I See Me
is the first book in the Oracle series. This series is set in the same universe as my Dowser Series, and contains spoilers for Dowser 1, 2, and 3.

While it’s not necessary to read Dowser 1 through 3 before reading Oracle 1, the ideal reading order is as follows:

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1)

Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser 2)

Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser 3)

I See Me (Oracle 1)

Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser 4)

Other books in both the Oracle and Dowser series to follow.

The day I turned nineteen, I expected to gain what little freedom I could within the restrictions of my bank account and the hallucinations that had haunted me for the last six years. I expected to drive away from a life that had been dictated by the tragedy of others and shaped by the care of strangers. I expected to be alone.

Actually, I relished the idea of being alone.

Instead, I found fear I thought I’d overcome. Uncertainty I thought I’d painstakingly planned away. And terror that was more real than anything I’d ever hallucinated before.

I’d seen terrible, fantastical, and utterly impossible things … but not love. Not until I saw him.

CHAPTER ONE

“There’s that guy again.” Sprawled facedown over the black vinyl chair, I had a perfect view of West Broadway through the storefront window of Get Inked.

“What guy?” Tyler muttered as he hunched over my bare shoulder with his two-coil tattoo machine. Someone had to come up with a better name for that, other than ‘tattoo gun.’ Most ink artists hated calling it that.

“That guy … from the pizza place two days ago. The guy who tried to buy me a slice of pepperoni, like I eat meat.”

I didn’t point. I wasn’t stupid enough to move my shoulder and risk ruining the ink. All Tyler had to do was look up and he’d see the guy drinking a venti Starbucks and leaning against the pockmarked concrete wall of the convenience store across the street. A tall, skinny guy wearing black jeans and a knit hat in an attempt to look like a hipster, but really just hiding stringy, dirty blond hair. I was serious about the ‘dirty’ part, as in actual dirt. If the guy let his teeth yellow any worse, they’d match his hair. At least he hadn’t actually smelled when he sidled up to me a couple of days ago.

“The daisy would look so much cooler with some color,” Tyler muttered. He wasn’t easy to distract once he had the two-coil in hand. Normally I liked that about him. “Red … pink?”

“It’s a peony.”

“What?”

“A peony. And daisies aren’t red.”

“Fine. I’ll stick with the boring black, as usual.” Tyler snapped a used cartridge out of his tattoo machine and plugged in a new one. Then he started filling in the edges of my newest design. I’d copied my peony sketch onto transfer paper about two hours ago, and Tyler and I had argued over its placement for another hour. It had taken me three months to get the flower design exactly right — as perfect as I’d seen it in my head — and ready for its permanent place on my shoulder.

I had a tattoo of barbed wire with various things snagged in the spikes running up my left arm. The ‘things’ were eclectic — keys, spiders … even a black-and-white Canadian flag. With the addition of the peony, I was getting Tyler to extend the tattoo over my shoulder now. Eventually, it would meet and intermingle about two-thirds of the way across my back with the ivy leaf pattern that ran up my right arm.

“I don’t like him,” I said. The guy across the street was playing with something, rolling something silver around in his hand. Pedestrians were steadily passing by him in either direction, but he hadn’t once bothered to glance up from his phone.

West Broadway was a major artery through this part of the city. It ran all the way from Burnaby up to the University of British Columbia, which was pretty much as west as it got without running into the Pacific Ocean. As was typical for January in Vancouver, the day was gray. Despite the cloud cover, I kept catching flashes of silver when the light hit whatever the guy was fooling around with. It was probably some creepy magic trick with coins or something.

“He tried to talk to me.”

“He must be insane then. Who would want to talk to you?”

Tyler was joking, but it wasn’t that far from the truth. I could count my friends on one hand. If I included my social-worker-of-the-day, I’d have to use my thumb.

I didn’t like people, so I tried to make sure they knew it right away. The moment they saw me, actually. I dyed my pale blond hair black, and wore it cut blunt just above my shoulders. I also wore white-framed tinted glasses over my weirdly pale gray eyes no matter the weather, and covered myself with as much black ink as I could without getting kicked out of the Residence. So nothing on my neck, face, or hands. I couldn’t even get the multiple piercings I wanted, so I hadn’t bothered with any. Not even in my ears.

That would all change today.

Today was my nineteenth birthday.

The Residence, which was what we nicknamed the group home for older kids, wasn’t going to kick me out. Not right away, at least. Not without another place to stay. But I’d be encouraged to move on. Hell, they’d been ‘transitioning’ me for two years now.

And yeah, I was an orphan. Something that wouldn’t even rate mentioning after today. Because no one cared if an adult had parents. As far as I’d seen, most adults tried to pretend they didn’t have parents. Except my shrink, who’d tried to invite me for Christmas dinner last year. As if I wanted to be trapped next to a huge turkey carcass with twenty people I didn’t know. Twenty strangers who all knew exactly who I was.

I doubt client confidentiality kept anyone’s mouth shut about me, ever. I was such a sad case. Cue the tiny violin. Orphaned at birth. Mother killed in a terrible car accident. Her body never identified. Father and extended family unknown. Surname unknown. Never adopted, though a couple of families gave it a good try. And — wait for it — with a diagnosis. The shame. The stigma. Gasp.

