Tara plucked the last card from the tree’s foliage, positioned to the southwest of the Star. The Wheel of Fortune showed a sphinx holding a wheel between its paws. In the clouds around it, symbols of the four elements perched: a bird, a man, a cow, and a lion. “Another card of endings and beginnings, new cycles. Whatever is past is falling away, and the future is rolling in. The Wheel of Fortune also speaks of taking risks and accepting the consequences, whether good or bad.”
Tara turned over the first card in the tree’s trunk. “The Four of Pentacles illustrates your hopes and fears. In this case, it’s reversed.” The card showed a woman sitting under a tree in a meditative posture. She cradled three pentacles in her lap and was crowned by the fourth. “It suggests you’re in deliberation, but that you will need to take action or a risk to move forward. It’s a card of complacency and miserliness.”
“Does it mean I shouldn’t take any action now?” Cassie’s brow wrinkled.
“Not necessarily. It just means that if you don’t act, nothing will be gained, and you’ll remain in the same position.” Something tickled Tara’s memory about the card, and she grinned. “Traditionally, the reversed Four of Pentacles can sometimes herald being sent to the nunnery.”
Cassie stuck her tongue out. “Screw that.” She paused, reflecting. “Wait a minute.”
Tara lifted a brow. “Oh?”
“I haven’t seen any men around here. Besides Harry.”
Tara avoided the insinuation. “Yes.”
“Does that mean. . . ?”
“Does it mean what?”
“Does that mean that joining Delphi’s Daughters means I have to take a vow of celibacy?” Panic crossed the girl’s face.
Tara laughed out loud. “No. I think you’re safe.”
Cassie sat back. “Whew. I mean. . . I wondered there, for a moment, if that was the real reason why you’d left Delphi’s Daughters.”
Tara shook her head. “No. That wasn’t any part of the equation. That ‘wife of Apollo’ stuff wasn’t even strictly adhered to back in the time of sandals and togas.”
Cassie nodded. “Okay. I’ll try not to panic at the rest of the reading.”
“The last card is the final outcome of your question,” Tara said. She was heartened by the positive flavor of the reading, and expected the final card would seal the reading.
The Page of Swords. A woman armored like Joan of Arc stood against a gray sky with sword lifted, peering into the wind with wariness. Her green cloak curled around her, hiding something.
Tara’s finger rested on it. She’d encountered this card recently, when Gabriel and Corvus had sent the assassin for Cassie. Then, she’d associated the card with the shooter, with a puppet of Gabriel and Corvus, but hadn’t quite been able to get the feminine taste of the card out of her mouth.
“This card cautions you to be clearheaded and quick-witted. It also suggests the need for discretion. Be cautious and enter the situation with your eyes open.”
She circled the configuration of cards with her finger. “Overall, I’d say that the cards predict an auspicious beginning to the next part of your life. You have many allies, though you have some emotional business to attend to. Joy is on the horizon. But be vigilant, and guard against complacency.”
Cassie nodded. “Understood. Thanks, I do appreciate it.”
From the other side of the door, a knock rattled. “Cassie, it’s time for flowers. . .”
Cassie made a face. “Ugh.”
Tara smiled. “Go get tarted up like a parade float. I’ll check on you in a bit.”
Cassie dragged her feet going to the door. When she closed it, Tara picked up the Page of Swords. She turned it over in her hands, observing the cold expression in the Page’s eyes.
She’d seen that cold expression before, in Adrienne’s agate gaze.
“Shit,” she breathed.
She shuffled the deck, cut the cards, and began a reading for herself. “What’s coming next?” she muttered at the deck. She did a simple three-card spread.
The first card she drew was Strength: the woman holding the jaws of the lion closed. A runnel of blood traveled from her collar where the lion had bitten her, soaking the front of her gown. But the woman held fast, her expression serene.
The Ten of Swords depicted a man lying prone on a beach, his back pierced by ten swords. Blood drained into the water of the nearby lake. It was the sign of a painful and inevitable ending.
