“No,” Holly said, and Jim could not tell who spoke. Was this his daughter telling those shades not to kill the Oracle? Or was it Sally, through his daughter?
He would never know, and Holly would never say.
Instead, the No-Face Men dragged Veronica from the room and up the stairs. She screamed and railed against them, muttering spells that did not work, incantations that dispersed to the air. And none of them worked because Holly was this Boston’s next chosen Oracle, and such violence against her could not be allowed. That was why Veronica had needed the little girl out of her Boston-the soul of the city, in this reality, would not allow one Oracle to kill the next.
Jim wanted to watch what happened to the old woman, but Jenny hugged him and held him there, and Trix quietly closed the door. Still, they heard the heavy footsteps upstairs as Veronica was dragged across the small bedroom, and then lighter impacts as her feet fell in the farther room. After that, one long scream, fading, growing distant in space and time, until it was finally cut off by a shattering silence.
Jim turned to his daughter. She was still facing away from them, but her head turned ever so slightly to the left and right, left and right. It was as if she was reading something from the air before her.
Without turning, and in a tone that told Jim he might never hear his daughter’s innocent voice again, Holly spoke three words.
“I know everything.”
Epilogue
What’s Left of the Flag
Jim stood in the doorway of their new kitchen, watching Holly coloring at the table. Delicious aromas filled every room. Jenny had decided to make jambalaya, and Holly loved nothing more than to help her mom cook. Sometimes she helped cut vegetables or stir eggs or perform some other task appropriate for a girl who was not quite eight. But most of the time she was content just to be with Jenny. If anything, that inclination had only increased in the six weeks since their ordeal in the other Bostons.
Jim knew how his daughter felt. Ever since they had come back to their own city, he had rarely been parted from his family. At first, he had been unwilling to leave them at all, and had even insisted that Holly sleep in with him and Jenny. He had not worked at all, not a single brushstroke on canvas or anything more intricate than a casual sketch on a napkin, for almost a full month after their return, and had only left them twice to meet with Jonathan. The first time had been to assure himself that the world had returned to normal and that Jonathan was not, in fact, dying of cancer. The second had been to visit a gallery where Jonathan had arranged a display of his work.
Yet the past weeks had been anything but stable. They had put their apartment up for sale and moved into Veronica’s house. Thomas McGee’s house. With the passage between realities so much easier through that upstairs room, they could not allow it to be sold to some ordinary, unsuspecting family. For weeks they had been redecorating the place, moving in their own furniture, refinishing floors and painting walls, and buying new appliances. No matter what changes they made, though, Jim found it impossible to think he would ever feel at home here.
But what mattered was not what he and Jenny felt. This wasn’t really their home, it was Holly’s. She was the Oracle, chosen by the city. At first, Jim had feared that there would be many complications in attempting to buy the building from Veronica’s estate. When his attorney had done the research, however, he had found that there had been two names on the deed-Veronica Braden and Holly Banks. Holly’s name had been added to the deed on the day she was born.
There was no way that Veronica had done such a thing, but somehow, through its influence, the city of Boston had arranged for it to happen. It had chosen its next Oracle that long ago.
Jim felt a familiar sadness engulfing him as he watched his little girl color. Holly sang to herself, a little snippet of a song from some Disney Channel series, and did a little jerky dance movement while kneeling on the chair. He smiled but could not chase away the melancholy in his heart.
“She’ll be all right,” Jenny whispered, coming up behind him and sliding a hand around to rest on his stomach. She kissed his neck. “She’s got us with her. We can do this together.”
Jim nodded but couldn’t speak. In Sally Bennet, he had seen what happened when a child inherited the role of Oracle. She knew the city intimately, knew the secrets and mysteries of its people, the joy and hatred and despair that seeped into every brick and beam. She had inherited the city’s ancient magic, yes, and a profound wisdom far beyond the capacity of a child to wield. In years to come, she would benefit from that wisdom and power, but now she was simply too young to process it all. She knew of murders and infidelity and perversion, and there were months yet before her eighth birthday.
“No child should have such things in her head,” he whispered.
“I know,” Jenny said, pressing her warm body against his back, kissing his neck again. “But the city chose her. We can’t erase that. All we can do is help her carry the weight of it.”
“I’ll be all right, you know,” Holly said.
Jim stiffened and stared at his daughter. She hadn’t looked up from her coloring. He didn’t think they had spoken loud enough for her to hear.
Now Holly turned to look at her parents, her eyes full of a wisdom beyond her years. “Trust me, Daddy. Everything will be all right.”
The doorbell rang. Holly’s eyes lit up, and suddenly they were a little girl’s again. “Auntie Trix!” she cried, jumping down from the chair and bolting past her parents.
Jenny caught Jim’s hand, and as he turned, she kissed him. “We’ll be all right. Think of all of the people we’ll be helping.”
Jim nodded. It would feel good to know that they could do so much good, but he would never feel it had been worth the sacrifice of his daughter’s innocence. He vowed to protect her childhood as best he could.
“Without you, this would have broken me,” he told Jenny, gazing into her eyes.
“Duh, I know that,” she said. “That’s why I knew you’d find a way to come after us. Your life would be so boring without me in it. And who would nag you to take out the trash?”
At last, he smiled. Together, they walked along the hall into the foyer, where they heard voices fussing over Holly, telling her how big she’d gotten.
Trix had arrived, but it appeared that their other dinner guest had come at the same time, for Jonathan crouched down in front of Holly and, with a flourish, produced a small gift-wrapped present from inside his coat. “For your new bedroom,” he said.
Holly made little excited noises and asked if she could open it immediately. Jonathan insisted, and she tore off the paper and opened the little box to find a small crystal prism inside.
“You hang it in front of your window, and on sunny days, it makes little rainbows all around the room,” he explained.
“Uncle Jonathan, I love it! Thank you so much!”
Holly darted to the window to see if she could make the prism throw rainbows, which gave the adults a few moments to exchange greetings. Jonathan shook hands with Jim and kissed both Jenny and Trix. He nudged Trix’s overnight bag with his toe. “Spending the night?” he asked, turning to gaze at Jenny in mock admonition. “No one told me it was a sleepover.”
Jenny and Trix seemed awkward and at a loss for a reply. Jonathan seemed to sense this, and seemed about to apologize for something he could not possibly understand.
“It’s a girls’ thing,” Jim said, rolling his eyes. “They’re all going to camp out in Holly’s room tonight.”
A lie, of course. But they had all agreed not to tell anyone the tale of the Oracles and the other Bostons. Jonathan might have been able to believe them, but perhaps not. Jim thought that his own life had been better, and simpler, before he had learned the truth of the world, and he didn’t think they had a right to spoil that simplicity for anyone else.