Kitabı oku: «A.k.a. Goddess»

The Target:
The ancient chalice of Melusine

The bad guys: Otherwise known as the Comitatus, a powerful group of gun-toting men bent on destroying the goddess grails—and anyone who gets in their way. They’ve got superior firepower, a worldwide network of resources and a dangerous reputation. Fearing that the power of the grails will threaten the brotherhood, they will use any means necessary to prevent them from being united.

The good gal: Magdalene Sanger, college professor and grail keeper, comes from a long line of women charged with protecting the ancient grails, keeping them out of enemy hands and safely hidden until the time is right. What’s at stake? No one really knows what power the grails may hold, but Maggi’s determined to find and preserve these legendary artifacts of woman power with all of her wits, her research…and the power of a goddess.

The Grail Keepers:

Going for the grail with the goddess on their side!

Dear Reader,

Enter the high-stakes world of Silhouette Bombshell, where the heroine takes charge and never gives up—whether she’s standing up for herself, saving her friends from grave danger or daring to go where no woman has gone before. A Silhouette Bombshell heroine has smarts, persistence and an indomitable spirit, qualities that will get her in and out of trouble in an exciting adventure that will also bring her a man worth having…if she wants him!

Meet Angel Baker, public avenger, twenty-second-century woman and the heroine of USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Beard’s story, Kiss of the Blue Dragon. Angel’s job gets personal when her mother is kidnapped, and the search leads Angel into Chicago’s criminal underworld, where she crosses paths with one very stubborn detective!

Join the highly trained women of ATHENA FORCE on the hunt for a killer, with Alias, by Amy J. Fetzer, the latest in this exhilarating twelve-book continuity series. She’s lived a lie for four years to protect her son—but her friend’s death brings Darcy Steele out of hiding to find out whom she can trust….

Explore a richly fantastic world in Evelyn Vaughn’s A.K.A. Goddess, the story of a woman whose special calling pits her against a powerful group of men and their leader, her former lover.

And finally, nights are hot in Urban Legend by Erica Orloff. A mysterious nightclub owner stalks her lover’s killers while avoiding the sharp eyes of a rugged cop, lest he learn her own dark secret—she’s a vampire….

It’s a month to sink your teeth into! Please send your comments and suggestions to me c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Sincerely,

Natashya Wilson

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

A.K.A. Goddess
Evelyn Vaughn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

EVELYN VAUGHN

has written stories since she learned to make letters. But during the two years that she lived on a Navajo reservation in Arizona—while in second and third grade—she dreamed of becoming not a writer, but a barrel racer in the rodeo. Before she actually got her own horse, however, her family moved to Louisiana. There, to avoid the humidity, she channeled more of her adventures into stories instead.

Since then, Evelyn has canoed in the East-Texas swamps, rafted a white-water river in the Austrian Alps, rappelled barefoot down a three-story building, talked her way onto a ship to Greece without her passport, sailed in the Mediterranean and spent several weeks in Europe with little more than a backpack and a train pass. All at least once. While she enjoys channeling the more powerful “travel Vaughn” on a regular basis, she also loves the fact that she can write about adventures with far less physical discomfort. Since she now lives in Texas, where she teaches English at a local community college, air-conditioning still remains an important factor.

A.K.A. Goddess is Evelyn’s seventh full-length book for Silhouette. Feel free to contact her through her Web site, www.evelynvaughn.com, or by writing to P.O. Box 6, Euless TX, 76039.

I owe thanks to many people for this book. Thanks to Leslie and Stef and Lynda and Cheryl and Julie at Silhouette Books, and to Paige at Creative Media Agency. Thanks to friends who critiqued or brainstormed, especially Maureen McKade and Pam McCutcheon and Deb Stover, and to Toni and Sarah and Jenn and Christine. Thanks to Matt and my friends at TCC for double-checking my technical elements, and to inspirations like Maggie Shayne and Lorna Tedder and the Sisterhood of the Scribes.

