The Oracle's Locket Read online

  I sat on the dock and slipped off my shoes to let my feet hang in the water. This water was the only constant in my life. I’d gone out on the water with my father so many times that I was now flooded with memories of him. He’d been terribly handsome in the style of classic American teenagers: the star quarterback and the arrogance that, of course, didn’t affect how he treated me because, hell, I was his little girl. I was his world.

  Until I’d been the reason that he’d been killed.

  I heard my name from shore and turned quickly to find Ezra, Raphael, and Quintin in a line on the pier. Their bracelets glowed. I glanced at the locket to see that it showed the tiniest bit of glow to it, as well.

  My tumultuous emotions had given me away.

  But I couldn’t reveal myself to the boys. I couldn’t show them my true thoughts. If they knew I planned to escape the community, I knew they’d fight me or insist on going along with me. To them, and to me, our growing love meant more than almost everything else.

  But if they were ever injured because of me, I would never, ever forgive myself.

  “Hey,” I said, giving them a big smile. There it was again: the false one I showed everyone.

  They walked down the dock and sat alongside me, their feet hanging. Quintin’s hand found my back and slipped down toward my ass and I crept toward him and leaned my head on his shoulder.

  “What’s wrong, Ivy?” Raphael finally asked.

  It was difficult to get anything past these guys.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just had my last session with Professor Binion. He says that everything’s gone better than he could ever have imagined. Apparently, I passed with flying colors if you can believe it.”

  Each of the boys told me that they couldn’t have imagined me doing any less. “I mean, you’re Ivy Whitestone,” Ezra said, his grin widening enough to show the tips of his fangs. “How could you do anything less?”

  “But it means that I’ll be able to go back to Hillside Falls this summer,” I told them. I knew each of the boys lived close. Hell, I’d even run into them once, the last summer, at some little second-hand shop Celeste had dragged me to.

  That was before I’d really known what I was. That was when Origins Supernatural Academy had been nothing but an idea.

  I had never even been in love before.

  “But we’ll still see you all the time,” Quintin asserted. “We all live around there. It’ll be like old times but better. Hanging by the water and going boating. Ezra’s father has a beautiful sailboat that we like to take out sometimes.”

  Ezra beamed. There seemed to be this whole other reality opening up for us: one I knew would never be.

  “That sounds like so much fun,” I said. I genuinely wanted to believe in it. “You won’t forget about me, right?”

  Quintin laughed. “Oh my god, as if that were even possible.” He lifted his wrist to show the bracelet. “Remember. We’re linked for life, Ivy. We’re your protectors. We will never let anything bad happen to you.”

  We swam that evening. It felt like this blissful, otherworldly thing: the four of us swimming in our underwear as the moonlight crested over the Gulf. Our laughs floated out across the water and into the arboretum. It seemed that curfew was no longer paid attention to. Nothing bad had happened in ages, and everyone was on their way home, anyway. It was time to call it quits on all the drama for the year. Time to move on.

  After our swim, the boys and I padded back to our separate dorms. All of them gave me a longing look as we departed, which made me check first-thing when I got back to my room. Sure enough, they lurked down below the window. I shook my head, a huge grin forming as I yanked open my window and let them in, for the last time.

  I couldn’t let them know how painful this all was for me.

  I couldn’t let them see it.

  Here they were: my boys, my favorite creatures on the planet.

  Ezra pressed me hard against the wardrobe. It shook behind me as he tore his lips over mine hungrily. My eyes closed as my hands rippled through his black hair and across his muscular arm and over his perfect sleeve tattoo. His fangs rippled against my lips as he opened them wider. He grabbed my breast over my still-wet bra and squeezed hard, then tore the bra off my body. I heard the fabric bust at my back.

  “Hey!” I said playfully, through the kiss. “Don’t destroy my perfectly good...”

