Oracle's Moon

7

Figuring out which bills to pay was a bit of a joke.

Grace put Max down for a morning nap, started a load of the never-ending pile of laundry and built Chloe a “castle” in the living room with a sheet spread over the back of the armchair and across one of the straight-backed chairs she brought in from the kitchen.

While Chloe played happily in her castle with Lala Whoopsie and several stuffed animals, Grace looked through the bills twice. She came up with the same answer both times. Keep the water, electric and phone bills paid. All the medical bills got stacked on top of a neat, growing pile. She put student loan deferment notices in another pile. Each one was like the ticking of a time bomb that would eventually blow up in her face. Then, her stomach in a clench, she spent a half hour calling around to bankruptcy lawyers. Fun times.

She folded laundry, looked through her unfinished senior history project and set it down again, fed the children lunch and found the note in her purse about calling Katherine to set up a time when Joey and Rachel could come over for a playdate. Feeling guilty about asking Katherine to babysit yet again, Grace picked up the phone and stepped into the kitchen so Chloe couldn’t hear the conversation. No point in getting Chloe excited if Katherine couldn’t take them. She hit Katherine’s number on speed dial.

Katherine picked up on the third ring. “Gotta love caller ID,” she said. “Hi, Grace, how are you doing?”

Grace could hear the cheerful shouts of children in the background. She said, “Hi, Katherine, we’re doing all right. I know you’re working, so I want to keep this brief. Is there any chance you could take Chloe and Max on Saturday? The second quarterly work day is coming up, and last time I had a hard time keeping track of them while I dealt with everybody’s questions about what needed to be done.”

“Of course,” said Katherine immediately. “You know how much I love them. Why don’t they spend the night as well? That way you can just crash when everybody leaves.”

Grace felt a rush of love for the older woman. Katherine had grieved almost as hard as she had at Petra’s death. Katherine was always willing to help out in any way she could, while Grace’s friends had drifted away after the accident. Grace tried not to take it personally. Her friends were as young as she was, and when Grace had taken on the children, she had been catapulted into a completely different reality from theirs. Still, the lack of connection with her old friends felt like an abandonment.

“That’s so good of you,” Grace said to Katherine, her voice thick with emotion. She would pack up the serving platters and give them to Katherine as a thank-you, and if Grace had to explain how she got them, so be it. “I wanted to ask you about something else too. I’m looking to trade Chloe’s toddler bed to someone for a twin-sized one. Would you be willing to tell the parents of your daycare kids, to see if any of them might be interested?”

“Be delighted to,” said Katherine. “I’m sure we’ll find someone who’ll be happy to trade.”

“Great, thanks so much,” Grace said. “Can I bring the kids over at eight? The work day is supposed to start at nine, and that will give me time to get ready.”

“You bet.”

Grace ended the call quickly and turned her attention to other things. She washed the lunch dishes. Their stack of library books were due in a few days. She bagged and set them by the front door. Then she put the kids down for an afternoon nap. That sent Chloe into another meltdown, and when things finally quieted down, Grace did her physical therapy exercises. After that she worked on her resume. She had two versions going. One of them listed her actual college credits. The other was a resume built on hope and included the bachelor’s degree she had not yet earned. Louisville was still hurting from the long recession. Jobs were hard to find, and she had to make her resumes look as good as she could.

Something had to give, somehow, sometime. The law of averages said it had to. Meanwhile, Grace felt like she had been locked in a pressure cooker and set on a burner that was turned on high. It wasn’t going to be a pretty sight when that pressure cooker exploded.

She hit another wall, staggered to the couch, and a black hole sucked her down again. She slept hard, and when she woke a half hour later, the house was still silent. When she checked on the children, she found both still sleeping.

My goodness. Could she actually grab some time for herself?

She went to the kitchen and used the leftover coffee from that morning to make herself a glass of iced coffee, then she sat to stare blankly at the clean table.

She wondered what her high school friend Jacqui was doing this summer. The last time they had talked, Grace had just gotten home from the hospital. Jacqui had stopped by the house to say hi. The visit was awkward. Grace watched as Jacqui looked everywhere in the living room except at Chloe and Max, who were playing on the floor. Jacqui said she couldn’t stay long because she had to study for a test the next day, then she looked stricken. After that, they had exchanged a couple of e-mails. Then silence. Grace wondered if Jacqui was even still in the area or if she had gotten a job somewhere else after graduation.

The ghosts were silent. Nothing moved, either in the house or outside. The summer heat blanketed the land like a lover.

She didn’t want to have quiet time to herself. She didn’t want to think about that terrible vision, not when she was alone. She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around herself and huddled in her chair.

This time when Khalil appeared, he did so gently. His presence curled into the kitchen like a tendril of soft breeze. Her heart leaped, but not from irritation. She opened her eyes and turned in her chair and tried not to show how glad she was that he had come.

Khalil wore black, and once again his long raven hair was pulled back. The afternoon sun slanting through the kitchen window touched his ivory features with gold. His regal face was grave, contemplative. For a moment he looked like a sculpture created by one of the masters, his impossibly graceful form freed forever from priceless marble by Michelangelo’s genius.

