Oracles were so rare, they made Healers seem common. They weren’t even counted among the four types of magic, because no one was sure it was even a type in the same way. Alice didn’t know how rare they were, she only knew that she’d never seen one. As soon as a mage was determined to be an Oracle, they disappeared from the Academy.

For special training, it was said.

For their protection, it was explained.

No one really knew what it meant, because anyone who knew what they could do, didn’t talk about it. What Alice did know, was that they could trace magical signatures and were extremely valuable to the Academy. When they were, very briefly, taught about the Oracles, they were told that Oracles could find any mage by tracking their signature. All they needed was an anchor point; a recent time and place when the mage had used magic. Some people still believed they were a myth, a fairy tale the Council had made up to keep mages in check, but Alice had always believed they were real.

Now she was on the verge of seeing one for herself. She followed Hadley, and was surprised when he led her to his car. Since the Oracles were such an important asset to the Council, it would have made sense to keep them within the wards of the Academy, even though no student had ever seen one. At least, as far as they knew. Some said their appearance changed as they used their magic, but Alice didn't know if it was true. She had perhaps imagined some sort of secret basement, where they all lived. She certainly hadn't imagined them living in the city, which was the direction Hadley was driving in. When they crossed the bridge, and got off the highway, he turned towards downtown.

He stopped in front of a hotel, and allowed the valet to take his car. Hadley held the glass door open for Alice, as they entered. She was still confused about what they were doing.

The hotel was all dark wood, decorated with gold. It had a Victorian feel to it, and it was… a lot. Almost to the point of extravagant.

"A hotel?" Alice asked, keeping her voice low.

"A famously haunted hotel," Hadley said, as if that explained everything.

"Okay, but that still doesn't make sense," she insisted. She couldn't imagine any practical way of keeping the Oracles at a hotel, while keeping them safe, and not attracting suspicion. She couldn't believe the best option they had come up with, was booking open reservations at hotels, haunted or not. Even if they moved them around, relocating them on a regular basis, that was a lot of work.

"Doesn't it?" he asked her, and she instinctively resented the tone of his voice. It was too much like a teacher, trying to trigger a memory of something she didn't know. Luka didn't have the patience for that kind of teaching method, and she really thought she had escaped it.

"Does it?" she asked, bothered by whatever she was missing.

Hadley didn't answer. He approached the front desk, where a young woman looked at them with a polite smile, asking what she could do for them.

"Room 304," he said.

"Sir," she said, with an acknowledging nod. "The room isn't available."

"It is now."

She cocked her head slightly, taken aback.

"There's a lockdown."

"I know," Hadley said. "Look, it's life or death for one of our Agents."

"Okay," she said. "ID and clearance."

He slipped her his Academy ID, and leaned over the desk.

"I don't have time to take this through the proper channels," he said. "Especially not with the lockdown. But Mage Van Aller cleared it."

"I can't…"

"You're welcome to call her," Hadley said, and took out his phone. He scrolled through his contacts, and held it out to her.

"No," she said, waving the phone away. "It's fine. Mage Thomas. Sir."

She eyes Alice. "Two?"

Hadley nodded. "Thanks."

She disappeared in the back for a moment, and when she returned, she handed Hadley a key card and two delicate silver chains. Hadley handed one of the silver chains over to Alice, and headed for the elevators. The chain had a small key charm attached to it. Hadley pulled it over his head, and Alice copied him.

"For the wards," he explained.

The elevator took them to the third floor, and the doors opened to an empty hallway, even though Hadley had never pressed the 3rd floor button.

"Are you ever going to explain any of this to me?" Alice asked.

"The significance of the haunted building should be obvious to you. Haven't you been taught about urban legends?"

"Right," Alice said. "Yes. I think it was covered in the 'stay away from wild magic' portion of the syllabus, where we were told to stay away from wild magic."

Hadley sighed. "So, that's a no."

"We have been taught not to create magical incidents, and how to deal with them when they occur, which mostly came down to leaving them alone and calling an Agent. That's it."

