Everyone else around the table leaned forward too.
“It willsmell 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 fuckingzombies?”
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. IfGastonhas 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 mylair. Myhome. 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—”
