Rogue Oracle (6 page)

Cassie swallowed. She knew that the Pythia’s talent was pyromancy—seeing the future in fire. She didn’t know that fire would respond to her whim like that.

The Pythia smiled in satisfaction at the damage. “This is what I mean by evolution of your gifts. I couldn’t control fire at your age. And there’s no telling how your talents will develop. But for now, you must learn more practical ways to protect yourself.”

The Pythia gestured to the guns arranged on a weathered picnic table. “Pick your weapon.”

Cassie leaned over the table. Most of the guns looked quite complicated; a couple were machine guns. Cassie chose the simplest-looking gun in the group: a revolver.

“Good. Pick it up.”

Cassie picked the gun up by the wood grips, awkwardly.

“That’s a Smith & Wesson Model sixty-six.” The Pythia reached behind her, popped out the revolver barrel to show Cassie. “It holds six shots, either thirty-eight or three fifty-seven.”

“It looks like a Dirty Harry gun,” Cassie said.

“No. Clint Eastwood had a Model twenty-nine. I’ll show you how to load it.” The Pythia plucked bullets from a brick-shaped box and handed them to Cassie. “Put one in at a time. Keep it pointed downrange, or at the ground.”

Cassie fitted the bullets into place. “Okay. Now what?”

“This gun is double-action. That means that you can shoot it by pulling the trigger, or by cocking the hammer and then pulling the trigger. There’s no safety.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Takes less force to pull the trigger after you’ve cocked it. I’ll show you.”

The Pythia put her hearing protection ear guards over her head and fitted Cassie’s over her ears. They were like giant stereo headphones that muffled the outside sound, but amplified the sound of Cassie’s breathing.

“First, make sure there’s no one downrange,” the Pythia told her. The rest of Delphi’s Daughters had put out the fire and milled behind them. “Next, hold the gun before you.”

Cassie did as she was told, but the Pythia shook her head. “Spread your feet about shoulder-width apart. Good. Lift the gun to shoulder level, and straighten your arms. No. Don’t lock them.” The Pythia fussed over her stance. “Now put the heels of your hands together on the back of the grips. That will absorb the shock.”

The Pythia stood on tiptoe to look over Cassie’s shoulder. “Now, sight in. See those two orange marks? Line those up just at your target … lower … there.”

Cassie swallowed. This felt very foreign to her.

“Good. Now, breathe out so that you don’t shake your aim. Take your first shot when you’re ready.”

Cassie squinted over the sight and squeezed the trigger.

She’d expected it to be like firing a water pistol. But the gun had a mind of its own. When she squeezed the trigger, the gun bucked in her hands with a loud report, kicking her arms up over her head. Cassie managed to hold on to the gun, but the sound and movement rattled her.

She opened her eyes. “Did I hit anything?”

The Pythia laughed. “You missed. Try again.”

Cassie set her jaw, took aim, and fired again. This time, she was better prepared for the reaction. A bit of straw was knocked from the arm of the scarecrow.

“Good. Try again.”

Bang.

“Again.”

Bang.

“Again.”

Cassie shot until the gun clicked empty.

“Very good,” said the Pythia. “You didn’t flinch when you ran out of bullets.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means you’re not afraid of the gun.” The Pythia took the gun back to the picnic table and reloaded it. Cassie wiped her hands on her jeans. They were sweaty and smelled like gunpowder.

“This is what we will show you how to do today.” She gestured with her chin at one of Delphi’s Daughters, who now had the shotgun aimed at the straw man Cassie had been plinking away at.

The woman took aim with the shotgun and fired. The gun reported so loudly that Cassie jumped. The woman advanced upon the straw man, ejecting shells and rapid-firing thunder until the straw man was sheared in half. His ragged head and torso bowed in front of the woman.

“Wow,” said Cassie, thunder still ringing in her ears. “I don’t think I can do that.” It scarcely seemed the other Daughter had time to aim, but she’d destroyed the scarecrow in seconds.

The Pythia shook her head. “You will.”

Cassie swallowed. She didn’t think she had much choice in the matter.

G
ALEN SAT ON THE STEPS OF THE
L
INCOLN
M
EMORIAL
, watching the tourists mill around the reflecting pond. A hazy blue summer sky shimmered in the pool, and sun beat down on the visitors with their summer clothes and cameras.

Galen leaned back in the shade. He wore jeans, sunglasses, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. He’d mostly healed from devouring Lena, but didn’t want to call attention to the fading assimilation marks in his skin. He understood that this look wouldn’t draw undue attention; it was simply considered “emo” in America. His close-cropped hair had begun to grow back over his smooth skull. There was nothing remarkable about his face any longer. It was symmetrical, as near-perfect as it had ever been.

