The Oracle's Locket

by Devyn Forrest

  The Oracles Locket

  Book 2

  The Origins Supernatural Academy

  By

  Devyn Forrest

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2020 by Devyn Forrest

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Devyn Forrest holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Also by Devyn

  Crestwood Academy

  Wicked Blue Bloods

  Cruel Blue Bloods

  Twisted Blue Bloods

  Savage Blue Bloods

  Denver Athletics

  Out For Blood

  The Accident

  The Trials

  Olympic Village

  Connect with Devyn

  **

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Connect with Devyn

  Chapter One

  The icy blue eyes glared at me, tore through me. I shook with complete and total fear. Everything Professor Binion had taught me rushed through my mind, pounded from ear to ear, but I couldn’t find the strength for any of it. A cold cackle throttled through the chilly, rainy air.

  “I have you now, you pretty thing,” the bounty hunter boomed.

  I blinked several times, trying to see anything beyond these blue eyes. Suddenly, he thrust me toward the nearest tree, and my head pounded against the wood. The hit was so hard that the skin broke, and I could feel a trickle of blood ooze down my skull. Fuck. His hand was powerful, the fingers thick at my throat. If I just could have reached out to him, touched him with my hand, I might have sensed more of him—his past, his present, his name, the reason for his attack. But it all devolved into a fog of nothingness and fear. I choked for a moment and tried to force air through my windpipe. In the darkness, I began to make out the shadow of the man who held me. The moonlight swept across his cheek and showed a strange scar that cut from his forehead toward his chin.

  “What’s a little girl like you doing out here so late?” he said. He seemed the type of guy who liked to toy with his prey for a while. He shoved me harder against the tree so that I couldn’t draw a breath again.

  What would he do with me? Where would he take me? It was clear: he had known I was there at Aunt Maria’s house, known how to trick me into the woods and yank me away from the safety of the charms that swirled around the house itself. Now, after all the bullshit I had gone through at school, all the chaos of becoming this goddamn oracle—it was likely I would be murdered there in the woods behind my house and sink into the swamp, or else taken somewhere else, allowed to wait for my fate.

  Then, whatever was meant to happen with me as an Oracle—whatever it was I was meant to stop or save, it would go on without me. Maybe humankind and the supernaturals would defeat one another at once, destroying much of the planet along with it. I wouldn’t know. I would be nothing but roots, moss.

  The panic swirled in the back of my head and then seemed to become something, something powerful and outside myself, like a wave coming in from the strong ocean. I could feel the intensity in my eyes and could feel the burn of it on my belly, the mark of the oracle. Suddenly, the rush of this emotion flung itself toward the house, and every single one of the back windows cracked and cast the glass to the ground below. The bounty hunter loosened his grip for only a split second and whirled around to watch as the last shatters of glass crackled onto the swamp below. He seemed rigid, afraid. He took a tentative step back, just as Aunt Maria whipped out onto the back porch.

  I had never seen her like this before. She looked half-crazed, her white hair whipping out through the air around her pale skin, and her eyes glowing. She lifted from the edge of the porch and eased toward us, her arms extending out on either side of her and her white nightgown shimmering in the moonlight. Although the rain hadn’t quit, the droplets seemed to bounce off of her. She seemed immense, powerful. The bounty hunter staggered back, letting my neck free once and for all, and I leaped out of the way.

  Aunt Maria now rose several feet off the ground, so that her feet were in-line with the bounty hunter. In a split-second, she ripped her hands toward him and cut electric bullets from the tips of her fingers, which directed through his chest and made him quiver and then fall back on the ground. His body spasmed several times, and he frothed at the mouth. The sounds were monstrous like he was an animal being tortured. Then, all was quiet. The creepy thing was, even as he remained there, very still and pale, his eyes remained open to reveal those gruesome blue irises.

  I realized I still hadn’t breathed. With a sudden gasp, I fell to my knees in the mud and pounded my fists against the ground. Every single feeling shot through me: rage and fear and sadness. I realized that my sobs and screams had mixed and now echoed against the side of the house and rippled through the trees.

  Slowly, Aunt Maria descended and stood beside me, her hands clenched into fists. She stared down at the bounty hunter with immense rage. Her white hair fell back to her shoulders, her back, and the rain found her and splattered across her cheeks so that she looked like she was crying. Thunder cracked, much too close, so that the ground seemed to shake. I rose to stand beside her. I wanted to touch her hand, and I started to reach for it—then remembered all too soon that I couldn’t, that touching my aunt would drain her, potentially destroy her.

  “What the hell were you doing out here,” Aunt Maria muttered. Her voice sounded strange, horrific, nothing like I’d ever heard from her at all.

  “I thought you were out here again. I thought I saw you,” I spoke, stuttering.

  “You know that they’re after you. You know that there’s so much at risk,” Aunt Maria said, her voice rising. “And you still just barreled out into the rain. You didn’t give a single thought to me or what might happen. You just...”

