by Nicole Thorn
She groaned. “My head is killing me,” she complained. “Where am I?”
Kizzy answered from her spot by Jasper. “You’re at our house, and you’re safe. Do you understand what happened to you?”
She blinked at my sister, and she looked to me. “Demigods. I can feel you, and the whispers told me where to come. Seers,” she added, looking around more. “Demigods and seers all together. The little army.”
Hmm. “Honey,” I said softly. “You know what we are. What are you?”
She laughed, and her voice sounded like wind chimes. “You’ll believe me. Mom and Daddy don’t like to listen. I always have to listen, because the whispers tell me to. They tell me all I need to know and say.”
“Uh-oh,” my sister said.
I didn’t draw the same conclusion she did, and Callie had to tell me. “I am the Oracle,” she said with pride. “And I am the mouthpiece of the gods.”
She spoke with such reverence for her occupation. That had to be a lack of sanity on her part.
“Are you now?” I asked. “Since when?”
The girl smiled. “The whispers told me that the previous Oracle passed last year. She went peacefully and is now enjoying her afterlife. I am the new Oracle, and I am here to . . . ” Her eyebrows pushed together, and she stared at the floor. “Here to . . . ” She made a sad sound as she looked up again. “I don’t know why I’m here. I had it.” She huffed, and her gaze turned up to the ceiling. “Foggy. I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I knew what I had to do. Daddy didn’t like it when I left the house. He says I’ve been off. He doesn’t understand that the whispers are telling me what to do.”
She was nutty then. Like a freaking squirrel. Like a squirrel that killed itself in the basement of a house for sale.
“Wait,” Juniper said, waving her arms. “You were looking for us?”
“I think so,” Callie said. “Everything was bad. Bad things in my head, and lots of bad feelings. But I’m here, and I’m supposed to be here.”
Okay, so we had an Oracle teenager in our house, who seemed to think she ended up where she needed to be. Not good. We just freed ourselves of the furies, and that almost got us all killed several times. Kizzy literally got torn up by those things. What could the gods want us to know that they wouldn’t tell us themselves?
My brother acted normal, so it couldn’t be all that bad. My mother would warn us if we were in danger, and so would Demeter . . . I think. If they could, that was. Some of the gods didn’t like it when we got special treatment, yet they always did the same for their children. They would find a way to tells us, our moms. This may have been it.
What new, awful thing came after us now? We’d not done anything else that could deserve any punishment. The furies were fine with us now, and glad that they got to start fresh. Other than that, we’d spent our lives keeping to ourselves.
“How do you not remember?” Jasmine asked the girl. “How is it all fuzzy in your head?”
Callie shook her head, and sighed. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s so clear, and sometimes it’s all weird. Like I’m watching through steamed glass.”
“Hold on,” Juniper cut in again. “Is it not strange that the Oracle happened to be wandering around when you ran into her? I mean, this is an odd coincidence.”
Jasper shrugged. “Was it not a coincidence that Jasmine ran into Zander and Kezia before? She had a vision of them right after.”
“Yeah,” Kizzy said with a furrowed brow. “There are three seers in the whole world, and one Oracle. And we’re all here now, demigods, seers, and the Oracle. I refuse to believe that just happened.”
Jasper’s expression made it clear that he agreed with his girlfriend. I did too. Strange that we all found each other. I thought about that from time to time, but I didn’t have an answer. No one offered up explanations, and we all kind of had to live without them.
“Actually,” Callie said, raising a finger. “My dad was transferred a few months ago. I didn’t always live in Seattle.”
That didn’t make it any less a coincidence. That only made it even odder. So, she had been brought to Seattle, my and Kizzy’s mothers set us up here, and the seers have always been around. Was there something in the water?
“What does your dad do?” Jasmine asked.
“Advertising,” she said. “He and my mom work at the same company. I go to school, but Daddy pulled me out for home tutoring when he said I needed to be away from people. The kids at my school didn’t understand me. It’s not my fault that the gods whisper to me.”
