The Phantom Oracle (Vampire Innocent Book 5)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Oh. Chad.”

  I laugh.

  “What’s funny about that?”

  “There are some names that just work for the people who have them. Like the douchebag character in Dad’s Eighties college movies is always named Chad, Kent, or something like that.”

  Mom laughs, then sighs. “There are rumors going around the office. Some defense contract for a next generation fighter craft has gone from definite to maybe-not-going-through. Boeing sank so much cash into the prototype to show off to the DOD, there are fears of cutbacks if we don’t get the contract. I’m only worried because Fowler is fond of people who kiss his ass, and I can’t do that. He gave me that look today like he’s got a nasty surprise waiting for me. If he gets told to reduce staff, I’m probably first on his list because I don’t take his shit, and after eight years of refusing to kiss his ass, I don’t think any natural force on this Earth would change his mind.”

  Whoa. Did my mother just drop a not-too-subtle hint?

  “Who’s Fowler again?” I ask, peeking at her thoughts. And whoa—yeah. She does kinda hope I do something, but can’t bring herself to ‘break the ethical wall’ of coming out and asking me directly.

  “My boss. Cristian Fowler. He’s the director of legal.” She finally opens her coat buttons—or at least tries to. Her hands are shaking. “Except for his desire to have people constantly suck up to him, he’s not that bad.”

  And, color me freaked out. Mom read me the riot act for using my powers of mental influence to encourage people to buy a box of Girl Scout cookies. That she’s even contemplating asking me to fiddle with her boss’ head is totally epic. In a bad way, I mean. She must really be scared of losing her job.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m sure they’ll get the contract. And Fowler would be a moron to get rid of his best lawyer.”

  She sputters at me, waving. “Please. I’m nowhere near their best.”

  I grab her in a hug. “Of course you are. You’re my mom.”

  Mom gives me an ‘oh shit what have I done’ look. “I love you, too, sweetie.”

  Playing innocent, I stand. “Okay. Suppose I should get going. Got class in an hour.”

  “Drive safe… or fly safe. Whatever you wind up doing.” She looks me over. “Did you eat yet?”

  “Nah, I’ll grab someone at school.”

  She just stares at me, unsure if she should laugh.

  “Bye, Mom. See you later.”

  And speaking of grabbing, I nab a box of Thin Mints on my way out the door.

  Tonight is Introduction to Biology with Professor Clark Connolly.

  I don’t know what the hell is wrong with my brain, but I went in there expecting a mountain of sexiness. Like Clark Kent crashed into Sean Connery. Alas, the guy looks more like the slightly-over-the-hill alcoholic police captain from a primetime cop drama. He’s fiftyish, hair brown on top, grey over the ears, and has this quiet, unassuming demeanor that makes me think he’d just keep right on lecturing in the middle of an earthquake.

  Once again, I feel like I’m at ‘take your daughter to work day’ more than in school. I’m the youngest person in the room, and the weird girl with the frilly goth dress is nowhere to be seen. The other students around me are all in their thirties, more than half still wearing various polo shirts or uniforms from their day jobs.

  Depressing thoughts about my being denied the ‘normal college experience’ don’t get a chance to take hold since Professor Connolly launches straight into it. No ‘hey let’s get used to each other since it’s the first class period of the semester’ for this guy. But at least science is interesting.

  It keeps my mind occupied until first break. The class is an hour and forty-five minutes long, with two ten-minute breaks. On the first break, I follow a group of three to the ladies’ room. The straggler, in her late-twenties and either Chinese or Korean, is absorbed enough with her smartphone that the other two go into stalls before her. Since there’s no one watching, I barge right in behind her.

  She jumps back, but before shock becomes anger, I overwhelm her mind, forcing her to stand there in a daze. To avoid any unwanted rumors, I float off the ground and keep my feet tucked up so anyone going by outside will only see one pair of legs in here.

  I brush her hair off her neck and sink my fangs in, emitting a startled moan of surprise at the flavor of mocha coffee. Must be her ‘Starbucks-green’ shirt that implanted the idea. Either way, dangerously yummy. Gotta be careful. Usually, when people run into something like an alcoholic drink that tastes too good to realize how powerful it is, they wind up passed out. If I lose myself having a flavor-gasm, I could kill someone.

