A.K.A. Goddess (2 page)

He’d been accused of perjury the previous year. Worse, he hadn’t denied it. It had contributed to our latest breakup.

Now my words wrung a hint of a smile from him, an expression that, on Lex, packs a potent punch. “So may I come in? You know I need permission to cross a person’s threshold.”

No, he wasn’t a vampire. He was just being sarcastic.

“You might as well.” I sighed. “Everyone else has tonight.”

So he did, casually touching my arm as he passed me…except that nothing Lex Stuart does is truly casual. He’s got a great poker face, but it’s more as if he’s eternally lying in wait for something, patiently still, ready to pounce.

I’ve only seen him pounce once. I didn’t enjoy it.

“Ouch,” he said, noticing my broken curio cabinet. I’d had to cruise every room before I saw it, but he took it in first thing. “They got the girls?”

“Thoroughly.” I watched him cross to the rubble. I’d been straightening, but I hadn’t gotten to that yet. Once I cleaned it up, I might as well throw it all away—nothing left to save. I wasn’t sure I felt ready for that.

“Bastards.” Lex picked up the round, faceless head of my Willendorfesque Venus—a piece he’d given me when I got my doctorate. We hadn’t even been dating at the time. But he’d sent me the statue for my collection anyway, managing in true Lex fashion to choose something that, despite my best sense, I couldn’t bear to return.

“Luckily none of it was original.”

“This was,” he said.

I gaped at him.

He shrugged, dropped the chunk of rock back onto the carpet, and brushed his fingers on his neatly pressed, thousand-dollar slacks. “You know my family collects antiques.”

Yes, I knew. Beyond last year’s corporate espionage trial, and his still-murky role, his family’s antique collection was one more reason to distrust the Stuarts. Considering my own family’s connection to certain relics, that is. Now this.

“You gave me an original piece of Paleolithic sculpture?” Not counting what something like that would fetch at auction, hadn’t it belonged in a museum? Was owning it even legal?

The Stuarts never had constrained themselves with something so mundane as legalities.

“So did they take anything?” Lex answered my question with his avoidance. “Or was it simple vandalism?”

They were looking for something. The dumped drawers, the gutted cushions, the carpet pulled away from the corners…It was the only logical explanation. I hadn’t cleaned enough of the damage for someone as smart as Lex to miss that, either. And they hated my goddesses. Any guesses?

“I haven’t found anything missing,” I said, noncommittal. “But it’s hard to tell, this early.”

We eyed each other, letting the silence stretch. Me, because I had theories I wanted to protect awhile longer. Him…who could tell? Maybe he had secrets, too. Or it could just be his love of a good competition.

Either way, neither of us ’fessed up to anything.

He turned away first—though it may have been a simple courtesy. “You really need a monitored security system, Mag. If you can’t afford one, I wish you’d let me—”

Blessedly, my phone rang to cut him off before he tried to buy me yet again. Even during the good times, we generally argued when he did that.

Another ring. He turned away to look at other damage, giving me an illusion of privacy. It wasn’t the best circumstance under which to take a phone call, but I didn’t want the answering machine to pick up and broadcast anything to him.

Too bad I’d already rehooked the machine. So I answered. “Hello?”

“How soon can you get to France?” Sure enough, it was my cousin Lil—likely on business Lex shouldn’t know about.

I used every bit of self-control to say, “I have company. Call you back?”

There was a long pause while she took that in. Then Lil asked, “Is it who I think it is?”

Maybe she’s psychic. Maybe she’s just really smart. Does there have to be a difference?

I peeked over my shoulder at Lex. He’d decided to make himself useful and was shelving some of my scattered books, scowling at the destruction.

“I think it is.”

“I’ll call you,” she said, and hung up. Quickly. I wondered if she’d gotten off the line before a trace could be run…assuming anybody was running a trace.

She would call back from a different phone, likely using someone else’s three-way dialing to confuse matters further. Just in case. We’re amateurs at the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we learn fast. And as much as I hated bowing to that kind of paranoia…well, someone had broken in.

Lex turned back to me, solemn, as I set down the phone. His rich hazel eyes didn’t flinch. “You used to trust me.”

