Dark Oracle (21 page)

He’d not killed her so far, when he’d had the chance. His mission must be too precious for him to lose her.

“What do you want from me?” she screamed at him, and the wind shredded her voice.

“The dark matter,” he shouted. “It’s in you.”

She shook her head, lashing hair around her face. She wasn’t going with him. She pulled the trigger. The wind muffled the pops chewing into his chest. He fell onto the floor of the copter, sliding precariously toward the open door.

The helicopter pitched forward in a dive. Adrienne advanced to the cockpit. She wouldn’t let him ditch the copter. She had places to go.

She skidded forward and pressed the gun barrel to his helmet. “Level off.”

He paused, then pulled up. Good man. Perhaps the pilot had more of a sense of self-preservation than Gabriel.

“Where to?” he shouted.

Where, indeed? Adrienne slid into the copilot’s seat. She had none of her usual tools of geomancy to guide her: no stones, no dowsing rods, no handfuls of earth to scatter.

No. She did have the earth. She could feel it singing in her bones. It was inside her. She listened to it. It grew and filled her with a sense of magnetic north. From this great height, she could see the blue spiderweb of ley lines crossing across the distant ground, could feel the energy of earth as never before. Unraveled threads of wrath and unshed tears rose in her.

She pointed to the horizon. “East. Take me east.”

Her quarry was there, gathered with the rest of Delphi’s Daughters. She could feel it, as surely as she could feel gravity or hate.

K
NOWLEDGE WAS A LIVING GIFT, PASSING FROM ONE GENERATION
to the next. It could be a boon or a curse. Tara wasn’t quite sure which it was that Cassie had inherited from her father.

Tara sat on the porch swing at Sophia’s house, looking out toward the yard into the darkness, one of Sophia’s sweaters wrapped around her shoulders. It smelled like sage and jasmine. Maggie stretched out at her feet. Oscar had emerged from Sophia’s breadbox to grace Tara with his presence, tucking himself under her arm. Cold chills rippled through her, though her brow was glossed with sweat. She’d eaten little of the sumptuous dinner Delphi’s Daughters had prepared. She was afraid to imagine how deep the radiation sickness went, and had slipped out into the darkness to allow the stillness to permeate her, to allow some equilibrium to sink in. Inside the house, a half dozen of Delphi’s Daughters bustled about. Someone was playing music, and by the laughter and creak of the floorboards, she guessed they were dancing. Polka, followed by the Electric Slide, from the sounds of it.

She remembered the apple trees in the yard from when she was a child, when she and her mother and Sophia would gather them in laundry baskets to make pies. She remembered her mother’s easy grace, her love, and the gift of knowledge she’d passed on to Tara. Tara’s mother had never treated her abilities with cartomancy as a curse. Strange that Tara had come to look upon it as such.

Tara looked at the tattered Tarot card she held in her hand. Strength. Her mother’s cards were gone. Her mother was gone. All she had left was the ability to honor her memory, by being of service.

Tara turned the card over in her hands, thinking of Harry. He’d saved her life, in many ways. She wished she could tell him how grateful she was to him for pulling her out of her shell, for breaking her exile and helping her to feel again. She frowned. Perhaps she and Harry were too different to make a relationship work, but she still owed him a debt.

The screen door slammed, and Cassie slipped out onto the porch.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Mind if I sit with you?”

Tara scooted over to give Cassie room on the swing. The girl vigorously rocked it back and forth with her sneaker, making Tara queasy.

“About this thing with the Pythia. . .” Cassie began.

Tara waited, laced her hands in her lap.

“I’m not sure what to do. Everything’s happened so fast, and I. . .” She leaned back and looked at the stars. “I don’t know.”

Tara followed her gaze to Cassiopeia rising on the horizon. Without her cards, Tara’s intuition was stubbornly silent. For an instant, she felt as if she were missing a limb, unable to accurately advise or see around corners. She was surprised at how easily she’d fallen into her old familiar patterns, and how much she missed them.

“No matter what happens,” Cassie said sadly, “I’m gonna have to leave everything behind. . . school, my name. . . everything but Maggie.”

