Oracle's Moon

17

I love you too, Grace had said, and that was a far more radical thing than simply calling him friend.

Too.

As if she had already known something he hadn’t.

Khalil held himself tensely while he watched Grace sleep. How had this young human woman become so precious to him so quickly? It had happened in less than two weeks. A mere handful of days.

He had been at war with Lethe for longer than some civilizations had existed. Often he had taken years to decide where he might go on vacation. When he had met Leo Tolstoy in 1906, the Russian novelist had intrigued him so much, Khalil decided he would consider reading War and Peace, and he had still not yet made up his mind. It wasn’t that he was indecisive; he simply had no reason to rush anything.

He had never bothered to count time before, but he started to now, and it began with counting each breath she took. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest in agonized amazement. She would take only a limited number of breaths in her lifetime, and then she would stop breathing forever. Max and Chloe, those bright-eyed baby birds, would live for such a short, short while.

Once he had thought they lived such small lives, outside of politics and world concerns and violent struggles for dominion and Power. Now he realized how big their lives really were, because their lives were everything that mattered. They were the only thing that mattered. The joyous surprise in each discovery they made together was more precious than the treasure of kings, more suspenseful than the most spectacular of car chases, more beautiful than the most exotic of landscapes.

He studied Grace with meticulous care. As uneasy as it made him, the patterning of her light, fiery energy entwined with the dark Power really was quite beautiful. The pattern flexed and breathed, a part of her living presence, flowing through her life. He had been worried that the darkness would taint the Power she had been born with, dull the bright strength that was so uniquely hers, but it didn’t appear to be doing that. In fact, it looked like the dark Power reinforced what had already been there.

How would it change her? Was he right? Was she actually becoming the Oracle in a way that none of the others that came before her had?

As he had told her, he was no healer, nor was he any expert on human physiology, but he still examined her body as carefully as he knew how, to see if the Power changes might be toxic to her in any way. She appeared perfectly healthy to him, her young body strong and filled with vitality.

Her cheeks were flushed with a soft rose. He noticed that her thick eyelashes were a rich, tawny mink, darker than her short, fine red-gold hair and eyebrows. Her hair would probably never lie down in a sleek cap, because she was always running her fingers through it. The rucked bedsheet was only partially tucked around her torso, exposing a generously rounded, pink-tipped breast.

He let his gaze trail along the graceful dip of her spine to where it disappeared under the cover, noting how the sheet followed the swell of her round, firm ass.

He remembered the taste of her desire, the feel of her delicate, stiff little clitoris against his tongue, the exquisitely curved petals of her labia, and how she sucked in those precious shocked breaths of hers as he ravished, sucked, licked her everywhere, everywhere, and the interplay of her physical pleasure with the vibrancy of pleasure in her spirit was so goddamn beautiful it was symphonic, ineffable. Then her remarkable spirit had opened wide as he had pushed into her welcoming body, and he had fallen into her so far he could not imagine how he would ever wish to come out again.

And he needed to know, needed to know, what it was like to take her, human skin to human skin, but he had squandered too much of his energy earlier on foolish, useless things, and he would not be able to fall deeper into flesh again until he had rested and fed.

He wanted to stroke her all over, but that would disturb her sleep, and she needed to rest. He held his hand a few inches over her head and imagined, remembered, what the silk of her hair felt like. Then he clenched his hand into a fist and struggled to tamp down the desire raging through him, because it was really quite extraordinary that she could sense that too, and if he didn’t control himself, he might wake her up that way as well. She was the most alive and sensitive creature he had ever met.

Even though he tried, she still sensed something. She stirred and murmured. Without fully waking up, she reached up to take his hand and pull his arm around her. He sank down, wrapping his body around her while surrounding her with his presence.

You destroyed me, she had said.

If that was true, she had destroyed him as well.

He was too old to have allowed just anybody to do so. He did not think he would have allowed her, except that those incredible, loving children had acted as a stealthy vanguard and stole their way into his heart. When he dropped his defenses and opened up to them, Grace somehow became the engine that drove his existence.

He buried his face in her flyaway cloud of hair.

I love you too.

Love.

Too.

He drifted, resting until the sun broke over the horizon. Then he began to absorb energy from it. He could get more nourishment faster if he shifted out into direct sunlight, but he felt too lazy and comfortable to move.

Grace shifted and sighed, and her presence came to alertness. At least somewhat. “I might have figured.”

Excellent. Now that she was awake, he let himself do what he had been wanting to do for hours and hours. He stroked down the curve of her back. “Might have figured what? I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No,” she murmured. She rubbed her eyes. “With the kids gone, I thought I would be able to sleep past dawn for once, but I think they’ve got me trained too well.”

