Rogue Oracle Read online

  “Tell me about Zahar,” she breathed at the cards, ignoring the paper cut. “Tell me about his heart, mind, and spirit.”

  She pulled three cards and placed them, facedown, on the table. Tara’s fingers fogged the scratched stainless steel, and she turned the first one over.

  The Fool, the first card in the deck, confronted her in a riot of clear watercolors. The ancestor of the joker in the modern playing card deck, the Fool depicted a young man skipping through a green field, toward the edge of a cliff. The Fool held a bundle over his shoulder, and gazed up at birds in a blue sky. The Fool, one of the Major Arcana cards, represented archetypes at play, suggested the broad strokes of destiny.

  Tara steepled her fingers before her, brushing her lower lip. The Fool was a card of innocence and recklessness. It spoke of youth. Where Zahar was concerned, it might reflect the idea that Zahar had been carelessly going down the path of the traitor without watching where he was going. At heart, he might be more innocent than she’d thought.

  She turned over the second card, the Seven of Cups. Cups were one of the four Minor Arcana suits, and represented choices and reactions to destiny. As a suit, cups represented emotions. In her three-card spread, this signified what had gone on in Zahar’s mind. The card depicted a man gazing at a pyramid of seven cups, from which fantastical creatures and images crawled: dragons, golden fish, a jewel-encrusted sword, a snake, a castle, a griffin, and a veiled woman. This was a card of illusions. Zahar’s head was filled with lies, perhaps from his handler, perhaps from his sister’s husband. Zahar may have started out innocent, as the Fool, but he’d made a choice to be deceived.

  The last card in the spread represented spirit. Tara was most eager to see what Zahar really was, deep down. She flipped over the Three of Wands, which depicted a man staring out over the sea at a ship, surrounded by three staves. The Minor Arcana suit of wands represented fire, movement, and creation. But the Three of Wands was reversed, suggesting treachery and ulterior motives. Tara’s brow wrinkled. Zahar’s handler may have been lying to him, and Zahar might have even been deceiving himself. But, with this card, she was also certain that Zahar was lying to her.

  She blew out her breath. She cleared the three cards from the table, shuffled them back into the deck. She felt the whir of the rigid cards in her hands as she whispered to them: “What else do I need to know?”

  Tara cut the deck three times and drew the first card from the top of the reshuffled deck. Her brow creased as she turned it over.

  The Lovers. The Major Arcana card depicted a man and a woman tangled in an embrace. It was difficult for her to tell where one ended and the other began. A voyeuristic angel watched over them from a cloud.

  Stymied, Tara rested her head in her hand. She didn’t yet fully trust this new deck, and it seemed that this card had nothing whatsoever to do with Zahar’s situation. She tapped the picture with her fingers, let her mind rove around the image. She didn’t like where free-associating led her: to her own personal life. To Harry Li. Harry had given her this deck, and it seemed to be intent upon reminding her of him.

  Her fingertips crawled up her collar to the scars lacing her throat, remembering Harry’s kisses upon them. She hadn’t seen Harry for months. As an agent for the Special Projects Division of the Department of Justice, he’d been sent out several times—destinations classified—on various assignments, making a relationship difficult. Tara understood; years ago, she’d been an agent for Special Projects. Special Projects took, but rarely gave anything back.

  Her fingers hesitated on her scars. Special Projects had taken a great deal from her. Working for them, she’d fallen under the tender mercies of the Gardener, a serial killer who buried women in his greenhouses. She’d survived, barely, and called it quits. She only hoped that Harry wouldn’t be subjected to similar dangers.

  The latch on the consultation room door ratcheted back, and the door opened. Tara scrambled to shovel her cards into her purse. Looking up with a scowl, she expected to see one of the guards.

  “You’re back early—” she snapped, but her breath snagged in her throat.

  Harry Li stood in the doorway, his hand on the knob. He was almost exactly as she’d remembered him from months ago: sharply creased charcoal suit, polished shoes, black hair precisely parted. But there were circles beneath his almond-shaped eyes.

  “Hi, Tara.” He let the door clang shut behind him.

