Page 43 of Zomromcom
“I swear to all the gods and goddesses, Edie, I’ll kill those girls myself if you—”
“…cares like Gaston, strokes through hair like Gaston,” she singsonged below her breath, distantly noting the house’s sudden silence. “In a zombie scare no one shares lairs like Gaston!”
“He has a lair?” someone said, their voice hushed. “Is he Batman or just really emo?”
Lorraine’s fork scraped against her platter. “Are you sure he’s a vamp? Because caring and sharing aren’t exactly hallmarks of the species, to be frank.”
Well, if everyone could hear Edie’s song anyway, she might as well belt it out, right? “As a vampire man, yes, he’s so ag -gra- va -ting—”
Max held up six fingers, and Edie kicked him lightly in the shin.
“But my, how he tries, that Gaston!” she finished grandly, then swept a bow in response to the resulting applause. “Thank you. Thank you very much. For an encore, I’d like to introduce a different, macramé-related version of the song, one I think you’ll find edifying in a variety of mmphmmm —”
With his palm firmly but painlessly covering her lips, Max marched her toward the kitchen, where Kip and Lorraine had plowed through half the food already and were still going strong.
“Use that mouth of yours for eating instead of singing,” he murmured in her ear, “or I’ll find a different way to fill it.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, vampire boy,” she said, then grabbed a plate and a large square of the lasagna, because woman couldn’t live on vampire dick alone.
***
As it turned out, Gwen was an Enhanced human. An oracle, to be precise.
When Sabrina’s attempts at further scrying proved unhelpful, she’d asked her friend to provide prophetic guidance. And for some reason, Gwen’s face had twisted into a pained wince at the request, even as she’d agreed to it.
“You know I’m not…” After pursing her lips for a moment, the redhead squared her shoulders. “Okay. Okay. I’ll do it.”
The oracle now sat at the kitchen table, everyone else arrayed around her in concentric circles.
The athame she produced from her backpack gleamed by candlelight, its edge wickedly sharp.
With a single deft gesture, she sliced downward across her palm, and the cut welled up with blood immediately.
The oracle didn’t react in any way, although Edie had to suppress a sympathetic cringe.
That must hurt. Even for an oracle. Even the thousandth time she did it.
Slowly, Gwen’s eyes went blank, her face expressionless.
She gasped once, then fell silent once more.
Her palms lifted from the round kitchen table, hovering above the surface, before slapping back down again viciously fast and hard in a concussion that made everyone—even Max—jump.
When she raised them again, her blood was smeared across the wood, mute evidence of what she suffered on their behalf, and the cut on her palm had turned black, as if cauterized.
“What are our possible futures, oracle?” Sabrina’s tone was quiet. Respectful. “We beg for your assistance and will heed whatever information you’re able to offer.”
Fascinated and unsettled, Edie awaited Gwen’s pronouncements. Held her breath in anticipation of the visions their resident prophet might share with all of them.
“The troll…Kip…” she eventually intoned, her voice cold and deep and inhuman. “He will fall.”
A chorus of gasps rose, and Lorraine’s eyes grew tear-bright. “He’s…is he going to die?”
Oh fuck, I’m not sure I want to know , Edie thought frantically as Max wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her against his side. I can’t —
“These are only possible futures, remember,” Kip reassured his cousin. “Don’t worry, Lorrie. I’ll be careful.”
“He will fall,” the oracle repeated. “He will stub his toe on a root in the dark, and he will fall.”
Edie’s wringing hands stilled. Okay, some clarification was needed. Pronto.
“ Fall as in die ?” Edie asked tentatively. “Or fall as in—”
Gwen didn’t blink. “He will lose his balance and hit the ground.”
“Oh. You mean he’ll literally fall.” Lorraine’s thick brows drew together as she sniffed back more tears. “Does he injure his head? Or maybe the accident leaves him vulnerable to attack—”
“He will trip and fall.” The oracle’s voice remained expressionless. “The Power offers no insights as to Kip’s fate afterward.”
