couldn’t do?  Tear up the one thing I should.
Because I went to the library last week and did some research, and found an article about
the night its parents died, the night I saw in the portal.  Oliver’s name used to be Nathan.  And
his parents were Howard and Lindsey.  And I’m asking myself: why does knowing he was
human make it any different?
Because there’s something not right about the night Dean died.  I mean in addition to the
everything that’s already so, so wrong about it.  I feel like there’s something else.  Like I’m
remembering it wrong.  I wish I could explain it more.
Oh, dad’s calling.  Gotta run…

january 3, 10:13pm
You won’t believe what happened this afternoon:
When dad calls me upstairs, I expect it to be something I don’t expect.  That’s how it is
with dad: Cole Joseph Watkins, son of Jonathan and Irene Watkins of Anchorage, Alaska.  Once-upon-a-time, in black and white pictures, he was a kid called C.J.  Then he met what Irene called a ‘wild girl.’ That’s my mother, Margaret Browne.  And then he was an adult named Cole, and then he was a father, and a computer programmer, and a homeowner.  But then his wife left him, and it was goodbye to all that, and to dad.
It’s not that it feels like he’s not there for me.  He is.  It’s just that when he is, he’s not all
there.  Does that make any sense?
So then today I’m walking up the stairs, and I’m ready, because it could be any kind of
weather in the kitchen: a hurricane of frustration and throwing the empty milk carton.  There is just no way to keep on top of all this! he’ll shout, and I’ll feel like it’s my fault for being born, even when I think I know that’s not how he means it…
Or it could be a tornado of laughing at a comic in the newspaper. Emalie you’ve GOT to
see this! he’ll say, and I’ll look and laugh even though it’s not really that funny…
Or, worst of all, it could be an afternoon rain of quiet speaking.  Emalie have you finished
your homework? he’ll ask with the red eyes that look like they were just rubbed hard to clean up the tears…
Of course the one kind of weather I don’t expect at all is a bright sunny afternoon.
“Hey kiddo,” he says, standing by the door putting on his jacket.  The first thing I notice
is his face has no stubble.  His hair is just-showered-wet and sticky with gel.  He looks like he
popped out of a time vortex from two and a half years ago, before mom left.
And then more surprises:
“Your aunt Kathleen called…”
Whoa.  That’s mom’s aunt, my great aunt.
“They’ve got a job opening down at the docks,” Dad is saying.  “They want me to
interview.”
I look at him sideways.  Careful, emalie.  This is feeling good.  What’s the catch?  “So?”
He almost laughs.  “Well so we’re going down for the interview.  Kathleen wanted to see
you, too.  It’s been awhile.”
A shaved face and a job interview?  I’m thinking about collapsing to the floor and then
maybe jumping up and making pancakes and drinking syrup straight from the bottle.  Instead I just look around our kitchen, at the boxes that are still half-unpacked after three months of living here, at the one frying pan on the stove that never comes quite clean.  If my dad had a job we could get nonstick.  Nonstick.  It sounds like the future.
But I show nothing on my face.  Just look out the window by his shoulder and say:
“Okay.”  I am good at this.  Emalie who doesn’t get her hopes up.
I grab my vest, scarf, hat, gloves, and we grab the bus down to Ballard.  We are the same
old quiet on the way, dad staring out the window, me with headphones on.  But I am watching
him.  I still can’t get over the shaved chin.  It’s so smooth.  There is a zit there.  He’s not that old, this Dad of mine.  I’ve never thought of him as not-so-old before.  He fidgets in his seat like it’s his first day of school.  Do adults still have first days of school?
On the way, I daydream: if this job pans out, maybe we could have nonstick and one of
those pepper grinders.  With the multi-colored pepper.  Oh man, that’s the good stuff!  I would
grind that thing straight into my mouth.  Pepper.  Syrup.  Pepper.  Syrup…
We get off the bus on Leary and head down toward the canal.  Crossing streets of
windowless warehouses and forgotten train tracks, the pavement lumpy around the smooth steel lines.  The sky is pool blue, the sun brilliant white, and cold breeze that smells sour like the ocean ripples our clothes and makes us squint.  You can’t breathe too deep because everything is tense against the cold wind.  The sun is barely over the top of Queen Anne hill and there are four-month-long shadows between the warehouses.  The dirt alleys between them have puddles that will be there all winter.
