A.K.A. Goddess (35 page)

“That’s ridiculous,” protested sandy-hair. So their leadership wasn’t something that could be bartered for.

Not openly.

“It would certainly explain the difficulty Lex seems to have had reclaiming his position,” I continued, feeling out the truth of my words by their responses. “He’s a picture of health. He’s competent. And he’s not afraid of a few goddess cups.”

They looked uncomfortable. Good.

“Powerful individuals must still support the Phil faction, despite him having a dick job some years back,” I mused.

Now they recoiled. It was hard not to laugh. Keep your enemy off balance, and all that.

“But surviving plastic surgery doesn’t require close to the strength Lex needed to conquer leukemia. And he did conquer it.”

I could smell their discomfort. I was so damned close!

“Only through his cousin’s help,” blurted sandy-hair, who was clearly the Talking Pooh of the bunch.

“True. But I’ve got to think that you boys are having some conflicting loyalties, lately. Maybe not you three personally,” I admitted with a shrug. “But a lot of your brethren. On the one hand, you have Phil, who got his position by default and has men running around beating up old ladies and trying to steal antique cups for reasons he probably won’t share, because in fact he’s scared of them. On the other hand, you have Lex, who by blood should be in charge and who supports strength, balance and honor. In fact…that’s why he still hasn’t taken over by using force, isn’t it? He’s honoring the rest of you. He needs you to accept his qualifications and ask Phil to step down.”

That was it. With no more confirmation than a few nervous glances between the men, I finally understood. Damn, I was good.

“When does your aunt’s flight leave?” asked their leader coldly. He didn’t like listening to me? Well boo-hoo.

“Since nobody’s telling you what’s so scary about a goddess chalice,” I said, “I think I’d better explain.”

All three men blinked at me, sure I was joking.

“Long ago, before accepted history began…” I started—and kept going. I told the fairy tale. I explained the difference between power over people and power from within. I didn’t use the word Grail Keepers, but I did mention the importance of empowerment for their mothers, their sisters, their wives.

I gave them a lot.

If I had to, I was going to convert these bastards one man at a time. At the very least, the more I kept talking, the more real I probably became to them. The harder to kill.

Assuming they were human.

By the time my cell phone rang, I suspected I had at least planted doubts. It was a start, and a good one.

“I’m on my way back,” announced Sofie. Most people need boarding passes to get beyond security…but a police badge can certainly help. “Lil missed the preboarding call, but she’s on her Virgin Atlantic flight. It took off without a hitch. We saw it while I walked Brigitte to her Air France connection.”

“Good,” I said. “Thanks. I’m about done here.”

“‘Cup and cauldron.’” I heard the grin in her voice.

“‘Ever a friend,’” I finished. “I’ll be waiting.”

Then I hung up, stood and faced three men who looked downright hungry. “Here you go,” I said, handing them the case.

The leader motioned for the stocky man to open it—so he was the first one who got a good look at the plastic bottle of spring water inside. “Son of a—”

“You bitch!” The leader grabbed my arm roughly. “We had a deal, Sanger. You said you’d give us the chalice.”

“I said I’d give you what I had, which was the case,” I said. “Read the fine print. The information I just gave you is worth a hell of a lot more to you than that cup would be.”

“Where is it?” He tried to shake me. “Who had it?”

With an easy twist, I stepped free of his grasping hand. Then I drew myself up to my full height, in their faces. They thought personal power didn’t matter?

Let them get a taste of this.

“Listen up, you bullying, power-hungry toads,” I hissed. “This is me. Magdalene Sanger. You’ve got to have heard the stories by now. I can jump down wells and survive. I can fly out fourth-story windows. I can vanish from in front of trains. And I can damned well put that chalice wherever I want to. I can also create a world of pain for you—”

Sandy-hair reached under his coat, but a woman across the lounge yelled, “Does he have a gun?”

His eyes widened, but he dropped his hand.

I smiled. “Like that. You may leave now. Tell whoever thinks they’re in charge that the bottle is full of goddess water, and that if they’re not pure cowards, they should give it a drink. It might just help you people understand some things you’ve been missing for a very long time.”

Their leader all but vibrated with rage. He didn’t like losing—even if it was the best thing for him.

