What about cracks? The oracle had said sealing cracks was important, and I had a feeling that was related to the business with the Neutralities being destroyed. If it wasn’t about Wallach’s project, maybe cracks referred to the damage to the wards, warping them, and if we sealed the cracks, we could protect the Neutralities? Something else to suggest to Lucia, since I didn’t have the power to do anything like that.
So the Neutralities were being destroyed. It reminded me of something else the oracle had said, something about holes being plugged until there was only one. That made me wonder if the Wardens should be doing anything about the destroyed Neutralities. Those might be considered “holes.” Holes, I wrote, then chewed the end of my pen. What else might this augury mean? Drawing each letter with deliberate slowness, I wrote The villain is the least obvious suspect. I didn’t know what that meant, because we knew who the villains were, but it felt right.
I turned that page over and hesitated at the top of the next blank page. I’d been studying the augury so I wouldn’t have to face this, and that had been a good excuse for a while, but now I was just being cowardly. I squeezed my eyes tight shut for a minute, then blinked at the page and clicked the pen open and shut a few times. Mitch Hallstrom belonged to the Mercy, though we didn’t learn that until later, I wrote. Judy and I believed he was the killer who’d been draining magi of their magic…
I wrote until my hand was sore. Details I’d forgotten, like the smell of arborvitae and the greasy feel of concrete under my face, swarmed down my pen onto the paper. I remembered how it had felt when Hallstrom splayed his palm against the bare skin of my stomach and had to set my pen down and swallow hard to keep from throwing up. Then I wrote Malcolm shot me and stopped, reading those three words over and over again. It was the only way, I wrote, and stopped again. I swore loudly and crossed out those words so violently my pen tore the paper. He shot me, I wrote, ignoring the splotches where my tears struck the paper. I loved him, and I thought he loved me, and he looked at me as if I was a bug and sent that twisted piece of metal through my shoulder. And it doesn’t matter that I understand why he did it, it doesn’t make me forget that look on his face. But because it hurt him—I crossed that sentence fragment out too. I can’t let it affect me because it would hurt him so much, all over again, because it wasn’t true, he did love me, and—
I tossed the pen aside and wiped my eyes. I’d told him I’d forgiven him, and I’d meant it, but I’d been strong for all the wrong reasons.
I went in search of Malcolm and found him in the office, answering email. “Are you busy?”
He shook his head, but his eyes were still on the monitor. “I’m…not now,” he finally said, clicking Send. “Is everything all right?”
“I was writing about Mitch Hallstrom,” I said, “and how you shot me.”
His face went very still. He said nothing.
“I didn’t want to make you feel bad, because I knew you felt so guilty at hurting me,” I went on, “but that means—I didn’t—” Tears streamed down my face. “You looked as if you didn’t care about me at all. Like I was just another obstruction. I could understand everything else, but not that. And believing you didn’t care for me…that hurt so much more than being shot.”
Malcolm stood and gathered me into his arms, holding me as I cried. “I was so afraid for you,” he murmured. “I thought if Hallstrom knew you meant more to me than just an innocent bystander, he’d never let you go. Or that he’d hurt you to make me suffer. If I hadn’t looked indifferent…Helena, he held your life in his hands. I am so, so sorry you suffered, and if I could have any moment to live over again, make different choices, it would be that one.”
I sniffled. “I don’t see how you could change it. I’d still have been in his power.”
“I got lost on the way to his house. If I’d gotten there five minutes earlier, I would have arrived before you were captured, and you wouldn’t have been involved.” He stroked my hair. “I don’t usually play the game of ‘what-if’, because trying to second-guess yourself is a fool’s errand. But in this case, it’s hard not to imagine.”
“I didn’t know.” I wiped my eyes and looked up at him. “You know I really, truly don’t blame you.”
“It doesn’t sound like that’s what this was about.” Malcolm cradled my face in his hand, stroking my cheekbone with one thumb. “That night, you looked at me—I don’t know what you were thinking, but you looked at me with such hope it broke my heart, because I knew the only ending to that standoff would leave you bloody on the ground and hating me forever. I know I can’t change your memories, but I want you to know—no matter how I looked that night, I loved you, and I hope you believe I always will.”