Excuse me while I choke on your sympathy.

Two more hours, and I could leave the country if I wanted.

And that was exactly the plan.

I was done with Vancouver. For now, at least. I might even get around to changing my name, if I could ever think of anything better than Rochelle Saintpaul. Yeah, the nurses at St. Paul’s Hospital nicknamed me ‘little rock,’ because I never cried. Flattering, huh? I’ve seen the nickname in the nurses’ handwritten notes in my Ministry of Children and Family Development file. Then, when it came time to fill out my birth certificate, my social-worker-of-the-day figured out that Rochelle meant ‘little rock,’ and bam, I had an official name.

Whatever. Who wanted to live where it rained every day anyway?

∞

Tyler gave me the peony tattoo as a birthday gift. He was cool like that, though he could easily get a hundred and sixty an hour for his tattoo work. I was pleased with the results. I’d drawn a section of the peony’s petals like they were pierced by the barbed wire, so it looked as if the flower was hanging over my shoulder blade by that precarious attachment alone. I could extrapolate that the placement reflected life, or could read something boring and tenuous into it like I was the black peony and the barbed wire was life, but that was hokey as hell. I wanted it to look that way, end of story. Though obviously I wouldn’t be flashing the new tattoo to my shrink or social worker.

And it wouldn’t be any of their business in a few more hours anyway.

Cue stupid grin plastered across my face. I was riding high on life today. Again, I wouldn’t be mentioning that to anyone who took notes in a thick file folder. Like, never.

I slipped out the back door of Get Inked into the alley to avoid the guy out front, though I hadn’t seen him there for over an hour. It wasn’t raining yet. The sky was still a light, overall cloud gray as I skirted the metal recycling and garbage bins. Alleys in Kitsilano were cleaner than any alley I’d ever seen east of here. Even the alley behind the Residence, where I’d lived for the last two years in the Downtown Eastside, had to be cleaned every day, and that block had been updated only a couple of years ago. Part of the revitalization of the parts of Vancouver that freaked the tourists out. Picking up garbage was one of the crappy lottery chores a resident could pull as part of their room and board at the Residence every month. I’d been there two years and only gotten stuck with it once, though.

Anyway, the buildings in this part of Kitsilano were a big mixture of old and new. The tattoo parlor occupied an older two-storey block of concrete, but it was freshly painted, clean concrete. Some trendy coffee shop, a florist, and an interior design place filled the brand spanking new multistorey building next door. I couldn’t believe the money people blew on things like that. Crap that they just consumed or threw out after a couple of years. Though I secretly lusted after the white orchids in the front window of the florist.

The brilliant snow-white blooms were as big as my hand. The plants were planted in pots that looked like they were made out of ash-gray concrete. Little smooth black and white rocks nestled among the moss on top. I hadn’t even bothered to check the prices. They probably cost as much as my tattoo would have if Tyler had charged me, and the blooms lasted like all of three weeks or something.

I had to take two buses from the tattoo parlor to get to my next appointment — the much-anticipated social worker appointment of my year — and I was going to be late now. But there was no way I was going to waste any money on a taxi. I had a plan for every cent in my pockets today.

I pulled my mittens out of my bag. I never went anywhere without my hand-painted satchel. I wore it slung across my chest, against my left hip, and filled with my art supplies. The mittens were hand knit in ivory-white cashmere and worn to hell. They’d been a gift from my last social worker three years ago. A gift given when she’d told me she was going on maternity leave and had to transfer my file … again. No biggie, really. I’d had so many social workers and caregivers — their term — that I didn’t bother to count anymore. They were all genuinely nice people who couldn’t do more for me than they already did. Guilt gift or not, the mittens rocked, especially because it was actually cold in Vancouver today. It got chilly this time of year when it wasn’t raining.

I crossed out of the alley onto West Broadway a couple of blocks away from Get Inked. I didn’t think the guy from out front was following me or anything. He was just annoyingly chatty.

And now he was standing next to the bus stop on the corner of Burrard Street.

Great.

“Hey,” he called, lifting his paper coffee cup to greet me. Geez, either that was the same coffee he’d been drinking hours ago or the guy was seriously caffeinated.

I forced myself to continue walking toward him. Obnoxious guy or not, I really needed to catch the next 99 B-Line.

“I was just thinking about you,” he said. His accent was full-on American, though I didn’t know the difference between the States.

“Yeah?” Ignoring his cheesy attempt at a pick-up — if that was what was actually going on — I looked over my shoulder for the bus. I wasn’t religious, but I’d been having a good birthday so far and I’d pray for it to continue without this guy chatting me up to whatever God would have me.

“Rochelle, right?” he said. “I’m Hoyt, remember? You heading downtown?”

“Sure,” I answered, completely lying.

“Maybe we could grab that slice?”

“Nah, thanks. I’m not big on pizza”

The 44 bus pulled to a stop in front of us, and the other bus stop occupants shuffled into line around Hoyt and me. I went along with the crowd, making a show of digging into my bag for my bus pass.

“Pasta then, or Mexican?” Hoyt was glancing around like he was worried about someone seeing him talking to me.

We shuffled along to the front door. Hoyt stepped up on the first stair and I took the opportunity to peel away from the line.

BOOK: I See Me

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