  But he didn’t care a thing about my bras, or about my underwear, or about any article of clothing that could keep me away from his body. He yanked my underwear off and then lifted me into his body before stretching me out naked across my bed. I placed my feet on either side of his waist. Slowly, he inched down and his tongue flicked out between his fangs and his impossibly blue eyes were ominously bright and ferocious. Suddenly, his tongue found my clit and I cried his name and yanked at his hair to hold him against my pussy.

  I was so wet. I wanted him so badly. I sped up his tongue and forced my hips up and down, gyrating along with his rapid tongue, and moaning. My nipples were rock-hard little beads. Quintin couldn’t take it anymore; he needed to touch me. I could feel it on him. He fell onto the bed and wrapped his mouth around my nipple and sped his tongue around it. His mouth found mine after that and he kissed me angrily, his tongue across my tongue, competing. I reached for his jeans and helped him hurriedly rip them off. He placed his cock in my hand: massive, the veins pulsing against my gloved fingers.

  “Just once. Without the gloves,” Quintin said through gasps.

  I hesitated. Even Ezra brought his mouth up from my pussy, and his lips dripped with my juices.

  This was the last time. I wanted to feel every moment of it completely.

  I wanted to touch them with my real hands.

  I removed the gloves slowly. My eyes turned toward Raphael to watch as he slipped his jeans off. His cock sprung into the air and then into his hand as he watched Ezra burrow his face back between the juncture of my thighs. A moan escaped my lips just as I wrapped my hand around Quintin’s cock.

  I had always had trouble reading Quintin. I’d always assumed that this was because of the thickness of his dragon skin.

  Unfortunately, the thickness obviously didn’t descend over his cock.

  But the images I got from Quintin, and from Ezra, and from Raphael—they were flashes of absolute beauty. I came almost immediately, unsure of what exactly I saw on the other side of all this. I felt immense love covering all of us, like the most protective blanket. I crested and gripped Quintin’s cock harder and harder until I felt his cock bubble over with cum, which fell across my stomach. He gasped and fell forward and I leaped up, wanting to feel all of them, to taste all of them, to see this impossible future.

  I pressed my hands against Raphael’s abs and then took his cock in my mouth completely, up to the hilt. With my eyes closed and my tongue circling and my head whipping back and forth across the thick hard member, my fingers explored his skin and shot back more images, more beauty. His moans echoed off the walls. As I fucked him with my mouth, Ezra dotted little kisses across the very base of my back, down my ass. He then smacked me—first softly then a little bit harder. He’d never done anything like that before and it thrilled me. My heart beat like a drum.

  Suddenly, I felt Ezra plunge inside me from behind, doggy-style. I grabbed Raphael’s firm waist to steady myself as Ezra pumped hard at me and my breasts bounced beneath me.

  I was the center of their entire world. My body was the only body they worshipped. They would have done anything for me in the world—and had, every single step of the way. Now, I wanted to taste them for the last time—to feel Ezra’s cock deep inside me, fucking me harder than I’d ever been fucked before.

  I knew it would all be a memory soon. I knew this was the last time. But in the moments that I came, again and again, and again that night, I could pretend not to care.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Celeste’s mom planned to pick both of us up the next evening, around six. She had a few th
ings to do to prep for Celeste’s arrival, and Celeste and I needed to take the day to pack and say our final goodbyes to campus.

  In the morning, the boys got up and kissed me goodbye. They all looked so sleepy and so handsome at the same time (admittedly, we’d gotten almost no sleep) and they each promised me that they would see me as soon as I got back to Hillside Falls.

  “I can’t wait to meet your Aunt Maria,” Quintin said tenderly. He splayed his hand across my cheek and gazed at me.

  “She deserves to know how much her niece is loved,” Raphael agreed.

  “And protected,” Ezra affirmed.

  We’d never actually said the words. I’d felt their love over me, so powerful, since at least Christmas. It had seemed unmentionable, too big to even be able to be wrapped up in a few words. But now, faced with an entire lifetime apart, I wanted them to know.

  I only hoped that me saying it wouldn’t alert them to my real plans to escape.

  “I love you,” I said. I said it steadily, making eye contact with each of them one at a time. “I love you so much more than you could possibly imagine.”

