The mirror disappeared along with the fog, and she found herself standing beside Maggie.
Maggie grinned and hugged her before her more reserved persona reasserted itself.
"Congratulations. You passed the test. The Oracle only speaks to those who truly desire the answer to their question."
"Are there any more tests?"
"Only one." Maggie turned her around to face the other direction, and Audrey gasped. "Not to run screaming from the cave."
20
Harold and Mary Smith were not what Damien expected after having met their skinny, wild-eyed, long-haired son. Both were short, round, and dressed conservatively. They looked like Midwest farmers who had retired South. Damien was surprised that Daniel's mother didn't wear a gingham apron over her gray dress and that his father wore blue slacks and a checkered shirt instead of overalls.
"I was an Atlanta policeman for thirty years," was the first thing Harold Smith said to Damien and Charlie, "so I know you boys have to ask your questions, especially after what Daniel did, but I just ask that you try not to upset my wife too much. It's been hard for her."
Damien raised his eyebrows. It's been hard for her?
"Now, Harold," she told her husband, "let the boys do their work. It's not easy for them, either. Remember when you had to arrest that jumper after he fell off that bridge on I-85 and broke his leg?"
"Ahem, right." He gestured to the plastic-covered couch in the office Amanda Lee had shown them into. "Why don't you guys have a seat?"
They all sat, and Charlie brought out his notebook. "We were just wondering about what your son may have said after the incident."
The older couple looked at each other, and Mary spoke first.
"He was very upset." Her eyes filled with tears. "He kept talking about how he hadn't wanted to hurt the kind doctor, but the imp made him."
"Who made him?" asked Damien. He thought back to the bed in the room where Rizzo had been shot and how the mattress looked like someone had just gotten up or like something small but invisible still sat there. Had there been something? And would he ever get used to this world of invisible assailants?
"He called it an imp," Harold said. "You know, a small creature, kind of like a little troll." He cleared his throat and looked at a spot on the floor between his feet. "I looked it up."
"I'm glad you did so I didn't have to." Charlie was laying on the deep charm, which Damien respected this time. Hopefully it would put the two of them at ease and get him and Charlie some honest answers. "Was this a normal hallucination for him?"
"No!" Mary held out her hands, begging with her eyes for them to believe her. "He'd never had any visual hallucinations. They were always auditory, and they never told him to harm anyone."
"When did this start?" Damien's mouth went dry when everyone looked at him. "This current episode, I mean."
"It's hard to say." Harold took over answering the questions. "Daniel was always real clever about hiding his medicine instead of taking it. He, ah, gets off it, you see, and we don't realize he's relapsing back into his schizophrenia until he disappears. Then he usually ends up here."
Damien could understand their frustration. He'd escorted enough mentally ill people from Decatur's square to the hospital, many of them several times. They always seemed to appear on his shift. "So he's never had anything like this before?"
"No." They denied it simultaneously and so strenuously that they were either good liars or adamant about the truth.
"Where do you think he got the gun?" asked Damien. "Do you keep one in the house?"
Mary opened her mouth to answer, but Harold interrupted her. "I've got one."
Mary's mouth was a gaping hole in her chubby face. "You promised to get rid of it when you retired. You knew Daniel could hurt himself if he found it."
"But I don't know if he found it. At least, I don't think he did. The only key to that drawer is with me all the time, and it was locked."
"Let's say the gun is still where it was. Will you check the chamber to see if a bullet is missing?" asked Charlie.
Both of the Smiths looked at him like he was crazy.
"Why would I do that?" Harold finally said. "There's no reason one would be, especially if the gun is still there. I haven't shot anyone."
"Then do you mind if I send someone over there to get it?" Charlie turned his most charming smile on them. "I don't want to get in trouble with my superiors."
"Of course," Mary told him. "There's no way my son could have killed someone with my husband's gun."
