Chapter 10
Lila and Dixon lingered awkwardly in the oracle’s parlor, both pacing atop a thick blue rug, both cutting glances at one another whenever they came to the frayed ends. They’d followed Kenna and Connell into the oracle’s house and stopped in the parlor, not wanting to intrude, but no one had emerged from the bowels of the house to fetch them.
Perhaps they’d been forgotten.
Perhaps they should wait outside.
Both turned their gazes away and started pacing anew.
Back in the admin building, Mòr had thrashed and murmured for what felt like hours. But Dr. McCrae, the compound’s daytime physician, had arrived as the seizures ended—not that she could have done a thing to stop them. Connell had burst through the door immediately after, lingering in the background while the doctor completed her examination, her thin purple scrubs flitting over the oracle, the fabric baggy over her small form. Mòr made Dr. McCrae’s work all the more difficult by shoving away anyone who hovered near her.
“She’s not herself right now,” her sister had explained before being pushed off balance for the third time.
It took Mòr another five minutes to become aware of the world once more. She finally moaned in her own voice and peered around the room, trying to sit up.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Connell had nearly knocked Kenna over again in his haste to nudge Mòr back down to the floor. “We’ve talked about this. Lie down. You promised.”
Dr. McCrae cleared her throat. “She needs to—”
“She can hear you,” Mòr reminded them. “She’s right here.”
“We might talk to her if she ever listened,” Connell said.
The doctor sat back on her heels. “You need to rest, Mòr. I’ll swing by your cabin in a few hours to check up on you. Call me—”
“If anything changes. We know.” Connell had scooped up the oracle in one motion, as though lifting a child made of glass and china, and navigated her carefully into the hall. Reactions from onlookers in the admin building ran from concerned to curious, but no one approached. In fact, they seemed very keen on their paperwork, their phone calls, the rugs at their feet, or even the outsiders.
Connell carried Mòr to the nearest cabin, surrounded with an abundance of violet pansies. Kenna followed along, worried hands waving as though she’d catch her sister if Connell’s grip slipped.
Lila doubted that would ever happen. Perhaps he lifted weights for precisely this reason, so he could fulfill his duty as chief and carry home the oracle whenever she grew ill.
Lila came to the end of the rug, but kept walking this time, her curiosity finally outweighing her worry. Mòr had arranged a collection of family pictures on a set of shelves, interspersed with hundreds of travel books. Each cover promised glossy pictures of places Lila had never seen. The oracle had a book for every country, even Germany and Italy.
Lila’s eyes cut away to the rest of the room. A dark brown couch and a few sofa chairs had been positioned near a roaring stone fireplace. The leather’s hue matched the colors in the rock, and contrasted prettily with the deep blue rug they’d been marching back and forth across.
Little else had been put into the parlor except for two display cases. One contained family heirlooms spanning the millennia, the shelves filled to bursting. Brass placards gave a date and a description for each object: a chipped china plate, a silver hand mirror, a frayed and folded quilt, several illuminated manuscripts with ornate calligraphy, sketchbooks, rings, pendants, and watches. A worn obsidian slab sat in the middle, as thick as two knuckles. It ran the length of Lila’s arm and the width of her chest, and had been carved with letters she’d never seen before.
No placard explained its existence, but Lila knew exactly what it would say.
Oracle Stone. Carved twelve to sixteen hundred years ago.
Once upon a time, every oracle on the islands of Britannia and Hibernia owned an oracle stone. Now they were spread all over the commonwealth, just like the stones later crafted in France and Spain and Portugal. Many had been lost, stolen as spoils of war, burgled by private collectors, or broken into pieces and destroyed. Only a few hundred still survived.
Superstition always followed the stones. Before modern medicine “discovered” oracle’s disease and catalogued its symptoms, people believed that the stones afflicted a chosen girl in their village with the seizures, granting her the sight, giving her the ability to share the thoughts of the gods as she thrashed upon the ground. Now people knew better, recognizing that the women merely possessed a faulty gene. Most believed their visions to be false, and the stories of their deeds had been eschewed as nothing more than perversions of history or myths, similar to the gods themselves.
The second display case held more gruesome artifacts from the old country and the new. Polished swords, maces, bows and arrows, an entire row of guns and rifles. A worn saddle settled in the middle, a deep red stain covering half the leather.
