Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(57)

She couldn’t explain the impulse that gripped her next. Instead of relaxing, panicking or cancelling, she strapped on her knee brace, slipped out of the house and for a second time, she walked the length of the property to the back meadow.

Without distracting conversation, she could hear the wind sighing in the trees. The land seemed to doze in the early evening heat. She smelled freshly cut grass. She looked along the edges of the clearing, along the path, studied the eroded area carefully.

She didn’t know what she was looking for. Something.

Why would Brandon call Olivia to tell her she wasn’t needed today? Did he do that with the other people who hadn’t shown up? And if so, why did he tell her in such a way that implied the others had cancelled? It didn’t make sense. The day would have gone a lot quicker with more people. Unless he was trying to cherry-pick volunteer hours for his buddies?

That didn’t make sense either. Part of the function of the covens was to keep track of a witch’s service hours. It was a lot like paying union dues. Since the Oracle’s entire function was service oriented, Grace was now exempt from the tithe, but the community service tithe wasn’t onerous, just five hours a month, and there were always plenty of ways a witch could volunteer.

Now that everybody had left, her Power was quiescent, the ghosts tranquil. Back in this area by the river, the ghosts she sensed were American Indian. Occasionally through the years someone would find a few arrowheads or maybe a flint knife. She suspected a tribe might have once lived here.

Taking the key from the coffee can on the lintel, she unlocked the old wooden door, pocketed the key and stepped into an area large enough to hold two sturdy Rubbermaid cabinets. She felt in the air above her head for a dangling cord, and when she had found it, she switched on the naked lightbulb that hung from the ceiling.

The Rubbermaid storage cabinets held old blankets, jackets, packages of batteries and flashlights and a couple of old-fashioned oil lamps, along with boxes of matches in zippered plastic bags to keep them from getting damp.

There was also one other item, wrapped in cloth. Grace took it out of a drawer and leaned back against the cabinet as she uncovered it. The cloth fell away to reveal a plain gold Greek mask, with stylized features, and holes for the eyes and the mouth. The face was androgynous, beautiful and blank. The style of this mask was far, far older than Agamemnon’s famous gold leaf mask that had been found at the citadel of Mycenae.

Grace regarded the mask wryly. Stunning, Carling had said when she first laid eyes on it. But Carling had seen it by flashlight, from a distance. She might have called it something else if she had studied it in the light of day.

Funny, how no one ever tried to steal the mask of the Oracle. If they had, they would soon discover it was not made of real gold, nor was it very old. Instead it was a very pretty fake. The Andreas family had sold the original mask in Europe, to the Queen of the Light Fae in Ireland, who had long had a fascination with auguries of any kind.

Her family had used the proceeds of the sale to finance their relocation to the States, to buy this land and to build on it. The only thing Grace regretted was that she didn’t have the original to sell again, because even in a depressed economy, she felt sure the original mask would sell for enough to solve all of their money problems for years.

Whereas the sale of the fake mask probably wouldn’t bring in enough to fix the roof.

Although come to think of it, that might be worth checking. Maybe somebody would like to buy the fake mask for novelty’s sake. It was a decent replica of the original.

She wrapped the mask in the cloth again, tucked it under her arm, took one of the stronger flashlights and went down the tunnel, picking her way carefully on the uneven floor to the perfect black of the cavern below. She shone the flashlight over the walls and ceiling as she went. Finally she admitted the truth: that she had bristled at Brandon going into the tunnel and cavern to check them without waiting for her. She didn’t like him poking around by himself, but her reaction was irrational. The cavern wasn’t off-limits to people, it was just off-limits to children, and that was for their own safety.

She still couldn’t explain what she was looking for.

She was just looking for something.

Was Therese anti–Elder Races, like Brandon? Was that why she had reacted so badly to Khalil’s appearance? Grace had thought it was because Therese got caught snooping. Had Therese been snooping because she had heard a rumor about a Djinn hanging around? What about Janice? Had this whole thing begun with her, because attracting a Djinn’s interest is generally not considered to be a good thing, Grace?

Spinning in circles like this made her head hurt. Worse, it made her angry. If quarterly work days were going to make her feel like this, she wanted to tell them all to f**k off. But she couldn’t do without them or the babysitting roster, unless things changed.

It all came down to the Oracle’s Power. How she used it. What she made of it.

And that came down to her.

She reached the cool, spacious cavern. After walking around and checking the entire space, she turned off her flashlight and let her eyes adjust. She had left the door propped open on the surface. A diffuse shaft of light from the tunnel cut through the absolute blackness.

Many people had a problem with caves, but Grace didn’t. She liked it down here. The cavern itself was beautiful. Not only did it call to the Power that lived inside her, but it was utterly silent and peaceful. In the darkness, it felt womblike, filled with the potential birth of limitless possibilities.