Читать книгу Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes To Ashes - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 10

Max couldn’t believe her nerve.

There Bella sat at the kitchen island, her head bent over a book, occasionally turning to take a bite from the sandwich she held in her left hand. She perched on a stool, her right foot on a higher rung than her left, so she could rest her elbow on her knee and still turn pages.

How could she look so relaxed after all that had happened? When people he’d known for years—he assumed she’d known them, too—were dead. Tortured to death by the Oracle, who now roamed around unchecked. Oh yeah. Perfect time for a sandwich.

If I kick that stool right now, there’s no way she’d be able to get her balance before her ass hit the floor. The thought brought a bitter smile to his face.

“Making yourself at home, huh?” He strolled to the refrigerator and opened it, noting with annoyance she’d used all but the dregs of the mayonnaise and replaced the jar, anyway.

He pulled out a bag of blood and popped it in the microwave. “So, get a good day’s sleep?”

She didn’t look up. “You know I do not sleep more than a few hours at a time.”

“Oh, right.” He snapped his fingers. “It’s a dog thing. So, do you have to circle around three times before you can lie down?”

This time, she gave him a warning glance before word-lessly returning her attention to her book.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt story time.” He set the timer and then turned, leaning back against the counter. “Here’s a funny story. Tell me if you’ve heard it. A building full of vampires gets roasted from the inside out and everyone dies.”

She didn’t look up. “You think I do not care about what has happened to the Movement?”

“You’re right. That is what I think. See, you haven’t shown much love for vampires. None of your kind have. And maybe what I thought was you being brave and stoic was just you…not giving a shit.”

The microwave dinged and he pulled out the pleasantly warm bag. Eschewing a cup, he bit through the plastic and purposely let some blood dribble down his chin, for good measure.

Her nose twitched at the coppery smell. With a noise of disgust, she tossed her sandwich down and slammed her book shut. “You are a pig.”

“And you’re a bitch. Yet here we are.” He drained the bag, though he really hadn’t been hungry to begin with, and tossed it aside. It landed with a wet smack on the floor beside the trash can.

Bella looked as though she might throw up. Nothing would have pleased Max more.

But it wasn’t in the cards. Instead, she stood, tucked her book beneath her arm and headed toward the door. Her hand was on the smooth, painted wood when she whirled to face him. Her stony, cool facade had cracked, her high cheekbones coloring deep red.

“I am sorry you cannot accept my rejection of you for what it is. That is, that you cannot see beyond your pride, to the many reasons we could not be together.” Her voice quivered slightly on the last word. “And I am sorry it taints your view of the situation we are in.”

He chose to ignore that final part. “Oh, please. If you think I’m nursing a broken heart, don’t waste your time feeling sorry for me. It’s Carrie I’m smarting for.”

Bella snorted derisively, than sobered. “What are you talking about?”

“I think you know.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I knew you were going to make a move on him. I had a sick feeling about it when I left you at his place. How could you do it? When you saw how torn up Carrie was, how could you do that?”

“How could I do what?” Bella raised her hands in the classic pose of innocence. “I think you have finally lost your mind, vampire.”

“Stop trying to play dumb! You know exactly what you did. You’ve been fucking Nathan!” Max rounded the island and stepped so near to her he had to ball his hands into fists to keep from touching her. This kind of closeness was dangerous. He could lose his temper and grab her, or lose his willpower and—

No. You went down that road before and it sucked.

“You think I am sleeping with your vampire friend?” She had the nerve to laugh at him, as though the idea was ridiculous. Placing her palms flat on Max’s chest, she gave him a shove. “You dare to accuse me of this when last night I could smell her all over you?”

Ouch. But what he had been doing didn’t matter, Max reminded himself. It was Bella’s immorality they were talking about. “Listen, what Carrie and I do is our business. But you knew how messed up she was when she left Nathan, and you still moved in for the kill. For your information, she was really hurt when she found out about the two of you. She could have slept with me to get her mind off it. But she didn’t.”

“When she found out about us?” Bella snorted again. Max wanted to hit her. “How, exactly, did she find out?”

The uneasy feeling that maybe something was amiss, maybe some critical piece of information had slipped through their keen investigative fingers, crept into the back of his mind. “I don’t know. When she called, I guess.”

Bella only nodded.

