The Phantom Oracle (Vampire Innocent Book 5)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Michelle stares into her iced tea. “If a defense attorney asks the prosecutor to prove their case, and the prosecutor gets pissed off and starts screaming… pretty good chance he doesn’t actually have any evidence. I get what you’re saying. But there’s no discussing it with them. Why do you think I want my own place so bad? And I’m not quite where you guys are. Maybe it’s real, maybe not. But… there’s a big damn difference between those fake-ass people at that place and genuine spirituality.”

  Ashley sighs, downcast.

  The Gerards still don’t—nor will they ever—know that Ash is bi. I’m sure Michelle didn’t intentionally refer to her parents as fake spiritualists, but we’re all pretty sure they’d freak out. Considering Mr. Gerard often randomly blames societal problems on everyone and anything he deems ‘ungodly,’ we’re avoiding the topic entirely. I mean, there have been a few politicians who spoke out against LGBT people until someone in their family came out of the closet, then they changed their mind. I suppose it is possible that the Gerards might accept Ashley since they’ve known her for years. But… that’s a coin flip none of us—especially Ashley—are comfortable making.

  Pretty sure watching that hate in action played a part in souring Michelle on the church—or at least the one her parents attend. She probably still believes in some kind of creator. I shake my head. Mrs. Gerard thinks some entity ‘saved’ me that night… yeah. Some entity did save me, and his name was Dalton, not Jesus. Whatever creator may exist didn’t save me. He let me die.

  But… I’m with my dad on that topic. Proof please. Hmm. I wonder if my existence as a vampire proves anything. Obviously, supernatural stuff exists. But, I don’t need anyone to just take my condition on faith. I can show them fangs—at least when it’s dark out.

  And, yeah. I’m not wasting the last few days of summer on brain-crushing philosophy.

  “So what do you guys wanna do with our last night of childhood?” I ask.

  “That happened like three years ago before we had to get summer jobs.” Michelle grins. “But… hmm. Movie? Girls night out?”

  Ashley stretches one leg into the air, appraising the polish on her toes. “Movie would be dark enough to hide how badly I need to redo my nails. I don’t really care.” She again squeezes me. “Just glad we can do something together… and that you’re not moving away to California.”

  A pang of homesickness hits me at the thought of California. “Yeah. Me too. I can’t even remember where the idea of going to Cali came from. Probably would’ve hated it and come back after one semester.”

  Michelle scoffs. “Semester? More like one week.”

  “Give her some credit.” Ashley elbows me playfully in the ribs. “She’d have lasted at least a month.”

  “Either way…” Michelle scoots forward out of her chair. “Unless you guys wanna wind up conscripted into baking all damn day, we need to go somewhere soon.”

  I glance down at the bright purple on my toenails. It doesn’t look obviously in need of repair like Ashley’s nails, so I shrug. “Whatever you guys wanna do is fine with me. Let’s just have some fun.”

  “We could hit that augmented reality place?” asks Michelle. “Or a movie.”

  Ashley shrugs. “Okay.”

  “How about both?” I twirl a strand of hair around my finger. “It’s our last night of freedom. We might as well stay up late.”

  2

  California Dreamin'

  Comfortable warmth surrounds me. I’m content and relaxed in silence. At least, until the din of voices and the occasional joyful squeal of a distant small child intrude upon my peace.

  Blackness fades to a blinding reddish glare. I haven’t even opened my eyes yet, but the light is painful. A soft breeze brushing over every inch of me sounds alarm bells since I don’t seem to be wearing anything. I briefly start to panic at winding up in a morgue again, but the creaking of a beach chair under me and the smell of sunbaked plastic causes my brain to halt. I raise an arm to shield my eyes, and open them to an impossible sight.

  I’m smack dab in the middle of a huge beach, maybe forty feet away from the water on a big folding lounge chair. Sunglasses appear to be the only thing I’m wearing, but none of the people around me seem to notice or care. Two guys go by in USC T-shirts and swim shorts, both giving me ‘hey what’s up’ nods.

  That I’m stark naked on a crowded beach doesn’t even register to my mind. I’ve got bigger problems: it’s like high noon on a bright, sunny day.

