“What about me?” I eyed the pile of bones. I wanted to be included, but maybe not that included. “I’m a quick study. Give me something to do.”
She considered the array of objects before her and pushed a jewelry box toward me. I opened it to find a slender crystal dangling from a delicate chain.
“A pendulum,” Bella informed me. “Nathan, can you instruct her? I thought perhaps it could be used to try and pinpoint the Oracle’s location on an atlas.”
“I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it.” He winked at me.
“Good. We should all keep track of our results.” She sounded like one of my old professors explaining the etiquette of laboratory experiments. “Until we know specifics about our situation, everything is important.”
She reached for a bottle of what looked like ink and poured it into the glass bowl, which she lifted from its stand to swirl it a few times. Then, taking a lighter from her pocket, she lit the charcoal in the small, tabletop cauldron at her left.
“So, are we dismissed then?” Max asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
Caught up in sprinkling foul-smelling powder onto the burning block, Bella didn’t look at him. “Yes, of course. We need to get to work immediately.”
Max waited until we were in the foyer, at least, before he exploded. “You’ve got to be kidding me! She comes into my house, assigns us jobs, declares herself Dwight fucking Eisenhower of the occult, and stinks up my dining room with…whatever that was?”
“Honeysuckle and camphor,” Nathan supplied. “They’re powerful divination aids, but they smell better fresh than burning.”
“No shit.” Max’s face had turned a queer shade of red. “Listen, she’s got to go. I don’t care where, she’s just got to get out of my house.”
A terminally stupid person could see his problem wasn’t with incense and tarot cards. Still, I had to proceed cautiously. Any mention of his feelings for Bella caused a total shutdown, in which Max would storm off and nothing would be resolved. “I know you’re having a hard time with her here, but look at us. Three of us against the Oracle? Possibly against the Soul Eater, as well?”
He didn’t respond, but the muscle at the corner of his jaw ticked. He didn’t like what I was saying, but he knew I was right.
“Bella has an advantage over us,” Nathan added. “She can go out in the daytime. We need her for that, at the very least.”
It was clear from the way Max shifted his gaze silently between Nathan and me that he didn’t want to admit we were right. He groaned and tossed his hands up. “Fine. But you guys are paying for the air fresheners when she’s done in there.”
Nathan laughed. “It’s a deal. Now, where can we go to work?”
“In the library. Or the parlor. Or one of the fine guest accommodations, either upstairs or down.” Max shrugged. “Do it in the hot tub, I don’t care.”
A warm flush crept up my neck as I caught sight of Nathan’s lascivious grin. “That’s not a good idea. But thanks,” I said. “We’ll be in the library.”
“Do me a favor and keep her out of it. If it’s so ‘meager,’ she’ll have read everything already,” Max said petulantly. “I’ll be upstairs, trying to get answers out of Bill.”
“We could have done it in the hot tub,” Nathan groused as I led the way to Marcus’s library. “It would have been more fun than this divination business.”
The look I gave him made it clear “this divination business” was all we were going to be up to.
The library, situated at the front of the building, was by far the most impressive room in the condo. The ceiling reached to the second floor of the apartment. Books lined the walls. Iron spiral staircases led to the balcony that wrapped three sides of the room, holding the second tier of literature. I wondered how many personal libraries Bella had seen, and what they must have been like to make this collection seem unimpressive.
Nathan whistled in awe. He set the cards down on one of the leather armchairs near the enormous fireplace and scratched his head as he glanced around. “Not too shabby.”
“I’d offer to leave you two alone for a minute, but I fear what you would do.” I motioned him to the far wall. The huge windows overlooked Grant Park and the shore of Lake Michigan beyond. I pointed out the aquarium at the edge of the view. “Max has connections. He got us in after hours.”
“Weren’t all the fish sleeping?” Nathan chided. He stood silently, taking in the lights of the city for a minute, then turned to me. “You don’t…like him, do you?”
“No, of course not.” I suppressed the urge to tack on You idiot. “Not the way you’re thinking.”
