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…

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

Edit that; I had to find the cup.

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

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

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

Mine was a first-class blanket.

Suspicion contracted my chest. Did that mean…?

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

Then something small and hard slid off my lap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And with a nod of quiet satisfaction, he sits.

“Maggi Sanger!” protests Miss Mason.

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

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

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

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

He looks intrigued. “Please?”

“Sure,” I say. “Lex.”

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

Alex was a victim.

Lex is a survivor.

Chapter 4

S tanding in line for customs, my backpack slung comfortably over one shoulder, I caught glimpses of Lex’s long suit coat half a line ahead of me. Surely he was just being chivalrous with the blanket and chocolate? He wasn’t spying, living up to his archvillain moniker, was he?

Could he possibly do both?

It wasn’t lack of time or opportunity that kept me from asking. Nor was it cowardice or embarrassment. We’d been lovers at one time, remember?

Nope. I held my tongue because I couldn’t think of a way to confront him without tipping my hand. On the very low chance he’d seen my notes, at least he hadn’t taken any; I’d checked that on the plane. Better to err on the side of discretion.

Especially while guards stood by with automatic weapons.

By the time I left the secured area, Lex was greeting yet another reason for not trusting him.

His cousin Phil, CEO, prince regent of the family business.

Phil Stuart was stocky and harsh-featured, right down to his crooked nose. He purposefully wore his tawny hair too long. His suit was more expensive than Lex’s, but not as understated. Phil was the kind of businessman who put the filthy back into filthy lucre—and yet Lex was one of his staunchest supporters.

Having someone save your life with his own bone marrow will do that.

I turned to scan the waiting crowd. Aunt Bridge’s assistant would be a college-age girl, right? I noticed one young blonde, but she threw her arms wide to greet my Discman seat mate and they began making out, right there in the airport. Okay, probably not her.

I felt either Lex or Phil watching me, but didn’t want to look paranoid by turning. I continued studying the crowd. When I saw my name on a piece of cardboard, I looked up.

Oh, my…goddess.

The person who held it was older than standard college age by about a decade.

He was also a guy.

Other than being tall—lanky, really—the man holding the sign that read “Magdalene Sanger” could have been the anti-Lex. He wore broken-in jeans the way only cowboys and Europeans can, and a loose T-shirt. His shaggy black hair looked finger combed, and he didn’t seem to have shaved that morning. When his gaze met mine, I saw his eyes were a bright blue.

They smiled at me in welcome, even bluer. And yet something in that smile seemed unapproachable. Amiable but off-limits. Probably married…even if he wasn’t wearing a ring.

Then he lowered the sign to step forward and greet me, offering a slim, bony hand, and surprised me further.

Because he wore a prominent crucifix around his neck. And his quiet greeting as he ducked his head toward me, in a thick Celtic accent, was “Circle to circle?”

“A guy Grail Keeper?” I asked Aunt Brigitte as soon as Rhys Pritchard politely left us alone at the Hôpital Américain de Paris. He’d said he would bring back tea.

“It is not impossible,” my great-aunt murmured from where her folded bed propped her up. Her neck was in a brace, her arm in a cast. One of her eyes had swollen purple, to match the side of her face. It hurt to look at her, but I looked at her anyway, gently holding her free hand. If she could survive the beating, I could survive the evidence of it.

“His mother is from a Welsh line of Keepers,” Aunt Bridge continued. “As she taught his sisters the stories, he learned them as well. Would you have had her exclude him just for being a boy? Would you have me do so?”

“No! I just would have thought he’d be a bit too…”

I didn’t stop myself in time.

“I’d be a bit too what?” teased Rhys, peeking in the cracked door. His smile didn’t falter as he carried in two cardboard cups of tea, letting the door swing shut behind him. “I would have knocked, but my hands were full.”

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “I was being nosy.”

He put the other cup of tea on the rolling table that spanned Aunt Bridge’s bed and retrieved her straw from a plastic cup of water. “No offense is taken.”

“Not just that, but…” Might as well admit it. “I’m sorry, but I was going to say, too Christian.”

Rhys and Aunt Bridge exchanged a significant look.

“What?” I demanded, immediately suspicious.

“Beliefs need not be exclusive. You know that I’m Catholic myself,” said my aunt, despite how badly she’d been treated after her divorce in the fifties. “Almost every cathedral built in medieval Europe was named Nôtre Dame for a reason. Not just to praise the Virgin, but to fill a void left by the banished goddess worship.”

“I know,” I said. “I was jumping to unfair conclusions.”

Rhys hitched himself onto a table, since I had the room’s only chair. “Are you a goddess worshipper, then?”

I hated that question because I hated my own less-than-logical answer. “I’m not sure.”

He took a sip of tea, clearly surprised.

“I’m still figuring it out. In the meantime…calling it research feels safer.”

“You’re quite the honest woman, aren’t you?”

Some days I believed that more than others. “Are you studying the goddess grails along with Aunt Bridge?”

“My main interest,” he admitted, “is the Holy Grail.”

I could hear the capitalization, even in speech, and put down my tea for fear of spilling it. “The Holy Grail? The cup-of-the-Last-Supper, sought-by-King-Arthur’s-greatest-champions Holy Grail?”

“That’s the one,” he said, with that great lilt of his. “Like in Monty Python, but with less inherent wackiness.”

I grinned.

“Rhys believes that his grail may be hidden among the remains of the goddess culture,” said Aunt Bridge.

“The church did try to suppress the Grail legends along with other heresies,” he agreed. “The Templars. The Cathars. The Gnostic gospels. I’m merely seeking the truth.”

Or maybe he meant, the Truth. “And you honestly think you’ll find the cup of the Last Supper was hidden by old goddess worshippers?”

“British legend holds that Joseph of Aramathea brought the Grail west, after the crucifixion,” he told me. “But the French have a different legend.”

Ah, yes. “That Mary Magdalene brought it to Marseilles.”

He nodded. “It’s worth investigating.”

“So it’s settled,” Aunt Bridge declared. “Rhys will go with you to get the Melusine Chalice.”