In the eerie quiet of the kitchen, even the buzzing of the fluorescent lights could be heard, layered with the drumming of water dribbling into the sink and the ticking of the sleek steel clock on the wall. From the rest of the house, not a sound.

So, where are Nathan and Carrie, genius?

Almost the exact moment he thought it, a smug smile began to grow on Bella’s face. “I am sorry the only outlet for her troubled mind was in clumsy foreplay with an in-adequate partner.”

He threw the rest of her sandwich at the swinging door as she passed through it.

When I opened my eyes to find myself in an empty bed, my fuzzy brain snapped to alert. Okay, it snapped to panic.

You made it all up. It was a dream.

There was no way the day before hadn’t been real. No way I hadn’t spent the last few hours sleeping comfortably in Nathan’s arms.

I’d tossed back the blankets and was about to swing my legs over the side of the bed to begin a frantic search for him when he stepped out of the bathroom, a toothbrush in his mouth and a towel wrapped around his waist. He paused in his brushing long enough to give me a look implying I had lost my mind, then retreated to the bathroom again.

Flopping back on the pillows, I smiled. The curtains were open, the sky had faded to twilight and Nathan had turned on the bedside lamp. The soft, golden light shone through my eyelids when I closed them, and it felt almost like turning my face to the sun. I wondered if I’d ever woken up so happy.

The faucet turned on, as briefly as possible because, as I’d heard many, many times, water conservation is everyone’s responsibility. I slipped out of bed and padded across the thick carpet to the bathroom. Nathan leaned over the sink, spitting toothpaste into the basin.

It’s demented that you find that sexy, I told myself. I yawned and leaned against the door frame. “You know why vampires have to brush their teeth?”

He raised an eyebrow as he wiped his mouth with a hand towel.

“So they don’t get bat breath.”

Drying his hands, he considered me silently for moment. “I’m rescinding my offer of letting you come home.”

I slapped his shoulder. “Listen, don’t be too hard on Max today, okay?”

Nathan looked as crestfallen as a child who’s had his favorite toy taken away. “Why not?”

“Because I have a feeling he’s going to feel pretty foolish about all this. You know, when he finds out.” I shuffled my feet on the carpet.

“Why, because you feel foolish?” He shook his head. “Don’t you have any faith in me? Any trust?”

I raised an eyebrow in answer.

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. I won’t give him a hard time. You women are so picky about these things. And by you women, I mean you and Max.”

“Get out,” I ordered. “I’m going to take a nice, long, water-wasting shower.”

With a grin, he asked, “Will you require assistance with that?”

“You’ve already taken a shower,” I pointed out, gesturing to the towel.

“I’m dirty enough to take two.” He winked.

We’d found that although the blood tie didn’t come with built-in sexual attraction, it did ramp up whatever attraction already existed. Now that we were on familiar footing again, it didn’t surprise me that he was suddenly in a randy mood.

“I don’t doubt that. But we’ve got bigger things to worry about than your libido.” I pushed him toward the door.

He went, grudgingly. “Fine. But you are in such trouble in the morning.”

I don’t doubt that, I thought, grim reality intruding unpleasantly. I’m sure by morning, we’ll all have jumped feetfirst into trouble.

We found Bella upstairs, stretched out on the leather sofa in the foyer with a book in her hands. Though I now knew the truth of what had transpired between her and Nathan, her treatment of Max still kept me from warming to her.

She sat up, her eyes moving from me to Nathan and back again. “Max is in the kitchen.”

Nathan seemed to sense the reason for her trepidation, and, because it’s the kind of person he is, he snarled, “I’m going to kill him,” before tearing toward the kitchen.

Bella didn’t look nearly as alarmed as Nathan had probably expected. She lifted one elegant eyebrow and glanced back to her book. “Is he really going to kill him?”

“No. I banned him from teasing Max. I never thought to forbid him from teasing you.” I slid my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “Listen, I’m sorry.”

She looked up, mild surprise registering on her face. “For what?”

I thought for sure she knew, the way she’d been hesitant to tell Nathan where to find Max. I jerked my thumb toward the kitchen door. “Be-because I almost slept with Max.”

“Ah, I understand. You would be more sorry if you had completed the act.” Her attention once again drifted to her book.

“That’s not what I meant. He’s kind of your…territory.” I winced at the dog terminology. “That didn’t come out quite right.”

“Max does not belong to me, and I do not wish him to.” Bella closed the volume with a frustrated sigh. “I do not wish to continue this conversation, either. There is much we need to do. Tell the men we will all meet in the dining room in fifteen minutes.”