The Page of Swords brought up the last position, vigilant and staring back at her with eyes the color of the gray sky behind her. Adrienne again. The young upstart, seeking to dethrone the Queen of Swords.
Could she have survived the mine collapse? Tara steepled her fingers at her chin. The cards were insisting she was a proximate factor. Drawing the card twice in two different spreads went far beyond chance.
There was an ending to be had between Tara and Adrienne. And the cards predicted it would be bloody.
HARRY DROVE THROUGH THE COLD HOURS OF NIGHT UNTIL the stars burned out.
He felt guilty for leaving Tara, but he needed to sort this shit out. There was clearly some bat-shit craziness going down at the farmhouse. Asking him to believe in Jung’s synchronicity was a far stretch for him, and this cult stuff. . .
He felt guilty for leaving Cassie behind. He wondered how much brainwashing Cassie might be subjected to. So far, all he had to go on was Tara’s word that she’d be safe. Several times he picked up his cell phone and started to dial the local FBI field office. It would take some doing to get agents to descend upon the farmhouse, but he might be able to pull enough strings to get it to happen. Each time, he hung up without completing the call. Tara was right; Cassie’s life was safer with Delphi’s Daughters than in any witness protection program he could place her under.
But it bothered him that there seemed to be nothing he could do about the situation. He was accustomed to being able to act and solve problems. . . and there was no good answer for this situation. It was merely a choice between two evils. And it was Cassie’s choice.
Dawn reddened the horizon before he stopped along the interstate, at a small town near the edge of the state line. Few lights were on as he cruised down the main street. Convenience stores and restaurants were closed, not to open for another hour or more. He doubled back down residential streets, searching for caffeine or a place to piss.
Spying the inviting red glow of a vending machine in the distance, he pulled off the road. He’d take his caffeine any way he could get it. He drove through an open gate in a chain-link fence, through a deserted county fairground. Parking the car before the seductive red glow of the pop machine, he emerged from the car. He jingled change in his pants pocket as he perused the selections.
Choosing a high-octane energy drink, he fed a handful of change into the humming machine and punched the button. The machine rejected his change. Harry growled and fed it to the machine again, one coin at a time. The damn machine spat them out again. He kicked the machine.
Harry snatched the change from the coin slot, sifting through it. Maybe he’d accidentally picked up a slug somewhere. His fingers counted out two quarters, a dime, a couple of nickels, and. . . a weird coin that was the wrong shape.
It figured that the damn machine wouldn’t take Canadian money. Harry turned to go back to the car. Perhaps he could scavenge some more change from the seat cushions. But something tingled in the nape of his neck, and he opened his hand again to look at the strange coin.
It wasn’t Canadian. It was British money. One side of the golden coin showed a portrait of the Queen. The other side showed the words Ten Pence above a crowned lion.
Harry paused. The coin reminded him of the Tarot card he’d found where Tara had been buried: Strength. The tattered image of the woman holding closed the jaws of the lion had inspired him to start digging.
He’d driven away from the caldera, as she’d wanted. But as soon as he’d pulled out of the compound, he’d picked up a tail. Through
some harrowing turns down two-lane roads in the desert, Harry had succeeded in ditching the tail. He called the nearest field office for reinforcements, then turned back to the caldera. The only thing on his mind had been rescuing Tara. Halfway back, he heard a roar that jangled gravel on the road and shook the lines on the overhead telephone poles. He could feel the shudder of the earth through his foot jammed to the gas pedal, and his heart lurched into his throat. He arrived at the old silver mine just behind the local volunteer fire department. Sheer luck had led him to Tara.
Perhaps not luck. He flipped the coin in his hand, weighing it.
Movement behind the building caught his eye. The morning sun illuminated a grand old carousel. Filled with horses and fantastical beasts, the immaculately maintained paint shone brightly. It was closed down for the winter; tarps covered the control panels.
But someone still imagined riding it. Astride a brightly painted lion, a woman in a long coat sat sidesaddle. The lion’s mane was painted orange, and he was captured mid-roar, with white fangs glistening. She stared up at the sun, while a dog snooted around the base of the carousel. The woman held a leash in the hand that rested on top of the lion’s head as she waited for the dog to finish his business.
