Oracle's Moon

2

Grace dreamed she was running along a dark paved road. The night was full of shadows, the new moon hidden from the naked eye. The full moon at its zenith was a witch’s moon, a time for incantations and Power. The new moon at its darkest was the Oracle’s moon, a time when the veil between all the worlds and all the times thinned. A brilliant spray of stars like Djinns’ eyes pierced the dark purple sky, and the wind whispered secrets to the shadowed, swaying trees.

Her running shoes slapped the ground rhythmically. They struck a pagan tempo for the song in her coursing blood. She loved how her body felt, sleek and strong as it moved along the paved road. Perfect. She felt perfect.

A gigantic black panther ran along beside her. His broad shoulder was as high as hers, and his long, powerful body ate the distance with effortless, fluid grace. As soon as she became aware of him, the panther turned his head and looked at her with diamond eyes that were as piercing and shining as the stars. Shocked, she jerked and stumbled.…

And she slipped into another dream. This time she climbed the side of a steep rocky bluff. She had to use her hands, and the burn in her muscles felt good. The sun was perched high in the sky and beat down on her head, and she dripped with sweat.

An immense black dog climbed at her side. He was easily twice the size of a mastiff, all muscle and power, yet he climbed up the side of the bluff with impossible agility. As she stared, he turned to look at her with radiant diamond eyes that startled her so badly, she lost her grip on the rocks.

Gravity yanked. She fell, and the ground hurtled toward her.

She woke with a start, her heart hammering. Her clothes were clammy with sweat. The sun had shifted, and she was alone in the living room. The television was off. So many things were not right with the scene, but before she had a chance to panic, she heard Max and Chloe giggling in their bedroom.

“I want you to be a doggie now,” Chloe said.

A male voice said, “But at the moment I am a cat.”

Grace knew that voice. She had only heard it for a brief time, but she would never forget it. It was the voice of the Bane of Her Existence. It sounded deep and clear, with a kind of purity that somehow hurt the heart, and it held the power of a cyclone.

It belonged to a creature whose whirlwind arrival on her doorstep had heralded confrontation and violence.

And the killing.

And it was visiting with her kids.

She was off the couch and moving down the hall before she fully knew what she was doing.

Chloe said, “I want to ride the doggie!”

“I believe what you want would then be called a horse,” said the Bane.

Max shrieked, a happy sound that escalated so high it could shatter glass.

Sharp pain shot up her leg. Just as it threatened to give out from underneath her, she reached the children’s bedroom and grabbed on to the doorway as she looked inside.

Max stood in his crib. He couldn’t walk on his own yet, but he could stand when he held on to something. The single wisp of dark brown hair at the top of his head waved as he bobbed up and down. He was grinning from ear to ear and watching Chloe, who sat on the floor along with a black cat, who sat in front of her.

The cat had to be the Bane of Her Existence. The Djinn. Khalil Somebody Important. Visually, it looked like a normal, fairly large cat, perhaps twenty pounds or so, but to her mind’s eye, it felt immense with a shadowy, hazardous Power.

The cat said, “For something so small, you emit a great deal of noise.”

Chloe grabbed the cat’s tail and yanked on it. “Doggie!” Chloe shrieked. “Doggie! Doggie!”

“That is my tail,” the cat remarked. The little girl stabbed at his furred face with a plump finger. “Now you have discovered one of my eyes. Oh look, you have discovered the other one. I think you have awakened your aunt. I told you we should be quiet.”

The trio turned to look at her as she stood frozen. Two delighted children and what appeared to be a normal black cat but was instead an alien, enormously Powerful, infinitely dangerous creature.

“Look, Gracie!” said Chloe. “It’s the doggie-cat! You said we can keep him.”

The cat’s strange, wrong eyes narrowed. “Did you?” he said. His triangular face looked distinctly unfriendly, whiskers held awry. “That wasn’t what you told me earlier.”

Grace lunged forward to snatch up the cat, and he allowed it. His body hung boneless from her grip just like a real cat would. “I had no idea you meant this doggie-cat, Chloe,” she said, her voice hoarse. “That changes everything.”

“Which other doggie-cat could she possibly have meant?” said the cat. “You don’t exactly have a plethora of them hanging around.”

Grace growled to Chloe, “Stay here.”

