A.K.A. Goddess (30 page)

“Don’t call Lex that.” Once we pushed through the swinging doors and saw we were alone, I turned so she could unfasten the chains running across the back of my dress.

“How bad-guy does he have to get?” she demanded.

“Actually…” I sighed in relief as I stepped out of the gown. “I think Lex might be the head bad guy.”

“Which absolves him how, exactly?”

“I’m not sure, but it seems that if we’re going to turn the snake, we turn its head first. And if anyone can turn Lex…” The dress seemed to have survived the evening unscathed. I traded with Lil for the T-shirt she handed me from my bag.

“So, Mag,” she said innocently, as I pulled the soft knit material over my head. “If you abstained, how’d you manage that hickey on your breast?”

Oh. I drew my most professorial dignity about myself as I stepped into a pair of shorts, aka Rhys’s bathing trunks. They looked even trashier with dress boots than they had with hiking boots. “We didn’t have sex. We just…came close.”

I peeked under my collar to see. It was barely a hickey.

“Oh, Maggi,” she moaned. But instead of feeling defensive, I relaxed into the ease of having my cousin here, at last.

It was one thing to face guns, thugs and subway trains alone—but this was man trouble! “I don’t know what it is about him, Lilith! I see him or hear his voice, and it’s as if my body says, ‘Hot damn, time for sex!’”

“After a year? You poor frustrated thing.” Then she squinted at me, suspicious. Her eyes widened. “When?”

“Three days ago. In Paris, before I knew he was Comitatus. It was…” I spread a hand, searching for words that didn’t exist for what we’d done in that little room.

“Awful?” she suggested for me, but she was clearly teasing. “Old hat? Nothing worth ringing me about?”

I reached for the dress bag. “You hate him,” I reminded her. “Something you never have adequately explained.”

“I explain it every time you ask.” She held the bag open while I threaded the dress’s hanger up into it.

“Not with the same reasons. You’ve hated him because he’s so rich. You dislike fraternities. He made me cry. I was only dating him out of pity—which was ridiculous—and just because.”

“And clearly I was correct on all five counts.” She shouldered the dress. “As it turns out, I also hated him because he was running a secret society out to get goddess grails and their Grail Keepers. We’ll call that Reason #6.”

“Uh-huh.” I slumped against the wall, beside a towel dispenser. “I figured that knowing his involvement would make me immune. But tonight the attraction felt even more powerful. Dangerous.”

“Do you suppose Melusine has anything to do with this?”

I squinted at her, intrigued.

“You already told me how your body’s predicting danger by tightening your throat—like Melusine’s scream. What if you’re also playing out her romance, choosing a man destined to betray you over and over?”

I’d already considered the romantic parallels. Hearing it from her, though…“So maybe it’s permanent? Or maybe once I get the grail back, and we find someplace safe for it…”

“The attraction might stop,” she said. “Goddess willing.”

It was worth a try.

When we left the bathroom, Rhys didn’t look up from the laptop. Only his eyes and his page-down finger seemed to move.

“I’m getting a lemon shandy,” said Lil. “Anyone else want something from the machine?”

Rhys looked up. “Maggi!”

“Sorry,” said Lil. “They haven’t bottled her yet.”

Rhys looked back down. “Maggi, it’s the bloodline.”

“I know. The Comitatus are all about blood.”

“No,” he insisted, flushed. “This is about the Sangreal bloodline.”

One breath, my world seemed marginally normal. The next—I understood. He didn’t mean the Sang Grail, or blood grail, but the even more mythical Sang Real, or royal blood. More noble than any one family. More momentous than any kingship or crown.

I caught at the Formica table with one hand before plopping down, lest I collapse onto the truck-stop linoleum.

“What?” demanded Lil. “What’s a Sangreal bloodline?”

Rhys said, “It’s a rumor—heretical, but still compelling—that certain powerful European dynasties trace their bloodlines through the immediate families of Jesus Christ and King David, and as far back as early Sumerian kings.”

“Dynasties like the Merovingians in France,” I whispered. “The Pendragons in England. And I guess the Stuarts…”

“The Pendragons?” challenged Lil. “As in, King Arthur?”

The one Lex had idolized since childhood. “When you think of the Holy Grail,” I said, “don’t you think of Arthur?”

