A Shade of Vampire 43: A House of Mysteries(3)

I nodded gratefully at her suggestion. Having all of us together would make me feel a whole lot better, reminding me that I wasn’t alone in this. Even if, so far, it had just been me seeing visions and getting accosted in the bathroom by the Oracle, a whole team of us would deal with it—deal with anything that this stupid house chose to throw our way.

When Serena had gone, Aida turned to me.

“When you said she sounded desperate, what did you mean?” she asked. “Like she was in trouble, or we were?”

It was a good question. One I wasn’t sure I knew the answer to, not yet. I tried to recall everything just as it had happened, to move away from the shock and fear that her presence had brought up in me and remember the details.

“She just sounded frantic. And at the end, it was almost like something happened to cut her off—that her disappearance was against her will, not just because I hadn’t answered.”

Aida’s expression grew even more concerned. I knew what she was thinking. The Druid had told us that the Oracle was in the custody of Azazel—already that name struck fear in me, and I hadn’t come face-to-face with him yet. I didn’t even know enough that I could say for sure that what the Druid had told us was true. Azazel was the ruler of Eritopia. He owned and controlled the repugnant Destroyers that had killed one of the incubi while we were in the jungle, Bijarki only just narrowly escaping the same fate. If the Oracle had tried to contact us without Azazel’s permission, and been caught, she would be in danger. And so would we.

Before I could say anything more, the footsteps of the others came from the corridor. In the room next door, I heard a light thump, as if someone had dropped down onto the dusty floorboards. It must have been Field, coming in from the outside. Soon they were all gathered in our bedroom—Jovi looking sleep-rumpled with his black hair sticking up at odd angles. Phoenix and Field both stood leaning against the wall, Phoenix frowning with concern and Field looking wary, his eyes darting to the open windows as if he expected something to come flying through them at any moment. We were all on high alert.

Serena, never really able to sit still at the best of times, paced slowly up and down the room, chewing on her lip with worry.

“Vita,” she said, coming to a standstill, “you’d better start.”

With reluctance, I repeated the story again. I tried not to feel like a freak when the boys raised their eyebrows in surprise, staring at me as if they didn’t recognize me anymore. I knew it was most likely my imagination—especially when the surprise gave way to a deep concern.

“Are you okay?” Field asked, when I’d finished explaining my theory that it was the Oracle who was trying to reach out to us.

“Just shaken,” I replied evenly, not wanting anyone other than Serena and Aida to know how terrifying I’d found the whole thing. “And I want to know why she’s trying to reach out to us—and whether or not we speak to the Druid about it.”

Field shook his head.

“Not yet,” he replied. “I think we keep this to ourselves. Until we know what message she’s trying to pass on, I think it’s better if the Druid doesn’t know about it. Especially as she might be trying to help get us out of here.”

“I agree,” Phoenix added. “We don’t know how much we can trust him—if at all.”

“There’s more,” Serena added, resuming her pacing. “When I went downstairs to try to syphon off him, he woke and took me through to a laboratory he has—it’s behind a hidden door in the basement room.” I shuddered, thinking of the old-fashioned hospital beds that Phoenix, Aida and I had lain on while we were going through the transformation into Oracles. When we’d woken, I had thought for one crazy, horrible moment that we were in some kind of psych ward. I wasn’t a fan of the basement, even if it was the coolest room in the baking-hot house.

“There’s a flame in the room,” she continued, “it’s obviously some kind of magic—it rises from some rocks on the floor, but there’s no fuel or anything to burn. Anyway, he told me to look inside the flame, and I saw our families in the In-Between, leaving the fire star to return home. None of them…” She hesitated, turning her back to us as she walked the other way. “None of them know we’re missing. It’s almost like we never existed in the first place.”

“What?” Phoenix replied, his brow furrowing more deeply.

I waited for Serena to clarify what she meant. So far, none of what she’d said made any kind of sense to me. She began to repeat the conversations she’d heard between our parents. When she mentioned my mom and dad, I felt my body grow cold—as if the life was being sucked out of my veins.