Dixon stood transfixed before it. It’s over four hundred years old.
“Whose was it?”
He pointed at the placard, his eyes wide.
“Lilliard. The Lilliard?” She read the placard, shaking her head. The Maid Lilliard had been the oracle queen of Ancrum Moor hundreds of years ago. She’d slain an English commander who had come to take over her village, a man leading an army that fought without an oracle. His people had slunk home after their defeat, rudderless, their will broken.
That was before the Declaration of Peace, before the Allied Lands had joined together as one. After signing that small piece of parchment, they’d agreed to stop the infighting and fortify themselves against the Holy Roman Empire, a chunk of land that would one day become Italy and Germany. The oracles had pushed the union on behalf of the gods, and the people had believed them, for the women had rarely cooperated or given up power over their tribes.
Perhaps they’d been wrong to do it. Here it was, hundreds of years later, and they had little power left. The commonwealth fed them like pets, giving them government handouts to keep their compounds in repair.
“I guess we know which line the oracle comes from.”
“I guess you do.” Kenna padded softly into the room. Lila and Dixon both stepped away from the display cases like naughty children caught near a jar of sweets. “I believe we can trust you to keep our origin to yourselves.”
“Why keep it a secret at all?”
“History teaches us that people flock to those oracles who can trace their lines back the farthest. We know it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. It also overburdens some of our oracles unfairly. The truth never leaves an oracle’s compound.”
“How do you keep others from talking?”
“The usual. Blood. Pain. Death.”
Lila and Dixon caught one another’s eye, not sure if Kenna was joking or not.
Lila jutted her chin toward the obsidian slab. “You have an oracle stone.”
“Yes, we do. It’s the only one for five hundred kilometers in any direction, and before you ask, that’s not why Mòr is the state representative for Saxony.” The corners of her mouth crooked upward, but it was obvious Kenna would keep that secret.
“I never realized her seizures were like that.”
“Not many do. Usually it’s much gentler than that.”
“Will she be all right?”
“Yes.”
“She touched me before she fell.”
“Sometimes when my sister touches someone, it triggers a vision. It’s why no one touches her here, why we isolate her at the temple. If she touches you, it’s her choice, and she accepts the consequences.”
“Why’d she touch me, then?”
“Because my sister is not some mystical ball of energy?” Kenna said. “She’s a woman, Lila, just like you and I. Sometimes she gets lonely. Sometimes she forgets. She’s dozing now, though. She’ll be better tomorrow after she rests.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? You did nothing wrong. Seizures happen, and there’s little Mòr can do to stop them. She’s not going to live her life in a bubble.” Kenna led them to the vestibule and snatched up her fur coat. “My sister is frustrated that she cannot spend the afternoon with you. She’s asked me to give you a tour of the compound in her place, and procure anything you might need for your stay and your investigation. If you give me a list, I can send it out to the right people. You too, Dixon. I don’t mind reading, you know.”
Dixon snorted and buttoned up his coat.
“He’s so damn quiet. What does it take to make him chatty?”
“Talking to him, rather than near him. It seems that Mòr feels the same way after a seizure.”
Kenna bowed slightly to Dixon. “My apologies.”
I haven’t had anything worthwhile to write down, anyway, he scribbled before slipping his notepad back into his pocket.
“Will she be okay alone?” Lila asked.
“Connell is with her. He takes good care of her, and he’s the only one she listens to, the besotted little fool.”
Lila’s mouth hung open.
“Yes, the oracle has a lover.” Kenna rolled her eyes as she tugged on her fur-lined boots. “She’s a person, Lila. Don’t start thinking of her as something instead someone. Things like that get on her nerves, and she likes you. It’ll hurt her feelings.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You should. My sister likes it when people don’t treat her like an oracle. You treated her like a con-woman when you first met her. That doesn’t happen often.” Kenna studied Lila from her head to her boots. “She might like you as a person, but you terrify her, you know. If half of what she’s seen comes to pass, you’d terrify me too.”
“What does that even mean? What has she seen?”
“Blood. Lots of it. Some caused by you, much of it stopped by you. Mòr’s not lying when she says that you are important to the oracles. You’ve already stopped things.”
“The kidnappings?”