She cleared her throat. “I thought you were coming tonight.”

He walked toward her, pulled out a chair and sat down. “You said to come when the children were asleep. They are. You have also rested.”

Just as before, he filled the entire house with his presence. She took a deep breath and let go of the tension that had built up between her shoulder blades throughout the day. She asked, “How did you know I rested?”

“I checked in earlier. You were asleep on the couch.” His too-keen diamond gaze focused on her face.

She nodded and looked away, feeling awkward under his scrutiny. She could waste time feeling strange about him looking in the house when she was asleep, but that seemed like a little too much, too late, when he’d already shown he didn’t have human sensibilities or boundaries.

What should she say or do now? Her social skills were not the most refined at the best of times, and she had no idea how to behave with him if they weren’t sniping at each other. She noticed her glass of iced coffee, sweating rivulets of moisture in the heat of the day, and she started to rise to her feet. “I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?”

His hand came around her bicep. She looked sideways at the long ivory fingers curled around her arm as he eased her back down into her chair. “I do not require refreshment,” he said. “We must discuss what happened this morning.”

She nodded again. He had not removed his hand from her arm, and she decided not to remind him of that. His grip felt heavy and reassuring. She noticed again how hot his touch was, as if his presence was a fire his skin barely contained. With her free hand, she touched her cold, sweating glass then took a quick swallow.

She said, “I’m scared to look at it too closely.”

“Do not be frightened,” Khalil said quietly. “You and the children will be safe. I have said so.”

At that, she turned to face him and met his crystalline gaze.

Those ageless, inhuman eyes held such piercing clarity, when she looked into them she felt as if she fell into forever. She couldn’t look away, and he didn’t. With the whole of her attention on him, she felt her own energy settle into alignment with his, and it was an entirely new experience that felt right somehow, comforting and good. It held a completeness she had never known before, his maleness to her femaleness, his Power touching the Oracle’s Power that resided inside her, along with her own, unique Power of the spirit. She felt enfolded, warmed, almost as if he had physically reached out to put his arms around her. A strange expression flickered across his face. He frowned slightly, tilting his head as he stared at her.

Up this close, the shining flame of his own Power was fierce and inexhaustible, a pure, unceasing roar that was…

It was sexy. Not just a little sexy. Awesome, kick-in-the-head sexy.

For the first time in months, she felt a pulse of arousal.

What?

Shocked and disconcerted, she pulled away. His hand fell from her arm. Breathing unevenly, she sat in a rigid, upright position and stared straight ahead. She could feel the blood rush to her cheeks.

His fiercely male presence filled the house, just as it had last night.

And he was no longer entirely indifferent to her.

“Now you have interested me,” murmured Khalil.

“I have no idea what you are talking”—she could barely squeeze enough air out of her lungs to get the words out—“about.”

He chuckled, and the husky sound was even more dangerous than that from the night before. It shivered along her exposed nerve endings with as much sensuality as if he had trailed his fingers along her bare skin. “I think I might like it when you lie,” he said. “It makes my truthsense feel so superior.”

She tried to glare at him but was afraid she might have just ended up looking panicked and confused. Outrage, where was her outrage when she needed it? “Of course superiority would matter to you.” Her attempt at scoffing came out more like a squeak, and she had a sudden impulse to get her sheet from the futon and pull it over her head.

She never saw him move. Suddenly he was bending over her from behind. He whispered in her ear, “You know, our truth game is still open, and it’s my turn to ask a question.”

She started shaking her head then her whole body decided to join in, as she shivered. They were supposed to be talking about something scary, but there were so many scary things in her life right now, she had lost track. What were they supposed to be talking about again?

“We’re on a new round of questions,” she whispered back, unsteadily. “So it’s only your turn if I don’t end the game.”

“Are you going to end it?” Tiny puffs of air from his words tickled her ear.

She shivered harder. Smart. Dumb. Oh, Damascus. “I–I don’t know.”

He cupped her shoulders. “Are you cold?”

She looked over her shoulder at him, wide-eyed. His eyes shone, and his expression was heavy lidded, languorous and wickedly knowledgeable. This time she didn’t even try to verbalize, but instead shook her head again. She felt as if she had lost contact with gravity and was floating in midair.

Khalil gave her a slow, keen smile. “What are you, then? You’re shivering.”

She fought to get some grounding, to push back. “You’ve just asked three questions, and I’ve answered two of them. No matter how you look at it, it’s my turn now.”

His smile widened into a grin. The look was stunning with his elegant features. He was not just prince of his House. He was also prince of mischief. “I concede,” he said. “It is indeed your turn.”

“I won’t be rushed,” she warned. This time she would be sure to make her question count, if she had to sit down at the computer and write drafts until she got it right.

“Take your time,” he purred. The pure sound licked over her skin. “I am in no hurry.”