We reach the canal, lined with these giant fishing boats streaked with rust.  There is one
sliver of the water that you can see, and the universe is nice enough to stick a kayaker in the
middle of the sparkling blue right as we walk by.  A little brown dock sticks out into this space.
I wonder if there are crabs clacking around on its posts.  To the left of the dock is a tiny line of
sailboats, wrapped tight in plastic for the winter, huddling like ducklings in the shadow of a huge white fishing boat.  To the right is a low wooden building sticking out into the water on a wharf.  It is made of warped boards, and has a pattern of scraped doors and cloudy windows.
Dad stops at one of the doors and I watch him do the deep-breath nervous thing.  I know
that thing.  It’s the same thing you do before you walk out on stage for a chorus concert, or climb through a vampire’s window—
Blammo.  That makes me think of… Dean…Whoa, watch out, Emalie. almost walked
into the sad mood trap.  I shake it off.  Gotta focus on Dad.
“Good luck,” I say to him.
He turns, almost like he’s surprised that I’m there.  Then he smiles big, and nods at me
like we’re partners.  “Thanks.”
Inside is a small office with dark wood walls.  There are two desks, a neat one and a
sloppy one.  The sloppy one has an empty chair, and pink crinkled papers smeared across it.
Behind the neat one, all the papers arranged at straight angles, sits my great aunt
Kathleen.  She’s a big lady, and is wearing a flowery pink shirt that makes her look bigger than she is.  She has hair that is supposed to be blonde but looks more like orange, and then gray at the roots… but her eyes look like Mom’s.  Which is weird.
“There you are,” she says to Dad, but looks over to me so fast I get a rush of nerves.  It’s
almost like I’m the one she’s been waiting for.
“Hey Kathleen,” dad says, sounding nervous.  I wonder if he notices the mom-eyes too?
Kathleen is standing.  “I’m so glad you guys could come down,” she says, and waves at
the two brown chairs on the brown rug in front of her brown desk.  We sit down.
“So,” Kathleen goes on, “It’s like I told you on the phone, C.J.: We have a small salmon-
catching fleet, three boats.  You’d be in charge of overseeing the catch and processing, as well as keeping us in line with the good ol’ Fisheries department—”
“Buh.” a wiry, gruff man walks into the room from the back hallway.  He has a patchy
blonde beard and curly hair sticking out from a black hat.  He’s wearing rubber overalls all
splotchy with blood.  He sneers and says: “Fisheries department.  Those sons a—”
“Careful, Zeke,” Kathleen warns, flashing her eyes at me.  “There’s innocent ears in the
room.”  She smiles at me.
I try to smile back but I think: Innocent?!  More like murderer’s ears!  No.  Don’t think
about that, Emalie.  Almost walked into another sad trap.  Have to be careful, cause the traps are everywhere…
Zeke shrugs and sits at his messy desk.  He reaches in his pocket and then drops a new
crumply pink paper onto the mess of other pink papers.  “Sorry.”
“C.J., this is Zeke.  He runs the docks.  You’ll be working with him.”
“Hi,” says my dad.
Zeke says hi back with his eyebrows.
“Zeke can explain way more about what you’ll be doing than I can,” Kathleen says.
“Why don’t you two take a walk around the boats?  Zeke, you can show C.J. the in’s and out’s,
and I’ll catch up with my niece, here.”
“Don’t you want to see my resume?” dad asks.
Kathleen just shakes her head.  “You’re family.”  She glances at me. “That’s the only
resume you need.”
Dad follows Zeke out the back.  I sit there, and I feel Kathleen looking at me.  It makes
me nervous.  Almost like she wants something.
“Want to take a walk out on the pier?” she finally asks.
“Okay.”
We head back outside and past the long line of beat up doors and grimy windows.  At the
end of the building is an open deck, squinty bright in the sun.  We walk out to the end and lean
on the warped railing.  There’s water all around, covered in sparkly diamonds.  Off to the right is a rusty boat, and I hear Zeke talking to dad over there.
“So, how are you Emalie?” Kathleen asks.
“Fine,” I lie.  I don’t like this.  It feels like she knows something…
“I’m sorry about your cousin,” she says.  And then: “And about the vampire.”
Even in the bright sun I shudder.  How does she know?  “What are you—” I start to say.
