Page 1 of Oracles Always Win

Chapter One

JAKE

Ihad always suspected there might be something… well,offabout the town ofWillowLake.ButI’dnearly convinced myselfVanClark, theChiefofPolice, didn't have fire in his eyes.Itwas just a trick of the light.AndHaydenWalker, the mechanic down at the garage, didn't growl.Hejust had something wrong with his throat, maybe damage from smoking.True,I’dnever seen the man light up, but it didn't matter.Hemust have quit beforeImoved to town.

Andthat figureI’djust seen running through the shadow-cloaked garden outside my inn?Thatwas definitely a regular old horse.Itdidnothave the torso of a human.

Itjust didn't.

Andif sometimes other people looked at me the same wayIlooked atChiefClark,Mr.Walker, or that horse?Itjust confirmed how fanciful my imagination was, becauseIwas absolutely, completely ordinary.

ThefactIwas currently hunched over the sink in my room, gagging into the old and severely chipped porcelain sink basin, with a paintbrush in my hand, not knowing howIgot thereagain…

Well, no one needed to know about that.

Sometimesstrange things happened.

Itwas all perfectly understandable.Really.Mypsyche was just finding ways to cope with the yearI'dendured.Paintingwas relaxing.Ithelped.Itwas a form of art therapy.Ofcourse, mine was the sub-conscious kind.Themiddle-of-the-night, paint-while-you-sleep kind.Thekind that made me puke every single time it happened.

Okay.

Somaybe whatIwas going through wasn't one hundred percent normal, but it could be worse.Maybe.Sowhat ifIhad some strange kind of sleep-walking condition that ended with me painting creepy pictures and not remembering anything about doing it.Everyonehad problems, right?Thiswas just my own personal slice of crazy with extra olives.

Iwiped the back of my hand over my mouth and stared at the paintbrush in my other hand.Thebristles were covered in black and white paint.Nosurprise there.Mypainterly alter-ego abhorred color.EverytimeIwoke up like this, it was the same thing.I'dfind a strange picture done in black, white, and varying shades of gray.Itwas all depressing shit.Weirdshit.

Eventhis latest one—the one on my easel with its still wet and glistening gobs of paintI’dbarely glimpsed before sprinting to the sink—wouldn't be normal.Iknew it wouldn't.It'dbe another study in twisted horrors.

Certainlynothing marketable in this tiny little town.Oranywhere.Really.And, no,Iwasn’t being melodramatic.Thisone, just like all the others, would be another waste of my limited resources.

Maybeif all my other paintings sold or the innI’dinherited from my grandfather wasn’t constantly dancing with bankruptcy,Iwouldn’t care about these strange midnight painting sessions.MaybethenI’djust laugh and happily jump online to buy moreMarsBlack,TitaniumWhite, and canvases.MaybethenIcould pretend these painting sessions weren’t desperate pleas from my deteriorating mind.

Except…Mypaintings weren’t selling, the inn flirted with debt likeSallyat closing time, and a little part of me died every timeIhad to order more black and white paint.

Sowhere did that leave me?

Witha shaky hand,Ibrought a plastic bottle of mouthwash to my lips.Ifonly my anxiety could be washed away with a swish and a spit too.Istared at the green froth at the bottom of the sink for several long minutes, asIhunted for enough oomph to deal with whatI’ddone.

Howlong hadIbeen standing here?

Iwas never sure how long these things lasted, butI’dcrash hard soon—yet another lovely side effect of my nightly endeavors.Butfirst,Ihad to look.Ihad to see whatI’dpainted this time.Ijust needed to muster enough energy to go across the room and look.AndthenI’dhave to figure out what to do with it.Iwas running out of space to store all these horridly awful pictures in my room.

“Deepbreath in.Deepbreath out,”Imuttered.Ibraced against the vanity with my paintbrush still clenched in one hand. “Thisone will be nice and chocolate boxy, somethingIcan sell.”

Honestly,I’djust be happy if it wasn’ttooodd.Theworst thing would be if it was another one of the imaginary man—the one with the horns, of all things—that my subconscious seemed fixated on.

Imean, how was a devilish-looking man with horns sexy?Basedon all those messed up medieval paintings of the devil eating peopleIhad to study in art school,I’dhave thought it’d be impossible, but here we were anyway.ApparentlyIhad aLuciferkink no one else needed to know about.

NotthatIshowedanyof my black-and-white paintings toanyone.Ever.Thatwas just a big ol’ nope.

Butthe ones with that strange man?ThoseIhid under my bed like dirty little secrets.

He—the imaginary man—called to me on a primal level.Andhow crazy did that sound?Thepaintings were a figment of my imagination.Theguy in the pictures wasn’t real.Hecouldn’t be.Iwould have remembered meeting someone like that, even without the horns.Andno one was that… that…Perfectwas the word that came to mind first, but could a horned man be perfect?Anyway, maybe my brain mashed together all my wet dreams and coalesced them into an unrealistic perfection, just to remind meI’dnever find an actual real person who’d do it for me.

Butif the guy was real?

Heatraced over me asIthought about the dark and intense look in his eyes, the dimple in his cheek, the way strands of his thick black hair fell over his forehead…

“Stop.Thinking.About.Him.”