“It’s nice to meet you, Patrick.”
“Likewise,” he said. “So do you think that there are witches out there… somewhere?”
A vision of Ellen’s nightmare wizard had flashed across her mind, and in her vision, the wizard was ritually killing someone in New Orleans.
When Ellen saw that the teenager was looking curiously and slight disturbingly at her, she shrugged and questioned rhetorically, “Who knows?” She then quickly gestured towards her group while saying, “I really need to rejoin my friends.”
The teenager politely grinned and nodded while saying, “Of course.”
Ellen nodded with a grin before turning and walking away quickly with her plate of little smokies.
“Why did you lie about your name?” the teenager faintly heard a familiar female voice asking from a different direction.
The teenager faced the eighteen-year-old woman—who stood thirty feet away—before grinning and softly saying, “Vampires not seeing their reflections, unable to enter a house uninvited and bursting into flames in direct sunlight are myths as you well know, but many myths have a grain of truth to them.”
“What are you talking about?” the eighteen-year-old woman asked without moving towards him. “And what does that have to do with you lying to that girl about your name?”
“Most of those vampire myths came about after a witch or a wizard had cast his or her spell to either identify one or to defend against one. However, the real danger for a vampire against a witch or a wizard is when a witch or a wizard knows a vampire’s true name—his or her birth name. If a witch or a wizard knows a vampire’s birth name then that witch or wizard could turn a vampire into a pyre with a simple chant.”
The eighteen-year-old woman turned towards Ellen while asking, “That girl is a witch?”
“She’s a sorceress actually,” the teenager corrected. “There are two other sorceresses here too; however, they don’t suspect people here of being vampires, so you and I aren’t in immediate danger.”
“Are they... wicked sorceresses?”
“No,” the teenager said simply.
“We hunt animals; not humans, so they might accept us.”
“We won’t volunteer that we are vampires, but if they would find out then we will plea our case. Until then, don’t let them find out your birth name.”
After a short deliberation, the eighteen-year-old woman nodded in agreement.
“I had a vision,” Ellen announced gravely, barely above a whisper to her group as she stepped up.
“That’s great,” Karla said.
“Who’s that guy you were talking to?” Everett asked.
Ellen gave Everett a curious look and saw that Everett was giving the teenager his focus as he tried to see through the crowd.
“He’s Patrick, and he’s not important,” Ellen told Everett before looking towards Karla. “What is important though is that I had a vision, and it wasn’t great.”
“You’ve wanted to get another vision,” Jessica pointed out. “So why isn’t that great?”
Ellen glanced warily towards Allen before saying, “The morning after you and Karla had stayed the night at my place, I’d told you about a dream that I had…”
“What about it?” Jessica interrupted.
“With the vision that I just had, I don’t think that dream was a random dream,” Ellen explained.
“What do you mean?” Jessica asked as Ellen was noticing that Everett was still trying to see the teenager through the crowd.
Ellen moved over and blocked Everett’s view while saying, “I believe that my dream was a psychic dream.” When Everett attempted to see around Ellen, Ellen demanded to know, “Are you jealous, Everett, that Patrick spoke to me?”
With a confused expression across his face, Everett looked at Ellen. After Ellen’s question had sunk in, he said, “No, that’s not… I’m trying to see Patrick’s aura.”
In a drawn out manner Ellen asked, “Why?”
“Because earlier, I don’t think I’d seen one,” Everett explained while looking around Ellen. “And as I was trying to verify what I think I saw, the dancers were getting in the way.” The dancers were no longer blocking Everett’s view; however, the teenager was no longer standing by the table. “And now he’s nowhere in sight.”
Ellen turned to search for the teenager too, but when she couldn’t spot him, she turned back towards Everett and said, “Patrick might’ve gone to the bathroom. When he gets back… from wherever he went, I’ll introduce you two. Meanwhile, can we focus on my disturbing vision?”
“What exactly did you see, Ellen?” Karla asked.
When Ellen glanced warily towards Allen again, Karla sweet-talked Allen into getting something from the food table for her.
As Allen was walking away, Karla told Ellen, “Now you can talk freely.”
With an amused expression on her face, Ellen said, “In my vision, the wizard was ritually killing someone in New Orleans.”
“And you’re sure that the wizard from your vision was the same one from your nightmare?” Jessica asked.
“It was most definitely the same one,” Ellen assured them.
“Please tell me that you aren’t planning on going to New Orleans,” Everett quickly requested.
Ellen thought of her answer before saying, “By your dad being a detective, I wouldn’t make it out of Georgia before he put out an APB on me. Plus rushing in blindly would be foolish, if not suicidal. So we need to learn everything we can about this wizard before we plan anything.”
“And how are we supposed to do that when all we know about this wizard is from what you had seen from your dream and vision?” Everett quickly questioned.
Ellen thought for a second before asking, “Could you sketch this person if I describe him to you?”
Everett shrugged, and before he could respond with more than that, a fifteen-year-old girl dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz stepped up to them.
When Ellen and her group looked, the girl timidly looked into Ellen’s eyes while saying shyly, “He sees you… too.”
Everett, Jessica, Karla and Simon stared curiously at the girl. Ellen stared curiously at the girl as well, as she asked, “Who’s seeing me?”
The girl made a gesture as if she was listening to an invisible someone next to her before saying shyly, “When you see him—the one who is in New Orleans—he sees you at the same time.” The girl then made another gesture as if she was listening