“She said you were deadly that afternoon, that you had the blessing of Frigg upon you, that you’ve had it since you were an infant.”
“No, I had a gun,” Lila grumbled. “Why won’t she tell me what she sees before it comes to pass?”
“Tradition. Rules.”
“Mòr breaks the rules all the time.”
“Yes, she breaks silly rules for very good reasons, just as you do. You might dig into a government database if it helps you catch a criminal, but you’d never torture someone, would you?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“You have no idea what is the same thing and what is not. Know the limitations of your own experience, and listen when you should not talk.”
Lila buttoned up her coat. “Fine. This is me shutting up.”
“She said.”
Lila stuck out her tongue.
Kenna snickered and escorted them from the cabin. Dixon trundled along behind, his eyes absorbing every color he saw. They detoured through a large garden behind the administration building, leafless, thigh-high hedges grown into a labyrinth. Marble statues stood at the center, carved on short pedestals. Bouquets of purple pansies lay at their feet. The six frozen women danced in a ring around a seventh, Sileas, the Blind Oracle, the first of her kind.
She hadn’t been born blind, though. The teenaged Sileas had been the first to spot ships off the shore near her family’s village. Raiders had landed, camping and entrenching themselves, their weapons of war not far from the beach. They’d come to take the farms and the land, ready for a long and bloody siege.
Even Sileas knew that her people could not handle it. Her people had only lived in the area for a generation, and it had been a particularly brutal winter. Food stores had already dwindled, and they wouldn’t survive if the enemy soldiers ruined the fields. After she told the elder men what she had found, the tribal leaders told her to get into the village hall with the rest of the women and children, for none of them were fit to hold a bow or wield a mace. She, just like her mothers and grandmothers, were too weak, good for nothing but one last defense for the children, good for nothing more than desperate pleas against rape.
Sileas disobeyed the tribal leaders. She ran to the temple instead and asked the gods how she might save her people.
Frigg answered her call. She’d grown frustrated over the centuries, frustrated that the people had nearly forgotten her and her sisters in favor of her brother-gods, frustrated the people had demoted her from a goddess of war and sex to a scavenger of battlefields, who only pointed to those who had earned an honored place in the halls. She appeared before Sileas in animal skins, her bow slung against her back, asking the teen to make a sacrifice.
Sileas did as the goddess bid.
She cut out her own eyes with a stolen dagger.
Frigg fashioned a necklace from the girl’s eyes, wearing them like pearls on a cord around her neck. In return, she healed the teen’s wounds, filling the holes with orbs of white. Then she handed Sileas a bow and led her to the beach, whispering where the girl should aim.
The raiders saw the bloody teen on the shore of hill, shooting arrows straight into the hearts of her enemies, a blue light glowing at her side. Sileas pulled her bow without rest, and none of the men could hit her. Their arrows fell at her feet as though they’d struck an invisible barrier.
Frigg had shot down their arrowheads before they reached their mark.
The army soon fled back to their ships.
Tribal elders watched from the outskirts of the village, muttering in fear and awe.
Sileas never became the beloved of her village. Instead, she became its battle queen, for the first who spoke against her, the first who admonished her for her actions, received an arrow to the heart.
The blue light then laughed and faded away.
Sileas spent hours with her sisters after that, puzzling out the images in her mind, for even though she was blind to the human world, she still saw plenty.
She had a great many visions. She also had a great many daughters. Only daughters, as a matter of fact, all trained to hunt and kill and war and bed any man they wanted, all given the sight in a scattered form. Like their mother, they sacrificed to Frigg. Each vision came with a price.
The seizures had begun with them.
Tribal elders never told any woman she could not fight again. They never neglected the goddesses, either, worshipping them and their brothers equally thereafter.
But they all paid special attention to Frigg.
Sileas’s daughters took over nearby villages, as ordered by the gods. Those daughters had daughters of their own, which spread to the next villages, ballooning throughout the islands and what would eventually become the Old Country.
As least, that was what the legends said.
Lila lifted a finger to brush the sculpture, the deep grooves marring Sileas’ face and her doe eyes. Lila had always imagined her to be soulful and gentle and fragile, but this woman looked anything but that. Her stout frame could have filled out battle armor. Her biceps could have lifted a mace with ease, sight be damned.