  “I … oh. I thought you were the guard.” She finished scooping the cards into her purse, but her heart hammered.

  Harry inclined his chin at the disappearing cards. “Still reading?”

  “Yeah.” She zipped her purse shut and folded her hands over it. “How did you find me?” she asked, but what she really wanted to ask was: Why here, and why now?

  “When you said you were getting back to work, I figured that you wouldn’t stray too far from your forensic psychology roots.”

  Tara’s mouth turned down. “Just contract work. Some pro bono stuff for psychiatric hospitals. That kind of thing.” She’d dipped her toe back into work, gingerly. So far, it seemed to be going well, in those measured small doses. Her work with Zahar was filling in for a government psychologist away on maternity leave.

  An awkward silence stretched.

  Harry stuffed his hands in his pockets, jingled loose change. He did that when he was nervous. “I missed you.”

  Tara glanced up at him. His face was open, tired, and she felt a jab of sympathy for him. Her fingers knotted in her purse strap. She was fighting the urge to stand up and kiss him. “I missed you, too.”

  His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and he dropped into the other chair on the opposite side of the table. Exhaustion was palpable in the broken line of his shoulders. “Special Projects is killing me.”

  Tara reached across the table for his hand. His fingers folded around hers so tightly that she couldn’t tell where hers ended and his began. .

  “I’ve been there,” she said, without irony.

  “I know.” His mouth flattened. “That’s why I came to ask for your help.”

  Tara’s hand froze. She had hoped that he’d come to see her. Not for work. “Oh.” She looked down at her fuzzy reflection in the table.

  Harry reached across the table and crooked a finger under her chin. “Hey. That’s not what I mean. I wanted to see you, and—”

  Tara withdrew her hand and pulled her chair back, drawing her professional mantle tightly about her. “Tell me about your case, Harry.”

  Harry stared down at his empty hand, closed it. “A half dozen Cold War-era intelligence operatives have disappeared. We’ve got evidence that specialized intel connected to them is being sold internationally, to the highest bidder. Most of it has to do with uranium stockpiles, leftover pieces of weapons from Soviet Russia. Tehran has been all over it.”

  “That sounds like a military issue. Or an NSA problem.” Tara crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You would think. But the disappearances are … unusual. These men and women have been vanishing without a trace. No bodies, no evidence of struggles.”

  Tara shrugged. “Maybe they defected. Maybe they’re having a beach party in Tehran.”

  “Homeland Security hasn’t caught any of them trying to move outside the country. Some of them have literally walked off surveillance footage and were never seen again. It’s like the fucking Rapture—they leave their clothes, jewelry, even cell phones behind, and vanish.” He smirked, mouth turning up flirtatiously. “Of course, there’s also the fact that there are no beaches in Tehran.”

  Tara lifted an eyebrow, intrigued at both the case and the flirtation. “What’s their connection to each other?”

  “All of them were associated with something called Project Rogue Angel in the 1990s. It involved cataloguing and tracking the disposal of nukes in the former USSR.”

  “That sounds like a thankless job.”

  “Wasn’t as successful as one might hope.” Harry rubbed the bridge
of his nose. “I think somebody got to these people. I can’t prove it. But I need help in figuring out who’s behind the disappearances. You’re the best damn profiler Special Projects has ever seen, and we need you.”

  Tara considered him. Harry wasn’t the type of man who would readily ask for help, and he’d done so in a clumsy way. She was reluctant to become involved with Special Projects again, to be their tool. But she owed him.

  He looked at her, eyes red with too little sleep. “I need you.”

  She reached forward and took his hand. She couldn’t say no to him.

  Chapter Two

  GETTING AWAY from work would be easy. With the piecemeal jobs she’d been working as a forensic psychologist, Tara was certain that no one would notice if she disappeared for a couple of weeks.

  Getting away from her secret life as an oracle would be difficult.

  Tara dragged her battered suitcase down from the top shelf of her bedroom closet. She chucked it on the butterfly-print bedspread that smelled like lavender. An aggrieved yowl emanated from the bed, and a gray tabby cat rocketed from under the quilt.