Another man sat down beside him. He was not “emo.” He was more what Americans would consider to be a “yuppie”: he was dressed in chinos and a collared shirt, with a blue sport coat and flashy watch. He unwrapped a sandwich, began eating it.

“What kind of sandwich is that?” Galen asked. As much as he tried to lose the accent, a trace of Russian still crept in.

“It’s a turkey club.”

“Ah. I prefer pastrami.”

“You can get the best pastrami in Oradea, in the old country.”

“So I’ve heard.” The buyer had given the correct code word. Galen bent down to unzip the backpack at his feet and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook to hand to the buyer.

The buyer dusted crumbs from his fingers. Galen studied the buyer as he paged through the book. He didn’t know who the buyer worked for. It could be Iran. It could be China. Or Pakistan. He didn’t really care. Truth be told, he didn’t care much about the money, either.

The buyer nodded. “Latitudes and longitudes. Exactly as described.”

Galen didn’t say anything. From Lena’s memory, he’d just given this man directions to a buried cache of degrading weapons-grade uranium.

The buyer pulled out his BlackBerry, began punching buttons. “I’ll make the transfer now.”

Galen nodded. Within seconds, his own phone in his jeans pocket began to vibrate. He took it out, peered at the screen. The alert confirmed to him a bank transfer of two million U.S. dollars to an offshore account. “Got it.”

“Good doing business with you.” The buyer tucked the notebook under his arm, stood, and walked away with his sandwich in hand. He disappeared quickly in the throng of tourists.

Galen leaned back in the shade, feeling a stab of satisfaction at his accomplishment. Whoever had purchased the information would doubtlessly manage to stir up some chaos with it.

And chaos was his primary goal. It was as close as he could get to getting even with a world that had chewed him up and spat him out, molecule by molecule.

He was a monster, he knew it.

And he would make sure the world suffered for it.

Chapter Six

I
’
D LIKE
the number 185.”

Harry handed the menu back to the waiter at China Palace. The waiter looked over his notepad. “Sha Cha Beef?”

“Yes, please.”

The waiter lifted his eyebrow, scribbled down the order, and walked away.

Harry shrugged at Tara. “Wait until you see the look I get when I ask for a fork.”

Tara rested her chin in her hand. Soft red light from paper lanterns made translucent circles on the white tablecloth, and a breeze slid through wind chimes on the patio. Harry was jealously transfixed by a strand of hair that had wound free of her chignon and tickled the scar on her shoulder. “Pops never taught you to use chopsticks?”

“Nope. And I don’t speak a bit of Chinese. It’s occasionally socially awkward.”

“Do you think you missed out?”

“Probably.” Harry poked at the chopsticks on his place mat. “I missed out on a lot. Probably as much as you did when you lost your mom.”

Tara’s mouth thinned. “Yeah. Though I had her long enough to learn a lot from her. About the Tarot. About life.”

“You said that she belonged to Delphi’s Daughters.”

“She did. She was the right hand of the Pythia. And the Pythia wasn’t happy when I left them. I blamed them for her death, but …” Tara sighed. “It was just cancer. There’s really no blame there.”

“Yeah. I spent most of my teens blaming everyone in sight for the car crash that killed my parents. But I was lucky. I had Pops to look after me.”

“Your Pops is a helluva man.” Tara had met Harry’s adoptive father months ago. She wished she’d had a man like that in her life, growing up: warm, wise, and brave.

“Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without him. He’s …” Harry sighed, looked away down the street. The isolation he felt was hard to articulate. “… he’s one of the few people I feel at home with.”

Tara nodded. “I guess home is wherever we find ourselves.” Her gaze was faraway, and Harry wondered where home was for her.

The waiter returned with their food. Without Harry asking, he brought forks.

Harry raised his glass. “To orphans.”

Tara clinked hers against his. “To orphans.”

Harry pushed his food around with his fork. “Speaking of orphans … how long are you going to stay at the farm with Cassie?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t like leaving her alone there.”

“You still don’t trust the Pythia?”

“No.” Tara savagely sliced a piece of pepper in half. “The Pythia is never what she seems. She serves her own purposes.”

“And you’ve said that the Pythia has plans for her.”

“Yeah. She wants Cassie to be her successor, the next Pythia. And I don’t want to see Cassie turning out like that.”

