Something Wicked (9 page)

W
hen I’d talked to her, my cousin Eleni had described the “flat” she shared with two other women. Ben and I locked my luggage at his hostel and set off in search of her address.

Tired or not, I thought we ought to find her right away.

“She said the building was once a mansion, before it was converted to apartments,” I read from the crumpled notes I’d scribbled. As we hiked, I could see why the narrow, twisting streets of the Plaka were closed to cars. They were a maze of great old flagstones. Some of them even had steps.

“I can find it,” Ben assured me. International travel sure played with your values. That he spoke English seemed especially wonderful, just now.

At least we were safe from traffic, though at least twice a motorbike buzzed too close by us.

“It should be three stories high,” I continued, “and a reddish brown, with white trim and a blue door.”

“I’ve seen it.” Ben stopped at an intersection to study each quiet direction. He headed left. “I can find it again.”

I didn’t see how he could. The area was a jumble of quaint tavernas with outdoor seating and souvenir shops with bright T-shirts flapping in the breeze. How a Greek-speaking, tourist-crowded neighborhood could feel so damned
peaceful,
I had no idea.

Maybe it was all the potted plants. Or all the cats. Potted geraniums and cats were everywhere.

“Up there, I think,” Ben said.

I looked up—and my stomach sank to see a crowd milling in front of a three-story, reddish-brown house with white trim. “Oh, hell,” I said and ran.

The incredible weather and flagstone street weren’t the only signs that I wasn’t in Chicago anymore. The cluster of almost a dozen people were all talking, and I couldn’t understand a word. Had something happened to my cousin? Was she upstairs, lying dead on
her
living room floor…?

“Pappas?” I called, shouldering into the crowd. That was her last name. “Eleni Pappas? Is she all right? Does anybody here know Eleni—”

“Katie?” a woman responded, and I turned. And stared.

Eleni Pappas looked like Diana.

I’m not kidding. If she’d had blond hair, and a longer jaw, and stood maybe an inch or two taller, they could have been twins.

“You are Katie Trillo, yes?” she asked, while I stood there gaping in front of the bright blue doorway to her building. When I nodded, she threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug. Then she kissed me on both cheeks. Then she hugged me again. She smelled of sunshine.

“It is good to meet you at last! Our little Katie, come home to Athens.”

Home to Athens? “But…what’s going on? When I saw all these people, I thought…I thought something had happened to you….” Oh, hell. My eyes actually started to burn with concerned tears. And I barely knew this woman!

But the tears weren’t exactly for her, were they?

She made a friendly, dismissive sound. “My neighbors, they see a trespasser in our building. Because of your warnings, I ask the men to, um…” She made a circular motion with her hand.

“Check it out?” I asked.

She laughed, nodded, and gave me a sideways hug, leaving her arm over my shoulders. “Yes, check it out. Do not worry, Katie! You are like my family, so concerned about single woman, but all is well. This is a safe place.”

I realized that the crowd included housewives still wearing aprons, children and stooped old men who probably would be playing the Greek equivalent of checkers this time of day. Several dark, burly men emerged from her doorway with shrugs and shaking heads. Even without understanding Greek, I could tell they’d found nobody.

A boy of maybe seven years old was talking quickly and getting a lot of attention.

“Milos sees the intruder,” translated Eleni. “He sees this man before. He sets up a shout, we all run down to the street. But the man, he is gone.”

I had my suspicions, even before young Milos suddenly pointed past me and began “setting up” another shout, this time with recognition.

In barely a moment, poor Ben was surrounded by glowering Greek shopkeepers, housewives, children and senior citizens.

“No!” I protested, wedging myself in to stand beside him, my shoulder pressed against his. “No, you’ve got the wrong guy. He was with me!”

Ben may have done more good when he said,
“Ohee,”
and
“Parakalo.”
Or something like that. Who knew the guy spoke Greek? He even managed a strained smile.

What was even more unsettling, though, was when Eleni cocked her head in recognition.
“Ben?”

I looked from her to him and back. “You know him?”

“We meet at the market,” she insisted. “Two days ago. You ask me if I know where to find the good ceramics.”

The crowd was moving in on us again. Pressed against Ben in response, I barely had to turn my head to catch his gaze, confusion solidifying into dark realization.