Where had the irascible, antagonistic Djinn gone? He had been replaced by one who oozed sensuality and sin. She heard herself blurt out, “Do Djinn even like sex?”

Oh, God, she didn’t just ask him that. Why did she always have to take the dumb route? She squirmed and felt herself flush, not just on her face but all over, so that she could actually feel heat pulsing off her body. She would give anything to hide under her sheet.

If he was stunning before, the expression on his face now turned downright electrifying. “With the right person, we enjoy sex very much,” he said in a gentle, unhurried reply. “We enjoy it in a leisurely fashion, and we devote all of our attention to it. And our lovers crave it.”

Grace felt like she was about to leap out of her skin. He still bent over her as she sat in her chair, and he had braced one hand on the edge of the table. The memory of every boy she had kissed in high school, along with the lovers she had taken in college, burned away under Khalil’s intense, incendiary attention, and all he had done was flirt with her.

What would kissing him be like? Her mind whited out, and she coughed. It sounded suspiciously like a whimper. “Well, okay. I guess I blew that round again, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Did you? I found your choice of topic extremely interesting.”

She shook her head. “I just blurted it out.” Her voice sounded jerky, the words disjointed. “I was going to ask you something really clever and useful.”

He laughed. The deep sound of his mirth filled the room. “We have both been caught using our questions poorly. I have not been so foolish in a long while.”

If she were to choose how she viewed what just happened, she decided she would feel a small, sneaky sense of triumph for goading (coaxing? flirting?) him into the foolishness, because excuse me, at his age, he really should know better. She wasn’t sure that it made up for her own foolishness, and she suspected she had been quite a bit more foolish than he, but she wasn’t too proud to take any victory where she could find one.

And their whole exchange had been too strange, too intense. A strategic escape might be in order. She swiveled around in her chair to face the table again, grabbed her iced coffee and buried her nose in the glass.

Still chuckling, Khalil moved back to the table to take his seat. With her head bent, she took small sips, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He sobered and grew thoughtful. After a bit, she thought it might be safe to put down her drink, but she didn’t let go of it. Talk about foolishness. As if holding a glass of anything would ward off a Djinn who was determined to do something.

Khalil’s gaze darkened. “As much as I have enjoyed teasing you, we still must talk about this morning.”

All thoughts of flirting blew away. Her shoulders sagged even as she nodded. “Yes, of course.”

She put her elbows on the table, her forehead in her hands, and turned her attention to what she had been circling around since it happened, the memory of the voice that tore down the stars.

While she appreciated that Khalil had been trying to reassure her in his own way when he told her not to be frightened, she didn’t think he understood that the vision itself had been terrifying, and she was reluctant to open herself up to the possibility of having another one.

Her hands clenched into fists as she poked at the memory. To her immense relief, it remained distant, disconnected from her.

She hadn’t realized how much she had tensed until Khalil put a flattened hand to her back. He said, “Talk.”

“I’m not getting anything else,” she said. “It’s gone now. The vision definitely came for Cuelebre.”

Khalil said, “The voice mentioned the Great Beast.”

“Whether he wants it or not, it’s his prophecy.” Her forehead crinkled. “Although I think whatever the vision is about, it might be bigger than just Cuelebre. It felt global or elemental in some way. I had a vision of stars being blacked out in the night sky.” The sight was so unnatural, she couldn’t stop another shudder.

His gaze sharpened. “I did not see anything. I only heard the voice. Did you recognize the landscape?”

She shook her head. “No. It might have been symbolic, but I’m not sure. Oracular visions can come in a variety of ways. They can be from the past or from possible futures, or they can be a dreamlike sequence of images that has particular significance to a petitioner. My grandmother and Petra could tell the difference, but I haven’t had enough experience yet. This was only the third time I’ve accessed the Oracle’s Power. My second time was with Carling and Rune.” She gave him a twisted smile. “Both my grandmother and my sister, Petra, said the same thing. The Oracle sees a lot of weird shit. They also said they—we have a kind of built-in defense mechanism that helps us gain distance from the visions after we have them. The visions we see come for other people. We’ve got to let go of them or go crazy. Petra thought that might also be why the Oracle sometimes blacks out. I think I’m starting to understand what she meant.”

“Is it normal that both Cuelebre and I heard it?”

“Yes and no.” She grimaced at him. “Sometimes the Oracle can channel someone who has died for those who are in mourning and who need to say good-bye, and when we prophesy, the Power has its own voice. Several people might hear it, but usually that’s when we’re all together. And usually the Oracle only prophesies from a place deep in the Earth.”

“Why is that?”

“I think part of it is tradition. That’s how things have always been done, so we continue to do it that way. Also, the Power that comes to each Oracle is inherited.” She frowned as she fumbled to explain something she knew so intimately. “Just like anybody else, we each have our own wellspring of Power, talents and affinity to things. My sister was really good at a kind of clairvoyance called farseeing, which is a kind of seeing at a distance but in real time. My talent is an affinity to spirit. I’ve always had it. I have a facility with ghosts and other spirits, and I know when you’re around even when you’re not visible or in physical form. I could also feel the connection you created.”