  “Sorry, Oscar.” Tara winced. The fat cat could flatten his substantial mass into disappearing shapes that would defy Stephen Hawking to describe on the quantum level.

  Oscar looked up at her and twitched his whiskers. He yawned dramatically, then stalked into the open closet to root among Tara’s shoes. Tara reached to the top shelf for a battered pistol box, containing a Ruger SP-101 revolver. Tara opened the barrel, forgetting whether or not she’d cleaned it after the last use. Fortunately, the stainless steel was shiny and smooth, smelling of mineral oil. She placed the pistol and a box of bullets beside the suitcase.

  The suitcase sported an address sticker from years ago, and Tara ripped it off. She’d fill out a new one—reflecting her current address at a Tennessee farmhouse—at the airport. Her tenancy had been intended to be temporary, but it had already stretched into several months. It wasn’t home, but it was where she needed to be.

  It was where Delphi’s Daughters were gathered.

  Through the open window, feminine laughter echoed over the buzz of the cicadas and the bass notes of the bullfrogs. A bonfire blossomed in the backyard under a huge yellow-cheese moon, and the shadowy silhouettes of women passed before the flames. The bell-like sounds of zills rang into the darkness. Tara’s nose twitched. She smelled marshmallows and incense. A woman cast sparkling dust into the fire, while the others oohed and ahhed. Another, a little tipsy, got up to do the funky chicken dance to rowdy cries of “Opa!” and “Shake it!” The dancer kicked high, and a flip-flop soared into the bonfire.

  Delphi’s Daughters were just that: a contradiction. They’d existed since the beginning of recorded time, just behind the scenes, foretelling and nudging the courses of world events to suit their liking. By day, they were soccer moms, actuaries, and soldiers. By night, they told the future according to unique gifts. Some dealt in dreams, others in the reflection of the moon on water. Some could tell the future by listening to the calls of birds or swishing the albumen of eggs around at breakfast time. Most of them found some time during the year to gather at the farmhouse, under the guise of conferences or visiting distant relatives.

  Tara was the only living cartomancer in the group—not that she was officially a member. She had mixed feelings about their work and their message, but she’d forged an uneasy peace with them to watch over the youngest of Delphi’s Daughters, Cassie Magnusson. She was Cassie’s self-appointed guardian and protector, and Delphi’s Daughters seemed to respect that.

  Most of the time.

  “Hey, do you know where the bottle openers are?”

  Tara’s door swung open without a knock. Cassie Magnusson, a young woman in her early twenties, stood holding a bag of marshmallows. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, barefoot, with grass clinging to her pale legs. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, and on her head perched a silvery headband with alien antennae topped with wobbly stars. Glitter from the stars had fallen on her cheeks, giving her an ethereal, if somewhat sticky, glow. A chubby Labrador retriever waddled behind her, claws clacking on the hardwood floors.

  Cassie paused, taking in the suitcase and gun. “Where are you going?” she accused.

  “Nice headgear,” Tara said. “Is that part of your training—receiving signals from space?” Against Tara’s better judgment, Cassie was being groomed to be the next Pythia, the most powerful of oracles and leader of Delphi’s Daughters.

  “No. The Pythia gave ’em to me as a prize for passing my last astrology test. And don’t change the subject.” Cassie parked herself on the bed beside the suitcase, and the Labrador lay down at her feet with a sigh. “Here, Maggie.” She dropped a marshmallow on the floor, and the dog gobbled it. Oscar waddled out of the closet to sniff the bag of marshmallows. Cassie dropped another on the floor. He batted it under the bed and disappeared. “Where are you going?”

  Tara sighed and sat next to Cassie on the bed. “Harry came to see me today.”

  Cassie’s face brightened. “How’s Harry?”

  “Busy with work.”

  “That’s what you keep saying.”

  “Yeah, well … Harry’s line of work is like that. It’s nothing personal.”

  “That’s what you keep saying.”

  Tara wrinkled her nose at Cassie. “Harry needs my help on a case.”

  “Sure. He wants your brain.” Cassie arched her eyebrow, and her antennae wobbled.

