“The other, the serious one, he practically had a scavenger hunt with forty men looking like some lost army of conquistadors.
Didn’t realize you can’t find her, the oracle.”
“Because all the paths are sealed?” Thalia asks.
Reggie takes a big gulp of his weak beer. “’Cause she ain’t wanting to be found. She has to find you.”
Just then, something startles him. The smell I’ve been trying to figure surrounds us. All merfolk turn their faces up to the air as if we can suck it all in. The scent is lonely and thin and winding its way inside.
“Tears,” Kurt whispers.
Reggie’s large body shivers. He knocks on the bar top. Backs away slowly and tells me, “Fair seas to you.”
The bit of white at the corner of my eye sends my heart jumping.
At the door it’s just a girl. She’s so translucent that, for a heartbeat, I wonder if this is my first time seeing a ghost. There’s a rawness at the corners of her eyes and under her nose, like all she does is cry.
I’ve never felt this way before, like she’s rubbing her sadness all over my skin. Kurt’s right: she smells like tears. Something inside me is twisting, changing slowly. There’s a wonky bit of glass across from me. It’s cloudy and speckled, but I can see myself in there some where and that in itself is a relief.
Like Reggie, the patrons that glance at her busy themselves with pretending she’s not there. Others tap crosses over themselves. One man covers his ears and leans his forehead on the table. She’s staring at Kurt.
I nudge him. “Friend of yours?”
“Not at all.”
When the girl in white turns around, she exposes the white ripple of her vertebrae, the blue spiderweb of veins. She looks back over her shoulder once.
“Think she wants us to follow her?” I say.
“She will lead us to the oracle,” Kurt says, taking one foot toward the door.
“Or, with our luck, to a dark pit of despair.”
He’s trying to compose himself, leveling violet eyes at my blue ones. “You heard the barkeep. She will come for you. I will be by your side.”
“Right. Time to grow some claws.” I draw out my dagger. Then I remember the girls. “I don’t think we should leave them alone here.” Gwen pounces off her chair. “Hardly. We can take care of ourselves.” She holds my face in her hands so I can feel a tiny electric hum that threatens to fry my face off.
“Okay, I get it.” I take a step back.
“We must go now,” Kurt says.
Beside me I can feel Layla’s heartbeat racing, the panic in the way she balls her fists. Kurt grabs my shoulder and pulls me to the door. This is why I’m here. This is what we’ve been waiting for. “We’ll meet back here,” I say to everyone, but I’m looking at Layla. Hers is the face I take with me as I follow the faint smell of tears and this girl dressed in white around another dark corner.
For a girl her size, she runs fast.
Kurt and I are head to head, eyes straight up the narrow hill as if we’re climbing to the heavens.
“What does she look like?”
“I suppose she looks like a ghost,” Kurt says.
“The oracle, smart-ass!”
He glances at me but doesn’t say a word. Why would he think he had to hide a girl from me? If there’s a guy you want giving advice on girls, it’s me. Or…it used to be me. I’ve gotten girlfriends for all my friends at one time or another. So why can’t I keep my own?
The sky is clouding over in fat, black and gray tufts. The row of slanted buildings is an echo of slammed doors and shutters. The girl makes a quick left into a skinny unlit alleyway.
I stop running.
“Why are you stopping?” Kurt bumps into me. “We’ll lose her!” “I don’t know, man.” I bend down and squeeze my thigh muscles.
“What if she’s, you know, evil?”
“She’s not evil. She’s one of the oracle’s handmaidens.” “You said you didn’t know her.”
His violet eyes are like beams against the shadow cast by the slanted alley walls.
He says, “When you found the oracle in Central Park, she had women with her, yes?”
“Fairies. But—”
“All the oracles do. They’re protected by other women.”
“Fine. But if she tries to eat your head off, I’ll let her.”
We shuffle sideways into the narrow path. The stones are cold and slick with moss, the cobblestones like walking on crooked teeth. When we