“Wait,” I protested. “The Melusine Chalice is no longer safe where our ancestors hid it, not with whoever stole our files going in search of it. But what are we supposed to do once we have it? Are we going to hide it again and create a whole new nursery rhyme for future generations?”

Somehow, even drinking hot tea through a straw, Aunt Bridge managed to look wise. “Remember, dear. The grails were hidden only until the world became ready for their return. Your grand-mère and I, we discussed this a great deal before she died. It is a new millennium. Women have greater power and freedom than ever in recorded history. Perhaps that time is now.”

“And what if we’re mistaken? What if we just make it easier for some bad guys to destroy it, like they did Kali’s?”

She attempted a pained smile, crooked on her swollen face. “You think too much. Trust your heart. There may be a reason this is happening now, a reason you’re involved.”

I believed that, to a point. But that point ended where logic began. I still had to find the chalice. That was no longer debatable. But until I did, we needn’t make a firm decision about what to do with it, right?

A lot depended on where we found it. Knowledge of the Melusine Chalice, and the responsibility to protect it, belonged to Grail Keepers, but the chalice itself…that was anybody’s guess. Instead of arguing further, I said, “But why bring Rhys? I don’t need a male escort.”

Rhys laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve been called that.”

“I mean a protector.” But I had to grin at his deliberate misunderstanding, as well as the face he made. Lex Stuart, even when he was being funny, came across as solemn, as if he’d taken the weight of the world onto his solid shoulders. Rhys Pritchard…

He’s hiding the weight of the world in his heart. My insight surprised and intrigued me—assuming I was correct. He smiled so easily, laughed so easily. I probably wasn’t.

“He has been my assistant since I began drafting my book on Melusine. He knows most of what I know,” Aunt Bridge insisted, when he opened his mouth to protest. “Since I cannot come with you, and my files have been stolen, he must go. In any case, he has the keys to my car.”

I didn’t want to be rude. Or ruder. But I glanced toward Rhys and asked her, “You really trust him?”

“Like my parish priest,” she said, which for some reason made him frown. They had some kind of secret between them. But clearly they weren’t ready to share it.

Either way, her recommendation was good enough for me.

It wasn’t like I’d been divinely chosen for this myself.

Rhys took the first shift driving. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice them at first. I was busy watching dusk settle over the City of Lights, before we reached the A6 motorway.

You can see the Eiffel Tower from anywhere in the city, of course, and other landmarks like Nôtre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe are hard to miss amidst the glitter and the centuries-old bridges crossing the Seine. I loved it. I used to spend a month here every summer with my cousin Lil and our maternal grandmother. Lex once called Paris my maison away from maison.

It was a coincidence, him coming to Paris today. Wasn’t it?

“I know to head south,” said Rhys, who looked a little long for Aunt Bridge’s 3-door Citroën Saxo VTR. “Have you got anything more specific in mind?”

“We might as well start in Lusignan,” I said. “Since their claim to Melusine is the strongest.”

“Mère Lusigne,” he murmured, by way of agreement. That’s where some believe Melusine got her name. So he did know his stuff. “The closest city would be what, Poitiers? At least we oughtn’t to have trouble finding a place to stay. They have that big amusement park, nowadays. Not Disney—the futuristic one.”

Good thought. “I’ll call ahead for a reservation,” I said, reaching for one of the cargo pockets on my pants. “What with all my overseas relatives, I got a satellite phone as soon as they came on the market.”

“We can just see what’s available when we get there.” When I stared silent questions, he admitted, “I don’t have a credit card.”

“At all?”

“I haven’t had time to build a credit history.”

I laughed. “What, you’ve been in prison?”

All Rhys said was, “It’s not there I’ve been.”

I shrugged. Aunt Bridge trusted him.

And if she was mistaken, I could probably take him.

“We’ll use my credit card,” I said, calling Information.

“I can pay my way,” he assured me. “I have cash.”

This was so unlike any road trip with Lex Stuart that I had to grin at the irony. But after making a reservation at the Holiday Inn, I thought back to Aunt Bridge in that hospital bed, and my sense of humor faltered.

“Why now?” I asked, of the darkening French landscape as much as anything. “Our family has passed down a rhyme about the Melusine Cup for centuries—how did someone suddenly notice us?”

“Brigitte didn’t mention her lecture to you?”

I turned to better face him. “What lecture?”

“Three nights ago,” he said. “She gave a presentation on ‘Le féminin perdu en archéologie du dix-huitième siècle.’”

“‘The lost feminine in eighteenth-century archeology’?”

“How they dismissed the countless goddess figurines they found as dolls or pornography. That’s it. At one point, someone in the audience mentioned the Kali Cup. It had just made the news. Some of them thought its destruction was part of a—how did they put it—a patriarchal conspiracy for the continuing subjugation of women. “If destroying the Kali Cup was part of a great masculine conspiracy, I never got my ballot. Should I be insulted, do you think?”

He followed the signs toward Orléans. “I think the trouble started when Brigitte reassured the audience that there were more goddess grails, and that she and her brilliant American niece were working toward locating one in France.”

I groaned. “She didn’t.”

But of course she had. Aunt Bridge never backed down from anything. She had to have known the danger of her announcement. That didn’t mean she’d deserved the consequences.

It was the men who’d attacked her who perverted our world, who made it a darker place, not my aunt speaking the truth.

“She threw down the gauntlet, and someone picked it up.”

“At the risk of sounding sexist,” I said, “were there any other…?”

“Penises there?”

I choked. “Rhys!”

“There were,” he assured me. “Quite a few. Assuming the attackers were men in the audience we cannot narrow it down to one or two suspects.”

“It wasn’t just the men in the audience,” I said grimly.

Rhys glanced toward me, intrigued. “Why isn’t it?”

“Because they wouldn’t have had time to fly to the East Coast and break into my apartment. It has to be some kind of group or association, some kind of…”

“You think it’s a conspiracy?” Rhys prompted.

But that sounded far too dramatic for my comfort.

About an hour later, we stopped and ate a late dinner outside Orléans—the place Joan of Arc rescued before she got burned as a witch. While Rhys refilled the tank with petrol—his word—I phoned my mother. She insisted on going by my apartment to clean up the damage from the break-in. It wasn’t a battle I would easily win, so I forfeited.