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “That is quite unusual. I have never heard of another human able to do so.”

“In our family, our talents make us potential Oracles, but the Power of the Oracle itself is an inherited Power.” She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “I knew my sister was dead when I woke up in the hospital, because the Power had come to me. I know this sounds strange, but we never know who will inherit it, except that it always moves from female to female. For example, theoretically it could have moved to Chloe when her mom died, although I’ve never heard of it going to someone so young. But it wouldn’t have gone to Max.”

His eyes narrowed. “So you didn’t have a choice about it coming to you.”

“No,” she said. She felt a sudden impatience and brushed that aside. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s mine now, and it’s up to me to see what I can make of it. Basically what I’m trying to say is most people have one source of Power. I have two sources, the one I was born with and the Oracle’s Power that I inherited earlier this year. That is a very old Power, and it runs deep.”

He watched her face closely. “What do you mean?”

“It’s always present. I can feel it, but it sits just on the edge of my consciousness.” She tried to sift through the lifetime of teachings in her head to distill things for him quickly and easily. “Did you know that human witches often take a patron god or goddess?”

He shook his head.

“Our goddess is Nadir, because she’s the goddess of the depths. There’s one family legend that says Nadir gave us the Power of the Oracle. There’s another that says it came from someone else, another god or Powerful creature. Whatever the truth of that is, the original temple at Delphi was in a cavern below ground, and we have a small cave system here on the land. When someone petitions to speak to the Oracle, that’s where we take them. Going there helps us to reach down into that deep part of us, so we can access the Power.” She thrust her fingers through her hair again. She muttered, “I’m giving you too much information.”

“Do not trouble yourself about that,” he said. He was still frowning. “So this Power might leap from you to Chloe.”

She shook her head grimly. “Not while I’m alive,” she said. “When I die, it will pass on to another female in the family. That may be Chloe. She’s the only other living female relative that I have right now. Or maybe by then we’ll have more family, if Chloe and Max grow up to have kids.”

“And what happened this morning was different from how the Power usually manifests?” he asked.

“Well, I’m no expert,” she said. “But yes, it was different from anything I’ve experienced or anything Petra or my grandmother talked about. What happened this morning came out in full daylight. I was taught that we have to reach for the Power, to call it up, but this morning it just spilled out. I don’t know if that was because Cuelebre’s presence triggered it, if the vision was urgent, or if it had something to do with me and how I connect to the Power. I’m just grateful Chloe and Max didn’t know what was happening.”

He pressed his palm against her back, almost as if he would press strength and calm into her body by willing it to happen. “Did the voice take you over?”

She lifted up her head to frown at him. He was watching her closely. She fumbled for words. “It was more like I tuned into a radio frequency, and the voice came through on that channel. I don’t know how else to explain it. It couldn’t have been physical, or the children would have heard it too. Right?”

He nodded, frowning as well. The brilliance of his gaze was muted into shadowed diamond sparkles. “Your radio frequency analogy is a good one. I heard it like telepathy, but it felt on a different level somehow than normal telepathy.”

“Chloe’s telepathic,” Grace told him, her throat constricting. “She isn’t very good at it yet. Most human children develop the ability after they develop physical speech patterns. Petra always used to say it was nature’s way of protecting young parents. Just think what it would be like to have a telepathic two-year-old having a screaming tantrum in your head.”

He gave her a small smile. It faded almost at once. “If you feel something like that vision coming again, you call me immediately. Pull hard at the connection, and I will know your need is urgent.”

She nodded. She didn’t see how she had any choice. As fast as the earlier vision had taken her over, he was the only entity she knew who could get here quickly enough to make some kind of difference. “I can’t lose control like that and leave the children unsupervised. You saw what happened with Chloe and the milk. If I pull really hard, when you come, look after the kids, do you hear? Make sure they’re safe.”

His expression turned fierce. “I have promised both you and the children protection, and you will all have it.”

Her eyes grew moist. She wouldn’t thank him again. She had thanked him enough, and anyway, he didn’t like it. Instead she leaned back against his hand.

He tilted his head as he studied her. “You are doing all this on your own, while looking after the children.”

She lifted one shoulder. “Not quite. Petra’s best friend, Katherine, kept the kids until I got out of the hospital and could bring them home. Remember Janice from yesterday morning, the one who babysat when I spoke with Carling and Rune? Janice belongs to a roster of witches who are on call to babysit whenever someone petitions to speak to the Oracle. They do it as part of their community tithe. More people are coming on Saturday to put in a quarterly work day. They’ll beat back the worst of the weeds and mow.”

She braced herself for another one of his contemptuous looks. That had stung when she didn’t even like him very much. Maybe she did like him after all, now that she had gotten to know him better. Now his disdain would hurt worse than a sting.

But he didn’t look contemptuous. Instead, his face tightened. He said, “It is good that you have some help. And now both you and the little ones have me for protection. But you are still too much alone in all of this. You should be surrounded with a House filled with associations.”