"He's actually not dead," Damien told her. "He's just in a coma. He had a few scary moments this morning but has been stable since."
"Oh, thank God!" Mary fanned herself with her hand. "I was so worried Daniel would be sent to jail for killing someone."
"Your concern is touching." Damien tried not to wince when Charlie delivered a quick, painful nudge to the side of his foot.
"Do you mind if we keep in touch?" asked Charlie. "I'd like to know if he says anything else that could help us sort out why this happened."
"I think he has enough for an insanity defense, don't you?" asked Harold. "I mean, he's clearly not in his right mind."
"That's for the law to decide," Charlie replied. "I'm just a humble detective. We'll be in touch."
After the two women left his crappy office in the C.U., Lyle Ames leaned back, propped his feet on the desk, and closed his eyes in preparation for the journey back to the waking world. He wouldn't admit it to anyone, least of all Amelia, but he looked forward to more verbal sparring with the beautiful Aphrodite, his Pandemos. She was everything he wanted in a woman: good-looking with a killer body, smart, witty, and not afraid to go after what she wanted. And powerful, let's not forget powerful… The drowsiness and floating feeling that signaled alpha waves descended on him, and he smiled in anticipation.
A thunderclap accompanied the dizzying crash that brought his head and back to the cold marble floor with a crack. He woke with a start, surprised to see the cracked plaster ceiling of his office in the C.U.
"What the…?"
The creature in the cage snickered. Lyle's head throbbed, and his lower back tightened with a muscle spasm. He tried to make rising from the floor look dignified, but he caught his sleeve in the smoldering ruins of the chair and had to tug at it. When it released, he tumbled backwards and landed hard on his butt. He tried not to move too stiffly when he pulled himself off the floor by holding on to the desk, brushed himself off, and looked for an alternate seat.
Zeus sat across from him in one of the chairs recently vacated by the members of the Standards Committee. The god examined the fingernails of his right hand and blew on them to dissipate the smoke from having just lobbed a thunderbolt at Lyle's chair, which was now a pile of charred ash. Zeus' pinstripe suit, perfectly pressed and fitted, showed no signs of him having traveled, although Lyle was sure he'd been on Olympus that morning.
"Good afternoon, Lyle."
Lyle gritted his teeth against the pain. "Zeus, what a nice surprise."
"Do you know who those visitors were?"
Lyle gingerly lowered himself into the new chair that appeared behind his desk. It wasn't nearly as nice as the original one had been. "Members of the Standards Committee, they said."
"Mr. Ames, in the Collective Unconscious, we don't have a Standards Committee."
"You don't?" No wonder the place was falling apart.
"If you're going to do business here, Lyle, you have to start thinking like a god, especially if you have my patronage." Zeus fixed his steel-colored eyes on Lyle and flexed his fingers, which sparked. "The red tape that your government puts you through is the subject of many a dream, especially around tax time. It takes us months to clean it up. You need to get better at discerning legitimate hassles from fabricated ones."
"Point taken." He kept an eye on Zeus' fingers. He's itching to fry someone. He must be pissed.
"The redhead was the Truth Seeker, Margaret of Cor
nwall."
"Right, you've mentioned them. What are they, again?"
"Essentially law-enforcement personnel. Their task is to keep our affairs from interfering with those of the waking world."
"So it was a police visit?"
"Yes, but not of the kind you expected, although I did tell you they had been alerted."
"And the other young woman?"
"A human whom I interrogated recently in connection with Persephone's disappearance. I tried to have her liquidated, but she is stronger than I anticipated." He smiled as though pleased, and Lyle did not envy the girl for having caught Zeus's interest. That rarely ended well for mortals.
Lyle put his head in his hands, which he regretted when his neck throbbed, and fingers of pain reached around his head from the base of his skull. "So they now know a lot more than they did before about what we're doing."
"Yes, especially since you were so helpful and indiscreet with them."
"Crap. What do I do now?"