  “I’m telling you! I thought you’d slept-walked again!” I cried. My heart jumped into my throat with rage and I lifted my face toward the black sky to feel the torrential rain. “God, I didn’t ask for this!”

  “Well, Ivy, it’s here, anyway,” Aunt Maria said, her nostrils flared. “And now we have a dead bounty hunter in the backyard.”

  I swallowed, pushing back the fearful images I’d had when he’d pressed me against the trunk. I’d already followed the path to my own end. Now, Aunt Maria had given me my life back. But when would they come back? Would they know I was here, now?

  “What should we do with him?” I asked. This seemed the most obvious question. The first thing to start with.

  “I’ll de
al with him,” she said gruffly.

  Another blast of thunder clapped through the sky. Aunt Maria shot her hands back out, and a glimmer of electricity eased from the tips of her fingers and illuminated around the bounty hunter. Slowly, he lifted from the ground, and she shifted herself backward, bringing him through the air. I studied her face as she moved: her cheeks clenched tight and hollowed-out, her eyebrows low. She had hardly done any magic in the previous ten-plus years. At least, not around me.

  She cut in through the back door and brought the bounty hunter through the air behind her. I stepped up the creaky wooden steps and eyed the glass across the grass, across the far edge of the porch. Again, my powers had proven themselves to be wildly outside of my reach, almost too powerful. I shuddered, remembering a similar event that had happened at Origins Supernatural Academy. Rage, fear: the two seemed to merge together to create something bigger than anything else.

  When I stepped inside, I saw that Aunt Maria had dropped the bounty hunter in the dining room, the one we almost never used, and he laid there stretched out, a tiny bit of blood oozing out of his mouth. His eyes remained open. Aunt Maria hovered near the counter, her hands cupped together near her heart. Suddenly, I burst toward the bounty hunter and dropped the tips of my fingers over his eyelids and shoved them down. The moment I touched him, I got a strange rush of memory from him—apparently still fresh, despite his being dead only a few minutes. I saw him, donning his dark coat; I felt the volatility and anger that once permeated through his veins. I felt the desire he’d had to own me, to find me.

  Quickly, I brought my hands back and gasped, overcome with the darkness within him. But at least I had done what I’d wanted to: his eyelids were closed. The blood next to his lips had begun to dry. He was middle-aged, with big bags under his eyes, and his ears were overly large, dangling a little toward the floor. I shuddered and shot back toward the kitchen.

  The clock in the kitchen glowed to read 1:30. Aunt Maria splayed her hands across the counter and studied me. I had never seen her so furious before.

  “I knew it was a mistake that you return home,” she said.

  Anger shot through me. “My teachers approved it. I know I’m strong enough to be here, Aunt Maria. You have to understand that I...”

  “You’re strong enough to be here?” Aunt Maria returned almost scoffing. She pointed toward the dead bounty hunter in the dining room and said, “I think you’ve already disproven that theory, don’t you?”

  “Aunt Maria, please. It’s been such a long semester and all I want in the world is just to... to stay here and have just a single normal day.”

  “There are no more normal days, Ivy,” Aunt Maria stated harshly. She turned swiftly toward the other side of the counter, yanked the cork off a bottle of wine, and poured herself a full glass. “Those normal days you so crave went away the moment you turned seventeen. Your powers are here, now, Ivy. Every single window in the house is busted. And you had no idea you were doing that, did you?”

  “It got your attention, didn’t it?” I retorted.

  “But I can’t be here to save you all the time!” Aunt Maria argued. She spun back, a large glass of wine in her long fingers, and glared at me. “The reason I sent you off to school is because it’s the only place you’ll be safe. While you’re there, I can sleep easier. I know that I’ve done the best I can for your safety. I...”

  “But you have no clue what this is doing to me!” I said. “All I ever wanted was to be a human. I—I played soccer. I had crushes on boys. I read magazines and painted my nails and...”

  “The sooner you let go of the past, the better,” Aunt Maria said. She knocked the glass of wine back, her eyes closed.

  “What do you want me to do?” I demanded. I shot toward the counter and smashed my fist on it, making the plates shake.

  Slowly, Aunt Maria removed the glass from her lips. She studied me, her eyes hazy, and then said, “Our new friend, the dead bounty hunter is going to cause ripples through the bounty hunting community. Maybe they knew he was on his way here; maybe they didn’t. But regardless, we need to get you back to school as soon as possible.”

  “And miss Thanksgiving?” I returned. I thought of the blissful soon-to-be views, the turkey Celeste’s dad was in the midst of cooking, the pies and the croissants and the glasses of wine, even the parade.

  “And maybe even Christmas,” Aunt Maria returned.

  I fell forward, my head in my hands. The world felt like it spun off its axis.

  “I think it’s best you pack your things right now,” Aunt Maria said suddenly.

  My eyes rushed back toward hers. “You can’t be serious. I only just got here.”

  “And there’s already a body,” Aunt Maria said again. She knocked the rest of her glass of wine back and smeared the back of her hand across her mouth. Her eyes still glittered with anger.

