The Forbidden Oracle

by Devyn Forrest

  Once inside the main building, she swept toward the winding staircase, gripping the railing. “It’s just up here.”

  “What is it?” I asked, becoming increasingly annoyed with her antics.

  “One of the oldest artifacts in the entire school,” Margot told me, spinning back to show her glittering eyes. “It’s really quite impressive when you see it.”

  “What does this have to do with a party?” I asked.

  Margot cackled. “Oh, darling. The artifact is from Ancient Egypt. The oldest races used it back in Egypt to cast spells on the pharaoh’s people, for the pleasure of the pharaoh. I guess it was a little bit like being able to watch television. Like, the old Egyptian warlock would cast this spell on them, and the pharaoh would instruct them on what to do, how to act, who to fuck—that sort of thing. Oh, it was complete chaos. But once the party finished for the night, the spell was broken and everyone was allowed to return to their normal lives.”

  I gaped at her. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  “Sure. But you’re rather new to all this stuff, aren’t you? There’s so much you can’t understand yet,” Margot tittered.

  “That just sounds...evil, Margot. I don’t think we should cast any spells like that on anyone at Origins. I just can’t imagine it would end well. Forcing people to live against their will.”

  “Come off it,” Margot said, snapping her fingers.

  We arrived at the top level, just a floor above where my classroom was with Professor Binion. The attic door was slanted a bit, with an old, locked latch. Margot busied herself with undoing it, muttering various incantations as she went. When it finally undid itself, she swept open the attic door and gestured for me to head inside.

  I stepped through, heading up the thin staircase. I felt Margot behind me. When I reached the top, my foot stretched out across the dusty floorboards. The attic seemed to fill the entire top of the school, with glowing windows looking out over the school grounds. We were high enough that you could see the Gulf just beyond the tops of the trees. It was funny to see so much life and vitality outside the walls of the dusty, ashy, gloomy attic.

  Weirdly, I was grateful that Margot had taken me up there. It was fascinating to see the old boxes, filled with various artifacts from hundreds and hundreds of years of supernatural history. Margot gestured toward the far corner, where a box had the flag of Egypt stamped across it.

  “This way,” she pointed. “I know it seems strange, but I promise you—it’s worth it. Oh, so interesting.”

  Half of my brain thought she might have cast a spell on me, causing me to be her personal assistant or something. But I imagined that if she did, it wouldn’t last long. It’s not like she had anyone to watch her handiwork, and I knew the minute Celeste saw me later that day, she would put an end to it.

  “Here we are,” she said, drawing her fingers over the top of the Egyptian box. After a few muttered words, she ripped open the top of the box to reveal—

  A statue of a snake, seated in the belly of the box.

  I gaped at it. Perhaps Margot had opened up the wrong box?

  But before I could do anything, Margot’s fingers sprung up over the snake, wiggling. The snake itself turned instantly bright green and sprung out from the box. I leaped back, falling across the floor as the snake stirred through the dust. The dust flung up from the ground, creating big clouds around us.

  Behind the snake, Margot cackled, her eyes glowing behind the dusty clouds. She pressed her lips against the palm of her hand and sent me a kiss. Then, she turned toward the staircase in the attic and pounded down, leaving me alone. I heard her latch the attic door and knew—

  I was pretty fucked.

  “GODDAMMIT!” I cried. I leaped up and hustled toward the far end of the attic room, looking for any kind of exit. The snake continued to slither toward me. His eyes knew nothing except my body, my flashing feet.

  When I reached the long end of the attic, I turned quickly again to find that the snake was about twenty-five feet behind—seemingly taking his time, letting me run. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered.

  Behind me, a voice rang out.

  “You have to get out of here. Immediately. I know who you are. But the powers in that snake are quite deadly—even for you. At best, you’d be unconscious for a month, maybe more.”