A security guard was crossing the lounge toward us. “Is there some kind of trouble here?”

“Tell your leaders,” I said, even more softly, “that if you leave the innocents alone, we’ll leave you alone. But if any of you ever comes after me and mine again, I can more than take you. All of you. Can you remember that?”

Sandy-hair said, loudly, “No, sir. We were just leaving.”

And since nobody had actually seen a gun, the guard stood back and just made sure they did that. Left.

“Thank you,” I told him after they were gone. “Some men don’t realize how threatening they can come off, you know?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the guard. He looked young, but he’d still been willing to risk himself for everyone else’s safety. “Are you all right?”

I saw Sofie waving at me from beyond the doorway, and I grinned. “You know—every time someone like you reminds me of how great most men can be, I’m better and better. Have a nice day.”

Then I went to meet my friend. The one who’d yelled gun.

“You’re okay,” she said, giving me a relieved hug.

I hugged back, so glad to have a friend in this. “I told you I would be. They took your backpack, though.”

“A change of underwear, a paperback. Nothing I can’t live without. So…they never guessed that Lil isn’t pregnant?”

“Not for a second.”

“Men.” She rolled her eyes. We headed for the parking lot.

“Thanks for getting that fake belly for us. It made a wonderful hiding place. Great mother-goddess connections.”

She shook her head. “Keep talking like that, people will think you’re a college professor or something.”

“There’s something to be said for being sneaky,” I mused. “We got the grail. Once Lil has it safely in hiding….”

“Then we can collect more of them, until we’ve got an exhibition nobody could dare destroy or ignore, right?” She’d been hanging with us since yesterday. She knew the plan.

“For all we know,” I mused, “Charlemagne may have cut down the wrong trees. What did he know from sacred groves? All the pagans had to do was jump in front of a particular stand of wood and start screaming ‘No, not our sacred trees!’”

Sofie was staring at me now and maybe I was getting silly. The Melusine Chalice was safe again—I felt it in my bones. I’d planted some fertile seeds of discord among my latest thugs. Her car, when she remote-unlocked it and did a visual scan, wasn’t hiding anybody or anything.

The sound of planes rushing overhead and the traffic in the distance and New York City on the skyline…

Everything was as it should be.

I only had one more stop to make, to call my day complete.

My visit to the hospital would have gone more smoothly if I hadn’t come face-to-face with Phil Stuart in the parking garage.

He looked troubled, in the split second before he recognized me. Then he looked scared.

That could be because I’d just caught him by the throat, put pressure on a nerve that I knew hurt like hell, and pushed him back against a cement pylon. Hard.

“I didn’t do it!” he exclaimed, his voice bouncing off cars around us. “You think I could have my own cousin killed?”

Killed? My gut twisted cruelly, and I tightened my hold. Not now. Not Lex. And not when I felt so close to…to what?

To something important and wonderful.

“Uh, Maggi?” asked Sofie, from behind me.

“Help me,” gasped Phil in a pained whimper.

“Mmm-hmm,” said Sofie. “Maybe you should talk to her.”

He did. “I didn’t know about this. I swear it! Ask Lex. He believes me.”

As the fear in my own heart eased, I eased my grip on him. Phil took the chance to knock my arms aside and step clear, trying to recapture his usual swagger. Too little, too late.

Heady with relief, I let him. “He’s talking?”

“Yeah. He’s out of surgery, and the doctors say he should go home in a few days.” He squinted at me, newly suspicious. “If you’re back together, where the hell have you been while he’s in there fighting for his life, huh?”

“I came from the airport as fast as I could.”

He raised his chin slightly, probably aware of what had been planned at the airport. I didn’t have time to confront him on that.

“If you didn’t know what was going to happen, maybe you should reconsider your ability to lead that bunch of thugs.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He was an awful liar.

“Just don’t let it happen again,” I warned, going well around him. “Bye, Phil.”

“See you at the family parties,” he called, smarmy. Reinvolving myself with the Stuarts would be a joy, wouldn’t it?

But as I found Lex’s room—easy to recognize because of Sam standing guard—it was a joy. I pushed through that silent, swinging door into the cavern of beeps and wires and screens and graphs that was ICU. I saw Lex, still alive, and I felt such joy that I could have wept from the intensity of truths beyond my academic, logical side’s ability to comprehend.