She left without another word.

I knew Max was in full-blown denial about his feelings for Bella, but I hadn’t realized the reverse was true. According to Max, she’d ended their fling, but in typical Max fashion, he was sure she still wanted a relationship with him, while he, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about her.

Maybe he was right. A definite angry vibe had radiated from Bella, the same type I’d projected to her when I thought she was competition for Nathan.

In the kitchen, Nathan leaned against the counter, sipping blood from a mug, while Max wielded a mop angrily across a vicious blood spill on the floor beside the trash can.

“Did we kill someone this morning?” I crossed my arms and eyed the mop, which was soaked pink and seemed to be doing nothing but spreading watery blood over the bright white tile.

Nathan made a snort of disagreement into his cup. He swallowed with a grimace and licked a bit of blood from his upper lip. “Max threw a tantrum.”

“You’re a guest in this house,” Max snapped, jabbing the mop at Nathan’s feet. “Remember that.”

“And I appreciate your hospitality. Speaking of which, when do I get to nearly have sex with you?” Nathan took another sip from his cup, ignoring Max’s murderous scowl.

I smiled, covering it with my hand when Max’s glare fixed on me. “Well, Bella wants us to meet her in the dining room.”

“I guess it was too much of an inconvenience to stop in and tell us herself?” Max tossed the mop aside in disgust. “Maybe I had plans or an agenda or something. She can’t just move in and start ordering us around!”

“I didn’t think you’d mind so much if she moved in.” Nathan barely dodged the saltshaker, the object nearest Max when the comment enraged him.

“Methinks you hit a nerve.” I went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bag of blood.

Nathan took it and handed me his nearly full mug. “I’ve already had two cups. You finish this off.”

I stood, sipping my blood in silence, while Nathan studied me covertly, pretending to be interested in his bare feet, the floor tiles and the pots and pans suspended over the island. He knew I hated being watched while I fed, but his surreptitious looks made my stomach fill with butterflies.

Max cursed fluently as he scrubbed the stained tiles with a roll of paper towels and an absurd quantity of glass cleaner. As the minutes ticked by, it became painfully apparent none of us wanted to be the first to appear at Bella’s meeting.

“What do you think we’re going to talk about?” I ventured finally.

My voice ruptured the quiet so suddenly, Max hit his head on the counter as he straightened in surprise.

Blind to his distress, Nathan shrugged calmly. “A battle plan, I assume. With the Movement gone, we have no centralized form of communication. We won’t be able to get information from other operatives, and we don’t have the means to track the Oracle without Movement connections.”

“Not to mention the Soul Eater,” I added softly. A flicker of pain crossed Nathan’s face at the mention of his sire. “He’s still out there.”

“I hate to say it, but that might have something to do with the Oracle’s disappearance,” Max commented, still holding a hand to the top of his head.

As though the air had been sucked from the room, I gasped, and Nathan took a great, hissing breath at the realization the two vampires were likely connected.

“What could the Oracle want with the Soul Eater?” I asked quietly.

“What wouldn’t she want with him?” Nathan replied grimly. “She has power, but she’s been isolated for centuries. Think of what that would do to you.”

Max nodded in agreement. “You’d definitely lose touch with a lot of your connections.”

“And it would be easier picking up an evil coup in progress than starting your own from the ground up.” My throat clenched. “My God… You don’t think…”

Max looked from me to Nathan and back again, his jaw tight. “It would be handy to have a god in your pocket, and totally possible if you got in on the ground floor.”

The door from the dining room swung open and Bella stuck her head in with a disgusted look. “I did say fifteen minutes, did I not?”

Max shot us a withering glance and mimed choking the life out of what I assumed was an imaginary werewolf.

Like the rest of the condo, the dining room was oversize and ostentatious. I had seen it only a few times—once on the tour, another when I’d become disoriented and taken the wrong door from the foyer. Max rarely used the room at all. He preferred to drink his meals in the stark, antiseptic kitchen, rather than mahogany-paneled, windowless grandeur.

Bella had set up at one end of the massive table, in the clean, golden light of one of the dual chandeliers. She seated herself at the head of the table, behind a miscellany of archaic-looking objects, some of which I recognized as items Nathan sold in the bookstore. The others—a piece of black, concave glass resting atop a wire stand, and a large collection of what appeared to be desiccated chicken bones—were totally foreign.