“Victor,” I guessed. The flip-flop in my stomach had nothing to do with jet lag, my foreign surroundings, our recent accident or even the growing mob surrounding us.

“Victor,” he agreed in a bleak, defeated rasp.

“No,” I repeated, loudly. “Eleni,
this
is Ben Fisher. His twin brother is the man I warned you about. His
identical
twin brother. That must be who you met. And Ben couldn’t have been the intruder—he’s been with me since I arrived. Ben’s trying to help. It has to have been Victor.”

Much of the crowd must have spoken English; they backed off a step or two. Eleni’s quick translation earned us a cease-fire from the rest of them.

“I meet Victor,” she repeated. “But he says he is Ben?”

“Yes,” Ben and I said, more or less in unison.

“And you believe Victor trespasses on my home, and not Ben?” she asked.

We both nodded.

She considered that, then turned to talk to her neighbors. Though suspicious—especially skinny young Milos, who apparently liked the attention—they seemed to take her word for it. But instead of bringing us inside, Eleni took my hand and drew me down the street with her. “Come,” she said. “Both of you. We have much to do, much to discuss. The others, they keep watch on my home.”

So we followed. Wherever we were going, it was uphill.

Eleni gave me another sideways hug and soft kiss on the cheek. “You are very much my cousin, this I can see. We are like sisters, yes?”

Since she looked like Diana, she looked like me. More so, since we were both dark-haired. And we’d both been drawn to medicine. “Yes,” I agreed, unsteady from more than jet lag.

“And you are like a sister to worry about me. But how do you know this is Ben, and not Victor?”

I managed not to shudder at the idea. “Part of it’s his attitude. Victor’s more polished. He dresses a lot better, too.”

I felt Ben’s gaze on me and turned to meet it.

“Thanks,” he said. Not that his maroon T-shirt was tucked into his jeans. His sneakers were scruffy, too.

“He
is.
” I shrugged. “Then again, he’s evil.”

“Dangerous,” Ben argued. “He does evil things. And he needs help before he hurts anyone else.”

“Ben, on the other hand, is laid-back,” I continued, since Victor’s need of
help
was something we wouldn’t agree on. Ever. “And his hair’s longer.”

Only after I’d reached out and fingered one of Ben’s loopy black curls—and caught his sharp black gaze from under it—did I realize what I was doing.
Damn
that jet lag!

Sorry,
I mouthed, but he seemed intrigued.

Then I asked Eleni, “What did he want? Victor, I mean.”

We turned up an even steeper, narrower street. Shops and houses on either side of us made way for green trees.

“He asks about pottery,” my cousin said. “Pottery for the goddess. I tell him shops that are reputable, and he asks if I do not perhaps have some myself.”

“Bastard.” I was starting to breathe hard—and not just because of the climb. Not for the first time, I wondered how Victor had approached Diana about
our
chalice. I wondered why she’d fallen for it. I wished she hadn’t.

Ben asked, “
Do
you have anything yourself?” At Eleni’s arch reaction, he added, “What I mean is, what did you tell him?”

“I tell him not everybody in Athens wishes to sell to tourists, and I leave him there.” She shared a smile with me. “But I remember him, because he is so good-looking.”

Good-looking?
Not
how I would describe Victor. But I snuck another glance at Ben, all the same. Maybe…

He’d pulled out his PDA and was oblivious as he split his concentration between jotting some notes and not slipping on the smooth stone street. Low-key, definitely. But yeah…good-looking, too. “So he’s after more goddess grails,” he muttered.

“Diana’s wasn’t enough for him?” He’d killed my sister for it, and it
wasn’t enough?

“I guess that’s what we have to—” But as we came around another turn, Ben interrupted himself to say, “Wow.”

I looked up. “Holy wow.”

Across a stretch of open pavement, shaded with scrubby trees on either side, stood a roofed gateway into more trees. Nothing special. But far above and beyond those, high atop limestone ramparts and white against the blue sky—

The Acropolis.

I, Kate Trillo, was really standing at the foot of the Acropolis.

Eleni looked delighted by our reaction. “You wish to pay respects to the Lady, yes?” she asked, and indicated my
vesica piscis
necklace. “Circles…um…beyond all endings?”