This book is dedicated to all of them and more, and to the spirit of sisterhood that, as far as I’m concerned, is the most constant and wonderful manifestation of Goddessness.

Contents

The Grail Keepers’ Bedtime Story

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

The Grail Keepers’ Bedtime Story

L ong ago, before accepted history began, there lived a Great Queen with nine powerful daughters. Their powers lay in their beauty, in their truth, in their abilities to heal and create and protect. Their powers lay in their skill at dance and art and sports and poetry.

But their greatest power lay in being women.

Because the world needed them, the Great Queen sent her daughters in nine different directions to be queens in their own right. And she gave them each a finely crafted cup.

“Pour your powers into these cups,” she instructed, “and share them as you will. But if ever you find yourselves in danger, a victim of fear or envy, hide the cups so that your powers can live on, even though you be forgotten.”

Her daughters agreed, and off they went. For a long, long time they ruled as beloved queens—queens of the North and the South, of the East and the West, of the Heaven and the Earth and the Underworld. They married and loved and bore children. But all things change, wheels turn, and eventually, as the Great Queen had predicted, men began to fear and envy their powers.

One queen was imprisoned by soldiers.

One queen was denounced by priests.

One queen was outlawed by a senate.

One queen was erased by scholars.

One queen was exiled by her father-in-law.

One queen was overthrown by her stepson.

One queen was betrayed by her lover.

One queen was forgotten by her son.

One queen was deserted by her husband.

As each queen found herself in danger from fear and envy, she asked her own daughters to do as her mother, the Great Queen, had instructed. She had them hide her cup, so that the powers she had poured into it could survive, waiting to be found and shared if ever the world again became ready for them.

The cups wait to be discovered.

The cups wait to be united.

The cups wait to change the world.

They are waiting still…perhaps, my daughter, for you.

Chapter 1

T he light over my front door was out again. I noticed it as I carried my damp gym bag up the shadowy outer stairs. I’d have to call the landlord.

Then I climbed high enough to see that my door stood open several inches.

I knew I’d locked it.

Someone was in my apartment.

For a long, dumb moment, I just stared. Then I backed down the steps as quietly as I could. Don’t get me wrong. I come from a long line of strong women—WACs, suffragettes, ladies who disguised themselves as boys to fight alongside soldier husbands in ancient wars. And, trust me, that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my family and woman power.

But there’s a huge difference between strength and stupidity. Our brains are our best weapon, or so my sifu—instructor—used to say. I reached and unlocked my car, and all but dove inside. I hit the lock button, only then using my cell phone to call 911.

Then I sat there on the phone, fumbling my key into the ignition in case whoever was in my apartment might force me to flee by automobile.

Or maybe to run them over. Who can say with hypotheticals?

The cops got there barely ten minutes later—not a bad response time—and I disconnected from the nice emergency operator. I cracked my window, but the two officers only nodded in my direction before heading upstairs to check matters out. I waited, staring unfocused at my faint reflection in the car window—late twenty-something, long brown hair pulled into a wet ponytail, eyes too serious. What felt like forever later, a second blue-and-white cruised into my parking lot. As its female officer got out, I could hear her radio crackle. A male voice said, “Someone’s trashed the place, but it seems empty. We’ll look around to make sure.”

Trashed the place? My place?

Weirdly, instead of feeling hurt or violated, I simply felt…disbelief. My apartment was safe. How could someone trash it?

The policewoman tapped on my car window. Despite having watched her approach, I still jumped. “Ms. Sanger? Officer Sofie Douglas. Could I ask you some questions?”

I was still tense—so much for the relaxation benefits of swimming thirty laps at the gym. But her being female made her more approachable. She was black, shorter than me and about my age.

As a gesture of confidence, I climbed out of the car.

“Is your name really Margaret Sanger?” Officer Douglas asked. “Like the lady who made birth control legal?”

“No,” I said, not for the first time. “Not Margaret.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Dispatch said you identified yourself as Maggie.”

I saw her writing it down. “No e.”

She scratched out the e. Hey, at least I don’t dot my i’s with hearts or smiley faces.