Max took the chair to her left and scoffed at the heap of bones. “Dinner?”

Nathan pulled out a chair for me on her right and sat between Bella and me.

Though she’d clearly heard his comment, Bella didn’t give Max the pleasure of a response. “I tried diligently all day to make some kind of contact with my fellow assassins. Unfortunately, the werewolf contingency has all but fled Spain to return to our ancestral forests, and I know very few vampires.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Max muttered under his breath.

“I do not want to alarm you.” Bella turned in her chair so she faced Nathan and me. “But I feel we are at a marked disadvantage against the Oracle. And I fear…”

“That she might be looking for the Soul Eater?” The question slipped automatically from my mouth.

She nodded, her expression hard, and continued. “I have pored over the meager library Max keeps—”

I glanced his way, sure his head would blow off his neck at that. The “meager” library had belonged to Marcus, and Max took all slights against him, intentional or not, very seriously. His face remained impassive, and he leaned back in his chair, arms folded over his chest.

Bella, ignorant of her affront, continued speaking. “It appears there was a breakdown in Movement communication in France during the Nazi occupation. A handful of assassins found themselves unable to contact headquarters or track their quarry. They turned to divination to reestablish communication and monitor the whereabouts of their mark.

“Though in this case it would be unrealistic to try and open a line of communication with the Movement, we could certainly use those same means to glean information about the Oracle and what she intends to do now that she is free.”

“Or Nathan could do it.” Max’s voice seemed overloud, and we all turned to stare at him in varying degrees of horror as he continued. “He has a blood tie with the Soul Eater. If he’s working with the Oracle, Nathan would know it.”

At the thought of Nathan making contact with his terrifying sire, the one who’d possessed and tormented him, the blood in my veins turned to ice. “No!”

My denial was echoed by Bella. “He was possessed once by the power of his sire. My spell freed him, but I cannot guarantee I could do so again.”

“She’s right,” I agreed vehemently. “Nathan, you can’t even consider doing something like that. He would find you in a minute.”

Beside me, Nathan drummed his fingertips on the table. “I think you’re right. We try Bella’s way, first.”

Max snorted. “Listen, I’m not trying to shoot down the one solution anyone has come up with, but I’m not sure this is exactly the most efficient way to go about finding the Oracle and figuring out what her plans are.”

“What would be more efficient?” Bella demanded. “Traveling the world door-to-door, knocking and asking if the Oracle is inside?”

Rolling his eyes, Max turned to Nathan and me. “Listen, you guys can’t really believe this is our best bet? Random patterns of cards and gazing into a crystal ball?”

Though I felt as though I was betraying him, we didn’t have much else to go on. I spread my hands helplessly. “Well, it couldn’t hurt to try. If the Movement has fallen apart, it’s just a matter of time until every non-Movement vampire figures it out and we end up with a crisis on our hands.”

“So, we’re going to prevent this from happening with our super New Age mind rays?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I just think we’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Nathan grimaced as though he hated being cast in the peacekeeper role. “Listen, Bella hasn’t been able to contact anyone. I’ve been out of the Movement for two years, so I don’t know anyone’s number or location anymore. You might be able to track somebody down, but even if you do, how are we going to find the Oracle? We’ve got documented evidence that this approach works. Why not try it before we declare ourselves royally screwed?”

“Max, you were still in the Movement. You have to have the company directory or something, right?” I hoped he did. I didn’t like the looks of those chicken bones any more than he did.

Max shook his head. “It was Movement policy never to reveal the identities of their assassins, even to other assassins.”

“Any assassins who knew each other, like Max and me, chose to contact one another outside of the Movement.” Nathan glanced briefly at Max. “Sometimes I wonder why I chose to contact him.”

“It was a policy that applied only to vampires,” Bella added. “The werewolves involved in the Movement were all from the same pack. You would consider that family, or extended family. We have a code of honor, and our own consequences if we should break it. But the vampires … imagine if one vampire knew how to find all of the assassins? And then they found themselves in the company of a creature like the Soul Eater?”

“So, they kept your locations, and to some extent, your identities, secret so the information couldn’t be tortured out of you?” I looked to Nathan for confirmation.

“Or sold to the highest bidder.” He gestured to Max. “Max and I became acquainted when we were given an assignment together. But if we hadn’t both agreed that it would be handy to know another assassin nearby—or relatively nearby—we might not have exchanged contact information and stayed in touch.”

