The Oracle's Locket Read online

  Inwardly, I laughed. Back in December, Celeste had demanded why I was so volatile with people, why I wanted to pick fights at every corner. Now, I didn’t do it enough, apparently.

  “Because it really doesn’t matter,” I told her. My eyes felt heavy, serious.

  Celeste protested. “I mean, yes, it does...”

  “I’ll explain later,” I told her, just as our teacher drew us into the classroom and clipped the door closed.

  BACK IN MY BEDROOM after classes, Celeste sat at the edge of my bed and insisted I explain it to her. I sighed and dropped on the center of the mattress and fiddled with the end of my jean skirt.

  “When Zelda took me into the tunnel under the school, there was something really off about her,” I said. “I could see it and feel it. And it linked up with that day when the statue fell on her. I’d touched her and felt such insane fear and darkness and overwhelming terror and...” I shrugged. “I’ve felt that before, but only a few times. It’s the worst feeling in the world. You think your entire life is about to end. And in her case, she thought her life and the lives of those she loved most were going to end. She had to do what she did.”

  Celeste furrowed her brow. “She hasn’t told very many people what happened. I mean, I don’t think you’ve explained every single detail to me. But I heard Margot and Riley talking about it a few weeks ago and I know even more than they do. I think Zelda’s really embarrassed.”

  “And embarrassment mixed in with all that fear isn’t a good combination,” I said.

  “Right.” Celeste chewed on her lower lip. “So you’re really just going to let her keep doing this shit to you? It’s horrible to watch.”

  “I know. But I have bigger things to focus on.”

  Celeste dropped on the bed beside me. It had been a horribly long semester, but already, we approached the end. Our final day of classes was in the middle of May. I had a load of fear about this. I hadn’t seen my home in Hillside Falls since November and hadn’t had any correspondence with Aunt Maria since Christmas. If I focused too hard on that arena of my loneliness, I felt really crippled with sadness. Every day that I grew away from the old life I’d known, I felt less and less like myself. All hope seemed lost.

  “Your powers seem to be getting stronger,” Celeste said. She’d spotted me on the soccer field a few weeks before, fine-tuning my ability to move things around with my mind.

  “I have a lot more precision than I used to,” I told her. “I can feel things about people without even touching them, sometimes.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “And terrifying,” I told her. “I try to block you out because it feels like an invasion of privacy.”

  “You know that I would tell you anything,” Celeste said. She propped herself up on the side of her hand and gave me a look of earnestness. “We don’t need to have any secrets between us.”

  “I know. But...” I trailed off. She noticed a flicker in my eye.

  “You know that I want to break things off with Peter again,” she said.

  I gave a small smile. “Now, you’re the mind-reader.”

  “Ha. Well, I haven’t decided anything yet,” she said. She rolled on her back and gazed at the ceiling. “It’s already so complicated with your powers getting stronger and all this shit about to hit the fan. I hardly even know what’s about to happen, but even I know that I want to be around to protect you. I don’t want to linger on stupid boy drama when there’s so much at stake.”

  Her words were so genuine that they hurt me. I wanted to tell her not to worry about me so much that I would take care of myself. I knew she’d reject them.

  “What are you thinking about the end of school?” Celeste suddenly asked.

  Although I hadn’t told her, with every passing day that my powers grew stronger, my plans seemed to solidify: I had to leave. I had to leave my great and wonderful loves, my powerful boys. And I had to leave Celeste, the girl I’d known since I was no age at all. I swallowed, grateful that the only things she could read in my mind were the things about herself—the things any friend might guess.

  “I guess I’ll stay at the academy,” I said. “Like I did for Christmas. I don’t want to endanger Aunt Maria and it’ll give me time to completely focus on everything here. It’s responsible and it’s comfortable and...”

  Celeste gave me a sharp look. “Are you sure you’d actually stick around?”

  Maybe I was wrong about her not being able to read my mind completely.

  “Of course. Where the hell would I go?” I asked. I made it sound rigid like it had never crossed my mind to ever journey elsewhere. In reality, it was almost all I dreamed about.

  I never wanted Raphael, Quintin, or Ezra to have to save my life again. I never wanted anyone to be in such horrible danger. I just wanted the freedom of being alone, of knowing that whatever happened to me wouldn’t affect anyone else.

  Celeste rolled her eyes and dropped back on my pillow. “You’ll be so bored here.”

  “Maybe,” I said. Boredom was the least of my worries.

  The silence stretched between us. I hated when this happened. It wasn’t a thing I remembered before coming to Origins Supernatural. We’d always had stuff to say, so much so that Zoey and Aunt Maria had had to tell us to shut up almost every afternoon of our entire lives.

  “Well, I’m sure if you’re here, the boys will be, too,” she said. “They can’t get enough of you. I um...” She paused and made a funny face. “I came to see you the other night, but right before I knocked on the door, I heard you...”

  My cheeks flushed crimson. I laughed timidly. “They haven’t been very good about curfew. That’s for sure.”

  “Well, neither has Peter,” Celeste said. “I swear, I always find him down below my window, wanting to come in. He transforms into a bat or a bird or whatever and then just swoops in. I never get a moment of peace.”