  Careful only to take what I need, I back off once I’m full, then stare into her eyes to make her forget seeing me in the bathroom. The near-deafening clicking of fingernails on smartphone screens from two other stalls tells me exactly where the other women are. The space adjacent on the right is empty, so I float up and over the partition, flush, then walk out like I’d used that toilet.

  The woman I fed from starts to leave her stall, then stops, realizing she hadn’t done what she came in here to do yet, and ducks back in.

  Well, I don’t smoke, don’t need a snack from a vending machine, and don’t have any friends to hang out with here… so I head back to the classroom to spend the last four minutes of the break period sitting at my desk like a nerd.

  Professor Connolly is a nice guy.

  Dreadfully boring and a complete failure at public speaking, but a nice guy.

  I had an English teacher once, Mr. Martin. Same guy who I saw working in the mall at a clothing store that totally shattered my notion of teachers being these mythical beings of power. Anyway, the guy said something like ‘There are people who make great teachers. There are people who truly understand a given subject. Finding someone who is both a great teacher and truly understands their subject is rare.’

  Alas, Connolly falls into the second group—not the third.

  No doubt he knows the material, but he could narrate a battle between two fifty-foot-tall robots with missiles and laser cannons and make it sound as dry as needlepoint night at the old folks’ home. At least bingo occasionally involves a raised voice or a little excitement.

  He almost puts me to sleep before sunrise.

  Still, the material is interesting. I can’t imagine taking this guy’s class at eight in the morning, first thing. No wonder the school bookstore also sells pillows. Making it through the remainder of his lecture takes a good amount of concentration on the material rather than the voice conveying it. With my amped up reflexes, I could transcribe everything he says word for word into my notebook, but there’s no point. I do take notes, but only important things that sound like test bait.

  When class is over, I make my way out of the building. Fortunately, the rain’s stopped by now, but the ground is still wet. There’s enough of a group heading up the street to the parking garage that I would’ve felt reasonably safe as a normal girl. I don’t really know any of these people, but it’s still highly unlikely an entire group of like eleven students would conspire together to assault me.

  The parking garage is another matter. It has numerous areas that appear like they’d probably be shadowy and dangerous. I’m guessing since I can’t actually see darkness anymore. Still, they look like perfect ambush spots for creeps. By the time I get to the Sentra, I’ve been walking alone for at least a hundred feet. Then again, it’s not like I’m in one of the bad metro areas.

  I flop in the driver’s seat and pull out my iPhone.

  Hmm… Cristian Fowler, Boeing. Okay, Google, what’cha got?

  Looks like he lives in a big-ass house on Garfield Street in Queen Anne. Damn. That’s way close to center city Seattle. Guess this guy’s doing pretty well for himself.

  Whistling innocently, I grab the box of Thin Mints, get out of the car, and meander over to the edge of the parking garage. One casual look around to make sure no one is watching me later, I zip into th
e air.

  It’s barely two miles away as the crow—or vampire girl—flies.

  Driving, more than ever, feels like a ball and chain slowing me down. But, it is a lot drier than flying on a rainy day. I glide in for a nice landing on the sidewalk in a nice, suburban area. The guy’s house is huge. A set of concrete stairs leads up to the front porch along the side of a dirt mound covered in bushes. To the right of that, a two-car garage occupies a sunken area even with the ground floor, though half of it’s embedded in the hill, so it’s more like the basement is exposed on the right side than a two-story house.

  Anyway, I trot up the steps, ring the doorbell, and smile like a tween-aged Girl Scout.

  A skinny blonde girl in a teal top and yoga pants answers. She’s maybe fourteen, and gives me this ‘what are you supposed to be’ look.

  “Hi. Is your father home?” I wave the box of Thin Mints. “Delivering his cookie order.”

  “Aren’t you kinda old for that?” asks the girl in a patronizing tone.

  “My kid sister’s the scout. I’m just running it around since it’s a bit late for her to be out.”