The military might still be looking for her, and Cassie would have to shed her old identity, whether or not she stayed with Delphi’s Daughters. Tara suspected one of the hardest parts of her grieving process would be losing her father’s name and taking on a new identity. But as long as she kept her father’s knowledge close to her heart, Tara was convinced the girl was stronger than even she knew.

“The most important thing,” Tara said slowly, “is to make sure that you’re safe. The rest are simply choices that can be altered later on.”

Cassie smirked. “You think the Pythia would let me change my mind? Join later? Or drop out of the Daughters of Delphi?”

Tara shrugged. “Why not? I did. And she hasn’t eaten me alive. Well, not yet.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the Dragon Lady eats people.”

Tara snorted. “Dragon Lady. I like that.” Her expression sobered. “Look, I’ve got very little love for Delphi’s Daughters. But I do believe they can keep you safe. So. . . it’s your choice. Just tell the Pythia that you reserve the right to change your mind at any time. And keep my number handy. I’ll come get you, no matter where you are.”

Cassie smiled. “I believe you. Thanks.” Her eyes shone with reflected starlight. Tara guessed that if she looked deeply enough into her eyes, she might see galaxies unfold. “When did you join Delphi’s Daughters?”

“I was initiated when I was about seven. Yeah, that sounds about right. That was the year my mom made me the Wonder Woman birthday cake and the year I discovered comic books.”

“Your mom was in it, too?”

“Yes. You might say she was the Pythia’s favorite. Like you.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I’m not much of a joiner.” She thought about it. “That’s not exactly true. . . I wanted to save the world. And I didn’t think that I could do that within Delphi’s Daughters.”

“Wow. Delphi’s Daughters seem. . . to have so much power.”

“They do,” Tara agreed, trying to be objective. “But that’s just not where my path lies.”

Cassie leaned back again in the swing to stare at Cassiopeia, and Tara wondered exactly what she saw in her future. Without her cards, she had no way to know which route the girl would choose, but she hoped it would be the right choice for her.

Tara straightened when she heard the crunch of gravel and a dust plume rising from the road. The porch swing stilled with a squeak.

“Go into the house, Cassie,” she ordered, reaching for her gun. No more of Delphi’s Daughters were expected tonight. Cassie obeyed, running into the house.

Barefoot, Tara walked down the gravel driveway. The gravel was sharp and cold on the soles of her feet, and the grip of her gun was slick in her left hand. The headlights washed over her, clicked out as the car engine shut off. Tara lifted her chin, still dazzled by the light.

When her vision cleared, her breath caught in her throat. Harry opened the car door. Some of the swelling had gone down in his face, but he still had a hell of a shiner and a few stitches over his eyebrow. He jammed his bandaged knuckles in his jacket pocket and smiled at her. As beat-up as he was, he looked incredibly good to Tara.

Maggie bounded down the porch steps and plowed into him, nearly knocking him off his feet. She pinned him to the car door, slurping all over him, tail wagging.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself.” Tara put the gun away, surprise writ all over her face. “How did you get here?”

“Someone named Amira called me.”

Tara glanced back at the house, was sure she saw a flicker of movement in the lace curtains of one of the upstairs windows. “Oh.”

Awkward silence stretched.

Harry rubbed his hand through the back of his hair. “Did you tell Cassie?”

“I did. She’s. . . she’s doing okay.”

“And how are you doing?”

Tara looked up at him. “Better. Did you get deposed?”

He made a face. “Yes. For days.”

“Sorry.” Tara jammed her hands in her pockets. “How did it go?”

“On the bright side, it looks like I won’t get fired. But there’s not much evidence to back up what I say. Much of it seems to have been destroyed, disappeared, or is classified.”

“I’m sorry.” Tara didn’t seem to be able to stop apologizing.

Harry reached for her hand. “There are other things I want to focus on right now.” He leaned forward and kissed her. It was a sweet kiss, full of hope.

Tara looked down at her hand in his. It felt good, right.

“I brought you something.”

“Not flowers, I hope.” She wrinkled her nose.

Harry laughed. “No flowers.” Reaching into the jacket pocket, he handed her a small box, wrapped in shiny red foil that glinted in the porch light.

“What’s this?” It felt heavy.

“Open it.”

Tara pulled apart the paper and opened the box. It was a deck of Tarot cards, beautifully illustrated, displaying a midnight-blue pattern of stars on the verso. They were edged in silver leaf, the figures drawn in a delicate hand that reminded her of Art Nouveau works, shaded in vibrant watercolors.

