Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(87)

Everything was so sensitive, her body well used and pleasured hard. Even in the middle of their frenzy, he had been so careful with her knee. It hadn’t been strained in the slightest. She still thought she’d better wear the brace for a while, until the rest of her got used to standing upright again.

All of her casual summer clothes were now downstairs. She wrapped herself in a towel and went down to the office and dressed in a tank top and another pair of soft, unstructured shorts. Then she turned on the air-conditioning unit that was fixed into one of the living room windows, and she walked through the house, closing all the open windows. One larger unit was downstairs, and two smaller units were upstairs. With all three running the big, old house should be comfortably cool for the first time that summer. Yee-haw.

As she turned away from closing the window over the kitchen sink, she felt the Djinn enter the kitchen.

Her hackles raised as Phaedra formed in the middle of the room.

Oh damn.

Even though Khalil insisted she call him, every reason she had for not calling him the first time Phaedra showed up was still valid. But she had promised.

He didn’t actually say when she should call him. That was splitting hairs, and frankly, it would be a toss-up whether his Djinn sensibilities could accept that reasoning or if he was going to be royally pissed.

Who was she kidding, he was going to be royally pissed.

But she was still going to protect him, and he would just have to forgive her. She readied the expulsion spell as she said, “Hello, Freaky Bitch.”

Phaedra stared at her, black eyes burning. “Who is it? Who is the ghost?”

Grace studied her, mouth level. “Okay,” she said. “But just so you know—if you ever come uninvited into my house again, or if you come anywhere near my kids without my permission, I pinky swear I will knock the living shit out of you.” Damn, it felt good to have an offensive spell, or at least one that worked on Freaky Bitch.

Phaedra looked as if she hated Grace. “Just show me who it is.”

Grace touched the Power lightly and it flooded her. It really was like drowning, she thought, as the dark sea filled her to the brim and overflowed. She no longer tried to hold herself back from it, because that would be like trying to hold back from herself.

Come on, she whispered into the sea. Show yourself again.

The ghost heard and arrowed toward her. Grace held out a hand, and the ghost took it, eyes shining like the brightest of stars. Somehow she lifted the ghost out of the sea or pulled it into the present, for she was a doorway. She thought she would act as a channel, but instead, with a grateful look, the ghost stepped through her and into the kitchen.

Then Phaedra from a far distant past came face-to-face with the Phaedra she had become. The present Phaedra stared, her expression stricken.

The ghost of who she had been stared back wonderingly. Their forms were identical. They both had regal ivory features and bloodred hair, but they were far different from each other. The Phaedra from the past was transparent, but even so she had a brightness of spirit, a light in her face. She felt straight and strong and beautiful, and Grace knew this was who Phaedra had been before Lethe had imprisoned her, before she had become the dark.

In contrast, the present Phaedra’s razored edges and black center felt especially wrong. There was nothing wrong with the dark, Grace thought, as she considered the living sea inside of her. Darkness can be a beautiful thing, and the night had a velvet embrace that the day could never hope to match. But darkness was an entirely different thing from this brokenness.

The present Phaedra’s face contorted. She screamed, and the sound was so full of rage and pain, so full of shattered glass and catastrophic ruination, that it almost doubled Grace over.

She was horrified at what she had initiated. I’m so sorry, she wanted to say. But before she could find her way to the words, the ghost sprang, faster than thought, and wrapped around the present Phaedra.

Who screamed and screamed, beyond anything a human could produce. The strength of anguish behind it finally had Grace clapping her hands over her ears as tears streamed down her face. How could anybody survive with something like that inside of her? It was intolerable. No creature should reach a place of such pain that caused a scream like that.

Underneath the screaming, Grace began to hear something else.

Choose me. Choose me. All but inaudible, heard only in the mind, the ghost said it over and over, Choose me.

The screaming stopped. What it left behind was a pounding silence.

The ghost sank into Phaedra, whose body shuddered and rippled. Grace felt Phaedra flex convulsively. Then with a concussion that rattled the house, her presence snapped into a different alignment.

Oh, please let that be a good thing.

Grace wiped her eyes. When she could see again, Phaedra’s form was barely visible. The Djinn’s presence felt fragile and fundamentally changed. Grace said, “Tell me what I can do to help you.”

I must rest. Then Phaedra said slowly, Call on me when you have need, and I will come. I owe you a favor.

Grace felt something settle into place as the Djinn’s presence faded. It was a tiny, barely perceptible thing.

A thread of connection.

She turned, braced her elbows on the counter and leaned there for a while until her racing heart slowed. She couldn’t wait to tell Khalil what happened. Either that, or she dreaded it. Maybe both.

Phaedra had felt so paper-thin and delicate before she disappeared, hardly capable of surviving.