  I scream and jump up, flailing my arms while looking around for anywhere to take cover from the ball of fiery death in the sky. Pristine sand stretches an impossible distance in every direction except toward the water. It’s like I’m at the edge of a desert that touches the ocean with nowhere I can go to escape incineration. Panic drives me into a short run, but I keep stopping and dashing in back and forth since it’s the same endless sand everywhere I look—unless I dive under the waves. Finally, I catch sight of a giant umbrella and sprint.

  An older couple who look simultaneously familiar and strange, peer up at me from their beach towels as I skid to a stop by the strut holding up their umbrella.

  “Oh, hi, sweetie,” says the woman. She’s easily late seventies with ye-olde-standard white curly granny ’do. “Can we help you?”

  “Umm.” I finally notice that I haven’t caught fire—and I’m not even smoking.

  “Is something wrong, hon?” asks the old man, sitting up. Gah. He looks like a giant piece of fried chicken with body hair. Dude needs to lay off the tanning bed or invest in sunblock.

  “I’m…”

  Neither one of them react at all to my lack of a bathing suit, which is too damn strange. No concerned expressions or even inappropriate staring from the guy. A girl streaking the beach should at least be getting stared at. And on a college beach, probably applause… until the cops show up.

  “Not burning,” I mutter.

  “Well that’s good.” The woman smiles. “Are you out of lotion?”

  I bite my lip. “Not that kind of burning. I, uhh, usually take sunburn to the next level.”

  “Ahh, you’re Irish?” The old man laughs. “No color at all to Maine lobster in five minutes?”

  Okay, that’s beyond weird. Why is he saying something Ashley always said about going outside in the summer?

  Another pack of ‘generically good looking young men’ go by, all with USC logos on their shirts, hats, or coolers. Not one of them reacts the way I’d expect a boy to react to me standing around in my birthday suit. In fact, they barely give me a second glance.

  I peer down at myself. Yep, still bare assed.

  Even more bizarre, I’m not on fire.

  Oh. Duh. I’m dreaming of California. Wow. This is really… strange. I don’t remember ever having a dream that felt like this before. Meaning, real time, like I’m awake and thinking and stuff. Usually, my dreams are more like watching a movie from inside.

  “I’m okay. Thanks.” I shrug at the old couple. Might as well see where this rabbit hole goes. A bizarre dream is hardly the screwiest thing to happen to me in the past few months.

  Since I’m no longer panicking about burning to ashes, I blush hard at being around so many people with nothing on. Still, I force myself to ignore that mortifying detail and walk back to my lounge chair. After all, this is a dream and no one is really seeing me. This dream probably doesn’t mean I’m anxious about something or I’d be in the center of a bunch of people pointing and laughing at me for being naked.

  The second my ass touches the overly warm plastic chair, my iPhone emits a tweep.

  Wow. Even in dreams I can’t get away from text messages. How messed up is that?

  I wonder if the naked part is related to my waking up in the morgue, or from Ashley’s joking around last night about the worst part of my being a vampire is we’ll never go to a nude beach. Both she and Michelle had consumed a couple beers at that point, so it’s anyone’s guess where that suggestion came from. Ash
had always been the shiest of our group. For her to suggest something like that was way outside normal. Of course, she has been kinda odd ever since her tryst with Aurélie. And okay, maybe I was a naughty vampire and helped people believe my friends’ fake IDs.

  A text on the screen appears from Sophia: ‹Sare, when are you coming home? I miss you. And Sierra’s being a butthead. She keeps teasing me. Please come home.›

  I notice a 99* on my little brother Sam’s name, so I page over to his message stream, which is an endless repetition of ‹when are you coming home?›

  The next page has a notification from USC that I failed a biology test.

  “Wow,” I mutter to myself. “Anxiety must be on overdrive. Sun. Public nudity. Guilt trips from my siblings and a test failure.”

  I hang my head and sigh. When I look up, I’m at a desk in a classroom… and I’m still naked. Still, none of the forty or so students around me nor the professor—who looks like Gandalf’s older brother with rheumatoid arthritis—react to it.

