Perilous Waters by Diana Paz Page A

around the dim basement. Each of the candle flames remained utterly still. She remembered the first time the three of them had trained down here. With time frozen, Kaitlyn had reached out to a flame, curious about whether it still burned. It didn’t. The sliver of red and yellow had felt like nothing… no substance whatsoever. Like the rest of the world when time was frozen, there was no warmth or coolness, no real scent to the air. It was a paper world; a stage with props and frozen actors.
    Julia began withdrawing her hands, but Angie stopped her. “We need to look through the threads of time, remember? I had a vision about where we’re going next.”
    Kaitlyn took a deep breath. “All right,” she murmured, drawing in magic from the other two… mainly from Angie, since she poured her magic into Kaitlyn as if she would never run out.
    The additional magic seeped into Kaitlyn’s body, soaking her essence and filling her with heat and power. The threads of time took a lot of energy to sustain, so she waited until she was sure she would have enough magic to let them look through the threads without having to stop.
    “Anytime now,” Julia mocked.
    “Shut up,” Kaitlyn hissed. “This is hard enough without you being yourself.”
    Julia’s mouth opened, about to say something, but Kaitlyn shut her up with a blanket of threads. The long, endlessly entwined strands formed a pale rainbow. Shifting iridescence lit up their faces as the threads moved and breathed in front of them.
    All of Kaitlyn’s focus centered on the threads. Soon she couldn’t see the other girls or the room, or even her own hands.
    “Look for the brightest threads,” Angie said, her voice a silvery echo.
    Kaitlyn searched through the shifting colors. The future spread infinitely across the world in a chaos of possibilities. And yet, some futures shone brighter than others. Kaitlyn reached for one, following it into a vision of the future.
    An island. A lush forest… a waterfall… an endless beach with white-crested waves rolling onto the sand. It looked like the Bahamas, and for a moment Kaitlyn half expected to see the resort she and her family stayed at when they vacationed.
    The vision angled back. She and the others emerged from the dark line of trees. They seemed out of breath, and they wore big dresses—not as poofy and frilly as the ones they had worn in France, but definitely something from the past.
    Why were they so scared? She watched as Julia looked behind her and seemed to scream. Angie took her hand and tugged her forward. The three of them argued over something… then a group of men stormed out of the jungle.
    Beside her, the real-world Julia said something. Kaitlyn tried to ignore whatever Julia was talking about. They weren’t in the same vision, and she needed to find out what was going on in hers.
    “No, no, no,” Julia mumbled. “He can’t be… I don’t understand.”
    “Shut. Up,” Kaitlyn ground out, nearly losing her hold on the vision.
    “I can’t help it,” Julia said. “It’s Brian. Something terrible might happen to him.”
    Kaitlyn focused on her own thread. The men attacking them had swords. Jewels covered their filthy bodies. Most of them wore hats and mismatched clothes.
    “Pirates,” she whispered, nearly losing the threads of time again as the realization hit her.
    “That’s what I’ve been seeing,” Angie said. “But pirates like this roved the world for centuries. Try to look for something that identifies a date or a place.”
    Kaitlyn watched in macabre fascination as the pirates bore down on the three of them. If only she could hear, but the threads of time filtered through images of the future, not sounds. She watched the three of them blast the pirates back, but there were so many of them. Even just watching, she could see that their magic would give out before they were able to defeat them.
    “A little help, guys?” Julia asked. “I think this sign is in Spanish… what does