It was the scene of a simple morning stroll, but it hit Harry hard, hard as the shredded Tarot card perched in the dirt.
Harry climbed back into the car, started the ignition. He turned the car back down the way he’d come.
He couldn’t shake the irrational sense of impending danger. He was certain that Tara needed him, whether she knew it or not.
“YOU’RE NOT WEARING THAT.”
“I am.”
The Pythia planted her fists on her hips, jingling the gold bracelets over her thick gauntlets. She was dressed in a scarlet dalmatica with gold trim and a matching girdle strung with tiny bells that tinkled when she moved. The overall effect was of having one’s pissed-off fairy godmother cast in a Bollywood flick.
“You are,” Tara growled, “not my mother.” She folded her arms over her button-down shirt and black jacket. She was wearing jeans, period. There was no way to hide a gun in a toga.
“This is an initiation. Have some respect.”
“Yeah, well. . . I’m a guest. I’m not in the club, remember?”
The Pythia rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. She flipped on the burner of the gas kitchen stove to light a cigarette. On the kitchen counter, Oscar poked his head out of the breadbox. He fixed Tara with a baleful look and disappeared back inside.
“Pythia.” Tara tried to change the subject. “I read something in the cards that has me worried. About Adrienne.”
That got her attention. The Pythia glanced sidelong at her. One of the flower petals from her headdress drooped precariously over one eye. “What about her?”
“That she may still be out there, somewhere, and in revenge-seeking mode.”
The Pythia plucked a bay leaf from her headdress and dropped it into the burner. Tara’s stomach rumbled as the sweet smell of bay leaf smoked up to the flame hood. The Pythia watched the blue fire catch it, burn yellow, curl it, and reduce it to ash.
“There is nothing here that can be changed,” she said.
“But there is no immutable future,” Tara protested.
The Pythia made a slicing gesture with the hand not occupied with a cigarette. “Let it play out the way it’s meant to.”
“But. . .” Tara began.
The Pythia poked her in the ribs with a sculpted fingernail. “Go get something to eat. You’re too skinny.”
“Radiation sickness will do that to you.”
The Pythia snorted.
Cassie stomped into the kitchen, flower petals flying in her wake. Two of Delphi’s Daughters twittered after her, trying to tuck the errant flowers in place. The girl looked like a maypole. Flowers covered her: a chaplet of bay leaves curled around her head; wilting crocuses were tied to her arms with ribbons; orange and yellow tulips were garlanded around her waist.
Cassie sneezed. “Is this all really necessary? I’m allergic to this shit.”
The Pythia raised her eyebrows. Cassie fell into a sneezing fit that dislodged her chaplet and blew a handful of tulips off her toga. She stood in the kitchen floor, miserable, wiping her nose with a paper towel. Tara went to her and started plucking the worst of the flowers from her clothes and hair.
The Pythia threw up her hands again. “Let’s just get down to the spring.” She stalked out the back kitchen door.
Cassie looked at Tara. “Is she pissed at me?”
“No. She’s really mad at me. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
“Used to her being mad at you or me?”
“Both.”
The Pythia was calling for Cassie. Delphi’s Daughters were beginning to flock together on the front porch. Like extras from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, their pale dalmatica robes were white, and the women had braided flowers and herbs into their hair. Tara smelled incense, and someone yelped as Maggie’s nose scooted up an unsecured skirt.
Cassie rolled her eyes and dragged her feet to the door. “You’re coming?”
Tara set her mouth in a grim line. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
She just hoped the guest list was under control.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE PYTHIA Parade began shortly before noon.
Tara resolutely fell in line behind the uneven line of women spewing rose petals across the field. She stubbornly refused to change clothes, and stuck out like a sore thumb among the women dressed like the Muses’ crazy old aunts. The drinking had already begun, and some were already none too steady on their feet. Sophia’s chickens followed them for a short distance before losing interest, but Maggie bounded through the freshly plowed field to catch up to Cassie. Mud began to sully the edges of their skirts, and claimed more than one sandal.
