Page 85 of Office of the Lost

“I’d kiss you again,” Leopold said, “but don’t we have an Oracle to find?”

“We can spare a couple seconds.”Crispin threw his arms around his Chaos Man, and this time their kiss was different.Their essences mixed, and the tingling spread from Crispin’s lips and warmed his whole body.If that’s what a mere kiss is like….

They broke apart.

“Dude.”Leo’s voice made the word a sacrament.

“Dude.”Crispin grinned again, and Leo returned it.

Minkis leaped back onto his shoulder.

“So how do we find this Oracle?”Leo’s eyebrow rose in that adorable way of his.

“We bring it to us.”Crispin took Leo’s hand again and felt the welcoming surge of Chaos.

The Office halls shifted around them, blowing apart like a slow-motion explosion.For a moment it was all exposed, every nook and cranny, every sealed room holding its secrets.Then it came back together, reassembling itself.

The door to the Oracle was suddenly right in front of them.

“Whoa.”Leo’s mouth hung open.

“Whoa, indeed.Not even the wards of OotL can stand up to the two of us when we work together.”

“Right?That’s so much better than an elevator.”Leo’s eyes twinkled.

The door before them split in two, the crack opening around one side of the giant, winking eye.

Crispin’s pulse raced.He’d never been to see the Oracle before.Only Bidulla and a few of the higher-ups had O-Level access.

They stepped into the medium-sized chamber, maybe five meters square.The transparent walls showed a forest scene with little half-seen somethings scampering among the branches.

In the middle of the back wall, a huge eye blinked at them, almost a twin to the one in the entry door, but much larger.

“Who calls upon the great and mighty Oracle?”The deep voice shook the room, coming from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

Crispin frowned.This wasn’t what Juzir had told him to expect.

“It’s the Wizard of Oz.”Leo was grinning like a madman.

“What?”Crispin had never heard of a place called Oz, and certainly not of a wizard who hailed from there.

Leo jabbed a finger at the lump in Crispin’s vest pocket.“Thea.Thea was right.This is the Wizard of Oz.”He stalked forward and punched the eye right in, well, the eye.

“Leo, don’t?—”

But it was too late.

The eye crumpled like a piece of tissue paper, folding back on itself to reveal a series of compartments.And in each one?—

“Squirrels?”Leo stumbled back a step.“Why is it filled with squirrels?”

Minkis chittered, and the forty-odd squirrels that had been hidden behind the eye chittered back.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”Crispin still couldn’t quite believe it himself.“The Oracle issquirrels.”

32

Leopold

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