I leaned into his touch. “I shouldn’t need that reassurance, but I do.”
“I don’t think ‘should’ matters,” Malcolm said, and leaned in to kiss me. His lips on mine were so tender, so much the way they’d felt the first time we’d kissed, that more memories rose up, all of them wonderful. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him back, feeling peace unfold like a flower in my heart.
“I don’t know if that’s what Sydney had in mind with that assignment, but it worked,” I said a few minutes later.
“I’m in favor of anything that makes you kiss me like it’s the first time,” Malcolm murmured.
“That’s how it was for me, too. Except the first time, I thought you were saying goodbye, so my heart was broken.”
“I told myself it was goodbye, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.” Malcolm brushed my hair back from my face. “And now we’re here.”
“Now we’re here,” I agreed. “Come to bed. I want to hold you and let that memory fade.”
“You have excellent ideas,” Malcolm said, and we went upstairs together.
I handed Wallach the paperback. Its eerie cover featured a bearded man in a top hat with his hands outstretched as if welcoming something. Lightning forked in the background, and two smaller figures in the center raced toward an old-fashioned carnival. Wallach read the title aloud. “Something Wicked This Way Comes. Is this a joke, Mrs. Campbell?”
I’d slept poorly last night despite Malcolm holding me, and I wasn’t in a mood to be polite. “The oracle chooses the auguries, Mr. Wallach, not me. I’m sorry if it’s not what you expected, but I have work to do.”
Wallach didn’t budge. “You’ve been unrelenting in your negative comments and your claims that the oracle has spoken to you. Is there some reason you want this project to fail?”
“Fail? Why would I want that? You said this would stop the invaders permanently. I have a husband who puts his life on the line on a regular basis to fight invaders. Why wouldn’t I want you to succeed?”
“And yet you claim to receive auguries about my work, as if you were qualified to pass judgment?” He jabbed a finger at the other book I’d brought out of the oracle, the one with my name on the title page in silver ink. This one wasn’t an Animorphs book; it was titled Cassandra: Princess of Troy. Even I could understand the symbolism there: Cassandra had been cursed to prophesy the truth and never be believed.
His animosity was winding my nerves to the breaking point. I said, “Look. I don’t just take books off the shelf and pretend they’re from the oracle. I think it’s enlisted me because you’re not paying attention to the auguries it gives you.”
“The oracle doesn’t know any more about this project than you do.” He cast a glance at Something Wicked This Way Comes. “If it’s not going to be helpful, it can stop providing answers. I don’t need its assistance to understand the principles behind my theory.”
His attitude made me feel defensive of the oracle. “Is that what your auguries are telling you? Are they warning you, too?”
Viv opened her mouth to reply, but Wallach overrode her. “It’s none of your business what my auguries say.”
“Well, it’s not just auguries. What about when it spoke to me directly about anchors vanishing?”
Wallach’s jaw tightened again. “It’s something I’ve accounted for already. Everything’s proceeding the way I expect. Unless the oracle can tell me something concrete, I can’t use its nebulous ‘warnings.’” His voice put sarcastic air quotes around the last word.
Viv looked worried, her attention darting back and forth between Wallach and me like she was watching Mom and Dad fight. “Maybe we should listen to what Helena says,” she said. “If the oracle spoke to her, isn’t that important?”
“This project will change the future of every human being on this planet,” Wallach said. “You know it’s dangerous, Ms. Haley, I’ve explained that to you. The results are worth the danger.”
“But—” Viv hesitated, then shut her mouth.
“Look, Mr. Wallach,” I said, “I’ve relayed the oracle’s warning. You’ve had your own auguries. It’s up to you what you do with them. But I’ve never known anything good to come of ignoring what the oracle prophesies.”