But she cuts me off.  “It’s okay.  It’s understandable that you were curious about
vampires.  Though they’re based in evil, they are connected to the forces of the larger universe, to the spirits… Just like you.”
I look up at her, trying to figure out what she’s talking about, but at the same time my
heart is pounding like an angry fist against my ribs.  “What do you mean?”
And then she says it: “Do you find yourself feeling sad a lot, like, sad for the people
around you, for the world?”
Okay this is too much.  How does she know that?  “Yeah, like, forever.”
“Well, Emalie,” Kathleen puts her big, soft hand on my shoulder.  “You’re not making up
those feelings.  You are connected to the emotions and spirits of the world in a way that very few people are— But I am, and so was your mother.”
I can’t believe this.   I am staring at the water and counting the diamonds because what
am I supposed to do, or say, or even think?
Kathleen goes on.  “You would never know this, but we— you, your mother, and me—
are descended from a long line of women who are able to sense the spiritual world.  We can use
this sense in powerful ways, sometimes even to predict the future.  We’re called—”
“Orani,” I say, without even knowing I’m going to.
“Yes,” Kathleen agrees.
I realize that I’ve been holding onto that word since Dead Desiree said it in the
Underground.  She told Oliver I was an Orani, but then didn’t say any more about it.  And I was going to ask Oliver, but…
Aunt Kathleen is going on full steam ahead.  “Our bloodline traces all the way back to
ancient Mesopotamia.”  She is blowing my mind, but I feel like I already know what she is
saying.  “Not every woman in our family has it, but those who do must keep it secret, and be
trained.  Your mother and I weren’t sure about you, but I think you and I can be pretty sure now.  Especially after you joined Oliver in that Portal vision.  No ordinary human could have done that.”
I’m spinning.  How does she know any of this?  It’s almost like she’s reading my head—
“You’re wondering how I know all this.”
I practically laugh, and yet, it’s relief, too.  “Yeah.”
“I can sense it, in the emotions and energy radiating off you.  You would never know
this, but even from across town, I felt the precise moment when you entered that Portal.  If you know what forces to watch, you can see an Orani’s interaction with the spiritual world.  They make ripples like a finger touching water, and you’ve made a lot of ripples lately.”
My brain is racing past what she is saying.  I’m imagining the training: us taking off for a
mountain-top retreat, and wearing robes and learning how to make objects float and only eating sushi and—
“No,” Kathleen says, “It’s not like that.  You have to learn about your Orani powers on
your own.  I can only get you started.”
I look over to see Kathleen holding out her hand.  In her palm is a little rolled-up green
paper.  I take it.  It’s a sticky note.  I peel it apart and unroll it.  Inside is a small oval of red.  It
looks kind of like a jewel, but maybe more like a hard candy.
“It’s a scarab,” Kathleen explains as I turn it over in my fingers.  One side is curved and
smooth, and on the other is carved like a beetle.  The surface is worn and scuffed.  “It’s a charm
from ancient Egypt.”
“This thing is ancient?” I ask.  I thought only movie heroes got to have ancient things.
“Mmm.  Scarabs have been used to hold charms.  This one is called a Conduit.”
I stare at the tiny beetle carving and notice there’s a hole in the top.
“Oh, here.” Kathleen is holding out a tiny silver chain.  “So you can wear it.  Now… the
paper tells you where to begin.”
The paper has writing on it:
Corner of Market and 22nd, 3:17pm.
“What’s this?”
“Listen carefully, Emalie.  Go to that spot tomorrow.  At that exact time, hold this scarab
between your palms and blow on it gently.  As you do so, relax your mind.  Then your journey as an Orani will begin.”
“My journey?  But—”
“Hey guys!” we both turn fast like guilty criminals, to see my dad and Zeke standing by
the door to the office.
“Just a sec!” Kathleen says all cheery, but when she turns back to me, her face is dead
serious.  “Emalie, listen: Something big has begun to happen.  Powerful forces are aligning.
Your mom knew it, but…”
“But she left,” I say darkly, my words as sharp as the pain in my gut.
Then Kathleen’s eyes get red and wet.  “Emalie, no.  Your mother would never have left
you.”
I feel the world crowding around me now.
“Your mom’s disappearance was not her idea… not at all,” Kathleen says.  I want to say
something about this, but my mouth and brain no longer work.  Kathleen pats my shoulder.
