Chapter Ninety Here Comes the Son
Aflicker has shown up just behind Remy, a guy, about seventeen, dressed in jeans and a worn black shirt. He’s tall—as tall as Jude, but not as heavily muscled—with spiky black hair, studs in his ears, and a scattering of freckles across his nose.
When he notices me looking at him, he grins widely.
Instinctively, I step closer to him, and as I do, I can’t help but notice that he’s got different-colored eyes—one blue and one green and silver. And that’s when it hits me—he’s in full color, unlike most of the flickers who are in black and white. And not only that, I realize I’ve seen him before, twice. He’s the boy in the dungeon and the one in the T-Rex pajamas on the center mall in the rain, all grown up.
I raise a hand to wave to him, and his grin gets even bigger. “Looks like you found him,” he tells me with a quick lift of his brows.
“Who?” I ask, confused.
“Dad, obviously.” He gives a little nod toward Jude and the tapestry man, who has just stepped out from behind his blurry curtain.
Shock holds me immobile for a second, and I whisper, “What’s your name?”
If possible, his grin gets even bigger. “It’s Keats. I’m named after the poet. You know, from the class that started it all.” Then he gives a little wave and disappears.
“Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to take care of all that. And let me tell you, my skin is wicked dry,” the guy from the tapestry says as I stare after Keats, reeling. “Do any of you have any lotion? I could really use some of the good stuff.”
I kind of want to tell Jude what just happened, but I know there’ll be time. So I turn to the guy and blink in surprise, because he looks a million times different than the man who walked in a couple of minutes ago.
Gone is the wild, shaggy hair. In its place is a sophisticated, slicked-back taper. His dirty, faded smoking jacket has been replaced with a three-piece pinstripe suit, complete with a bright-pink paisley tie. Even his shoes have been replaced—the old house slippers have become a pair of inlaid leather brogues. Oh, and the beard is completely gone.
I’m not sure how he managed all that in fifteen minutes in a corner, but magic is magic for a reason.
“Thank you for your patience,” he tells the group of us with a benign smile, though I have the uncomfortable feeling that he’s looking mostly at me.
I’m not the only one who notices that, either. Jude definitely picks up on it, and though he doesn’t make any overt comments, he does position himself just a little bit in front of me.
The guy realizes Jude’s doing it, too, and seems to grimace ever so slightly. Which makes me more inclined to appreciate Jude’s protectiveness. If the guy is full of good intentions, why does he care where my mate stands?
Izzy gets fed up with the silence and demands, “So are you ever going to tell us who you are or we just supposed to guess?”
“Not to mention why your friends thought sending a storm like this to find you was a good idea?” Mozart adds.
“No guesswork necessary,” he tells her with a small grin. “I’m Henri, the Oracle of Monroe.”
“Oracle?” Remy speaks up for the first time. He sounds doubtful, but when I glance at him, his face is blank in a very un-Remy-like way. “You’re an oracle?”
“I am, indeed.” He doffs a sophisticated men’s hat that appears out of nowhere before settling it back on his head. “And if I forgot my manners earlier, please forgive me. It’s been a while since I’ve been around people. As for why my friends sent a seeker storm after me? I’ve been missing for seventeen years. I think they got tired of looking.”
“Seventeen years?” I ask, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I thought you were in the tapestry for ten?”
“It’s a long story, one I’m not quite ready to talk about just yet. Needless to say, your aunt Camilla was involved.” He shakes his head sadly.
“Aunt?” Luis repeats, looking confused. “I’m not sure you’re much of an oracle, man. Camilla is her mother.”
“Is she now?” Fury flashes across his face but is gone so fast I’m not certain I didn’t imagine it.
I want to ask him how he knows when I just figured it out myself. But I’m not in the mood to have the conversation with the whole room—especially since I haven’t even told my mate yet—so I bite my tongue, even as Henri steps closer.
“Would you mind indulging an old oracle for just a moment, Clementine?”
“I’m pretty sure that depends on what the indulgence is,” I answer, brows raised.
“Can I shake your hand?” He holds his out for me in what is either a gesture of goodwill or a trap. But considering he didn’t ask for anything and didn’t try to make a bargain with me, I’m going to assume it’s the former. Maybe.
But the moment my palm slides against his, an image of my mother—my birth mother—fills my consciousness. She’s very pregnant and has a hand resting on the side of her stomach as she steps back and admires a mural she just painted on a bedroom wall.
The mural is my name, and each letter is filled with magical, fantastical things. I know the mural well; it was on my wall for nearly ten years before we finally painted over it. I had no idea my birth mother had painted it for me.
My lip trembles a little, but I bite it until it’s steady again. No way am I breaking down about this now—not in front of a total stranger.
“I apologize for showing you the truth so harshly,” he tells me. “But oracles need to face their own baggage before they ever try to be effective for anybody else.”
“How is this your baggage?” I ask. “She was my mother.”
“Good point,” he says with a tiny little nod. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
Any other time, absolutely. Right now? I’m tired of trying to figure things out and even more tired of learning stuff that turns my world upside down. So instead of making a guess as to what he’s talking about, I settle for the one thing I know. “I’m not an oracle,” I tell him. “I’m a manticore.”
“Are you sure about that?” He tilts his head in question. “Because—”
He breaks off as a loud, high-pitched screech sounds from just outside the cellar doors.
“Shit!” Jude immediately leaps into action, grabbing the tapestry. “Remy, we need to get out of here now.”
But Remy’s already on it. He opens a portal just as the insane snake monster Luis and I had to fight in the dungeon rips the cellar doors off their hinges.
“Wait! Don’t we need to fight it?” Ember asks, looking confused. “I thought that was the whole point of fixing that damn tapestry to begin with.”
“We do,” Jude agrees as he hustles everyone into the portal—including Henri. “I just don’t think a tiny root cellar is the place to do it.”
I have to agree with him. There’s nowhere to go in the cellar to get away from it—if it stands in the middle of the room, its snake fingers can reach all four corners and everywhere in between.
I dive into the portal just before one of those snake fingers gets me, and I’m practically giddy with relief when I walk out into the center of the dance hall two seconds later. At least until I plow straight into Luis’s back.
“Hey, what’s—” I break off as I realize what he’s staring at. What everyone is staring at.
The dance hall is crawling with monsters, each one more terrifying than the next.