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And since most bullies are cowards, he said nothing.
This time when someone stepped up behind me, the sense of solidity and body heat belonged to Lex. So was he backing me up, or readying to help his cousin?
Either way, my bare back welcomed his nearness.
“You know,” murmured Tammy into the uncomfortable silence that followed, “perhaps I’ll catch a cab home. Thank you for the invitation, Phillip, but—”
“You can’t leave,” protested Phil, and Tammy arched an eyebrow at him in challenge.
“Thank you, Magdalene,” she said as she turned away. “It was a real pleasure to meet you.”
“For three minutes?” Phil’s heavy head swung back to me for one last glare before he trailed his girlfriend from the gallery. “You met her for three freakin’ minutes. Tammy!”
His bodyguards trailed after them.
“I hope she’ll be all right,” I murmured in their absence. I’d felt jittery all evening. Not sore-throat jittery, but still…
“Phil’s made mistakes.” Lex took a sip of his champagne. “But he’s a Stuart. There are lines even he won’t cross.”
I did a double take. Did he honestly believe that? Did he mean it as assurance?
Then he distracted me by sliding a hand across the small of my back and murmuring, “Why do you keep doing that?”
So he’d noticed, too. Phil’s wife. A nurse who stood up to a condescending doctor. A waitress who suddenly found the strength to take down a rowdy customer.
A little girl, whom I’d helped to her feet when Lex and I were jogging in the park, who finally hit her brother back. She never does that, exclaimed her surprised mother….
“And don’t say, doing what,” Lex continued, his voice mild but his hazel, almost golden eyes demanding.
“I’m not doing anything. Not deliberately.” That would mean I had some kind of…well…magic. I didn’t, sore throats aside. I wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility.
He looked particularly inscrutable.
“But maybe,” I admitted, mulling it over. “Maybe the Melusine Grail is.”
In a nearby display case sat a small, ornate goblet of blue faience. It wasn’t a goddess cup, but I turned under Lex’s hand and escaped for a closer look anyway.
My name’s Magdalene Sanger. I’m a professor of Comparative Mythology at Clemens College outside Stamford, Connecticut. And as it turns out, I’m descended from goddess worshippers. Long ago, when such beliefs became a burn-at-the-stake offense, women across the world hid their most sacred relics and taught their daughters and their daughters’ daughters where to find them.
Grailkeepers. Like me.
Until recently, guarding the knowledge of these lost chalices had been enough. But Phil Stuart and a secret society of powerful men had gone after my family’s cup. I’d rescued it—and learned the truth, which was this:
After hundreds, maybe thousands of years, mere knowledge was no longer enough.
Lex’s reflection appeared in the glass case, over my shoulder. “How’s an old cup that’s not even here making women more—” he frowned, at a loss “—more.”
“Legend says the goddess grails will increase the power of women a hundredfold,” I reminded him. “And I do still have the Melusine Grail. Sure, it’s hidden away for now…”
He didn’t ask where. I definitely didn’t tell him.
“But still, I drank from it. I took the essence of goddessness into me. Maybe that connection is what’s empowering other women…at least when I touch them.”
“So you don’t need to go looking for more cups?”
“Of course I do.”
His ghostly image scowled. In some ways, I thought, he’s more dangerous than Phil.
At least I felt certain about where Phil stood.
Even when I turned and looked at Lex straight on, I knew damned well I wasn’t seeing all of him.
He breathed out his next question. “Why?”
“You know as well as I do. Because a secret society called the Comitatus are after them. They destroyed the Kali Grail in New Delhi—”
“You can’t know that was…them.”
“You’re right, because they work in secret.” I frowned into my champagne. “But I know some of them went after the Melusine Chalice. I know they came after me. Is there any reason I should give them the benefit of a doubt?”
Lex’s mouth flattened as I kept talking.
“That’s the problem with secrets,” I continued. “I could have been dating a member of the Comitatus for years—hell, I could’ve dated one of its most powerful members—and never known it. I could have considered marrying him, and because of some stupid vow of secrecy, he would never have told me who he really was.”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” Lex’s reflection turned away from mine and faded, like a ghost’s.
Whether I wanted it to or not, my heart lurched. I turned after him. “That’s our problem. You can’t talk to me.”
Because that whole previous speech had been a big, fat load of sarcasm.
Turns out, Lex was one of the most powerful members of the Comitatus. From what I’d pieced together, the only reason he wasn’t in charge was that a childhood illness had taken him out of the running as a leader of supposed warriors. More’s the pity.
Despite our own problems—previous deceptions, and cross-purposes, and scars that might or might not yet heal—I had to believe things would have been different with him as the leader.
I had to.
I caught up to him and put a hand on his arm, hard and fit beneath his tuxedo jacket. “I have no reason to trust them. And since you can’t talk to me—”
“I can,” Lex insisted. “About anything but that.”
“It’s a hard thing not to talk about. You must know something good about those men, something worth saving, but I haven’t seen any proof of it. And now—”
Now Phil Stuart scowled at us from across the room, bodyguards instead of a date at his side. His fear of me, of what he couldn’t understand, made him dangerous. I looked from him to Lex again, noting how tight Lex’s jawline had gotten with the strain of his own secrets, and I consciously chose against fear.
“I trust you,” I vowed softly, hopefully. “I trust that you know what you’re doing, that it’s something honorable and right. I’ve got to believe that, for both our sakes….”
My voice faded, the closer his face leaned toward mine, the more intently his golden eyes focused on my lips. The nearer he came, the shorter my breath fell.
