“It does sometimes. It would be more exciting if I understood half of what it said.” I took his augury slip and stepped into the oracle.
The oracle’s attention pressed down on me as if it had been waiting for me to come back. Warning, it said.
“I’m not the one you need to tell that to,” I replied. “Though it doesn’t look like he’s listening to either of us. If you could give me something more specific, maybe that would help.”
Warning. Something comes. Dreams come true.
“That doesn’t seem like something bad. Though if you mean literal dreams, I’ve had some real nightmares I wouldn’t ever want to come true.” I’d never thought of the saying in those terms before.
Dreams come true. Pay the price. Warning.
I thought about that one. “You pay the price for a dream to come true. Maybe a dream in the good sense, something you really want. You get your dream, but at a price…so what if the price is too high? Or—like that story I read in English class, where the husband and wife buy each other the perfect gifts by sacrificing their treasured possessions, and then they can’t use the gifts because of the sacrifices?”
Price. Warning. Something comes. I will end. Helena will end.
I let out a hiss of frustration. “Why don’t you—wait.” Either it had switched warnings mid-stream, or… “Is Mr. Wallach’s plan related to our ending? Will it cause us to end?”
The oracle said nothing, but its presence still bore down on me. I will end, it finally said. Helena will end. It left me as swiftly as it had appeared.
I leaned my forehead against the nearest bookcase and drew in a calming breath, though I was too agitated for meditation. The oracle didn’t have emotions, at least none I could perceive, so the frustration I felt was all mine. But I couldn’t help wondering whether it was as impatient with my lack of understanding as I was with its cryptic, incomprehensible warnings.
I straightened and set off in search of Brandon’s augury. That, at least, was simple and straightforward. Either there was an augury or there wasn’t, and Brandon’s question, How should I invest my gambling winnings? was not one the oracle was likely to want me to weigh in on.
14
LaserPinz wasn’t the best bowling alley in the Portland area, but it did have one feature Judy, Viv, and I loved, and that was Lanes After Dark. Thursdays after eight o’clock, they turned the overhead lights way down and turned on black lights and the neon light strips outlining each lane, revealing that the rather bland bowling balls and pins glowed in the dark. So did the stripes on the rented shoes, the wall decorations of colorful zigzags, and the cream toppings on their famous chocolate pudding cups. Viv liked to say it was all very Eighties, but I thought no one decade could possibly have produced anything this simultaneously tasteless and awesome.
I lined up between the glowing green lines of our lane, hefted my neon pink bowling ball, and took a few quick steps to send it spinning toward the pins. A perfect strike. I pumped my fist in the air and trotted back to our table. “That’s another one for me.”
“I’m only letting you gloat because we’re playing laser tag after this,” Viv said, “and you suck at that.”
“Bowling is the only sport I’m any good at,” I admitted, admiring my score.
Judy licked a dollop of radiantly white cream off her spoon. “I can’t believe you talked me into coming here.”
“You say that every time, and then you change your tune when the laser gun is in your hand,” Viv said. She hopped up and retrieved her ball, which glowed blue like it was radioactive. “I’m not sure it’s healthy for you to enjoy shooting people that much.”
“It’s therapeutic. It keeps me from lashing out at idiots.” Judy took another bite of pudding. “I don’t know what they put in this stuff, but it’s addictive.”
I ate some of my own pudding cup. “How do they make the topping glow, I wonder?”
“Tonic water glows under a black light,” Viv said over her shoulder. She let go her ball and watched it drift into the gutter. “I don’t know why I bother.”
“You’re getting better,” I protested.
“Not so anyone can tell.” Viv hovered over the ball return. “We need to join a softball league so I can be successfully athletic.”
“No way,” Judy and I said in unison.
“I played Pee Wee softball for one season when I was seven,” Judy said. “I got hit by the ball ten times. Two times, I wasn’t even on the field. I swore off softball forever.”
“That’s quitter talk,” Viv said. She released the ball and leaned hard to the left as if that would keep the ball on track. Three pins fell. “Are you sure we can’t play with those bumper pads blocking the gutters?”
“You’ll never learn not to throw gutter balls if the pads are in the way,” I said. “My dad never let us use them, even when we were little.”
“Your dad is a monster,” Viv grumped. She returned to her seat and took a long swig of Diet Coke as Judy got up to take her turn. “But you seem to be in a better mood. I was starting to worry about you.”
“I’m trying to avoid thinking of all the horrifying things in my life. Bowling has a very soothing, focusing effect on me.” I scraped pudding off the sides of the clear plastic cup and licked it off my spoon. “And it helps that there were no new attacks today anywhere in the world.”
“There’s nothing we can do about them if there were,” Judy said, lifting her ball to chin height before taking a couple of swift steps and releasing it. “Except what we’re already doing.”
“Yes, how is Mr. Wallach’s project coming along?” I asked.
Viv shrugged. “It’s at a stage where I don’t understand most of what he’s doing. The initial work was all about finding a shape for the magic that will shift our reality. It’s like a framework…we bought about a hundred Tinker Toy sets off eBay to model it.”
“So it has a physical shape.”
“Sort of. The model does, but that’s just to show the magic what it needs to look like. The actual solution is only partly physical, like an aegis.” Viv took another drink. “But that’s bone magus territory, and a lot of what Mr. Wallach does, I can’t even see.”
Judy dropped into a chair next to us. “You don’t sound enthusiastic.”
Viv tossed her cup at the nearest trash can. It bounced off, and she stood and, grumbling, retrieved it and threw it away. “I’m worried,” she confessed. “None of the auguries gave any positive advice—positive in the sense of helping us move forward. They were all a lot of warnings about things. Which is good, because they helped us avoid some major missteps, but…wouldn’t you think the oracle would want to see this happen?”
“The oracle doesn’t see things the way we do,” I said. “I can never guess what it will do. What worries me is that it saw fit to give me auguries to back up the ones it gave Mr. Wallach. I think something is wrong with his plan.”
“Me too. But I have no idea what.” Viv sighed. “It all looks perfect. The modeling came together just right, all Mr. Wallach’s theories are proving correct—it’s almost too good to be true.”