  Despite wanting to get up and leave such an embarrassing situation, I don’t move. Something between the instinct to sit still because it’s class and the fear that the instant I do anything abnormal everyone will notice I forgot my clothes keeps me seated. Reminding myself over and over again that I’m dreaming keeps me sane. I’d take notes, but the teacher’s indecipherable. He’s doing the ‘wahwahwah’ thing like from a Peanuts cartoon. Hours pass in what feels like mere moments. Every time I look over at the wall clock it’s jumped by twenty minutes or so.

  Finally, everyone gets up at the same time.

  I don’t have any books, bag, or anything to carry, so I sheepishly stand and follow everyone into the hall. A moment later, Ashley comes out of the crowd and pounce-hugs me, bursting into tears and telling me how much she misses me. No, it’s not awkward at all having her wrapped around me in the middle of a crowded hallway while I have nothing on. At least she’s dressed.

  Before I can even think of what to do, she disappears into a cloud of smoke.

  “This is one weird ass dream.”

  For no particular reason, I walk with the crowd, feeling like I have somewhere to be in a hurry, like a next class period. Okay, this naked thing has got to be a metaphor for vulnerability or being unprepared. I’m neither vulnerable nor unprepared. Well… maybe not vulnerable. College still makes me nervous, but the stakes are lower.

  Ugh. That was bad.

  I mean, if I fail out of school, I’m not ruining my life/career, just disappointing my parents.

  And, I’m a vampire. I don’t have any reason to be afraid of physical threats anymore.

  By the time I reach the doors outside, I’ve somehow wound up in a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. I can work with that. Paradoxically, now that I’m dressed, people start staring at me like I’m walking around naked. Probably because of the Seattle Central College logo across my chest.

  “Hey,” says a voice I never wanted to hear again.

  I whip around to stare straight ahead—at Scott Deacon. He’s still wearing his varsity jacket from high school, a red Solo cup in his left hand. He would’ve hated college if he actually managed to get accepted anywhere. While he wasn’t quite the king of high school, he was in the top six ‘dudes.’ Going from that to a relative nobody would’ve driven him nuts.

  “Let me guess, you’re going to stab me,” I deadpan.

  Scott tilts his head in confusion. “Why would I do that?”

  “Oh, I dunno…” I shrug. “Maybe because—”

  His right arm flies out and embeds a giant knife in my chest.

  I peer down at it and sigh. “Figures.”

  Scott disappears in a whorl of vapor. Frowning, I yank the knife out and throw it aside.

  Everyone on the campus stops and stares at me.

  “What? You’ve never seen a girl stabbed to death before?” I hold my arms out to the sides.

  They shake their heads like I did something rude in public, and keep walking. I wander the campus for a little while until I realize I’m mostly retracing the steps from the tour I went on three months into my senior year.

  “The hell am I doing?”

  I blink, and find myself staring at the ceiling of my room in glorious black-and-white. The only spot of color is the alarm clock to my right. Tall letters in green LED indicate the time at 2:37 p.m. Ugh. What a messed up dream. I sit up and habitually rub my eyes even though they don’t crumb over anymore. Another mark in the ‘no longer dreaming’ column is my oversized T-shirt. I generally don’t sleep naked—unless Hunter’s here. I would do it more often for comfort but… I have siblings and a mother who walk in with little to no warning.

  Although it hasn’t been that long since I’ve been beholden to a schedule, realizing that I have a class at 7 p.m. makes me groan. Summer vacation’s officially over. Hi. I’m a college student now. Ashley’s right. I guess I do kinda qualify as a nerd, if a lazy one. I channeled my powers to coast through school with decent grades and minimum effort. Sure, I probably could’ve worked my ass off, taken AP courses, maybe even made it to college a year or two early. But… I was so not into that level of punishment. I liked my free time and having fun way too much.