Did he purposefully choose the best way to wound me, or was he just expressing his own pain? I didn’t want to do this again. It had hurt both of us too much the last few times. Still, I couldn’t not answer. “You didn’t used to work for your cousin.”

He tried a wry smile. “I never said Phil isn’t an ass, Mag.”

“And yet you cover for him, despite last year’s trial.”

“In which the charges were dropped.” And they had been. Espionage. Perjury. Insider trading. Unfair monopoly.

Like magic.

“After an undisclosed settlement,” I reminded him. “That you won’t even talk about.”

He took a deep breath. “Because I signed a contract of nondisclosure.”

“Damned convenient, that. The ends don’t always justify the means, Lex. Sometimes the means are everything.”

“The stockholders seem happy enough.”

I said, “So marry one of the stockholders.”

His eyes narrowed. “I was just worried about an old friend, Magdalene. Don’t flatter yourself that there’s more. Marriage hasn’t been on the table for some time.”

I forced myself to say, “Good.”

That brought him up short. It hadn’t been my intention, whether he deserved it or not. And I still didn’t know, couldn’t possibly guess if he really deserved it.

That’s the part that really sucked. Not knowing. And he’d fixed things so I would never know.

“Oh, Lex, I didn’t mean it that way.” I crossed to his side, torn. An enemy I could fight. An ally I could love. But what could I do with him? “What I meant was, you deserve to be happy, and it clearly isn’t happening with me. I just wish—”

But he shut me up by kissing me.

I should probably have fought him off. Slapped his face, kneed him where it hurt, bit his searching tongue. I had my ways. That would teach him to be so damned proprietary.

But I’d missed him, and tonight I needed that kiss far, far too badly to risk any of it.

Lex….

We fit, somehow. Always have. He was my first date, my first kiss, my first time, my first love. He was also my first heartbreak, and second, and third, with a truckload of regret thrown in…And yet his arms gathering me to him felt right on a deeper level than good sense could counter. Such incredible power. Such unfathomable depths.

Such a really great body. The boy was ripped.

When I dug my fingers into his thick, ginger-brown hair and chewed playfully at his lip, he turned to wedge me against the door, never breaking the kiss. His body felt hard and necessary against mine. Alive. Real. Lex. My soul knew the taste of him, the feel of him, the scent of his breath. Our heartbeats, pressed chest to breast, seemed to fall into almost instant unison. I opened my mouth to him, slid one knee up over his hip, arched into the brace of his arms, my blood singing.

The telephone rang again, startling me back. “Crap.”

Lex steadied himself with the heel of his hand, a solid thunk against the door, but otherwise regained quick control. “Don’t worry,” he said thickly, licking his lips and swallowing heavily. “I’m well aware this was just a momentary lapse.”

That didn’t make the reality of it any easier to bear.

“You don’t have to work for your family,” I pleaded. But I took a step toward the ringing phone as I said it. Talk about your divided loyalties! “No matter what they expect. The money can’t be that good….”

He stared at me. Then, surprisingly, he laughed—if a little harshly—and ducked forward to kiss my cheek. “Someday you’ll realize just how painfully naive you are, Mag. I hope to God I’m there when it happens.”

Oh? “So that you can come to my rescue?” I asked. “Or so that you can say you told me so?”

His eyes crinkled, just a bit—and he let himself out. “Lock up,” he called over his shoulder.

The phone screamed yet again as the door shut behind him, then rolled over to the machine. I snatched the handset up, interrupting my own recorded voice. “Yes!”

“So sorry,” said Lil, her British accent adding to her sarcastic edge. “Is the need to save the world for womankind getting in the way of your date with Satan?”

“Don’t call him that.” Maybe I should be beyond defending him. I’m not. “We don’t know anything for sure.”

Lil’s voice gentled. “We know enough, Maggi.”

And she was right. In the end, it no longer mattered what I felt for Lex Stuart or what he felt for me.

I was still one of an ancient line of women charged with the protection of sacred, secret chalices. Chalices that could, if legend was to be believed, heal the world—male and female. Holy Grails, every one of them.

And Lex came from a family rumored to be bent on destroying them.

It’s my first week in kindergarten. I already hate Alex Stuart. He thinks he’s better than all the other kids.

