A Shade of Vampire 24: A Bridge of Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand and leave the empty quarters when she pointed to a little package set atop a ledge. We’d been so distracted by the oracle’s absence, it hadn’t been noticed until now.
    I walked over to it and picked it up. The wrapping was made of parchment, and within it was something weighty. I unfurled the paper and a tiny glass vial containing vivid green liquid dropped into my palm. Then I caught sight of four words scrawled across the parchment in burgundy ink:
    Drink deep, curious fairy.

Ben
    C urious fairy . Grimacing, I handed the vial to Aisha. The oracle always did have a way with words.
    “What do you think this is?” I asked the jinni.
    Aisha examined the vial with a deep frown on her face. “She knew that you were coming for more answers,” she murmured. She opened the lid, sniffed the potion, and wrinkled her nose.
    “Well?” I asked. I’d had enough dealings with vials of liquid to make me averse to drinking anything out of a bottle for the rest of my life.
    “I’m not sure,” Aisha replied, replacing the cap.
    “Well, you can’t just drink it, Ben,” River said, taking the bottle from Aisha and examining it herself.
    And yet the oracle knew I was coming for answers… and she told me to drink it.
    I’d already resigned myself to the fact that the fastest way forward would be to consult the oracle—despite how maddening she could be. And here was her note, giving me a direct instruction… I’d just been to hell and back. Could anything really be worse than that?
    “I guess beggars can’t be choosers,” I muttered, taking the potion from River’s hands.
    As I took a seat in a rickety chair, River’s face drained of all color. I hated to do this to her, but I had no choice. If we stood a chance of having a future together, we had to take risks.
    I removed the cap and, raising the bottle to my lips, downed it in one shot.
    An unbearable bitterness overwhelmed my taste buds and stung my tongue, but before I could even gag, my vision started to fade. I felt myself falling backward and I guessed that I would have toppled off the chair, but I couldn’t know for sure. My consciousness was elsewhere.
    Darkness enshrouded me, but then there was light. A dim, flickering light. Like candlelight. As if a lens had just focused, I found myself in another cave, quite distinct from the one I’d just left. It was larger, with a concave ceiling. And it was bare except for a burning torch that hung from one wall, a glass flask of murky water, a bundle of tattered blankets on the sharp, rocky ground, and an old, eyeless woman, wearing a long dark dress—the signature garb of the oracle. But this… this was not the oracle I had met. Hortencia, although horribly disfigured, had still appeared youthful. Her face was unlined, as though she was no older than twenty-five. I imagined that if Hortencia had eyes, her face might’ve even been pretty, in a pixie-like way.
    This woman’s face was as shriveled as a hundred-year-old’s, her form bent and crooked.
    “Who are you?” I whispered.
    The woman slid slowly off the rock and padded with bare feet across the sharp ground toward me. Her skin looked thin. I was sure the rocks would cut her soles. “You know me,” she rasped, her lips curving in a knowing smile.
    “Hortencia?” I asked. Who else could it be?
    “It is me,” she said. “Always me.”
    “What… What happened to you?”
    “I left,” she said simply. “And I will not be returning. But I did not abandon you. I saw that your needy self would come for me, and so we meet like this.”
    I was surprised that she had taken the trouble to leave that note and vial for me. In her eyes at least, Hortencia owed me nothing. On the contrary, I owed her. In fact, I wasn’t really sure why she bothered to help any supernaturals at all. Maybe it was just for her own amusement.
    As I gazed around the chamber, I wanted to ask what “this” even was—where were we? But before I could, the oracle continued,