  I leaped around to see a ghost, lurking just beyond another collection of dusty boxes. The man was old, haggard-looking, his white hair springing up like Jack-in-the-Box springs, and his beard swimming down toward his chest. He looked at me and then the snake, his eyes somber.

  “What...?”

  “The snake! He could really damage you. I know who you are, Ivy. But the trouble is, nobody else does. If Margot knew what danger she was putting the world in right now—”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I demanded.

  The ghost glanced toward the enormous windows, which opened out onto the tiled roof of the school.

  “They’re locked,” I said. “They also don’t look like they’ve been opened in like 100 years...”

  “You have to use your powers. Pretend like you’re searching through Professor Binion’s mind for memories but do it to those goddamn windows...”

  I rushed to the side, realizing that the snake was a mere foot away, now. I had no other method, no other solution. I squeezed my fists tightly and did exactly what the ghost told me to do—resenting, really, that he’d been spying on us but feeling grateful about it, all the same.

  I felt like there was a bomb going off in my skull—like all the blood was pooling together and thrusting out of my ears and eyes. I let out a wild scream as the feeling crested. It was like a wild inner-brain bomb, something I couldn’t control once it started. And at the very peak of this, I heard it: the shattering of windows.

  I hustled from the snake, reaching the windows and drawing out onto the other side, into the sun. I stood out on the roof, my feet crinkling over the glass shards that had exploded out. I glanced down and realized that every single person who went to Origins Supernatural was down in the grassy clearing below—staring up at me.

  Over one hundred people—all of their eyes pointed directly at me.

  I didn’t know what to do. If I went back into the attic, then the snake would immediately attack me. I had a hunch that the snake could eventually find a way to slither up and out onto the roof, which meant that I needed to hurry. But I felt oddly frozen, with all of those pairs of eyes looking up at me.

  I knew that I was an outcast at this school—that everyone questioned why I was there and why I mattered. I knew that they didn’t want me there, that I was nothing to them.

  And now, I knew I was revealing myself to be every bit as weird as they’d always suspected—with some kind of strange power they probably couldn’t fully recognize.

  Fuck.

  In the center of the crowd, Raphael, Ezra, and Quintin stood in a line, their arms crossed over their chest. I was drawn to Ezra, whose blue eyes seemed like targets in the belly of the student body. He licked his lips, then muttered something to Quintin. For whatever reason, I actually heard what he said—

  “What the fuck is she up to now?”

  Margot ambled up behind them. She gaped at me, seemingly shocked that I’d been able to escape the snake, at least for now. She turned quickly and whispered something to Zelda, who frowned up at me.

  The worst of all of them, though, was Celeste, at the back of the crowd with Peter. She draped her hand over her eyes, blocking the sun. I could tell she was petrified. I’d known over the past few weeks that my being at Origins hadn’t exactly been easy for her. Sure, she’d thought it would be a blast before it all had begun. She hadn’t expected that Margot and the kings would choose me as the one they wanted to fuck around with. She hadn’t expected that she’d have to hear insults flung at her, all because she was friends with me.

  It wasn’t my fucking fault. But I still felt horribly guilty about it.

  I
couldn’t wait anymore. I ambled to the side of the roof, where a little iron ladder snuck down to the next level. From there, another ladder led me to the balcony on the side of the third floor. I could feel the student body’s eyes on me as I took every single delicate step. My hands squeezed the iron bars almost too tightly. I told myself, over and over again, that I couldn’t possibly cry. If I cried, then I would reveal myself as weak. And I couldn’t be. Not with everything about to happen.

  When I reached the third-floor balcony, I found myself face-to-face with Headmaster Chesterton. Apparently, he’d heard all the chaos up top and had come to find me. His face was difficult to read: blotchy and red, like a beet. He reached out in anger to grab my wrist and yank me off the balcony—and I was immediately thrust into visions.

  A dying, fat man—stretched out on a bed. His belly round and pointed toward the ceiling. A television, buzzing with the nightly news.