“Maggi.” Rhys’s voice shook. “Your old boyfriend seems to be the most direct successor. And if he’s head of the Sangreal, good or bad, that rather makes him the current Holy Grail.”

Oh, heavens. I couldn’t swallow. Crazy or not, it fit.

No wonder Lex was surprised to hear I was a Grail Keeper.

Lil said, “Let’s just call that one Reason #7.”

Two days later, I left my friends at a nearby café and strode through Gramercy Park—one of New York’s older neighborhoods—to meet the head of the Sangreal.

Sofie—aka Officer Douglas—had driven up from Connecticut. Rhys was still working on Lil’s laptop. Lil, looking surprisingly pregnant, sat with Aunt Bridge and fumed about Lex. But I had to do this alone—and not just because Lex had said so.

My arrival at Lex’s building, a prewar co-op, had a muted familiarity to it. It was practically home turf. Except—

“Excuse me, miss?” called the doorman, hurrying around the desk to intercept me. “Miss? You need to check in.”

In the six years since Lex bought his apartment here, I’d never once been stopped entering the building. But it was a new doorman, graying but broad-shouldered.

“I’m Maggi Sanger, for Lex Stuart. I know the way.”

He stepped between me and the elevator—the security here had been a selling point. “I’ll need to see some ID, miss, and check your name at the desk. Please step aside for a moment.”

“It’s all right, Ed,” said a rough, friendly voice. “I can vouch for Ms. Sanger here.”

“Sam!” Turning delightedly, I surged into the big, black man’s arms for a hug. “How are you? It’s been too long.”

“Now, Ms. Sanger, if you would just marry Sir Silver Spoon upstairs, we wouldn’t have such an on-again off-again association ourselves, now would we? Let me take a look at you.”

Sam held me at arm’s length, as if the sight of me brightened his day. Despite the weight of grails and secret societies, seeing him brightened mine. I’d known Sam for over half my life—he’d once been Lex’s bodyguard. Later, when Lex bought the penthouse apartment here, he’d recommended Sam for a job on their elite security staff. And now…

“Chief of security,” I read off his nametag. “Impressive.”

“I do what I can, Ms. Sanger.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Truman,” said Ed-the-doorman. “Even if you vouch for the lady, regulations say I need to check her name….”

“You go ahead and do that,” conceded Sam. “She’s at the top of Mr. Stuart’s list. Though it has been too long since her last visit.” That last, he directed pointedly at me.

“You know why I stopped coming,” I reminded him.

He snorted. “Now Ms. Maggi, you know that boy upstairs better than anybody. He’d as soon cut off his right hand as do something he thought was dishonorable.”

“He thought” being the operative words. Just because Lex didn’t think something was dishonorable didn’t mean it wasn’t.

Showing Ed my ID, I just said, “I hope you’re right.”

But I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

I pressed PH on the elevator, got off on the twelfth floor, and knocked at 12A. Lex answered the door dressed in his version of casual-pressed jeans, loafers and such a soft-looking green jersey that it took all my self-control not to touch it. “Come on in,” he said. “It’s just me. You’re welcome to search the place to make sure.”

I’d always loved Lex’s apartment. It had a simple, open floor plan, with one long stretch of dining and living room all the way from the kitchen to the spiral staircase up to the terrace. Clear sunlight washed through arched, mahogany windows onto gleaming floors and high white walls Lex had promised to paint once we married. Three bedrooms and two baths took up less room along the inside, eastern wall.

I went in, but instead of creeping throughout and peeking into every closet, bathroom, and nook of the terrace, I just relaxed into the apartment’s familiarity…and listened.

All I heard was Lex shutting and locking the door behind me—hardly sinister, in this city. All I sensed was his quiet, powerful presence and a whole lot of questions. Mostly mine.

“It had to be my place,” he said, answering one of them, “because this is where they courier the laptop.”

On the kitchen table sat an unopened box the right size for a notebook computer.

“You’ve got your own laptop,” I reminded him. When he gave me a dirty look—oh, yeah, that would be the one I’d broken into—I raised my chin and stared back. I’d had my reasons.

“Yes,” he said, glancing at his watch. We had more than half an hour yet. “But not one hard-coded with the IP address we need. Do you want something to drink? I’ve got that juice you like.”