“Cassie will be her own girl,” Harry said. “She’s stronger than you think. Don’t underestimate the kid.”

Tara’s shoulders slumped. “I know. I just … feel like I should be protecting her. When I was her age, I had my mother to ask about being an oracle. She deserves someone who will tell her the good and the bad.”

“And you will.”

Tara shoved her rice around. “I wish my mother was still around. God knows I still have questions.”

“Questions about being an oracle? I thought you already had that down pat.” Harry looked at her quizzically. Tara was the most self-possessed person he knew.

“Yeah. It’s not like someone hits you with a wand one day and—boom—you’re an oracle.” Tara shook her head. “It evolves. It changes. And now that my deck has changed, I’m … renegotiating my relationship with those cards.”

Harry frowned. “Look, if they’re not working out, I won’t be hurt if you want to get another set …” When Tara had lost her mother’s deck, it had seemed only right that he replaced it. Now, he felt like he’d fucked up. Given her a chopstick when she needed a fork.

Tara shook her head. She reached across the table and grabbed his hand. “No. I love this deck.” Her voice was impassioned, and she blushed, pulling away. But Harry trapped her hand with his.

“How about I show you where I got them?” Harry said. “They came from a bookstore just a few blocks from here.”

Tara hesitated. “I’m keeping the deck, but …”

“But?”

Curiosity glittered in her blue eyes. “You know, I would really like to see where they came from.”

“H
OW DID YOU FIND THIS PLACE?
”

Tara stared up at the façade of the colonial brick row house that had been converted into a shop. The front store window was crowded with a display of books, and a wooden sign above the front door depicted a black cat and a moon, bearing the legend: A
RIADNE’s
W
EB OF
B
OOKS
. Red geraniums bloomed in window boxes, beside a pair of concrete lions. Tara’s hand lingered on a lion, still warm from the day. Darkness had fallen, and stray fireflies swam through an evergreen hedge, trying to hide from the threat of rain.

“I was getting deposed here in Washington, after we met.” Harry stood with his hands in his pockets, jingling change. “I was out for lunch, and just started walking.” He shrugged. “I ended up here.”

Tara climbed the front steps and opened the door, a screen door left open to the summer night. She smelled incense, and a bell jangled overhead to announce their arrival.

Polished wooden floors supported floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining the walls and aisles. The interior floors of the house had been gutted, she realized, to make room for an iron spiral staircase that looked as if it had been torn from a ship. Upper floors of steel and wood curved around the cavernous space, lit by amber glass pendulum lights suspended from the uppermost rafters. A breeze blowing from the open windows on the upper floors trickled through wind chimes.

The shelves didn’t hold only books, though there were thousands of them, new and used, smelling of dust and incense. Knickknacks of various vintages dotted the shelves: jars of herbs, bells, glass bottles of stones. Tara ran her finger down the spine of the wired skeleton of a lizard guarding a shelf of herbalism books.

“Can I help you?” Footsteps padded across the polished floor. Tara turned to see a middle-aged woman with platinum-blond hair braided around her head. She wore a long gray dress embroidered with leaves and black ballet slippers.
This must be Ariadne,
Tara supposed.

“Yes.” Harry said. “I came in here a few months ago, and—”

“I remember you.” The woman’s face split into a smile. “You’re the fellow who bought the Tarot cards.”

“You have a good memory.”

“I have a good memory for unusual sales.” The woman moved behind a glass counter that held a cash register and peered through her bifocals. “What can I do for you?”

Tara pulled the deck from her purse. She was reluctant to allow another person to handle them, since she wanted the deck to imprint fully upon her. “What can you tell me about these, about where they came from?”

Ariadne peered through her glasses at the deck. “Ah. Those. I’ve never seen another deck like them.” Her fingers hovered above the deck, but she didn’t touch. That made Tara think she knew more about cards than an ordinary book or antiques dealer.

“Me, either.”

“If I remember …” She dug through a file cabinet. “Those were sold on consignment. Let’s see …” Ariadne smoothed out a yellow form that had wrinkled around the edges. “Those were from Tennessee.”

“May I see that, please?” Tara asked, and Ariadne turned the page around. The seller’s address was the farmhouse Tara had been living at. Her mouth tightened.

The cards had come from the Pythia.

Tara’s gaze flicked up to Ariadne. “Do you know Amira?”

“I don’t know anyone by that name. But I do know that these are supposed to be yours.” Ariadne smiled at her. “You might say that I have a knack for matching up books with the right reader … and tools with the right practitioner.”