She drew a similar pendant out from under her blouse. Damn. I really shouldn’t have been surprised.

She was a Grail Keeper, too.

“‘Cup, cup, cauldron,’” I finished, slowly recognizing her version of
Circle, circle, never an end.
“‘Ever a friend.’”

She gave me another quick hug. “Then you do nothing in Athens until you pay respects to the Lady. Wait here. I know Costas, at the ticket booth. I get us a good price.”

Ben said, as we waited, “So that pendant means you’re a goddess worshipper? I mean, I assumed you were—your sister being one—but I’m not familiar with this particular symbol. Pentagrams, yes. Renditions of the moon, sure. Not the overlapping circles.”

“This one’s specific to Grail Keepers,” I explained, staring at the white ruins that towered above us. “But Ben, I don’t know what Lady she means. The Goddess, of course, but…why here?”

Ben laughed, like at a joke. Then he must have seen from my expression that I wasn’t kidding. “This is Athens,” he reminded me, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

I folded my arms. “Duh. And…?”

“And…Athens is named after Athena. Goddess of wisdom and war?” Ben’s eyes widened at my ignorance. “You didn’t know that? Katie, the Acropolis may be the largest goddess temple in existence.”

A goddess temple?

Eleni came dancing back with our tickets. “Come, come,” she urged, delighted in her role as tour guide. “We go to the head of the queue, and I will bring you to the Lady.”

In all fairness, there wasn’t much of a line. March must not be a big tourist season. She gave the guard—Costas, I assumed—a kiss on the cheek as she ushered us through the gate. Then came a lot more winding and climbing, surrounded by dry rocks, olive trees and even marble blocks and column sections just lying around. And always, above and ahead of us, beckoned the beautiful, ancient columns of a truly blatant goddess temple. Huge. Unmistakable.

I’d just assumed that witches always hid their beliefs behind secrets and nighttime. For safety, if nothing else. A major ingredient of magic was secrecy. To know, to will, to…something…and to
keep silent.

But this…!

Bless Ben for all his questions and information. Apparently more than one of the columned structures above us belonged to Athena. The biggest one, the Parthenon, represented Athena
Parthenos,
the virgin goddess. Another smaller temple was for Athena
Nike,
goddess of victory. “Outside the gate,” said Eleni, “there is…
was
a statue of Athena
Promachos.
This means guardian of the city. She stands so tall, ships at sea can once see the tip of her spear.” Or, I assumed, they had at one time.

“So the one goddess,” said Ben, barely short of breath despite our increasingly steep climb, “can symbolize many things. Is that why you worship Athena, although Diana worshipped Hekate?”

She laughed. “I worship Hekate also. My name, it means ‘torch.’ For Her, the torchbearer. But Hekate is a, how you say, common goddess? Many homes once have—had—statues of Her by their doors, for protection. Now She has no great temple nearby, and Athena does. So…” She shrugged. “All are faces of the Goddess.”

“Sort of a one-river-many-wells concept,” mused Ben.

“All paths are Hers,” agreed Eleni.

Me, I just listened and enjoyed the mild warmth of the day.
This
path took us even farther up through a big stone gate and up more stairs into a vast dreamscape of dry rock, low stone walls, scrubby wildflowers and fluted white columns.

We were on top of the world.

With the Goddess.

Feeling hushed, like in a cathedral, I started walking, closer and closer to the Parthenon. In some areas lengths of chain had been hung between metal posts, to keep tourists on the paved pathways. In others, we could clamber over the rocks and ruins at will. To one side of this high plateau, the blue-and-white Greek flag flew over the city, but other than the tourists, that was all the color there was. Even the tiny wildflowers were white and yellow, like the age-stained stone.

Eleni and Ben talked about how these temples had been destroyed, and when, and by whom. They discussed someone named Lord Elgin, and whether he should give back some statues he’d taken—apparently that was a pretty big issue around here. I barely listened. And when they said something about going to see
caryatids,
whatever those were, I told them to go ahead, and I sat down on a sun-bleached stone wall at the edge of the ramparts overlooking what seemed like all of Athens, far below into the hazy white distance.