She had to press her lips tightly together and look away before she could say, after a moment, “Well, nobody ex-pected things to turn out this way.”

The afternoon sunlight had deepened as they talked. From down the hall, Chloe started to chatter. She was talking to her toys, but Max burbled a wordless reply.

Grace turned back to Khalil. His hard face had eased into an indulgent smile again. “Thank you for the talk,” she said. As the words fell out, she clapped a hand over her mouth. “I swear, that one just came out. I’m sorry.”

Instead of looking angry or disgusted, this time he looked amused. He stood. “I will come back tomorrow to visit with the little ones.”

Grace stood too. “We’re going out. It’s story time at the library, and we have books to return, and…” He was listening to her with such close attention, she grew self-conscious. She ended, awkwardly, “Well, you don’t need to hear about all that.”

“What is their schedule in the evening?”

“Dinner at five, bed by eight.”

He raised his eyebrows. “May I come to visit with them before they go to bed?”

Grace was impressed. He actually asked; he didn’t dictate. She said, “Sure.”

He studied her for a moment, his gaze unreadable. Then she felt his presence slide along hers in a scorching, invisible caress. As she sucked in a breath, he inclined his head and disappeared.

She shut her mouth with a click. What was that—his version of a hug good-bye?

“Even Samantha was surprised when people appeared and disappeared without warning,” she muttered. “And she was a witch too. I am not Darrin. I’m not.”

There was nobody around to argue with her, so she went to get the children up from their nap.

As entertaining as arguing with Khalil was, she had enjoyed talking with him even more. She tried not to dwell on that too much, either that evening or the next day.

After she put the kids to bed, she took the baby monitor and tackled the stairs to dig through her wardrobe for more clothes. She seemed to have broken through some sort of emotional barrier about the scars on her legs. Not only did she collect several pairs of shorts, she also rediscovered a couple of pairs of capri pants she had forgotten she owned. She shook her head, exasperated with herself. If she hadn’t been so frozen over examining her summer wardrobe, she could have been wearing those all along.

In the morning, she took the children to the library. The early learning program for babies Max’s age was at nine o’clock. It involved little more than sitting in a circle, playing with soft, plastic-coated books and singing nursery rhymes, but he adored it. Chloe declared she was too big to sit in the circle and sing with the babies and their caretakers, so she usually sprawled nearby with a coloring book and crayons, and hummed along with the songs.

On the way home they stopped at a few stores to pick up some essentials that Super Saver didn’t carry. Then it was naptime for Max, lunch, back to the library again for Chloe’s story time, home again and a nap for both of the children in the afternoon. While Max and Chloe slept, Grace finished polishing one resume and worked on tweaking the other version.

A knock sounded hesitantly at the front door. She peeked out the office window. A middle-aged couple stood on the porch.

She braced her shoulders and stifled a sigh. When an Oracle died, the witches’ demesne sent out a public notice to ask that people grant the new Oracle three months’ transition time before approaching her with a petition. For Grace, that transition time was now over. More and more people would begin to petition for a consultation. She went to answer the door.

The couple turned out to be a brother and sister, Don and Margie. Their mother had been deceased for many years, and their father had died of a heart attack the week before. Shocked and grieving, they hoped to say good-bye.

Grace couldn’t help but soften. She invited the couple in and called Therese, the next witch on the roster for babysitting duty. When Therese arrived, Grace took the couple out to the cavern. “I want you to understand, I can’t guarantee that your father will come,” she told them as they walked the overgrown path. “We can only try.”

“Trying means everything to us,” said Don.

They reached the back meadow where the cavern was located. The Ohio River ran along the western border of the property. Sparkling glints of blue water were visible through a tangled border of trees and underbrush.

Earlier in the summer, she had explored, briefly, trying to sell some of the riverfront acreage in order to raise some cash. The Oracle’s Power had bristled, clearly antagonistic toward the idea, but it wasn’t writing the checks for her monthly bills, so she shoved it aside and made some phone calls.

The venture quickly became too complicated to pursue with any real hope of financial return. The real estate agent she had spoken to had been blunt. Granting access rights to anyone who potentially built along the shoreline meant they would be driving past her house in order to get to their patch of land, and she would lose any hope of privacy. Also, the land had too much of a reputation for being haunted to have any wide market appeal. In the current housing slump, it was unlikely the agent could move the parcels of land at all.

The path to the cavern cut north through the meadow then veered a little east, where the land rose into a short, rocky bluff that was dotted with trees and bushes. The entrance to the cavern was set into the bluff.

When Grace was a child, she used to climb the bluff and have picnics on the squat, flat rock at the summit. The bluff was tall enough, and the land sloped downward at a steep enough angle, that she could see over the tops of the trees that grew down by the shoreline and watch the river for boats and barges.

She gave the bluff a wry glance. It was unlikely she would ever see the top again. She could probably take her time and climb up the way she climbed the stairs, using her sound leg to haul herself up, but that seemed like a useless expenditure of energy when she had so many other things that needed her attention.