He smiled, probably mentally adding the “you idiot” part himself. “I’m sorry. I know it’s stupid to think that. But you know, here he is, nice house in a big city, young guy—”
“You’re a young guy,” I reminded him. “Young looking, anyway.”
A faint flush colored his usually pale face. “I know that. But I’ve been alive a hundred years, and I’m starting to act my age.”
Starting to? “In all fairness, Max is technically in his fifties.”
“Max is a teenager, no matter how old he gets.” Nathan’s cool gray eyes scanned the street below us. “I understand why you came here. You wanted to be around someone you can identify with.”
“What I want is someone who can love me.” I studied him carefully to gauge his reaction. “Someone who can love me as much as I love him. But I wasn’t looking for that in Max.”
Nathan lifted a hand as though he would touch me. I brushed it aside and pointed toward the fireplace. “We have things to do.”
He taught me how to use the pendulum. First, he showed me how to hold the cord so the crystal hung perfectly still over a book. I asked two questions. The first, “Is this a book?” caused the pendulum to swing in tight, clockwise circles. The second question, “Is this a dead fish?” resulted in wide, counterclockwise swoops.
“That’s all there is to it,” Nathan explained. “Clockwise for yes, counter for no. At least, for you. It varies from person to person.”
It was much easier than Bella made it sound. She either had a gift for overcomplicating things, or she had greatly underestimated my intelligence. Probably the latter, as werewolves didn’t put much stock in the intellectual equality of other species.
I dangled the crystal point over a map of the world, moving it from area to area and asking, “Is the Oracle here?” while Nathan laid out one complicated spread of cards after another. As soon as I made inroads to the continent North America, I flipped to a new page in the atlas and started working on the states and provinces. Occasionally, the pendulum would swing erratically, and I’d have to go through the process of recalibrating it. Then I’d start over from my last reasonable answer, sometimes to find it had changed. Every yes I got, I wrote down. Though the Oracle couldn’t really be in all those places at once, Bella had said to write everything down. I would let her sort out the details.
We’d sat in silence for an hour before Nathan looked up and frowned. “Do you hear that?”
Now that he mentioned it, I did. Every few minutes, a rhythmic bang came from the upper level of the library.
I rose slowly, staring at the walls. The sound grew louder and more violent, actually shaking the crystal chandelier suspended high above us. “It sounds like it’s coming from—”
“The dining room,” Nathan said, breaking into a run toward the doors.
We were coming up the stairs to the foyer just as Max ran down from the third floor. “What the hell is that?”
Nathan didn’t answer, but rushed to the doors leading to the dining room.
Before he could touch them, they flew open, as if with a gust of wind, but as there were no windows in the dining room, the force must have come from an unnatural source. Nathan toppled back and I rushed to help him up.
“Holy shit,” Max whispered, his eyes wide.
I followed his gaze through the open doors. Bella
hung lifeless, suspended in the air as though nailed to an invisible crucifix. A supernatural wind howled in a cyclone around her, the various objects she’d carefully spread on the table caught up in the maelstrom. They whirled around her like ornaments on a mobile, almost merry as they weaved and bobbed, the occasional chicken bone or rune stone flying free to smash into a wall.
Bella’s head, limp and heavy on her neck, snapped up. Her eyes, usually preternatural gold, were opaque with blood, her olive skin pale and her lips the blue of a corpse.
As the three of us stared, horrified or dumbstruck or maybe both, Bella’s lips began to move.
But the voice that issued forth wasn’t Bella’s.
It was the Oracle’s.
Four:
Oracle
“Y ou have sought me, and now you have found me, children.”
The voice, which I’d heard outside of my head only once before, sent chills down my spine. Even under Movement control—and heavy sedation—the Oracle had been able to maim Anne, one of Max’s few friends at headquarters, and she’d nearly broken my neck. If she’d been able to hurt Bella from wherever she was, she could still damage us.
