Rogue Oracle Read online

  “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.

  “THE 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 gu
n 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.

  The gunman’s wrist shattered under the torque of the impossible angle. Harry didn’t hear him howl, just heard the blood pounding in his own ears. Harry’s shoe slammed into the punk’s ribs over and over.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he could hear himself yelling.

  The mugger was on his side on the ground now, and Harry slugged him. That felt so good that he balled up his fist and struck him again. The hat fell to the sidewalk, and red spattered on the pavement. Like loose gravel, a tooth rattled away.

  “Who—”

  Harry kept hitting him.

  “—the fuck—”

  He couldn’t stop himself.

  “—do you think you are?”

  Didn’t want to.

  But Tara wanted to stop him. He felt her hands winding around his shoulder, dragging him off the punk. Harry staggered back, breathing heavily. His hands were covered in blood, and the punk was spitting out teeth into the shrubs.

  “Harry, let’s go.”

  “His gun—” Harry gasped.

  “I’ve got it. Let’s go.”

  She dragged him down the street. The humidity in the summer air finally broke, and it began to rain. Harry looked back over his shoulder. The punk stumbled off into an alley. Only Tara’s hands tangled in his jacket kept Harry from going back to beat him into the ground.

  Tara flagged down a cab, shoved him inside. Harry sat, dripping on the ancient leather interior, his bloody hands before him. But he could only see the blood when streetlights flashed past overhead. When he looked at his hands, they shook. But only when he looked at them.

  Tara overpaid the cabbie in cash and shoveled Harry out of the cab a couple of blocks from his apartment. Dimly, he knew that if the punk filed an assault report or showed up in the ER, they didn’t want to be easily found.

  Rain rinsed the blood from his hands as they walked in the darkness, without comment. Tara took his hand in hers, fiercely tight, and wouldn’t let it go, even though it was sticky.

  He tried three times to get the key in the lock before she took it from him and did it herself. He let her pull him into the apartment, into the bathroom with that harsh bluish light.

  She wiped the specks of blood off his face with a washcloth without saying a word. He’d expected her to be disgusted with him, to pack her suitcase in the face of that brutality and leave him alone. But she didn’t. She tenderly washed his hands and dressed a cut on his knuckle. He thought she’d leave when she undressed him and pushed him into the shower. He strained to hear the sound of the door closing over the hiss of the water.

  But she was still there when he got out. She took his face in her hands and said: “What the hell happened to you?”

  He shook his head wordlessly. He couldn’t explain what these last months at the Little Shop of Horrors had done, what the years of chasing killers and living in unreality had created. He felt it chewing at him, gnawing at the edge of his consciousness. Until something broke.

  He just shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  But she knew. She’d been there before. She’d let Special Projects literally chew her up and spit her out. And she didn’t ask any more questions.

  She put him to bed, spooned up behind him. He sighed, feeling her hands wrapped around his chest.

  And slept.

  TARA DREAMED OF THAT TWILIGHT WORLD AGAIN, THE WORLD of the Tarot.

  Her boots sank deep into the sand as she walked, and the lion walked before her, the sinewy muscles of his back undulating like the ripples in the desert surface. Their tracks ran together in the sand, footprints and paw prints sinking together. Tara was no longer afraid of the lion. She knew he was leading her. Once or twice, he looked back with his golden eyes, as if to make sure that she followed.

  Tara knew she was searching for something. For someone.

  There. In the sunset, she saw something shining. A figure in golden armor stumbled across the landscape, dragging a heavy golden pentacle behind him in the sand. It was lashed around the knight’s throat, strangling him. A tattered red cape streamed behind him like the banner of a defeated army.

  Tara recognized the figure. Her Knight of Pentacles. She began to run toward him.

  The knight collapsed to his knees, fell over in the sand in a magnificent glittering heap, with a sound like pots crashing to the floor.

  Tara fell to her knees beside him, struggling to remove the noose from around his neck. The sand was soft and sucking, and the knight’s armor was scorchingly hot from the sun, dented and scarred as if from a terrible battle. The heavy pentacle, large as a millstone, was dragging the knight down. He was limp when she touched him, his helmeted head lolling to the side. The armor burned her hands. She succeeded in freeing the rope around his neck, but the sand tugged at him, dragging him down into the hot belly of the desert.

