Page 105 of The Reveal
I can feel the cards nestled against my heart, pressing in hard.
I forget about getting food, because the truth is, I’m not that hungry any longer. When I let myself into the house, I go to Gran’s room. I don’t let myself look out the windows to see what Savi might be doing.
I’m not sure what I’m expecting. I haven’t left Gran here for this long in years, and I have no idea what state I’ll find her in. I’m already mad at myself, though I know I couldn’t have done anything differently.
But when I walk in, she’s sitting up in her chair by the window looking clean and well kempt.
“I was beginning to think you died out there,” she says with a sniff.
“I’m sorry I left you for so long, Gran.” I decide not to play the game ofdoes she know metoday. “I figured you would understand. But I’m glad you seem to have managed.”
“Savi helped me.” Gran lifts her brow at the expression on my face then. “I might not be on death’s door, but I’m no spring chicken. As I’ve said. Besides.” She looks at me gravely. “I’ve known Savi for some time.”
I refuse to ask how Savi got in. I’m sure I don’t want to know. “The sorceress, you mean.”
We stare at each other. I realize I’m standing just inside the door, my arms crossed belligerently, so I move farther into the room and go to sit on the edge of her bed. So we can face each other.
“The fact that you’re not overwhelmed with joy that you are the oracle is a good thing,” Gran tells me. Slowly. “It’s those who are a little too pleased to find they have the sight that end up blinded. It’s appropriate to be apprehensive. Seeing what is to come is a heavy load to carry.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “There is a large part of me that was pleased that Lilianne was spared. She could never have held up to the demands of the cards, let alone the visions themselves.”
“I saw Augie.” I blurt that out. “I actually talked to him. He’s not well in the sense of being clean, but he looks well. I’m not sure which is worse.”
“When I see him, I see him in despair,” Gran says quietly. “Buried somewhere in the earth, not dead but not quite alive, either.”
“Yes,” I say. “More or less that.”
We sit there for what feels like far too long, and I hope Augie feels it, down there in his cell. I hope heknowsthat there are people here who still love him.
“I need you to listen to me.” Gran surprises me by leaning forward and taking my hand in hers. “I have always known that this gift would be yours. I have always understood that you would be the one to take my place. I waited for you to step into the role and accept it as only you can, but I want you to know that I never had any doubt. Not the way I did when I wondered if it would be your mother. I knew she couldn’t handle it. But you’re something else. You’re stronger in every possible way.”
I think about the things that Ariel did to me. The things I let him do. The things I begged him to do. The things I am pretty sure I would do again, if he asked, no matter how I might have left him earlier.
“I don’t think I’m stronger at all,” I say quietly.
“It’s not a question of opinion.” Again, she looks at me in that intense way of hers, as if she’s looking straight into me, right past all my defenses. “Remember, child, I have always known where this is going. And you are the only one strong enough to survive it.”
“I met Vinca,” I tell her. “The Goddess of Filth herself, in a vision. At least, I think it was a vision.”
“But to look upon her face is to die,” Gran says softly. “For such is the terror and wonder of her bearing. So it has been foretold.”
“The funny thing is that I think I did die,” I say after a moment. “I just didn’t realize it at the time. But it turns out I had a secret weapon.”
Once again, we take the measure of each other, my grandmother and me. We have gazed at each other too many times to count over the course of my life. But this time, maybe for the first time, we’re truly seeing who we are.
Indigo eyes and all.
“Do you still have a pulse?” she asks quietly.
“I have a pulse.” I can’t tell if she looks relieved or disappointed. “But between you and me, I’m not entirely certain I qualify as one hundred percent human any longer.”
“You are the oracle.” Gran says that with a little nod that tells me that whatever else she is, she’s deeply proud. I plan to think about that later, when I’m alone and don’t have to worry that what I feel shows on my face. “You can and should be whatever you wish.”
First there are chores to catch up on. I start with the laundry, and when I bring mine down into the laundry room I see that Maddox left me my hiking pack by the door. It amazes me how long ago that hike feels to me now. It seems like a whole different lifetime when I thought I could charge up a mountainside and outwit a death goddess, when it was only yesterday.
Like that Winter was very different from the one who called the most powerful monsters in the valley over for a meeting tonight.
By the time sundown rolls around, I’m more than ready.
