A.K.A. Goddess (21 page)

My cell phone rang, startling me from fleeting thoughts, and I wiped my hand on a towel before answering it. “Bonjour, c’est Véronique.”

“Hello, Véronique.” It was my mother. She would recognize my voice even if I spoke Gaelic and called myself Boudicca. “I was so pleased to get your message. It’s been too long.”

Two days, Mom. But Véronique couldn’t say that.

“Far too long, yes,” I said, accented. “I have been, how do you say, busy as a pea?”

“Something like that.” I’d just noticed how tense Mom sounded when she said, “You know, Véronique, as much as I would love to talk, I’m trying to find my daughter.”

“Madeleine?” I’ve been called Madeleine all my life.

“Magdalene. I was straightening her apartment for her yesterday—did you know she’d been burglarized?”

“Mon Dieu. This is terrible.”

“I found something odd there—a little box, the size of a pager, but it wasn’t a pager at all. Maggi had given me the number of a friend of hers, a police officer, to call if there was trouble.” I had. My partner in crime. Sofie. “Officer Douglas came over and looked, and said it was what I thought.”

“What?” I was sitting up in the tub now, clutching its porcelain side. My throat clenched so tight that I could barely breathe past it, much less talk.

“A state-of-the-art listening device,” said Mom, gently. “Officer Douglas did some checking, and she says it wasn’t there when the police searched Maggi’s apartment the night of the break-in, so someone must have left it afterward.”

No. I didn’t want to know, really I didn’t, but some ugly, bat-winged determination forced me to ask. “Left it where?”

“In Maggi’s bookshelf,” said my mother.

The books Lex had reshelved for me. Lex. The only person, other than Mom, whom I was sure had come into my apartment since the burglary…and who had coincidentally been on the same flight to France as me, the following morning.

I barely submerged my head underwater in time to drown out another powerful, furious scream at even the possibility of such a betrayal.

I now had a good idea why the heraldic Melusine was shown with two tails. I’ve never felt so divided in my life as I did getting ready to meet with Lex.

The words son of a bitch screamed through my head as I splashed from the tub. I couldn’t even imagine such a calculated, premeditated betrayal without some good, solid fury. I definitely needed fury to stick with the frustration of blow drying my long hair.

Lying, sneaking, manipulative son of a bitch.

Then, unwrapping my new underwear from its label-sealed tissue, I regretted lapsing into suspicion so easily, so soon. I’d bought these matching tap pants and bra, a dusky blue edged with silver, with such high hopes. Had I been an idiot?

Don’t jump to conclusions, I advised myself. It may not have been him. The police could have missed the bug, or the Comitatus could have planted it since then.

But as I clipped silk stockings to my new garter belt, I remembered more. In the airport Lex had said he regretted his behavior the night before; had he meant more than the kiss? And just today he’d argued that a person’s rights meant nothing against someone else’s ability to ignore those rights. Like, oh, the right to privacy and the ability to plant illegal bugs?

I slid my new dress, a dove-gray silk, over my head, my arms, my body, like sliding into a whole new skin, a whole new cynicism. Worse than his betrayal would be falling for it.

And yet, as I put on new makeup, my blush brush faltered on my cheek. No. Slow down. Don’t let anger outweigh love without being absolutely sure.

You don’t want to live in that kind of world.

It wasn’t just that I still loved him; lovers have been wrong before. But he loved me, too. He’d said so, and the way he’d made love, and the way he’d kissed me, and his concern for my safety…

He wasn’t faking those. I knew that, with a certainty that refused to be contradicted even by fear or hurt.

It was time to call him. Instead, I unzipped the leather backpack and took out the Melusine grail, held its white stone curves, contemplated it. Love. Betrayal. Triumph. Loss.

And, as if it were whispering to me, Realization.

I’d always thought of the husband in Melusine’s story as a one-note bad guy. But she’d given him ten children. He’d been goaded into spying on her by fears of an affair. He may even have thought he acted out of love.

But he’d been wrong. And his fears destroyed them.

Maybe Lex did love me. But he thought that gave him the right to control my life. To call the police and demand I get special treatment. To stake out my hostel. To bribe a desk clerk for my room key and sneak into my shower, as surely as Melusine’s husband had snuck into her bath chamber.