“She reminds me of you,” Lila told Dixon.
Sileas sacrificed her sight by choice. I’m nothing like her.
“You both see more. You both hear more.”
Kenna’s gaze dropped to Dixon’s notepad, the dawn of understanding finally breaking in her eyes. “This statue is almost two hundred years old. The first New Bristol oracle commissioned it for the garden. This was the original site of Waterloo. Of course, when the president of Saxony chose the city as the capital, he renamed it. Did you know that the walls of our compound were once the original walls of the town?”
“Then he tried to kick the oracles out,” Lila recalled, “claiming they should have a special place to call their own downriver. He almost sold it to the people.”
“Lamar was a highborn ass. He quickly relearned a lesson that afternoon. The oracles are battle queens—always have been, always will be. Lamar convinced the matrons to move outside these walls soon after. He was too worried the people might return to the old ways if they got too close to Morag. Houston believed the same. It was the only thing those two ever agreed on.”
Lila looked at the sculpture of Morag Ancrum, a mischievous dimple denting her cheek. She too could have held a mace. “She chose the site of New Bristol, didn’t she?”
Kenna smiled the smile of her great-great-grandmother, then turned on her heel, her white robe swishing as she led them away. “I’ll take you to the library now.”
Kenna led them back to the smooth asphalt lane that ran through the center of the compound. They marched toward another structure several stories high, occupying a place across from the admin building. “We tore down six cabins to build it about ten years ago. Half of it is a computer lab. Mòr said you’d need a computer while you stayed here.”
“I’ll also need access to your network, specifically your logs.”
“We anticipated that. Mòr has cleared it.” Kenna stifled a grin. “Do try not to copy our data and sell it to the empire.”
“I’ll endeavor to restrain myself.”
Kenna climbed up a few stairs and crossed the covered veranda, which wrapped around the entire building. A dozen children reclined on swings and benches, hunching over books and small tables. Some studied separately. Others argued in small groups, their voices hushed as they bent over a page. Whenever any of them looked up, they bowed their heads politely in greeting, eyed the outsiders curiously, then returned quickly to their texts and discussions.
Lila and Dixon raked their boots upon a mat while Kenna opened the library’s doors. Exposed beams ran along the ceiling, and the entire cabin opened into a large room filled with books and shelves. More young people sat inside, crowded upon couches in little nooks and corners of the library, rugs underneath their feet, pillows behind their backs, and paintings above their heads.
“First dibs gets you a nook until the library closes,” Kenna explained as she led them down the center aisle. “They’re all getting a jump on next semester’s reading list. Our children work hard.”
Lila eyed their books as she passed. “They’re all reading different texts.”
“Of course. Why would they read and study the same things? We educate our children in the old ways. They pick their own reading lists and give reports to their fellow students, teaching them the things they learned. Children learn better and faster when they are interested in the subjects, when they aren’t learning from some stuffy adult with an agenda. Not everyone needs to know calculus and philosophy.”
“They must know something of the world.”
Kenna turned. “Oh, please. How much do you remember from science class, Ms. Fancy Pants? Have you drawn any organic molecules lately?”
“That’s hardly the point.”
“That’s exactly the point. I’m amazed by what children outside the compound are taught, what they’re tested over, and what they forget a month later. I’m sure you’d be equally amazed at what captures a child’s attention when it’s a friend who’s pointing it out, at what these kids can produce if given the right tools and the right direction. The point of education is learning how to learn, learning what makes a good argument and a good research study. It’s about creating a drive against ignorance and untruths. We are very good at teaching that.”
Lila narrowed her eyes, unsure.
“Ah, you’re so very highborn and so very like us at the same time.” Kenna approached the checkout counter. She pointed to a row of shelves behind the attendant. “Adults here don’t often have time to wander throughout the library, but our librarians know everyone and their interests. They slip books in with whatever we check out. Everyone still learns here, no matter their age. Everyone reads. Everyone studies. How long has it been since you read something new?”
“I read up.”
“On what? Programming languages? What else?”
“I don’t have time for much else. I’m too busy getting dragged into other people’s emergencies.”
“Tetchy, aren’t we?” Kenna tapped a little bell, so quiet its sound didn’t travel much beyond the circulation desk. A young man in jeans and a neon-green sweater turned from the bookshelf along the wall and scratched his sideburns, both of which nearly reached his chin.