Chloe pushed to her feet and whined, “But I want to play with him.”

Grace looked at the little girl. “I said stay here, young lady.”

Something in Grace’s expression must have made it clear she meant business, because Chloe kicked her toys on the floor. “You never let me do anything fun. I’m never going to live here again.”

“Fine,” Grace said between her teeth. “Just do as you’re told.”

She limped out of the bedroom. Max gave a wordless yell, clearly displeased at recent events. Chloe shouted, “Horrible! He’s MY doggie-cat! I found him first. You’re not fair! I hate everything and everybody!”

Grace hissed at him. “Thank you. Thank you so much for that. There are so many things wrong with what just happened. What the hell is the matter with you, anyway? Have you got no sense?”

“You are every bit as impudent and disrespectful as you were earlier this morning,” he said in a cold voice.

The cat grew as she walked down the hall, until suddenly she held on to a weight that was much too heavy for her to carry. She dropped him, and he continued to grow until he became the massive black panther from her dream. A thrill of shock iced her skin. Her gaze slid sideways to look at the impossible behemoth slinking along beside her. He was the size of a large pony, yet he still seemed small compared to what her mind insisted was the immensity of his true presence.

She would not give in to what she was feeling. She would not.

“Stop it,” she snapped.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the monstrous feline. He turned his head to look at her with bizarre eyes that sparkled with malice.

They reached the living room. Grace rounded on him. She used her fury to propel her forward. She shoved at the giant creature. It was like trying to push a mountain. She shoved at him again. “You’re trying to intimidate me. Well, guess what, asshole? It isn’t going to work. This is my home. Those two kids are my niece and nephew. And I did not give you permission to spend time with them. You are trespassing, and it is not okay.”

The giant panther morphed into the upright figure of an angry man, and finally she came face-to-face with the Djinn she had met when he and his two companions had knocked on her door.

The form he wore this time was tall, somewhere close to six and a half feet. Long, raven black hair was pulled back from an elegant, pale face. That face had all the same things that a human face had, two eyes, a nose and a mouth. It was even lean-jawed and handsome, yet somehow it was clearly not a human face. His strange eyes were the same in every form he chose to wear, crystalline and diamondlike. He had a lean, graceful frame that matched his face, and he wore a simple black tunic and trousers, and a fierce, regal pride.

This, as much as anything, was his real physical form. At least it was his go-to form. At his essence, he was a spirit of magic and fire. No physical form could contain him in his entirety. His Power filled the house.

My gods, there’s so much of him, she thought as she stared up at his sparkling, angry eyes. What a calamity he is. Standing in front of him, she felt absurdly young, very small and stupidly, excessively fascinated.

“I offer you a gift beyond price, you foolish creature,” he said between his teeth. “And you throw it back in my face.”

“What do you think you’re offering me?” she asked. “I wake up and I find you with my kids in their bedroom. And I’ll say this again: without my permission. Do you realize how offensive that is? Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s something Djinn would do all the time. You know what, I don’t care. And I’m not even going to get into all the wrong lessons you were teaching them. Wait a minute, yes, I am. You were a talking cat with children who are much too young to differentiate between that and reality.”

His eyes narrowed. “What nonsense are you spouting, human?”

“What do you think is going to happen the next time Chloe sees a black cat?” Grace demanded. “Do you think she’s going to say to herself, oh this is not like the freaky black cat that talks to me and lets me yank its tail and poke it in the eye? No. Do you know what she’s going to try to do? She’s going to try to talk to it and pull its tail and maybe poke it in the eye. And you know what that cat is going to do—because it’s a real goddamn cat? It’s going to scratch her. It might bite her. Cat bites are filthy things. Usually the puncture wounds go deep, and they get infected. And then suddenly, I’ll be taking a confused, crying four-year-old girl to the ER for a three-hundred-dollar doctor’s visit to get antibiotics, all because of your ignorant arrogance!”

He regarded her with a supercilious expression. “Do all your thoughts proceed in such a fashion?”

“What are you talking about?” Grace blinked, thrown off balance. “Do my thoughts proceed where?”

He gestured with a long hand. He made it look impossibly graceful. “To conclusions of disaster, of course. No doubt there will also be brain-eating parasites in the cat bite, or perhaps a troop of rabid monkeys will escape from a nearby zoo and cut a path directly for your house.”

