Queen of Wands-eARC Read Free Page B

elimination. When the killer decided that she was closing in, the elimination had been of lives.
    “You say it’s fairly common,” Barb said. “Why not send someone with Sight on the investigation?”
    “Sight is a tricky power,” Sharice said. “All of them are. People, even very good mystics, tend to suppress them. To repeat: Gifts are not easy. Most of the operatives we have with Sight can see auras well enough but have a hard time with demons. Admittedly, as deeply as Remolus was possessing Krake, it should have shown up in his aura. But we didn’t know that at the time. But you’re backwards, as is usually the case with Christians. You can’t suppress the sight of demons yet, but you can suppress auras. You’d have spotted him almost automatically. And when you do get to reading auras? Fully possessed individuals, their auras will be almost black.”
    “Nice to know,” Barbara said. “Not. The Ear?”
    “The only drakni you’re going to see are those that have attached,” Sharice said, carefully. “There are far more that are not.”
    “I’m hearing demons?” Barbara asked.
    “Demons, ghosts, which are often associated with demons, psychic echoes,” Sharice said, shrugging. “You’re hearing mystic voices. The good news is that if you learn to tune it, The Ear can do many things for you. You can find out what a demon’s True Name is. There is an undercurrent to the voices, like data in a router packet that tells the system what the origin of the packet is. It repeats the True Name of the demons. It’s also sometimes an audible channel to your God and his servants. You might just be able to hear angels, although they rarely have anything more complicated to say than ‘Wheeeee! Look what I can do!’ We’re going to have to do some serious work on you, girl. I’ll be fascinated to see the limits of your Gifts. If you have them.”

CHAPTER TWO
    “I see a light purple,” Barbara said, looking at the monk who was bent over a scroll. “Tinges of orange, but that might be from his robe.”
    It had taken two days of very careful practice for Barb to learn to open up her ability to see auras. It wasn’t a matter of concentration, quite the opposite. It was more a matter of opening up a part of her mind. She had to obtain a nearly Zen state to see one consistently. They had also practiced closing off her Sight with small, inoffensive neutral entities that Sharice conjured. Today was the day of practicing on the real thing.
    They’d gone to the Foundation’s extensive library to find some subjects for aura reading.
    “And I’m seeing a coral color,” Sharice said, sighing. “Very pure. And there we go with the fun of aura reading. Different people see different auras…differently.”
    “What’s purple mean?” Barb asked, flipping through the tome on her lap. “Vanity? That doesn’t seem right. Chun Chao is one of the least vain people I know.”
    “Which is the problem with reading auras,” Sharice said. “Most people see them one way, but others see a completely different spectrum, if you will. Demons are the same way. I might see a spider. You see a snake. Chun Chao might see a snarling traditional Tibetan demon. Nobody sees these things the same.”
    “Why?” Barb asked.
    “Isn’t it your Holy Book that says the mind of God is ineffable?” Sharice asked back. “Ask Him. The guesses are all over the map. My favorite theory is that it has to do with the mind of the viewer. What your Sight is Seeing gets translated by your brain into something that you can recognize, the same way that a hallucination converts images into something your brain can recognize.”
    “So if the book’s useless,” Barb said, tossing it lightly onto the side table, “how do I figure out what auras mean?”
    “By watching them,” Sharice said. “You just watch auras and deduce from what you know about people and their actions what the auras truly represent. What do you know about Chun