Celeste propped herself back up on her elbow. “Really? You would rather go back to being a human?”
I shrugged. “I miss soccer.”
“Ha. You know you can play soccer here.”
I thought back to the day kicking the ball around with Ezra: how he’d shoved his fangs out, given that volatile, “I could kill you but won’t” smile.
“It’s just different,” I said and rubbed my arm.
“Right. Well, I guess everything will be from now on, but I know you go this girl,” Celeste said and gave me a smile of confidence.
I knew she was right, but I certainly didn’t feel like I had anything under control.
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS were strange, to say the least.
It seemed like everyone at school knew about my—erm—“title,” or situation. They largely stayed out of my way or made it their mission to make me comfortable.
When I first saw Ezra, Quintin, and Raphael on that Monday morning after my birthday, it was when I was heading to meet Professor Binion, walking through the arboretum. It wasn’t their nature to look anything but mean and stoic—but I did see their eyes flicker with confusion and fear. They’d seen me come into some of my powers. I paused as they passed me by, glancing at Ezra.
Professor Binion sensed the shift in me the second he saw me. He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flared. “Your skin is still glowing a bit,” were the first words he said.
“I wish it would stop,” I groaned, sitting across from his desk. “It’s getting a little annoying.”
He leaned toward me. “I’ve been keeping an eye on your aunt. It seems like the house is still covered up. And your friend’s mother—she’s been administering more spells around the house.”
“That’s what Aunt Maria told me as well,” I affirmed. “I know it’s just the beginning. I’m only seventeen. But maybe...”
“There’s so much about the future that is already written,” Professor Binion said, his eyes growing shadowed. “But there is also so much we can never know until it happens. Your mother saw you in her prophecy. She knew you would grow to become very powerful. In time though. Your knowledge would come gradually like hers did.” He paused, swallowing, before murmuring, “Do you feel some of it?”
I hadn’t forced myself down that path of vision. Sometimes, it frightened me to really peer at the future too much—as I suspected that “seeing it” in my head made it more true and unfixable. “I do,” I whispered. “But only some of it.”
With my powers more fully-formed, Professor Binion and I made enormous strides over the next weeks. I began to learn more spells and to draw upon past experiences of previous oracles. Instead of Professor Binion tutoring me twice a week after class, it was now three times a week in the morning and then if something had happened, we had our nights available as well. There was so much responsibility since I was only seventeen and still a year or so out of graduating from school—and I didn’t fucking know what would happen next or where to go next. We lived in a bubble at Origins Supernatural and I was just focused on staying alive.
But on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break, Professor Binion hit me with another fare warning I hadn’t thought about.
“You need to stay safe and keep your guard up, child. I’m simply telling you this because you must be aware. You’re worth so much more than just fixing the supernatural realm. Understand this. There are people out there—vampires, and bounty hunters—who want to destroy you. And potentially use you for their greater will...”
I let my shoulders sag.
“What would you have me do? I’m already hiding out here at Origins Supernatural. I’m trying my fucking best to learn all the spells and...”
Professor Binion stood up quickly from his desk. He looked like he might stagger over. He was too old to move so fast.
“I don’t think you should go home for Thanksgiving,” he suggested.
I pressed my lips together. I’d had this comment from Celeste and from my aunt already—but I hadn’t taken it seriously. To put it frankly, I was homesick. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and I wanted to run around Hillside Falls with Celeste, sipping milkshakes and pretending real life hadn’t caught up with us yet. I wanted to visit my parent’s gravesite that I hadn’t visited since before I left a few months ago.
I wanted to be at home.
“I know what I’m doing,” I told him. “And it’s only a few days. I’ll be back to Origins by Sunday, and I’m sure I’ll be safe and happy and absolutely fine. Better than fine. I’ll have a perspective which is something I need more than anything.”
Professor Binon followed me to the door, acting like an anxious old grandfather or uncle. He almost quivered as I opened the door.
