“Yes. There is an Oracle on staff. A first cousin to my mother. He’s about twenty years older than me. When he joined Pythia under my grandmother, he negotiated an iron-clad contract that allows him to pick and choose which clients he works with and when. Under that contract, my parents have to be very selective of when and how to use him because Oracles don’t have a long career life.”
That doesn’t sound good. There was that pesky protective streak again. “Okay, you need to elaborate.”
She gave him a long, considering look before she answered. “Unlike with most mage-wielded abilities, Oracles don’t become better at mastering their abilities the more they use them—they can actually get worse.”
He frowned. “How does that work?”
She plucked at his T-shirt. “When an Oracle is asked to forecast, they don’t just ‘see’ one path but all the possible paths. Most of the time, an Oracle will stick to the clearest and most obvious path for their forecast, but sometimes an Oracle will go too deep into a seeing, losing track of the reason they’re forecasting in the first place. That’s when, if they’re not careful, it’s easy to take a wrong turn and get lost. Think of it like a tree of never-ending what-ifs. The trunk is the clearest path forward, but each choice a person makes forms a branch, and each branch leads to another choice, creating another branch, and so on.”
Picturing it, his brain ached. He couldn’t imagine having to live that reality.
Cass kept talking. “For an Oracle to get back to the trunk of reality, they have to be rooted in reality, but the more times they climb the tree and the farther out they go, the weaker the root becomes. In the cousin’s case, he’s got another five, maybe ten, years left so long as he doesn’t cascade out.”
The grimness of that last description set Grayson on edge. “Cascade out?”
“Being an Oracle requires a mental strength that can be difficult to maintain, which is why we train almost from the moment we can think and all through our lives,” she said somberly. “It’s our way of trying to strengthen that root holding us in the present. But if it splinters, so do we. It’s what we call a cascade, and the chances of recovering from it are slim.”
“This cascade thing—can you stop it once it starts?”
“You can if the Oracle has a strong enough anchor to pull them back.”
A chill raced down his spine and settled icy links around his chest. “And your parents wanted you to risk that possibility on a regular basis?”
“They did,” she confirmed. “I did not, and neither did my grandmother.”
“What the hell, Cass?” He didn’t bother hiding his revulsion at her parents’ attitude. “That’s some serious bullshit.”
She stayed quiet, and he realized this wasn’t the worst of it. “You said you were broken.” Something flared in her eyes, striking a chord in him. Before he could put a name to it, she pushed away from him. “And as I said before, that’s a story for later.”
Recognizing her self-recrimination and sorrow, he tightened his hold, keeping her at his side. He softened his tone. “Okay, we can circle back to how that came about, but for right now, I need to know—was it them that broke you?” If so, he’d make damn sure to severely limit how much air they got to share with her.
“Not them.” Her voice was rough. Then she swallowed hard and touched her tongue to her lips in a nervous tell. “That was all me.”
Chapter 9
Cass
As Grayson cruised through the parking lot of the Broken Hen the next morning, Cass scanned for her sister’s car. The sporty two-seater should have been easy to find in the sea of SUVs and sedans, but so far, no such luck.
“I think we beat them here,” she told Grayson while he pulled into a parking space.
“We’re about five minutes early.” He shut the car down, got out, and came around to meet her.
As they crossed the parking lot and headed toward the restaurant, Cass said, “She considers that late.”
“Could be that Russ drove.”
She gave a soft snort and adjusted her glasses. “Doubt it. She likes to be the one behind the wheel.”
They got to the door, and Grayson pulled it open, letting her go first. They hit the host station and the young man behind it. After exchanging greetings, Cass gave her sister’s name.
“This way, please,” the man said.
They followed him across the busy floor to the back door that led to a small outdoor patio surrounded by lush potted greenery and a couple of strategically positioned trees. Sunlight drifted through the foliage and chased dancing shadows over the handful of customers enjoying their meals as the low murmur of conversation filled the patio. She spotted Sofia and Russ drinking coffee at a table to the left. Sofia caught sight of her and lifted a hand in greeting while Russ pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head.
Cass returned Sofia’s wave as a breeze drifted through, ruffling the leaves of a nearby tree. For a disconcerting moment, Sofia’s welcoming smile turned into a distorted, almost skull-like grimace. Horror slid over Cass, bringing her to an abrupt stop, but then Grayson brushed a hand down her spine, and the shadows disappeared, leaving behind a frowning Sofia.
Grayson leaned in and asked quietly, “What’s wrong?”