She led Don and Margie across the meadow to the old doorway that had been built into the side of the bluff. The door was locked to keep exploring children out, and the key was stored in a small rusted coffee can that rested on the top of a wooden lintel.

The doorway opened to a tunnel that led down to the cavern. Grace was familiar with every inch of the property. She had played in the meadow, walked that tunnel and had been down to the cavern more times than she could count, but Don and Margie were wide-eyed and stared at everything.

Grace collected a couple of flashlights and the mask, from which the Oracle had spoken since the temple at Delphi, and that was when Margie broke down in tears. “I can’t do this,” the older woman said to her brother. “This is too much, too strange. I just can’t.”

Grace was unsurprised. It happened sometimes. People might travel from all over the world to consult with the Oracle, only to balk at the last minute. She said, “I’ll wait outside while you decide what you want to do. Just remember while you talk this over—you don’t have to try this right now. Your father just passed. You can give yourself some time and come back when you’re ready. The tunnel is quite roomy, and the cavern looks just like the ones at Mammoth Cave National Park or the cave systems in southern Indiana.”

Don said, “We read about it on the Oracle’s website, and looked at the photos.” He looked at his sister sadly. “I guess it’s all a bit much in real life.”

Niko had created a simple website in an attempt to prepare petitioners. It had a brief section on the Oracle’s history and another one on what to expect when they arrived. There was also a page that explained the ancient social contract, that while the Oracle acted in service and did not ask for payment, donations were essential for the upkeep and maintenance of the property. He had even set up a PayPal button. The website pulled in between two and three hundred dollars every six months.

Grace said again, “You don’t need to do this right now. You can come back when you’re more ready.”

She stepped outside and waited in the sunshine while Don and Margie talked. While she tried not to listen, she could still make out snatches of their conversation. It was difficult to hear their struggle, and their grief touched too close to home. She crossed her arms and scowled at the tall grass. The meadow was dotted with bright colors, mostly yellow from dandelions, but also white and purple wildflowers.

Going into the cavern was strange for people who were not used to it. The old stories told of petitioners approaching the Oracle of Delphi in awe and supplication.

But the Power had come so strongly the other morning. She could not think of a single reason why it could not do so again.

She felt along the edge of her consciousness, and there it was, nestled inside of her, deeper than gut instinct, an ancient well running through her like a dark subterranean sea. Was it really a gift from the goddess of the depths, or was it from some other strange, Powerful creature? The oldest stories her grandmother had told were a tangle of superstition and myth. The earliest Oracles had worshipped the Power and believed they spoke the words of the gods themselves. Over thousands of years, that attitude had evolved and changed, but Grace’s grandmother, and even Petra, had talked about serving the Oracle’s Power as if they were subservient to it. Without having any real experience herself, Grace had listened and accepted what they said, pretty much without question.

Until now. She patted along the edges of the Power with her awareness, really exploring it for the first time since it had come to her. It felt unruly and untamed, almost as if it had a mind of its own, except it wasn’t quite a person. She knew what personalities felt like from the ghosts she had encountered and the dark spirits she had driven off the property. Growing familiar with Khalil’s presence had only sharpened her understanding. She could see clearly that even though the Oracle’s Power seemed vast, it was too incomplete to be a personality.

She thought, how could you have Power without a person? You couldn’t, like you couldn’t have the ability to draw without someone to manifest it. But families carry inherited abilities and traits that manifested through generations.

She wasn’t the first person in her family to have an affinity to spirit. The difference between the two was, the Power she was born with felt just like a part of her, while this Power felt old.

Maybe it had been part of a person once, someone who had died or been killed a long time ago, and their Power had sheared away. Only, because it couldn’t exist without someone to manifest it, it had grafted onto someone else. Then someone after that. The thought felt right to her, somehow true. She felt again the sense of a dark ocean that flowed everywhere but seemed to recede from her touch.

She focused all of her attention inward and reached for it again. It receded again, as if pulling back from her.

Something clicked over in Grace’s head, the same way it had when she had heard Khalil talking with the kids in their bedroom or when Chloe had said she was bad.

Oh, no you don’t, she said to what had come to live inside of her. I’ve put up with a lot of shit in my life because of you. You chose me. Well, that makes you mine. Do you hear me? You will come when I call, because you are mine now.

Maybe she wouldn’t have done it if she had paused to think about it. But she didn’t pause to think. Instead, she reached deeper and harder inside of herself, and much as she had with the connection to Khalil, she grasped the Oracle’s Power and pulled.

She connected. For one wild moment the Power bucked in her hold, stronger and fiercer than she had expected. It rushed up in a roaring wave and threatened to engulf her entirely.

Oh, no, she thought. You don’t own me. I own you. She wrapped her awareness tighter around it and held on.

It tried to recede again.

No. She would not let it go.

The sunlit meadow disappeared. Everything went dark. She held steady as the Power thundered and crashed in her grip, a feral, undisciplined storm. She got a feeling of immense connectivity again, the dark ocean flowing everywhere, touching everywhere, where the veil of time and space grew thin. Losing her grip and falling into it would be crossing a threshold to drown in a constant state of epiphany. She had heard stories of Oracles getting lost in the Power and babbling madness for the rest of their lives.