My hands went to my pockets and I sighed. “And what do they say?”
“All kinds of things. They tell me what I need to tell people, but I cannot remember what I had to let you know . . . ” She harrumphed. “I do not like things so unclear.”
Well, this wouldn’t get much better. She needed to return home so she could rest and let her parents know she hadn’t been hurt.
“Let me call your parents,” I said. “I’m taking you home.”
She gave me the number, and I left for the kitchen while the girls talked to Callie. Such an odd little thing, that girl. I could only imagine what she saw in her head made her that way. She had probably been totally normal up until the last Oracle died. Poor kid.
The phone rang out, and a man answered, sounding tired already. “Yes?”
“Hi, my name is Zander Dovetree, and I found your daughter in the park. She’s a little worn out, and I wanted to bring her home.”
He cut me off before I could ask where he lived. “Is she okay? What happened?” he demanded, frantic.
“She’s fine,” I promised. “Just got a little dizzy.”
The man sighed. “My poor baby. She’s been having such a hard time. She won’t take her pills, and she gets confused. The kid thinks that gods talk to her. Like, Greek gods. Like Cupid is out there telling her to stick people with arrows or something.”
I smiled to myself. “That’s his Roman name.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Me and my sister are gonna swing by with Callie. Can you give me your address?”
He lived very close. Like . . . ten minutes close. I found that worrisome and didn’t know how to take it. Something bubbled beneath the surface of all this, and I couldn’t see what. I could feel it, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
“Um,” I said, buying time. “What exactly is up with Callie? Is she okay?” I wanted more information. Maybe she said something to him that she couldn’t remember anymore. Any hint would’ve been good, since it would seem that the monsters desperately wanted to kill us.
Her father sighed, worn out. “She’s got a lot of imagination. She’s perfectly fine most of the time. Sometimes she’s a little odd, but I like that about her. She sees everything differently. I’m getting worried now. Why would she start ranting about gods out of nowhere?”
“Maybe something she read,” I suggested, tossing out the sentence. “We’ll be there soon.” I hung up, and put the phone back in my pocket.
I walked out to the living room, and found Callie admiring Nemo with Jasmine as she dropped in Cheetos. That couldn’t have been good for him, but the little bastard ate it. That thing was not a beta, and I wanted to know what it was. Something told me that the fish had some more growing to do. Juniper would probably want to flush him down the toilet.
“Kiz?” I asked, and she turned from the tank, her face still scrunched up from the show. “Can you come with me to drop Callie off?”
The three of us left for my car, and Callie sat in the back. She insisted on sticking her head out the window so that she could feel the cold air on her face. She looked so happy, and I couldn’t help but smile. So, we might be dying, but at least she seems to be okay with her lot in life.
“So,” Kizzy started, looking at Callie. “Just how bad did your little vision thing feel?”
Callie’s nose scrunched up when she settled back in the car, and her feet tapped on the floor. I couldn�
�t look at her for long, but she seemed utterly unsettled. “It was very dark, and I didn’t like it. I don’t like that I can’t see anymore. My whispers are all wrong, and I can’t fix it. Maybe you can.”
Super. We had another task to deal with. So much for me trying to help out Jasmine, or showing her that things could be nice, and that she didn’t have to drink away everything real in her life. I couldn’t make her understand that she had people to fall back on, and that she wasted her days away. Another person I couldn’t save.
I didn’t want this life for Kizzy either. She had started getting to a great place, and we didn’t need the Oracle giving us messages about the danger that she couldn’t even tell us more about. I wanted to take my sister, and bring her somewhere far away from this. Damn the fact that we were half god. Just enough to get us in trouble, but not enough to keep ourselves safe from the danger.