She felt so warm and soft. He pressed a kiss to the sleek curve of her shoulder blade. “Do you want to try to go back to sleep?”

She shook her head and reached behind to stroke his hair.

Desire lit a slow-burning fuse. “Good,” he muttered. “Because I’ve been waiting such a long time to do this.” He cupped her breast and flicked the tip of his finger over the distended tip of her nipple. “Hours and hours. And hours.”

She groaned and arched, pushing herself into his grip. He squeezed and caressed her as he ran his teeth along the sensitive cord at the base of her neck, and she shuddered all over. He felt her go into a meltdown, the core of her gushing with molten heat. Her presence twined around his, and her hunger for him was so damn sexy it incinerated every one of his intentions for going slowly and gently.

He rose over her as he pulled her onto her back. She wound her arms around him, her fine features etched with passion, and gods, it was such a damn fine thing to have a hard cock to push inside of her. He had the presence of mind to make sure she was moist and ready for him, and then he entered her, and she was tight as a fist, and he need, need, needed to know what that felt like when he wore a more human skin.

But for now he dug in as deep as he could, and he couldn’t wait to go slow. Because he had to take advantage of the things he did have right now, and he was so damn greedy for everything she could give him, he licked on her nipples, and yanked at her hair so her head tilted back, then he bit at her neck and suckled ravenously at that exquisite little bud at the core of her pleasure while he thrust his hard cock into her.

Then she screamed again. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Her climax convulsed her body and threw her spirit wide open. He dove into her, a silent spear of need, and then his own cascade of pleasure took him over.

For an endless, pulsating moment, he couldn’t see or hear. When he came back to himself, slowly, she was sucking in air in rapid gasps as she clung to him. Her gaze was unfocused and tears streaked from the corners of her eyes. He sank a fist into her hair and kissed her while he ground against the gorgeous, swollen flower of her body, and she squealed, a helpless, surprised sound, and climaxed again.

The fabulous pleasure rippled out of her, into him, and he sent it back into her, growling.

Again, he said in her head.

In her head, in her body, in her spirit. In. He pushed in.

She shook all over. “I can’t—I can’t—”

You can. Gracie, give it to me again. He bit her neck and sucked her hard and washed over her in a sheet of flame, and this time she sobbed out loud when she came.

He came with her. He came with her every step of the way. Power to Power, presence to presence. For an uncounted amount of time they floated together, entwined. Then she fell back into her body, and he returned to himself, wrapped around her again, with her and yet alone.

She huddled against him, and he covered her. She was shivering. He went with her there too, as the muscles in his body quivered. He realized his fist was still clenched in her hair. He would probably have to do something about that sometime. For now he held on.

“I think I went blind that time,” she whispered.

Her lips were swollen and trembling. He covered her mouth with his, caressing her gently. He wished he knew how to describe to her what he felt.

I started counting time for you.

I want to change who I am for you.

You are my Grace.

He was too full, and there weren’t enough words.

He said, “I did not know I needed grace until I met you.”

Then as she held him tightly, he knew that what he said had been enough.

He settled back against the pillows and pulled her into his arms, so that her head was on his shoulder. She hooked her leg up, resting it across his hips. He drifted that way, and she dozed until close to eight o’clock. “I have to get moving,” she said. “I told Katherine I would pick up the kids around ten.”

“There’s plenty of time,” he said lazily.

She groaned and rolled onto her back. “No, there isn’t. I want to go to the store before I pick them up. I promised Chloe some glow-in-the-dark stars for their ceiling, and I want to buy them a little inflatable pool so they can play in some water today. They’ve been too cooped up in the house lately.”

He sighed, stretched and accepted the inevitable. “That sounds like a good day,” he told her. “And I have people to see and things to discover.”

“I would say be careful, but…” She rubbed her face and looked sideways at him. “Maybe instead I should say, please don’t start an inter-demesne incident.”

He smiled.

She pointed at him. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

He snatched at her hand before she could pull away, and he kissed her finger.

In the bathroom, water started to gush in the tub. Grace startled and frowned. Khalil told her, “I started a bath for you.”

Her mouth opened. Then shut. She said faintly, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Do not fret about me. Pick up the kids and enjoy your day, and I will see you later, if that is acceptable. May I use your computer while you bathe?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling at him. Her multicolored eyes glowed in the morning light. She looked so beautiful in that moment, unself-conscious in her nudity. The sheet was tangled around her legs, her hair stood up in feathery tufts, and her face was marked with sleeplessness, but this time she was not, by any means, pale. Her smile turned into a grin. “Do you know, I think that ‘thank-you’ sailed totally past you this time.”