And she simply refused to do that. If nothing else, she was stubborn. She had dishes in her sink that needed to be washed. She had to change the oil in her car. Max and Chloe needed to be tucked into bed that evening. There was also something else she had said she would do. She couldn’t think of what it was, with all the crashing and heaving going on in her head, but she knew she had promised to do it, so she wrestled the Power down.

As she did so, she glimpsed a ghost.

She stared, confusion tumbling through her thoughts. She could “see” ghosts, such as the elderly women in the kitchen. They looked like indistinct, transparent smudges overlaid on normal reality.

Oracular visions were an entirely different experience. Those streamed directly from the Power, and like the vision that came for Cuelebre, they overwhelmed her regular senses.

Seeing this ghost felt like a true vision. It was another anomaly. According to what she had learned, the Oracle’s visions came for other people, but at the moment no one else was around. Wasn’t anything going to go the way it was supposed to?

The ghost certainly wasn’t Don and Margie’s father either. It was either Wyr or Demonkind, a strange creature with a face like a human female’s, except its features were too sharp and elongated, and it had more of a snout than a nose. The face flowed back to a hooded cobralike flare of a neck before falling to the body of a serpent as thick as a man’s waist.

Grace felt a pulse of recognition that went deeper than knowledge, past instinct. It came from the Power she held. She said to the ghost, This was once yours. This Power came from you.

The ghost stared at her in astonishment. Then it gave her a merry, feral smile. Very good, child. Very, very good.

She knew the ghost did not speak English, but she still understood every word. Blood thundered in Grace’s ears, or maybe it was the sound of the dark ocean. The ghost came clearer, and Grace seemed to see her in a cavern. Struggling with astonishment and an odd sense of betrayal, she said, I thought we were human.

You are, said the ghost. Mostly. Your many times great-grandmother found me after an earthquake on Mount Parnassus. My body had been crushed from tons of falling rock. She tried to help me, but it was too late.

Grace asked, How did we inherit this?

The ghost’s smile widened to reveal long, sharp fangs. I gave her the serpent’s kiss as my thanks. I meant to give her the Power to walk the night, but I died while I kissed her. I gave her all of my Power instead.

Another vision came to Grace. Although the image was born from a far distant past, it was also as sharp and clear as if she were truly present. Grace watched the serpent creature convulse in death throes as she bit a screaming human woman.

Grace said, We’re an ACCIDENT?

You are a thing of beauty, the ghost whispered. Although your ancestress went a little mad.

Good gods. Grace shuddered and almost lost control of her hold.

The serpent-woman ghost coiled on itself. Your grandmothers created a history of prophecy and service out of the legacy I gave them. You should feel proud.

I don’t need you to tell me how I should feel. Grace noticed how the Power pulled toward the ghost. She said, You didn’t mean for any of this to happen, so you never really let go.

The ghost came up to her. You’re strong. You pulled the Power up in daylight, and you called me to you. You’re very strong for such a young one.

Well, I didn’t call you on purpose, Grace told her. Gripping the Power while talking with the ghost took all of her strength. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold on without it sucking her into that dark, endless sea. She said, I wanted to see if I could pull the Power up in daylight, but since we’re having this nice chat, you really need to let go now. Or take it back. I don’t give a shit which one you do, just do one thing or the other.

The ghost turned away, and her coiling grew agitated. What if I can’t take it back? I’m no longer alive. I cannot contain my own Power.

Then let go, dammit. Your connection to it is too strong. I can’t get full control while you hold on. Grace injected all her strength into the words. In the back of her mind, she was turning frantic. If she couldn’t get control, she didn’t know if she could release it safely.

The serpent woman looked at her. Her smile had faded away to be replaced by something much darker. What if I don’t want to let go? My Power is alive in you. As long as my Power is alive, something of me is alive as well.

Realization struck. You’re the reason why the Power doesn’t bond with any one person, why it jumps from Oracle to Oracle, Grace said. It’s because you won’t let go. But you’re not alive. You’re dead. You’re only pretending.

While they were speaking, she searched for how the Power connected to both her and to the ghost. Now that she knew she was haunted, she could try to get rid of the ghost in the ways she had been taught, but she didn’t know if she could do that while she still held on to the Power. She might have trapped herself with her own impetuousness. Dumbass.

Holding on is the only thing I have left, said the ghost.

Fury welled. Grace said, You didn’t “kiss” my ancestor. You didn’t mean to give her a gift. You just fucking bit her.

The ghost hissed, I give life to all of my children!

Grace had begun to shake. Her grip was close to slipping. We’re supposed to be your CHILDREN? she gritted. No decent parent I know would ever put their child in jeopardy.

I haven’t put you in jeopardy! the ghost roared as she recoiled. You did that to yourself when you tried to control something you were never meant to control!

