Lucia stared at me from across her desk. “You have got to be kidding me,” she said.
“Lucia—”
“All right, all right, I know you wouldn’t make something like this up, but—” She pinched her lips tight and shook her head. “You have to admit it’s unbelievable.”
“That the oracle had that kind of power? Or that I died and came back? Or—”
“All of it, Davies, all of it.” Lucia leaned back in her chair and put her hands behind her head. “And it’s just…over.”
“Not over. There are still a lot of invaders loose in our world that need to be destroyed. And…” Another flash of awareness struck me: <The Well will be cleansed and Lucia will be the first to wish on it.> “Um. When the Well is cleansed, you need to be the first to wish there.”
“Excuse me?”
I had a feeling this would be the hardest thing for people to understand. “I’m the oracle now. We’re the same person.” That was more or less true. I still felt more like Helena Campbell than a dual persona, but the oracle no longer spoke to me through my thoughts, and it was the best I could do to explain those flashes of insight.
Lucia’s jaw went slack. She recovered quickly and said, “That’s going to drive the Board of Neutralities crazy.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “They can’t control me, can they? I’m not a Neutrality, I’m a person!”
“I have no idea what they’ll think. But you shouldn’t fall in line if they want to order you around. I’ll back you up if necessary, but I think you’ll find they’re intimidated enough not to behave as if everything is as it used to be.” Lucia shoved back her chair and stood. “Go home. Shower. I’ll send Campbell to you when the Well is secure. Let us take care of the rest—what the hell are we supposed to do about the store?”
There were a lot of things I hadn’t considered yet. “In a sense, the oracle is lost. I don’t think I can do what it did with choosing auguries, but I could be wrong about that. I guess, as soon as it’s repaired, I’ll go back and…see what happens.”
“You have the strongest work ethic of anyone I know. Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
I shrugged. “I plan to go home and sleep for a week. How’s that for getting tired of it?”
I’d driven to the Gunther Node in my own car despite Lucia’s commando insisting that I didn’t look well enough to drive, and now I took myself home. I didn’t know what I looked like, but I felt perfectly okay. I didn’t even feel emotionally overwhelmed. That would probably hit me later that night. I didn’t feel anything except hungry and in the mood for pasta.
When I got home and into the bathroom, though, I realized why I’d gotten all those strange looks. My hair looked like rats had nested in it, my face was white and streaky with plaster dust, my clothes looked like I’d rolled around on a dirty floor—not true; Abernathy’s was always clean—and my eyes were red-rimmed like I’d been crying. They also looked strange beyond that, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was different. I ran my fingers through my hair and shook about five ounces of dust onto the countertop. Time for a shower.
It took three shampoos and rinses to get all the dust out of my hair, but when that was done, I felt cleaner than I ever had. I examined my left hand, which wasn’t as stiff as it had been. It was still faintly yellow. I couldn’t tell if the color had faded at all, but I liked to think it had.
Downstairs, I set water on to boil for pasta and turned on the television. The news was still reporting on the attack on Portland, and it sent a chill through me—maybe I was wrong, and I hadn’t stopped anything—until I remembered the finality of that golden attack, and my knowledge that there were still invaders in our reality. I felt the tiniest twinge of guilt that my solution hadn’t saved everyone and mentally slapped myself. I’d sacrificed my own life for this, and I needed to be grateful for all the people it had saved.
I changed the channel to Jeopardy! and set the pasta to cooking. I didn’t want anything more than noodles Romanoff, simple and delicious, and easy to make for one person—
I sank down onto a kitchen chair and put my face in my hands as the enormity of what had happened finally struck. I didn’t feel like crying, but I shook as if the tears were pouring out of me. It was too big to comprehend. What I’d done…and the oracle had said it wasn’t even because I was anything special, just a woman with certain qualities who the oracle had liked. That felt right. I certainly didn’t want to be some superhero.
And yet, now that I was the oracle, wasn’t that what it made me? A superhero? The shakes returned, double strength, and I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to breathe normally. I didn’t even know how it worked, whether other people still had to ask me questions, or if prophecies would come to me at random, or something else I hadn’t even considered.
I wished desperately that Malcolm was home so I could tell him everything and get his advice. I didn’t dare text or call because I didn’t know if that would disrupt whatever he was doing at the Well. And I wanted him to be the first to know—the first after Lucia—so I didn’t want to call Judy or Viv, even though I was sure they’d be supportive.
I realized I’d let the pasta cook too long and hurried to drain it. It would be too soft, but I no longer cared.
When I finished eating, I put my dishes into the dishwasher and contemplated the sink. For once, the idea of cleaning didn’t soothe me. What I wanted, I realized, was to read more of that book I’d been engaged with before the attack. Did I want to drive all the way back to poor, ruined Abernathy’s just for one book? I realized the answer was Yes and got in my car.
I decided to enter from the street side, as I’d left the book on the front counter and going through the back meant passing the enormous mess the invader had made of the store. The street was crowded with National Guard forces helping to clear away bodies. I’d almost forgotten all the deaths that had preceded my destruction of the invaders. The cordon stretched well down the street, so I parked beyond it and walked the rest of the way. No one stopped me, either because the growing darkness obscured me from the busy people or because part of my transformation had given me a limited invisibility. Probably it was the former. I hoped it was the former. Invisibility was a pain.
I let myself in through the front door, marveling at how it transformed the light of the setting sun into a hundred tiny rainbows. The book had been knocked off the counter by the teeming mass of invaders that had destroyed the cash register, but it was unharmed. I picked it up and dusted it off carefully, shaking the glass shards from the broken window off it. I would have to tell Judy what had happened before she came in tomorrow morning and found out about the destruction the hard way.
Aside from the shattered window and the thick coating of plaster dust that covered the counter, the shelves, and the floor, the store looked remarkably intact. No bookcases had been knocked over, no books had fallen off the shelves. I tried to right the cash register and discovered it weighed about a ton. I’d leave it for the Wardens, assuming anyone wanted to rebuild Abernathy’s.