“Remember everything I’ve taught you,” he told me, his eyes burning into mine. “Please, don’t take any unnecessary risks. Your house has the most protection over it. Stay there as much as you can.”
It took all my strength not to roll my eyes. But I told him that I would respect his wishes that I would be safe. And then, I marched into the hallway, scrambling toward my bedroom. I wanted to pack and to regroup. I couldn’t wait to stretch my legs outside of Origins Supernatural and see what it meant to be this new version of myself back home.
It meant everything.
Chapter Twenty
Celeste’s mom picked us up at Origins Supernatural at three on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Her face was so open and promising, stretched wide with her familiar smile. I fell into a hug. She was the last stop before going to my house. I inhaled the smell of her—of potions and herbs and whatever she’d last cooked for dinner.
On the drive home, Zoey let Celeste and I change the radio station around as much as we wanted. We sang songs and opened the windows and cried the lyrics out into the air. Zoey didn’t mention my new-found status, although I knew she knew everything. I was glad for this. She teased me and joked with me, just like she always had, like it was like old times and I was grateful that she didn’t question me at all.
When she parked the car outside my house, I could hardly catch my breath. It looked exactly the same: three stories of century-old brick, the porch swing swaying around in the wind, the dead flowers sweeping to and fro. I ducked out from the back seat and ran head-long toward the door, willing Aunt Maria to appear. It was like I’d called her because a moment later, she stepped onto the doorway, looking as beautiful as I remembered. I fell into a hug, no longer caring that we weren’t supposed to touch each other. I needed her touch more than anything.
The hug lasted a few long minutes before she held me away outstretched so she could get a good look at me. She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and then stroked my cheek before kissing my forehead.
“Ivy,” she murmured. “I missed you so much, honey.”
“Me too,” I said and ran my hand around her waist.
I was glad she didn’t tell me that it was wrong that I should have listened to her and stayed where it was safe. It was Thanksgiving, for God’s sake, and all I wanted to do was sit around eating too much food with her.
Zoey and Celeste piled in after me. Celeste hugged Aunt Maria before heading inside behind me. Later on, the four of us had a glass of wine on the back porch. Aunt Maria and Zoey talked about what they’d been up to—the potions they’d tried, the TV shows they’d laughed at, the gossip they’d heard around town. I wanted to bring up the vampire murders and the spells around the house, but it felt like those were topics for different days—days when we weren’t celebrating break and being back together.
The next day, we were planning to head to Celeste’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Zoey was already in the process of making a gorgeous meal, apparently. She’d picked out an enormous turkey, had her husband already prepping potatoes and onions and stuffing. “He’s slaving away back there. I left him special instructions,” she said. “He better not mess up. He knows better.”
When Celeste and Zoey left for the night, I hugged Celeste clos
e and whispered, “See you tomorrow. I’m so grateful you’re my best friend. I don’t know what I would do without you.” And she squeezed me hard against her, unable to respond. We were both happy to be home. It felt like we were kids again. This was exactly what I’d wanted.
Back inside, Aunt Maria propped herself up on a few pillows, seemingly exhausted. She tapped the other side of the couch and said, “I hope you’ll tell me more about your life at school.”
I just grinned at her, pointing upstairs. “We should really get to bed. We can have as much talk as you want tomorrow.”
She tried to suppress a yawn, saying, “Yeah, right. I want it all. Right—now.”
But I just rolled my eyes. I snuck my hand into my pocket and drew out a glove, which I then brought over my right hand. I stretched that handout, silently asking her to take it and she did.
“What a good strategy!” she said, her eyes glowing sleepily. “I’ll go around the world, holding your hand forever if you’ll wear this glove all the time.”
“Ha. It’s been kind of a necessity,” I told her. “The visions...”
“I know. I remember when it first started happening to your mother,” she continued. “She couldn’t get away with touching anyone without knowing their deepest, darkest secrets...including sometimes either their past or future.”
I nodded, realizing, with a jolt, that Aunt Maria was the only person on the planet who could possibly know what I might be going through. I knew I had to speak with her more about the changes, about grappling with the strange horrors of being an oracle.