“…died a few days before the papers arrived,” Rhys was saying, low, from his chair beside the bed. How much had we gone through together before he told me about Mary? Now, in the course of one afternoon, he was unburdening to Lex?

Lex looked particularly pale, particularly mortal in his hospital gown, wired for IVs and oxygen, heart and lung monitors, a blood pressure cuff, a finger clamp for pulse-ox.

“That bites,” he said, his voice rough and groggy.

Rhys shrugged and tapped his fist on Lex’s hand, curled across a blanket. Male bonding. Now there’s a mystery for you.

I cleared my throat, and both men looked up. Both of them lit up at the sight of me, too. What a pair they made. Lex, normally so golden with health, low but not beaten. Rhys, the slighter man, with his black hair and pale complexion in full contrast to Lex’s, standing in as caretaker.

This part of my life wasn’t close to resolved. But what I had to clarify, they both should hear. Better to do it now.

“Six months,” I told Lex. “We date for six months, like we discussed at your apartment. After that, if you’ve proved yourself to me…we’ll talk.”

Either way, I’d already sent his $2-million chalice into hiding somewhere in England.

He nodded, the relief in his sleepy hazel eyes intense.

I moved my gaze to Rhys’s, where he looked…not quite stricken. But more taken aback than I’d expected. I tried to will him to be patient, tried to assure him that an explanation would be forthcoming, but we weren’t psychically linked.

“Ah. Well…why don’t I fetch some tea,” he suggested, standing carefully. “Maggi, would you like some?”

“Sure, thanks. I plan on being here for a while.”

We hugged, his embrace solid and honest. “You could do worse,” he whispered into my hair.

“I’m still figuring this out,” I whispered back.

He complicated matters by kissing my cheek, and headed out.

I looked after him until Lex muttered, “Just don’t be obvious about it, okay? Spies everywhere…”

It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. “If you and I are dating, Lex, then we’re dating. Rhys and I aren’t involved that way. He’s still grieving over Mary.”

Considering what Lex’s body had been through today, I doubted he had the strength to smile. But his sleepy eyes warmed in my direction in a way that made my heart ache.

I went to the chair Rhys had vacated, sat, and wove my fingers through his, despite the plastic pulse-ox sheath on his finger. Alive. He was alive. Thank you, gods and goddesses everywhere. “But dating or not, I’m going after more goddess grails. Get used to that.”

“It could be dangerous.” His voice was definitely rough—he’d probably had a tube down his throat during surgery.

“Says the man in ICU. We’ve all got our own grail quests, Lex. I think we’ll do best if we combine them, but either way, I know where my priorities have to lie for now.”

“With the goddess cups.”

“With what they symbolize.” Life. Love. Sisterhood. Personal power. None of it sucked, as far as worthy goals go.

“Mag—” His hesitation didn’t seem to be because of the painkillers or lingering anesthesia. “I…I’ve been asking you to trust me. Maybe you shouldn’t.”

But I wasn’t hopping back on the to-trust-or-not-to-trust Lex Stuart roller coaster. Not today, anyway. Melusine had survived her husband’s betrayal with a continued loyalty to their legacy. She’d survived. Maybe I’d give that a try.

Squeezing his hand, I shook my head.

He frowned, fighting his sleepiness. “I could have gotten you killed today, just by being with me. I can’t even talk to you about any of it. You shouldn’t let down your guard around me. You should—”

So I shut him up by kissing him, gently, firmly. “Never tell me what I should do, Lex. Instead…just tell me about your goals.”

He looked pained from more than wounds. “I can’t—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Vow of secrecy. Let’s just go around the obstacle. Hypothetically speaking, given the choice between helping yourself and helping humanity, which would you choose?”

He looked wistful now. The drugs robbed him of so much of his usual armor. “I thought you’d know.”

Damn it, I did love him. A man who in a few ways was still a stranger…except to my heart. Weren’t we the pair for keeping our most foolish, most important vows?

I drew my fingers across his cheek. “I’m here, aren’t I? I just wanted to hear you say it, so that I—”

“Humanity,” he whispered. “I hope.”