  I hadn’t really come up with my plan for the when or how I was going to run away. I figured I would maybe say a final goodbye to Aunt Maria before I did it since I missed her more than life itself and felt totally hollow and strange without her in my life.

  If I had to leave forever, I just wanted to say hi one final time.

  The boys didn’t bother with the window to leave. It was the last day and they burst open the door of my bedroom and paraded through the living area. Margot stood next to the smoothie machine with her jaw dropped. She wore a ratty t-shirt and a pair of shorts and her hair was a wild mane down her back. She glared at me and then at the boys and growled, “Ivy! You know that this isn’t allowed. Do you want me to tell Professor Springer on you?”

  At the door, Raphael turned toward Margot and gave her a delicious smile. “Margot. I want to tell you something that I’ve been dying to tell you all year. No—I’ve been dying to tell it to you since we first met.”

  Margot furrowed her brow. “What is it?”

  “You. Are. A. Huge. Bitch,” Raphael recited. “And you need to mind your own business, for once in your goddamn French life.”

  With that, the boys cut through the door and slammed it behind them. I tried to hide the huge smile that stretched across my face. If that had really been the final time I’d seen Raphael, Ezra, and Quintin, I was glad it had been like that.

  I loved them. And they loved me. And nothing—not even some stupid prophecy, or time, or space between us—could stop that.

  CELESTE GRUMBLED IN the doorway of my bedroom a few hours later. “I have packing fatigue,” she said, then crumpled into a ball by the door. “And Peter won’t stop texting me that he is dying to talk to me one more time before we leave.” She rolled her eyes.

  I could sense that secretly, she was pleased about the attention from Peter. But I knew better than to mention it.

  I had a few suitcases laid across my bed. I had been in the process of folding dresses and shirts and underwear and shorts and pants for the past twenty minutes. It had felt like forever.

  “The way the boys left your room this morning? It’s all over campus,” Celeste said, arching her brow. “You really know how to get people talking.”

  “Ha. It was all of them. They wanted to show off or something; I don’t know.”

  “They’ve spent almost every night in your room for months. How are you going to manage to sleep without them?” Celeste asked.

  Again, my stomach felt this strange pang of terror and sadness. I paused as I dropped a sweater into the suitcase. Then, I turned and gave her a devilish grin. “You’ll sleepover with me sometimes, right? Old sleepovers, like old times?”

  “Yes, of course. But don’t expect the same kind of service,” Celeste said.

  “Ha! Oh my god, no,” I said, giggling.

  There it was again. A moment of normality. A moment that I would never get back.

  “Whatever. I’m going back to packing,” Celeste said, still laughing.

  When she was gone, I perched at the edge of my bed for a long time and looked at everything in the room. It was a room that had seemed so fucking foreign during those first few weeks—when I’d been deemed a “human” and had been bullied into submission by Margot and company.

  That seemed like a million years ago.

  Suddenly, I heard a crash and a scream from down the hall. The scream had to be Celeste’s. I would have known it anywhere.

  Oh my god. I’m too late. I should have run away days ago. Weeks ago. It’s all my fault. It’s all—

  I was completely frozen with shock for only a second until I got up the energy to bolt toward the door. When I did, I nearly stumbled head-first into Celeste herself. All the blood had drained from Celeste’s face. She looked stricken with tears falling fast down her cheeks. She held her phone to her chest and said, “Ivy. Ivy. Ivy.” Over and over again. Each time, the word seemed a little further away from me. I could feel the devastation of what she was about to say—but I still couldn’t have fully articulated it. Not until she said it.

  Maybe that meant that I wasn’t so fucking masterful over my powers, after all.

  “Ivy! Ivy, it’s your house. It’s your aunt,” she sputtered.

  My heart dropped like a stone. I fell along with it, all the way to the floor. I clutched my knees and waited. “Just tell me,” I whispered.

  “Ivy, your house burned down!” she cried. She dropped along with me and held onto my gloved hands and let even more tears fall.

  Why couldn’t I cry? Why hadn’t I cried yet? What was this horrible feeling I had?