“But what about the meeting? You had a dozen Movement assassins in your bookshop.” I shuddered at the thought of some of them coming after us as we’d been living peacefully in the apartment upstairs.

“That was a strike team Rachel personally assembled. They already knew who I was and where I could be found. And I trusted them all for a reason.” Nathan put a reassuring hand on my knee.

“Nathan was never quite as secretive as some of us.” The way Max spoke the words implied he thought Nathan was an idiot for trusting anyone. “I do have a blood donor who’s pretty active in the city. I might be able to get some contacts out of him.”

“We may still be, in Nathan’s words, royally screwed,” Bella pointed out. “Of the four of us, I have the most experience with the occult, but divination has always escaped me. I may be able to pick up a few clues, but I will not know if they apply to our situation or not. Have any of you ever done anything like this?”

“I own an occult book and supply store,” Nathan reminded her, not a little sarcastically. “I’ve used tarot cards before.”

“Ah, good.” Bella’s face lit up. She reached for a box of cards and slid them across the table to him. “That can be your job. Since he has expressed disinterest in helping us, Max can try to reach other assassins through his donor.”

“What about me?” I eyed the pile of bones. I wanted to be included, but maybe not that included. “I’m a quick study. Give me something to do.”

She considered the array of objects before her and pushed a jewelry box toward me. I opened it to find a slender crystal dangling from a delicate chain.

“A pendulum,” Bella informed me. “Nathan, can you instruct her? I thought perhaps it could be used to try and pinpoint the Oracle’s location on an atlas.”

“I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it.” He winked at me.

“Good. We should all keep track of our results.” She sounded like one of my old professors explaining the etiquette of laboratory experiments. “Until we know specifics about our situation, everything is important.”

She reached for a bottle of what looked like ink and poured it into the glass bowl, which she lifted from its stand to swirl it a few times. Then, taking a lighter from her pocket, she lit the charcoal in the small, tabletop cauldron at her left.

“So, are we dismissed then?” Max asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

Caught up in sprinkling foul-smelling powder onto the burning block, Bella didn’t look at him. “Yes, of course. We need to get to work immediately.”

Max waited until we were in the foyer, at least, before he exploded. “You’ve got to be kidding me! She comes into my house, assigns us jobs, declares herself Dwight fucking Eisenhower of the occult, and stinks up my dining room with…whatever that was?”

“Honeysuckle and camphor,” Nathan supplied. “They’re powerful divination aids, but they smell better fresh than burning.”

“No shit.” Max’s face had turned a queer shade of red. “Listen, she’s got to go. I don’t care where, she’s just got to get out of my house.”

A terminally stupid person could see his problem wasn’t with incense and tarot cards. Still, I had to proceed cautiously. Any mention of his feelings for Bella caused a total shutdown, in which Max would storm off and nothing would be resolved. “I know you’re having a hard time with her here, but look at us. Three of us against the Oracle? Possibly against the Soul Eater, as well?”

He didn’t respond, but the muscle at the corner of his jaw ticked. He didn’t like what I was saying, but he knew I was right.

“Bella has an advantage over us,” Nathan added. “She can go out in the daytime. We need her for that, at the very least.”

It was clear from the way Max shifted his gaze silently between Nathan and me that he didn’t want to admit we were right. He groaned and tossed his hands up. “Fine. But you guys are paying for the air fresheners when she’s done in there.”

Nathan laughed. “It’s a deal. Now, where can we go to work?”

“In the library. Or the parlor. Or one of the fine guest accommodations, either upstairs or down.” Max shrugged. “Do it in the hot tub, I don’t care.”

A warm flush crept up my neck as I caught sight of Nathan’s lascivious grin. “That’s not a good idea. But thanks,” I said. “We’ll be in the library.”

“Do me a favor and keep her out of it. If it’s so ‘meager,’ she’ll have read everything already,” Max said petulantly. “I’ll be upstairs, trying to get answers out of Bill.”

“We could have done it in the hot tub,” Nathan groused as I led the way to Marcus’s library. “It would have been more fun than this divination business.”

The look I gave him made it clear “this divination business” was all we were going to be up to.