He cocked his head as he considered her words. “Indeed.”

He kissed her fast and paused just long enough to watch pleasure bloom in her expression before he created clothing for himself, another pair of jeans and a black T-shirt this time, and he strode downstairs. It didn’t take him very long to find out where Therese lived. He checked Grace’s babysitting roster, memorized Therese’s phone number and used a reverse phone lookup to get her address.

He turned off Grace’s computer, then he dematerialized and streamed out of the house. Once outside, the sun was so bright and hot, he drifted for a while and basked as he soaked up the plentiful nourishment. When he felt quite energized again, he went in search of a certain nosy human.

A human who disrespected the bargain she had struck with his human. His lover, his Grace.

And if there was one thing Khalil hated, it was when someone disrespected or reneged on a bargain.

Therese lived in a modest-sized house with a fenced-in backyard, in a neighborhood with tree-lined streets. Khalil wasn’t very familiar with Louisville, but he did recognize in the distance one of the famous spires from the Churchill Downs racetrack. He surveyed the house and immediate area from above as he floated down. The driveway was empty. Therese appeared to be gone. Her house winked with flecks of Power.

It was as unwise to rush into a place filled with unknown magic as it was to rush into a place filled with unknown wards. Either Therese was a competent witch, or she knew someone who was, because all of the entrances to her house were spelled, front and back doors, her windows, even the chimney.

He studied the spells thoughtfully. They seemed like they might be sensitive enough to be triggered by his presence. He didn’t think they would hurt him so much as alert someone if he triggered them.

He was interested to know who they might alert. He was even more interested in the fact that the spells felt bright and shining, like newly minted coins. Why would Therese recently feel the need to spell her windows, doors and even her chimney?

Perhaps Khalil had not made a favorable impression on her when they met.

He lowered down and slowly circled the house from a few feet away at the ground level. The house was not so new. However, both it and the detached garage were nicely maintained, and the flowers and shrubbery in the yard were quite charming and well tended.

There. A small vent for a clothes dryer protruded from the exterior wall, a few feet above the ground. It was covered with a grill and an aluminum flap, but those barriers did not matter in the slightest to him. The vent was not covered with a spell. He thought perhaps someone should tell Therese about that.

He attenuated his presence and flowed into the vent, through the dryer, and materialized in a small laundry room. There were no living presences in the house, so he strolled out of the laundry room and found himself in a kitchen filled with a great many things.

The walls were covered with hangings and framed pictures. There was a rooster clock and a smiling creature made of cloth with denim clothes and straw for hair and button eyes. There were cartoon cows interspersed throughout. A red-and-white checked cloth covered the table where two small ceramic chickens sat, one with the letter S and the other with the letter P. A pink jar fashioned like a pig sat on the counter. The word COOKIES was printed on its round belly.

Really, he did not understand the pig thing.

The jar had a lid shaped like a puffy white hat. He lifted the lid and looked inside. It was, indeed, filled with cookies. How logical. He took one, sniffed it and tried a cautious bite. It was brown, sweet, and had a spicy kick.

He ate the cookie as he walked through the house. He paused in the hall by the front door to flip through Therese’s mail—bills, cards, clothing catalogs and a solicitation from a political group called the Humanist Party. Therese liked stinky colored leaves and dried flowers that she kept in a bowl on the hall table. She had a small computer station in one corner of the living room, and a large flat-screen TV in another corner. He turned on the laptop and left it to power up as he continued his search.

Therese also liked a lot of pillows, and she had a lot of dolls. She really had a lot of dolls. Dolls on shelves, dolls in glass cabinets. Dolls with curly blonde hair and frilly dresses, cloth dolls, plastic dolls, baby dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls both new and old. He lost interest in counting them after he reached a hundred. In her bedroom, she had twenty pillows on her bed of varying shapes, sizes, colors and patterns, and over thirty dolls were arranged in front of them. Some of the dolls sparked with magic.

Khalil was inclined to think this was strange. He was almost bored, and he really wanted to go back to Grace and watch the kids splash in a small pool, but he was also curious. Down the short hall, he found a bathroom (there were dolls in the bathroom too, which he found totally incomprehensible), and a half-closed door that led to a darkened room that held most of the Power in the house. Carefully he eased the door open further and looked inside.

There were so very many dolls. By this point he was beyond surprise. There was a workbench with a tall stool and a lamp, and parts of dolls on the bench, along with clay, jars of powders and liquids, bowls and measuring implements, a pestle and mortar, dried herbs, and candles and a smudge bowl with something half burned in it.