“And you and I both know the oracle’s auguries can be invalidated under the right conditions,” Wallach said. “I know what I’m doing and I don’t need any more warnings, particularly ones about dangers I’m already aware of.” He slapped his augury down on the counter. “Ms. Haley, let’s go.”
“But what about—” Viv said, gesturing to Something Wicked This Way Comes.
“We don’t need it.” He slammed through the crystal door, sending rainbows scattering over its surface. Viv followed him with one last backward glance at me.
I closed my eyes and bit back several profanities. Then I looked at my next customer. “Okay, Brandon, let’s keep moving, okay?”
Brandon gave me a skeptical look. “Did you say the oracle spoke to you?”
“It does sometimes. It would be more exciting if I understood half of what it said.” I took his augury slip and stepped into the oracle.
The oracle’s attention pressed down on me as if it had been waiting for me to come back. Warning, it said.
“I’m not the one you need to tell that to,” I replied. “Though it doesn’t look like he’s listening to either of us. If you could give me something more specific, maybe that would help.”
Warning. Something comes. Dreams come true.
“That doesn’t seem like something bad. Though if you mean literal dreams, I’ve had some real nightmares I wouldn’t ever want to come true.” I’d never thought of the saying in those terms before.
Dreams come true. Pay the price. Warning.
I thought about that one. “You pay the price for a dream to come true. Maybe a dream in the good sense, something you really want. You get your dream, but at a price…so what if the price is too high? Or—like that story I read in English class, where the husband and wife buy each other the perfect gifts by sacrificing their treasured possessions, and then they can’t use the gifts because of the sacrifices?”
Price. Warning. Something comes. I will end. Helena will end.
I let out a hiss of frustration. “Why don’t you—wait.” Either it had switched warnings mid-stream, or… “Is Mr. Wallach’s plan related to our ending? Will it cause us to end?”
The oracle said nothing, but its presence still bore down on me. I will end, it finally said. Helena will end. It left me as swiftly as it had appeared.
I leaned my forehead against the nearest bookcase and drew in a calming breath, though I was too agitated for meditation. The oracle didn’t have emotions, at least none I could perceive, so the frustration I felt was all mine. But I couldn’t help wondering whether it was as impatient with my lack of understanding as I was with its cryptic, incomprehensible warnings.
I straightened and set off in search of Brandon’s augury. That, at least, was simple and straightforward. Either there was an augury or there wasn’t, and Brandon’s question, How should I invest my gambling winnings? was not one the oracle was likely to want me to weigh in on.
14
LaserPinz wasn’t the best bowling alley in the Portland area, but it did have one feature Judy, Viv, and I loved, and that was Lanes After Dark. Thursdays after eight o’clock, they turned the overhead lights way down and turned on black lights and the neon light strips outlining each lane, revealing that the rather bland bowling balls and pins glowed in the dark. So did the stripes on the rented shoes, the wall decorations of colorful zigzags, and the cream toppings on their famous chocolate pudding cups. Viv liked to say it was all very Eighties, but I thought no one decade could possibly have produced anything this simultaneously tasteless and awesome.
I lined up between the glowing green lines of our lane, hefted my neon pink bowling ball, and took a few quick steps to send it spinning toward the pins. A perfect strike. I pumped my fist in the air and trotted back to our table. “That’s another one for me.”
“I’m only letting you gloat because we’re playing laser tag after this,” Viv said, “and you suck at that.”
“Bowling is the only sport I’m any good at,” I admitted, admiring my score.
Judy licked a dollop of radiantly white cream off her spoon. “I can’t believe you talked me into coming here.”
“You say that every time, and then you change your tune when the laser gun is in your hand,” Viv said. She hopped up and retrieved her ball, which glowed blue like it was radioactive. “I’m not sure it’s healthy for you to enjoy shooting people that much.”
“It’s therapeutic. It keeps me from lashing out at idiots.” Judy took another bite of pudding. “I don’t know what they put in this stuff, but it’s addictive.”
I ate some of my own pudding cup. “How do they make the topping glow, I wonder?”
