Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(3)

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, sweetie.” She paused to search for a scrap of paper in her purse and scribble a note on it. Joey and Rachel were Petra’s friend Katherine’s children. Katherine had been an immense help since Petra and Niko died, and Grace owed her a good six months’ of regular playdates, but she would never remember to make that call if she didn’t write it down.

Her leg was hurting worse than ever, and she was limping badly by the time she got the children and the groceries out to her battered car.

Instead of using the car insurance money from the accident to buy a new car, Grace had decided to fix up her own 1999 Honda Accord so that it ran more reliably. Then she spent the rest on replacing a leaky water heater. The property was a money pit. The house was not quite falling down around their ears, but a building that was over a hundred and fifty years old had constant issues.

At least Petra and Niko had replaced the old monster of a furnace last year with an energy efficient one, but the roof was in such poor shape, Grace didn’t think it would last another winter, and she honestly didn’t know what she was going to do about it.

The trip home was lost in a fog of exhaustion. She got the children inside first and set Max in his carrier down gently on the floor by the couch. Then she put some pretzels in a small plastic bowl for Chloe, along with milk in a small cup. Chloe was delighted to watch Dora for the ten thousandth time. Grace limped through the house to make sure that the child gate was secured properly at the foot of the stairs and that other doors were shut throughout the ground floor.

She left the door to Chloe and Max’s bedroom open so that Chloe could get to the toys stored in that room if she wanted. Then Grace turned on the floor fan in the living room. Running a fan was cheaper than running any of the three window air-conditioners in the house. After that she carried in the groceries.

There were four steps up to the porch. She thought of all the times she had blithely run up and down those steps, her young, strong body working so smoothly she never gave it a second’s thought. She would never take anything like that for granted again.

She had gone up the steps once with the children. If she stacked all of the grocery bags on the porch first, then she only had to climb up those four steps one more time. She stopped trying to think and let her mind float away on a sea of pain.

She had pushed too hard today. She would have liked to soak in the tub, except the tub was on the second floor. Getting herself and the kids up a full flight of stairs, along with the baby gate, sounded like climbing Mount Everest. She could wait until she put them down for the night and take the baby monitor upstairs with her, but she didn’t think she would last that long. She had a feeling that once she got the kids to bed, she would go out like a light. Thank the gods they were so small she could bathe them in the large, old-fashioned kitchen sink that evening without having to bend over or kneel. As for herself, she would have to wash again at the sink as well.

On the television Dora went in search of her lost teddy bear. Chloe ate pretzels, pretended to feed her doll and sang along with the show. The psychic air around the property seemed restless and full of spirits. Something about the Oracle’s presence, or the property, attracted them. The house was crowded with ghosts.

For some reason, a group of elderly women had been hanging out in the kitchen for the last couple of weeks. Grace didn’t recognize them, and she couldn’t quite make out what they said. Either the ghosts weren’t strong enough, or they didn’t have anything they felt passionately enough about to communicate clearly to her. She suspected they just enjoyed the children and the atmosphere of the old kitchen. Whatever the reason was for their presence, she liked their companionship. They felt worn, comfortable and faded, like an old, warm blanket. Concentrating on them helped to take her mind off her body’s misery.

Sometimes the ghosts that came to the house weren’t comfortable. Sometimes they were jagged presences, serrated with old malice and resentments, or still reverberating with the traumas from their lives.

Sometimes there was nothing else to do but chase the dark spirits off the property. She wasn’t Jennifer Love Hewitt, and this wasn’t the Ghost Whisperer, where angry ghosts somehow turned into nice people once they had a chance to settle misunderstandings or get grievances off their chests, and then all the happy ghosts moved on to a shiny afterlife at the end of an episode. Dark, angry spirits tended to be dark and angry because they held on to things. Given half a chance they also tended to linger, spreading their ill will and negativity throughout the property like a malaise.

The Power of the Oracle was the Power of prophecy. Prophecy, as it related to the Oracle, was neither fortune-telling nor divine revelation, but involved a sense of clairvoyance, or the ability to see beyond the five senses. If the petitioner asked after those who had passed, occasionally it could involve channeling the dead. The Power always passed to a female in the Andreas family, but not every female was an eligible candidate. The abilities of those who had the potential to become an Oracle often manifested in either a strong second sight or a connection to things of spirit, and the veil of time could become thin in odd ways.

Both Grace and Petra had shown potential very early, so their grandmother had taught them both the skills and traditions they would need if the Power passed on to them. Grace had her own suspicions about Chloe. The challenge in identifying the ability was that every small child had an active imagination and often chattered to invisible friends. Usually a potential was identified by the time the candidate was around five years of age, because by then it was possible to have enough of a coherent conversation with a child to confirm the presence of the ability.