“You’ve Seen me,” the Red Prophet said, crouching down to walk and waving her hands over her head like a chimpanzee. “You know.”
“Bah. I don’t know anything.” Karen batted it away, walking ahead with a stiff back. “I’ve been wrong before. There was this pizza episode…”
Charity watched in utter fascination from the edge of the dining room as Karen started shuffling her tarot cards. The fog in the crystal ball rolled and boiled, lights sparking within it. By Karen’s glances at it, her brow furrowed, that obviously wasn’t normal or expected. The Red Prophet sat on the actual table like some sort of centerpiece, looking on. Karen was doing her best to ignore the situation as she worked, but it couldn’t have been easy. Charity was having a hard time concentrating with it herself.
“Why does she…turn on the dramatics?” Charity whispered to her dad, who was standing next to her, watching. Darius, Roger, and Emery stood in the room with them, wanting the information as it came. Reagan had flat-out refused to attend. She didn’t much like Seers, it seemed. So Penny had stayed with her in the outer room, and Charity got the idea it was to keep her from taking off. Reagan was as bad as the Red Prophet, she gathered.
“She is very old,” Romulus answered. “And she has done a lot of mind-altering substances. She—”
“That’s not why,” the Red Prophet interrupted, her gaze drifting toward the ceiling. She stuck out her tongue and placed a little white square onto it. “Your mother is why. She is a very exacting woman, and she likes to have her way. I am something she cannot control, not even with her magic. I remind her of it, often, which is why she keeps me…apart.”
Charity tried to keep from stiffening. Though her dad wouldn’t admit it, he was having a lot of anxiety about what would happen with Grandmama’s situation. The First had kept her people hidden away for years. She’d divided them, essentially forcing those who didn’t want to remain idle to leave. She’d torn Romulus from Charity’s mom in the Brink, and created a hostile situation for the visiting shifters. She had a lot to answer for, but she was also family. She was the matriarch of their people, and had been for a long time. Calling her down would be a terrible burden on them all.
“Can I have a little quiet, please?” Karen asked.
“You don’t need quiet—you need to stop being so stubborn,” the Red Prophet replied. “You have a block for a head.”
“Says the drug addict.”
“I am not an addict. I am a crackhead.”
Karen blinked a few times, then minutely shook her head. “We’re not going to get along, you and I.”
“Correct. I look forward to our arguments. It’ll create all the energy we could possibly need.” The Red Prophet looked behind her, at a spot on the wall. She nodded.
“Right but…you’re here now, and Grandmama isn’t,” Charity said to the Red Prophet. “There’s no need for any kind of ruse.”
“True. Old habits, as they say. Though…these Brink mind alternants seem to promote exaggerated behavior. It’s best just to go along with it, I think.”
“Only a hack needs drugs to use her Sight,” Karen murmured, placing the cards as the crystal ball cleared for one solid moment. Energy rolled over Charity’s skin. From Romulus’s shiver, he clearly felt it too.
The Red Prophet jumped down from the table. “I will go and enter—”
“You need to go to the Flush,” Karen told Charity and Romulus, “that’s true enough.”
The Red Prophet hissed, straightened up, and faced Karen. “We must record our findings in private, so we can reflect on them before we speak with the others. That is how it is done. Then we must—”
“We have a job to do,” Karen spat back, “and that job does not entail making everyone wait while you dream up more dramatics.” With a closed-down expression, she looked at Romulus. “When you get to the Flush—”
“No. That is not to be revealed,” the Red Prophet said, and climbed back onto the table.
“I know very well what is, and is not, to be revealed, thank you very much. Or didn’t you know that I foresaw Charity’s journey into the Flush?”
“You are too rash, but even still, we make an excellent, powerful team,” the Red Prophet said, now smiling. “We are the best in the world when we work together. We will hate it immensely.”
“Good God,” Karen said. “Anyway, Romulus, you must take care of your business in the Flush, then make your journey to the elves as planned. That much is very clear. With you, to both of those destinations, must travel the Triangle of Power.”
“Yes. I Saw that, as well,” the Red Prophet said, and Charity noticed her sudden gravity. “The Triangle of Power is very important to this journey. But what is it?”