Picts didn’t wear torques. Some of the archaeological hoards traced to them contained heavy-duty chains, but nobody knew their purpose. However, Celts definitely wore torques, and they had eventually spread through the British Isles.
I needed an expert on Picts. Unfortunately, there was no such thing. The next best bet were the Druids. The Druids didn’t like me. They didn’t like anybody. The specter of human sacrifice hung over them, and so they did their best to project a benevolent image. They wore white robes, waved tree branches around, and blessed things. But nobody I knew had ever been invited to a druid gathering. They never answered questions about their rituals or ancestry either. Showing up on their doorstep and asking them to help me decipher Pictish symbols would get me a nice pat on the back, followed by a door in my face. I didn’t even know where that doorstep could be.
I needed help. Somebody who had an in with the pagans. Somebody familiar with old magic . . . Somebody who wasn’t afraid of Druidic history and whom they couldn’t bullshit.
Roman. He was a pagan, a black volhv, and his mother was one of the members of the Witch Oracle.
I needed to visit the Covens anyway, now that my father was going on the offensive. We’d made a plan together: the Covens, my aunt, and me. But the witches seemed to be dragging their feet with getting it implemented.
Curran walked through the doorway. He came around the desk and leaned against it.
“I’m thinking of going to see the Witch Oracle,” I told him.
He frowned. “It’s a bad idea.”
It was an awful idea. I avoided the Witch Oracle like I avoided fire. When you consulted an oracle, you rolled the dice. Whatever they said would alter the course you took. It was always accurate; it always applied to the situation but never in the way you thought it would. An oracle could warn you that water would be a problem for your house in the future, so you prepared for a flood, but then your house caught on fire, and you didn’t have enough water to put it out. The fact that the oracle was right wouldn’t get your house back. Ninety-nine percent of the time you were better off not getting the prophecy in the first place. Unfortunately, I was down to one percent on the scale of desperate. I needed answers about the box, I needed to secure Roman’s help, and I had to talk to the Oracle about getting a move on with our final strategy to fight my father.
Besides, we had to prevent a second Serenbe from happening, and if the Oracle could help with that, I’d kiss their feet.
“I need to talk to Roman about the Druids. And I want to ask the Witch Oracle about Serenbe.” And a couple of other things. “I can’t just sit on my hands and do nothing, Curran. People died. We have to do something about it.”
“I’ll watch the boy,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Will you come home tonight?”
“I will.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I have plans.”
“What kind of plans?”
His gray eyes turned warm. “Come home and I’ll demonstrate.”
“You’re insatiable,” I told him.
“Maybe you’re just irresistible.”
“Sure I am.”
He leaned in and kissed me, sending a shiver through me. It was funny how the world stopped when he kissed me. Every single time.
He fixed my gaze with his. “Go do your thing. Nobody will hurt Conlan while you’re gone.”
I smiled at him and dialed Roman’s number. He picked up on the second ring.
“Three months. You don’t call, you don’t write,” Roman’s accented voice said into the phone. “I am offended.”
“No, you’re not.”
He laughed. “Fine, I’m not. What do you need?”
“I need to see the Witch Oracle and to talk to you about something.”
“Do you need a vision?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. Once I said this, there was no going back, and I would have to live with whatever prophecy they delivered. “Yes.”
CHAPTER
11
“WHY DOES IT have to be a tortoise?” I mumbled, moving down a narrow path through the woods that used to be Centennial Park.
“You said you wanted a vision,” Roman said.
He was wearing his usual black robe. The Slavic pantheon had two sides, the dark and the light, and volhvs acted as the conduit between the gods and the faithful. They served as priests, enchanters, and, on occasion, therapists. Roman served Chernobog, the God of Death, the Black Serpent, the Lord of Nav, the realm of the dead. On the surface, Chernobog was evil and bad, and his brother, Belobog, was good and light. In reality, things were complicated. Someone had to serve the Dark God, and Roman had ended up being that someone. He once told me it was the family business.
Roman did have the dark priest part down. His robe was black with silver embroidery at the hem. His hair—shaved on the sides and long on top and on the back of his head, so it looked like the mane of some wild horse—was black as well. Even his eyes under black eyebrows were such a deep brown, they appeared almost black.
“I know. I was asking in general.”
“Tortoises are ancient. They live for a really long time and grow wise.”
“I know what the tortoise symbolizes,” I growled. The path turned, and we walked into a clearing where a big stone dome rested on the green grass.
Roman reached out with his staff and tapped the dome.
The dome shuddered once and slowly crept up, rising higher and higher. A dull black snout emerged. Two eyes, as big as dinner plates, looked at me. The colossal reptile opened its mouth.
I climbed into it, stepping on the spongy tongue. “What I meant was, why couldn’t the Oracle meet in a building? You know, a nice temple somewhere?”
“Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry would show up wanting a prediction of their next golf game,” Roman said, climbing in behind me. “This way, they’d have to risk getting eaten by a giant tortoise to ask for their prophecy. Only two kinds of people would do this: the desperate and idiots.”
“If you say I’m both, I’ll punch you right in the arm.”
“If the shoe fits . . .”
I sighed and made my way through the throat, down the sloping tunnel to the pool of murky water at the bottom. Long strands of algae hung from the walls. The liquid smelled of flowers and pond water. I frowned. Usually it was much deeper. One time Ghastek’s vamp came with me and it slipped and went all the way under.
I walked through the nearly dry tunnel. “What happened to all the tortoise spit?”
“I’m wearing my good robe,” Roman said.
Having your mother serve as one of the three witches of the Oracle had its perks.
The tunnel turned. I followed it and walked into a large room. A pond spread before me, offering delicate lily blossoms among the wide dark-green pads. A stone bridge, so low that water washed over it, crossed the pond. Above us a vast dome rose, the light of the evening sun shining through its translucent top, setting it aglow with fiery reds and yellows. The walls gradually darkened, first green, then black and emerald.
The bridge ended in a platform where three women sat. The first, ancient and withered, napped quietly in her chair, her hair so light, it looked like fuzz. The first time I’d seen her, she’d been fierce like a predatory bird ready to draw blood. Now Maria mostly slept. She still hated me, though. The first time I visited the Oracle, she locked me into a ring of magic and I broke it. She’d wanted to murder me ever since. Next to her Evdokia, plump, middle-aged, with a brown glossy braid pinned to her head, knitted something in her rocking chair. A small black cat wound its way around her legs. The third girl, blond and slight, smiled at me. I’d saved her from dying, and Sienna always tried to help me in return.
Behind the women a tall mural of HekatÄ? covered the wall. She stood before a large cauldron, positioned at the intersection of three roads. The crone, the mother, and the maiden, all aspects of their witch-goddess.
“Do you seek a vision?” Sienna asked.
We were going through the whole ceremony, then. “Yes.”
“Ask your question.”
Evdokia leaned over and nudged Maria with her knitting needle. The old woman startled, blinked, saw me, and rolled her eyes.