“Dixon, what should we get Lila to read while she’s here?”
Dixon scribbled on his notepad. Gambling.
“Liam, could you pull a book on gambling and check it out under my account? Add one on the history of the oracles and one on the gods as well. Have them sent to cabin seventy-two, please. A computer will be en route. Just put them on the cart.”
“That’s all?” Liam scratched his forehead and fixed his gaze upon Lila. “I’ll find a few more to send along. Maybe you’ll like the look of them.”
He turned to Dixon. “That book you requested about Freyr came in this morning. Would you like anything else to go with it?”
Dixon shook his head.
“Freyr?” Lila had seen Dixon reading about the oracles and the gods before she left New Bristol, a consequence of his near death almost two months before. She’d had no idea he’d continued, though. It worried her. “No more books about the gods and the oracles today. Give him a book about the stars.”
“Stars it is,” the librarian replied.
Dixon cut her a look.
“You taught Tristan everything he knows about them, didn’t you?”
Dixon shrugged.
Kenna led them away from the circulation desk and toward the back of the library. “It’s too bad the spring term hasn’t yet begun. I could show you the kids’ workshops and studios. Unfortunately, everything’s locked right now, forcing them to take a much-needed rest. Or at least try.”
“Let me guess. If I saw their work, I’d be amazed.”
“So amazed.” Kenna’s proud expression fell as she glimpsed a corner nook. Two young women sat below a painting of a ship caught in a storm. One embraced her upset friend, a hand trailing along her back, both their books forgotten.
Not uttering a word, Kenna marched quickly through the library, tour forgotten. It was as though she followed Connell for the second time that afternoon.
Lila and Dixon trudged along behind her.
“Cecily,” Kenna said gently, crouching before the two young women. “Perhaps the library isn’t the best place for you right now.”
Cecily pulled away from her friend’s arm to reveal red-rimmed eyes and an even redder nose. She sniffled softly. “I’m sorry, Mom, I was okay until—”
“I know. Go back home with Camille so you can really get it out. There’s no shame in it.”
“But I need to work. I need to get ready for next semester. I don’t want to fall behind. I’ll be okay—”
Camille ignored her friend. She gathered up their books and tossed them into their backpacks. “You’re not going to fall behind. You’re a genius compared to those idiots at university, and school doesn’t even begin for another month. Let’s take it easy for another week. We’ll marathon the next season of The Estate and eat chocolate chip ice cream until we get sick. We haven’t even started the third season. That’s what we’re falling behind on, not our studies.”
“But…”
“No buts.” Camille hitched her loaded backpack upon her shoulders. “I want ice cream, and I want to watch The Estate. Do it for me.”
Cecily sniffled again. “Achille and I used to eat ice cream together.”
“I know, but you’ll have to settle for me now. Let’s go, hon. These books are terribly heavy.”
Kenna helped Cecily to her feet. “Thank you, Camille. What would I do without you?”
“You’d probably get a lot more done, since you wouldn’t be addicted to some silly teenage soap opera. I saw the family’s queue yesterday. You’re watching it too.”
“Hush, child. It’s research.” Kenna helped her daughter put on her backpack. “Has Cecily invited you to Solstice breakfast?”
“Of course. Lunch and dinner, too. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Cecily sniffled, and Camille took her by the hand and led her through the shelves.
Kenna watched them go. “My daughter is on break from university. Her boyfriend broke up with her several weeks ago.”
“She seems to be in good hands,” Lila said.
“Thank the gods for Camille. She and Cecily have been best friends since the moment they met at university, and she’s proven her worth in the last few weeks. She hasn’t even left my daughter’s side since the breakup. She’s been so focused on trying to cheer her up.”
“A friend like that is hard to come by.”
“Yes, she is. I’m not too happy about all the hot chocolate and ice cream Camille keeps sneaking her, but I can hardly complain. At least my daughter is eating, and Camille is just doing what she can. Cecily will be heartbroken for a long time to come. First loves and all that. You must remember how things were at that age. You live with an open heart, and your whole world crumbles at the slightest strike against it.”
Lila gave a small nod. She had never actually lived like that—not as a teenager, anyway.