When Rhys tossed me the keys to the Saxo, I slid into the driver’s seat, adjusted the mirrors and merged us back onto the motorway heading southeast.

I hadn’t driven ten kilometers before I noticed it.

There, in the rearview mirror, hovered a dark-green, four-door sedan made of sleek, curved lines.

Like some kind of water creature. Like a shark.

Maybe it was instinct that locked me on to it. Or maybe instinct is just our subconscious noticing something—a driver’s face or a suspect maneuver—that our conscious mind hasn’t caught on to. At first I hesitated to mention it to Rhys.

What if I was imagining this?

I took the Blois/Vendôme exit, just to test them.

They took the same exit. At the next cross street, I U-turned under the motorway.

They followed. Crap.

Rhys inhaled deeply as he sat up, unable to ignore the centrifugal force of my turn. “Is something wrong?”

I turned right, past an anachronistic McDonald’s, and divided my attention between the road ahead of me and the car behind me. “What kind of car has a silver lion on its grill?”

“Rampant?” he asked, rubbing a sleepy hand across his face.

“Yeah.”

“That would be a Peugeot.” Yet another gender stereotype, proven out.

I made another right.

So did they.

I signaled a third right, as if lost—then turned hard left.

They followed. Worse, despite the illusion of activity given by that McDonald’s, I’d somehow driven us into a dark, industrial neighborhood. No, no, no! You’re supposed to stay in a populous area when you’re being tailed.

“Then we’re being followed by a Peugeot,” I said grimly.

Rhys turned in his cramped seat to look—which is when the Peugeot behind us picked up speed, looming increasingly closer in my rearview mirror.

“Ah,” he breathed.

“Yeah. Merde.”

I hit the gas.

Hard.

Chapter 5

“W ould you prefer that I drive?” asked Rhys. The question kind of squeezed out of him. He was pressed firmly back in his seat, only partly by choice.

“No.” I toed the gas pedal to the floor—after all, if the police stopped us it would be a good thing, right? Most tails don’t stick around to talk to the authorities. “Do you think they followed us all the way from Paris?”

“I don’t know. How would I?”

By looking in the rearview mirror once in a while? That wasn’t fair, and I knew it. I had to focus on now.

The Peugeot was gaining on us. It was a larger car than Aunt Bridge’s Citroën. It had more power.

We shot onto a bridge over the Loire—luckily, a regular, two-lane bridge, and not one of those scenic medieval landmarks. For a moment, as we left the upgrade onto the bridge, the Saxo’s tires left the road.

It landed about as smoothly as the jet I’d ridden into Paris earlier today. I managed to hang on to the steering wheel and felt disproportionately proud of myself, which seemed preferable to feeling terrified.

We were leaving the industrial area behind for more open landscape and less chance of police intervention.

Who were these guys?

“Do you know where we’re going?” asked Rhys, his voice not quite as tight. He was trying to stay cool, anyway.

“Away from the damned highway,” I confessed. “And I want to be back on it. You’re wearing your seat belt, right?”

He didn’t sound encouraged when he asked, “Why do you ask?”

The Peugeot had reached our bumper. Now it was starting to pass us—rather, to pace us. I glanced to my right, to see that Rhys did have his harness on, before looking out to my left.

A tinted passenger window slid slowly downward, and a pistol appeared over its top, waving at us to pull over.

I hit the brakes.

The Peugeot whipped past us like the bullet I’d probably just escaped. Or postponed. The Saxo squealed to a reluctant stop with a horrible scream and stench of burnt rubber. My own seat belt yanked me back against my seat, hard enough across my shoulder to leave a bruise.

Rhys coughed out something that sounded like “Oofa coals.” Whatever. Since the Peugeot, ahead of us, was making a 180 turn, I wasn’t ready to ask for a translation.

I shifted the Saxo into Reverse and eased on to the gas. The tires had held. We started to pick up a little speed…but not as much speed as we’d need to outrun that Peugeot.

“I’d prefer we not take the bridge this way,” said Rhys, his Welsh lilt more distinct the more tense he got.

“We won’t,” I said. “Hang on.”

At least the road was relatively deserted—a benefit of late night travel. I’d only practiced this a few times, but the gun had upped the ante, so I ticked off the check list in my head.

Fix on a spot just ahead, like in yoga balance exercises.

Push the pedal to the metal. But not for long. This maneuver was only safe—relatively speaking—at under forty miles per hour. Whatever that was in kilometers.

I then did three things at once. I hit the clutch, threw the car into Drive and yanked the steering wheel to the left.

A brief grinding of gears joined the scream of tires as our back end pivoted left and our nose pivoted right, the weight of the engine carrying us around in a perfect bootleg. Yes!

Before we even came to a stop, I stood on the gas to shoot us forward—the Peugeot still gaining on us. It wasn’t a great improvement from a few minutes ago, but at least we were heading the right direction, nose first. We flew back across the bridge, startling some ducks out from under it. We shot back into the industrial area, but the Peugeot was quickly closing our lead. Instead of images of the gendarmerie finding our bodies buried in a field of picturesque sunflowers, I was now picturing them never finding us. Like Hoffa. But in France.

We weren’t going to outrun these guys.

“So what’s ‘Oofa coals’ mean?” I asked, surprised at how clenched my own words were. The Peugeot’s headlights, in the rearview, drew closer. I couldn’t see driver or passenger, but if I were the latter, I would be preparing to shoot out—

Yup, there was the pistol, aiming at our tires. I swerved, and the only explosion I heard was that sinister pop of gunfire. It doesn’t sound as loud in real life as in the movies.

It’s a lot scarier, though.

Rhys said, “Uffach cols. It means embers of hell.”

The Peugeot pulled around and was flanking us now.

“Hang on!” Again, I stood on the brake pedal, pulling the handbrake simultaneously. We skidded forward some yards, further abusing the tires. The Peugeot shot past us again, but braked faster this time—and turned, sideways, blocking our way to civilization.

Brick warehouses crowded the road on either side, without even a sidewalk to try to squeeze around the green car.

“That’s some fairly mild swearing,” I said, breathless.