  “Oh.” She reaches toward me. “I can take it. Dad’s watching TV.”

  I stare into her eyes, making her think I’m holding a clipboard. “That’s cool. But I still need him to sign the form.”

  “Seriously? Why do you have to be so annoying?” She sighs at me like I’ve just thrown off the entire rest of her life with the massive inconvenience. Ooh. Entitled little brat. “Fine.”

  “Sec?”

  The girl smirks at me.

  As soon as she makes eye contact, I plunge into her mind. “You really could stand to be a bit nicer to people.”

  Her expression falls slack into a distant stare. Ten seconds later, her eyelids flutter and she just kinda stands there, clueless.

  I wag the box of Thin Mints at her. “Would you please let your dad know I’m here?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Hang on. I’ll go get him.” She zips into the house, leaving the door open.

  Ahh. Wild abuse of vampiric powers. Fear me. Rawr—or something.

  “Umm, Dad?” says the girl somewhere inside the house. “S’cuse me… there’s someone at the door. She’s got your cookies and says you have to sign for them.”

  “Something wrong, Andrea?” asks a man.

  “No… Why?”

  “Did you take something?”

  I can just picture her shaking her head. “No.”

  Upholstery creaks, then the thud, thud, thud of someone walking across the house. A man in his later forties with slick black hair and a dark tan emerges from the living room in a Boeing polo and cargo shorts. His right eyebrow is attempting to embed itself into his hairline.

  “Hi, Mr. Fowler?”

  “Do I know you? You look kinda familiar…”

  “No. I’m just dropping off cookies.” I dive into his head. “Just need you to sign here.”

  I remind him of Mom, but he doesn’t realize it yet. At least, not at a conscious level. Mrs. Wright is the best lawyer working for you. You’d never lay her off. She’s way too valuable for Boeing to lose. I momentarily debate throwing in a raise, but nah. That’s too much like stealing and I’m pretty sure Mom would be legit pissed at me for doing that. In his mind, he takes the clipboard from me and signs his name right next to his original signature where he agreed to buy one box of Thin Mints for $5.

  “Thanks,” says Mr. Fowler in a lifeless tone. He takes out his wallet and hands me a $10. “Keep it. Call it a donation.”

  Okay, that’s all him. I didn’t do that. Honest.

  “Here you go. Thank you!” I chirp while handing him the box of cookies. Remember. You would never lay off Allison Wright. Your team would fall to pieces without her.

  While I’m in there, I also tweak his memory of my appearance enough for safety. Black hair, blue eyes instead of brown, and hell… freckles.

  “Take care, kid.” Mr. Fowler waves at me and shuts the door.

  Sierra’s probably going to kill me for pinching one of her boxes of Thin Mints, but hey… she’s got a whole case. I head a few houses down, slip into a nice dark spot, and leap into the sky for the flight home.

  Oh, crap.

  I forgot the car.

  5

  No One Alive

  Within seconds of my sneakers touching down on the parking garage deck, a dark figure walks out from behind a column.

  I jump, startled by the sudden presence of another person, but relax when I recognize it’s the strange young woman in the super frilly goth dress I saw in English Lit class. She gives me a Mona Lisa smile and keeps on walking. Okay, either she didn’t see me fly in and land, or she did and—for reasons unknown to me—has no problem whatsoever with that. No freak out. No ‘wow, that’s so cool!’ No confused staring.

  Like this girl sees people climb in the side of a third-story parking deck all the time.

  There’s no way she saw me fly and has no reaction whatsoever. So either she didn’t see me, or… she’s a vampire, too. She glances back at me before disappearing into the stairwell. I manage a friendly wave. Her smile widens, though she doesn’t slow down or stop. Hmm. Odd. If I had nothing better to do, I’d go chase her down and make sure she didn’t see anything weird.

  But, that would cut into my Hunter time.

  And besides, no sane person sees a girl flying around and just walks off totally calm, right?

  She didn’t see me—or she’s not sane. In which case, no one would believe her if she tells anyone. Screw it.