"Capture them. You can hold the Truth Seeker until your businesses are so entrenched in both worlds she won't be able to prove interference. As for the human girl…"
A shiver distracted Lyle from his pain. "If she's trapped here indefinitely, her mortal body will go into a coma, and she'll die."
Zeus wiggled his fingers, which still emanated wisps of smoke. "A casualty of business. But you can let me take care of her once you do have her."
"Now look here, Zeus. You promised me that this would be a clean arrangement with no violence or death involved. We've already been responsible for the wheat nymph's death in the waking world—"
"A pity, but it only brought her back here sooner."
"—but I can't betray one of my own kind like that. I run an above-board operation."
Zeus leaned forward such that his face was only inches away from Lyle's. His slate-colored eyes bored into Lyle's black ones.
"You've gotten into it too far to back out now, Lyle. We've been working on this for a year. If the girl dies, there is no way it can be traced to you. She's got an injured collarbone, and we can arrange for internal bleeding or some other complication to be the cause of her body's death."
"What will happen to her here?"
"Oh, I'll make sure she's well-entertained." Zeus got a faraway look in his eyes, and his lips curled into a feral smile. "She's feisty, just my type. I'm sure she would give me some interesting descendants. I haven't fathered one in many centuries."
Lyle pictured her and felt a pang of regret. She seems to be an independent spirit. How can I condemn her to eternity as a concubine?
"I can see what you're thinking, and you humans have such a strong cohesive spirit. But if she and that Truth Seeker take what they know to the higher authorities, we are ruined, and you will know the unique torture of being in prison in both places at once. Imagine not being able to escape in your dreams. Most humans in that position die within the first two weeks of an apparent cardiac event, although I may have to put you out of that misery before it happens so it won't get traced back to me."
"Right. I understand." Lyle took a deep breath to quell the panic that rose in his chest.
Zeus sat back and steepled his fingers. "Lyle, when you deal in the trafficking of flesh for whatever purpose, whether it is capital, emotional, or practical, it is never a clean business."
"You're right, as always. How should I capture the mortal and the Truth Seeker so they can't wake up in the real world?"
"I'll set a trap for them. You said they were curious about your pet over there, right?"
Lyle looked back toward the golden cage under the sheet. The creature was quiet now, perhaps listening to their conversation.
"Yes, they wanted to know what was under there."
"Then they will most likely be back, especially since you told them you would return to the waking world shortly."
"So you can rig up a trap for me?"
Zeus looked up at the ceiling. Lyle followed his gaze and saw another cage suspended with a chain.
"It will fall when someone lifts the sheet," Zeus said. "I'll make sure they come back this way."
"Right. I should be going." It will be his guilt, not mine. I haven't touched the thing.
"Yes, go on. Have a safe journey. I'll alert Toady to tell you when our trap has been sprung."
Audrey faced a blonde woman in a white dress who sat on a raised throne of black marble. Supernatural fire glowed and flickered behind the dais and cast strange shadows around them. The Oracle's eyes were rolled into the back of her head so that only the whites showed, and her neck bore two puncture wounds like she'd been attacked by a giant serpent or a vampire. Her hands and feet, both of which were shackled to the throne, had the waxy texture and color of dead flesh. Her mouth opened, and a black snake emerged and crawled down her chest, slithering across her breasts, stomach, and lap. It grew bigger and bigger until it was at least eight feet long and the circumference of her neck. Audrey wanted to turn and run, but she willed herself to remain where she stood even when the snake drew up in front of her, hissed, and opened its mouth to reveal long fangs dripping with venom and blood.
"What do you seek?"
She heard the sibilant words in her mind and said as Maggie had instructed, "I seek true knowledge from the Oracle."
"Are you not frightened?"
Audrey didn't want to show this horrible creature any weakness, but she remembered the rule against deception of any sort. "Scared shitless," she told it.