It was no one’s fault, so I shouldn’t be so angry. I wanted my sister safe from more pain. She had begun healing up, and now I had another hole to plug up in this fucking dike that my life became. One problem started to go away, and another came. One that would be infinitely harder to solve than the last. Getting a person to heal wasn’t as hard as getting one to see. The seers, so blind . . . it would have been funny if not tragic. They went into denial to keep themselves safe. Something in their heads blocked it out so that they didn’t have to deal. Even with Jasper knowing now, he seemed so careful. He didn’t point it out to his sisters. That was either cruel or kind. I didn’t know.
How do you make a person see the truth without shattering them? Could you? I didn’t wish that kind of pain on Jasmine. It might have all been pointless. If she wanted to waste her life away, why didn’t I let her? I was useless anyway. Why did my pesky need to soothe have to fuck me in the end? Jasmine didn’t want me, so why did I continue to let this hurt us?
Oh yeah, because I love her. Silly me.
Well on the bright side, I wouldn’t go to prison for kidnapping a sixteen-year-old. A demigod in prison would have been bad for a lot of people. Ares may have been willing to break me out, or I could use my Charm.
***
Sex, I needed sex. There it was. I hadn’t been with anyone in a really, really long time. It had been hard when I had to sneak out to meet people. I needed a night of random fun, and I could be okay again.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I couldn’t even trick myself for five seconds. I never liked random. I never had something much more than random. I knew what I wanted, even if it I couldn’t have it. Damn everything.
Callie hopped out of the car with us when we brought her back to her freaking mansion. Nice to know that the gods shoot for the rich people. Heaven forbid some short order cook be the Oracle.
“Callie,” the man who had to be her father said as he opened the door. His hair looked like a much darker orange, and his eyes were only brown. Everything else in his face looked like little shadows of her. “Where have you been?”
She smiled. “At the park. The gods wanted me to find their children. The children of Demeter and Aphrodite. And the seers. They’re all in town, Daddy.”
He smiled nervously. “Oh . . . so these kids are . . . gods?”
“Demigods,” she corrected.
I waved and grinned. “Nice you meet you, sir. Me and my little sis should get going, but I recommend that you get Callie some tea, and put her down for a nap.”
“Will do.” The man nodded, pulling his daughter inside. I hoped he would believe her one day. I’d hate to see what happened to her mind if someone deemed her insane.
The whispers wouldn’t save her then.
CHAPTER FIVE:
Winter is Freaking Cold
Jasmine
Darkness consumed the house. I didn’t recognize it, but it had that abandoned look that seemed the same to all empty houses. Dust and cobwebs decorated everything. Things left behind either by owners or stupid kids coming here to make out gathered amongst the dirt. The floors creaked with every step. Sudden movements sent plumes of dust rising in the air, thick enough to choke on.
I turned to Zander. “How sure about this are you?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Pretty sure. It’s only the living room, Jazz. Let’s see the rest of the house before making any dire decisions.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Sure. The big scary demigod who can’t get tetanus from rusty nails wants to check it out. Meek little human must follow along.”
Zander laughed. We took another step forward, and I walked right into a cobweb. I had to lash out, because it was a cobweb and I needed the spiders to know that I would not make a good home, and they best abandon ship. Spiders and snakes. There was nothing creepier than either.
“It looks like there’s stuff in this room,” Zander called out over his shoulder.
Curious, I went over, avoiding anything that could be a trap. Paranoia could come in handy sometimes, as I’d learned. We stepped into the room, and it did indeed have stuff in it. Lots of stuff. It seemed to be the only room of the house that hadn’t been abandoned. A bed with a yellow quilt sat in the corner, and the windows looked cleaned with curtains hanging down. The floor appeared free of dust.
Zander knelt on the floor, and I knew that wasn’t a smart move. There could be anything under the. He yanked out a box, and looked interested in it. “See. I told you this wasn’t a waste of time.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That has yet to be seen, Tall, Light, and Goofy. Let me at it.” He handed the box over, and I touched the metal lock with the tips of my fingers. Simple. I had learned how to pick locks when Juni had decided that locking up my beer in the garage was fun. I took out a paperclip, and went after the lock. I worked a couple of moments, and it popped open.