“Tonic water glows under a black light,” Viv said over her shoulder. She let go her ball and watched it drift into the gutter. “I don’t know why I bother.”
“You’re getting better,” I protested.
“Not so anyone can tell.” Viv hovered over the ball return. “We need to join a softball league so I can be successfully athletic.”
“No way,” Judy and I said in unison.
“I played Pee Wee softball for one season when I was seven,” Judy said. “I got hit by the ball ten times. Two times, I wasn’t even on the field. I swore off softball forever.”
“That’s quitter talk,” Viv said. She released the ball and leaned hard to the left as if that would keep the ball on track. Three pins fell. “Are you sure we can’t play with those bumper pads blocking the gutters?”
“You’ll never learn not to throw gutter balls if the pads are in the way,” I said. “My dad never let us use them, even when we were little.”
“Your dad is a monster,” Viv grumped. She returned to her seat and took a long swig of Diet Coke as Judy got up to take her turn. “But you seem to be in a better mood. I was starting to worry about you.”
“I’m trying to avoid thinking of all the horrifying things in my life. Bowling has a very soothing, focusing effect on me.” I scraped pudding off the sides of the clear plastic cup and licked it off my spoon. “And it helps that there were no new attacks today anywhere in the world.”
“There’s nothing we can do about them if there were,” Judy said, lifting her ball to chin height before taking a couple of swift steps and releasing it. “Except what we’re already doing.”
“Yes, how is Mr. Wallach’s project coming along?” I asked.
Viv shrugged. “It’s at a stage where I don’t understand most of what he’s doing. The initial work was all about finding a shape for the magic that will shift our reality. It’s like a framework…we bought about a hundred Tinker Toy sets off eBay to model it.”
“So it has a physical shape.”
“Sort of. The model does, but that’s just to show the magic what it needs to look like. The actual solution is only partly physical, like an aegis.” Viv took another drink. “But that’s bone magus territory, and a lot of what Mr. Wallach does, I can’t even see.”
Judy dropped into a chair next to us. “You don’t soun
d enthusiastic.”
Viv tossed her cup at the nearest trash can. It bounced off, and she stood and, grumbling, retrieved it and threw it away. “I’m worried,” she confessed. “None of the auguries gave any positive advice—positive in the sense of helping us move forward. They were all a lot of warnings about things. Which is good, because they helped us avoid some major missteps, but…wouldn’t you think the oracle would want to see this happen?”
“The oracle doesn’t see things the way we do,” I said. “I can never guess what it will do. What worries me is that it saw fit to give me auguries to back up the ones it gave Mr. Wallach. I think something is wrong with his plan.”
“Me too. But I have no idea what.” Viv sighed. “It all looks perfect. The modeling came together just right, all Mr. Wallach’s theories are proving correct—it’s almost too good to be true.”
“Which is one of the things the oracle warned me about,” I said. “Getting a dream at a price that’s too high.”
“But if Crazy Wallach’s plan was detrimental to the Long War, the oracle wouldn’t give any auguries about it,” Judy said. “Which suggests there’s some other problem.”
“I don’t suppose you still have that last augury?” Viv said. “The scary one?”
“I do,” I said, “but I can’t sell it to you because it’s in Mr. Wallach’s name. I held onto it in case he changed his mind. You’ll have to convince him.”
“That’s unlikely. I think he’s mad that the oracle hasn’t been more helpful. Helpful according to his wishes, I mean.”
Judy glanced at the monitor. “Helena wins. As usual. Do we want another game?”
“I’m tired of losing. I want to shoot things,” Viv said.
I pushed back my chair. “Sounds good to me.”
We returned our balls and shoes and headed for the laser tag arena. In the dimness, the people around us were shadows blotched with glowing white, mostly T-shirts and tennis shoes. My own shoes, which I’d worn instead of sandals because I knew Viv would insist on laser tag, had white stripes on both sides that made me look like I was wearing those wooden Japanese sandals with blocky soles.
The Book of Destiny Page 15