Rogue Oracle Read online

  She thought of the dream-trances she’d experienced while sleeping. Was there a way she might be able to activate that intuition while awake? Tara bit her lip, wished there was someone she could ask about technique. Her mother was dead, and the Pythia was not to be trusted. As always, she was flying by the seat of her pants, hoping not to crash to the ground.

  But it was worth trying. Tara crossed her legs before her and placed her hands, palms up, on her knees. She gazed at the Star, feeling the warm summer wind whistling through the grass around her. Slowly, she felt the adrenaline begin to settle out of her veins, and some of the tension in her shoulders slackened. Her eyes began to drift shut, and she focused all her will on finding the Star.

  WHEN TARA OPENED HER EYES, SHE WAS STARING UP AT THE jewel box of stars in the sky.

  She’d expected to find herself in the desert, as she had in her previous visions. But there was no soft sand underfoot, no warm glow of sunshine in the sand.

  This was somewhere else entirely.

  The black forest stretched around her as far as she could see. The sounds of animals scraping and chattering to each other mingled with the whisper of leaves on trees. Locusts buzzed around her, suggesting that the night was still relatively young. Though it was warm enough for humidity to cling to her skin, the scene chilled her. She knew this place. It was the forest the Pythia had left her in when she was a girl, expecting her to navigate her way out.

  Tara’s hands balled into fists. She was no longer a child; she was an adult. She was not abandoned, as long as she had herself to rely upon. And she would find Cassie and get out of the forest.

  Something bumped her leg. Tara looked down to see her companion, the lion, rubbing against her side. He yawned; lions weren’t nocturnal creatures. In the darkness, his half-lidded eyes shone with reflected light, like coals. His tail swished sluggishly among the leaves on the forest floor.

  Tara found the North Star overhead, spied the crescent moon peeping among the trees. She began to orient herself. Remembering the direction the cards had told her to go, she began to walk east, dipping a bit south. The lion padded after her in the woods. Once or twice, he paused to chase something in a sudden burst of energy, but he always returned to her side, flowing along at the hem of her skirts.

  She walked for what seemed like hours, until the forest opened into a field. The field was pierced by the pond she’d seen in reality, grown tall with grasses and thundering with the sound of bullfrogs. At the edge of the pond stood the pale form of a young woman, kneeling to drink from the water.

  “Cassie!” Tara shouted.

  The girl turned, and Tara ran toward her. Grasses sliced into her skirts and cut her legs, but she ignored them, rushing to the girl’s side.

  Cassie stood in the shallow water by the cattails, looking at Tara with confusion on her face. Tara grasped her bare shoulders. “Cassie. Where are you?”

  The girl looked at Tara with a sense of puzzlement. “I’m not sure. I’m running … running …” She looked up at the bright stars overhead. Tears shimmered on her face. “I killed a man.”

  “Listen, Cassie.” Tara shook her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right. Just tell me where you are.”

  Cassie shook her head, slinging dark hair around her face. “I don’t want them to find me.”

  “No one’s going to find you. You’ll be safe with me.”

  Cassie’s eyes were black as pools. “Okay. Okay.”

  Tara patted her cheek. “Tell me where you are.”

  Cassie bent to the surface of the water. She scooped up the water with her milk-pale hands, poured it into Tara’s. Tara struggled to hold the water in her hands, but it slid between her fingers, leaving behind a stone that glittered like a star.

  Tara stared at the diamond in her palm, reflecting moonlight into the darkness. Cassie folded her fingers around it, and Tara could feel its cold heat sparkling throughout her palm. The light glowed red through her skin, as if she’d closed her hands over a flashlight. It burned through her fingers in a white haze that obliterated the darkness of the forest and the pond.

  TARA OPENED HER EYES TO STARE INTO A LIGHT THAT shouldn’t be there.

  She blinked.

  She was staring into the eyes of an opossum. He sat on his hindquarters less than a foot from Tara, looking up his long, pale nose at her. His whiskers twitched, and he came back down on all fours. Sniffing the ground, the nocturnal creature shambled away into the grass, his long pink tail dragging behind him.

