“So what exactly are we looking for?” Levi asked Evelyn as they came up to the intersection of W 27th Street and Raspberry Street. Night had fallen and the chilly fall breeze blew the crunchy leaves across the dirt road.
She squinted in the darkness. “I’m not exactly sure. My vision was murky.”
“So then why are we here?” Frankie asked from her other side.
“All of my divination readings said that something bad happened at this corner.”
“Which one?” Levi pointed. “There are four corners here. Were they on the sidewalk?”
She shook her head. “No. In the street.”
“How can you tell?” Frankie asked. “It’s so dark. Would it kill them to put in some streetlights?”
“This far out from town?” Levi commented. “Why would they?”
Frankie laughed. “Where I come from, this is damn well near the center of town.”
“Don’t even start with the whole ‘I’m from the future’ bit,” Levi said with a groan.
“Would you both be quiet?” she snapped. “We’re not going to be able to hear anything if you keep talking.”
“Evelyn, look around!” Frankie gestured toward the intersection. “There’s nothing here. And unless you have something concrete from your vision to go on, then I think we’re just wasting our time.”
The oracle wasn’t convinced. “I just have a feeling…”
Frankie sighed and decided to give her break. He knew very well that nagging magical intuition feeling. He stepped out into the intersection and looked around, trying to find any remnants of the supernatural thread that Evelyn had picked up on.
The biggest thing that he noticed was that the area felt familiar to him. The newly-built house on the corner was his first sale as a realtor in 1984. How strange it was to see it at its infancy.
But there was something else. Underneath the familiarity. Something big that was hiding. Subdued. As if someone else didn’t want the enormity of it to be found out.
“What is it?” Levi asked from beside Frankie. He hadn’t seen him approach in the darkness.
The witch nodded. “I agree with Evelyn. There’s a supernatural presence here. A dark one, at that.”
“I told you,” Evelyn said.
Levi looked between the two of them. “How do you know?”
“I can feel it,” Frankie said. “The same thing Evelyn’s picking up on.”
Levi raised his eyebrows. “I don’t feel anything.”
“That’s because you’re nonmagical,” Frankie explained. “You don’t have the magical intuition the rest of us do. The one that picks up when something is just a bit off. Which is exactly how certain evils operate. They take advantage of the nonmagical who can’t sense magical dangers themselves.”
“It’s like a sixth-sense,” Evelyn added. “If the power is great enough, sometimes we can sense the magical workings happening around us. Or, in this case, what had previous transpired.”
“And if they’re really skilled—or if we’re not seeking it out—even we can miss it ourselves.” Frankie looked over at Evelyn. “That’s why I didn’t immediately pick up on it, either.”
“Okay, so then what exactly are you guys feeling?” Levi asked.
Both Frankie and Evelyn said nothing, but looked around the dark, quiet, chilly neighborhood.
Finally, Frankie turned to Evelyn. “Do you think you can get a vision to recall anything that happened here?”
“I can try, but from what I can tell, there’s something blocking my power.” Still, she crouched to the ground and held her hands out to the dirt road, where the two streets intersected. She closed her eyes and concentrated, sitting quietly for a long time. Then, after several moments of fierce determination, she rose to her feet and shook her head.
“Nothing?” Frankie asked.
“I just feel a bad presence,” she explained. “I couldn’t call up a vision.”
“So does that mean that everything’s fine?” Levi asked.
Frankie and Evelyn exchanged more looks between them.
“That’s…not necessarily the case,” Frankie said.
“Sometimes there’s a magic stronger than mine that is able to block my psychic interferences,” Evelyn said. “Someone is actively trying to hide whatever happened here.”
“But you got the first vision unprompted,” Levi said. “Back at the restaurant.”
“That must’ve been before the protections were placed.”
The trio fell silent as they looked around the darkness.
“So what do we do next?” Levi asked.
“We need to start digging,” Frankie said.
“For clues?”
He shook his head. “Yes. In the ground.”