“We’ll talk more soon.  Now that your dad has this job, I’ll have a reason to see a lot more of
you.  In the meantime… Tomorrow.  Will you take the conduit charm and do as I ask?”
“Okay.”
Kathleen suddenly smiles at me with a warm glow that makes me look away.  “Thanks,
Emalie.”  And then she turns and starts back toward Dad, leaving me to carry the fifty ton weight of everything I just heard all by myself.
I mean, wow.
I’ve been sitting down here in the basement tonight, flipping this little scarab beetle over
in my hand, wondering about everything.  I think I even went a good whole five minutes not
thinking about how much I miss Dean, or even how much I might miss him = it.  It’s exciting to have something.  That’s how dad’s been acting, too.  I can’t wait for tomorrow, to use these
powers of mine (come on, really?  do I really have powers??).  Maybe I should be scared or
nervous, but I’m not at all.  I’ve had enough of that lately.

January 4, 8:36pm
Or maybe I should have been.  Scared, that is.
I leave school as soon as the bell rings.   I’ll have to walk fast to get to the address in
time, which is easy now that I have, well, no one to slow me down…  It’s a thick cloudy day and
there’s actually a warning for snow.  That would be something.  It barely ever snows in Seattle, and when it does, even just an inch can turn the world upside down.
The air is still, waiting, and wouldn’t you know, and as soon as I’m stepping off the bus
in downtown Ballard, thick flakes of snow are zigzagging their way to the pavement.  The bus
was actually on time today, which is like winning the lottery— it so doesn’t happen very much.
So I actually have time to stop into Cupcake Royale and get a mini cupcake.  My favorite: white cake/chocolate frosting.  Eat the frosting in one lick, then pop the little cake in your mouth and be all fat cheeked like a chipmunk for a minute, and always get noticed by some cute boy looking up from his iPod at just the wrong moment — BUT anyway…
Then I’m back outside and crossing over to Market and 22nd and it’s really coming down.
There’s a tingle on your cheeks as the fat flakes hit, but also in the air as everyone hunches and rushes.  Do they feel the excitement of snow?  Or just how it messes up their day?
I get to the corner and the wheels of cars are spraying slush.  A woman passing me slips
in her silly heels and goes down to her knee.  Flakes on my shoulders.  Flakes on my hat.  Flakes on my striped gloves that don’t have fingertips.  A gift from my grandma, btw: no fingertips, that way you can text your friends in winter comfort!  Too bad poor little me doesn’t have a phone or the friends.  Right now I just wish I had fingertips on my gloves.  But what poor little me does have is an ancient scarab charm…
I pull out the beetle and hold it in my fist, then I check my wristwatch, the one I never
wear because if I wear it I always check it, like time is a drug or something.  3:16.  I wait.
A horn honks.  A bus sloshes by.  Flakes on my nose.  Wet through my purple sneakers.
3:17.  Okay.  I hold up my hands, pressing the scarab between my palms.  I try to clear
my mind, but my mind is like that scrolling line across the bottom of the news channel:  Dean,
Oliver, It’s your fault!, mom, Orani, Portal, You’re a monster! , Dean…
Re. Lax. Emalie.  Somehow I do, and close my eyes, and put my lips up to my hands and
blow between them…
And it’s hard to describe what happens next.
It’s like someone turns up the volume, but it’s not the sounds of the cars or the slush that
gets louder, it’s all whispering voices, everywhere, like I can hear everyone around this busy
intersection — and my body is moving— no, I’m moving, my body is staying where it is, but
I’m rushing through the whispers, across the street, among the snowflakes—
Then I stop.  Now there’s only one voice: ‘Can’t believe he didn’t like any of these gifts.
Ungrateful brat.  Why do kids have to become teenagers?’