  And it’s kinda dark of me to say this, but I’m glad I did. If I wasted the last four years of my life having no fun at all while working like hell for something I could never have now—a career—I’d be really pissed off. I had a social life, such as it was, and a lot of good memories. But, to Ashley’s point, I can handle the programming track if I really want to. Computer stuff has never really grabbed me the way it did Dad or Sierra… but I can make it work. Truth be told, nothing really clicked with me. I’m jealous to a point of my friends, even my siblings. Ash always knew she wanted to do something like be a veterinarian. Michelle’s been talking about law school ever since we met. Sophia’s got dreams of doing makeup and stuff for Hollywood someday. Granted, she’s ten, so who knows if that will change. Sierra wants to do something with video game development or computers. It’s good and it’s sad in a way. Ten- and eleven-year-olds shouldn’t be thinking about their careers. At least my brother Sam acts like a normal kid. If he’s got plans for what he wants to do as an adult, he’s kept them to himself.

  So yeah, we got the nerd gene from Dad. Along with the noodle gene. To be fair, Mom helped with that one, too. Her entire family is skinny. All three of my siblings have spaghetti strands for arms and legs. Surprisingly, Sophia’s got the most defined muscles of any of us since she’s totally into her dance class. I started to have a shape before I died. Undeath has taken away a few pounds, probably from internal organs or muscles shrinking or some such thing like that. Or maybe that’s just the Innocent thing trying to make me childish. I asked Aurélie if she thought that might be the case. She laughed at first, but then found herself wondering, too. She told me Innocents are pretty damn rare, so no one really understands them. Almost every vampire she knows of wanted to be one. The youthful thing might be a defense mechanism. Her joke about how children are cute so their parents don’t kill them out of frustration rang a bit too dark for me, but if looking cute and harmless prevents some Fury from tearing my head off for saying the wrong thing, I’ll deal with it.

  I check the iPhone for weather and determine it’s cloudy-overcast today. Cool. After pulling my door open an inch to test light levels, I relax and head upstairs for a shower. The place is eerily quiet. Oh, it’s so bizarre. All three of the littles are away at school. Mom’s at work, and Dad—if he’s home—is sequestered in his office working. He’s unusually silent, so I change course from heading to the stairs to his study.

  He’s at the computer, reading from a book thick enough to qualify as a deadly weapon. Aha. That explains the lack of clicking. Not wanting to disturb him, I back away and go to the upstairs bathroom. The beach dream was so vivid, I feel like I’ve got sand all over me. It’s nice not to have to battle for bathroom time, and actually enjoy a somewhat-too-long shower. Befor
e I can even turn the water on, an explosion of tween voices goes off downstairs. I click the lock to avoid unwanted interruptions.

  You know what else is cool? Not having to shave my legs.

  My hair and nails only grow if I concentrate on wanting them to. Guess what I don’t want. Of course, I haven’t told Sophia that. She’d go nuts messing with my hair since I could grow it all back from a totally shaved head in about two minutes. Her using me as a cosmetics crash test dummy is fine. I’m not dealing with Edwina Scissorhands.

  Sam shouts to Dad that he’s going to Daryl’s house. Giggling comes from Sophia’s room across the hall from me, and the house experiences a mild catastrophic earthquake from the PlayStation in the living room.

  Eventually, I drag myself out of the shower, wrap my hair in one towel, my body in another, and slip out into the hall. Two other girls are in Sophia’s room, chattering away. I leave them be and head downstairs. Sierra’s sitting on the floor in the living room next to her friend Nicole. Neither of them look up as I go by in my towel toga. I scurry to my cave in the basement, drop the towels, and throw on a long T-shirt until my hair finishes drying. While I wait, I flop at my desk and look over the school stuff for the thousandth time.

  The more I study the maps, schedules, and student guide, the more I start to freak out. For no particular reason, I’m anxious about being late or getting lost. There’s no detention anymore for missing class, just bad grades, failure, and the potential of wasting money. I already feel like I’m making my parents light dollar bills on fire sending me to school, but at least the local college is quite a bit cheaper than USC. Part of me still feels guilty about being accepted there and withdrawing. But, it really isn’t like I chickened out or had a crisis of confidence… okay, maybe I did chicken out. I probably could have made USC work with late classes. But California sun and vampires really don’t sound like a good combination. At least here, it’s rainy enough that I can sometimes go outside during the day without too much pain.