The library, situated at the front of the building, was by far the most impressive room in the condo. The ceiling reached to the second floor of the apartment. Books lined the walls. Iron spiral staircases led to the balcony that wrapped three sides of the room, holding the second tier of literature. I wondered how many personal libraries Bella had seen, and what they must have been like to make this collection seem unimpressive.

Nathan whistled in awe. He set the cards down on one of the leather armchairs near the enormous fireplace and scratched his head as he glanced around. “Not too shabby.”

“I’d offer to leave you two alone for a minute, but I fear what you would do.” I motioned him to the far wall. The huge windows overlooked Grant Park and the shore of Lake Michigan beyond. I pointed out the aquarium at the edge of the view. “Max has connections. He got us in after hours.”

“Weren’t all the fish sleeping?” Nathan chided. He stood silently, taking in the lights of the city for a minute, then turned to me. “You don’t…like him, do you?”

“No, of course not.” I suppressed the urge to tack on You idiot. “Not the way you’re thinking.”

He smiled, probably mentally adding the “you idiot” part himself. “I’m sorry. I know it’s stupid to think that. But you know, here he is, nice house in a big city, young guy—”

“You’re a young guy,” I reminded him. “Young looking, anyway.”

A faint flush colored his usually pale face. “I know that. But I’ve been alive a hundred years, and I’m starting to act my age.”

Starting to? “In all fairness, Max is technically in his fifties.”

“Max is a teenager, no matter how old he gets.” Nathan’s cool gray eyes scanned the street below us. “I understand why you came here. You wanted to be around someone you can identify with.”

“What I want is someone who can love me.” I studied him carefully to gauge his reaction. “Someone who can love me as much as I love him. But I wasn’t looking for that in Max.”

Nathan lifted a hand as though he would touch me. I brushed it aside and pointed toward the fireplace. “We have things to do.”

He taught me how to use the pendulum. First, he showed me how to hold the cord so the crystal hung perfectly still over a book. I asked two questions. The first, “Is this a book?” caused the pendulum to swing in tight, clockwise circles. The second question, “Is this a dead fish?” resulted in wide, counterclockwise swoops.

“That’s all there is to it,” Nathan explained. “Clockwise for yes, counter for no. At least, for you. It varies from person to person.”

It was much easier than Bella made it sound. She either had a gift for overcomplicating things, or she had greatly underestimated my intelligence. Probably the latter, as werewolves didn’t put much stock in the intellectual equality of other species.

I dangled the crystal point over a map of the world, moving it from area to area and asking, “Is the Oracle here?” while Nathan laid out one complicated spread of cards after another. As soon as I made inroads to the continent North America, I flipped to a new page in the atlas and started working on the states and provinces. Occasionally, the pendulum would swing erratically, and I’d have to go through the process of recalibrating it. Then I’d start over from my last reasonable answer, sometimes to find it had changed. Every yes I got, I wrote down. Though the Oracle couldn’t really be in all those places at once, Bella had said to write everything down. I would let her sort out the details.

We’d sat in silence for an hour before Nathan looked up and frowned. “Do you hear that?”

Now that he mentioned it, I did. Every few minutes, a rhythmic bang came from the upper level of the library.

I rose slowly, staring at the walls. The sound grew louder and more violent, actually shaking the crystal chandelier suspended high above us. “It sounds like it’s coming from—”

“The dining room,” Nathan said, breaking into a run toward the doors.

We were coming up the stairs to the foyer just as Max ran down from the third floor. “What the hell is that?”

Nathan didn’t answer, but rushed to the doors leading to the dining room.

Before he could touch them, they flew open, as if with a gust of wind, but as there were no windows in the dining room, the force must have come from an unnatural source. Nathan toppled back and I rushed to help him up.

“Holy shit,” Max whispered, his eyes wide.

I followed his gaze through the open doors. Bella hung lifeless, suspended in the air as though nailed to an invisible crucifix. A supernatural wind howled in a cyclone around her, the various objects she’d carefully spread on the table caught up in the maelstrom. They whirled around her like ornaments on a mobile, almost merry as they weaved and bobbed, the occasional chicken bone or rune stone flying free to smash into a wall.

Bella’s head, limp and heavy on her neck, snapped up. Her eyes, usually preternatural gold, were opaque with blood, her olive skin pale and her lips the blue of a corpse.

As the three of us stared, horrified or dumbstruck or maybe both, Bella’s lips began to move.

But the voice that issued forth wasn’t Bella’s.

It was the Oracle’s.