Sweet Shadows (14 page)

“Me?” She looks around, startled.

I nod. “You’re the only one here. Teach me everything Gretchen has taught you so far.”

She hesitates, probably worried about being inadequate to the task. Clearly Gretchen is a solid tutor; otherwise Grace never would have been able to defend against my attack. I’m sure she has some monster-fighting skills as well.

“Okay,” she says, like she’s bracing herself. “I can do this.”

I smile. “Of course you can.”

C
ome on!” I pound on the door so hard the glass—and the surrounding windows—rattles. My only answer is an echoing silence and dust falling from the velvet hangings that cover the windows. The times I’ve been here before—once, four years ago, and then again last week—the storefront appeared just as empty as it does now.

Yet both times the door was unlocked. Both times I walked right inside and she was waiting for me. The oracle.

Last night I assumed she had gone home. That she is still gone and the door still locked this afternoon is not acceptable.

“Aaargh!”
I pound my right hand harder on the glass, not caring if I shatter the ancient thing, not caring if I spill some magical healing blood that flows through the veins of my right arm. Just so long as I can get inside.

“Way to be discreet,” Nick says, wrapping a hand around my wrist and pulling my arm away from the door. “You want the whole neighborhood to take an interest?”

I glare at him. And then at the few pairs of curious eyes that are watching me assault the door. Whatever. One look in my eyes with a little subliminal suggestion, and they’ll forget they ever saw me. They’ll forget their own names for a while.

“I can take care of them.”

Nick steps into my line of sight, blocking my view of the interested spectators.

“That’s not necessary,” he says, his voice low and adamant.

I yank my wrist out of his grasp. “What would you know about it?”

“I’ve been around the mythological block a time or two,” he says, as if I’ve forgotten. “I know all about what happens when you mess with someone’s mind.”

His dark eyes get a faraway look, and I have a feeling he’s lost in some kind of shadowed memory. Or maybe a dream. I don’t have the time—or patience—to care right now.

“I’m just frustrated,” I admit. I turn and give the bottom of the door a solid kick. “Where could she be? Why isn’t she here?”

Nick snaps out of his memory. “I don’t know,” he says. “Oracles are meant to be tied to a location, to a mystical spot where their powers are strongest. If she has moved on—”

“Then something must have happened,” I finish. She might have been attacked or frightened away. Or, if current trends continue, taken prisoner. Anyone who helps me and my sisters seems to disappear. “We need to get inside.”

Nick nods.

I pull my long-sleeved tee down at one wrist, securing it tight against my arm. I wish I still had my leather jacket. “Shield me,” I say as I turn and lift my elbow. One swift jab to the glass and we’ll be inside before I can say
Bring it, beastie
.

“Whoa, hold on there, eager beaver.” Nick stops my momentum and tugs me away from the door. “Violence isn’t always the answer.”

He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out something small and shiny. I can’t tell exactly what it is, but he steps up to the door and grabs the handle. “You,” he says with a smirk, “shield me.”

I scowl and then turn to face the sidewalk, keeping him at my back and hiding his actions from the view of the passersby. I hear the faint scrape of metal on metal. A few seconds later, a quiet whine announces his success. I turn around just in time to see the door swing open.

He flashes me a cocky grin. “After you.”

I stomp past him, a little irritated by his arrogance—and by the fact that he has gotten us inside without destruction of property. And that he’s right. It would be much easier to explain an “unlocked” door than shattered glass to a squad of cops.

Inside, the space is as dark and dusty as ever. There is no furniture in the front room, which does its best interpretation of a deserted building.

But I know better.

Pulling out my car keys, I flick on my keychain flashlight and shine the brilliant blue beam around the room. At first, I don’t notice anything unusual. A thick layer of gray-brown dust covers the floor, the curtain rods, and the defunct chandelier hanging at the center of the room. I can see the faint outline of my bootprints from my last visit.

Clearly, this place is not on a regular cleaning schedule.

As my light sweeps over the room, Nick says, “Wait. Look.”

I shine my light where he’s pointing, at a disturbance in the dust. In the doorway to the back room there is a sweep of fainter dust, like something slid or was dragged through. The resettled layer of dust there is almost as thick as the dust covering my old bootprints. Whatever happened there must have been shortly after my last visit.

Leaving Nick in the dark, I run into the back room. My heart plummets. It’s a disaster. There are candles strewn across the floor. The small, scarred table is on its side in the corner, where it probably rolled after being tipped over. One of the wooden chairs lies in a pile of splintered wood, as if it was smashed over something.

“Whoa,” Nick exclaims as he looks in from the doorway.

“I don’t—” I shake my head and scan the room. “There isn’t any blood. She’s probably—”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” he says, stepping into the room and to my side. “Oracles generally are. She probably saw it coming and was gone before this even happened.”

“What about the drag marks?” I demand, pointing at the tracks in the dust. “It sure looks like she was here when they showed up.”

“Not necessarily.” He turns to study the marks. “I can name a dozen creatures that might leave those marks with heavy tails or dragging limbs.”

I take a deep breath and hope that he’s right, that the oracle left before the creatures showed up. True, I barely know the woman. I’ve only spoken with her on two occasions, and neither time was exactly a social visit. But she guided me toward my destiny, helped me see the major turning point in my life when I went from worthless daughter to powerful descendant. I can never repay that gift.

“We need to find her,” I say.

“Gretchen,” Nick says, sounding disgustingly hesitant. “She could be … anywhere.”

“Then we’ll search anywhere. Everywhere.” I picture the matching layers of dust in my bootprints and the drag mark in the other room. “Whatever happened to her might be because of me. Because I visited her here.”