“Wow.” Kip frowned, scratching his head. “Not to be rude, but that was kind of a useless—”
But the oracle had already turned her attention elsewhere. “Eden. Human. Creator of beauty from harsh, unforgiving matter.”
“Are you talking about lye?” Because she’d never personally found olive or jojoba oil all that unforgiving, to be honest. “I mean, that’s a flattering description of my job, but—”
“Your essential oil has been gravely contaminated.”
Huh. She had her oils safely capped and stored off the garage floor, and she kept her doors locked at all times. How could anyone or anything have possibly—
“Deliberately?” Max’s tone turned steely, and he pulled her tighter against him. “If someone attempts to poison Edie, I’ll find them. Find them and rip out their—”
“The blackberry-sage oil is too old. It has spoiled.” Gwen’s eyes…they weren’t a soft green anymore, but a chilly shade of steel gray. “The next time you use it, you will have a cold. You will not be able to detect the scent of rot. Your batch of Berry Beauty soap…”
Edie leaned forward. Gods, what the fuck did that soap do ? Was it so spoiled that it caused some sort of horrible transmissible disease? Had she made herself or her customers ill?
“Your batch of Berry Beauty soap…according to the emails you’ll receive…will…”
Everyone else around the table leaned forward too.
“It will smell like butt ,” Gwen finished. “That is a direct quote.”
Riley failed to turn a snort into a convincing cough, and a soft giggle drifted down from the loft.
“Refunds will be issued.” The oracle wasn’t quite done yet. “Apologies will be made. Regrets will be had.”
“Oh.” Yeah, Edie could only imagine. “That’s really helpful, actually. I’ll replace my blackberry-sage oil as soon as I can. Thanks.”
“Don’t you have any other information about Edie’s fate, oracle?” A weird grinding sound emanated from the vicinity of Max’s teeth. “Something involving our upcoming battle with fucking zombies ?”
Edie elbowed him. “ Max . There are children here. And be nice.”
“No.” Gwen—or, rather, whoever or whatever she was channeling—didn’t sound offended. Didn’t sound… anything , really, other than dispassionate and inexorable. “But the Power has a warning for you as well, Gaston Maxime Boucher.”
For some reason, Sabrina gasped at that.
“His name really is Gaston?” A blond tween snickered behind them. “That’s…unfortunate.”
Edie couldn’t even take any pleasure from the mockery. Not with Max’s fate at stake. “What can you tell us, Gwen? Will he be okay?”
The other woman’s palms rested lightly on the table, her hands completely steady. “There will be a spill of red, Gaston. All over you. So much red.”
Edie gasped and clung to Max’s waist. That had to be blood. Max’s? Someone else’s? Zombies bled a sickly yellow, so—
“You will…” The oracle spoke slowly, then paused before continuing. “You will…spill red glitter on yourself during your next recording session.”
Giddy with relief, Edie rubbed a hand over her lower face and tried not to audibly giggle.
“Recording session? Red glitter?” Lorraine glanced at Sabrina, dark brows raised high. “Dude might be a mini-vamp, but he’s a hot one. If Gaston has an OnlyFans account, you’d best be sharing the link, girlie.”
Max was muttering to himself. “I was going to use red glitter in an upcoming video. How did she know? Did someone hack into my—”
“She’s an oracle, bro,” Kip said before Edie could gather the right words. “Duh.”
“The spill will prove disastrous,” Gwen told Max.
His mouth snapped shut, and he scowled at the oracle. “How?”
“For weeks afterward…” Gwen’s fingertips twitched for the first time as she prophesized, and her lips did the same. “You will resemble a sunburned Edward Cullen.”
Kip choked on a bite of tiramisu and doubled over coughing. In fact, a great number of odd-sounding coughs occurred after that pronouncement, Edie’s among them.
“We should have stayed in my lair, human,” Max grumbled under his breath, pitilessly tickling a sensitive spot on her ribs. “Wait, not my lair . My home . Dammit, Edie—”
Sabrina’s hand raised in a peremptory gesture, demanding silence. “Do you have prophecies for anyone else in this group, oracle?”