But now, it was time for sleep.
I watched Aunt Maria slip into her bed. She dropped her head on the pillow, making her hair billow out around her. I sniffed and turned back toward my room. It was such a familiar route that I thought I might start crying. I wished I could walk across the rug in the hallway every day. I wished I could feel the creak in the floorboard.
I closed my eyes on my bed, keeping my nose straight toward the ceiling. My heart buzzed with happiness. I was home.
BUT THE DREAMS INVADED every crevice of my mind, pressing against my skull, forcing my eyes to open. I stared at the moonlit ceiling, my heart pumping wildly in my chest.
Again, I knew something was wrong. Something was terribly off. I flung up from my sheets, sweat pooling between my breasts and my shoulder blades. I turned toward the window, blinking down at the forest just behind our house.
There, tucked between the trees, was Aunt Maria.
Again, and again—like a nightmare on a constant loop—there she was.
I knew without question that she’d slept-walked there again. She was tilted forward, her grey hairs wafting in the night wind. Her white gown fluttered at her calves. I flung myself toward the door, pounding down the staircase toward the back porch. I cursed this, cursed it all—already trying to create a strategy for how to get her back to bed. I didn’t want to freak her out like last time.
When I yanked the back porch door open, a light pattering of rain began. It was almost too perfect, this rain: little glistening crystals, dotting the edge of my nose. Wearing only a ratty t-shirt and shorts, I flung out into the night. Within just a few minutes, I would have Aunt Maria back in the house, tucked back between her sheets. And after that, I would arrange some kind of strategy to keep her in the house at night. We couldn’t have her wandering around. Not with everything else going on.
The backyard was still just as swampy as it always had been. My toes felt spongy in the wetness. I tapped delicately through it until my toes felt the pine leaves, which created a kind of second, dry layer.
“Aunt Maria?” I whispered, edging closer and closer. “Aunt Maria, it’s me...”
I took light steps toward the nearest tree. As I approached it, I lost sight of her for a second. Then, I sprung out from behind a tree, darting toward the next and the next, until I arrived in the clearing where she had been standing.
But when I got there, I realized—
She was gone.
Fuck.
It had been only twenty seconds, no more. Where could she possibly have gone? I glanced around, wondering if, in her sleepwalking, she’d wandered deeper into the woods. That was certainly possible, especially given all the chaos that had been happening in our lives. Back when she’d sleepwalked the first time, I’d thought she was just a half-shapeshifter. Now, I knew she had something in her. Something magical in order to protect me.
“Aunt Maria?” I called out again.
The rain escalated and the air felt chilly, with each inhale coming in sharp, like a knife. I crossed my arms over my chest, remaining in the same spot where Mom had been standing. Was it possible that she would come back? I glanced back toward the house, wondering if she had somehow retreated back and missed me on the way.
But no, she wasn’t there, either.
The laughter rang out, then. It was maniacal and masculine and evil—bouncing from tree to tree. I frantically searched around me, hunting for its source. I no longer knew where I was, what was happening. I knew only that I was in imminent danger.
That I should not have left my house that night.
That maybe—Aunt Maria was actually still in her bed, and this had all been a fucking trap.
My heart thudded. I felt the cold fingers of someone—something—an evil being, wrap over my lips. My scream fled my throat, but it was trapped by these fingers, which lurched me against a thick, muscular figure. Someone had been watching me. Someone had known how to yank me out of my house—into the darkness between the trees.
And as the panic overflowed, I fell back, my knees shaking, my body wild with adrenaline. I saw only darkness—and these terrible, electric blue, piercing eyes. They reminded me of Ezra’s eyes—and yet they were edged with something even more sinister than I had ever seen in my life.
They seemed to speak of something that I didn’t fully understand, not at the age of seventeen.
They spoke of revenge. They spoke of murder.
They spoke of wanting to destroy me—not for what I’d done, but for what I planned to do.
To be continued...
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The Forbidden Oracle Page 18