“I, uh, was in the bookstore, and I didn’t know if these were the right kind, or anything. . . but I knew you lost the ones you had. . .” He scrubbed his hand at the nape of his neck in that nervous gesture she’d come to love.

Tears welled in Tara’s eyes. She’d felt the loss of her mother’s deck powerfully, hadn’t even begun to think of how she’d begin again. She laid her fingers on his lips and kissed the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Chapter Twenty

L
ATER THAT
night, Tara and Harry lay awake, entwined in each other’s arms. The Pythia had given them the old guest room at the top of the house that Tara had occupied during the summers when she was a child. It hadn’t changed. The same shade of pale yellow paint covered the walls, and the bed was dressed with the same quilts she remembered. Some of Tara’s old Nancy Drew books stood at the top of one dresser, and a lump rose in Tara’s throat whenever she saw them.

“Hey.” Harry brushed her hair from her shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She rested her chin in her hands. “Just remembering. I spent summers here when I was a kid, with Sophia. I wonder what’s going to happen to the house, now that she’s gone.” There were too many memories associated with this place. She wanted to wrap them around herself like a blanket one minute, and run away from them the next.

“It seems like the house is well-occupied,” Harry said circumspectly.

Tara looked into his almond eyes. “I should probably tell you who all these crazy women are.” The time had come to tell him the truth.

“I assumed they were crazy relatives of yours.”

“Well, that’s partly true.” She took a deep breath. “These women are all like me. They call themselves oracles.”

“They can tell the future?” Harry’s eyebrow crawled up his forehead.

“In their own ways, yes. They’re a society of women that can trace their intellectual lineage back to the time of the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece. They call themselves Delphi’s Daughters.”

“This is the chick version of the Freemasons?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. The woman who called you, Amira. . .” The name still tasted foreign on her tongue. “She’s the head oracle, the Pythia. My mother was her successor. My mom died, so. . . the Pythia’s been without someone to train.”

“She didn’t train you?”

Tara shook her head. “No. I left when I was an adult.”

“Sounds like a wise move.”

“But one of the other Daughters of Delphi thought I was in competition with her for the title. She wanted it. She went rogue, and was working for Corvus and Gabriel. Adrienne. . . killed Sophia. She was with me, in the cell. . .” Tara swallowed, and Harry rubbed her good shoulder.

Harry leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Tara was reluctant to continue without some sign of positive feedback from him. “What do you think?” she asked after some minutes had stretched.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. Tara felt him slightly pull away from her.

She decided to plunge ahead. Better to get it all out into the open. “The Pythia wants Cassie to be her successor. She’s willing to hide Cassie for as long as necessary.”

Harry turned over to look at her. “Wait a minute. I can accept that you used to belong to a. . . a cult. But you’ve got no business handing Cassie over to them.”

“Cassie is an adult. She’ll make her own decisions.” Tara could scarcely believe that she was defending Delphi’s Daughters. But she couldn’t disagree with Harry’s assessment: they were a cult.

“Christ, Tara. . . you’re a psychologist. I don’t have to tell you how emotionally weakened Cassie is now. This is seriously bat-shit crazy.” His voice rose, and Tara wondered who else in the house heard him.

“Harry, we can’t keep her safe. Do you really think the military is going to just stop looking for her?” Tara whispered furiously, hoping to draw down the loudness of his voice. “It’s the lesser of the two evils.”

“Maybe. But it’s still the wrong thing to do. There may be another option we haven’t considered. Witness protection. Moving Cassie to another country. Something.”

Tara shook her head. “Delphi’s Daughters are all over the world. They will find her.”

Harry rolled over, sighed, and lapsed into silence. Tara rested her head on his shoulder, listening to the rhythm of his breath. Neither of them slept, but Tara could almost hear the thoughts rattling in his head as he considered possibilities and discarded them.

Finally, he slipped out from under her and sat on the edge of the bed. He scrubbed his hand in the back of his hair and reached for his shoes.

“Where are you going?” she whispered. She bit her lip, afraid that he heard too much need in her voice.