“You don’t know that.”

I stalk over to the table and pull it upright. “I owe her my help.”

Nick doesn’t say a word, but he moves to help me pull the table into the middle of the room.

“Besides,” I say, bending down to pick up some candles, “we need her. She’s the only one left who can help us find the Gorgons.”

To his credit, Nick just nods. He must sense how important this is to me—or how important her help is to us. While I gather candles from the floor, he returns the chairs to the table.

I’m setting the candles on the shelves when he picks up the broken chair.

“Hey, Gretch,” he says, sounding odd, “look at this.”

Shoving my armful of candles onto a nearby shelf, I hurry to his side. He holds out the seat of the chair, facedown.

I take the seat and study the bottom. There in the middle, held in place by pieces of masking tape that look decades old, is a square of yellowed paper that looks older still. I peel the paper off and set the seat on the table. As I unfold the square, the aged paper crackles like it might break in pieces.

“What does it say?” Nick asks.

The paper is covered in strange symbols. Just like the sign on the door written in ancient Greek.

I hold the paper toward him. “Can you read Greek?”

“Not a word.”

“Great,” I mutter.

I’ll have to find a translator. The note might have nothing to do with my situation. It looks as if it’s been there since before I was even born. But just in case, I fold the paper and stuff it into my back pocket. Maybe there’s another clue—one in a language I can understand—somewhere in the room.

“Search the rest of this room.” I walk toward a door leading into another room. “I’m going to check back here.”

The other room turns out to be a hall that leads to a back door and a back alley. There’s a door off to the right that opens onto a tiny bathroom. A brand-new bar of soap sits next to the faucet on the pedestal sink. There is a dark red hand towel on a small bar next to it and an antique-looking mirror, cloudy and oxidized, hanging above.

Nothing out of the ordinary for a bathroom.

As I turn to head into the hall, I flip off the light and a strange glint on the mirror catches my eye. I turn back and, leaving the light off, I shine my flashlight across the surface of the mirror. In the sideways light, an otherwise invisible message appears.

FIND THE LOST.

“Seriously?” The woman does not know how to leave a comprehensible clue. As if she could say anything more vague. There are so many lost things right now: the Gorgons, the oracle, my sanity.

But the clue does give me hope that there is something more for me to find here in the bathroom.

I turn the light back on and check around the base of the sink and in and around the toilet tank. Nothing. I stand on the toilet seat and use one of my daggers to unscrew the vent cover in the ceiling. All I find there is a century’s worth of dust and grime.

I wipe my hand off on my cargos and replace the vent cover.

As I hop down, I study the room critically. Analytically. Something’s not right, doesn’t fit, and I can’t quite put my finger on it....

I scan the tiny space, my eyes drawn again and again to the bar of soap. Why?

“It’s new.” I think it through out loud. “It’s new and clean and completely out of place in this filthy room.”

It must be another clue.

There isn’t a handy pipe wrench hanging around, so I drop to my knees in front of the sink, grab the U-shaped pipe underneath with both hands, and twist hard in opposite directions. The pieces give. When the connectors are unthreaded, I pull the pipe out and examine it. Black gunk. So thick I can’t see how water gets through.

I suppress my gag reflex and hold the pipe out over the sink. Banging it against the porcelain, I try to dislodge some of the crud. The sludge is lodged in place, and as I bang the pipe as hard as I can, the sound of metal on porcelain echoes out into the hall.

“What are you doing in here?” Nick asks, appearing in the doorway.

“I don’t know,” I reply honestly. “There’s something funny about this—”

As I answer, a metallic sound clinks in the sink. Our wide eyes meet before I jump to my feet.

There, in the sink basin, solid against the sea of black muck I managed to knock out of the pipe, is a gunk-covered object—a big lump with what looks like a chain attached.

Quickly replacing the pipe, and hand tightening the connectors back in place, I grab the object by the chain and turn on the water. I hold it under the icy stream, watching as the blackness slowly swirls down the drain. When it’s clean enough to see clearly, I hold it up.

“It’s a necklace,” I say, disappointed.

I’m not sure what I expected. A sign, maybe, or a clue. Or a key. Not … jewelry.

“That’s not a necklace,” Nick says, stepping into the tiny space and lifting my arm so he can study the object at eye level. “It’s a pendant of Apollo.”

“What’s that?”

To me, it looks like a boring old necklace. A little tacky, with bright gold links, some leafy gold filigrees, and a giant golden gem in the center. Amber, maybe, or topaz. It’s not very well cut, either. It looks more like a shiny blob than a rare gemstone.

“Apollo, the god of prophecy,” Nick explains, “gives one to each of his oracles. It creates a mystical connection with the god himself, allowing them to receive information from him and allowing him to keep track of his priestesses.” Nick’s sad, dark eyes look into mine. “It is also the source of their power.”

“That means—” No, I can’t say it.

And I don’t have to. Nick finishes for me.

“The oracle is without prophecy.”

My fist tightens around the gold chain. This can’t be good. If things were so dire that the oracle had to discard her pendant, discard her powers, then she must have been truly frightened.

“You know,” Nick says, interrupting my thoughts, “there is another possibility.”

“What?”

“She might have shed her powers intentionally.”

“Why would she do that?”

He shrugs. “Maybe to prevent herself from helping you further.”

“No,” I answer without hesitation. The woman who first told me about my destiny, who helped me find Sthenno and who promised that I
could
save Ursula … that woman is not my enemy. “I don’t believe that.”