“Huh,” Zander said. “That’s sexier than I thought it would be.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “We are working. We can make out in the car later, buddy boy.”
“Boring.”
I was grinning at him when I popped the lid of the box opened. Then I screamed bloody murder as a thousand spiders started to crawl out of it, and all over me. I dropped the box, still screaming, trying to bat them off my body, but they didn’t want to go. They clung with their legs, and their tiny teeth started to bury into my skin, and I could feel the poison leaking into my body.
This was it. This was how I’d die, because I couldn’t get them off. I slapped, and scrambled, and screamed. They had to get off. I had to get them off before they killed me. Zander screamed with me, trying to save me from the assault of spiders, but he couldn’t move fast enough either. The bugs completely coated me, and they had all bitten my skin. Thousands of little teeth—
Darkness rolled through me, and suddenly I felt like I fell. Fell forever. Trees dotted my vision, and then the road appeared. Pavement marked with tire treads. Sidewalk off to the side. Snow still clung to the ground in big fluffy white piles, but the street had been cleared.
The sky looked bright with a heavy moon, and the stars shined as much as they could with the city lights not too far off.
And Callie walked down the side of the road. She moved jerkily, like she couldn’t get control of her legs. Her eyes stared distantly. She stopped moving, and stared up at the sky. “Can’t hear you . . . ” she mumbled, like she talked to someone. The gods, obviously.
She turned around, still staring at the sky. “Trying to hear you, but there are too many of you talking all at once.” She kept turning in circles, talking nonsense, if you didn’t know how to listen properly. She hadn’t dressed for outside again, I realized. She wore a thin tank top that barely covered her torso. Her skin looked too white, and red in places. Blue in others. The only protection that her legs had was a tiny pair of shorts. Her knees had turned bright red, and I could practically see the goosebumps in the dark. Her feet were the most protected, covered in a pair of sneakers. They wouldn’t keep her safe from freezing to death, though.
She shivered hard as she turned in another circle.
Her hands went to her hair, pulling at it as she tried to make sense of what the gods said to her. When she just couldn’t do it, she dropped her hands, and cursed, creatively and at length. “You need to stop saying so much,” she told the sky. “How am I supposed to tell others when I can’t even understand you?” She sounded heartbroken.
With another twirl, she stepped off the sidewalk, and into the street. She didn’t pay close enough attention, because her feet got tangled together. Her knees bumped into each other, and Callie went down on the cold pavement, landing hard on her ass. She made a choking sound, mostly of grief, but some of the pain.
“Kick me when I’m down,” Callie grumbled. She started getting to her feet, but it was already too late. Her shoes hit the pavement, but the car hit her before she even stood halfway up. It wasn’t a gentle hit. She didn’t roll over the hood, and land on the other side, holding her hip in pain.
It was a car. She was a tiny girl. She went underneath it. I could hear the crunching, and the cracking. Blood flew across the pavement as the second set of tires rolled over her body, smooshing her hips against the ground. Leaving Callie as a broken, flattened thing that looked nothing like the girl she had been before.
I rocketed out of bed, scrambling to get away from the vision. Oh gods. My hands wrapped around my stomach, and I curled into it. Oh gods. Everything I ate for dinner threatened to come up while I tried desperately to keep it down. Oh gods.
I sucked in a breath. The vision had interrupted my nightmare, and for that I felt thankful, but Callie . . . I couldn’t let her die like that. I could still hear the crunching of her bones under a weight much greater than her own. I covered my ears, but that didn’t do anything.
Fuck this, Jasmine. You’re wasting time being horrified when you should be looking for that girl.
I scrambled over to my closet and pulled out my shoes. I wasn’t dressed for going outside, but pulling out proper clothes would waste time that Callie might not have. What if my vision had only been seconds from reality?