The Oracle's Locket Read online

  And it somehow pissed me off even more.

  I shot toward my bed and crashed against it, my back flat beneath me. The mattress shook. Celeste walked over to me, her brow furrowed.

  “There’s no way I could understand what you’re feeling,” Celeste finally said.

  She always knew exactly what to say.

  She perched at the edge of the bed and then slid against me. It was the same form we’d taken year upon year, just two girls daydreaming the hours away. This time was edged with a very different kind of sadness.

  “These forces at play are crazy,” Celeste said, her voice low. “It’s difficult for me to fully understand them, and I’ve been in this world my entire life. What I do know is this: we’re here at Origins Supernatural Academy to hone our powers, to build and develop ourselves as a witch and an oracle. One day, maybe, we’ll hone them enough to face whatever’s out there. But Ivy—I still kind of feel like an awkward, frightened teenager.

  I batted my eyes several times, trying to dig myself out of this tremendous sadness. It felt like a cloud on my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

  Celeste forgot for a moment what I was. Like she’d done a million times before, she reached for my hand and gripped it hard. Immediately, I felt sloshy with her thoughts: the fear she’d talked about, the awkwardness, and a darker color, something that simmered with uncertainty.

  But beyond all that, bigger than every other thing—was this tremendous love she felt for me.

  She wasn’t staying behind at Origins because she was being forced to.

  She was staying because she wanted to make sure I was okay.

  I cut my hand away from hers, just in time. I’d been about to dip into her memories, into her future—and the intensity of all that might have knocked me out for a few hours.

  “Shoot. I forgot,” she murmured.

  I shook my head wildly enough that my hair shot out on either side of my head. She mocked me for a moment, shaking her head, too, and then giggling.

  “As if we’ll ever be powerful,” I said, my laughter growing.

  Celeste popped up, her eyes growing larger. “I forgot to mention the best part of all of this.”

  “Is there a best part?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Yes! There’s always a silver lining.” She sounded conspiratorial now. “The campus gets pretty crazy over Christmas break. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I didn’t stay last year.”

  I arched my brow. “What do you mean?”

  “They’re just a bit more lax with the rules.”

  “You mean, the rules that people already learn how to break anyway?” I said. The first smile of the day eased between my cheeks.

  “I just think we shouldn’t be so, so upset that we can’t spend two weeks eating cookies with my mom and your aunt. We’re going to find our own fun.” Celeste winked.

  And I couldn't help but think of what she might have meant:

  Long nights, stretched out between Quintin, Raphael, Ezra—all of them completely focused on me, on my naked body as they stripped me down.

  The three most powerful boys I’d ever met in my life. A vampire, a werewolf, a dragon, over top of me, gazing at my long torso, my skin glowing, my breasts bouncing as I took one of them and he thrust into me, his eyes ferociously blue—Ezra, it was Ezra, and he wanted me, wanted to taste me, but he couldn’t, because if he ever took me in his mouth the way he really wanted to, I would never come back from it. I had no fucking clue what would happen to an oracle when bitten by a vampire.

  But it didn’t matter. Not now.

  But god, I wanted them the way I’d had them on my birthday.

  All at once, before me. Worshiping me. Wanting as much of me as they could take, without destroying me.

  Until I’d changed forever.

  Celeste snapped her fingers, incredulous. “Hey! Did you go somewhere?”

  I shook my head, shocked that I’d let myself fall so deep into a daydream. “Sorry. I’m here.”

  “Ha. I was worried I’d lost you to a spell or something. Or maybe that I’d even cast it myself?”

  “Ha. Maybe something about what you said was a little spell-binding,” I said, drudging up a smile.

  “Oh, but all that’s after the Christmas party,” Celeste said. She leaped off my bed and did a little dance, her black curls bouncing. “Last year was fun, I guess, but this year I have a boyfriend and—” Her eyes glittered excitedly.

  “Someone’s obsessed,” I said, laughing. I grabbed my pillow and smashed it against her stomach, the way we’d done when we were kids.