Nathan reached for me, snagging my arm and pulling me behind him, as if he could shield me from her wrath.
Bella’s head turned, her blood-occluded eyes fixing on him with startling intensity. “Do not move again.”
“Listen to her, Nathan,” Max warned. “She’ll kill you.”
Her eyes moved to Max. “I know you.”
“Yes, you do. And that’s a friend of mine you’re possessing.” Max took a step toward her. “And you’re going to have to leave.”
“You fear me, vampire?” Bella’s head sagged for a moment, then snapped up again. “I have no power over you now. Any harm you visit upon me in this form will only hurt her.”
“If you don’t have any power, how are you here?” I asked, trying to keep my tone reasonable. She might have tried to kill me before, but she’d also given me key information in finding Cyrus. It seemed unlikely she’d contacted us so dramatically only to slaughter us where we stood.
“Listen well, vampires. The age of your reign is drawing to a close. Those who resist will be killed. Those who do not may be spared. Chaos shall rule, order shall be abolished. Do not stand in my way and you may live.” Bella’s arm twitched. The Oracle’s control seemed to be slipping.
“What if we help you?” Nathan edged forward. “If we don’t oppose you, we may live. If we help you, will you offer us asylum?”
A laugh filled the air, but it didn’t come from Bella. Her head drooped forward, her body slouching in midair. “You wish to help me?”
“It’s better than dying.” Nathan shrugged, as if he didn’t care either way. “Better than trying to fight you.”
“That path will surely lead to death,” the Oracle warned, her now bodiless voice shaking the walls. “If you wish to gain my favor, abandon your pursuit of the pawn I need to ensure my rule.”
“The Soul Eater?” Max whispered, as if she wouldn’t hear us.
“He goes by many names. Abandon your pursuit of him and you may know my mercy.” Another wall-rattling boom split the air. “Upset my plans and you will know my wrath!”
The wind came again, this time sucking into the dining room as the Oracle’s presence left us. The doors slammed closed, shutting us out, just as Bella’s body dropped to the floor. We heard the noise of her impact, and Max darted forward.
When he grabbed the door handles, he cursed. “It won’t open!”
“She must have meant the Soul Eater.” Nathan rushed forward to help him, but in true Nathan fashion his mind was on the bigger picture. “When you said his name, she didn’t deny it.”
Max didn’t respond, pulling so hard at the door the wood splintered around the handle. “Come on!”
“Let’s try through the kitchen,” I urged, but no sooner did I say it than the doors let go easily. Nathan stumbled backward and landed on the marble floor with a curse. Max, who’d obviously braced himself in the certainty they’d get the door open, managed to stay on his feet. He ran into the dining room, shouting Bella’s name.
I helped Nathan to his feet and hurried after Max. “Don’t move her! She could have broken her neck in the fall.”
It was too late. Max had already pulled Bella into his lap, and was slapping her ashen cheek lightly with his palm. “Bella, come on!” He looked up at me. “Carrie, she’s not breathing!”
“Lay her down!” I caught her wrist as Max moved her to the floor. “No pulse!”
“Do something!” He pounded his fists on his thighs. “There has to be something you can do!”
“Do you know CPR?” I asked, tilting her head back.
Max shook his head. “Only from movies. Tell me what to do.”
“Pinch her nose shut and breathe into her mouth when I tell you to. I’ll do chest compressions.” I turned to Nathan. “Call an ambulance.”
“No!” Max shook his head. “The full moon is tomorrow night. If she’s in the hospital all doped up, she’ll change.”
“Nathan, get the phone.” I met Max’s worried gaze. “If we don’t get her back in two tries, we’re calling an ambulance.”
Grim-faced, Max nodded.
I’ve always hated doing CPR. Most of my experience with it came from the E.R., on seventy-and-over patients who’d gone into cardiac arrest. Their ribs were usually so brittle from bone loss they cracked like wishbones under my hands.
Bella was built stronger than that, whether by virtue of being younger, or because of her species, I have no idea. I got through the first set of compressions without breaking her bones. “Breathe now!”