She stared. “You think I’m making this stuff up? That cat bite happened to me when I was little. I have the scars to prove it. Do you know what I caught Chloe trying to do yesterday? She was climbing on top of the kitchen table. She thought she could jump off and fly like Clark Kent, because we had just watched an old movie rerun with Christopher Reeve, and if Superman could fly, she thought she might be able to too. Maybe she wouldn’t have broken her leg if I hadn’t caught her, but she probably would have hurt herself somehow.”

The curve of his elegant mouth turned cruel. He looked around the living room, his gaze cold and judgmental. “How unfortunate then for your children that you choose to nap in the daytime instead of watching out for them the way you should.”

She flinched as if she’d been slapped, and she looked around the living room too. Her textbooks were stacked on the coffee table. Toys littered the floor. A basket of unfolded laundry sat on the floor by the armchair. Chloe had spilled some of her pretzels on the area rug in the living room then walked over them. Crumbs were everywhere.

Grace thought of the tangle at the back of Chloe’s head that she still hadn’t brushed out. Embarrassment and fury clogged her throat so that she couldn’t speak. After a moment she managed to whisper between clenched teeth, “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no real understanding of me, my kids, or any of the issues we face. That lack of understanding alone makes you dangerous to us.”

“How dare you?” He thrust his angry face close. “I would never cause harm to a child. The whole reason I stayed was to protect them!”

His rage curled around her, manifesting as black smoke. She felt as though she stared into an inferno.

She would not flinch. She would not.

There was simply no point in trying to reason with him. They were too different from each other, and he was too arrogant to listen to anything she said. She dug down deep and found enough composure to say, “I get that you don’t mean us any harm. Thank you for staying this morning to make sure Chloe and Max were protected. If you don’t wish to petition for a consultation with the Oracle, I’m telling you now to leave my house.”

He scowled and opened his mouth, clearly intending a scorching reply, but a small, sad voice beat him to it. Chloe said, “No more fighting. Don’t be mad anymore, okay?”

Khalil’s diamond gaze flickered. He looked down, as Grace did, at Chloe’s worried face. Then Grace witnessed a remarkable thing, as his elegant, malicious expression gentled. He went down on one knee so that he could come face-to-face with Chloe. The girl regarded him gravely. Something in Grace’s chest twisted. He was so enormous, and Chloe so tiny.

“I will not be mad anymore,” Khalil said. He did something to throttle back the Power in his voice and spoke quietly.

“Promise?” Chloe asked.

His gaze slid sideways and up at Grace. He looked sour. Wow, Grace thought on a sudden spurt of hysteria, he really doesn’t want to give up on his grudge. But he wasn’t talking to Grace any longer. She raised her eyebrows and nodded toward Chloe, telling him with the silent gesture, you’re answering to her, not to me.

His strange, unfriendly gaze pledged something to her, but she didn’t know how to read unspoken Djinn messages. With an air of decision, Khalil turned to Chloe. He said, “Yes, we both promise.”

Wait, what? Grace straightened. She hadn’t given him permission to speak for her.

“We will not fight anymore,” he continued. “It is too upsetting for small people.”

Chloe said strongly, “It’s upsetting for big girls too.”

“Indeed,” said Khalil. He held out his hand and Chloe put hers into it.

Chloe was so small, Grace thought, biting her lip. So fragile, so precious. Grace held herself so tensely her muscles were starting to ache again.

He brought the girl’s fingers to his lips and kissed them. Then he let her go and straightened to his full height before he vanished.

Grace stared at Chloe, looking for some kind of reaction to his sudden disappearance. Other than wiggling the fingers Khalil had kissed and looking intensely thoughtful, the little girl didn’t appear to have much of one. Maybe Chloe was concentrating on trying to disappear too, and she was discovering that she couldn’t do that either.

Max shouted angrily from the bedroom. Normally good-natured, he’d apparently had quite enough of being left out.

Grace sighed and went down the hall to collect the little man. Chloe had eaten her pretzels snack, but Grace and Max had missed out on lunch. He had to be starving. She knew she was. She changed Max’s diaper and tickled him until his bad mood vanished, and he kicked and giggled. Then she settled him on the hip on her good side and turned to Chloe, who had followed her into the bedroom to watch.