“I need some time to think about this. I know you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do and you’re doing the best you can. But I’ve gotta clear my head, make sure I haven’t missed anything. I’ve got to be sure that there’s no other option.”

She nodded, swallowing. “I understand.”

He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead before he gathered his shoes and left, closing the door behind him. Tara could hear the car engine turn over and the crush of gravel as he drove away.

She stared at the ceiling, blinking back tears. She refused to go to the window and watch him leave. The swords of Harry’s logic hung too heavily over her.

“D
ID YOU GO THROUGH THIS BULLSHIT WHEN YOU WERE INITIATED
?”

Cassie wrinkled her nose as Tara braided the short strands of the girl’s hair around the crown of her head. She stared down at the simple gauze dress she wore, crossed her arms self-consciously over the sheer fabric.

“Mmm-hmm. But that was back when shoulder pads were big, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Imagine how hot this looked with tarantula mall-chick bangs.”

Cassie looked down at her purple toenails peeking out from under the gauze hem. “I think I’d take the big shoulder pads. But maybe not the bangs.”

“Delphi’s Daughters have a somewhat. . . eclectic ceremonial aesthetic,” Tara muttered diplomatically as she tucked bobby pins at the nape of the girl’s neck.

“It sucks.”

“Yeah. It does suck,” Tara agreed. “But it’s a big deal to them.”

Tara glanced out the window at the driveway. The driveway and the yard were full of cars. None of them were Harry’s; not that she had expected him to come back. Delphi’s Daughters had descended upon the farmhouse all day, crisscrossing the grass in bare feet, toes curling against the chill of the ground. Delphi’s Daughters loved to party, and the drink had already been opened. In the kitchen below, she could hear the clank of pots and pans. Outside, some of Delphi’s Daughters crowded around roast pig, encased in a drum leaking smoke. One of Delphi’s Daughters advanced on the drum with a paint bucket full of what looked to be barbecue sauce. Oscar followed in her wake, stalking a string of sauce drizzling from the bucket.

Cassie sniffed her bare arm. “Yuck. What is this crap I had to bathe in?”

“It’s bay laurel. The tree is sacred to Apollo.”

Resigned, Cassie stood still as Tara tucked the last loose strands of her hair behind her ears. “What other indignities can I expect to be subjected to today?” she asked crankily. But Tara could read the anxiety under the snark.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s no bloodletting or dead goats.” Tara sat down on the edge of the bed made up with a sunshine-yellow quilt. She traced a calico butterfly on the worn fabric. “They’re not crowning you Pythia today. This is just like. . . the pledge of allegiance for oracles.”

Cassie sat beside her. “I just wish I knew whether or not this was gonna work out.”

“Tell you what. I’ll read your cards.” They had time to pass before the rite began; no one was dressed, the pig was still half-raw, and the woman weaving the floral headdresses had run out of crocuses and tulips and was raiding the herb cabinet for something else to use.

Tara pulled her purse out from under Maggie’s slumbering belly. The dog barely so much as twitched. She pulled her new deck of cards from the crinkly red wrapper. They felt stiff and blank and new. She held them to her hands, warming them with her skin and her breath.

She was nervous using them, and not just because of the pang in her heart she felt knowing they were a gift from Harry. She’d never used any other deck than her mother’s. Part of her suspected the new cards wouldn’t work, that the magick had been inherent in those worn cards, and had nothing to do with her. What if these cards made no sense, were random scraps of cardboard? What if her ability to see into the future was lost to her forever?

Would that be so bad? Her power had brought her little joy, but she was reluctant to lose it entirely. Before, she’d been secure in the knowledge that if she ever decided to peer into the future, she could. Though the cards had been tucked away in a drawer, she could touch them any time she wanted. But now. . .

What if it was all gone? Used up? Adrienne had intimated that this is what had happened to the Pythia, that the well had run dry on her power. Why couldn’t it happen to Tara?

“Okay.” Tara handed the deck to Cassie. “Shuffle the cards until they feel right to you. Take as long as you want.”

The cards bristled together and apart as Cassie worked through the deck. After a few minutes she handed them back to Tara.

“The reading I’m going to do for you is called a Tree of Life spread.”

She drew the first card and placed it on the center of the bed. “This is your significator card. It represents you in this reading.”

