Читать книгу A.k.a. Goddess - Evelyn Vaughn, Linda Winstead Jones - Страница 12

“T hat’s better,” murmured a deep, muffled voice.

Not from my side, it wasn’t. I don’t like guns.

For a moment I couldn’t breathe. Not good.

“Fairy tales aren’t real, lady,” the man said in a smooth baritone. “And little girls break very easily.”

Breathe, damn it! You’d think, after training for years in Tai Chi, I wouldn’t clutch like this. Admittedly, some see Tai Chi as the Hello Kitty of martial arts, but you’d be surprised at its uses on the expert level. Unfortunately, Tai Chi requires a little thing called breath.

Then the man said, “That’s a good girl.”

I snorted with disbelief—which got me breathing.

Which made me dangerous.

I didn’t just have my balance—I owned it. I dropped my center of gravity. I spun, raising a hand, readying to redirect baritone’s gun into a safe direction as I took it, and—

“Police! Freeze!”

Damn. Sofie’s command surprised both of us. Worse, she stood where I’d planned to divert the gun. Using her distraction, I rerouted my movement into a full turn, stepping free from baritone and out of Sofie’s line of fire.

My new friend stood, dark and deadly, pistol pointed.

More guns. Goody. But I got a look at my attacker—tall, broad-shouldered, nice suit. Very nice suit. I should know, what with the company I’ve kept.

Interesting choice for breaking and entering.

It didn’t go with his black ski mask at all.

“Ladies,” warned baritone, glancing between Sofie and me, “You do not want to go there.”

Sofie said, “Put down the weapon and back away.”

Apparently not one to take orders, he swung his gun toward her. But I stepped smoothly back into Sofie’s line of fire and slipped his legs out from under him as he shot.

Four ounces of strength against a ton of force, as my sifu says. Appear, then disappear. You just have to sense your opponent’s weakness and know where to tap.

Baritone landed on the concrete with a surprised grunt and his shot—to judge by a crash of breaking window glass—went wild. Sofie lunged forward, shoving her pistol into his face. “Drop the damn gun!”

His fingers opened. His pistol clunked to the concrete.

Then I heard the sound of an engine, behind us.

“Down!” With a leap and a twist, I tackled Sofie to the walkway and rolled us behind a bench. More windows in Turbeville Hall exploded in a barrage of thorough gunfire.

The Plymouth hadn’t been empty after all.

“Damn!” Sofie yelled over the chaos, while baritone snatched his gun and ran. Maybe she could still have risked shooting him—if she wanted to shoot him in the back. He wasn’t our immediate threat anymore. Instead, she fired at the car once, twice, again.

The Plymouth’s passenger door opened, baritone leaped in, and it peeled down the service walkway. The last of the gunfire came from us.

“Damn!” Sofie repeated into the otherworldly silence that followed. We both sat up slowly, blinking against the heavy haze of gunsmoke. Nearby, from the hall, an afterthought of glass crashed from a broken window onto the ground. “If you’d gotten his gun, we could’ve printed it.”

That had been my idea, before she showed up with her admittedly expert grasp of the patriarchal value of weapons. I said, “X146.”

Sofie stared, then grinned. “You got the license?”

“The first four characters, anyway.”

“You go, girl!” She removed her radio from her belt, but I touched her wrist. “Don’t even think it,” she warned.

“I know you’ve got to call it in, and I know I’ve got to stay here for the report,” I assured her. “But do me a favor. Don’t mention my name on the emergency band.”

“Because…?”

“Because I know someone who might be monitoring it. Or has other people doing the monitoring for him. I don’t want to see him a second time tonight.”

Her dark eyes whitened. “Lex Stuart?”

That was no psychic hunch. “I knew it. He was behind all the attention the police gave me tonight, wasn’t he?”

“What’ve you got that has a man like Alexander Stuart throwing his weight around over a simple break-in?”

“It’s complicated.”

She grinned, clearly sensing a good story. “Let me just make this call,” she said.

“‘Little girls break very easily,’” I said, after Sofie disconnected.

She eyed me dubiously. “Come again?”

“That’s what our gunman said. Not, ‘real easy,’ but ‘very easily.’ He’s got a formal education…and an expensive tailor.”

“So you’re thinking he wasn’t just here to tag the building and maybe rip off some vending machines?”

“I’m thinking he was here to get my information on Melusine.”

“Meli-who?”

