Actually, the concert is free, but I’ve got a blanket and picnic basket and I was wondering if you wanted to—”
I click the phone off before he can finish his question. I know exactly what he was going to ask, and there’s no way I can say yes.
Slipping the phone into my pocket, I get out of the car and climb the creaking staircase up to the loft.
Girls like me can’t date. Imagine, sitting down to a nice dinner and catching a whiff of rotten meat. It’s not like I could say,
My phone rings again and I ignore it. The situation isn’t going to change. Girls like me have to be alone.
I toss my ringing phone onto the couch and head to the fridge. Maybe some dinner will help clear my mind. I yank open the freezer door. It’s stocked with a month’s supply of frozen dinners.
I grab a turkey-and-stuffing box, tear it open, and pop it into the microwave. While the microwave whirrs and my dinner spins hypnotically in circles, I can’t help feeling more alone than I’ve ever felt. Not only because Ursula, my one and only true friend in this world, is being held prisoner. Not only because I’ve discovered I have two long- lost sisters, one of whom is safe at home with her loving family and the other who wants nothing to do with me. Not only because I can never, in any conceivable universe, let Nick or any other ordinary human boy close enough to discover the true me. Not only because I’m not even sure who the true me is anymore.
No, I feel completely and utterly alone because, for the first time since the day I realized my adoptive parents were abusive trash and I was better off on the streets than with them, I don’t
And I can’t imagine anything more dangerous. For me or for him.
The microwave beeps, and the jarring sound pulls me from self-pity into the real world. It’s like I have an instantaneous moment of absolute clarity.
“I know how to find Sthenno,” I blurt out to the empty kitchen.
Without another thought for my dinner, I grab my phone, jacket, and keys and dash back to Moira at full speed. My best chance of finding Ursula’s sister is the same person who told me I was destined for greater things than what Phil and Barb had planned.
The oracle.
The storefront looks exactly as I remember. Plain, non-descript, with dark velvet curtains that might have been red at one time blocking any view inside. Hanging in the door is a small wooden sign that reads FORTUNES TOLD, with a line of ancient-looking letters below: ??????n.
At twelve I thought they were magical symbols. Now I recognize the text as ancient Greek: ORACLE.
Just as before, the place looks deserted from the outside. A thick layer of grime covers the windows, no light shines through even the tiniest crack in the curtains or door, and there is no sign indicating whether the place is open or even when it might be. But I know, in the same unnatural way I knew four years ago, that she’s inside.
I walk up to the door, grab the tarnished brass knob, and twist. The door glides open like it floats on air. Except for the streetlight streaming in the now-open door, the space inside is dark as night.
“You came back,” a gravelly voice says from the void. “I knew you would.”
She steps into the beam of light, looking the same as before. Long black robes swirling around her tiny frame. Long black hair falling down her back in thick waves. Long beaked nose protruding out from a haggard and wrinkled face. She looks like an evil witch from a child’s fairy tale.
“I know what you came for,” she says, her voice crackling.
“I’m sure you do.”
When I passed her door four years ago, taking the long way home from the grocery store to avoid going by Phil’s favorite bar, I was desperate. Searching for any light at the end of the dark tunnel I saw my life becoming. The nameless fortune-teller greeted me, as she did now, with the promise of things I wanted to know.
She led me to a table in the back room, studied my palm, and told me I was marked for a great destiny. Despite my protests, she insisted I had to run away, to get away from the people who kept me from greatness.
I thought it was all garbage until she said, “The creatures are your future.”
No one but Phil and Barb knew I saw monsters, and they beat it into me that I was crazy to say so. But this woman knew, and she thought it was important.
That night I ran away.
Ursula found me a few weeks later. All of Olympus, she later explained, received reports when an oracle—a fortuneteller—read prophecy to a lost descendant. My visit to this oracle four years ago sent immediate red flags up around the mythological world.
Because Ursula had been paying close attention, anticipating my appearance, she found me first.
Walking into this place again brings all those memories flooding back. It’s amazing how much my life has changed since then, and all because of this woman’s reading.
“Then tell me,” I say, stepping inside and closing the door. “Tell me what I want to know.”
Even though my eyes aren’t adjusted to the dark, I sense her turning and walking to the back. I follow her into the same room where my path shifted four years ago.
“Sit, sit,” she says, waving at the table as she lights the candles scattered around the room.
When there is a soft ambient glow illuminating the round table and the otherwise empty space, she takes the other chair and sits across from me.
“First,” she says, a hint of an old-world accent rolling the word, “you wish to find the sister.”
I don’t ask how she knows. She just does.
“Yes, that’s right.”
From the folds of her robes she pulls out a piece of paper. As she smoothes it onto the table, I see that it’s a map. While I’m studying it, identifying it as a map of San Francisco, she pulls another object out of her folds. A small, pointed crystal at the end of a gold chain.
“We must concentrate,” she says, dangling the crystal over the map. “Focus your mind on the woman you seek.”
I do my best, spending the next few minutes thinking about Sthenno and where she might be and what I’m going to do once I find her. But my mind keeps drifting to Ursula, to the news of her capture and her real identity.
“Psha!” the fortune-teller spits, jerking the crystal and stuffing it back into its hidden pocket. “You do not focus.”
I don’t bother denying it. I’m trying, but my mind is just too full, I guess.
“There is another way.” She peers at me in the faint light. “Blood.”
“Blood?” I echo. “Whose blood?”
“Yours.”
I meet her unwavering gaze for a long moment. Then, knowing I don’t really have another choice, I reach down and pull the dagger from my boot. In one swift movement, I slice a line down the center of my palm—my right palm—drawing a fine trail of healing blood from my flesh.
“Here,” I say, holding out my hand as I slip the dagger back into my boot. “Does this work?”
She nods. With craggy, gnarled fingers, she folds my hand into a fist and wraps her hands around mine. Holding it over the map, she squeezes tightly until a single drop of blood drips from the bottom of my fist.
Releasing my hand, she pushes the map at me. “There, it is revealed.”
I wipe my palm on my pants as I look at the map. The single drop of blood landed in the marina district, only a few blocks from my loft. With a shaking finger, I smear the blood away and read the name of the building beneath.
Alpha Academy. Grace’s school.
Well, at least now we know where to look. Sthenno is someone at her school.
“Good?” the fortune-teller asks.
I nod, taking the map and folding it into one of my cargo pockets.
“The other question,” she says. “The one you are afraid to ask.”