Tara turned it over, revealing the Star as Cassie’s significator. It showed a serene young woman dipping a pitcher of water in a spring. Relief washed over her. The tool didn’t matter. She had her mother’s legacy, and she would use it.

Tara dealt the remaining cards around the significator: north, northeast, northwest, south, east, west, southeast, and southwest. The significator was the center of the compass rose of her fate. The cards formed the shape of a tree, with the last two cards placed in a straight line at the bottom as the trunk.

Turning over the card north of the Star, Tara said, “This card represents your aims and your purpose in the situation. It deals with your higher ideals.”

The Magician. A man stood before a table containing symbols for all four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. He held a wand to the sky as he transmuted the elements into spirit, and his violet cloak furled out behind him.

“This represents your father,” Tara told her. “You’ve embodied his knowledge and ethics, as well as his power to create. His goals are now your goals. . . When you seek to hide the secret of dark matter, that was also his will.”

Cassie hugged her knees to her chest. She fingered the gilt edges of the card. “I hope so.”

Tara flipped over the card to the northeast of the Star. “This card represents the sphere of immediate influences on your life, what’s taking most of your attention.”

The Priestess stood in flowing robes, holding her scepter. She was crowned with a diadem shaped like a crescent moon. In this deck, she was holding a pomegranate. Tara associated that with the myth of Persephone in the underworld, absorbing it as a symbol of polarity, of bargains.

“This is a card I associate with the Pythia, with hidden knowledge. Since she appears close to the Magician, it suggests that their aims are similar. She can help hide you and your father’s knowledge.

“The card positioned to the northwest of the significator sheds light on the general nature of the issue facing you. This may be a facet of the situation you haven’t considered.” Tara turned over the Seven of Pentacles. A farmer leaned against a garden hoe, watching seven pentacles blossom in the fertile earth. “The Seven of Pentacles represents the fruits of one’s labor, a commitment. You will, literally, reap what you sow. You’re making a decision about your life’s work. I’d anticipate that since it appears so close to the Magician, that you may eventually wish to continue your father’s work in some form or other, after a period of respite or withdrawal.”

Tara glanced at the pentacles. “They’re stars?”

“Actually, the suit of pentacles represents earth, material life, career, and stability. They’re often depicted as coins in other decks.”

“So. . .being Pythia isn’t a career?”

“It’s a calling, which is different from a career. You’ll notice that even the Pythia has a day job.”

“It’s possible, then, that I could continue his work?”

“Anything’s possible, Cassie.”

Cassie smiled at that.

Tara pointed to the card immediately south of the Star. “This is the key to your situation, the key to making your decisions and helping you move forward.”

She turned over the Ace of Wands, a flowering branch thrust up to a brilliant sunny sky. “This is one of the luckiest cards in the deck. The suit of wands is associated with fire, passion, movement. This card shows you have a groundswell of enthusiasm beneath you, that you are in touch with the creative life force.”

To the east of the Star lay the Six of Cups. It showed a young boy handing a cup overflowing with flowers to a little girl. “This card deals with times past, and with childhood. These are things from your past influencing the present. It can signify a happy childhood, or it can indicate one is living too much in the past.”

Cassie bit her lip, and Tara moved to the next card.

“West of the Star is the near future.” She revealed the Three of Cups, depicting three women in beautiful dresses dancing, holding gold chalices aloft in the air. “The Three of Cups is a good card—celebration, joy, and unity. It’s a card of growth. Cups deal with emotions, with water. These women are sometimes interpreted to be the three Graces, or the three classical Muses. Overall, it’s a good sign.”

In the kitchen below, a pan crashed to the floor. The sound was immediately followed by raucous female laughter.

To the southeast of the Star, Tara picked up the Three of Wands. It showed a man flanked by three wands staring out at the ocean to a ship on the horizon. The weather was calm, and the waves even. “What do you see in this card?” she asked Cassie. “Just go ahead and free-associate whatever comes to mind.”

Cassie turned it to get a better look. “This guy looks like he’s waiting for the ship.”

“Is the ship approaching the shore or moving away?”

“It looks to me like it’s approaching.”

Tara nodded. “A ship is coming in, and the card marks the completion of a first stage in a plan or a successful first part of life.”

Cassie wrinkled her nose. “Does that mean I’ve got to look forward to being an adult?”