  She cast about desperately. She could feel the sand trap blistering in, hear the hiss of sand as the grains fell in on themselves, like the well of an hourglass. The lion stood at the edge of the trap, growling.

  Tara wrestled with the rope holding the pentacle, succeeded in unfastening it. The pentacle disappeared below the surface of the sand. Tara awkwardly cast the rope to the lion. It landed short, disappeared under the surface of the sand. The lion roared in frustration.

  With one arm, she tried to keep the knight’s scorching head above the sand. She reeled the rope back in, flung it out again. This time, it slapped down beside the lion.

  The lion knew what to do. He grasped the rope in his powerful jaws. Tara tied the other end of the rope under the knight’s arms. He’d half-disappeared in the quicksand, limp as a rag doll dressed in tin cans. She wrapped her hands around his neck, shouted at the lion.

  The lion pulled, trotting away with his end of the rope, as effortlessly as if he were tearing a leg from a gazelle. With a sucking sound, Tara and the knight were dragged free of the sand pit, landing in a filthy heap on more solid ground.

  Exhausted, Tara lay on her back staring up at the blazing sky. She rubbed sand from her eyes. A shadow fell over her. The lion. He dipped his head and began licking the sand off her face with a tongue as rough as a cheese grater. Her cheek was burned where it had come into contact with the knight’s searing breastplate, but she didn’t want to offend the lion by pushing him away.

  “Thank you,” she told the lion. He sat back on his haunches as she sat up, and began batting at the end of the rope.

  Tara struggled to get the rope disentangled from the knight. She got it off him, then turned her attention to the golden helmet obscuring his face. The red feathers on the top of the helmet had been destroyed by sand, broken like the plumage of a dead bird.

  She pulled the helmet away, as carefully as she might pour the yolk from a cracked egg.

  Harry’s battered face was under the helmet. She pressed her hand to his hot cheek. He was unconscious, but she could feel the movement of breath across his cracked lips.

  How had this happened to him? What terrible enemy had chewed him up? Her tears sizzled on his breastplate. She bent her head to kiss him. His eyelids fluttered, and his fingers twitched, but he did not come to.

  Tara turned to the lion. “I need to take him to water.”

  The lion padded over to Harry, nudged him with his nose. He lay down beside the fallen knight. Tara thought she understood. She dragged Harry over the lion’s back. As effortlessly as if he carried a kitten, the lion stood up and began to walk east.

  Tara wound her fingers to pick up her skirts to follow.

  The lion would lead them to water. She was certain of it.

  TARA WOKE TO FEEL SOMEONE SHAKING HER.

  At first, she thought it was the lion, that she’d stumbled somewhere along the journey, and that he was nudging her awake.

  But i
t was Harry.

  “Tara, wake up.”

  Her eyes fluttered open to find that Harry had grasped her arms and was shaking the dream out of her head. A twinge of fear flickered through her, seeing the concerned expression on his face. The bedside lamp was on, and Harry’s hair was mussed from sleep.

  “I—I’m awake.” She shivered. She was suddenly cold, and when she spoke, her breath made ghosts in the air.

  “Are you all right? You were mumbling in your sleep and kicking the covers like they were trying to eat you.” Harry bundled the blankets around her. “You’re freezing.”

  “I was dreaming,” she said, allowing Harry to wrap the covers around her and turn out the light. He curled up behind her, wrapping his arms around her to keep her warm.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “I’ve been dreaming about the Tarot,” she said. She felt guilty burdening Harry with these … visions. Especially when she hadn’t fully digested them herself. She sensed that her relationship with the cards was changing, and that it wasn’t just this deck. Something deep inside her was stirring … She could feel it uncoiling like a snake. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “Promise?”

  “I swear.”

  For the moment, Tara allowed herself the luxury of the warmth of Harry’s arms, of feeling his heart beating against her back.

  Harry had enough problems of his own. Her dreams were right—he was the one in need of saving. Not her.

  This new twist in her power, these vivid dreams … This was something she’d have to work out on her own.

  SOMETIMES, GALEN DREAMED OF SLEEPING IN THE ARMS OF A woman.

  He wasn’t alone in those dreams.

  He wondered what it would have been like, to fall asleep beside a woman and wake up to find her still there. Rifling through the memories of Carl and Lena, he had the sense of the two of them whispering in the darkness of train cars, desolate landscapes rushing by outside. They lay twined together like snakes on a caduceus, finding some kind of healing and solace over those foreign miles.