Then, suddenly, I’m being yanked to the surface. The hand around my ankle holds on tight, but the creature it’s connected to gets pulled up with me. As we approach the surface, the hand releases, and I fly out of the water and out onto the rocky shore.
I suck in great gasping gulps of air, struggling to get oxygen back into my panicking bloodstream. My stomach heaves, rejecting the black water that it welcomed a short while ago.
I’m on my hands and knees, gasping and gagging, when a woman’s voice says, “What kind of fool goes wading into the Lake of the Dead?”
I look up and try to focus my blurry vision on the speaker, but my attention is drawn to a beautiful black horse standing a few feet away. It takes me a moment to realize that the reason I can tell the horse is black is that the single horn in the middle of its forehead is glowing like a ship’s lantern in the fog.
“No way,” I whisper, fighting off another coughing fit. “You’re a unicorn.”
The unicorn tilts its head to the side and gives me what can only be a bemused look. That’s the last thing I see before I black out.
CHAPTER 18
GRACE
When Milo calls and asks if I want to go grab lunch somewhere, I almost put him off. Since Gretchen dived into the abyss just two days ago, I’ve been half crazed. I stayed up most of the last two nights working on my library archives search program—I call it the LASP—and then meeting Greer at first light to search the streets.
I’m exhausted and desperate, and those don’t seem like good things to throw into the mix between me and Milo.
“I’d love to go to lunch, Milo,” I say, “but—”
Before I can tell him I have to cancel our plans, Greer snatches the phone from my hand, clears her throat, and says, “I’m halfway across town. Can we meet in, say, twenty minutes?”
She sounded just like me.
I reach for my phone, but she jerks it out of reach.
“Greer!” I shout-whisper.
“Uh-huh,” she says, twisting to avoid my efforts at phone retrieval. “Okay, I’ll find it. Sounds perfect.”
She hangs up, hands my phone back, and says, “You’re welcome.”
“I’m welcome?” Is she insane? “I can’t go on a date. I have to keep looking for the oracle.”
“We’re covering the same ground,” she says. “I’ll keep searching while you have lunch with Milo. Consider this my penance for attending my tea committee meeting tomorrow afternoon.”
“I—I can’t.”
“You need to.” She looks me over. “How much sleep did you get last night?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “A few hours.”
“More like a couple of hours,” she guesses. “You look like the walking dead.”
“Great, all the more reason to go on a date.”
Greer walks over to the nearest car and sets her purse on the hood. She pulls out a small silk pouch. “That,” she says, “I can take care of.”
“This is a stupid idea,” I argue. “I’ll never be able to have a coherent conversation. I shouldn’t be able to. Greer, I need to keep searching.”
She holds my face between her palms and looks me straight in the eye. “Listen to me, Grace Whitfield. You are not a machine. You cannot operate on no sleep and, I imagine, no food.”
I feel my cheeks burn at the truth of her accusation. I was too rushed to grab even a granola bar for breakfast.
“If you run yourself into the dirt, you will be no good to Gretchen.” She releases me and grabs a silver tube out of the silk pouch. “Go on this date. Enjoy yourself. Flirt with the cute boy.” She pulls the top off the tube and twists the bottom, pushing a stick of skin-colored makeup out of the end. “When you’re done, you will be reenergized and we will meet back up and resume our searching.”
I sigh. Maybe it’s okay, maybe this is a good thing.
I relax and let Greer work her magic. Ten minutes later she pronounces my face ready for Milo. She unbuttons her lilac-colored cardigan, shrugs her way out of the sleeves, and hands it to me.
“Wear this over your …” She makes a face at my navy-blue SAVE THE OCEANS tee. “That thing.”
“You’re sure?” I ask her. “You don’t think this is selfish?”
“Of course it is,” she says. “But selfish isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It only means you take care of yourself, and you have to do that to be able to take care of others. Now, let’s get you to Crepetude.”
As I follow her to the bus stop, I wonder if I’m letting Gretchen down. Maybe Greer is right. Maybe I need this break to clear my mind, to get a fresh perspective. This could be just the thing to help me figure out what to do.
I only hope I’m not rationalizing so I can hang out with Milo.
Sitting across the table from Milo an hour later, pushing my half-eaten peanut-butter-and-jelly crepe around on the plate, the guilt hits me hard. I should be out hunting for Gretchen. Not that anything useful has come from our hunting, but it feels wrong to be on a date when I could be—should be—trying.
“Earth to Grace,” Milo says, a cautious smile on his adorable face. “You know they don’t give refunds for the part you don’t eat, so you might as well finish.”
I manage a weak smile. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not very good company today.”