“Maggi’s short for Magdalene,” I said.

Officer Douglas blinked at me. “You mean like Mary Magdalene?”

Lights appeared above us, from my apartment’s bedroom window, and my head came up to track it. “That’s the one.”

“So what do you do?” she asked. “For a living, I mean.”

“I teach comparative mythology at the college.”

She stared. “You can major in that?”

I was rolling on to and off of the balls of my feet, like a Tai Chi form about to escape. “When can I go up there?”

I wanted to see the damage for myself. I had to know if this really was random. I kind of hoped it was.

Static crackled on Officer Douglas’s radio. Then a voice: “Nobody’s here. It doesn’t look like they took anything.”

I jogged up the stairs without waiting for Sofie Douglas’s permission.

The place was trashed, all right. Sofa cushions slit. Drawers overturned. Plants uprooted in dark spills of potting soil. In some corners, my carpet had even been torn off its pad. Stunned, I headed for the bedroom, which was just as bad. All my clothes…!

“Can you tell if anything’s missing, Ms. Sanger?” asked a burly, red-haired officer. “Anything of value?”

“It’s all of value,” I said, more softly than I would have liked. “It’s mine.”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean—”

But I held up a hand to cut him off. I knew what he meant. As a test, I checked my jewelry box. There never had been a lot there—even when I was engaged briefly, I used to wear the too-expensive diamond—I had few family heirlooms.

“Nothing’s missing.” I turned and noticed my bedroom TV. It was portable, but it hadn’t been, well, ported. I returned to my living room—the TV and stereo remained there, too, though they’d been upended—and looked into my office. My computer hummed steadily, monitor facedown on the floor. But…

“The CPU’s running,” I said. “I turned it off before I left home this morning.”

Officer Douglas, who’d followed me upstairs, went to look more closely at my computer. The redhead, whose shield identified him as Officer Willis, said, “Does anybody have a key to your home?”

“My parents,” I said. “Two—no, three of my friends.”

He exchanged an amused glance with the other male officer, a tall, graying guy with a mustache.

“And the lady who cleans up for me once a week,” I added. “Oh, and my dog walker.”

Willis looked concerned. “You have a dog?”

As if I would’ve hidden in my car if any dog of mine had been in jeopardy! “Not anymore. She died last fall. I just never bothered to get my key back. I’ve also given a key to my neighbor, so she can check on things when I’m gone. But she’s trustworthy. They all are.”

“Maybe I should’ve asked who doesn’t have a key.”

There were a few.

“I prefer not to empower fear,” I murmured, turning in a circle, and he snorted with male superiority. At least he didn’t use that old line about “a woman as pretty as you,” as if a decent appearance begs for trouble.

Trouble doesn’t wait for invitations.

That’s when I noticed what was left of my curio cabinet. The cabinet itself had been destroyed—lying on its side, the door yanked completely off, cherry wood splintered and every pane of glass smashed. And my collection of statues, inside…

Little more than rubble.

I took a step forward, unbelieving. Chunks of white marble were all that remained of what had once been a twelve-inch Pallas Athena, which I’d bought in Greece. Shards of lapis lazuli had been my Isis-and-Horus statue. My obsidian Shiva was many-armed rubble. My glossy, ceramic Virgin Mary had been smashed to shiny dust. Even the wonderfully fertile Venus, similar to the famous Willendorf figure and carved from granite, had been reduced to round and jagged bits.

There was no way the Venus could have broken like that accidentally. Someone must have pounded on her, hard. Repeatedly. Purposefully.

And in anger.

I’d recently read a news piece about a goddess artifact being similarly destroyed, in a museum in India, and the similarities—as well as my sudden conclusions—unnerved me.

“Wow.” Willis whistled. “What were those?”

“Goddesses,” I said. “I collect statues of ancient goddesses.”

“Were they worth a lot?”

Monetarily? Some more than others—none were originals, thank heavens. But emotionally…

Officer Douglas, from my study doorway, said, “Goddesses? Are you one of those Wiccans?”