  Tara climbed to her feet, but the opossum had disappeared. She was shivering in the warm summer night. She’d been here long enough for dew to gather on her skin, and her shudders shook the drops off, rattling them into the grass.

  Frustrated, she turned to go back to the car. The overhead dome light seemed very bright, and she slammed the door quickly to douse it. She cranked the ignition over and pulled the car back on the road. Teeth chattering, she dialed up the heat as far as it would go.

  Her headlights bounced down the country road, and Tara wound her way back to the highway. She kept bearing aimlessly east and slightly south, mulling over her vision of Cassie as the Star. She sensed that Cassie would be willing to come to her, but she wasn’t able to puzzle out the meaning of her vision. All she could do was follow the direction the cards had given her, and hope.

  The Star was a card of hope, of a bright future. She hoped to hell that the Pythia hadn’t destroyed that in Cassie’s character with that stupid display of violence. It was a card of light in the darkness, of promise. When the ancient oracles looked overhead at the sky, they saw evidence of a higher design of hope. In their eyes, the stars controlled the paths of all the earthly creatures they surveyed.

  More than once, Tara’s fingers brushed her cell phone. She debated calling Harry to put out an APB on the girl. But she wasn’t sure where that would lead. Cassie was frightened, convinced people were after her. If that prediction were confirmed, she’d be even more difficult to locate. Cassie wasn’t stupid; she’d been educated to be a physicist, and she’d trained under the Pythia’s Daughters. She could certainly find some way to elude the police.

  Tara’s foot dragged on the brake when she saw an upcoming road sign, and her heart leapt into her mouth. It said DIAMOND—55 miles, with an arrow pointing south. Tara clicked on her turn signal to follow the arrow.

  Diamond was a little town that had built itself just off the freeway. It had a gas station that was closed at this hour, a post office, and a cluster of houses staggering up a hilltop. Tara’s eyes scanned the tiny roads winding up the hillsides. Where to look from here?

  She idled at a stoplight, considering, when movement caught her eye. An opossum lumbered across the street in front of her, disappearing down a street to her right. Tara followed it to a Dumpster behind a closed restaurant. A car was parked beside the Dumpster under a streetlight.

  Tara’s intuition prickled. She parked her car curbside, slowly approached the other car. Overhead, a light buzzed and cast blue light through the partially open window. Breath had fogged the glass, but Tara could see the form of a woman curled up in the driver’s seat with a backpack in her arms and a dog’s head on her lap. With worried brown eyes, the dog looked up when Tara approached.

  “Cassie,” Tara said softly, not wanting to frighten her.

  The girl jumped, reached for the ignition, but caught sight of Tara. Tears shimmered in Cassie’s eyes, and she opened the car door. Launching herself into Tara’s arms, she burst into heavy sobs. Tara stroked her hair while Maggie circled around them and Oscar poked his head out of the backpack on the front seat.

  Cassie’s sobs snagged into incoherent hiccups.

  “It’s okay,” Tara said. And she meant it. She’d figure out some way to make things okay. Somehow.

  Chapter Eleven

  HARRY HAD worn a hole in the carpet pacing when Tara called him in the early hours of the morning.

  “I’ve got her,” she said.

  “I
s she okay?”

  There was a significant pause on Tara’s end of the line that told Harry what he needed to know. “She’s not hurt.”

  “Bring her here,” Harry told her.

  “But it won’t take the Pythia long to find out where you live.”

  “We’ll figure something out. Remember, we’ve got Marshals crawling all over us on this case. She’ll be safe here for now, until I can find a better place.”

  “Make sure it’s someplace pet friendly. We’ve got Maggie and Oscar, too.”

  Harry didn’t ask Tara how she’d found Cassie, or what had happened. He knew Tara was busily working her mysterious magick, making intuitive leaps he couldn’t follow. Watching Tara work was like watching her walk across an ice-covered lake. He knew he couldn’t follow because the ice would crack under his weight, but she seemed to sense some invisible force where the fissures and solid places were. He felt lost in the face of it, like an observer, hoping she didn’t fall through.