I’m seeing the sidewalk on the other side of the street— walking out of Sonic Boom
Records…
And I’m in someone else’s head.  That’s the plain and simple truth.  But it doesn’t feel
plain or simple.  An older woman, walking along kinda bent over.  ‘We should just save our
money, if he doesn’t like anything he gets for Christmas, then why even have it?’ You’d think I might be laughing at hearing this, but I’m not, because I’m not just hearing this woman’s
thoughts.  I’m feeling them.  It’s like her emotions are mine, too.  I am suddenly filled with this
sad, empty feeling.  It’s almost like something I’ve felt before, but darker, more sour.  Like
something that’s been left out in the rain and gotten all rusty, that’s what this woman’s
disappointment feels like.  I don’t like it.  I want better for her, but I also want to get that feeling out of my heart—
And then I’m back out in the whispers.  Gliding between the snowflakes, a rush of wind
and noise, then into another person— A man this time, by the mailbox, holding letters: ‘Just mail them, get it over with.  Who cares if they’re two weeks late?  No one will read them, anyway.  Nobody cares about you…  Is it noon yet?  Maybe the pub is open…’ I’m swallowed up by his doubt, his shaking desire for the clear brown whiskey in the tiny glass that he’s imagining—
Back out and through the cold, the whispers seem like whipping winds, grabbing at me,
into the next one— A small child: ‘Big cars, hold my hand mommy carry me!  I don’t want to
cross the big street!’ Her fear shakes me, the cars are big, they are scary—
Into the next one— a boy my age, walking very fast: ‘Can’t let them find me.  Can’t let
them know.  If I can just find Selene.  But how?  Have to hurry…’ Wait a minute.  This one is
different.  I want to know more.  There’s something familiar about this boy’s head.  I don’t know him, but his feelings seem so like mine.  For the first time, I want to stay for a minute—
But then I’m out again, rushing, this time into a dark, cramped mind.  I’m looking out
through a truck window.  I’m in the driver’s head.  The truck is approaching the intersection.  I can even see me over on the corner, standing there like I’m in a trance.  And then I hear this
man’s thoughts: ‘There he is.  That’s the one.  Come on Murray, all you have to do is make it
look like an accident.  The snow is the perfect excuse.  Okay, he’s heading for the street, gotta
time this perfectly…’ I look out of his eyes and see that boy whose head I was just in.
This man’s mind is hot and crowded and dark, but suddenly I am freezing cold.  Because
I know what’s about to happen.  This truck driver is about to…
‘No!’ I scream with all my power.  The truck driver doesn’t hear me, but suddenly I am
rushing back through the wind, into another head— my head, I’m back.
I’m woozy for a moment, eyes popping open, still blurry, dropping the scarab back
around my neck and thinking: where’s the boy?!
There.  He’s on the other side of the intersection.  Waiting for the walk light.  It blinks
from red to white.  The boy starts into the crosswalk with some others, but he’s walking faster.
He gets out ahead.
I turn to the left.  The truck.  It’s short, white, wipers pushing snow out of the way.
inside, the silhouette of the thick driver.  The murderer.  It’s not slowing down as it reaches the red light.  I can hear its engine roar just a little louder.  He’s not going to stop…
“Hey!” I shout into the street.
The boy has his chin tucked in the collar of his frayed brown coat.  He’s hunched and
hurrying.  He doesn’t hear me.  The truck rumbles right into the intersection.
I run.  Leaping off the curb, slipping in the slush but still moving.  “Watch out!” I scream.
Finally, he looks up, sees me.  His eyes go wide.  Looking left— all I see is truck
headlights, and wet metal grill.
Somewhere close a man shouts: “Hey watch out!”
“What?” the boy says and then I am slamming into him, as hard as I can— our chins hit
and pain floods my head.  And we’re flying backward, stumbling and falling, and I think: ‘You
won’t get far enough the truck will run you down—’
But then we are crashing into a woman and tumbling and hitting the pavement.
“Ow what are you—”
I hear the roar and twist around— the truck is passing within inches of our feet.  For a
second, I see the driver staring out his window at us, scowling, confused.  Then the truck speeds away.
“What are you doing?” the boy is gasping underneath me.  I look down and see that his
face —kinda cute— is inches from mine… and I roll off and to my feet as fast as I can.
He sits up, his jacket soaked.  He has gloves with no fingers too, but that’s because his
are old, black, torn.  His hair is dark black.  There are people crowding around us.
“Are you two okay?”
“That truck almost ran those kids down!”
He looks at me with wide brown eyes.
And I get out of there.  The whole minute is catching up with me.  I can barely breathe.
My chin is killing me and I’m shivering all over.  I push through the crowd and head for the
sidewalk.  I am just stepping out of the street, still breathing hard, when I hear:
“Wait!”  the boy grabs my arm.  “Stop.”