“Not exactly,” I told her, fingering the amulet I wore under my shirt. It wasn’t a pentagram, but two interlaced circles called a vesica piscis. I wasn’t technically Wiccan. But our beliefs have surprising similarities.

It’s like I told you.

I come from a very long line of very strong women.

The police all but moved in. They made phone calls and questioned neighbors. Specialists showed up to photograph the wreckage and to dust for fingerprints, more backup than I’d ever expected for a simple break-in. When I asked if this was normal, Officer Willis said, “We’re just trying to be thorough, ma’am.”

I put up with it for insurance reasons, but mainly I just wanted to clean up. Did you know recent studies have shown that while men have a fight-or-flight response to stress, women have a hormone that prompts them to tend-and-be-friend? I hated to see Officer Sofie go, despite her leaving her card with me and telling me to call anytime. But I also wanted space in which to mourn my statues, to put things as much to right as I could…and to consider who could have done such a thing…and why.

I couldn’t help thinking this break-in might somehow be related to the recent destruction of an ancient goblet, the Kali Cup, a week before it could go on display. But that meant things I couldn’t face. Not yet.

I’d barely managed to start straightening the mess, alone at last, when a knock at the door startled me. I don’t like being scared. It goes against almost everything I believe in.

Checking the peephole and catching a glimpse of brown hair, and a familiar face in its usual impersonal mode, didn’t do a lot to improve my mood…or my lingering disorientation.

Lex.

Alexander Rothschild Stuart III and I go back. Way, way back. Worse, he makes me question my life choices almost every time our diverse paths collide. See, he’d be the dream catch for almost any woman—wealthy beyond his unimaginable inheritance, quietly handsome and, despite nearing thirty, still something of a brooding bad boy. Hard to resist, huh?

Hell, even I have a terrible time resisting him, as our roller-coaster history attests to. And I have different views on money and power than a lot of women. At least—I try.

I could also no longer trust either him or his family as far as I could comfortably spit them.

Still, there was that lack-of-resistance thing, and the intimate-history thing, along with no small amount of curiosity. It had been months since I’d so much as glimpsed him, yet there he stood, too self-possessed to even look impatient while I checked him out. Him showing up on the night of my break-in couldn’t have been a coincidence even if I believed in coincidences.

I don’t. But I opened the door.

“Are you all right?” The question came out vague and polite, as if he were making bored chitchat at a cocktail party. Lex has always had that coolness about him—he supposedly can trace his family line back to the Royal House of Scotland, by way of England, so it’s probably all that blue blood chilling in his veins. But the fact that he was here at all, much less this late, belied his nonchalance. So did the powerful energy that instantly roiled between us. “I heard about the break-in.”

“From the police?” I asked. That might explain all the special treatment, mightn’t it? “Or are you a part of the criminal grapevine now?”

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.

Chapter 2

“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.”

Now that I’m all grown up and educated, I know the symbol is called a vesica piscis or a “chalice-well” design, after the famous version at the well at Glastonbury Abbey. Like on wedding-ring quilt patterns. Like on my pendant.

Hence my interest in Officer Sofie’s card.

Jogging to my blue Mini for the second time that night, I wished I’d had time to draw the second circle on Sofie Douglas’s card and hand it back to her. That would’ve been subtler, safer. I didn’t. So I phoned her on my hands-free mobile as I sped down the highway and simply said, “This is Maggi. From tonight?”

“I remember.” She sounded carefully noncommittal. It being after midnight, I couldn’t blame her.

“I found your card and, well…” Talk about feeling awkward. “Circle to circle?”

For a moment I feared my connection had cut out. Then—

“Never an end,” she whispered, surprised. Not that I blamed her. The first time’s like learning the Tooth Fairy’s real.

“I thought you should know I’m heading to Turbeville Hall on campus, and that there might be trouble.”

When I arrived she had already parked outside the four-story building that houses the academic offices. I felt a twinge of concern when I saw the unfamiliar car, but then she got out, still wearing her uniform. And her hip holster. Carrying a monster flashlight.

