A.K.A. Goddess (5 page)

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.

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 brilliantAmerican 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.”