“It is not, for me,” he muttered.

The passenger door of the Peugeot opened, and a man with a pistol got out. He was wearing a ski mask.

Rhys said, “Isn’t it time to back up again?”

I considered that, considered how much more abuse this poor Citroën Saxo could take. If we ran, the Peugeot would just follow us again. Cat and mouse…and they got to be the cat.

The gunman approached us, especially ominous in the white illumination of our headlights, wreathed with foreign nighttime.

I said, “So how much does Aunt Bridge like this car?”

“She rarely drives it. She prefers the Metro.”

The brake engaged and the gearshift in Neutral, I gunned the engine. Both Rhys and the gunman jumped. “Good.”

The gunman wagged a gloved finger at me, a clear tsk-tsk. He came closer. At least he wasn’t shooting us—yet. He probably wanted to question us first. Then shoot us.

Fat chance, monsieur.

“You cannot run him over,” said Rhys, his voice firmer than at any point since this car chase started. Interesting.

I gunned the motor again, this time with less effect. “Well…I could.”

Damned if Rhys didn’t unfasten his seat belt and reach for the door handle! I lunged across his lap, grabbing his wrist before he could do it. “Wait!”

His eyes seemed bluer in the shadows and the reflected headlights. They were determined, too. Any macho points he’d lost by not noticing the tail, Rhys Pritchard gained back in spades at that moment.

I straightened away from him, released his wrist. “Put your damned seat belt back on,” I said. “I don’t plan on murdering anybody, whether they deserve it or not.”

He hesitated. The gunman was slowing, waving at us to get out of the car.

“Please,” I said, not taking my eyes off the gun. “Have a little faith, here?”

“Have faith?” But thankfully, the familiar click of a seat belt locking into place gave me the permission I needed. I gunned the motor a third time, dropped the car into Drive and burned rubber like a teenage boy showing off at a red light.

Then I released the brake.

The Citroën shot ahead. The gunman leaped out of our path.

I wasn’t aiming at him, anyway. Instead, I accelerated. Thirty kilometers per hour. Forty. Fifty—that was about thirty miles an hour. Sixty…

I rammed our Citroën straight into the passenger side of the Peugeot, behind the rear wheel. There was a crash, a jolt—but, just as I’d been taught, the car skidded out of our way.

The rear of a car is the lightweight end.

I flattened the gas, and the Saxo surged forward—with a nasty dragging sound that, after a few hundred feet, stopped when we bounced over our own bumper. Oops.

Behind us, the Peugeot tried to follow, not waiting for its gunman. But the car managed only a few lunges forward, unable to even navigate the turn to escape the warehouses framing them. As I’d hoped, I’d disabled the damned thing.

Yes!

Rhys sat quietly in the passenger side of the car as I retraced my turns back onto the motorway. I realized, in the near silence, that neither of us had bothered to turn off the radio. We just hadn’t noticed it, our lives being in danger and all. The music seemed particularly trivial, all of a sudden.

I unclenched my hands from the steering wheel, one at a time, and practiced my breathing. Then I said, “Could you check the map for the nearest train station? We’re going to be a little obvious if we keep driving this.”

Rhys shook his head, not in the negative so much as to clear out the debris. “I can. Where did you learn all that?”

“An old boyfriend of mine got special training—sort of a demolition defensive-driving course. Then he taught me. The bootleg turns, anyway. We only covered the theory of ramming.”

Lex had always been generous with the tricks he learned. We’d had a blast that week, taking turns pulling bootlegs and speeding in reverse around a big, empty QuestCo parking lot.

Funny, how all roads seemed to lead back to Lex Stuart.

“And he took it because…?”

“Because he got tired of having drivers and bodyguards. His family’s well off. It made him a pretty high abduction risk.”

“That’s lucky for us,” said Rhys, opening the glove box to pull out a map. I glanced at the stretch of his shoulder as he rummaged, suddenly longing for human touch. Any human touch. Rhys. Lex.

You’ve got to admit, the whole driving-lesson thing was ironic. I had only vague suspicions that Lex might be involved with the bad guys, here. But I had absolute proof that the lessons he’d given me had saved our butts. Maybe our lives.

Damn, my life was getting complicated.

Tai Chi is a moving meditation, a choreography of ancient circular motions done slowly and with purpose. Everything resolves into its opposite—expansion into contraction, inhaling into exhaling, tension into release—and back again. Yin and yang. Softness and strength. Mind and body.

I did a few basic forms in my hotel room in Poitiers, just to ground myself for bed. Though there are older, lesser-known combat techniques involved in Tai Chi, its main focus is on harmonizing your Chi, your life energy. After the previous two days, I figured my Chi could use all the help it could get.

It helped me sleep, anyway, despite some children yelling in Italian across the hall.

The next morning I compensated with a more intricate routine, not just to harmonize my Chi but to remind myself of those ancient combat techniques. As my sifu has explained, their seeming mildness gives them a special power. Few people look at Tai Chi and see beyond the synchronized patterns done the world over by senior citizens, children, people in wheelchairs…blatant noncombatants.

They mistakenly equate exclusivity with strength.

As I stepped into the beautiful Wind Blowing Lotus Leaves form, I could hear more Italian shouts. I smiled—easing a blocking arm slowly up, a fisted hand slowly down, feeling the Chi. Moving this deliberately was like swimming through water—and like my regular swims, it was strengthening. Even those children could probably do this.

I turned into a double kick, finished the turn on landing, and sank into a smooth lunge and elbow strike. Then I rose into the form called Fair Lady Works at Shuttles. That, too, had martial potential…but only if I wished it. The power to do injury carries with it the power to choose against doing injury.

By the time I’d finished, turning my palms toward the floor in the original start position, I felt…strong. Calm. Confident.

And not just because I heard the children across the hall being herded off toward the elevator. Because I didn’t have to sink to the level of whoever chased us last night…and because it was my choice to not sink to that level.

Choice. That’s the real power.

A knock sounded at the connecting door to Rhys’s room.

“Magdalene?” Rhys called softly, trying not to wake me if I were still asleep. We’d left the door cracked between us, in case there was further trouble. Only as I glanced up and saw him framed in the doorway did it occur to me that I was wearing nothing but what I’d slept in.