  Fuck. That was the darkest of all of them. I yanked my wrist back, staring up at him, aghast. He rubbed at his temples, looking similarly exhausted. Had he seen it, too? So far, it seemed like people could only sense what I saw if it was part of their future. People could maybe sense I was in their future—but they couldn’t see the images.

  “My god, Miss Whitestone,” Headmaster Chesterton scoffed. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing up there on the roof — breaking all of the windows? Do you understand when those windows were put in? My, I don’t think they’ve been altered since the school was built.”

  I set my jaw, absolutely fuming. “I had to get out of the attic.”

  He looked flustered. He scrubbed at his beard. “I know you’re going through a great deal, Miss Whitestone. But you cannot simply parade around this school like you own the place, just because of your situation.”

  “I can promise you. I wasn’t,” I spat back.

  “And what is with this electricity I feel when—“ He paused, looking like he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to ask what had happened when we’d touched. He took a dramatic step back, letting his shoulders sag.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I really need to get back to my room,” I said. I walked past him, then sped into a run. When I reached the staircase, I whizzed around to call back, “Oh! And someone released an ancient fucking Egyptian snake in the attic. I feel like you should probably go take care of that?”

  Then, I scurried around the staircase, until I reached the bottom, not pausing to gasp for breath. All I wanted was to be alone, to think. Time felt like this pressing weight on my chest. But when I cut out of the main building, lurching for my bedroom—almost limping, now, with exhaustion, I stumbled directly into Margot, Zelda, Riley, and the three kings.

  They had formed some kind of line between me and the girls’ dormitory. I almost fell to my knees, like some kind of servant wanting to beg for them to spare my life.

  Margot cut her heel into the grass. “Well, well. The boys mentioned that there was something up with you, little girl. I’m glad that we got to see a bit of whatever’s going on in that head of yours.”

  “I told you,” Ezra spat. “She’s a fucking supernatural, all right. Just don’t fucking know why she won’t tell us who the hell she is.”

  Raphael dropped down a bit to gaze into my eyes. I had half a thought to reach out, wrap my hand around his neck, and force him to remember something absolutely horrible about his past. Maybe some kind of childhood trauma? My eyes glittered, knowing I was growing into this kind of power.

  But I couldn’t use it for evil. Jesus, that made me no better than the vampires who’d killed over in Hillside Falls.

  “I see something in those eyes of hers,” he said. “So beautiful and blue. Like yours, Ezra.”

  “Fuck off,” Ezra said. He smashed his foot into the back of Raphael’s knee, making him stumble.

  Raphael reared around. Tufts of hair sprung upon his upper back and on his arms. His nails rushed out, becoming enormous and thick and yellow. From where I was, I couldn’t see his face—but I suspected he’d half-transformed in a fit of rage. I’d read in my textbook that Lycans had more control over when and how they transformed, compared to werewolves. But I’d also read that when they didn’t have control yet, their emotions could get the better of them.

  I made a mental note to take care of myself around Raphael. Keep on the down-low.

  Of course, I knew I had to watch out for all of them.

  “Calm the fuck down,” Ezra snarled at Raphael. He grabbed Raphael’s elbow and yanked him away from me, throwing him to the ground. The minute he hit the ground, his hair darted back into his skin. His face returned to normal and he blinked up at the sky, looking lost.

  Margot moved toward me. Her words were filled with malice. “I don’t know what you are or why you’re here,” she continued like nothing had happened. “But don’t think this is over. Your life is only going to get worse from here on out. Do you understand me? Oui? It’ll be like—hmm—a series of tests. Just to prove that you can stay alive at a place like Origins. What do you say?”

  I was exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to respond, to tell Margot exactly what the hell I thought of her or the boys. I darted to the right and marched back toward my dorm, praying that Celeste had regrouped and returned as well. God, I needed a fucking friend.

  Of course, when I entered my room, Celeste was seated at the edge of my bed. Her eyes were rimmed red. I clipped the door shut and sighed. I sensed what she was going to say before she said it.