“Think it’s about time we had some supper?” she asked.

Chloe gave that proposal due consideration. “Indeed.”

Grace fixed macaroni and cheese for supper. Chloe liked macaroni and cheese. Janice said Chloe had only picked at her breakfast, and the only other thing she’d had to eat that day were the pretzels.

Chloe liked applesauce too, and so did Max. What the hell, Grace thought. Let’s get wild and crazy, and switch things up. We’ll have applesauce tonight instead of a vegetable.

A bout of trembling hit as she pulled a jar of applesauce from the fridge. She left the jar on the counter and sat at the table while her limbs shook as though she had a fever.

In the living room, Chloe danced and sang while she watched a Disney DVD. Grace couldn’t remember the name of the movie. It was another story about a spunky princess with a requisite sidekick. Max sat quietly in the middle of the kitchen floor, happy to chew on a soft plastic baby book. Grace rubbed her forehead as she watched him. Apparently she was going to have her reaction before the kids went to bed, whether she liked it or not.

The killing.

For her, the events that led up to the Djinn’s arrival, and then to the killing, all began with Max’s ear infection. He had started to act cranky yesterday, which was enough of a change from his normal, happy personality that she took note and began to watch him closely.

He had worsened until he was up half the night, feverish and crying, until a strange and extremely dangerous trio came knocking on their front door.

If there had ever been a time when she had not wanted to answer the door, it had been at three thirty that morning. She had been walking the floor with a crying Max and trying not to pull her hair out. Unused to handling such crises, she didn’t know if she should tough out the night and take him to his regular pediatrician in the morning, or if she should wake Chloe up and take him right away to an urgent care facility.

But whether it was convenient for her or not, she had to answer the door. Her newly inherited position as the Oracle of Louisville demanded it.

Grace, Chloe and Max lived in the sprawling, old farmhouse where Grace had grown up. The house had been in the Andreas family ever since they had come to the States. It sat on a five-acre stretch of land that bordered the Ohio River. By inter-demesne law, the entire property was supposed to be a place of sanctuary for all who came to consult with the Oracle, and the Oracle had the obligation to welcome all petitioners.

But the Oracle should have been either Grace’s grandmother or her sister, Petra. Grace had never really believed that the Power would pass to her. Ever since the accident, she had been close to chucking away an ancient family heritage that had spanned thousands of years, but she’d held on to the impulse so far.

Barely.

So when the knock came in the middle of the night, Grace opened the door. She found Carling Severan, Rune Ainissesthai, and Khalil standing on her doorstep. Carling was one of the most Powerful witches in the world, a Vampyre, and she had once been Queen of the Nightkind. She was also newly retired from her most recent role as Councillor on the Elder tribunal. Her partner, Rune, was not just any Wyr. He was a gryphon, and he had been First sentinel for the Wyr demesne, although he too had just recently retired.

Then there was their companion, the Djinn. Khalil Somebody Important.

It almost sounded like the setup of a classic joke. Do you know what happens when a Vampyre, a Wyr and a Djinn walk into your house…? Only Grace found out that the punch line wasn’t funny.

Max’s illness was one of the reasons why she had tried so hard to persuade Carling, Rune and Khalil to come back at a more reasonable hour, but they couldn’t be dissuaded. At least Carling had healed Max’s ear infection before formally petitioning to speak to the Oracle.

Thankfully, nighttime petitions to consult the Oracle were rare. When they did occur, they tended to involve matters of some urgency. Such was the case with Carling and Rune. Rune had been wounded, and apparently their mission was urgent, and shit just sometimes happened.

The shit that had happened this morning just before daybreak had been big and bad enough to attract some of the most Powerful creatures on the North American continent. All but one of the seven Elder tribunal Councillors had converged in a tense confrontation with Carling and Rune. Two of the seven demesne rulers—Dragos Cuelebre, dragon and Lord of the Wyr from New York, and Julian Regillus, Vampyre King of the Nightkind demesne from San Francisco—had also been present.

Catching sight of the dragon that had filled up the back meadow before he shapeshifted into his human form—now that had been a helluva kick in the head.