  I jog across the garage, hop in the Sentra, and drive.

  You know what’s frustrating? Being stuck doing like forty miles an hour when I could be flying at 140. What’s even more frustrating than that? Getting stuck behind a dump truck. What the hell is a dump truck doing on the road at like 9:30 p.m.? Argh. I shift positions, tap my fingers on the wheel, lean the other way, tap my fingers on the wheel harder.

  Finally, after a few blocks, the truck turns off.

  Less than a full minute after I finally get up to the speed limit, a cop comes out of nowhere behind me and turns his lights on.

  Okay, seriously what the hell? I didn’t do anything.

  Most eighteen-year-olds being pulled over for the first time would be about ready to wet their pants. And okay, I experience about ten seconds of that dread, too, before I realize my parents won’t be yelling at me for getting a ticket because no matter what happens in the next five minutes, I’m not getting a ticket.

  I signal and pull over in the first open place to do so. The police car noses up behind me. A spotlight comes on, and… there we sit. Was I tailgating that truck? I don’t think so… No way was I speeding. Mom told me once about how she used to get pulled over all the time in her younger twenties because rookie cops wanted to hit on her. Ugh. I hope that’s not what’s going on here.

  Finally, after about four minutes, the police car’s door opens.

  The cop’s a guy, later thirties probably. Big, with a shaved head. He walks up beside the car, looks in at me, flashlight right on my face. I squint.

  “Who’s car is this, sweetie?”

  “My dad’s.”

  “He know you took it? You a bit young to be driving?”

  I sigh out my nose. Oh. Dammit. “I’m eighteen.”

  ‘Yeah right, this kid think I’m an idiot?’ goes across his mind so loud I can hear it without even trying. “Eighteen, huh?”

  “Yep. One sec.” I fish my license and college ID out of my bag and hand them over. “Was I doing something wrong, or did you just stop me because I look like I’m fifteen?”

  He examines my cards, glances at me, stares at the cards again, then squints. “Hold tight. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  It’s so tempting to just send him on his way, but I really am in the clear, so I merely nod.

  The cop tromps back to his car. I amuse myself by picturing his increasingly desperate need to prove my IDs are fake crumbling. W
hen that loses its appeal, I check myself in the mirror to make sure I haven’t regressed any younger. This whole vampire deal is still new ground, so who knows what’ll happen to me. Thankfully, I don’t look any different. Someone seeing only my face could guess anywhere from thirteen to sixteen.

  He finally returns and hands me the cards back. “Checks out. Sorry about that. You look young.”

  “No problem.” He leans in, peering around the car. “Wouldn’t happen to be anything in the car you don’t want me seeing?”

  All the powers of an immortal vampire at my disposal—well, at least a somewhat watered-down version—and of course, having a cop looming over me turns me straight back into Follows Rules Girl.

  “No, sir. Just my school stuff.”

  He nods, not even a note of suspicion on his face. Well, I guess that’s one advantage to looking innocent. “Drive safe, hon.”

  “Thanks.”

  I wait for him to get back in his car, then signal and pull out into the road. Swear… if being pulled over for looking too young to drive becomes a trend, I might just get into the habit of sending the cops on their way without going through the whole routine. Honestly, I don’t think I look that young. The guy probably just saw an ‘under twenty’ driving around at night and hoped he’d find alcohol or something.

  To save time, I drive straight home, leave the car, and fly to Mi Tierra. Fortunately, Hunter is working until 10 p.m., plus whatever time it takes him to finish up. The cop didn’t steal precious time. Only about fifteen minutes of waiting.

  It’s not bad waiting, really. The rain’s stopped, so I sit on the trunk of Hunter’s car, lay back, and stare up at the moon and clouds for a while. Sometimes when I was a little kid, I’d look up at the sky and think of it as a massive, perfectly blue swimming pool, and daydream about diving in. That I can do that now is both amusing and sad. Though, the somberness only comes from thinking about myself at like eight or nine, and how I had no idea back then a boy I thought I liked would stick a knife into my chest. Hell, at that age, I didn’t even have a concept that people could stab each other to death at all.