“A French fairy-goddess my aunt and I are researching. Either someone with a lot of clout doesn’t want us finding it, or they want to find it first so they can destroy it.”

“‘It’ being…?”

“The Melusine Chalice,” I clarified. “Her ‘holy grail.’”

We could hear sirens in the distance. This was going to be a long night, wasn’t it?

“I thought there was only one Holy Grail,” said Sofie.

“That’s in the classic version.” I wiped my palms where I’d scraped them on concrete, glanced toward the glass-littered bushes, and decided my shoe was history. “The Christian grail, there’s only one. Goddess legends aren’t so exclusive.”

“And some guys with a lot of clout would care because…?”

I was having trouble with that one, too. “Because they feel threatened? Or maybe…” My logical side winced. “Maybe they’ve heard the legends, that if enough of the goddess cups are brought together, woman-power in this world will increase a hundredfold?”

“Now that,” said Sofie, as several blue-and-whites sped into the parking lot, “would be sweet.”

We both raised our hands to show we were unarmed, and I nodded toward the mostly male police officers who clambered out of the cars.

I nodded toward her colleagues. “Ask them sometime if they agree it would be sweet. They’ll think we’re talking about power over them.”

Which made it our problem, even if they were mistaken.

Over the next four hours I filled out reports, gave statements and reassured my suspicious college president of my minimal involvement. My office was fingerprinted and, thanks to my “after my files” story, my computer taken as evidence.

Somehow, amidst it all, I managed to book a flight to Paris the next day. I got home with barely enough time to pack some necessities, like my passport and my emergency cash, before the airport shuttle picked me up.

I hated leaving my apartment in a mess. But at least carrying just a backpack meant I wouldn’t have to check luggage.

By the time I made it through the extensive security check and was jogging down the International Terminal, I felt the exhaustion, hunger and stress of the previous night’s events.

The last person I needed to hear calling my name as I dodged travelers in my sprint for the gate was Lex Stuart.

“Maggi?”

It was too huge a coincidence to ignore. I turned in the terminal and, sure enough, he was striding toward me. The crowd seemed to part for him, as if instinctively sensing his importance. He looked good, tall and fit and collected. It didn’t hurt that his eyes brightened just for me.

He could be a bad guy, my head warned me.

Or he might not, insisted my heart. Not Lex.

“This is a surprise.” Lex slowed as he reached me. Even after years with him, I wasn’t sure.

And I still had a plane to catch.

When I started walking again, reluctantly taking advantage of the clear space around him, he paced me.

“Are you all right?” he asked politely.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He didn’t quite shrug, but it was implied. “Because your apartment got broken into last night?”

Oh, yeah. That. “I’m fine. How are you?”

He ignored my formality. “I regret how I behaved.”

The kiss? Or the argument? “Oh…”

“That’s one reason I’ve missed you so badly this last year. You’ve always been my touchstone.”

“So your own moral compass is still on the blink, huh?”

That wrung a hint of a smile from him. “I only mean to say, you were already having a stressful night. Please accept my apology for complicating matters.”

Proper and polite to the end. But I’d helped, with the argument and the kiss both. Fair was fair. “Apology accepted.”

Except that we were approaching my gate—and he was slowing down too. Just out of courtesy, right? To see me off? Except—

He drew a boarding pass from his jacket pocket. “You’re going to Paris, too? I’m guessing you’re in coach.”

I stared. I wasn’t ready for proof that my suspicions were warranted. But this couldn’t be coincidence…could it?

What the hell. “Have you ever heard the name Melusine?”

He glanced toward the gate, making sure we had time. “Isn’t she some kind of medieval mermaid?”

My heart flinched. He had heard of her!

“You mentioned her in your report on the women of Camelot, in the seventh grade,” he continued easily; if he was covering his guilt, he was really, really good. “You compared her to the Lady of the Lake, right?”

“You remember that?”

“We did work on it together, Mag.” We’d split the workload by gender. His report on the men of Camelot had lingered on the subject of the Holy Grail. He’d compared an Irish legend, Nuada of the Silver Hand, to the Fisher King of the classic grail quest.

“There weren’t a lot of high points to the seventh grade,” Lex said, sounding heartfelt. “But you were one of them. Let me upgrade your seat to first class, and you can tell me all about Melusine and your research and your trip—”

“No.” I hated the suspicion that kept me from saying yes. Foolish or not, I still liked him…or more.