  “Oh? I’m the one obsessed? Want to tell me what you were just daydreaming about?” Celeste called back. She grabbed my second pillow and whacked me against the side of my head.

  “Hey!”

  We laughed like that for a while and then tossed back onto the bed. Celeste squeezed my hand again, but only for a moment, not long for me to get anything off of her except, again, a glimmer of her immense love for me.

  “You’re going to love the dance,” she murmured, seeming to fall into a kind of daydream herself. “It’s nothing like the dances back at Hillside Falls. It’s a whole other game.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Christmas Dance was held the final Friday before everyone left for Christmas break. It had been a chaotic few weeks. Professor Binion had nearly destroyed me—I could feel my brain fizzing with activity after our lessons and sometimes I just crashed into bed early, completely exhausted. But, just like Celeste had said, I did feel a tiny bit stronger. I had more control over what I did and how I did it. And, I’d avoided accidentally smacking anyone across the side of the head with any flying objects. This was a plus.

  Ezra, Raphael, Quintin, and even Margot had kept their distance, as well. I guessed Raphael had reported to the other boys what had happened outside with Margot, probably told them how crazy I was. I didn’t care, really. As long as I had Margot off my back and could concentrate on my studies (and not think too hard about how I didn’t know when I would see my Aunt Maria again), I could generally pretend I was at least half-way happy.

  Half-way happy was all I could really hope for.

  But it was the dance. Celeste informed me matter-of-factly that this was the time for letting loose, forgetting all the bullshit of the past semester and dressing up and putting on makeup and feeling better than ever all that. Obviously, I had a little bit of trouble believing her—but I was willing to try.

  A few hours before the dance was to begin, I watched outside the big windows outside the large dining hall, the fancier one that transitioned into a ballroom (named that, I guess because they used to have proper and fancy balls there, back in the 1800s and early 1900s). A massive Christmas tree erupted in the center, hung with glistening lights and what looked like real icicles. A banner hung on the far side, ornate, with “Merry Christmas” stitched across it. Riley Peters looked to be head of the decorating committee, and she fluttered around giving instructions, her pretty face contorting itself into an evil one whenever someone didn’t do her bidding. Margot and Zelda actually sat in the corner; I spotted at the end—seemingly uninterested in helping out, but able to give moral support in the form of sitting there, doing their nails for the dance.

  Back in my room, Celeste and I donned dresses—both black, slinky things that made us look a few years older than we were, at least in our eyes. We smeared black makeup around our eyes and then added red lipstick. Celeste looked tan and beautiful and her breasts were full beneath the shiny fabric of her dress, and I looked thin, my shoulders strong and powerful, and my thick lips sensual and bouncy. Celeste eyed me with her eyebrows high and said, “Damn. I’ve never seen you look like this before.”

  I bowed to her and said, in a teasing voice, “This is what you’ve created. I would be nothing without you.”

  “Now, for the finishing touch,” she said. With a flourish, she pressed her fingers against the top of a bottle of soda we had on my wardrob
e. Suddenly, it fizzed up and became clear.

  My mouth formed a round O. “Are you serious? You can do it now?”

  Celeste tip-toed to the bottle and opened it to sniff. “Fuck, yes. It’s champagne. I did it!” She gave little fist-bumps to the air.

  She poured us two glasses and we clinked them together. “All I want to do tonight is forget,” I told her, as the bubbles skated down my throat.

  “To forgetting! To getting drunk!” she cried.

  When we arrived at the ballroom, it was already obvious that we weren’t the only ones who’d decided to get a little tipsy beforehand. There was a DJ in the corner, a guy rumored to be a warlock, with a thick set of headphones over his ears and his hand in the air, waving back and forth to the beat. In the center of the room were the students, the girls dressed in little, tight dresses and the guys dressed in button-downs, the tops of their muscular chests revealed, their legs in tight black jeans. Everyone smelled of cologne and perfume, sweat and sex, and of course, booze. Celeste and I fell into the sea of them and ground against each other, swaying and lifting our hands into the air and crying out. At the end of the third song, Celeste grabbed my shoulders and squeezed hard and said, “God! I needed this.”