No wonder Tristan had gotten over her so quickly. He’d had practice. He’d had others. She’d probably never even meant as much to him as he’d meant to her.
The realization knocked a deeper hole in her heart.
She’d let herself get so undone, and for what?
Dixon gave her hand a little squeeze as Kenna led them to the back of the library, which opened up into another section of the building. Dozens of computers filled the room, with students pecking away.
Kenna seemed to have a point about students learning through their interests. Few highborn, lowborn, or workborn students would have been caught dead in a library over Solstice break, not unless it was to choose an adventure novel. But these kids still dug into all manner of subjects. One boy had two art history books open near his computer.
Sketches of noses filled his screen.
Lila’s eyes strayed over the computers themselves, balking at the selection. Midrange rigs, all of them.
“Our admin, Kara, runs both labs and the server room,” Kenna said under her breath. “You can work here, of course, but Mòr believed you’d prefer your guest cabin. Just pick a computer, and our admin will have it set up before our tour is complete.”
As if summoned, a woman with bubblegum-pink hair appeared from behind a counter and shook hands with them all. “I was told you were coming today. I was also told you’d need a computer and access. I don’t like my rigs going out where I can’t see them, but the oracle has commanded it, so I suppose I’m overruled.”
“I will take care of it as if it were my own,” Lila promised, inclining her head.
“You better. I’m not as cuddly as my hair might suggest.” The woman led them to a door in the back. She grabbed a card attached to a lanyard at her neck and slid it through a reader, which emitted a feeble beep. The door snicked open. “The real computers are in here.”
The group entered another room. Adults and much older teens bent over keyboards, typing and digging into manuals. The computers might not have matched the ones she’d had at home, but they only lagged a touch.
As Kara droned on about their specs, Lila stopped before the fastest rig in the room.
“How did I know you’d pick that one out of the bunch?” Kara sighed. “I’ll have it set up in your cabin within the hour. Come see me if you need anything else.”
Kenna led them back into the main computer lab. “In the meantime, I’ll show you the cafeteria and the greenhouse. My cousin, Edana, and her husband have done some wonderful work with ferns. Many of them are bigger than your friend there. Unless you’d like to visit the Star Tower?” she asked, aiming her question at Dixon. “My youngest sister takes care of the telescope.”
She opened the main door of the library, and the group slipped out into the cold. “On second thought, it’s too early for the tower. Blair’s not even awake yet.”
Dixon and Lila exchanged glances.
“My sister marches to the beat of her own drummer and her own alarm clock.”
In the end, they visited the greenhouse first, an open-air room covered in plastic and steel tubes. The ferns were, in fact, bigger than Dixon, as were the aloe plants and roses. They were beautiful, even more beautiful than the ones at Bullstow or the Randolph estate.
Kenna pointed out the cafeteria next, a structure nearly as large as the library. “You can have lunch there tomorrow, though we’ve stocked the refrigerator in your cabin. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like. As for breakfast tomorrow, Mòr has invited you to eat with us. She’ll be better then, and well rested.”
The sun dipped below the horizon as they walked toward a stumpy tower in the back of the compound.
Kenna folded her hands behind her back. “We haven’t had a chance to go over that list of missing children yet. Do you wish to interview them? I could set up a place for you in the library or the administration building.”
“Holding interviews would tip off the mole whether they’re on your list or not,” Lila replied. “I want to keep my reason for being here a secret for as long as possible.”
“Mòr was right. You are sneaky.”
“Sneaky and thorough. I’ll start digging into your logs tonight. The mole has been sending information to the empire somehow. Maybe if we’re lucky, they’ve sent them from here. I’ll look for evidence. While I work on that, you and Connell can take a pass at the photos and see what you think of the matches.”
The group jogged up the stone stairs. Only boxes filled each floor, as though the tower served as extra storage for the compound. After climbing several stories, they stepped out onto the top floor. The domed metal roof had been cracked open, revealing a wide telescope pointed away from the fading sun. Tables filled with open books and pencils littered the room. Bookshelves lined the circular walls.
A pale woman in her mid-twenties sat atop a stool in the center, her boots crossed under her butt, somehow balanced so that she did not fall. Blonde hair cascaded down her back as she pored over a spreadsheet on her computer. She wore a forest-green sweater and bright pink pajama bottoms, both baggy on her wispy frame. A yellow knit cap perched on the top of her head, matching her fingerless gloves. A muffin sat beside her, only one bite taken from the top.
