"I didn't call him a murderer."
"You implied it pretty heavily."
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
We eventually turned ontoa street where the houses pressed so close together you could reach from one porch to the next. The Oracle's house sat in the middle of the block, distinguished from itsneighbors only by the wind chimes hanging from the porch and the small hand-painted sign that read Fortunes Told, Futures Revealed.
This was it. Our last chance. If the Oracle couldn't help us, then we were walking corpses. Constantine would find us. Or Zeus would. Didn't matter who got there first.
The porch steps creaked under our weight. Jasper pulled out the offerings he'd brought: good tobacco, aged rum, raw coffee beans. Traditional signs of respect when asking someone to save your life.
We stood there waiting. The air felt heavy, electric with the promise of rain. Thunder rumbled somewhere over the river.
Lorenzo stood in front of me, so close I could have reached out and touched him. His shoulders were rigid, his breathing carefully controlled. Every line of his body screamed tension.
I wanted to say something. Apologize, explain, anything. But the words stuck in my throat.
His hand moved slightly, like he was going to reach back for me. Then he stopped himself and curled his fingers into a fist.
The distance between us was maybe six inches. It felt like a canyon.
Jasper knocked.
Footsteps approached and lock turned with a heavy click, then another, then a third.
The door opened and light spilled out onto the porch, framing a woman in the doorway. She was older than I'd expected, maybe sixty, silver-white hair wrapped in a crimson scarf. Her eyes swept over the four of us, pausing on each face before moving to the next.
She looked between Lorenzo and me, taking in the space between us, the way we weren't looking at each other, the tension that probably radiated off us like heat.
"Well," she said, smiling slowly. "Look what the cat dragged in."
Thunder rumbled in the distance, closer now.
"Come, come," she said, waving us inside. "No sense in you all standing out here in the rain. We have much to discuss, and I suspect you boys have even more to sort out betweenyourselves."
The Oracle's house smelledlike frying dough, chicory coffee, sugar, and oil. We followed her through rooms crammed full of family photos and mismatched furniture.
A door stood ajar in the hallway. Through the gap, I caught a glimpse of blue monitor light, multiple screens casting shadows across three people hunched over keyboards. A young man leaned over an old fashioned switch board, maps covering the walls behind him. One woman spoke rapid French into a headset while her fingers flew across a keyboard. The door swung shut as we passed, cutting off the view.
The Oracle led us toward the kitchen at the back of the shotgun house, down a hallway barely wide enough for one person.
"I made beignets," she said over her shoulder. "Never know when hungry house guests will pop on by."
She moved further into the kitchen, but she wasn’t alone.
Judge Rhadamanthys was sitting at her kitchen table.
I stiffened, ready to flee, until the Oracle waved her hand. “No fighting in the kitchen, boys. This is neutral territory. The Judge here knows that. And now, so do you.” She waved vaguely at the table. “Go on, now. Have a seat.”
Nobodymoved.
"I said sit." She didn't raise her voice, didn't even look at us. Just kept working a round of fresh dough.
We sat. Rafael and I took the chairs on one side of the small table, Rhadamanthys on the other. Diego and Jasper hovered near the doorway, neither quite willing to commit to staying or leaving.
The Oracle poured coffee into mismatched mugs and set them in front of us. The ceramic burned against my palms when I picked mine up, almost too hot to hold. I added sugar, watched it dissolve.
She placed a plate of fresh beignets covered in powdered sugar in the center of the table before settling into the chair. "So, what brings you boys to see me?”
