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The oracle didn’t look at her, but stared into space beyond her shoulder. Finally it
mumbled, and B sighed. “He doesn’t know,” B said. “He says that is hidden from him.”
Marla had expected Mutex to hide himself and his movements, but oracles were
normally adept at penetrating such veils, and this was a true oracle, despite being
generated by B’s own psychic powers. If B’s oracle couldn’t find Mutex, then that
meant…shit. It meant Mutex had cast his spell with the help of the Cornerstone, and it
would take seriously big magic to peer into the future through a curtain that thick. Marla
considered the unwelcome possibility that she might have to fall back on her other plan,
seeking out the surviving sorcerers in the city and trying to find Mutex that way. She’d
hoped for a more elegant, direct solution.
And maybe there was one. “All right,” she said. “Then we need to find a better oracle.
Where can we find the biggest, strongest, most powerful, all-seeing oracle in the
vicinity?”
“Ah, shit,” B said, clutching his head. “I got a headache all of a sudden.”
But the monochrome oracle was mumbling, and gesturing with its paper-white hands,
and B nodded, wincing as he did so. This question was taking something out of B to
answer, even by projected proxy. Finally the oracle stopped talking, and sagged against
the wall, like a half-deflated balloon version of itself. “Okay,” B said. “I know. But we
have to pay for this, first, before I can tell you.”
Marla nodded. There was always a price to pay for help of this nature. The better the
oracle, the bigger the price. It turned out that the price for this one was minimal. Marla
went into Vesuvio and ordered a red eye to go. She carried the cup of espresso and
coffee out into the alley, and gave it to B. He solemnly, almost ritually, poured it out at
the oracle’s feet. Steam rose up from the ground, and the oracle turned into steam itself,
satisfied with a drink of hot life.
“We have to go to Alcatraz,” B said. “That’s where the big oracle is.”
Marla nodded. This would be something different. Not a projection of B’s psychic
prowess, not one of his convenient oracles-on-demand, but an ancient, strange, inhuman
thing. “Does it have a name?”
“The Portable Witch?” B said. “The Pebbled Witch? The Potable Witch? I’m not sure.
Something like that. The oracle mumbled.” B rubbed his temple. “My headache’s going
away, at least.”
“That’s good,” Marla said. “So how do we get to Alcatraz? Steal a boat?”
“I hope not,” B said. “But we might have to. The tours are usually sold out weeks in
advance.”
They made it to Pier 41 just in time to take the last ferry to Alcatraz, at 2:15. Marla
would have just sneaked onto the ferry, but B went to try to buy tickets before she could