"Then you have passed the final test," the woman on the throne said. The snake disappeared with a puff of smoke that smelled like burning matches, and the woman appeared normal, although still pale and shackled to her throne. She smiled at Audrey and Maggie.
"Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?" Her voice sounded surprisingly normal, clipped, and businesslike.
"Madame Oracle, I am Margaret of Cornwall, and this is Audrey Aurora Sonoma, a human from the waking world."
"Welcome back, Truth Seeker. It has been a long time."
"Yes, it has."
"How did the previous answer work out for you?"
Maggie shrugged. "You were right, as always."
"I'm sorry to hear that, but I understand that you have other prospects at hand."
Maggie surprised Audrey by blushing. "I may."
The Oracle laughed. "Is that the nature of your question today?"
"No, Madame, although I admit to being tempted. I come seeking a different kind of answer."
"Then I shall enter my trance and endeavor to help you." The woman leaned back in her throne, and a roaring sound filled the cave. The glow became brighter, the shadows sharper, and steam hissed and billowed from behind the throne. The Oracle took a deep breath, and her eyes rolled back. She convulsed, and the shackles kept her from jumping off her seat.
"Ask your question," said a deep voice that didn't sound like her, although it came from her mouth.
Maggie stepped forward and curtsied. "Oracle, I come seeking the mechanism that causes the barriers between our world and the waking one to erode. I need to know how it's happening. If I don't figure it out soon, we will all be lost."
The Oracle expelled a long, whining sigh and jerked to one side. "The mechanism is well-hidden, yet right in front of you. It is tiny, but its effects are large. It is something that one of you has experienced, yet it has been used for thousands of years. You have just witnessed a journey in this world parallel to the one that this mechanism took in the waking world in order to reach those who use it but do not know its effects."
She coughed, then slumped forward. Her eyes opened, and she looked at them, herself again.
"How was that?"
Maggie shrugged. "Obscure as always, but I can't complain about the length."
"And you, Ms. Sonoma. What can I answer for you?"
Audrey had so many questions. Did it hurt when she went into her trance? Why was she shackled? "I don't really feel comfortable putting you th
rough all that. I'm okay, actually."
The Oracle surprised Audrey by laughing. "It doesn't hurt, I promise. I'm not just saying that to be nice, as our Truth Seeker here can tell you. So few pass the tests, and I don't get to interact with many, so I'm happy to help."
"Then allow me to do something for you in return."
"All right, then. I do have one thing to ask of you, but I shall wait until after I answer your question."
She leaned back and twitched on the throne. The glowing and hissing started again. Audrey didn't want to watch, but she couldn't look away, and although she'd been prepared for the deep, resonant voice, it still startled her.
"Ask your question, mortal."
21
Audrey's heart pounded in her ears. Her knees felt like gelatin, so she didn't even attempt a curtsy. She wished Damien were here and was glad he wasn't because in truth, the question was about him. She forced the words past the lump in her throat. "Aphrodite told me that I'd never find true love and be happy because of my need for independence and my reluctance to depend on anyone. I need to know if that's true and if I should just give up now."
"That is, indeed, a human question." Mocking laughter came from all sides. "I fear that you will answer that question for yourself shortly. If you make the correct choice, it will benefit all of you." She slumped over.
"What choice?" asked Audrey.
"Just one question per visit." The Oracle raised herself with effort. Her face glistened with sweat. "Did it help?"
"N-no, not really. What in the world is speaking through you?" Audrey wanted to release the poor woman from her shackles and bring her to the light of day.
"Ah, I can’t answer that question because I don't really know for sure. Some say it is the will of the gods, others, the voice of the future or the over-arching power that none have any knowledge of save the snippets it deigns to give us."
Audrey wondered if the Oracle gave similarly vague answers to questions like, What do you want for dinner? But she'd made a promise and hoped she wouldn't have to do something ridiculous. "Right. I have no clue what you're saying. What can I do for you?"
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