Thea Harrison - Serpent's Kiss

Carling said, “We’re looking for the Oracle.”

“This couldn’t wait until seven?” the woman snapped. She patted the boy’s small back and bounced him with the kind of tiredness of someone who had been doing the same thing for some time now. “Hell, until six? What’s the matter with you people, anyway? Can’t you see I’ve got a sick baby on my hands? Go away and don’t come back until it’s a decent time.”

Khalil said, “You’re the Oracle?”

The Djinn sounded as surprised as Carling felt, and Rune looked.

“You were expecting a gold shrine and a gaggle of virgins draped in pleated white sheets?” the young woman said. “Yes, I’m the Oracle.”

Carling raised her eyebrows and looked beyond the woman at the train wreck of a living room. A scuffed hardwood floor was covered by an old shabby area rug that was littered with toys. Textbooks and coffee cups were piled on the equally shabby furniture. One armchair held a wicker basket piled high with unfolded laundry. The house smelled like sour baby vomit.

The young woman looked around too.

“I know,” she said with a bitter smile. “Whoop-de-fucking-do, right?”

Carling said, “You have to give us sanctuary if we ask for it. Let us in.”

The woman’s weary hazel eyes narrowed. “You’re going to pull that card on my ass right now? Really?”

Rune said, “We can go and come back in a few hours.”

Carling glanced at him. His face was white, his lips bloodless. His eyes looked bruised. She shook her head stubbornly. “Do you know who I am?” she asked the Oracle.

The human’s face tightened. “I recognize you,” she said. “At least I know who you and the sentinel are. I don’t know who he is.” She jerked her chin toward Khalil.

“Rune is injured,” she said to the Oracle. “I need to attend to him. As soon as I do that, I can help your boy. If you know who I am, then you know I can do this.”

The Oracle took a second, closer look at Rune, and her expression changed to one of reluctant compassion. She pushed the door open wide and stood back.

Carling didn’t wait for more. She strode into the house, straight over to the armchair to shift the basket of laundry to the floor. “Come on,” she said gently to Rune. “Sit and let me have a look at you.”

Rune walked over to the chair and eased into it. His movements were stiff, without any of his usual grace. Behind them, Khalil strolled into the house. Carling couldn’t begin to figure out what was going through the Djinn’s mind as he looked around the living room with a speculative gaze, nor did she know why he hadn’t yet disappeared. Perhaps he was waiting for his chance to finalize the details of the favor she now owed him.

In any case, she didn’t have the energy to waste on mulling over Khalil’s odd behavior. Instead she knelt in front of Rune and touched his cheek as she whispered a spell that would numb his injury. Immediately the tight lines in his face eased. He gave her a nod in thanks. “I can wait now,” he told her. “Go put the poor kid out of his misery.”

“All right.” She stood again and turned to the Oracle and the sobbing baby. “What’s his name?”

Carling’s mild question opened a floodgate in response. The Oracle said anxiously, “His name’s Max. I think he’s got an ear infection. He was fussy earlier in the evening and didn’t want his supper. Then he woke up crying a couple of hours ago, and he has a fever and he just threw up, and he keeps pulling at his right ear like it hurts. I was just trying to decide if I should take him to an urgent care unit, but his sister Chloe’s sound asleep and it’s just the three of us here and I’d have to either call someone for backup, or set him down to wake Chloe up and get her in the car too—”

Carling shook her head, a little disoriented. In just under ten minutes, they had gone from facing almost certain death in battle to this. She put a hand to the back of Max’s head and numbed his pain as well. The baby’s crying died away. He hiccupped and shuddered, lifting his head from the Oracle’s shoulder to look around in bleary confusion.

“Okay, little man,” Carling murmured. “It’s going to get better now.” She asked the Oracle, “What is your name?”

“Grace,” the Oracle said. “Grace Andreas.”

“The Andreas family has gone through difficult times these last thirty years,” Carling said. A string of ill health and bad luck had decimated what had once been a large, thriving clan. “I was sorry to hear that Petra and her husband died in that car crash. What relation was she to you—was she your aunt?”

“She was my older sister,” Grace said, her hazel eyes reddening. “Chloe and Max are my niece and nephew. We’re the only ones left.”

Carling nodded. She had scanned Max as she and Grace had talked. She said, “You’re right, he has an ear infection. It’s easily taken care of with a simple healing spell, but he’ll be very tired over the next few days.”

Grace nodded, the exhaustion in her expression lightening with relief. “That’s fine, as long as it takes care of the infection. It’s not like he’s got to drive or go to work or anything.”

In spite of the seriousness of her own issues, Carling had to smile. “No, he doesn’t, does he? With your permission, I’ll cast that spell for him now.”

“Please.”

Carling did so and as Grace took the sleepy baby away, she turned her attention back to Rune. He was resting quietly in the armchair, watching her. She knelt in front of him again, glad to see that some color had returned to his complexion.

He gave her a small smile, his eyelids lowered, and said telepathically, I can’t decide which sight of you was more hot, the one where you were getting ready to throw down some kind of Armageddon spell on Julian’s ass, or the one where you just healed that little boy .

She gave a ghost of a chuckle that faded away almost immediately. They had almost died. He had almost died. She closed her eyes and gripped his hand, and his long, strong fingers closed around hers hard.

Time was shoving them faster and faster into a strange, unknown place. The colors may be sharper and truer, and the song notes more piercing, but damn, that fall had been horrific.

“No regrets?” she whispered.

“Not a single one,” he said back, quietly steady. “I will miss my friends, but that does not mean I have any regrets. Now heal my arm and shoulder, so we can get on with what we need to do.”

She set about doing just that, but healing his injuries wasn’t as quick or easy a fix as throwing the healing spell on a sick baby. She had to set the breaks first, and while she had already numbed Rune’s pain, getting the bones into alignment was still intensely uncomfortable for him. He braced himself against it, his teeth gritted. The broken edges of bone in his arm grated as they came together. The sensation made her feel ill.

She was wrung out by the time she was able to throw a healing spell on him. He sighed as the spell sank into his body. He looked as tired as she felt. Then he leaned forward to enfold her in both good arms, and a warm kernel of rightness found its way into her cold, stressed soul. She put her head on his shoulder and they held each other.

“What I want to know is, what kind of trouble did you bring to my doorstep?” asked Grace, who had returned from putting Max to sleep in his crib. Carling lifted her head to look at the other woman. Grace stood just inside the living room. The human was staring at all of Rune’s weaponry. The relief from Max’s healing had disappeared, and fear had taken its place. “And how much danger have you just put my niece and nephew in?”