  Suddenly, Peter slung up behind her and wrapped his hands around her waist. She shrieked and leaped around and placed her lips over his immediately. Jealousy—not for what they were, but for the fact that I didn’t have it—wrapped around my throat. Course, I wanted to dismiss it immediately. It didn’t matter.

  Quintin, Raphael, and Ezra lurked around the edge of the dance floor. Sometimes, I spotted one of them at the center of the pulsing crowd, dancing by himself. When a girl approached, he kind of shuffled to the side, getting rid of her. I tried to make eye contact with Raphael when I found him out there, just a few people away from me. But as I cut closer to him, yearning for his body close to mine, he disappeared through the crowd again. There was a sudden hiss in my ear: “Not so fucking hot now, are you, bitch?”

  I flashed around to find Margot glaring at me, her nostrils flared. She rotated her hips to the beat with beauty; each motion overtly sexual in a way I imagined only a Frenchwoman could craft.

  “Get the fuck away from me,” I shot back.

  “Where am I supposed to go?” she asked. She tossed her head left, right, her beautiful hair flowing out behind her. The crowd seemed to thicken around us, pushing us close together. She reached out to grab my hips, trying to grind herself against me the way Celeste and I had been dancing. But I flashed my hands out to shove her away from me.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me,” I blared. The music covered up most of my gritty voice so that nobody else could hear me but her.

  Margot’s grin widened. “I love it when you get this angry. You look absolutely crazy. And those eyes...”

  My eyes had started to glow. With all the energy I could muster, I shot out of the crowd and grabbed Celeste’s arm. I felt all fizzy from the champagne as I looked up at her from a very long distance below.

  “You okay?” Celeste asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any more champagne?” I gasped, my hand wrapped around my throat.

  Celeste led me toward the coat area, where we’d left the bottle of soda-champagne inside her purse. She grabbed her purse and together, we snaked off into the black night. When we reached the outside, we both drank several mouthfuls of champagne without speaking. The moonlight glowed across our cheeks, both sinister and friendly, depending on your view of it. After I threw back another mouthful, Celeste said, “Are you cool if I go back inside? I want to keep dancing with Peter.”

  I nodded. I kind of slept-walked back in behind her, feeling dragged back into the madness. My heart pumped loudly, the sound of it joining up with the beat of the DJ table. As I walked through the doorway, I spotted Margot pressed hard against some older warlock guy, their lips locked. Her eyes were closed. A surge of jealousy shot through me again. When I kissed anyone, when I touched anyone—it was a whole. Fucking. Deal. Margot could just flit through life, having whatever she wanted. Being whatever she wanted. Disappearing and reappearing across the Atlantic, whatever.

  Suddenly, I felt a jolt as someone pressed something hard into my hand and then forced my fingers around to clamp on it. I turned quickly, but whoever had done it disappeared back into the crowd in a split-second. By this time, Celeste and Peter were far away from me, dancing and kissing near the Christmas Tree. I felt extraordinarily alone.

  I lifted my hand and opened it to find a folded-up piece of paper. I glanced around to see if anyone watched me, but everyone’s eyes seemed elsewhere. Even Quintin, Raphael, and Ezra were far off on the other side of the ballroom.

  I unfolded the paper, my heart in my throat.

  Meet me on the football field in 10 minutes. I have a gift for you.

  Quintin

  What the fuck?

  I tore my head back toward Quintin, who had leaned forward to whisper something in Raphael’s ears. A bit drunk, wild, eager to be touched again, to be kissed—god, this fucking ball had reminded me of just how alone I was—I folded the paper back and turned toward the door.

  Quintin wanted to see me.

  He had a gift for me.

  There had been something between us. Something deep. Something I couldn’t describe with only words.

  He’d felt it too.

  Raphael, Ezra, and Quintin—they’d all come back to school because they’d been pulled by some kind of other force.

