Page 17 of Ravenous Prophecy
Usually when I was busy with a paper, Elaine would have to come pry me out of the library and feed me. No one else had ever noticed that I was hungry or hadn’t drunk water. Until Griffin.
“No. This tome has a detailed history of a particular strand of the Hive. Some of the text has been damaged, and I need to double-check some of my translations against known sources.” I tapped the tines of the fork against the plate. “I can tell you it’s an undiscovered text. Never before seen. He didn’t pick this up at Sotheby’s. It’s fairly esoteric. I might be the only one on this coast even remotely interested in it. And I have no idea what he’s planning, but after what happened when I started reading the document out loud, and after what happened with the MEA, I know it can’t be good. And no one else will listen, so I need to stop him.”
“Huh.” Griffin reached over, picking up the book and thumbing through the text. “No helpful notes. No big targets with the words: END GOAL.”
Something fell out of the back, and I winced. Likely a loose page or a piece of the binding. I was shocked that a book as old as this had even lasted through the rough treatment of a backroom brawl and running for our lives.
Griffin put the book aside and picked up the paper that had fallen. His eyebrows shot up, and he winced.
“What?” I asked, then looked closely at what I could tell now was a picture. “Oh.”
It was a photo taken from a distance, based on the high pixelization of the image. A man in an oversized jacket pushed a shopping cart filled with who knew what odds and ends. He didn’t seem aware of the camera.
“Of course. If there’s a magical disturbance of this size, there’s only one group of people in the city who might know anything.” I offered over the photo. “And it looks like Williams wants to keep a close eye on them.”
“Don’t say it,” Griffin said, his face scrunched in distaste.
“We need to see the oracles,” I said.
CHAPTER 7
GRIFFIN
It’sfunny how your opinion of someone can shift so quickly, how you can start to see someone in a different light. Better. Prettier. I’d had a fascinating night, studying Bradley in the way he studied, learning so much about him in so little time.
How his lips silently mouthed words I could never hope to understand, how his finger followed those same words on the page, how he fell so thoroughly into his work that it was as if he’d been transported to a different dimension.
Adorable, frankly, and if I’d sidled up next to him, snuggled into his side while he worked—something I was tempted to do several times over, trust me—he wouldn’t have noticed.
The same way he didn’t notice me dozing off on the couch, how he didn’t notice me making bacon and eggs so he wouldn’t collapse from hunger. And the entire time, his position remained unchanged, that little fringe of hair falling over his eyes, biting on the back of his thumb when he lingered too long on one page.
I was enchanted. Yes, entranced by Bradley Brooks, exactly as the manuscript had entranced him. And yet all of that fell away when he made his small suggestion about where we should go next.
The oracles. Ugh. Just a few reasons why I distrusted the oracles? Half the time, they got their divinations wrong anyway. The other half? Pretty sure they just made it up. Anything to score a paycheck.
And don’t forget the worst part, which was tracking them down in the first place.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin looking,” I told him. “This is your territory. You figure it out if you want to talk to them so much.”
With balled fists and an upturned lip, Bradley said he would, as miffed with me as he had been grateful when I’d served him breakfast. But maybe, he said, after he rested his eyes for a bit. Maybe after a tiny nap.
Poor guy definitely needed some rest. I didn’t begrudge him, covering him in the threadbare throw I’d found forgotten under yet another pile of books. Again my perception shifted when I glanced at him sleeping, his lips parted, his jaw stubbornly set. Maybe he’d be more malleable when he woke up.
Nope. When I emerged an hour or so later, after taking the time to freshen up in Bradley’s bathroom, he was gone. As I stared at the shabby blanket he’d left in a heap on the sofa, the bathroom door slammed behind me, faucets at full blast as he washed up, brushed his teeth.
Through the door, I calmly, quietly explained how oracles were unreliable at best, absolute scoundrels at worst. And through the door, mouth presumably full oftoothpaste and foam, Bradley replied with a muffled, “Nope. Oracles it is.”
And so oracles it was. I followed Bradley out of his building, because yes, as someone who actually lived in Moraira City, he had an inkling of where to look for local oracles.
They tended to stick together, shunning society at large because of their particular powers and vulnerabilities. To the untrained eye, an oracle enclave could be disguised as an artists’ commune, a hippie co-op, a homeless encampment.
It could also be disguised as a solid brick wall.
“I hate this,” I said, glaring up at the dilapidated wall as our rideshare drove away. Graffiti, faded tatters of old posters—it looked just like any old wall you’d find on any city block.
Bradley rapped his knuckles against the brick. “Hush, Gallows. I went clubbing with you last night, even if every last bone in my body was screaming for me to run the other way.”
I snorted, smiling for the first time in hours. “And you clubbed that guy real good. Remember, with the chair? Admit it. You had a good time.”