  Tara reached out to pat Cassie’s shoulder. “I won’t be gone long.”

  Cassie looked sidelong at her, and the girl’s fingers fidgeted in the plastic bag of marshmallows. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  As she hugged the girl, anxiety twitched through Tara. She knew Cassie picked up on her unease with leaving her alone with Delphi’s Daughters. She realized Cassie had overheard the furiously whispered arguments Tara had with the Pythia, late at night, about her training. Tara wanted Cassie to lead as normal a life as possible.

  But there was no normalcy in a house full of oracles.

  Tara put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “You have the cell phone I gave you, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s under the floorboards in my room.”

  “You call me whenever you need me, or if you just want to talk, okay?”

  “Okay.” Cassie’s antennae drooped.

  “You’re gonna be okay.” Tara squeezed her shoulders, and the antennae nodded in agreement. Oscar peered out from under the bed skirt. “You’ll have Oscar to watch over you. And Maggie.” The dog’s tail slapped on the floor, and she whined for another treat.

  “Yeah,” Cassie said, clutching the bag of marshmallows close to her chest. “I guess I should go find that bottle opener.”

  Tara smiled bravely as the girl left the room, Maggie following behind. Her smile faltered when they left, and she stared down at Oscar.

  “Keep an eye on her, will you?”

  Oscar blinked his golden eyes and rolled onto his back for Tara to scratch his belly. Tara took that to be assent. She might be uneasy around the other oracles, but she trusted Oscar and Maggie entirely.

  Tara finished packing and zipped up the suitcase. Its wheels made squeaking sounds down the hallway, following her down the steps with a series of ka-thunks. She rolled it into the dark kitchen, keys in hand. Dried herbs hung in fragrant bunches, strung by pieces of string from a lace-curtained window through which moonlight streamed. The moonlight picked out the dishes soaking in the sink and the cheese trays on the scarred butcher-block countertop. The only other illumination in the room was the dim blue light from the pilot light in the stove … and a red light bobbing in the corner.

  Tara’s nostrils flared, smelling a familiar cigarette. “Hello, Pythia.”

  A dragon of smoke blew across the window, and the Pythia stepped into the weak light. The short woman jingled softly when she walked, her swaying hips strung with a scarf covered in coin
s; she’d been dancing. She paused before the sink to tap her cigarette into an ashtray. A curtain of dark hair fell over her face, strands of silver glinting in the moonlight.

  “Going somewhere?” Her musical, softly accented voice wrapped around a steely inflection. She gestured with her chin to Tara’s suitcase.

  “Harry’s asked me to help him with a case.”

  “Harry’s good for you. You should go.”

  Tara gritted her teeth. “I don’t need your permission to leave the house, Amira.” She rarely used the Pythia’s real name; it was a sign of too much familiarity or disrespect. “I’m not one of Delphi’s Daughters.”

  The Pythia shrugged. “You can say what you want, but your actions prove otherwise.”

  “Leaving proves your influence over me? I don’t follow.”

  “No. Coming back just might, though.” The Pythia’s white teeth shone in the darkness when she smiled.

  “You know that I’d come back for Cassie. That’s all.”

  “Yes. I know that you wouldn’t leave her for long. Heaven only knows what we would teach her, in your absence. But you serve us, and our patterns, whether you want to, or not.”

  Tara bristled. She’d been estranged from Delphi’s Daughters for years, at her own insistence. She chafed under the idea of surrendering herself to their control, of giving in to her roots, rather than forging her own way in the world. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s tool. Not the government’s, and not Delphi’s Daughters’. “More of the idea that free will is an illusion?”

  “Free will isn’t an illusion. Free will can nudge destiny off its tracks.”

  “I know that,” Tara said, in irritation. The Pythia was old enough to be her mother, and somehow always managed to make Tara sound like a petulant child. “And I’m exercising my free will to help Harry.”

  The Pythia stepped over to the stove, hip scarf chiming in time with her steps. She switched on the gas stove burner with a click and a whoosh, cranked the blue flame up high. The light cast her shadow long across the kitchen floor, and the Pythia squinted at the fire.