Yesterday’s T-shirt and panties.

“I could go get breakfast while you—” he offered, then stopped, most of him hesitating between the rooms and all of him staring at me with those blue, blue eyes.

I was suddenly, stupidly glad Aunt Bridge had insisted on us traveling together.

For a long moment I just stared back. I had no desire to cover myself—why should I? A T-shirt is hardly a Merry Widow, after all. High-cut blue panties do not a G-string make.

Rhys turned away first. “Why don’t I just do that?”

“A croissant would be great,” I said. “With fruit. And herbal tea, if they have it. I’ll shower while you’re out.”

“I’ll have it in here.” He pushed the door back to a crack.

I considered saying, “Be careful.” Or even protesting that he shouldn’t go anywhere without me. But it seemed overly paranoid, even after last night, and no small bit egotistical.

Instead I called, “Thanks.”

A shower. That was the ticket. Shower good.

Afterward I toweled my hair semidry and combed it, and changed into clean panties and my one clean replacement shirt, a mauve camisole. I gave my face the barest hint of blush and eyeliner, not being a big makeup person, and put on yesterday’s cargo pants and boots.

It’s the price you pay for traveling with just a backpack.

I went to the connecting door and knocked. “Are you—”

Before I could finish, the door swung farther open and I saw that not only was Rhys back from the café, but he was kneeling by the bed, apparently…praying. In soft Latin.

I reminded myself of what he’d said—that he was after the goddess grails only to find the Holy Grail. That put us on distinct points of the religious spectrum, whether we were both ecumenical in our beliefs or not. But…

It felt weird, noticing how well the man wore a pair of jeans while he was reciting the Ave Maria with practiced ease.

I was raised Catholic, Catholic-ish anyway. I know the Ave Maria when I hear it.

It felt weird, noticing how long his dark lashes looked against his pale cheeks as he prayed. It felt wrong.

Not just invasion-of-privacy wrong. Deeper than that.

I started to back out. But with a murmured “Amen,” he smiled toward me, almost in relief, crossed himself and stood. “The food’s on the table. Let’s come up with a plan of action.”

“A plan for finding the Melusine Chalice?” I asked, sitting at the little table by the window. Below us we could see part of the Futuroscope park—a strange contrast to how far into the past we meant to go. “Or for avoiding gun-toting bad guys?”

He lifted croissants out of a paper sack and handed me one. “It’s difficult to avoid people you cannot name.”

I took the roll but hesitated—and it takes pretty heavy thoughts to keep me from a freshly baked Poitevan croissant.

“Do you have a different theory?” guessed Rhys.

“Not a theory so much as a concern.”

He waited, handing me a paper cup of tea with a floral essence.

I said, “I’m worried that we’ve gotten involved with some kind of secret society.”

Rhys sat in the other chair, eyes widening. “If we were going after the Holy Grail, I’d think you were on to something. Ceremonial orders like the Illuminati or the Priory of Scion.”

I took an innocent bite of my croissant and chewed. It was still warm from the oven. Mmm! And he’d brought fruit, too—strawberries, oranges and grapes.

“You can’t mean it,” Rhy challenged, with a laugh. “An ancient order? For one thing, we aren’t after the Grail. We’re after a holy relic, perhaps even a cup, but not the Grail.”

“You are,” I reminded him.

“Not exactly,” he protested. “I hope to find a connection, studying with your aunt. But as low as the chances of finding the Melusine Chalice are, the likelihood that it may lead us to the true Grail…”

I wished he’d stop making it sound like all the goddess cups were secondary. Even if he believed it, it seemed rude.

“Well,” he continued, “those chances are hardly high enough to merit high-speed auto races and gunfire.”

“Unless they know something we don’t.”

“Do they think the real Grail is in Poitou?”

“Could we just call it the Sangreal?” I asked. Sangreal is a classic term for the Holy Grail. To some it comes from the term sang graal—blood grail or blood cup. To a few it has an even more complex meaning about mythical royal bloodlines…but that really didn’t apply here.

It’s still about blood. Always about blood.

“The goddess chalices may not be of your particular faith,” I said, with what I felt was admirable reason, “but let’s assume that if they exist, they’re also real. And holy.”

“This is fair enough,” he said. “But do you mean to imply that these…people…think the Sangreal is in Poitou?”

“No.” I hated to tear down his hopes, but like he’d said, what were the chances? There was plenty of Sangreal research out there far more exhaustive than the research Aunt Bridge and I had been compiling on Melusine. “I don’t think the men who chased us last night, and who hurt Aunt Bridge, and who stole our notes… I don’t think they’re after the Sangreal at all. I think they want to suppress the goddess grails.”

“Why is that?” His gaze was unsettling. “Are they magic?”

My inner academic resisted that explanation, even as my Grail Keeper side hoped it was true. “Even if the cups have no supernatural powers, their existence could rewrite early history, reveal a more powerful feminine past. That’s important.”

“Again I say, high-speed auto chases and gunfire?”

He had a point. “Okay, so I don’t know their motivation. All I’m saying is, there are enough of them to worry me. Unless they’re racking up unbelievable frequent-flyer miles, the men who broke into Aunt Bridge’s office aren’t the same ones who broke into mine. They’re educated enough to know about our research. And they managed to break into the museum in New Delhi—the National Museum of India—to destroy the Kali Cup.”

“You’re talking a widespread network of very powerful people,” said Rhys. “Willing to go to great lengths to stop us.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And on our side we’ve got…”

“You, me and a nursery rhyme that’s been in my family for generations.”

Rhys stared at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Uffach cols.”

Lex Stuart and I become friends just in time for me to watch him die. Even his willpower can’t hide it. His eyelids swell. His coordination fails him. He throws up in class.

Then he vanishes altogether.

I send get-well cards and hear nothing. The normalcy of volleyball and final exams surges back as if he’d never been there. Then, over summer break, his mother calls me.

She talks about BMTs and isolation periods and platelet production resuming—I’m thirteen now, but all I really grasp is how relieved she sounds. Then she asks me to visit him.

