[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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 theshoreofLake 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 onYouidiot . "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 beenalive
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.
Page 29
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
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 hid out one complicated
spread of cards after another. As soon as I made inroads to the continentNorth
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," Maxwhispered, 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.
Chapter Four: Oracle
Page 30
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]