Nothing Grace had ever seen on television or in movies or in her own imagination could have prepared her for the sight of the dragon in real life.

She had already been struggling. She’d had the sleepless night with Max. Then she summoned the Power of the Oracle in an intense session with Carling and Rune that had left her with a blackout of blank time in her head. And to top it all off, Rune had shoved Carling—he had meant to get her out of danger, but Grace had been in the way. Carling had fallen into her, and Grace had been knocked on her ass hard enough to jar her whole body.

And things kept going from weird to worse, like some sort of high-speed hallucinogenic car chase. Picking herself up after the fall, Grace had watched from one side, largely unnoticed, as the scene unfolded.

She hadn’t understood everything the group discussed. For some reason, Carling was under a death sentence. Then the Elder tribunal decided to put her in quarantine instead. Except Grace was pretty sure Carling didn’t have anything contagious. Where the tribunal would hold Carling was also under some debate. Grace couldn’t figure out if the tribunal meant to put Carling in a hospital or a jail.

To complicate things, Rune had also taken Carling as his mate and refused to be separated from her. They couldn’t go to the Nightkind demesne—there was some kind of bad feeling between Carling and her progeny Julian, the King—and nobody liked the idea of the pair going to the Wyr demesne.

Meanwhile, image upon fantastic image careened by in front of Grace’s astonished gaze.

The Councillor from the Elven demesne, standing tall and shining and ageless. Holy crap, that woman had been riveting. The Djinn Soren, Demonkind Councillor and head of the Elder tribunal, with white hair and stars for eyes, whose Power was a tower of flame so intense it burned her mind. The trio of Vampyres: the Nightkind King with his pleasant-faced companion, Xavier del Torro, who was so notorious even Grace had heard of him, and the blonde woman with them who had pulled a sword on Carling while in sanctuary. That single act confirmed everything Grace had ever known, that the laws protecting the Oracle, her petitioners and her land were simply not enough.

Then the strangest thing of all happened. Everything around her slipped a groove. If reality was an old 45 vinyl record playing on a turntable, the needle had jumped, skipping an important part of the song.

And suddenly Rune shapeshifted into something monstrous. He killed the blonde Vampyre, who disintegrated into dust and blew away on an early morning breeze.

Grace had thought the group had argued a lot before, but that was nothing compared to what came next. She was reeling from exhaustion and shock but glued in place, because what those deadly, immortal Power brokers decided mattered a whole hell of a lot to her.

When at last the Demonkind Councillor turned to her and asked for her opinion, she was all too happy to give it. She knew she hadn’t seen everything that had happened, nor had she understood all of the arguing, but she saw one thing clearly enough, and she knew how she felt about that.

The Vampyre woman had drawn a sword on her land. As far as Grace was concerned, whatever Rune had done after that point was only what the woman deserved. Grace would have killed the woman herself if she’d had the opportunity.

Once she had said her piece, the whole thing had been over.

To a young, inexperienced human Oracle, the morning had been extraordinary, dangerous, confusing and terrifying. And she hadn’t had a chance to talk it out with anyone or process what had happened. The events kept swirling in her mind like a funnel cloud.

The fact that Grace hadn’t had to kill the woman in self-defense was beside the point. The early morning’s violence hadn’t even been directed at her, but witnessing it had changed everything. Grace’s quiet home and her small life had been indelibly marked.

Her world had already been shaken to its foundations these last four months. Now she felt like she and the children lived in an unimaginably fragile house of glass, and she did not know how she could stand for them to stay there.

At least all the covens in the witches’ demesne recognized what an unmanageable position Grace had been in ever since the accident. It was impossible to meet the obligations and uphold the traditions of the Oracle’s position while also acting as a single parent.

At the instigation of Isalynn LeFevre, the Head of the witches’ demesne, a roster had been developed of witches who were on call to babysit whenever Grace was petitioned to act in her new role as the Oracle. The witches donated their time as part of their tithe of community service. The tithe was required of all actively practicing witches in the demesne, but sometimes the help they gave Grace was grudging. In any case, the babysitting roster was only a stopgap solution. It didn’t solve any of her larger problems.

Or alter the fact that something, somehow, had to change.

It had to, because continuing like this was inconceivable.

The oven timer dinged. The pasta was done.

Grace stood and fed the children supper.