Really? said Grace. You mean when I tried to take what had come to me, what was supposed to be mine? That doesn’t sound like much of a gift to me. She grew calm as she told the ghost, It’s not too late. I’m sorry you died, but you died. Maybe you didn’t mean for this to happen, but you can still make good on the gift you tried to give my ancestor.

The serpent woman stopped coiling on herself, and that feral, beautiful face turned wistful. The ghost asked, What would you, a mere mortal, do with an immortal Power?

Don’t you think it’s time we find out? Grace said. If she couldn’t persuade the ghost to let go, she was going to have to take her chances and exorcise it, whether she was struggling to deal with the Power or not.

The serpent woman’s wistfulness grew. She held a hand out, as if she would caress Grace’s cheek. You’re not only strong. You’re more impertinent than the others were.

Grace didn’t know what to do. She wanted to cry or laugh or scream. She said, Maybe I’ll grow out of that. I’m still pretty young. Give me this chance. If I am really supposed to be one of your children, let me become your heir.

The ghost’s hand dropped. She faded away. Grace felt the ghost let go.

Instinctively, she braced herself. Afterward, she realized that might have saved her sanity and maybe even her life as the dark sea rushed toward her in a tidal wave. She threw everything she had at it, straining to hold on. All thought burned away in a gigantic, formless roar.

Gradually the roar quieted as the tidal wave receded. The darkness in her mind faded until she could see sunlight again.

She looked around wildly, soaking up the sight of the meadow drenched in sunshine. Then she bent at the waist, shaking as she drew in deep gulps of air, as wrung out as if she had just sprinted a mile.

She realized she could hear voices. Don and Margie were still talking just inside the tunnel door. The entire conversation with the ghost, along with her struggle to get control of the Power, appeared to have taken place within the span of a few moments.

Goddamn. She wiped her sweating face with the back of one hand. She couldn’t tell if she felt euphoric or flat out nauseated. Just, goddamn.

“Miss Andreas?” Margie said behind her. “Are you all right?”

“Call me Grace,” she said, her voice hoarse. She straightened and turned. Margie and Don looked at her with nearly identical expressions of discomfort and concern. “I’m fine,” she told them. “I got a little warm, that’s all. Have you made a decision?”

Margie said, “We have, and I’m sorry for wasting your time. I’m just not comfortable with this.”

“Please don’t worry about it,” Grace told her as gently as she could. She considered the two. Don appeared to be strug-gling with disappointment, while Margie had clearly been crying. She realized she had promised Don and Margie she would help them, and that had been part of what had helped her to hold on.

In the meantime, everything in her head seemed to have quieted down and her heart rate was returning to normal. Cautiously, she reached deep inside herself. Was it just her imagination, or did the Power feel closer? No, it was definitely closer. She made contact with the dark sea, and it rose readily to her touch.

Right there, in broad daylight. It rose to her touch, because it was hers.

Hers.

God DAMN.

There was no mistaking her euphoria that time. She kept a stern grip on the emotion, as she said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what makes you most uncomfortable? Is it actually speaking with your father or the thought of going underground to do it?”

Margie glanced at her brother then said, “I don’t mind you asking. It’s both things, really. I—you were right, it’s too soon for me. Then the thought of having to go down in some dark cave is too much like going into his grave.”

Grace winced at the imagery and the pain so evident behind it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Remember, you can always come back when you’re ready.”

“I’d like that,” Don said. “Maybe we’ll be in a better place in a couple of weeks.”

“Just e-mail me if you would like to come back. Maybe next time we can try to connect with your father without going into the cavern,” Grace said. “As long as you keep in mind I can’t promise anything, I’d be willing to try if you are.”

Margie’s eyes filled. “Thank you,” said the older woman. “Thank you so much.”

Grace nodded, feeling awkward in the face of so much raw gratitude.

Looking as awkward as she felt, Don handed her an envelope. She could see cash through the paper. She gave him a small smile as she folded the envelope and slipped it into the pocket of her capri pants.

Then they walked back to the front of the property, mostly in silence. Neither Don nor Margie seemed inclined to small talk, and Grace had more than enough on her mind.

She needed to digest what had happened, to consider what it might all mean.

The ghost had said the woman she had bitten had gone mad. Had the woman been too mad to comprehend what had really happened or explain it to her children? How many of Grace’s family traditions were because her ancestors didn’t understand where the Power had come from or why they couldn’t control it? Had any of them tried to exorcise the ghost before and failed? Would Grace be able to call the Oracle’s Power at will? She needed to practice, to see how much control she could establish over it. Now that it was hers—really hers—did that mean it wouldn’t pass on to Chloe or to some other child? Would it die with her? What did a mere mortal do with an immortal Power?

Was she…still mortal? The possible implications were enormous.

They reached the driveway. She said good-bye to Don and Margie, and watched as they climbed into a Ford pickup. When they pulled onto the road, Grace took a deep breath and turned to the house.

That was when she sensed Khalil. His presence seethed.

He was in the house. With Therese. And he was very, very angry.

Well, crap.