None of that was even in question. He’d done that much. For what he thought was my own good, he’d done all of it.

Whether he’d planted the bug or not.

I wrapped the grail in a towel to protect it and slid it back into the leather backpack. Then I stepped into my high-heeled sandals, which I’d bought to match the dress, hefted the backpack, and headed out for the nearest Paris Metro station.

Tonight wasn’t a time to retreat. From anything. But this conversation required a hell of a lot more than a phone call.

“I’m here to see Mr. Stuart,” I told the concièrge at Hotel Valmont, flashing my keycard, my passport and my sweetest smile. “I’m trying to surprise him.”

Then I strode to the ironwork elevator as if I owned it, fully aware of several pairs of eyes following me. They did not feel like threats. They felt like sexual nuisances.

I looked really good.

The elevator took me to the executive floor. I stepped out onto impossibly plush carpeting, found #3, and used the keycard to enter without knocking. What’s sauce for the goose.

“—doesn’t matter what he says,” I heard Lex insisting from beyond the baroque foyer. “No.”

I followed his voice and found him in the suite’s high-ceilinged den with a phone to his ear and his back to me. He wore a dark pair of tailored pants and a white shirt, bisected into a Y in back by dress suspenders. The outfit matched the expensive room, with its suede-covered walls, rich draperies, fresh flowers and dark, Louis XVI furniture. One thing about hanging with Lex; the setting was usually delicious.

He said, “If anything has happened to her, if any of your boys were involved, you’ll see exactly what I’m capable of.”

Then he slammed the phone down. The coiled cord swung. He’d been using a land line. And oh, goddess, I knew.

He was involved. “Funny that you’d have the phone number for someone whose identity eludes you.”

He spun so fast, it was…no. This would never come close to being funny. His naked relief was just salt in my wounds.

“God, Mag!” Lex exclaimed, checking his watch. I already knew it was seven exactly. “Cutting it close, aren’t you? I thought you were going to call. You look beautiful.”

He came to my side while he said that, touched my shoulder, kissed my cheek. I already knew what great smokescreens those little polite rituals could be, multipurpose, suitable for weddings, funerals and everything in between.

He smelled so good. He looked like a prince in a fairy tale, proud and well groomed and earnest. Even now, my heart ached to believe it. Maybe in some alternate universe, the two of us were still headed out for a magical Parisian night of dinner and not just sex but lovemaking.

Not in this universe. Some fairy tales weren’t real.

But not all little girls broke easily.

“So who were you just threatening, Lex?” I asked, tight.

He backed away a careful step, clenching his teeth in a sort of hesitating grimace. Casual, even now. Controlled. “Sorry, Maggi. I can’t really talk about business.”

“Was it someone involved with, oh, trying to kill me?”

“I’ve been told your life was never deliberately in danger. If I’m misinformed, set the record straight. What’s going on?”

“The record?” More business he probably couldn’t talk about. “By what definition are guns and high-speed car chases and arson considered safe? Thank heavens no innocent bystanders were hurt. Not everyone gets the Stuart mantle of protection.”

“Maggi, you’ve never accepted my protection.”

“Not against your own men I haven’t! That’s called a protection racket, Lex.”

“My own…no!” Lex shook his head. “Those weren’t my men.”

“So who were they?” That got me silence. I had a hard time imagining his involvement in any group he wasn’t helping to run, but let’s say I believed that much. “How are you involved with people who beat up old ladies, who murder their own partners, who pull guns on priests? And on me? How is that, Lex?”

His ducked his head. “I can’t talk about that.”

That’s when I lost it. I flew at him, pushed him backward, hard. He stumbled back without protest, setting his jaw, so I did it again. Then again, until he hit the suede-covered wall. “This is just like that stupid trial, just like that damned confidentiality agreement—”

Click. That’s exactly what it felt like. Too exactly.

“Is what’s happening now connected to last year’s trial?”

He started to shake his head before he could stop himself. Then he did. Stop himself. “I can’t talk about the trial.”

“But that isn’t the only confidentiality agreement you’ve signed, is it?”