I liked this woman.

As I got out of the car, she shone her light onto the asphalt at my feet. Her voice shook slightly against a background of crickets and a jet flying overhead. “‘Circle to circle, never an end?’”

Relieved, I switched on my own flashlight and slid the pool of light partially across hers, stopping when they overlapped halfway. “‘Cup to cauldron, ever a friend.’”

Vesica piscis. Drawn in light on the pavement. Our version of a secret handshake.

“I can’t believe this really works.” Sofie shook her head. “I thought it was just a fairy tale my grammy made up.”

I shifted my keychain so keys stuck out between my fingers, just in case, and strode toward the building’s front door. Final exams had ended last week, and we’d turned in grades yesterday. The place looked dead, so I assumed it would be locked. “Follow me, and I’ll explain what I know.”

She quickly caught up. “Why?”

Why explain, or why follow?

“Because knowledge is power,” I said. “The kind of power that just increases when you share it. And because someone I know was attacked in her college office this week.”

“Good…” Her voice fell softer as the door swung open into the empty lobby.

I hadn’t used my key yet.

“…reason,” she finished grimly. “I should call this in.”

“I need to check on something first.” My whisper echoed.

Sofie said, “Just keep talking, Maggi Sanger.”

So I did, heading for the stairs instead of the elevator. “Your grammy told you a story about the Great Queen, right?”

Lil and I hadn’t met a Grail Keeper yet who hadn’t heard some version of that story.

“The one with seven daughters?” she asked.

“Sometimes it’s nine.” I sprinted up the stairs. “I’ve heard it with as few as three and as many as thirteen. But the queen always sends her daughters off into the world, and she always gives each one the same gift.”

“Her own magic cup,” Sofie finished, pacing me. “The older I got, the more lame a going-away present that seemed.”

“Yeah, well, that’s allegory for you.” Both Sofie and I were in good shape; our breathing stayed regular. “Did you read in the paper last week about an ancient goblet that was destroyed in the National Museum of New Delhi, India?”

“Nope.”

“It wasn’t a big news item, so it would be easy to miss—”

She stopped, right there in the stairwell. “A goblet?”

“The Kali Cup,” I said, breathing just a bit harder. “Or chalice or grail. Scholars believed this cup was used in ancient ceremonies worshipping the goddess Kali. But it was destroyed—smashed—before it could go on display.”

I’d felt actual pain, deep in my gut, when I read that.

“And you think that was a magic chalice sent out with some great queen’s daughter?” Sofie blinked. “Reality check. That’s just a fairy tale.”

“I used to think that, too. But if you had to pass along information in a way that would seem harmless to the people in power, what better form than fairy tales and nursery rhymes?”

She started climbing again, absorbing it all. “You’re saying the Great Queen story was true.”

I said, “All I know for sure is that since my cousin and I started looking, we’ve found a lot of women who were raised the way you and I were—‘circle to circle.’ With the Kali Cup gone, we’re starting to wonder if some people weren’t raised to hate or fear those chalices.”

“Why?” she asked. “Unless they’re really magic, I mean. History can’t hurt anybody.”

I held up a cautious hand as we emerged onto the third floor. Emergency lights cast the long hallway into shadows, brightened only by the red eye of an exit sign.

I whispered, “Tell that to my great-aunt Brigitte.”

We made our way down the dark hallway, past the occasional row of plastic chairs. My office stood at the far end, so we got to pass all the other doors—all the possible hiding places. None of the doors had a window, even a peephole.

Taking a deep breath to slow my pulse, I slipped my key into the lock and turned it.

Sofie caught my hand. “Let me.”

Since she was the one with the gun, I nodded. I stepped back while she pressed a shoulder against the doorjamb, crooked her arm so that her pistol pointed toward the acoustic ceiling tiles, slowly turned the knob—

And burst into the office in one abrupt, practiced move. “Police!”

Her shout bounced back down the hallway. Nothing.