“I do not.”
Sighs of disappointment swept through the room.
“Aw, man,” a nearby Girl Explorer mumbled. “I wanted to know weird crap about the other troll too.”
“The Power—” Gwen began.
Then her entire body jerked, and her hands lifted from the table. Her face contorted and her eyes scrunched shut, her rosy cheeks turning paler by the moment.
The witch came over and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey, are you—”
“The Power has extinguished.” When Gwen’s eyes opened, they were back to their previous soft green. Still looking pained, she visibly swallowed, sweat beading along her hairline. “Your possible futures lie in wait, subject to will and chance both. It is done.”
At the reminder of what their immediate futures held, silence descended over the room. Gwen slumped into her chair, and Sabrina poured her a fresh glass of ice water.
Eventually, Lorraine spoke again. “Hey, if all that stuff happens—Edie with her soap and Max with his glitter—at least that means they’ll survive what’s coming, right?” Her smile’s wattage had dimmed significantly, but she did her best. “That’s something.”
Gwen bit her lip, swallowing convulsively. “The visions…they aren’t certain. They’re only possible futures, contingent on variables and choices that aren’t yet set in stone.”
“In other words, we may not actually survive,” Edie said.
“I don’t know. I’m so sorry.” Her eyes shone with tears as she glanced around the table, and her hand hovered near her mouth.
“The only prophecy that felt relatively certain was Kip’s.
He’ll almost definitely stub his toe on a root in the dark and fall to the ground. What happens after that, I can’t say.”
“Yeah.” Kip grimaced. “Okay. Thanks anyway for trying.”
“I know my predictions aren’t the most…useful. I, um…” Gwen clamped that waiting hand over her mouth and gulped before lowering it again. “I told Sabrina and Starla I’d try, but it’s not…not really under my…”
Another gulp. Two. Then she lurched to her feet, stumbled, and almost fell as she tried to push through the crowd of Girl Explorers surrounding her, her face pasty and green-tinged.
Suddenly, Max’s arm vanished from around Edie and appeared at the oracle’s elbow.
He half carried the other woman toward the hallway and into the nearest bathroom, where the two of them disappeared.
The sound of miserable, repeated retching filled the house, then grew muffled as someone—probably Max—kicked the door shut behind them.
“I’ve got you,” Edie heard him say, his voice muffled but gentle. “It’s all right, little oracle.”
It wasn’t the same tone he used with her. There was no intimacy there. No heat. Just…kindness. Patience. Simple goodwill toward a woman who’d tried to help them and was evidently suffering for it.
That was the vampire who’d been poised to serve his community on SERC. That was the neighbor who’d watched out for her safety from the very beginning.
That was the real Gaston Maxime Boucher. Or at least the Gaston Maxime Boucher he could be when he wasn’t so intent on distancing himself from the world.
Something anxious in Edie’s heart settled and warmed. She rubbed absently at her chest, welcoming her new certainty. Basking in the intensity and depth of her feelings for her impossible, irresistible vampire of a neighbor.
He could protest and deflect all he wanted from now on.
He wouldn’t be able to convince her—even for a moment—that he truly meant her or anyone else harm, unless he considered that harm fully justified.
Which was, obviously, a somewhat subjective determination.
They’d have to tease out precisely what he considered just provocation, sooner rather than later.
But no matter what, she now believed his sense of right and wrong matched hers much more closely than she’d once imagined.
Much more closely than he’d willingly admit.
And if that was true, she didn’t need to fight falling in love with him.
She didn’t need to fret. She could simply fling herself into the joyous maelstrom, headfirst and heedless.
After a brief pause and the sound of running water, poor Gwen’s gagging began anew. In the kitchen, there was a collective wince of sympathy.
“Does that always happen?” Lorraine asked Sabrina. “Every time she prophesizes?”
But the witch, staring at the closed bathroom door with a furrowed brow, didn’t answer.