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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.