“Maggi, if you’d just calm down—” His eyes pleaded with me to understand something he’d abdicated his ability to explain.

Now I had to back up or I was going to hit him for real. “No, not an agreement,” I whispered, more pieces clicking into place. “You’ve taken some kind of oath of secrecy, haven’t you?”

And that meant we were either swimming in enough secret societies for a farce, or I already knew which one he’d pledged.

Bloodlines. Power. The goddamned Comitatus.

Lex looked away, lest I see something in his eyes.

I said, “You belong to a secret society, and you gave an oath of secrecy. How long ago, Lex? How long has it been that I haven’t even known who you are?”

Now he looked back—surprisingly angry. “You’re one to talk! You were fourteen when you started wearing that necklace—”

“Of my own choice!”

“Do you think I’ve ever made a choice that wasn’t mine?”

“Mine never required an oath! There’s no vow of secrecy among my ‘hereditary feminists,’ just simple, common sense. We aren’t about any one person having power over others, but apparently you and your Comitatus demand it.”

Lex’s chin came up.

Very quietly he asked, “Where did you hear that word?”

He meant Comitatus. “What word?”

“He scowled.”

“You can’t even say it to me, can you? Is it because I don’t have the right blood, or because I have breasts?”

I didn’t want to be the only one losing control here.

It worked. “Don’t play the feminist card, Maggi! Not when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I never thought you had a problem with feminism,” I said.

“A problem with…? I don’t!”

“But you’ve involved yourself with people who do, right? Oh, wait. You can’t talk about it, can you?”

“It’s more compli—” But of course he stopped himself, because he couldn’t talk about it. Not to me. “I promise you, Mag, I swear that I’m doing everything I can to keep you safe.”

“Everything except tell me how to keep myself safe.”

When he paced across the room and glared out at the still-sunny view of Paris, he resembled his father. Had his mother ever felt this way? If so, no wonder she’d slit her wrists. But that I didn’t say to him.

I had that much kindness left in me, if not much more.

Lex turned to face me. “Give me the benefit of a doubt.”

I didn’t want to feel sorry for him. But I did.

Especially when he whispered, “Please.”

But sympathy wasn’t enough. I needed reassurances. “Just tell me you aren’t protecting the Comitatus with your silence.”

He looked desperate. “Mag—”

“Tell me you’re involved in some other secret society, working to stop them. One with its own vows of secrecy. You don’t have to name them even, just nod. Cough. Touch your nose.”

But that was just another fairy tale.

“You don’t understand,” he protested, grim.

“And you’ve ensured that I never will, haven’t you?”

Lex shook his head, not at me so much as protesting what was happening, what we were losing, right here in this Parisian suite. “If you could just trust me….”

“For how long? Another few days? A month? Our lifetimes? Can’t you see that you’re asking me to abdicate my power too?”

“I love you.”

Those words had never sounded so sad. The only thing sadder would be for me to repeat them. That, and the fact that some part of me would still mean them.

But it wasn’t a healthy part of me, and I wasn’t feeding it anymore. “Tell me this, then. Did you plant a listening device in my apartment, the night of the burglary?”

Lex stared at me, tall, handsome—and defeated. “Yes.”

The last of my hopes for us died, then and there. “That’s how you knew to go to France.”

“I did have business in France.”

“That morning.”

He set his jaw. “Yes.”

“Didn’t you know I would hate you if I ever found out?”

“I hoped to God you wouldn’t.”

“Find out or hate you?”

“Both. But I had to do something. I was afraid for you, Mag. Don’t you get that? I didn’t know what you’d gotten yourself involved with. Accidents can happen. I was afraid.”

So it was for my own good? Bastard. “You weren’t afraid enough to tell me. Or call the cops.”

He said nothing. Of course.

And now, for the game point—“So you already know why I’m in France, right? What I’m after.”

The Melusine Chalice. Maybe I could stave off the heartache that waited just outside that door, if I remembered the grail.

Lex said, “Yes. I know.”

“Do you know if I’ve found it yet?” My designer backpack, over one shoulder, felt heavy.

“Not for certain. No.”

“Are you lying?”

He frowned. “I promised never to lie to you.”

“You promised never to cheat me at cards.”