  When sunlight seeped through his blinds, a knock sounded at the door. Tara stood in the doorway, her face blank and unreadable. Her arm was around Cassie, and Maggie leaned against the girl’s other side. Cassie had the glazed look Harry had seen far too often on the faces of soldiers. In World War II, they called it shell shock. In modern times, the sanitized term was PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder. It was still ugly to see in person.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Harry said.

  She blinked at him. “Uh. Hi, Harry.”

  Maggie wiggled through the door and threw herself down on the carpet. She began to roll on it in an attitude of doggie relief, as if she’d reached the grass of a summer sanctuary. Cassie trudged through the door, and Tara followed. Harry locked the door behind them. He noticed Tara was carrying a squirming backpack. She set it down on the floor, unzipped it.

  Oscar wormed his way out and shot everyone in the vicinity a dirty look. He twisted his head around his back to lick down his mussed-up fur, chagrined at being handled like a sack of potatoes.

  Cassie sat rigidly on the couch, her hands around her knees, fingers laced so tightly together that her knuckles were white.

  “Are you girls hungry?” Harry opened the refrigerator, trying to inject a bit of normalcy into the atmosphere. “There’s coffee … and ketchup.”

  Cassie shook her head.

  Tara smoothed the hair out of the girl’s eyes, as if she was a small child. “How about I draw you a bath? Then, you and Oscar and Maggie can take a nap.”

  Cassie looked up in alarm. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  Tara shook her head. “No. I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.”

  “Okay.” Tara led Cassie by the hand down the hallway to the bathroom. Harry heard the running of water and the girls’ low voices.

  Oscar stretched up to claw at the edge of Harry’s shirt. Harry patted the cat’s head, and Oscar made a disgruntled mrrrrr. Harry rooted around for the broiler pan in the bottom of the oven. He set it beside the refrigerator, in the far corner of the kitchen.

  Oscar hopped down off the table to stare at it, meowed loudly.

  “I don’t have any cat litter.”

  Oscar gave him a dirty look that indicated that he would pee on the carpet, if provoked further. “Meeeeoooow.” The cat sounded positively plaintive. He’d been riding around in a car inside a backpack for twelve hours. He just wanted to take a piss. Harry could relate.

  Obediently, Harry dug through his cupboards. He found a box of stale oatmeal, dumped it into the pan with a sound like rain. Oscar sniffed at the oatmeal.

  “Dude, that’s all I’ve got.”

  Oscar wrinkled his nose, huffed. He delicately stepped into the makeshift litter box, shoved the oats around. With his back to Harry, ignoring him, the long-suffering cat began to do his business.

  Tara returned to the kitchen, watched Oscar scratch around in the maple sugar flavored oats. “Thanks, Harry. For everything.”

  Harry caught her hand. “What the hell happened?”

  Tara pulled up a kitchen chair. “The Pythia happened.”

  “I thought you said the Pythia wanted Cassie to be her successor,” Harry said in a low voice. “Why would she let her get hurt?” He didn’t understand the vagaries of Delphi’s Daughters, and the more he learned about them, the less he trusted them.

  Tara rested her chin in her hand. “The Pythia has odd notions of what constitutes appropriate training for an oracle. A lot of it goes back to the time of Delphi. Then, young women were brainwashed with noxious fumes and fasting to inspire visions and loyalty. Training to be an oracle has always been rough, and I don’t agree with the Pythia’s methods.” Her eyes were unfocused, seeming to see a distant past.

  Oscar hopped up on the kitchen table to study Harry’s fascinating cat clock. He watched the tail and eyes swish, watched the seconds tick by, entranced.

  “What happened?” Harry insisted on knowing.

  “The Pythia has been training Cassie in combat. That’s not unusual. But she wanted to see if Cassie would be strong enough to kill.” Tara’s voice quavered. “That bitch sent a man to attack her at the farmhouse, and she got her wish. Cassie killed him.”

  Harry rocked back on his heels. Without a word, he reached for his keys on the kitchen counter and grabbed his holster.

  “Harry.” Tara grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t.”