“Okay.” I followed him to the kitchen. “Your Grace.”

He might as well know I’d read the files, right?

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said easily, getting a pitcher from his refrigerator, “but aren’t I helping you, here?”

I watched him pour two tall glasses of juice. “I’m not always sure, lately.”

“Could you at least give me the benefit of the doubt and lay off the snotty honorifics? It’s been over three centuries since the Stuarts were deposed.”

“I know. I did some research.” While he put the pitcher away, I helped myself to a glass. Then I hesitated. “Most books say the line died out with Bonnie Prince Charlie, but a few…”

“A few report that he had children by a second wife.” He came to the opposite side of the counter from me, took the second glass, then squinted at me as if taken aback. “What?”

“It’s just…you actually told me something.”

“I can’t talk about my family tree?” Well…duh. Any vow of secrecy he’d taken related only to Comitatus matters.

But I had to push it. “Okay, then. Do you think you’re related to Jesus directly, or through his brother James?”

His jaw set. Tight.

“Oh,” I said softly. “Only the recent family tree.”

He took a drink of his juice, still annoyed.

Maybe he had a point. I was being snotty. “So why’s your family so quiet about their ties to the throne of England?”

“Because we barely do have ties. James II was deposed. Neither his son nor his grandson—pretenders, they were called—managed to restore the Stuarts to power. By then royalty was on its way out as a world power. The intellectuals knew it. So they looked for power in democracy, and…”

I saw the moment he noticed my full glass.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” he asked pointedly.

I looked at the glass, too, and felt guilty.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He took my cup and drank a few swallows, then thunked it back onto the counter—and glared.

“I didn’t really believe you would drug me,” I protested.

“But you weren’t sure. Maggi, it’s me. I know I screwed up planting the bug. You made your point, I apologized, that’s it.”

I opened my mouth to protest—we hadn’t even touched on his involvement in the Comitatus!—but he interrupted.

“You’re only here because you have to be, because you want my help. Fine. It’s better than nothing. But I’m not going to let you crucify me over my mistake every time it comes up.”

I took a sip of juice, watching him vent. It was a really good drink, a papaya-mango mix they made fresh at a deli a few blocks down. I suspected he’d gotten it especially for me.

Suddenly more relaxed with him, I grinned.

Lex looked wary. “What?”

“Crucify you. I mean, considering your family lines…”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake—”

Now I laughed. Lex scowled at me, then went to the table and tore open the box. Sure enough, it had a laptop in it.

We still had awhile, but I was glad he was getting prepared, even if my mockery had chased him into it. “So…everyone who puts up earnest money gets a laptop?”

“Yes. It’s part of the expense of this kind of business. Come on.” He took the computer into the middle bedroom, which served as his home office—or, as we jokingly called it, the War Room. He crouched beside his main desktop.

“And it’s ‘hard-coded’ with an ‘IP address’?” I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but he’d said that much, right?

“And the VPN settings we’ll need. The auction server only accepts incoming messages from IP addresses it recognizes, so only people who’ve been vouched for can join the auction.”

“Unless they get hold of one of the laptops.” I watched him connect the computer to what looked like a DSL cable. Nice wrists.

“And even then they would need passwords.” He straightened, opened the laptop and turned it on. It booted up smoothly.

“When the note said they’d ship the package to the verified address, I thought they meant the grail. I mean—the cup.”

Lex looked vaguely amused. “No. If we win the auction, they’ll e-mail us with a location. We set the amount up to transfer to their account, with our own password. When we arrive, they show us the cup and a computer. We type in the password, the money is transferred, and we leave with the cup.”

How…efficient. “You do this often?”

“Isn’t that why you came to me? Sit down.” Gesturing toward his luxurious task chair, he vanished out the doorway.

I looked around his office, at why we called it a War Room. He’d decorated it with antique weapons—a battleax, a halberd, a mace and a whole wall of swords. Rapiers and longswords and sabers. A bastard sword and a katana. A six-foot-long claymore.

“Most of them are legal,” said Lex, seeing what I was looking at as he returned with a kitchen chair.

“But some of them aren’t.” The sadness in my voice clued me in to how much this bothered me, and I shook my head. “Which is stupid. Why should I care if you deal in stolen art?”