Hadley fell silent, and instead unlocked the door to room 304. The lock beeped when the card was inserted and flashed a green light at them.

"The short version," he said, opening the door, "is that urban legends, specifically those with a set geographical location, become power centers. The added interest, the telling and retelling of the story, the myth and mystery shrouding the place makes it loaded with an unusual amount of magic. You should be able to feel it."

She nodded. Her magic had danced under her skin since they entered, and a faint but constant buzzing had been present in her ears. It had initially made her nervous, thinking she might have gotten infected with the virus, but had reasoned it was unlikely. She hadn't been using her magic, and no one had been using magic around her either. She thought it was just wards or something. She hadn't expected it to be the building itself.

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"Well, as an added bonus, no one will wonder why the magic is more intense here. No one will examine the cause of it, because the cause is obvious. No one will notice that on top of being a power center, this building is housing several Oracles."

The room opened into a small seating area, but it was empty. She followed Hadley further in, to the bedroom, and saw who she assumed was the Oracle. She sat on an unmade bed, looking up from a book as they entered. Her hair was nearly white, falling in soft waves to her chin, and her eyes were a pale, periwinkle blue, only barely holding on to any color at all. With her milky skin, white tank top, and light gray sweatpants, she looked washed out, like a watercolor ghost in an oil painting. Alice wondered if it was an Oracle thing, if that was what they all looked like. Pale and colorless.

The girl marked her place in the book and smiled at them, showing perfect teeth.

"You have something for me?" she asked, and looked excited at the promise of something to do.

Hadley nodded. "I need you to locate Luka Lavrin."

She shook her head. "Hadley," she sounded disappointed. "You know how this works."

"Right," Hadley said. "Of course. Luka Mikhailovich Lavrin. Healer. Last seen around an hour ago at Mutiny." He paused. "Is Mutiny enough, or do you need the address?“

She flashed him a smile. "It'll do."

They watched her as she crossed her legs beneath her and straightened her spine, taking up a position as if she was meditating.

Hadley turned to Alice. "This might take a while," he said quietly. "You had questions?"

Alice glanced at the girl. "I have several," she said.

They went back to the seating area and settled down in a pair of worn armchairs. The fabric was velvety, and run through with stripes in shades of reds and green. Alice fiddled with the stitching, as she settled on a question.

"Who is she?" Alice asked. It was far from the most pressing question on her mind, but it seemed like the right place to start.

"We call her Mira. When a mage is revealed to be an Oracle, they give up their identity and are placed in one of our safe locations for their own protection."

"So, she grew up in a string of hotel rooms, alone?"

"She has a handler. They all do."

"That's not..." She glanced at the young girl. She couldn't even imagine. "You do this a lot?"

"What? Break the rules to get access to the Oracles? No. I have the clearance to talk to them, so I often deal with them. Mira is too young and inexperienced to pick up the subtle magic of Strays, so it doesn't matter if we borrow her."

"I can pick up their magic, but it's taxing and inefficient," the girl cut in. Alice could glimpse her through the opening between the rooms, but she hadn't moved. She was sitting in exactly the same position with her eyes closed. Her magic was strange. It wasn’t neon lights swirling across her skin, it wasn’t the shimmering sunlight of nature mages, it was… iridescence. Her magic contained every color she didn’t, catching like rainbows in the light.

"You're supposed to focus on the task," Hadley told her.

"I am," she said. "And I wouldn't have to interrupt, if you were accurate."

"So, what exactly is she doing?" Alice asked, lowering her voice even further.

"Well, I don't know exactly how it works," he said, sending Mira a look she didn't see. "But from what I gather, she's using the information to track everyone matching the description, and following the different paths, eliminating them until there's only one left. Of course, in this case, we know he used his magic, which makes the process easier."

Alice nodded, not entirely comforted by the information. It was good that they could locate Luka, but until now she hadn't really believed they were that easy to find, to track. She hadn't bought into the idea that each mage had a signature, because if that was the case, how could anyone ever do anything against the law? They could just be tracked and found, couldn't they?