She’ll send a car. That’s my first clue that I’m about to enter a whole different world. Fairyland.

The Stuarts live outside of town, with tended woods and high-gated drives. Their lawn looks like a golf course. Their house looks like a palace. Lex’s mom looks like a movie star.

Only once she leads me to Lex’s room and I see him, do I truly believe that he’s alive.

He stands to say hello, despite his mother’s protests.

Once she leaves to “arrange a snack,” I fold my arms and say, “Way to keep in touch.”

“I’ve been preoccupied,” he says seriously. Not busy. Preoccupied. “Thank you for the cards.”

He looks weak, but good. He’s gone from wraithlike to skinny, from ashen to merely pale. His hair is growing in, a darker brown but still with ginger overtones.

“Are you back?” I ask.

He says, “I think so.”

So I take over the sofa beside his chair, so that he’ll sit, and demand that he tell me what it was like.

Even with his matter-of-fact presentation, without the uglier details, it sounds awful. His cousin was a match for a bone marrow transplant, which is why he got such serious chemotherapy. His mother cried. Some days he wanted to die.

“But now…” He searches for the right words.

“Now you don’t?” I prompt him.

He nods, with a ghost of a smile. But it’s a friendly ghost. My smile is more free; I feel that comfortable with him. I have the oddest sensation that our spirits are also conversing, and better, if only we could listen in.

The maid arrives with a huge platter full of crackers and cheese and fruits—and candy bars with the wrapper ends cut neatly off. Almost everything tastes as wonderful as it looks.

Lex tells me he’ll be coming back to class in the fall, at least until Christmas, maybe the full year. Recovery seems to be a slower process than I had imagined.

“There will be a dance, when school starts,” he says, still matter-of-fact…except for a certain intensity in his hazel gaze, a catch in his breath. Except for whatever our spirits are saying behind our backs. “I would very much like it if you would attend with me. If you don’t mind not dancing a lot.”

I’ve never been asked out before. “But that’s not for another month.”

“I wanted to beat anybody else asking,” he says.

I’m in braces, and I’m by no means slim. I’m not ugly; even I know that. But…he thinks there could be competition for me?

Lex Stuart, I decide, is wonderful.

“It will be years before we know how I’ll turn out,” he says, as if warning me. “Even if the cancer doesn’t reoccur, I could end up not growing or getting cataracts or getting really fat. Or…other stuff.”

If I think about it too hard, the warning won’t make sense. I deliberately don’t think about it, and it feels exactly right.

“I would love to go with you.” It is an understatement.

When I get home, I can’t stop talking about Lex and the Stuart mansion and the food and the fresh flowers.

“It’s like fairyland there!” I tell my parents.

They exchange worried glances.

Mom says, “Just remember your fairy tales, Maggi. Fairyland always has a catch.”

Chapter 6

I was expecting Lex to call—heck, I’d half expected it the day before. This was probably his version of giving me space.

I just hadn’t planned to be marinating in the destruction that powerful men so often wreak when he did.

After we checked out of the Holiday Inn, I rented a little silver Renault Clio. The train didn’t stop at the small town of Lusignan, where Rhys and I were now walking. What had once been a center of power was now a rural town. And the glorious castle—one of many—which the fairy Melusine had supposedly built for her bridegroom in one night…

Long gone. Nothing left but a sunny, public walking path where once the castle had stood, and trees, and an uninterrupted view down to the River Vonne. The castle had been razed for harboring Huguenots, adding to my frustration about finding anything. Whatever the goddess worshippers might have hidden at Château Lusignan was history, thanks to devastation and religious intolerance. Thanks to dark power.

My phone trilled out “Ride of the Valkyries” at the exact wrong time. When I glanced at the caller ID and saw it was Lex, I rolled the call over to voice mail.

Trust me, Lex. You do not want to talk to me right now.

Rhys glanced at me and my phone, then said, “Any goddess cult that worshipped Melusine would have gone underground by the thirteenth century—fourteenth, at the latest. Would they not?”

I fingered a little purple flower beside the path. “Mmmhmm.”

“And Lusignan was torn down, stone by stone, in 1574?”

Over religion. “A tower was torn down later.”

“So what did you expect to find?” asked Rhys.

“Not the chalice,” I admitted, though it would feel right to uncover it here at Melusine Central. “Just…a clue. Something. We have to start somewhere, don’t we?”

He looked around us and murmured, “Three fair figures…”

That was the first line of the nursery rhyme that my family has passed down for generations, seeming nonsense with a hidden meaning—like “Ring around the Rosie” being about the bubonic plague, or “Mary Quite Contrary” being the Queen of Scots. Nursery rhymes rarely attracted the attention of people in power, so they made a great treasure map.

Ours started, “Three fair figures, side by side…” As a child, I’d pictured people; kids are that literal. As a scholar, I knew the “figures” could be anything, standing stones or towers or trees or buildings.

Nothing stood in threes at Lusignan. Not that we could see.

My phone rang again. Lex. This time I just turned it off. My inner good-girl protested that it could be important, it could be an emergency, how could I be so selfish….

AKA the Eve Syndrome, holding ourselves responsible for everything. Ten years ago, before I had a cell phone, I couldn’t have stressed about it. I chose not to this time, either.

Instead, I raised my face to the blue sky, breathing in the fresh air. “This isn’t where we need to be looking.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Rhys spread his arms to indicate the commons around us. “So where do we go next?”

“To the women,” I decided, looking down the hill toward the two-lane road—and a Romanesque church that had survived the castle’s destruction. “And since I’m not ready to go door-to-door asking questions, I suggest we try St. Hilaire down there.”

Why did I sense that Rhys didn’t like my suggestion? He didn’t frown. He just said, after a moment, “Do you want to borrow my handkerchief?”

For my head. This was Europe.

“Thanks,” I said, accepting the neatly folded cloth.

“I’ll get the car and meet you outside.”

Once upon a time, the women of Lusignan would have gathered around the town well to wash clothes or collect water, and to bond. Wells are famous for their goddess connections.

If you’ve ever tossed a penny into a fountain and made a wish, some part of your soul must have understood their magic.