  “They’re trying to kill you,” she whispered.

  “I know,” I returned.

  “I don’t fucking know what to do.” Celeste’s lower lip trembled. Since she was still learning her magic and spells, when she got upset, things around her started to shift. My lamp erupted from the top of the side table and hovered near the ceiling. The curtain ripped off the hanger.

  I kneeled down in front of her as I watched the tears roll down her cheeks.

  “You don’t have to do anything, Celeste...”

  “Yes, I do. You’re my best friend. And I...”

  “They’re making your life hell, too. I know,” I sighed. I stepped toward the bed and sat next to her, careful not to touch her.

  The lamp fell to the floor with a crunch. The shards rushed across the floor, scattering in all directions.

  “Fuck,” Celeste whispered.

  For whatever reason, I laughed. It just seemed like such a silly thing to ever mourn a fucking lamp when everything else in the world was falling apart. We both dropped back on the bed, our hands over our bellies. It felt like we were little girls again, trading stories, living in one another’s dreams.

  “I wish you’d always known that you were special,” Celeste whispered, sounding wistful. “I feel like it wouldn’t be so confusing, you know? You could just live amongst us without so much heartache.”

  I shrugged. “I can kind of understand why Mom kept everything from me.”

  “But this has been terrible for you.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I know,” I said, trying to laugh it off. There was a long pause. I knew we were both trying to grapple with this huge change in our own way. But there was no fucking way to deal with it. It was just hard. Most people had to become adults, struggle through the aches and pains of getting older. But our version was much different.

  “The Halloween party,” Celeste said then. She propped herself up on her elbow, giving me a strange look. “Maybe we could just stay in that night. Just... I don’t know what’s going to happen when your powers come full circle, you know? Like, the way you cracked all those windows? That was fucking crazy.”

  “I won’t hurt anyone, if that’s what you think,” I said, although I really had no clue. I wasn’t sure how much I could trust myself. When I got angry? It seemed like something else took over.

  “I still think we should stay in,” Celeste stated, almost pleading it. “I’ll tell Peter to go on without me. We can get loads of booze and just chill in
here, get wasted alone. It’s what we’ve been doing for years, anyway. And I missed your birthday last year. Let’s just make it about us... yeah?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know why, but going to the Halloween Party seemed the most important part of my year. It was the final nail in the coffin, the very last moment of normalcy before everything happened. I just wanted to go drink, dance, scream into the night over the Gulf. And when my birthday hit and my powers came—

  I would deal with the consequences.

  I had to deal with them, anyway.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The day before Halloween, there was another murder in Hillside Falls. Again, I rushed to my phone to look up the name. It was someone I didn’t recognize. Still, my heart felt so fucking heavy with the news. I stared at my breakfast for twenty minutes without eating it, stirring it around with my fork. Celeste tried to snap me out of my reverie but soon stopped bothering. My brain was like a hurricane. There was no controlling it—especially so soon before my birthday.

  After a long pause, Peter asked if we were planning to go to the Halloween Party. I knew that he and Celeste had already talked about it—and probably, he was just asking me to make sure I really wanted to go. I looked at him squarely in his bright eyes and said, “Why would I miss it? Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year.”

  “It’s just with Margot and everyone taking their turn at you, don’t you think it’s kind of a good thing to avoid them for now?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Isn’t it better to stare your abuser in the face?”

  “I just don’t want you to get Celeste in any fucking situation I can’t get her out of...” Peter stated.

  Celeste snapped her fingers in front of Peter’s face. Peter gaped at her, clearly shocked.

  “I can take care of myself,” Celeste spoke with assurance, her eyes flashing.

  That was the best friend I knew. Of course, I hated to see them bickering about something that involved me. Celeste didn’t deserve the chaos I was putting her through. Hell, she had always just thought I was this normal human friend she could run around and shop with — what a goddamn surprise.