  Was it really possible that that feeling had been all about me?

  When I reached the darkness outside the school, I held onto my elbows and glanced back toward the ballroom. Should I wait for Quintin to leave? I wondered. But I thought about that image: me, waiting like an idiot for him to shoot out of there. Me, waiting, hungry—wanting him.

  What the fuck did I actually want?

  I decided to head over to the football field to wait for him. I squeezed the little piece of paper harder and harder, my eyes flashing left and right as I cut through the campus. The grass was dewy and my ankles were wet as the field came into view.

  The football field was admittedly a lot like the field back at Hillside Falls. It was just as bright green, with a large scoreboard off to the side, and two large goal posts on either side. I’d only made it to two games throughout the fall season, and Celeste and I had giggled, watching as the footballer players struggled not to use the magic that they could so easily dip into, to play a sport invented by humans to destroy one another.

  I stood out at the side of the field and blinked across the massive green. It seemed almost like another dimension, a football field at night. The light was way too unnatural, way too bright, and the grass was impressively fake, turf that seemed almost heinous.

  I waited for about three minutes, turning continually toward the ballroom for some sign of Quintin. But in my weird, hazy, anxious moments, I realized, with a jolt, that there seemed to be some sort of wrapped gift on the very centerline of the football field. It was cartoonish, with an enormous red bow on top, and silver wrapping paper that reflected the football field lights.

  I was hesitant. Sure, Quintin had written he had a gift for me—but I’d expected him there, bright-eyed and (hopefully partially, at least a little) in love with me, ready to bare his soul.

  I walked toward the package, my heart thudding. As I drew closer, I was flooded with dread. There was something really off about the package. It was about a foot and a half tall and a foot and a half wide, way bigger than anything normal, like a bracelet or a little trinket.

  A minute or two later, I deduced that Quintin himself probably wouldn’t make it. This meant that it was just me and this package, nothing else. But did I dare open it?

  Don’t be stupid.

  The voice rang out through my skull. I swallowed, lifted my shoe off my foot, and then tossed the shoe at the box. The box shifted back and forth and erupted with the sound of hissing.

  Oh, gre
at. Another fucking snake.

  Panic overtook me. I fell to my knees and blinked at the massive box, hardly able to imagine what kind of snake lurked inside. Slowly, I grabbed my shoe and slipped it back on my feet. I now operated outside the bounds of my body and mind—like something else had given me power in order to keep moving.

  I rushed back toward the campus housing. By the time I reached where the teachers lived, big, fat tears had rolled down my cheeks. I swatted them away as best as I could and then burst up the steps. Professor Dracoriant was Quintin’s professor—one who specialized in dragons and other creatures of the magical world. I’d heard only a few things about the guy: one, that he was incredibly old, two: that people hadn’t seen him transform into a dragon in years and years, and three: that he was very kind, maybe overly kind, given the cruelty of the supernatural world.

  When I entered the foyer, I closed my eyes and focused on the image of the man’s face: filled with crevices, with wrinkles, his eyes twinkling. With this image, I could feel the “center” of where the man was inside the dormitory—lurking up on the third floor, still a bit awake, peering into the darkness....

  I burst up the stairs, genuinely shocked that I’d been able to see him like that. When I appeared at his door, however, he opened it first, blinking down at me with confusion.

  “I felt you coming,” he informed me, as I stood, gasping in front of him. His eyes turned over my little black gown, my curled hair, my blotchy makeup. “Ivy Whitestone.” He studied me for a moment. He’d said my name—not like a question, but like he’d been expecting me all this time. “Would you like to come in?”

  “There isn’t time,” I told him. Between gasps of air, I explained what I’d found on the football field and what I suspected was inside the box.

  Without bothering to dress in anything other than his silky button-up pajamas, Professor Dracoriant grabbed a jacket and stabbed his feet into boots. He walked much quicker down the stairs than I would have imagined, just kind of lurching down until we reached the bottom. Once there, he stabbed his cane into the swampy grass outside and we set off for the football field.