  “Nobody can find your Aunt Maria. Not in the house and not outside the house. It seems like...”

  “They took her,” I whispered. “They must have. They found her and they took her and within hours or days or weeks, she will be dead. And then I will be dead, too. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fucking fault.” I smashed my fist against the floor, and pain reverberated up and down my arm. I could have leaped out the window. I could have destroyed myself. I wanted it all to end.

  But there was more to do. I had to buck up, to remember that. I swept to my feet and set my jaw. Between the two of us, I had to be the strong one. I was the Oracle, goddammit.

  “Let’s find Professor Binion,” I said. “Now.”

  We’d never run so fast, I swear. We shot down the staircase and through the arboretum, neither of us bothering much with breathing. When we reached the main building, I hoped and prayed that Professor Binion remained in his quarters and hadn’t gone off to the Keys yet. The second I yanked off my glove and touched the doorknob, I knew he was still upstairs. There was still time.

  When we reached his door, I rapped on the wood so hard that I was surprised the door didn’t give. Professor Binion yanked open the door quickly and glared at us, in genuine shock.

  “I’ve already heard,” he said.

  I guess it was written all over our faces.

  Professor Binion ushered us in without speaking. We sat on his little couch as he paced with his hands behind his back. He muttered to himself, clearly upset. Over the past two semesters, I’d learned that Aunt Maria had meant a great deal to Professor Binion when they’d been younger. It had been part of the reason that Professor Binion had agreed to become my professor later in life: abandoning everything else.

  Suddenly, he turned toward us, his eyes ominous. “It’s obvious that you two girls should remain on here at least for the night until we can figure out what’s happened.”

  Celeste dropped her shoulders and let out a sob. I returned my glove to my hand and grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard. I was devastated in this really far-away way. I could feel it slowly falling over me; the way night came on. I knew very soon, it would descend all too quickly and I would be shrouded in black.

  “Please, girls. Return to your rooms now,” Professor Bini
on said. “It’s overwhelmed me to a degree that I’m afraid I cannot be of any use to you right now. Stop unpacking. Sit together. Think and pray to whatever you can. We don’t know her fate. She could be in hiding.”

  Celeste and I walked very slowly back toward the girls’ dormitory. Disappointment pumped out of Celeste’s heart. I could see the images she’d had in her head, which she now said goodbye to dinner on the back porch with her mother and father; describing to her mother that she’d dumped a boy for the first time—and how upset that boy had been; asking her father for a half of a beer and talking to him about his childhood.

  Now, because of me, because of this, she was stuck at the academy with me. Again.

  Back in my room, Celeste tried to make conversation but really couldn’t. She made an excuse and returned to her room and said she’d find me again for dinner. I laughed at that. Imagine the idea of eating? Food sounded outrageous.

  I didn’t think I would ever eat again.

  I had this whole new, even bigger resolve.

  I had to get the fuck out of Origins Supernatural Academy. I had to get the fuck away from everyone I’d ever known and ever loved. And I had to do it as soon as possible.

  But I had to wait for Celeste to fall asleep.

  Celeste and I hardly bothered with dinner. We picked at a few granola bars and Twizzlers and tried to watch a TV show we’d always liked in the past. As we watched it, I really couldn’t remember why we’d ever liked it to begin with. It was shallow and stupid and there was a weird laugh track for some reason. Celeste rose half-way through and said, “I have to lay in my bed, Ivy. I’m sorry. I’ll call my mom and if she’s learned anything at all, I’ll come let you know.”

  “Thanks, C,” I said.

  She paused in the doorway and heaved a sigh. I was getting so tired of this look people gave me: sorrow mixed with pity mixed with blame.

  “I’m so sorry, Ivy,” she said. “I really am.”

  “I’m sure we’ll find her,” I said. As I spoke the words, I knew that I didn’t believe them. But I had to stay positive, only for a few more seconds. “I love you, C. Really. Thank you for being here with me for all this bullshit. I don’t know what I would do without you.”