When he won’t let Freddy Morgan use the yellow paint, Freddy cries. Freddy’s a wimp, but it makes me mad anyway.

“You’re suppose to share,” I tell Alex.

He looks surprised. “Only losers share.”

At five, I’m pretty simple. “Give Freddy your paint. He needs to make his sun yellow.”

Alex says, “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re just a girl.”

So I hit him, right across the face. After a moment of clear surprise, he hits me back. The class gasps—hasn’t he heard that boys aren’t supposed to hit girls?

My cheek hurts, but I’m glad. I want to win fair. I shove him to the ground, and then we’re rolling across butcher paper and through fingerpaints, pummeling uselessly at each other—and laughing. It’s fun! We’re purple and green and very, very yellow. But we’re still hitting each other between grins.

Then our teacher pulls us apart. Alex’s dad uses the incident as an excuse to send Alex to private school.

I don’t see him again for seven years.

“L isten,” Lil said. “This is bigger than your twisted love/hate thing with Lex Stuart. Aunt Bridge is in the hospital.”

“What?” Our great-aunt Brigitte was a historical sociologist in Paris. Even more than our mothers and our late grandmother, Aunt Bridge had convinced Lil and me of the truth in the Grail Keeper legends. “Is it her heart?”

“No, she was attacked in her office. Someone beat her pretty badly.”

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I wanted to sit, but most of my furniture was gutted or broken. So I sank back against the wall and slid down it, my gym shorts riding up, until I sat on the carpet, picturing Bridge’s face. She was in her eighties! What kind of sick person would hurt an old woman?

“This is connected to her work, isn’t it?”

“She isn’t conscious yet, but the Paris police say that her laptop’s gone, and some of her papers. You’ve been working with her, Mag. What was she writing about this time?”

“She’s calling it The Faerie Goddess in Early Gaul.”

“The fairy Melusine?” Lil and I had grown up on that story. Just imagine The Little Mermaid with bat wings and a traitorous husband.

“If she’s right, the goddess Melusine.” But I was staring at the destruction around me with increased concern. “Uh, Lil? Don’t freak, but someone just broke into my place, too.”

“What?” Even without the phone, I might’ve heard Lil’s shout all the way from England. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I haven’t looked at my files yet. The computer was on, and I always turn it off when I leave.”

Lil said, “You’d better check, Mag.”

I did. But I took Lex’s advice and locked the door first.

Sure enough, my latest backups were missing.

“I’ve got to go to my office,” I said, grim, when I picked up the phone. “On campus.”

“Why not just call security?”

“And say what? My aunt at the Sorbonne was robbed, so I’m worried about Connecticut? We’re between semesters. They only have a skeleton staff. I’ll go myself. Then I’ll go to Paris.”

“Be careful, Maggi,” Lil pleaded. “I hate when you do this stuff alone.”

But, picking up the business card Officer Sofie Douglas had left on my desk, I suspected I might not have to.

Beside her home number she’d doodled a simple O.

Secret societies are a bitch.

It doesn’t help that the scattering of women called Grail Keepers aren’t organized enough to actually be an organization. Most still don’t even know there are others out there. We have few written records, no official roll of members, no regular meetings and no inner sanctum.

That’s by design.

Our information comes from word-of-mouth, mother to child; from truths hidden in superstitions, fairy stories and nursery rhymes. It’s only been in the last few years that Lil and I, spurred on by our grand-mère’s dying wish, started using the Internet to find and coordinate some of the diverse women who make up our roster.

Or who would, if we kept a roster, which we don’t.

Even before that, though, Grail Keepers had an ancient technique for recognizing each other. It’s similar to how early Christians used to self-identify, back when their beliefs could get them fed to the lions—one person would draw an arch in the dust, and the other would draw an intersecting arch, and the result would be that simple fish design you now see on the back ends of cars. Scuff out the design, and nobody but those two people would be the wiser.

We do something similar with circles.

One woman draws a circle. The other draws an intersecting circle, and voilà—you have an ancient design, like a sloppy number eight, that represents the overlapping of worlds. Not that we knew this as children. Back then, it was just a rhyme game our mommies taught us: “Circle to circle, never an end, cup and cauldron, ever a friend.”