“Thank you.” Tara dropped the cards into her purse and backed away, thoughts churning. She knew that Delphi’s Daughters routinely nudged world events. Putting a deck of cards back in her hands would be a relatively small feat.

Harry followed Tara down the steps and out to the street. “Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Tara said. “I just—” Her phone buzzed. “Excuse me.” She dug her phone out of her pocket. Her face brightened, but her brow furrowed. “Hi, Cassie. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“How was the Pythia’s practical magic lesson today?”

“Different. We shot guns all day.”

Tara’s eyebrow crawled up into her hairline. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I suck with the MP-5. But she tells me I’ll get better.”

“Machine guns already?” Tara struggled to keep her voice neutral.

“I think I’m gonna have a bruise on my shoulder, though.”

“Take some ibuprofen before you go to bed.”

“I will. What are you up to?”

“Harry and I are walking downtown.”

“Cool. Can I say hi to Harry?”

“Sure.” Tara handed the phone to Harry.

Harry smiled into the receiver. “Hey, kiddo. How’s things?” He nodded and laughed, and his gaze flicked to Tara. “Yeah. Yeah, I will. I promise.” He passed the phone back to Tara.

Tara cradled the receiver between her shoulder and her ear. “Sleep well, Cassie.”

“Okay.”

“Can you put the Pythia on the line when you go?”

“Sure. G’night.”

“Good night.”

Tara could hear Cassie’s footfalls scurrying away, then the even tread of the Pythia’s jingling step on the floorboards.

“Hello, Tara,” the accented contralto voice answered.

Tara gritted her teeth. “Listen to me, you bitch. You keep Cassie out of harm’s way. None of that sophomoric hazing shit. Do you hear me?”

The Pythia laughed. “Cassie is perfectly safe. She’s to be the next Pythia. I’d never allow anything to happen to her.”

“Mark my words, Amira. Your crazy flock of followers may be too afraid to lift a hand to you, but I’m not.”

“I won’t hurt her. I swear.”

“You’d better not.” Tara switched off the phone, blew out her breath.

Harry reached for her elbow. “Hey, what was that about?”

Tara blinked at him. “The Pythia’s got her playing with machine guns the instant I step out of the house.”

“Cassie’s a big girl. She can handle herself around guns.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. I know Cassie can hold her own.” Tara shook her head. It was hard to explain. “The Pythia can get into some very ugly training with Delphi’s Daughters, if you leave her to her own devices.”

“What do you mean?” Harry’s hands balled into fists. Tara knew that he’d rip limb from limb anyone who hurt Cassie.

“Psychological shit. I remember being sixteen and taken on what she called an ‘orienteering’ course.” Tara shook her head. “They dumped me in the middle of the woods and expected me to find my way out. It took me two days.”

“Let’s go get her,” Harry said. He stood opposite her on the pavement, blocking her. He grasped her wrist. “Now.”

“No. I know they were watching me the whole time, that no harm would actually come to me. But … it’s disconcerting. And I haven’t been able to explain this shit to her.” Tara shook her head. “The Pythia’s just trying to see how far she can push since I’m not there—” Her eyes widened as she looked over Harry’s shoulder. “Harry, look out!”

A shadowy figure slipped up the sidewalk, a man wearing a ball cap pulled low over his brow and a denim jacket. He pulled a gun behind Harry’s head, clicked back the hammer. “You. Hands up.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed, and Tara could see the wrath shimmering off him, like heat from the pavement on a summer afternoon. Slowly, he lifted his hands.

Don’t do anything stupid,
Tara thought.

But the thought was directed at Harry, not the would-be mugger.

“T
HE LADY GIVES ME HER PURSE, FIRST.”

Harry’s heart thudded under his tongue. His body was between Tara and that fucking punk behind him. He saw Tara reach into her purse, saw the glint of metal. He knew she’d talk the mugger down if given half a chance, would have the guy eating birdseed out of her hand and apologizing, if Harry would let her.

But Harry was having none of it. He’d had too many weeks of putting up with too much shit. Too much time on the outside, looking in. And he was tired of the world trying to fuck with him when he was trying to be the hero and save it. Something in him snapped.

He heard the punk’s sneakers take two steps behind him. Harry guessed the gun should be about a foot behind his right ear.

Harry pivoted on his right foot, putting all his weight into his right forearm to knock the gun across the attacker’s body. He flipped his arm out in a hold, grasping the gunman’s arm as he kicked his feet out from under him. The punk yelped, and Harry bent his wrist back. The gun clattered to the pavement.