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She sat on the tailgate of Tristan’s truck, parked near the warehouse, her feet swinging back and forth. She’d slid her tranq back into her holster, but the guns she’d killed with lay in easy reach. The crickets chirped in the early evening, and the sun had not yet set. Her hood hid her face while she followed the moon’s progress. It floated above the horizon on an assigned course, a path that had been planned by the gods.
Had hers been planned so neatly?
Had this been the plan? Had she done it right, or had it gone horribly wrong?
Had she held the gun, or had it been the gods?
She hadn’t cared much about the gods before, not even when she dreamed of the oracle the week before, but now it all seemed important. If the oracles were the gods’ emissaries, and they’d used her and Tristan’s people to save the children—
Lila retreated into her coat. Her thoughts were too heavy, and she liked floating better.
She liked it very much.
Fry and Tristan carried Dixon out of the warehouse and into a waiting car. They’d buckled Shirley’s knife and holster around his waist. Blood still oozed down his trousers, staining the gray fabric. He’d given Lila more than a few concerned glances as he passed, but there wasn’t time for a chat. His grin had dissolved, as had the adrenaline, and his jaw had clenched tightly against the pain.
Tristan was too worried to let him dawdle.
The driver had peeled away, set on getting Dixon to Doc’s room at the shop.
Tristan’s people had brought the snoring bodies from the fields, friends and enemies alike, for a few friendly fire incidents had occurred during the mercs’ attack. Their scarves trailed in the field, flashes of color popping amid the thigh-high weeds. They loaded up their friends in two loud trucks, chosen because their rumbling engines would cover the snores. Fry and Tristan added Frank and Dice, then slapped the sides of the trucks.
The vehicles pulled away.
Tristan sent all but ten of his people back to their homes and jobs in New Bristol. Those who remained looked as though they’d spent time on a battlefield. They brought out the sleeping young and set them to doze in the back seats of a few cars, with warm blankets tucked over their shoulders. They brought out Oskar next and put him in the back of a truck so that Maria had plenty of space to sit beside him. Her suspicious eyes followed everyone’s movements.
The group then began a search of the surrounding area, finding nothing of interest but the Italians’ vehicles. The four delivery trucks looked new, and none of them had been stolen.
The oracle arrived soon after, her small gray electric car bouncing up and down on the broken road behind the building, flanked by two large trucks. Her door closed in the quiet, and she emerged. She had exchanged her purple robe and slippers for a long gray coat, draping sweater, jeans, and boots.
Workborn clothes.
Six figures disembarked from the other vehicles, all orbiting the ora
cle as though she were the sun, all wearing workborn clothes as well. They scanned the warehouse as though it were a battlefield.
Lila had never seen a purplecoat before.
Perhaps she saw them now, as anonymous as their mistress.
Tristan led them to the cars that held the children. The oracle peeked in on them, touching their faces. Once she was satisfied, Tristan led her into the warehouse.
Lila didn’t follow. She didn’t want to see the people she’d killed.
It felt like hours before the oracle returned, followed only by Tristan. Their faces were far more determined than their footsteps, which shuffled upon the concrete.
The truck dipped as they both sat upon the cold tailgate beside Lila.
“You found the girls,” the oracle said, as two purplecoats emerged from the warehouse, keys jingling at their fingertips. “Tristan told me what happened, though I’d already seen most of it in my visions.”
Lila licked her lips. “So I didn’t stop anything, then.”
“You stopped enough. I saw much worse. Believe it or not, this is one of the better outcomes.”
Tristan raised a brow. “I feel as though I’m missing something.”
“You are, but it’s none of your concern. Nor is this mess. It belongs to the oracles. You were right to get me involved, chief. You are not your father’s daughter.”
Lila didn’t know what to say to that. Judging from the blood on the warehouse floor, she was far from being his copy.