  Rage boiled in him, an unreasoning rage that he hadn’t felt in days, not since he’d beaten the would-be mugger nearly to death. “I’m arresting that bitch.”

  She shook her head. “It’s no use. The body’s gone. The Pythia will have covered it all up.” Her grip on his wrist was like a vise, and her blue eyes were wide. “Please, Harry, I’m asking you. Don’t go there.”

  “Why are you protecting her?” He blew out his breath in frustration. He didn’t understand this infuriating bond she had with this cult, these power-mad women who were clearly out of their minds.

  “I’m not protecting her. I’m trying to protect you.”

  Harry’s cell phone chirped, and he grimaced. Glancing at the number, he could see that it was Special Projects. “Li,” he snapped at it.

  “This is Aquila. You had DOT and Homeland Security looking for a needle in a radioactive haystack.”

  “Did they find something?”

  “To put it mildly. We’ve got one terminal at Dulles shut down. It’s all smeared in cesium and strontium particulates. You’d better get down there and explain what the hell they’re looking for.”

  “Be right there.”

  Harry snapped his phone shut, looked at Tara. “Will you two still be here when I get back?”

  Tara nodded. “As long as you’re coming back.” Tension was writ all over her face.

  Harry blew out his breath. “Okay. I’m coming back.”

  This time, he meant it.

  DULLES WAS A PERFECT CLUSTERFUCK. EVEN MORE SO THAN usual.

  Harry elbowed his way through a pissed-off crowd by flashing his creds. Security escorted him through the crowded lines, past the security screening area, where the airport administrator met him. The administrator was a nervous, wiry man dressed in a suit and possessing no sense of humor.

  “This shit is smeared all over everything like snot when my kid has a cold.” The airport administrator stormed down the crowded corridors with Harry in tow, back to the international arrivals terminal. “International Arrivals is completely shut down. I’ve got planes stacking up, with nowhere to park them. We’re setting up a temporary security area at one of the other terminals, but”—the administrator ducked under some yellow caution tape—“I want to know what the fuck is going on so that I can come up with something to tell the media to get them off my ass.”

  Past the checkpoint, Harry could see several white-suited men staring into Geiger counter screens like crystal balls. They had DHS—Department of Homeland Security—stamped on the backs of their suits.

  The administrator whistled for one of the white
suits to come back to them. The suit trundled back to them, and the wearer took the hood down. “It’s not bad, really. It’s just in a few places.”

  But the administrator was chewing his lip. “How bad is it? Are we all going to get cancer? Is this a dirty bomb? What’s it from?”

  “Nobody’s gonna get cancer. We’re finding a few smears at thirty roentgens per hour. That’s about five times the amount of background radiation … about what you’d pick up in an X-ray. It’s basically harmless. Looks like contact residue. And we don’t know what it’s from.”

  Harry shook his head. “We think it’s from an irradiated refugee from Chernobyl. Where did you find it?” Harry asked.

  The DHS tech handed him a clipboard. “We found it in on the ticket counter, a chair, the men’s room. And a whole bunch of other places. This stuff is like talc … it smears when one person touches it, then another.”

  Harry frowned. That made it seem unlikely that prints would be found. “Can you tell how long it’s been there?”

  “No.”

  Harry ran back the timeline of the disappearances in his mind. He might not be able to tell for sure when his subject got here, but he knew that he had been here. “Can you pull all the passports that went through this terminal from Ukraine and Belarus for the last two months?”

  “Yeah.” The administrator rubbed his temples. “Do I need to shut down this airport?”

  Harry hesitated. “I can’t tell you what to do. But I can tell you that we think this guy’s dangerous. We don’t know what else he’s left behind. And if you don’t shut down, and something happens, or the press finds out …”

  The administrator shook his head. “Fuck me.”

  The DHS tech nodded. “Yeah. You’re probably fucked.”

  HARRY WAS FUCKED. HE KNEW IT WHEN AQUILA WAS waiting for him when he got off the elevator at Special Projects.

  “Agent Li,” he said frostily. “About that incident at Dulles …”