Max didn’t hesitate. Bella’s chest inflated with the force of the incoming oxygen, but it fell again when Max pulled away.
I gripped her wrist—still nothing—then began another set of compressions.
At the cessation of compressions, blood traveling through the heart slows. Resuming the process doesn’t bring the circulation back up to speed. It’s like accelerating to seventy, dropping to fifty, speeding up to sixty, then dropping to forty. Bella’s fingernails showed signs of cyanosis. Blue is never a promising color.
But we didn’t have to call for help. This time when Max breathed for her, her body shuddered and she choked to life, taking great, panicked breaths.
“Bella, you’re fine, you’re fine,” I assured her, checking again for a pulse. Though a little slow, it was strong. I nearly sobbed with relief.
“Calm down, baby,” Max urged, brushing her hair back. “Just calm down. You’re fine.”
She opened and closed her mouth, vomited spectacularly, then visibly relaxed, shutting her eyes as her head dropped back to the floor.
“Let’s get her to a bed,” Max said, scooping her up.
Bella’s eyes opened to slits and she laughed weakly. “Always trying to get me into your bed, vampire.”
“You know it.” If Bella’s eyes hadn’t closed again, she would surely have seen the mix of relief and sadness, and the determination not to show them, that crossed Max’s face.
“You take care of her. I’ll tell Nathan not to call the paramedics,” I offered. Max and Bella needed time alone. If near death wouldn’t inspire them to talk without sniping at each other, nothing would.
I found Nathan in the kitchen, slumped over the island with the phone in his hands. When he looked up, his eyes were rimmed with red. “Is she—”
“She’s fine.” I pulled out the stool next to his and climbed onto it. “Banged up, but she’ll pull through. I’m not so sure about you, though.”
Nathan sniffed and tried to cover it with a laugh. “Oh, I’ll be fine. Just rattled my nerves, is all.”
Because she was possessed.
My gaze dropped to his arm, where he’d rolled up the sleeve of his sweater. Though vampires heal quickly, for some reason the self-inflicted marks he’d carved under the Soul Eater’s influence had never
completely faded.
I went to his side and put my arms around him. “It still bothers you.”
“You’re damn right it bothers me!” he snapped, pushing away from the island and stalking to the other end of the kitchen. “Jesus, Carrie! She found us. She nearly killed Bella!” He looked instantly repentant for his outburst. “She could have chosen you. She could have done that to you.”
“Nathan,” I whispered, my heart twisting in my chest. “She didn’t pick me. She attacked Bella. There hasn’t been a time since I’ve know you that we haven’t been in danger. Why is it so different now?”
“Because now…” His hands fisted at his sides, and he looked away. “It’s just different.”
Because now you love me, I finished for him across the blood tie. He shook his head. The denial didn’t skewer my heart the way it would have before. “You love me, and you’re afraid to lose me.”
“We’ve got to take care of this,” he said, changing the subject smoothly. “We have no idea if anyone else even knows what happened. If we’re the only ones, and we wait…I don’t even want to think of the consequences.”
He was right. I hated it, but he was right. “What do you suggest we do?”
“Tonight? Nothing. There’s no time. But tomorrow night we meet up again and we make an actual plan. Something concrete. Something—”
“Bloody and violent?” The rage emanating over the blood tie was almost frightening. “You know, we might have a better chance of success if we didn’t make this personal.”
Nathan jerked his head toward the door. “Tell that to Max.”
“Good point.” I went to Nathan and leaned my head against his chest, waited for him to put his arms around me. He hesitated, until I said, “We’ve been through worse, haven’t we?”
I felt the low rumble in his chest, but the laughter wasn’t enough to produce sound. “No. But there is a first time for everything.”
Though I wanted to stay there, held by him forever, my thoughts strayed to the pair upstairs. “I’m going to go check on Bella.”
There was a smile in Nathan’s voice when he spoke. “Always on call?”
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