“Blair is an astronomer, and my youngest sister,” Kenna said. “We stopped trying to get her to participate in the family business a long time ago.”
The group waited for Blair to look up and notice them.
She did not.
“We also stopped trying to get her to participate in much of anything.”
Kenna tugged on her sister’s hair.
Blair startled, but did not turn away from her notes. She merely threw out a lazy arm to bat her elder sister away. “I had breakfast. Go away.”
Kenna pushed the muffin toward her sister. “Oh really?”
Blair finally looked up from her work. “I’m going to finish it. It’s on my to-do list.”
“This is your muffin from yesterday, Blair. I know because you took the last chocolate chip. You didn’t even finish it.”
“It’s not from yesterday. I just got it an hour ago.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I think I know my own breakfast.”
Kenna picked up the muffin and chucked it at the wall.
It broke into two hard lumps.
“It seems my muffin is defective. Can you bring me another?”
“No, I can’t. And it’s not defective. It’s just old.”
“Maybe I lost the one from this morning.” Blair looked around her table helplessly, moving books around in case a stray muffin had gotten lost underneath. “Or maybe I ate it. Did I eat it?”
“How should I know?”
Dixon fetched her breakfast from atop a book bag.
Blair’s gaze lingered on his face. “Sometimes I lose them. Is it squishy?”
He squeezed the bottom and nodded.
“I told you I had a muffin.” Blair pinched the top and nibbled a blueberry. “Why did you let outsiders into to my tower, Kenna?”
“Tell Dixon thank you first.”
“Thank you first,” Blair said absently. “Why did you let outsiders into my tower?”
“It’s not your tower, and they are friends.”
“Whose?”
“Ours.”
“Yours. Not mine. I don’t have friends. Friends are boring.”
Dixon chuckled and crouched beside the telescope, stooping to peek through the eyepiece.
“Don’t touch it,” Blair said, swatting him away. “You’ll knock it out of alignment.”
Kenna rolled her eyes. “He’s just curious. Must you be so impolite?”
“I’m neither polite nor impolite. Go away. I’m too busy to pretend an interest tonight.”
“You’re always too busy, and you’ve forgotten your coat again.”
“It’s not cold.”
“It’s barely above freezing, and it will only get colder.”
“I remembered my hat and gloves.” Blair took another bite of muffin.
“A hat and gloves aren’t warm enough.”
Lila extended her hand, hoping to quiet the argument between the sisters. “My name is Lila.”
Blair stared at her fingers. “I don’t shake hands. People are always clammy or warm or sticky. It’s unsettling.”
Dixon laughed, a little sputter that threatened to turn into more.
His dimples reappeared.
Blair noticed them. “Who are you?”
He flipped his notepad around and pointed at his name.
“Dixon Leclair. What an odd name. Why do you insist on molesting my telescope?”
He fished in his pocket for his pencil.
“Cat got your tongue?”
No, someone else got there first.
“Are you making sport of me?”
You should eat your muffin.
Blair turned back to her spreadsheet. “Don’t nag, else you’re just as bad as Kenna.”
“Oh, say it isn’t so,” Kenna said.
“Well, at least he’s not yammering away in my ear. Why don’t you just start writing down everything for me?”
“You’d just lose the paper. What do you even have the telescope pointed at?”
“A star.”
“Which star?”
“Ooka Pooka Looka in the Zoink Boink Nebula. Why do you ask? It doesn’t matter what I say. You never remember any of it.”
Dixon peeked in the eyepiece, then scribbled on his notepad. Bellatrix. Orion.
Blair cast her eyes over her papers. “How did you know that? Did you see it somewhere?”
Dixon grinned and tapped his head.
“You knew it already?” Blair asked, barely pausing for his nod. “I’m going to prove Bellatrix isn’t one star but two. Some damn Spaniard is trying to do the same thing. He always tries to snag my observation time at Krek, but he only goes there so he can get drunk and party. Fool doesn’t know his ass from a—”
Kenna’s palm vibrated in her pocket. “Thank the gods. Kara has your computer ready. I’ll take you to your cabin and get you settled in.”