Ah. No wonder Therese had a thing for dolls. She worked sympathetic magic, and she made poppets. Khalil stepped closer to the workbench, studying everything without touching it. While he was no expert on human magics, it appeared Therese was accomplished at her craft. Someone could do a great deal of damage with poppet magic, and also a great deal of good. Several human cultures had magic systems that used poppets, from early Egypt, to West African fetishes and New Orleans voodoo.

Had Therese collected anything of Grace’s or the children’s to use in poppets, when she had snooped through their things? Just the possibility made Khalil want to raze her house to the ground so completely that not a single cornerstone was left standing.

Tires crunched on gravel outside. He blew to the window nearest the driveway in time to see Therese climb out of her car. She collected her purse and a few grocery bags from the trunk. As she headed for the front of the house, he flowed into the kitchen, materialized to lean against the counter and waited for her. He helped himself to another cookie as she unlocked the front door. He chewed and listened to her heels click on the floor.

Then she rounded the corner, caught sight of him, dropped everything and screamed.

He took a last bite of cookie and said, “Hello, Therese.”

She whirled to run. He stood in her way. She screamed again and spun to lunge for the back door, only suddenly he stood there too, blocking it. He watched her coldly, his arms crossed. A nice man probably would have felt bad at causing her panic. But Khalil remembered her digging through Grace’s things, and he wasn’t a nice man at all.

Therese flushed a deep red then turned pasty white. Her hands shook, and her eyes darted around. “H-how did you get in? All the entrances were spelled!”

Someone ought to tell her about the dryer vent, but it wouldn’t be Khalil. He said, “I should have followed up with you before this, but I’ve been busy. You might not know it to look at me, but I do have a day job.”

“You’re going to be sorry you broke in,” Therese spat.

“Am I?” He regarded her, almost with interest. “Probably not before you’re sorry you dug through Grace’s things. What were you looking for?”

“Nothing!”

“The thing about panic,” said Khalil, “is that it lessens one’s ability to lie, especially to someone who has an exceedingly well developed truthsense.”

“My gods, I was just looking for a pen and a piece of paper!”

In the next moment, he held her pinned by the throat against the wall. He hissed, “You would not be lying unless the answer mattered.”

“I was only looking for information!” she sobbed. “That’s all, I swear it!”

“What information?” Max and Chloe—his babies—had been playing innocently the whole time.

“I was looking to see if Isalynn LeFevre had contacted Grace!”

He was so angry, and it would be so easy to close his hand tighter and crush her windpipe. He barely held himself in check. “Why?”

“I don’t know why.” Something must have shown on his face or maybe his fingers started to tighten, because she screamed, “I don’t know why! Gods damn you freaksome bastard, someone asked me to check!”

“Who?”

“Brandon Miller!”

Brandon, from Grace’s work day yesterday. There was the connection to follow, and it wasn’t even difficult. His hand relaxed. “How convenient,” Khalil said. “He was next on my list.”

She regarded him with equal amounts of loathing and fear. But he was not at all interested in that, and now he had what he wanted from her.

“I like your cookies,” he told her as he tied her to a kitchen chair. He didn’t bother with a complicated binding since he didn’t plan on leaving her alone for long. He dissipated and flowed out the dryer vent, and as soon as he had rematerialized, he tugged on the connection that led to Ismat.

The other Djinn streaked toward him and formed in front of him. This time the Djinn chose the form of a dark-skinned, stocky male, with hawkish features and a twinkle in his starred eyes. “If you keep up this impetuous spending spree,” said Ismat, “you will convince all the younger Djinn that the sky is falling. Everyone will rush to call in all their favors, and our venerable society will collapse.”

Khalil didn’t smile. He said, “I’m asking you to agree to an open-ended favor that will cancel out the rest of what you owe me. I trust you, and you’re one of the few people I would call friend. I need you to help me, and I’m not yet sure what that means. Are you willing and able to pay your debt this way?”

The other Djinn’s merry expression faded. “Of course. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it involves Grace and the children.” He explained rapidly. “I need to find out where Brandon lives, and somebody needs to do something with Therese. I don’t know what, question her to see if she knows anything else or take her to the witches’ sheriff’s office, except I’m not sure yet if she’s actually broken any laws. I almost killed her, but Grace asked me not to start an inter-demesne incident.”

Ismat turned toward the house. “I’ll take care of her.”

Khalil started to dematerialize then paused. “I almost forgot—you’ll want to enter the house through the clothes dryer vent. She has all the doors and windows spelled. I’m not sure who would be alerted if the spells are tripped, but I prefer not to broadcast our intentions.”