But again, not in a good way. I wasn’t ready.
The last time we’d been lovers, before his attack, I’d known nothing of his involvement with the Comitatus. Learning the truth had just about broken my heart. I did want to trust him…but maybe hearts are slower to heal than knife wounds.
He must have seen something in my eyes, in my posture. We’ve known each other since childhood, after all. He reads me pretty well.
Abruptly, he turned away. “I’ll get us another drink.”
And then I was alone in the crowd, feeling cold and foolish and more than a little frustrated…which is when I saw it.
It was another glass case, another small sculpture in blue faience, apparently the Egyptians’ earthenware of choice. This one wasn’t a cup but a tiny figurine, a woman on a throne with a child in her lap.
I could have looked away, if I’d wanted to. But, pulse accelerating, I did not want to.
The size of the figurine, perhaps six inches, in no way matched the scope of its subject. But from the headdress, I recognized her—or should I say, Her—all the same. Isis. Goddess of Ten Thousand Names. Oldest of the Old. Sitting there amid relics from her ancient, half-forgotten world, nursing the tiny god Horus on her lap.
This Grailkeeper business would be so much easier if she spoke to me, even in my head—if she flat out said Maggi, this is your next assignment. It didn’t work that way, of course. So far, a sore throat in the presence of danger was as tangible as the magic of the goddess got. Except…
Something vibrated against my fingertips. I nearly dropped my purse before remembering my cell phone, tucked inside it. I drew it out, saw an international exchange on its display.
I thumbed the On button. “Hello, Rhys,” I said softly, and not just out of politeness for the other museum patrons. The moment felt almost…holy. “Tell me you know where the Isis Grail is and I’ll believe in magic.”
“I do not know for certain,” came the lilting Welsh voice of my friend, an archeology student at the Sorbonne who was interning with an expedition to Egypt. “But someone seems to think I do.”
My sense of unease returned—and only partly because I’d just seen Lex, across the room, conversing with his cousin Phil.
“Why do you say that?” I deliberately turned my attention back to the statuette. I trust him, I trust him, I trust him.
The tiny blue Isis wore a crooked smile, as if to say, “Gotcha.”
“I say it,” said Rhys, “because somebody tried to kill me today.”
Chapter 2
When we reached JFK, Lex turned the car into an open space at the far reaches of the Central Terminal Area lot and shifted into Park. August sunlight bounced off a stretch of windshields and rearview mirrors between us and the terminals. His engine idled almost imperceptibly, to keep the cool air blowing.
He unfastened his seat belt and turned to me.
Here it comes, I thought. Until this moment, Lex’s only reaction to my announcement that I was flying to Egypt had been three words: “I’ll drive you.”
I expected a protest.
I didn’t expect him to take my left hand in his.
“Mag,” he said. And he slid a gold band onto my ring finger! “Wear this?”
Gold band. On the finger reserved for engagement and wedding rings.
And I’d thought concern for Rhys and last-minute flight plans had been stressful? This sent the day’s pressure into heart-pumping overdrive.
Damn, I thought, staring at the ring. And we were just starting to get along again. Except for the panic attack at the thought of kissing him, that is. Still, I’d already refused to marry Lex Stuart, several times, even before this business about chalices and secret societies had come up.
The timing hadn’t exactly improved.
“It’s company policy,” Lex explained with his usual composure, drawing his thumb across the band. “Women wearing wedding rings invite less harassment in Arab countries than women who are recognizably single.”
“Policy,” I repeated numbly—and the world shifted back into place again. Policy. The ring meant nothing. Then the rest of his statement caught up with me, and I regained my full voice to challenge it. “Invite harassment?”
“Attract less harassment, then. Point being—”
“Point being you think I need the illusion of a man to protect me.” I started to tug the ring off.
He closed his hand around mine, stopping me. “I didn’t say that. God help any Egyptians who try to harass you.”
Appeased, I waited for him to explain himself.
“I just wish you weren’t going,” he said softly.
Which, as far as ways for him to explain himself went, sucked. “Well that’s not your call to make.”
“Did you hear me asking?”
Actually, no, I hadn’t.
Lex opened his hand enough to look at mine, at the ring that now loosely circled the top knuckle of my finger. “You’re the one who complains that we don’t talk enough.”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. I had to get rid of nervous energy somehow. “I complain that you’ve taken a vow of secrecy to an organization that’s tried to kill me. And you. More than once. That’s not the same as whining that you don’t tell me often enough that you love me.”
He said, “I love you.”
I sank back into the leather seat and closed my eyes, still anchored by his hand holding mine. My reaction to that really shouldn’t have been to think, Crap, should it?
I mean, this was Lex—my first date, first love, first time. My first, second, and third heartbreak.
But damn it, my plane was leaving soon, and I still had an international security check to get through. “Lex…”
“I love you, and I hate that you’re leaving. This is the Middle East you’re talking about, Mag.”
When I opened my eyes, there that ring sat, peeking loosely through our fingers, undecided. “Egypt isn’t the same as the Gaza Strip.”
“It’s not the same as Cleveland, either,” insisted Lex. “Less than a decade ago more than fifty tourists were massacred in the Valley of the Kings.”
“I’m not going to the Valley of the Kings, I’m going to Alexandria. It’s the other direction.”
Lex stared at me, unswayed.
I fisted my hand in his, ring and all. “I’ll be fine.”
“Like you were the last time you went after a chalice that certain people didn’t want found?”