"We could track whoever did this," she said. "We know where the source is. Go back far enough, and we have them."

Hadley shook his head. "No. In theory, yes. But there are too many variables. We don't know the when or who, only the where, and magic traces fade with time. There would be nothing left by now."

"Oh," she mused. So there were limits to the Oracles. It was both distressing and reassuring.

A little more than five minutes passed before Mira stirred. Alice wasn't watching her, but heard the rustle of sheets as she uncrossed her legs and planted her feet on the ground.

Alice got to her feet, impatient to move, to act on whatever information the girl was about to give.

She didn't speak, but came into the sitting room, and grabbed paper and a pen from a desk by the wall. At first, Alice thought she was writing an address, but it took too long. In the end, she handed it to Hadley.

"Your guy has been throwing around a lot of magic," she said and sat down on the bed again. She picked up her book, and just like that, seemed to sink back into her own little world. Alice felt sorry for the girl. The isolation had to be taxing and horribly lonely. She couldn't imagine living her life trapped in a lifeless hotel room, void of any personality or care. The chair she had been sitting in was an old, worn thing, barely holding together. She wanted to ask Hadley if this was what their lives were like, but not in front of her. She didn't want Mira to hear the pity in her voice, the hopelessness and incompetence she felt at seeing how the most important assets of the Academy were treated. She shook off the feeling for now, and looked over Hadley's shoulder at the piece of paper, which turned out to be directions. Hadley handed it to her.

"Go," he said.

A sliver of panic pierced her heart, as the words hit her. He intended for her to do this alone, barely trained.

"I'm… going to need an address. I can't follow this." The directions were from Mutiny, so she guessed it mapped Luka's route. She wasn't like Luka. She didn't have a map of the city built into her head, so she didn't know where she was going.

Hadley took the paper back, and glanced at it. "It's just at the edge of Chinatown. Near the gate, I think."

She wanted to yell at him. It wasn't good enough. Luka would have been able to give her an exact address, he would have given her useful directions. He would have… She took a breath. That wasn't the important thing right now.

She needed to go. Now. Except…

"Hadley, if he's throwing around magic…" If he was throwing around magic, it meant he had been wrong. They weren't trying to recruit him. They were trying to kill him.

"He'll be fine," Hadley said, handing the paper back. "He always is."

She nodded, but couldn't quite make herself start moving.

"What if he's hurt?"

Hadley shrugged, as if it was pretty pointless to send a Healer to assist a Healer. "Fine," he said. "I'll send for a team."

"Thank you, sir." Alice said. He nodded at her once, and she strode towards the door.

It was frustrating, waiting for the elevator, and even worse, waiting for it to reach ground level.

When she made it out of the lobby, rain was pouring down, and she started running.

She only vaguely knew where she was in relation to Chinatown, but she knew she had to go south.

The rain was in many ways the last straw for her, but she couldn't linger on that. She couldn't allow herself to despair yet. She didn't think Luka was helpless, not even in the rain, but it was just another thing that seemed to lower the odds of finding him alive.

She focused on running.

She made it to Chinatown in a little over five minutes, but she didn't know where to go now. The directions weren't clear. There was no mention of street names. It relied heavily on landmarks, directions and certain sensations. It became clear that Mira hadn't just been watching Luka, she had walked the route with him. Maybe even feeling the things he felt, seeing the things he saw. It was difficult, because Luka possessed an internal map of the entire city that was intricately detailed, and Alice had a feeling he could walk the city blindfolded and get exactly where he intended to go. He didn't necessarily walk the most logical route or the simplest route. So, she was following along to directions like "follow the red brick road to the red facade".

She was on the red brick road, but she didn't know what kind of red facade she was looking for. She turned a corner and saw it. A house painted bright red. Now she just had to find a car with a bow, and then she was nearly there. There were plenty of cars, but no bows. She turned in a circle, and then she spotted it. A bow had been spray painted on a wall across the street, right above the roof of a parked car.

The directions said more, but ended with "the end of the alley", so into the alley she went.