“Got it,” Ismat said. “Good hunting.”

It took Khalil longer to find Brandon Miller’s house than it had for him to find Therese’s. He called his Djinn associate with the facility for information gathering on the Internet, and he did something he rarely did any more—he bargained away a favor for information.

His contact got back to him quickly. Brandon didn’t live in the city. He owned a twenty-five-acre property about a half hour’s car drive south of the Louisville International Airport. As soon as Khalil had the details, he took off.

It took some effort to locate the property. While he searched, Khalil’s sense of unease deepened. Grace had said that Olivia thought the other witches from Saturday had known each other very well. If Olivia was correct, what did that mean? Why would they all wish to work on Grace’s property together?

Why would they wish for other witches to stay away while they did so?

Why did Brandon want to know if Isalynn LeFevre had contacted Grace?

Even though Brandon’s property wasn’t marked with so much as a mailbox, Khalil finally located it. A long gravel drive led back through a tangle of old-growth forest. The day had turned into a bright afternoon, and a fierce humid heat lay heavily across the land like a dense fog. He traveled through the forest carefully, all his senses wide open for sparks of Power that could be traps.

He found plenty of them. The land was layered with traps overlaid on traps. There were so many magical and physical traps, he stopped trying to gain information by slipping through the forest. Instead he soared over the land until he spotted a small cluster of buildings well away from the road. A large vegetable garden bordered the buildings, along with a chicken coop.

He drifted down as gently as a snowflake, spreading his presence so thin, almost nobody would have been able to sense him. Nobody except for his extraordinary Grace.

There were three older, rusted vehicles near the buildings, but none of them looked like they were in drivable condition. The main building was the house. He slipped close and listened, but he didn’t hear anyone stirring. It appeared Brandon was not at home. As he circled the house, he glanced in the windows at a cluttered interior. One room had several brightly colored signs stacked against the wall and piles of posters and buttons on a table, all with the American flag rippling in the background. Some signs had the slogan: THE HUMANIST PARTY. Others read: JAYDON GUTHRIE FOR HEAD OF THE WITCHES.

A couple of large dogs napped on a covered porch. He took care not to disturb them, in case someone was actually in the house where he could not see them. Some dogs and certain other animals were very sensitive to a Djinn’s presence.

He slipped away and scouted out the other buildings. One was an unused barn with a roof that was falling in. Another was a toolshed filled with a variety of implements and machines, and an aluminum ladder lying on the ground against one outside wall. Even that building had wards glowing on it. Brandon cared for his possessions. The only building that didn’t have wards or other sparks of Power was the rotting barn.

Khalil twisted in a circle, his attention sharpening. The barn really was the only building without sparks of Power glowing on it somewhere. Was there nothing in the building that Brandon wanted to protect?

Khalil really had no reason to go looking in the barn except for his terminal case of Djinn curiosity. He slid inside through a gap in the wooden wall. The interior was deeply shadowed. Cobwebs floated in the air. The bones of yet another vehicle sat inside. The metal lines of its body were heavy and rounded. It had no engine, wheels or seats. Thick dust coated the vehicle and the barn’s pitted floor, along with mice droppings.

A wooden ladder with broken rungs led to a loft. He floated up, intending to exit the barn through the hole in one corner of the roof.

That was when he discovered the loft wasn’t dusty or empty.

He whipped toward it. The repairs to the loft floor had not been visible from below. Fresh planks of wood covered the old floor in places. A new workbench was pushed against one wall made of wood planks as raw as the repairs to the floor. There was also a stool and battery-operated lantern, but that was as close as it came to any resemblance to Therese’s work area.

This workbench was littered with a variety of hand-tools, a blowtorch, wires and other bits of knobby, oddly shaped metal. Nothing felt magical. Khalil materialized in front of the bench. Frowning, he picked up a length of thin, flexible pipe and turned it over in his hands.

How did the human get into the loft in the first place? He saw no point of entry for an embodied creature unless it had wings. To one side of the loft, there was an opening in the wall, covered with a large wooden flap, but that looked as dilapidated and unused as most of the rest of the barn. The only other point of entry was a filth-streaked window.

He walked over to look closer and discovered fresh scratch marks on the sill. Looking out the smudged pane, he could see one end of the nearby toolshed. A corner of the aluminum ladder was just visible.

He returned to the bench. To say that he was not mechanically minded would probably be one of the biggest understatements anyone could make in a year.

Something had been constructed. Or perhaps something was going to be constructed. But what? He didn’t have a clue.

And why go to all this trouble to hide it?