I peeked around the jamb, relieved. It was just my office, darker than usual and straightened up for the summer break.

No books strewn across the floor. No computer monitor lying on its face. No mysterious bad guy lurking in the darkness.

With a last look around the office, Sofie holstered her weapon. “That plays better when there’s a perp waiting.”

I went in, turning on the light. “Better you than me. I never much liked guns. Weapons are too patriarchal.”

She grunted, stepped inside, and examined my décor—a framed illumination of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath from Canterbury Tales; stone fleur-de-lis over the window; an imitation suit of armor in the corner with a mortarboard balanced on his tin head.

Above the inside of the door hung a slim, sheathed sword, not quite Asian enough to clash with the rest of the office.

Sofie looked meaningfully back at me.

I shrugged. “Well, we do live in a patriarchy now.”

I reached for the power button on my CPU, to check my files—then abruptly stopped, opening my hand to splay it across the computer case.

Wait a minute.

Warmth tickled my palm. “Someone’s been here.”

“What?” Even as she asked it, Sofie’s head came up and she was on guard again, glancing more closely at the filing cabinets, the bookshelves, the knight.

Anything that might hide an intruder.

“It’s warm.” I straightened, leaving the computer alone. “Someone was just here.”

I switched off the lights and went to the window. My office overlooked the campus quadrangle, not the parking lot. Still, the walkways were wide enough that service vehicles could use them for maintenance.

And sure enough—

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered, staring down at the dark car that waited smugly, not fifty feet from the building.

In a moment Sofie stood beside me. “Plymouth. Current model. Looks empty. I can’t see the license from this high up.”

“Then we need to get back down.” Now. A few minutes ago.

“Let me go first,” she said, heading for the door.

She stopped when I opened the window and said, “No.”

My office was too far from the stairway. It made sense to hurry. What if the car left before we made it down?

Leaning out, I had to really stretch, balancing on my stomach across the sill to reach the drainpipe I knew was there. Good thing I’d stretched out by swimming laps tonight.

“Are you crazy?” demanded Sofie.

I’d seen students climb this pipe more than once, despite regulations and safety concerns. I knew it would hold my weight. Probably. Then again, here I was grasping a copper drainpipe as I eased my knees out a window into sheer air, three stories up. So was I crazy?

Who knows? I’ve been wrong before.

I centered and balanced in order to slowly raise myself, then precariously stand on the windowsill. I touched the top of the sash for balance, then slowly shifted my center of gravity across to the drainpipe, my chest brushing ivy-laced brick. Just before the step of no return, I remembered that I was wearing sandals. I caught the heel strap of each on the inside of the windowsill to pull them off, one at a time.

One fell into the office. The other slid out the window, spinning in freefall down into the hedge at the base of the building, three floors below me.

Yeah. Gulp.

Not that I could’ve gotten back in if I’d wanted to. By now, gravity had pretty much committed me. Tightening my hold on the pipe, I swung my feet and knees across to straddle it. My toe caught on an edge of ivy. Stone bit into my soles. For a brief moment I simply clung there, deepening my breathing.

I’m in pretty good shape, but there’s a reason chin-ups measure men’s strength better than women’s.

Aunt Bridge, I thought firmly, breathing strength into my arms as I glanced down at the mysterious car. Sons of bitches.

Holding the pipe with my knees, I let go with one hand to reach down. I slid some—mostly controlled—then reached down with the other hand. The copper pipe felt cool and coarse under my palms as I descended, hand under hand. My arms vibrated with the strain, and my knees dragged against brick and ivy. I looked up and saw my window empty; Sofie had vanished. I looked down and couldn’t see where my sandal had landed.

Within ten feet of the ground I thought, Close enough. I probably could have slid—like a fireman’s pole but with ridges. Instead I pushed away in a leap and landed in a low, shock-absorbing crouch.

My bare feet safe on manicured grass, I straightened and spun for a better look at the dark car’s license plate. X1—

Then something hard pressed against the base of my skull—something like a gun—and my priorities shifted accordingly.

Chapter 3

“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…