But he wasn’t just a Stuart. He was a Stuart on my flight, feeling me out about my research.

Did he have to pull a gun on me before I learned caution?

“I’ll use my frequent-flyer miles,” Lex offered, pushing it. “You know how many of those I rack up.”

I shook my head, hesitation hard in my throat.

“For God’s sake, Mag, I’m not trying to buy you.”

A gate agent announced that they were boarding first-class passengers and passengers in need of assistance. I was neither. “Enjoy your flight, Lex.”

His eyes narrowed, suddenly dangerous. “I don’t know what’s happened to you this last year, Maggi, or what kind of crowd you’ve gotten involved with. But whatever and whoever it is, it sure isn’t an improvement.”

At my resolute silence, Lex turned away and offered his boarding pass to the gate agent. Maybe ten minutes later my section was called, and I boarded with the other peons, carefully not looking at him…

Just enough of a glance to tell that he, comfortably settled in an oversize leather seat with a cocktail in his hand, wasn’t looking at me, either. The seat beside him was empty, spacious and inviting.

I continued past, found my seat and manhandled my backpack into an overhead compartment, glad for an excuse to vent my frustration. I slid into a middle seat, between a large businessman and a teenager bobbing to his Discman.

I dug my cell phone out of my purse to turn it off.

One missed call, it read.

I thumbed a button and read my aunt Bridge’s mobile number. The screen then read, 1 new voice message.

While other passengers boarded, I retrieved the message.

“Lilith says you’re coming here,” my aunt Bridge wheezed, weak from more than her years as a smoker. Much of my frustration melted under my gratitude that she was even conscious. “I thought you would. My assistant will meet your flight. Be careful, chou. It may be worse than we feared.”

That was it? I checked the display, to make sure I still had a signal. I used the code to replay the message.

That was it.

“Miss?” It was the flight attendant. “We ask that you turn off all electronic devices during takeoff, and keep your cell phone off for the duration of the flight.”

I switched my phone off while she turned her attention to my neighbor’s Discman. Then, before stowing my purse beneath the seat in front of me, I exchanged the phone for the one set of notes that nobody had gotten—because they were handwritten.

And because I’d had them on me—a pile of scribble-filled index cards wrapped in a rubber band—the whole time.

“Melusine,” I read, ignoring the flight attendant’s safety presentation. “Goddess of Betrayal.”

The plane taxied awkwardly, like an albatross, back from the gate.

I read right through take-off, searching for something. Anything. Had someone stolen mine and Brigitte’s notes just to learn about Melusine? Or was it more likely that they hoped to find her grail, like with the recently destroyed Kali Cup? If so, they wouldn’t find the most useful clues in our notes. Writing down the rhyme we’d been taught as children would seem as silly as writing down the words to “Little Miss Muffet.”

“Three fair figures,” the rhyme starts. “Side by side…”

No, I didn’t need my notes for that. Nor did I need them to understand how Melusine had gone from goddess to fairy tale. Few things just vanish, after all.

But how she could also have changed from a kick-ass symbol of female empowerment to a woman whose man had done her wrong…. That made less sense. Frustrated, I put my seat back and closed my eyes, meditating on it…accessing my Grail Keeper knowledge, passed down mother to daughter for centuries.

Mom had told me the Melusine story from my infancy. Grand-mère and Aunt Bridge had elaborated on it as my cousin Lil and I got older, adding some of the naughty parts.

“Once upon a time…”

The basic story is this. Melusine was a fairy of such beauty that, when a French count came across her bathing in the river, he fell instantly in love. But she’d been cursed with a secret, so she would only marry the count if he agreed to leave her alone, every Saturday night, and never ask about it. He gladly agreed.

They married. She magically built whole castles for him overnight, and they had ten children. Legends vary on the family that resulted—the Lusignans of southern France are the top contenders, closely followed by the Angevins who later became Kings of England and even the royal family of Luxembourg. No matter how you slice it, she birthed a powerful people.

But she had that secret curse. Every Saturday, Melusine changed. She grew a snake tail and bat wings, and could relieve her suffering only by splashing around in a bath, safe in her solitude, until the episode passed.

You can guess the rest, right? The count broke his promise and saw her secret. And Melusine flew out the window, cursed by his betrayal to remain in her serpentine form for eternity.