  “I guess he won’t leave you alone until you rip his heart out,” I said.

  “Yeah. Until then,” Celeste said. She then grabbed the pillow and pressed it over her face and gave a little scream into it. When she stopped, she revealed a laughing face, her nose scrunched. “Why couldn’t I have found insane love with three boys, like you, instead of just kind of half-love with a boy I now have to dump?”

  “Celeste, we’re only seventeen years old,” I said. “We aren’t supposed to find the people we’re meant to be with forever right now.”

  But Celeste clucked her tongue. Again, it felt like she could see right through me. It wasn’t her magical powers; it was more that she understood me on a deep, impenetrable level, in a way that I couldn’t fully understand myself.

  “You don’t mean that. I can see it. You want them forever,” she said.

  “Whatever,” I said. My voice was heavy with doubt.

  “Whatever,” Celeste said, mocking me with a wide grin.

  We fell into other, familiar conversations after that. She told me about the text her mom had just sent about choosing a new large wardrobe for the basement, where, apparently, Zoey kept an innumerable amount of potion ingredients and other supplies. “She’s so picky about this stuff. I always used to help her pick stuff out, but now she just has my dad who, apparently, has ‘no eye for detail,’” Celeste said, giggling.

  I wanted to treasure these last months. I wanted to remember every single moment. I knew that one day when I sat all alone wherever it was, I’d ended up, I would want to live in these images. As an oracle, maybe that was possible: to look always backward, to really feel what it had meant to be there—while being elsewhere all the time.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The last week of classes meant a wide variety of tests from all sides. Math, science, English literature: I shoved it all down my throat and winced through the final classes, willing myself to pass. The way it worked at Origins was, the moment you turned in your test, the professor whipped their hand over it, their eyes closed, and deduced your score immediately. That
’s how I knew I got mostly Bs, two As, and one C in science. Considering all the bullshit I’d gone through that semester, I didn’t think it seemed too bad.

  Plus, if I really was on the verge of leaving everything I’d always known behind, it wasn’t like that C was going to drag me down too bad.

  I marched into Professor Binion’s last course and placed my bag on the top of my desk, my heart thudding in my throat. I suspected that Professor Binion was “on” to my tactics to bail on the academy and worried he would see right through my mind. In the beginning, he had had a way with forging through those brain waves and coming up with conclusions I would never have revealed.

  However, in the months since the incident in the dungeon, I’d done some real work on my psyche. I’d built a kind of wall around my thoughts, one that seemed thick as stone. As a result, I sometimes watched Professor Binion studying me, his eyes cinched tight together and his eyebrows low. I knew he struggled to dig into that inner psyche again.

  And I knew that one of the reasons that he really couldn’t was that I had become too powerful.

  Professor Binion burst into the room on this, our final day of classes. There was a spring in his step as he jutted toward his desk and dropped his bag on his stool. He didn’t greet me at first. Instead, he leaned on the edge of his desk with his arms crossed and looked at me for a long time. I felt like an animal in the zoo.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “Ivy, when you first arrived at Origins Supernatural Academy, I was an anxious wreck. I’d trained for years and years to be your teacher. I’d given up everything, a fact I’m sure you remind yourself daily, to come here and help you become the oracle you were always meant to be. But on that first day, you had nothing.”

  “Gee. Thanks,” I said.

  He let out a wry laugh. “Wait. The compliment is coming very soon. I can promise you that.”

  “Waiting expectantly,” I told him.

  “Right. Well. In the months since that first day, I’ve watched you become this incredibly powerful young woman. I know you have more control over your powers than even you can understand. You haven’t allowed some very severe incidents to push you back. I watch you sometimes while you’re on the soccer field, working overtime. When you mess up, I can see how frustrated you are. You attack yourself, body and mind, and then you return to the same spot on the field and do your damnedest to get it right. It’s empowering. And it makes me understand just why the universe chose you to be the oracle to save us all. You have the resolve and the spirit and the wherewithal to do it.”

  I swallowed. I had no idea where the hell he wanted to go with this announcement. I couldn’t even muster a thanks. It felt too kid-like.

  “And I don’t think you’ve lost control in a long time, have you?” Professor Binion said. “You certainly haven’t in my class.”

  I couldn’t remember losing control over my powers in the past three to four months. Nothing like what had happened with Aunt Maria had happened; no platters had flown into people’s heads and knocked them to the ground. Beyond that, my mind hadn’t caused any kind of attack on Zelda or Margot or Riley. It still wasn’t clear to me whether or not I’d caused the statue to fall on Zelda that afternoon, but that was also so long ago, a part of a very different story.

  Maybe I was cured.

  Professor Binion seemed to think so. He leaned toward me, his eyes conspiratorial as he whispered, “I think you’re ready.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. My heart thudded. I swear, every time I let my guard down, someone revealed some new fresh bit of information to me. Was I about to grow a tail or some shit?

