All Seeing Eye Read Online Free PDF

had a cascading mass of pale blond hair that reached her narrow hips. She also had a horn. Yeah, a horn. It was planted right on top of her head and protrudingfrom the thick hair. Obviously papier-mâché and not fastened as tightly as it could’ve been, it wobbled precariously when she tilted her head to look at me. “Do you have warts? Huge disgusting warts all over your hands?”
    There in the sweltering heat and stink of roasting mystery meat, sitting cross-legged on the ground, I looked up into round amber eyes and felt my heart stutter with a painful squeeze. It wasn’t love. Hell, she was a kid, barely past the Barbie stage. No, it wasn’t love but a surge of homesickness so strong that the card in my hand bent double before falling to the velvet. I’d seen the look in her eye before. Curiosity, impatience, troublemaking through and through, she would’ve skipped hand-in-hand with Tess and Glory … perfect synch. She was older but had the same spirit, the same “Look at me, world. Just look how amazing I am.” It would’ve been annoying if it hadn’t been true.
    I let my eyes drop and swallowed against the strangling heat in my throat. God, I missed them. “No.” I cleared my throat, and the next words came out a little more smoothly. “It’s hair. All over my palm, just like Granny said would happen.”
    She scowled, pale eyebrows pulling into a confused V. “Huh?”
    “Never mind.” I picked up the card and tried to straighten it out. “I just like gloves, okay?”
    A pink shoe and gloves. One led to the other.
    The shoe had been the first time. I’d picked it upand known … just like that. I’d seen Tessie’s strawberry blond hair floating in a cloud, her blue eyes wide and empty, her mouth open just wide enough to show a flash of tiny white teeth. Tess was dead. Tossed into the old well as if she were garbage. Everything in her that made Tess Tess was gone. The fits of giggles, the smell of ninety-nine-cent honeysuckle shampoo, the absolute loathing of Brussels sprouts, and the forever love for her shiny pink shoes. All of it, gone forever. There was no more Tess, and it didn’t take any big jump of logic to know who was responsible for that. Chicken pox, Boyd playing babysitter, Boyd who would get bored easily, Boyd who drank until it was coming out of his pores, Boyd who’d thought Mom was a little too old when he married her at seventeen … so many thoughts in such a short moment of time as her shoe had tumbled from my hand.
    So very many.
    It had slowly gotten worse since that first time. In the beginning, I could touch something and see only a flash, a current slice of time. Hand me someone’s keys, and I could tell you where they were right then, but that was all. That changed. Little by little, I would see more of the past, until eventually I saw it all. I’d never much cared for history in school, and here I was condemned to relive it constantly. Wasn’t that a bitch? The past was all I saw, though, and I was glad of it. The future … who would want to see that? Unless you could change it,and it was safe to say with the way things worked, that wasn’t possible. Forget physics and math and all that geek crap, that wasn’t what would stop you. It was the universe, uncaring and oblivious, that was holding the cards on this one. It wasn’t about to let you change the shit coming your way.
    “I want a pair of gloves,” the girl said imperiously. Quite the princess, this one was. She held out her hands in front of her, palms down, and looked them over seriously. “White, I think. With diamonds. Real ones,” she emphasized. “To match my costume.”
    I gave a snort. “Sorry, kid. I’m all out of diamonds.” Picking up the stray card, I shuffled it back into the pack.
    She gave an exaggerated sigh and flopped down opposite me, skinny legs folded beneath her. “That’s okay. They’d be too hot, anyway. My name’s Abigail.” Sticking out her nonexistent chest, she fluffed