With the advent of modern plumbing, we’ve lost that. Now, elderly Catholic women tend to congregate at church.

The twelfth-century St. Hilaire de Lusignan had thick walls, round arches, and heavy piers instead of mere pillars. Its graying stone and blue-slate roof hinted at what the castle may have looked like—beautiful. When I pushed through one of its heavy double doors, I stepped into the scent of centuries of incense and wax and wood polish, of Yuletide greenery and Easter flowers, of continued faith. And it felt…

It felt powerful in a way few places can.

You don’t have to be Catholic, much less a practicing one, to appreciate the holiness of such a place.

As my eyes adjusted to the shadows, I respectfully draped the handkerchief over my hair. In random pews, pretending not to notice my invasion of their territory, knelt three old women.

Yes.

On instinct, I strode to the front pew, genuflected, then sidestepped in and sat near the woman I assumed was most important who, kneeling, was saying her rosary. She had woven a crown out of her white braids. She wore a black shawl over that, and a black dress, and a thin wedding band.

She seemed somehow timeless. That made sense. Old women, wise women, are the most powerful brand females come in.

If I’d had a rosary, this would be easier. Instead, I unclasped the chain that held my chalice-well pendant and laid it on the wooden pew between us, in a loop.

When the woman beside me said “Amen” and slanted her gaze toward the chain, I murmured, “Un cercle et un cercle.”

Her sunken eyes searched my face suspiciously, slid with disapproval to my camisole, then dropped to the necklace. Then, as I’d hoped, she looped her rosary across it. “Pour toujours.”

Basically, “Circle to circle, never an end.”

I’d made contact.

“I apologize for interrupting your prayers,” I whispered, still in French, but she shook her head.

“St. Hilaire hears from me each day. He will not mind some peace. You have come for the fairy, oui?”

“I’m here for her cup.”

She snorted.

“Is it not time for the cup to be found?” I asked gently.

“Perhaps…perhaps. But few daughters are worthy to find it. Few understand its power.”

“Then help me to understand.”

Her chin came up as she looked me over again; cargo pants, spaghetti straps. I’d left the backpack with Rhys. “You are too young and too beautiful. You will not want to understand.”

Not want to? “But I do. Please!”

She picked up her rosary, dismissing me. So I added, as quickly as I could, “‘Three fair figures, side by side.’”

I said it in English, but the old woman must have understood, because she lowered the beads to her lap. She crossed herself for Saint Hilaire, turned back to me and said in English with a heavy French accent, “Go on.”

I recited:

“Three fair figures, side by side,

Mother, son and brother’s bride.

In the hole where hid her queen,

Waits the cup of Melusine.”

The old woman nodded slowly, intrigued. “Perhaps you are one of us, at that.”

“But that doesn’t tell me where the figures are, what they are. It doesn’t say if the hole is a pit or a cave or a well.”

“Non!” My companion reverted to French. She seemed to like French better, and she was old enough to demand what she liked. “It tells more, if you only listen correctly.”

“I want to.” I touched her hand in supplication. “Please…”

She sharply nodded her decision. “You must drink of it.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You must promise that, should Melusine’s daughters help you in this, you will not forsake her. Should you find her chalice, you must drink her essence. Or you must let her sleep.”

“But…” My intellectual, academic side was having major trouble with this. I was supposed to drink out of an ancient cup? Couldn’t that screw with carbon dating or DNA? And how did I know what the cup had last held? The likelihood of something gross like poison or blood sacrifices was low, but still!

Still… “I will.”

“Then you will regret it.”

Was she trying to piss me off? “I promise to do as you ask, if you help me find the cup.”

The woman beside me turned—in several ungainly lurches, her body no longer as lithe as it surely once had been—to look behind her. I followed her gaze and saw that the other two old women had been unapologetically eavesdropping. The three were somehow one, I realized, logical or not. They went together like the Norns or the Fates or the Wyrd Sisters.

They nodded in answer to my companion’s silent question.

She turned back to me and said, very intensely:

“Quatre nobles avec le même coeur

Mère, père, fils, et belle soeur

Dans le tròu se cache sa reine

Attend la tasse de Melusine.”

Then she nodded, satisfied.

I wasn’t satisfied. From one cryptic nursery rhyme to its cryptic translation? Still, it seemed significant to her, and I was already noticing minor variations from my family’s version.

I slowly repeated the rhyme, word for Gallic word.

My impromptu teacher—or priestess, even?—squeezed my hand. “Perhaps you are the one. But you must remember—”

Which is when the doors at the back of the church opened, and Rhys entered. The women took one look at him and turned back to the altar, back to their devotions, as if the priest himself had walked in on us.

Rhys noticed me, opened his mouth, then awkwardly closed it. Then he pointed at himself, made walking-fingers, and pointed outside.

Then he escaped. But the damage had been done. My companion had reverted to praying.

I waited a few minutes, assuming she would finish. She just kept repeating the prayers, so finally I interrupted her. “You were about to say something. What is it I must remember?”

For a long moment I feared she’d reconsidered. Then she pressed my chalice-well pendant back into my hand and patted it, for all the world as if she were my own grandmother.

“Remember that Melusine survived,” she said.

When I emerged into the sunshine, Rhys stood across the road from the church, leaning against our Renault. He ducked his head while I looked both ways and jogged across to meet him. He winced up at me when I reached his side.

“I am sorry,” he said, before I could speak. Not that I’d meant to. I felt strangely light-headed, like after a deep meditation, or a movie…or a nap. A nap with powerful dreams.

Still, I couldn’t ignore him. “Sorry for what?”

“You had the whole nave, but as soon as they saw me…” He mimed turning a lock against his lips, then tossed the imaginary key over his shoulders, down the hill.

I grinned at the gesture, but I felt for him, too. Rhys seemed like a good guy, but just because he was a man, he came across as some kind of threat. Reverse discrimination, even unintentional, is still discrimination. “Don’t worry about it.”

Even though it felt weird, just how much authority they’d seemed to grant him. As if they sensed something I didn’t.

Rhys simply grinned and said, “Maggi? You have a handkerchief on your head.”

I palmed it off and gave it back, and he was so not an authority figure.