  “I think you’re ready to go back home to Hillside Falls for the summer. If you want that,” he continued. “See, you have excellent powers of perception. You can feel when an enemy is near; you can sense imminent danger and where it’s coming from. You can further use your telekinetic powers to protect yourself. Beyond that, because you have such incredible control over these powers, you won’t lose yourself and reveal yourself to anyone—not in the human world or the supernatural world.”

  I arched my brow. Was it possible that Professor Binion gave me this free-pass? It was clear he couldn’t see through to my true plan: to escape the academy and everyone I’d ever known and start fresh, somewhere far away.

  “That’s fantastic,” I said. I was genuinely very grateful, and he could hear it in my voice. He thought he’d just given me the biggest gift: a summer at home, with my Aunt Maria, in Hillside Falls.

  In reality, he’d given me a way out.

  “I knew you’d love it,” Professor Binion said. He looked very pleased with himself, even showing off a dimple I’d never seen before.

  “Professor, you’ve done so well teaching me,” I said. “Every step of the way, you’ve guided me without being overly forceful or impatient.”

  Professor Binion continued to beam. After a strange pause—something that seemed to happen more and more with nearly everyone these days—he sputtered and said, “I wanted to update you about Zelda Maroney’s family over in England.”

  “Right,” I said. Zelda hadn’t been my number one fan the past few months, but I did care a lot that her family was all right.

  “It’s been several months since the bounty hunters came to take you away,” Professor Binion said. “Since then, the charms around the Maroney’s household have been incredibly strong, impenetrable, even. I sent my very best in England to perform the charms.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said.

  He did look pretty pleased with himself.

  “And the charms around the academy itself are top-notch, stronger than they’ve ever been in its previous hundreds of years of operation,” he continued. “Which means that when you arrive back after break, it will be here, waiting for you—and all will be well.”

  I forced a smile. It felt very strange to smile at news that had nothing to do with me. After I fled, I would never see the academy or Professor Binion again.

  But I had to keep up the act. It’s what all these people wanted from me: proof that they’d done right by me, the Oracle sent to right the wrongs of the earth, or whatever.

  “It sounds like you handled everything perfectly,” I recited, still baring my teeth.

  “Oh! Also. We’re meant to give you a grade,” he said. “I’ve given you an A, of course. I couldn’t not. You’re my only student, as you know, but I still couldn’t have asked for anything more from you. Think of it, Ivy. A year ago, you were nothing but a sixteen-year-old girl with your whole human life ahead of you. Now, you can move things with your mind.”

  God, all I wanted to be my former life back.

  But I couldn’t show it. I stretched my grin wider and walked toward him to shake his hand with my gloved one. “I guess I’ll see you next semester, then, Professor,” I said. “Do you have many plans for the summer?”

  Professor Binion nearly leaped into the air with excitement. “Oh, yes. Well, as you know, I’m particularly keen on Florida. I’ve rented a little condo in the Keys and I plan to spend the entire summer swimming. After growing up trapped in the tribe....” He frowned for a moment. “It’s not as though I can ever go back after what I’ve done. But there’s a whole world out there. It’s waiting for me. And I can’t wait to feel it and taste it and squeeze every last drop of vacation out of it.”

  “Like the Florida orange,” I told him, smiling sadly.

  I thanked him. This was probably our final conversation ever, and I wanted him to know that I meant it. As I walked out of his office, I clipped the door behind me a final time and heaved a sigh.

  Apparently, according to the only person who would really know, I was “ready” for the world.

  This meant I had to prepare myself to be ready for the rest of my life, out there alone.

  WHEN I REACHED THE arboretum, most of the other students had let out of their classes for the day. Vampires sat in a circle near the tree, swapping little vials of blood as a
snack; Faes fluttered near the tree line closer to the woods. As I watched, a few of the mermaids straggled in from the water. Their hair was wet, dripping down their backs, but they looked refreshed and rejuvenated. Meghan was mid-way through the pack, her smile jubilant as she laughed with one of the mermen.

  Everywhere I looked, everyone seemed excited about the summer months ahead. The sky was terrifically blue, dotted with only the occasional cloud, and laughter floated through the humid air easily. All memory of tests and homework fled away.

  Celeste had broken up with Peter a few days before. I saw him saunter across the grassy area to sit alongside other shapeshifters with a frown stitched permanently across his face. Celeste had shrugged off the breakup. “I have tons of plans for myself this summer. None of them involve missing a boy.”

  I had to love that about her: she was perpetually free, perpetually alive. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel caged into any situation.

  Zelda, Margot, and Riley sat near the oldest oak in the arboretum. They had their heads together as they gossiped. Margot erupted into laughter and then said something off-handed in French. When she finished, she said, “Zelda, you absolutely have to visit me in Paris this summer. It’s divine. We always end up in the French Riviera on my father’s sailboat. It’s more than just magic. It’s a completely other reality.”

  My stomach churned with jealousy.

  As I walked toward the tree line, I asked myself a few times what the hell I was doing. I felt guided by something beyond myself, something I could understand. When I reached the Gulf itself, I gazed out at the beautiful water at the light orange cast across it in the early evening. In the past few months, I’d spent only a few afternoons out by the water: lifting the little rafts with my mind and then letting them crash into the water below.