  “Just let me rest. I’ll pack in the morning.”

  “There isn’t time for that. Who’s to say someone isn’t on their way right this moment?” she returned.

  I couldn’t muster the strength to argue with her. I turned back toward the staircase and tore back up to my bedroom to find my things. When I peered at myself in the mirror, I saw a drenched wreck, a girl so angry, so volatile, so fucking dangerous, she couldn’t even return home where she felt she belonged.

  Chapter Two

  Twenty minutes later, when I made my way back down the steps, I saw that the dead bounty hunter had disappeared. Aunt Maria had dressed in a pair of jeans and a black cloak, and she perched on the little chair in the foyer, her eyes toward the road. Somehow, her white hair had dried beautifully, and she looked regal, strong, as though this decision to send me back had given her some kind of power.

  “Zoey is almost here,” she said, without bothering to look up at me. “I’m watching for her car. Celeste has agreed to go back with you to the Academy for break.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I don’t want Celeste to miss Thanksgiving.”

  “And Celeste doesn’t want you to eat pop tarts alone in your room for Thanksgiving.” After a pause, during which I struggled to think of what to say, Aunt Maria added, “Here they are.”

  Zoey’s headlights blared from the driveway. Aunt Maria swept up and yanked open the door and waved both Celeste and Zoey in. They huddled under an umbrella, then cut it closed just before they entered. Celeste eyed me with confusion, but Zoey, ever the up-beat one amongst us, seemed to take over. She drew her arms around Aunt Maria, hugged her close, and then smiled at me and said, “A little change in plans never hurt anyone.”

  Celeste lifted a platter into the light and said, “We brought us all a piece of pie, so we could celebrate for a few minutes together before we leave.”

  Aunt Maria looked apprehensive, but Zoey gave her a sharp look, then led us all into the kitchen. I glanced again toward the dining room, but there wasn’t even a spot on the carpet where he’d been.

  “It’s really better you’re missing it, girls. Some of my favorite memories from my younger years are when I broke off from the norm, celebrated holidays with my friends. Ivy, I think you’ll find that I loaded Celeste up with plenty of snacks and things like that—but I also read that Origins has plenty of on-campus options, as some students do choose to remain on-campus throughout the holiday breaks,” Zoey said, as she slipped four separate pieces of pumpkin pie onto four plates, then added forks alongside each.

  “I’m sure we’ll make the best of it,” Celeste said. Her voice was way too chipper, oddly irritating.

  Sure, I loved her to pieces. But this was my life—and it seemed like I would never have it again.

  There was a strange silence. Everyone’s eyes were on me. I remembered countless other times when the four of us had stood there: laughing and gossiping, making fun of my soccer uniform or doing each other’s hair or listening to the radio and eating snacks.

  I blinked back at Aunt Maria. I wanted her to say the right thing. I wanted h
er to say that I still meant something to her. But she seemed hollow, sad, fatigued—as though what we’d done with the bounty hunter had stripped her of any emotion. When I collected the plate of pumpkin pie, I lifted my fork and then let it drop again, overcome with sadness. The fork flipped from the edge of my plate, then scattered itself toward the floor.

  “Oh, dear. I’ll grab that...” Zoey said. She dropped and grabbed it, then whisked over to the sink.

  “I just didn’t ask for this,” I told Aunt Maria again. My bottom lip quivered.

  Celeste reached out to try to touch my elbow. But I ripped it away and glared at her—something I swear I had never done.

  “You can’t touch me, Celeste. Nobody can touch me,” I said.

  Celeste’s face changed, as though I was some kind of monster she couldn’t trust. She turned her eyes toward her pie and muttered something. I turned back to Aunt Maria and said, “Just let me stay. Let me stay a few more days, Aunt Maria. I swear, nothing will happen—and if it does, I’ll be ready. I’ll stay up all night if I have to.”

  Aunt Maria leaned toward me, almost spitting with fear and rage. “You ran out of the house, Ivy. You just rushed into danger without a single thought for what might happen. How can I possibly trust you?”

  “I just want it to go back to normal!” I cried.

  Zoey remained near the sink. Celeste wouldn’t look at us. I’d never fought with Aunt Maria in front of them, not about anything serious, and I felt like I stained all previous good times.

  Aunt Maria cut back and slipped her arms over her chest. She glowered at me and said, “The thing you have to understand, Ivy, is this. The first sixteen years of your life? Those were the outlier. You can never return to them. They weren’t your real life—just a placeholder until everything came into play. You might as well get used to it, and say goodbye to it. Forever.”

  The sharpness of her tone, it swelled up in my mind. Again, the anger and fear and sadness swirled through me and seemed to erupt out of me. Suddenly, the platter on which the individual pieces of pumpkin pie had been shot up from the counter and smashed against the side of Aunt Maria’s head. She turned to the side and immediately fell to her knees, then pressed her hand against her skull and let out a low moan. The platter fell to the floor and smashed into three perfect, sharp pieces.