I almost don’t, but then I do.  We stare at each other.  I want to ask him why someone
would be trying to kill him.  I want to ask him about those thoughts he was having, but then it
feels almost wrong that I know his thoughts like that.  And wouldn’t I sound crazy saying those
things to him?
But then he has crazy things to say to me: “Do I know you?”
“No,” I reply, “Not really, I, um…”
“You just saved my life, didn’t you?”
Like an idiot, all I can do is shrug.  “Guess.”
I’m not sure what I expect him to say, but it’s not what he says: “You’re the one who
knows the vampire kid.”
I’m stuck like a skipping CD.  “What?  You mean—” I lower my voice. “Oliver?  I don’t,
I mean not anymore, I—”
But now this boy is looking at me differently.  He almost looks… worried.  And he’s
thinking hard.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Horacio,” he says.
“I’m Emalie,” I tell him, even though he doesn’t ask.  “Who was trying to kill you just
then?”
“I—I’m not sure.  They’ve been after me since I had the vision.  Every time I leave the
house…”
“What vision?” I ask, but he’s still looking at me like I’m something weird.  “Why are
you looking at me like that?”
“I should go,” he says.  “I have to keep looking.”
“You mean for Selene?  Who’s that, anyway?”
But now I did it, because Horacio is backing away from me, looking shocked.  He starts
to talk and I figure he’ll ask me how I knew that, but again, it’s more surprises: “You have to
stay with him.”
“Who?” I ask.
Horacio is reaching the crosswalk again.  “The vampire.”
Okay. Huh?  “What?  Why?”
The light blinks to ‘walk.’  “Just, if you don’t, it’ll be your fault.”
“What will be?”
Horacio looks at me one last time, so worried.  “The end of the world,” he says, then
rushes across the street.  All I can do is stand there, letting him go, stuck to carry another five
tons of confusion by myself.

January 22, 10:08pm
Haven’t been able to write in awhile.  I thought maybe I’d wait until I’d figured out what
happened in that intersection.  What Horacio meant.  Thought it would come to me and I’d fill
page after page.  So far, it hasn’t.
But I have found some clues.  Yesterday I was in the basement, not really sure what to do
with myself or the confused thoughts in my head.  I pulled out the big box where my mom’s
photography equipment goes.  My dad, the newly employed and shaven one, took my broken
camera into a shop, and found out it was ruined beyond repair.  He says we can go shopping for another one, but I don’t know, I don’t even really want to.  That camera started all this, from taking pictures of where vampires might live, all the way to being told, by a boy whose life you just saved, that the end of the world might be your fault.
Anyway, I started packing up the developer when I noticed this stack of notebooks in the
box.  Mom’s notebooks.  They never interested me before, but the other night I pulled them out
and it turns out they’re full of Orani notes, and directions for how to do enchantments.  There’s other stuff, too.  Special candles, glass jars of different powders, some dried flowers.  I don’t know what all of it is, yet, but I’m going to find out.
I have been reading mom’s notebooks for days.  I lie on the basement floor after dinner,
making a warm spot with my belly on the old yellow rug, flipping the pages— falling asleep,
waking up again.  I don’t notice when it gets dark.
I found notes on the conduit charm that Kathleen gave me.  It lets you enter people’s
heads, to observe and feel what they feel.  I guess the conduit will naturally seek out the
strongest, most intense feelings in an area, and that’s what led me to Horacio and his killer.  The bigger question is: did Kathleen know that I’d find that boy?  She must have.  She must have wanted me to save him.  I won’t know until I talk to her again.
The other questions are: who was Horacio?  What was this vision he was talking about?
Who is this Selene that he was searching for?  And what did he mean about me needing to stay
with Oliver, otherwise the end of the world would be my fault?
It doesn’t make any sense.  Just like so much lately.  I feel like my whole world has
changed.  But all I can do is try to figure all this out one step at a time.  And I have to start at the start…  at Dean…
See, I found something else in this notebook.  Something powerful, something I’m
probably not ready for as a young Orani…  Except, it’s something I can do to start solving all
these questions.  And something that might make me feel better about what happened to Dean.
I’ll keep an eye out for Horacio, but for now, whatever he was talking about will have to
wait.  I’ve got something else planned, and it’s going to keep me out long after dark…