Rogue Oracle by Alayna Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

of Lena’s hair, leaving Galen with a bald, lumpy scalp and a nest of hair in the sink.
    He looked more human when he was finished. Not like himself, yet. But less like Lena.
    He turned on the shower, let the hot water beat upon his flesh. He grasped a stiff bristle brush and scrubbed at his body. Skin sloughed away in parchment-thin flecks, circling the drain. He scrubbed until his skin was raw and pink, until he could see the glitter of Lena’s gold ring more clearly.
    He wrapped a towel around his body, dug around under the sink. The ring was an inorganic compound. He wouldn’t be able to digest it. It would have to come off.
    Galen slapped his hand down on the edge of the sink. He grasped the edges of the ring with a pair of pliers and pulled. The ring shifted a bit, but wouldn’t budge over the shiny red knuckle. He’d waited too long; he could feel it grown into the bone.
    He grasped the pliers again, with more determination, feeling the bite of them against the circle of metal. With all his strength, he twisted and pulled. He could feel his knuckle split, and warm, red blood seeped down over the pliers. He cast the bent ring into the sink with a clatter.
    Wrapping his bleeding hand in a towel, Galen picked up the ring. Lena remembered it. She remembered when Carl had given it to her in Red Square. Carl had said it was a promise, but Carl had forgotten.
    But Galen wouldn’t. Resolutely, he turned back to the nest of papers on his bed. He picked up his pen, determined to write everything Lena knew down, before her bones dissolved into his and her memory faded.
    Before he was alone, again.

Chapter Four
    T ARA ALWAYS found it difficult to assimilate into an investigation already underway. There was always a good deal of playing catch-up, and she hated being at a disadvantage. Sometimes, all she could do was retrace the steps of the previous investigators. She knew from the file that Carl had been married, with four children. The Lovers card had appeared in her reading, and she suspected that there was more to Carl and Lena than it first appeared. Had they run away together?
    The only way to find out would be to see for herself.
    She stood outside the Starkweather house, a nice house in a suburban Falls Church neighborhood. The house was a bit too big for the tiny lot, but each one of the other houses on the cul-de-sac had been built that way. She guessed this was a neighborhood populated by government workers, imagined that nobody could speak much about what they did at block parties. They probably talked more about the shiny, late-model cars in the garages and the kids pedaling their tricycles in the driveway than what anyone actually did for a living.
    The pansies lining the walkway were a carefully mulched blend of violet, white, and red that grew in a riot of color. Tara wondered if gardening was Mrs. Starkweather’s hobby, or if they had a gardener. The front walk had been freshly power-washed, and the grass clipped short in diagonal furrows across the lawn. Whether she was doing the work herself or overseeing it, Mrs. Starkweather had been keeping busy.
    Tara rang the doorbell and waited. She heard the mincing tap-tap of impractical shoes on the inside floors. Eventually, the front door opened. A tanned, blonde woman in cropped pants and a pink tank top looked at her. She was easily a decade younger than Carl, very beautiful, in a California beach girl way. Nothing like Lena. “Yes?”
    “Mrs. Starkweather? I’m Tara Sheridan, from the Department of Justice, Special Projects. I’m investigating your husband’s disappearance.”
    “Oh.” Her well-manicured nails flexed on the door handle. “You people were just here.”
    “We just have some additional questions.”
    Carl’s wife nodded, opened the door. “Please give me a moment to send the kids out to play.”
    “Of course.”
    Tara stepped into the foyer. The travertine floors had been freshly waxed, and Tara could smell lemon cleaning solution.