They did not live happily ever after. In fact, legend holds that every time a Lusignan count was about to die, Melusine could be heard screaming, banshee-like, outside the tower she’d once helped build. Until someone tore it down, anyway.

A fascinating story. But…had she really once been a goddess?

Until this week, my main purpose for researching Melusine remained academic. I wanted to compare her tale with other legends, in hopes of finding an unchanging base myth to all of them. Aunt Bridge was advancing her research on medieval goddess cults by focusing on the group of French women who had worshipped the Mother Goddess in the form of the fairy Melusine.

The idea that those women had really hidden a chalice, much less that we could find it…that had been an amusement. We were Grail Keepers, as our mothers’ mothers had been for centuries. Keepers of the secrets of the goddess grails.

We weren’t Grailgetters.

Now someone was after our information. And if what had happened to the Kali Cup in New Delhi was any warning…

We had to find the cup first. The chalice that Melusine worshippers would have used and which they would have hidden by the time of the medieval witch burnings.

Edit that; I had to find the cup.

I’m embarrassed to admit that the next thing I knew, I was drawing a deep breath and waking to an announcement, in French, that we had started our descent toward Charles de Gaulle. The previous night must have wiped me out, for me to sleep through six hours and at least one meal service.

I cracked my eyes open and saw that at some point I’d been covered with a thick, rich blanket. Mmm; nice service on this flight. Except…

A few other passengers also had blankets, and theirs were fairly thin and flimsy.

Mine was a first-class blanket.

Suspicion contracted my chest. Did that mean…?

My notes! I clenched my hand instinctively, sitting bolt upright. My fingers closed on rubber-wrapped index cards. Maybe Lex hadn’t come back here. Maybe the flight attendants just ran out of coach-class blankets.

Then something small and hard slid off my lap.

It was a small box of gourmet chocolates. The kind they give out in first class. The kind Lex had always passed on to me after his business trips…back when we were together.

In the seventh grade, Alexander Stuart inexplicably returns to public school. He’s no longer a bully; instead, he keeps to himself. I’m one of the few people he’ll speak to, maybe because I stood up to him in kindergarten.

When he sits out PE, we think he’s getting special treatment. Same with all his absences. None of us guesses he’s sick until the day he comes to school with his head shaved.

This, of course, is when kids stop calling him Alex and start calling him Lex Luther. He ignores them.

Our teacher does not. One afternoon when he’s gone, she tells us Alexander has leukemia. He could die. That’s why his parents want him home with them. We must not tease him.

Kids can be cruel. But not all kids. Not most of us.

Lex notices the change, the sympathetic looks, the students who hang back as if leukemia—or mortality—are contagious. He notices the return of his name. “Hi, Alex.” “How are you feeling, Alex?” “Hey, Alex, what’s up?”

I see his sharp hazel eyes go from confusion to to realization to fury at becoming an object of pity. Finally, during English, he stands up. “Miss Mason? I want everyone to call me Lex.”

Miss Mason doesn’t understand. “Now, Alex…”

“That’s what I want.” There he stands with his military-school posture, a twelve-year-old outsider, skinny, bald. I suspect just how exhausted he must be, how sick he must feel. But he prefers mockery to sympathy.

“No, Alex,” says Miss Mason. “I won’t allow it.”

He continues to stand, demoted from sick to helpless by her condescension. An ache grips my throat. It doesn’t seem right.

So I say, “Fine, Lex. Just sit down and shut up, okay?”

Several students turn to me in amazement, but I don’t pay attention to them. I’m watching how Lex’s quiet, hazel eyes slide toward me.

“Did you hear me?” I challenge. “Lex?”

And with a nod of quiet satisfaction, he sits.

“Maggi Sanger!” protests Miss Mason.

“As long as he’s going to act like a jerk, why not let him be an archvillain?”

Of course I’m sent to the principal. But I also get a glimpse of Lex Stuart’s rare smile. He’s waiting outside the almost empty school building when I get out of detention. A black limousine owns the parking lot not five spaces from my mother’s minivan.

“We’re doing group reports for social studies,” he says. “I chose Camelot. Will you partner with me?”

I wait. I know I am not a particularly attractive twelve-year-old. I’m chubby, and my hair is usually messy from running and playing.

He looks intrigued. “Please?”

“Sure,” I say. “Lex.”

He almost smiles. He has preferred “Lex” ever since.

Alex was a victim.

Lex is a survivor.