Which isn’t to say he didn’t have his own personal power.

“So where to?” He opened the car door and popped the locks. “Have you solved the mystery of the Melusine Chalice?”

“Nope. We’re still stuck with the obvious possibilities.”

“Those being…?”

I went around the car and climbed into the passenger seat. If we were doing Melusine’s home tour, I knew exactly what came next. “Did you by any chance pack swim trunks?”

Deeper and deeper I swam, kicking my feet for power, stretching my hands ahead of me into the murky river. I squinted at water plants, at little clouds of billowing silt, at a turtle paddling past.

I thought I saw something—a stone? Perhaps it was the large remains of a relic or a ruin, some unlikely but not impossible hint that Melusine Was Here. Tightness built in my chest from lack of air, but I was so close. A few more silent kicks…

Now I could see it was an old barrel. Rusty and moss covered. Years, not centuries, old.

Blowing the last of the air from my nose in bubbles of disgust, I aimed for the surface. I broke into the dappled summer sunshine with a splash and a needy gasp.

Rhys, on the wooded bank, called, “Do you see anything?”

“Not yet.” I was still treading water, kicking my bare feet, enjoying the gentle pull of the Vonne’s current against me. I still couldn’t believe I’d left my suit home. Me! “I’m going down one more time before we give up on this spot.”

He nodded. Rhys did have a pair of swim trunks. Since he claimed that his swimming amounted to little more than a dog paddle, I wore them with my camisole while he kept watch from the bank. Neither of us actually said this was better than me swimming in my underwear, but it so was.

I took a deep breath and dove again. Deeper and deeper. Freer and freer. Free of gravity, free of whatever kernel of attraction was flirting its way between Rhys and me, free of anything but one simple goal.

Try to find, against all reason, the remains of Melusine’s “fountain” in the Colombière Forest.

It wouldn’t be the first time goddesses were worshipped at a spring—like in Bath, or Lourdes, or the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.

Deeper. Freer. Was that possibly a bowl of some sort, on its side on the bottom?

Tightening my throat against the need to breathe, I kicked closer—and startled away another turtle, in a burst of panicked mud.

I reluctantly gave up the peace of submersion for the surface, yet again. Luckily, the surface was a nice place too, with birdsong and wildflowers and gently stirring tree branches…and a far-too-intriguing companion for my peace of mind.

“Nothing,” I called, when he waved to show he’d seen me emerge. Then I began a strong sidestroke back to shore. “If there was a sacred spring along here, it will take people with more experience than me to find the signs.”

It wasn’t like we’d seen either “three fair figures” or the French version, “four nobles.” If they’d been sentinel trees, the likelihood of them living this long was low. If they’d been standing stones, we hadn’t found them.

I waded out, my hair streaming water down my back, my toes gooshing deliciously in the mud. Rhys offered a warm hand, and I accepted it, and he pulled me firmly onto the grassy bank.

Close to him.

I noticed his gaze sink to my breasts, under a film of wet camisole. My breath fell shallow…but in a good way.

He noticed me noticing, let go and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he called over his shoulder, clearly discomfited. “I’ll walk ahead, see if there are any more promising spots.”

Oddly disappointed, I used yesterday’s T-shirt to dry off my feet before I put on my socks and boots to follow him. Interesting fashion statement, hiking boots with swim trunks. Very unacademic. I liked it.

I rezipped my backpack, which I’d apparently left open, and shouldered it. Then I hiked happily after Rhys, through what legend had it were enchanted woods.

When he glanced a truly self-conscious welcome over his shoulder and kept walking, I had to know. “Are you married?”

He stopped, startled. “What? I am not. Why?”

Because you act like it’s a sin to notice a woman’s body. It wasn’t as if he’d ogled me. “Just curious,” I said.

Rhys stared at me for a long moment. “I was engaged once,” he confessed. “She died last year, before we could marry.”

“Oh.” Way to feel guilty, Mag! “I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged one shoulder and started walking again.

“So, Aunt Bridge has been researching the goddess-worship side of Melusine,” I said, to change the subject. “I’m more into the mythology. You’re her assistant, give me an overview. How would it work? Women worshipping a goddess, I mean.”

For a moment he seemed lost in other thoughts. Then he said, “That depends on the time period. Gaul stayed pagan well into the Dark Ages. Probably they would meet in a sacred grove.”

Considering that we were in a forest, that hardly narrowed things down. “How would the scene have changed once Europe converted to Christianity?”

“By the sixth century, ritual groves were being destroyed in an attempt to convert blasphemers. Like Charlemagne cutting down the sacred oaks of the Saxons.”

“And that worked? If you cut down my sacred trees, you’d tick me off worse than before.”

He’d slowed his step, so I no longer felt like I was chasing him. “Back then, power defined your ability to lead. If your gods were so great, how could they let us cut down their trees?”

I glanced at the trees around us, dappled greens and golds and browns, and felt sorry for them. “You’re not really saying that your god can beat up the other boys’ gods?”

He grinned. “The remaining pagans would have met in secrecy—at night, or in the woods.”

“So if these people worshipped a goddess who was connected to a local spring…”

Thankfully, he picked up the thread of my idea. “Then they would have met near that spring. Their ceremonies would resemble witches’ circles, complete with moonlight and cauldrons.”

“Or cups. Or bowls. Or chalices.” Or grails.

“That is it exactly,” he agreed.

I took a moment to look around us. The banks of the Vonne were slightly rockier. It was all fairly soft limestone. One boulder looked particularly significant somehow, especially white amidst vines and brush.

“How far have we come since Lusignan?” I asked.

“I’d imagine we’ve come four or five kilometers. Why?”

I was noticing another bank of white limestone, near the boulder. “Do you suppose the Melusine worshippers would have come this far out?”

“If they feared the Church more than they feared wolves.”

I noticed a third length of limestone. My pulse picked up.

Three fair figures?

I sank down into an easy crouch to untie my boots.

I kicked off one boot, then the other and put down my backpack.

Then, I waded in to swim the water where Melusine the goddess may have once bathed.

Chapter 7

B y the time Rhys and I signed ourselves into a small bed and breakfast in Vouvant, I was still pissed off.

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