Tara scanned the edges of the field and the tree line of the forest. Between the flower petals and the tracks in the mud, they’d leave a trail easy enough for a child to follow. She reached self-consciously for her gun. She remembered the Page of Swords, with her sword upraised: the Page did not enter any conflict without being well-armed. Neither would Tara.
They crossed the field into the shade of the forest, following a winding overgrown footpath downhill. Tara remembered this place from her childhood. Delphi’s Daughters were versatile: they didn’t fight to possess locations for permanent oracles, like the Temple of Apollo. Their ancestors had wasted too much energy on places. Delphi’s Daughters could play a pick-up game of magick wherever they found themselves.
But this place was one of Tara’s favorites. She remembered when her mother had led her by the hand down this labyrinthine dirt path, years ago. Tara had stepped on a honeybee, and her mother had carried her down into the deep, shaded ravine to the place where a spring bubbled before a shallow sedimentary cave. She remembered the way the sandstone glistened, the cool feel of moss under her feet, and the sharp taste of the iron-laced water. Improbable trees had wedged their roots into crevices in the stone, clinging to the sides like spiders, reaching up toward the sun.
It was almost the same as she remembered it, but smaller. The cave seemed less deep, and the trees were still mostly bare this early in the year. Pale sunlight shone down onto the spring, which bubbled and gurgled like a half-open tap on a water hose. This early in spring, it smelled like moss and leaf-rot.
The Pythia delicately stepped onto a flat rock overlooking the spring. A fissure had formed in the rock decades ago, splitting it halfway. Below and behind it, darkness stretched, and the spring ran beneath. Tara’s mother had never allowed her to play there, warning her away from the steep sides.
Delphi’s Daughters busied themselves with building a fire in a brazier on the flat rock and arranging the Pythia’s tripod chair. They kept a few affectations of the old order of the Oracle of Delphi. Tara appreciated the fire aspect of it (the Pythia was a pyromancer, after all), but thought th
e small, tippy chair looked terribly uncomfortable. Perhaps it had been designed to keep the original Pythia from getting too comfortable and falling asleep after long sessions at the temple of Apollo. Tara was wholeheartedly glad she’d never be Pythia.
Two of the women led Cassie down to the pool at the edge of the spring. Tara heard Cassie exclaim shrilly, “What? I’ve got to take my clothes off?”
It was a tradition going back to Delphi: initiates had to be ritually cleansed in pure water. In ancient Greece the Castalian Spring had been used, but Pythia’s modern daughters would use any handy source of water. In an emergency ceremony, she had once seen the Pythia use a garden hose wrestled from a kids Slip’N Slide game.
But using the spring had much more gravitas. And the Pythia loved ceremony.
Maggie bounded ahead of her into the water, splashing mightily. She took two small circular laps, jumped up to the shore, and shook herself off. Frigidly cold water peppered the assembled women, who squealed in dismay.
Cassie shyly pulled her tunic over her head. She crossed her arms over her body, and Tara could see her cheeks flaming red. She hissed as she was led into the water and her foot connected with the chilly surface. Modesty won out over goose bumps, and she waded to her neck in it to obscure her body. Tara could hear her teeth chattering from her stance at the edge of the circle of women.
After a few false starts, Delphi’s Daughters managed to get a decent fire going with some scrap wood brought from the house and a couple of fire bricks. The Pythia gathered her robes and perched on her ridiculously little chair. She popped a few laurel leaves into her mouth to chew. Unlike in times past, hallucinogenic vapors were not required to have a ceremony. The Pythia maintained that hallucinogenic substances were for poseurs. She looked out over the women, and her voice echoed off the walls of the gorge. “Sisters, we assemble today in great sadness and in great joy. We come to mourn the passing of our sisters and to welcome a new initiate. Time passes, and times change. Sophia and Adrienne are lost to us, but our lineage begins anew, in the veins of Cassie Magnusson. She will carry our line forward into the future.”
Dark Oracle Page 25