1
I pushed open the door to Abernathy’s office with more effort than usual. It wasn’t a heavy door, but today it felt like something was pushing back against me. I checked to see if there was anything behind it, but saw nothing but a box half-full of Abernathy’s catalogues, minor divination tools for answering simple questions like “Where should I eat lunch?” or “Where did I leave my keys?” The box was about five feet away from the door, not in a position to block it. I shut the door behind me and deposited my purse on the melamine desk, next to the computer monitor.
Silas Abernathy’s picture caught my eye, and I took a moment to look him over, captured frozen for eternity in his three-piece suit and hat. He had his hands tucked into his pockets and his smile was carefree, not the smile of someone who knew what the future held. Silas had been the first custodian of Abernathy’s ever to abdicate his position in favor of becoming a magus, and he’d taken a lot of heat for it. I’d wondered, once I knew Silas’s full story, why later custodians had kept his picture on the wall if so many people believed he was a traitor to his calling. Sure, it hid the wall safe, but any large framed image could do that. But Silas had brought the store from London to Portland, a huge undertaking, and maybe those other custodians honored that.
I sighed. “I wish I had your advice,” I told Silas. “You’d understand, though I don’t know if you ever knew the oracle was a living creature. I don’t know if I’m even doing the right thing.”
I polished a smear off the picture glass and straightened the frame. The mail hadn’t come yet, or there would be a neat stack of envelopes on the desk, mail-in auguries for me to deal with. When had my job become something I had to “deal with” rather than a joy? That was a stupid question. I knew exactly when that change had occurred: five days shy of four months ago, when I’d walked into the oracle with a burning need for an answer and come out with knowledge I’d never wanted.
I wished Judy was downstairs already so I could talk to her about ordinary things. Usually if she wasn’t in the store before me, it was because Mike Conti had spent the night. I didn’t resent her love life…well, I resented a little that she wasn’t around right now to distract me. And that was foolish and selfish thinking.
I walked through the stacks, straightening books without reading the titles. The room was the perfect temperature, the air smelled of roses, but I felt itchy, like I needed to shed my skin. I checked my watch: 9:17. Too early to open the doors, and when I got to the front of the store there wasn’t anyone waiting outside, anyway. I perched on the wobbly metal stool behind the counter and let my eyes go unfocused so I could stare at my reflection in the glass top. I looked normal, just the way I had when I’d left home this morning. I didn’t feel normal. I felt haggard, stretched thin, and weary as if I hadn’t been getting enough sleep. But I knew that wasn’t the problem.
I saw the mail carrier coming down the sun-drenched street and hopped down to open the door. He gave me a cheery smile along with a bundle of mail. “Beautiful day,” he said.
“I guess,” I replied, returning his smile. He gave me a funny look and proceeded down the street. My smile must have looked strange. It had felt strange and out of place. I really needed to work on smiling like a normal person.
I sorted the augury requests from the bills and tore open the first. What school should I attend? That was a nice question. A positive, forward-looking question. Something the oracle shouldn’t have any trouble with. I folded the paper back on itself and regarded the bookcases. They ignored me. Well, that made sense; they were made of wood and not alive. Not like the entity they contained, or hosted, or…I was stalling. I let out a deep breath and walked into the timeless silence of the oracle.
The oracle’s attention was elsewhere today, something that relieved my mind. I walked the narrow aisles between the laden shelves, looking for the blue glow of a live augury. Until recently, I would have talked to the oracle as I searched, but now I felt like a sneak thief, hoping to get in and out with my treasure without drawing the attention of the dragon guarding it.
No augury presented itself. I knew the oracle hadn’t rejected the request, because the light within wasn’t red-tinged, but nowhere did it say the oracle was obligated to make it easy on me. And it had become increasingly slow to respond over the last almost four months. I didn’t know why, and asking hadn’t produced an answer, either in the form of a book or of the oracle communicating through my thoughts. Besides, I didn’t want to talk to the oracle, and possibly open up a line of conversation that would end badly.
I circled the entire oracle, checking all the aisles, and saw no spark of blue light anywhere. Time for a more direct approach. I opened the paper and read the question aloud. “Do you have an answer?” I added.
I felt the oracle turn its attention on me and braced myself for it to use my mind as its voice. But it didn’t do anything but regard me. Its attention felt like a feather-filled duvet, light and fluffy at first, but slowly and inexorably growing weightier as the minutes passed. I held my tongue. I was not going to be drawn into conversation.
Finally, off to the left, a familiar blue glow grew until it made the bookcase it was behind look like it had a sun’s corona. “Thank you,” I said, and headed in that direction. The oracle went back to whatever it had been doing. I suppressed a sigh of relief and picked up the book, which had a picture of a white pig next to the title Moo. Weird, but that described half the books the oracle produced.
I was almost back to the store’s front when I thought, Helena.
I cringed. I wasn’t in the habit of thinking my own name, but I’d have recognized the oracle’s “voice” anyway. “Yes?” I said, hoping I sounded polite and not irritated and guilty.
Something comes. Be ready.
Great. Another cryptic warning. Because I needed more of those. “What’s coming?”
Something comes. An end. I will end.
I ground my teeth and hurried out of the oracle, clutching the book to my chest like armor. So far, the oracle had never spoken to me, or through me, when I wasn’t in its unique space, but I had a feeling that wasn’t because it couldn’t. I hoped it wouldn’t feel compelled to tell me any more, to remind me that it had seen its own death.
That it had seen mine as well.
I set the augury on the counter and stuck the request between its pages. Then I picked up the next envelope. But I didn’t open it. I stood at the counter clutching the white envelope and stared sightlessly through the plate glass window with ABERNATHY’S painted on it in reverse. The oracle had told me that it, and I, would die, and it had repeated that warning several times a week for the past almost four months. No elaboration on the theme, no details about how or when it would happen. Just those thoughts reverberating through my head: I will end. Helena will end. And I didn’t know what to do.
I couldn’t even tell anyone. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. I always told my husband, Malcolm, everything, and he had suggested I tell Lucia Pontarelli, custodian of the Gunther Node and head of magical law enforcement for the Pacific Northwest. It had been Lucia who’d forbidden me to tell anyone else until I understood the oracle’s warning. “If it gets out that the oracle thinks it’s going to die, it would be demoralizing as hell,” she’d said. “Keep me informed, but don’t spread the word.” So I’d kept quiet, much as I’d wanted to tell my best friends Judy and Viv. But Lucia was right; people would freak out if they thought the oracle was going away. It was one of the Wardens’ best weapons against the creatures trying to destroy our world.