Five identical doors with brass doorknobs broke up the expanse of the room’s far wall. Leather Woman and Curse Breaker, I noticed, were giving the space the same sort of thoughtful once-over I was, and both now had their gazes on the doors.
“Five doors,” Dr. Sharma said, his voice taking on a grave ‘movie trailer voiceover’ tone, “and three of you. You will choose your door one at a time, but no one may select a door already chosen.”
Which meant we weren’t going to fight each other, unless the doors all lead into the same room on the other side. Most likely we were going to duke it out with some stranger. Or some strange thing.
I was changing my mind about Lady Califia. She might or might not be magical herself but she certainly knew our world and made use of it. But why?
That was a question for later. My immediate concern was what might be behind those doors.
Dr. Sharma nodded to me, indicating I got to be the first to choose.
I thought for a moment and then strode forward to the middle door. The knob, I noticed, was inscribed with magical symbols. The sting of a containment spell raced through my hand and up my arm when I took hold of the knob. Whatever was behind that door, no one wanted it getting out. Or they wanted to be sure that once I was inside, I couldn’t get out.
I turned the knob and pulled the door open wide in hopes that I and my two rivals for the job (because I’m generous that way) might get a sneak peek at what lay beyond. All I saw was a child-sized figure hunkered down at the far end of a space so long and narrow it was more like a shaft than a proper room. The figure was sitting on the floor, bent over with its back to me. I couldn’t tell if it were male or female, human or something else.
I took two steps into the room and halted, waiting, letting whomever or whatever was in there with me make the first move. The clunk of the door firmly shutting startled me and I flinched.
The person/creature in the corner didn’t move for a long moment, but finally began to unwind, growing larger as it did—its chambray-clad back rising first, its shaggy-haired blond head following. My opponent rose to standing using leg-strength alone. I swallowed, plenty impressed by that.
Even before the creature turned around, I’d decided it was male but probably not human. If human, he was misshapen—his thick, muscular arms too long for normal, his back also too long and too wide, his powerfully built legs, encased in blue jeans, a bit too short. All in all, I guessed him to be about six and a half feet tall, nearly a foot taller than me, but our legs were about the same length. I dearly regretted not bringing a weapon with me today.
Well then, magic would just have to do.
He turned around, displaying a hard-edged but bumpy face with deep-set dark brown eyes and sharp, pointed upper teeth protruding over a thin lower lip. The creature’s only smell was a vague scent of unwashed body, more ‘gym after a workout’ than ‘denizen from the depths of Hell.’
“Nice clothes,” I said casually. “Jeans, a chambray shirt, and cowboy boots. Not usual demon-wear.”
I wondered if the cowboy boots were steel toed. That could be a problem. Yeah, bringing a gun to this interview would have been handy.
The creature opened its maw, roared, and stalked toward me. I backed up the few steps available before my back touched the door. The demon had his arms flung out wide—the better to grab and squeeze me with, I figured.
I stayed where I was, back against the wall, as if frozen with fear. The creature roared again, spraying spittle on the top of my head, which was seriously gross, and snapped his arms inward to clamp them around my body. As his arms swung together, I dropped down to a crouch. The creature’s arms closed around empty air above my head. I punched upward landed a good blow where his testicles would be if he were human.
Something soft and squishy was there. The creature leaned back slightly and roared again, with pain this time. I propelled myself back up to standing, put both of my palms on his stomach, and shoved as hard as I could. The creature staggered back three or four steps before catching his balance.
Pain and anger had turned his brown eyes a flaming red. He roared again. I was privileged to get a good whiff of serious halitosis.
“Toothpaste and mouthwash, dude,” I said. “They really help.”
Evidently he didn’t appreciate my comment because he roared again and lunged toward me. This needed to be over with. I summoned up my will and sent a blast of air strong enough to knock him back half way down the twenty-five foot length of the room. I walked toward him and sent another blast before he could recover from the first. This one sent him all the way to the rear of the room where he slammed against the back wall.
My little joke is that I have elementary magic skills, in that my magic gives me control of the four elements: fire, water, wind, and earth. Metal and wood are pretty friendly to me as well.
I focused my magic and produced a rain cloud in the middle of the room. I thought about throwing in some lightning for good measure, but decided that would be overkill. The look of fear on the creature’s face told me he knew what I’d conjured and what I intended to do with it.
I blew the cloud slowly in his direction while keeping a steady blast of air on his body so he couldn’t advance toward me. The creature flattened himself against the wall as best he could. Not that it would do him any good once the rain started falling. I let a small drizzle leak from the cloud. The demon screamed and the door flew open.
“That is enough!”
Dr. Sharma’s voice was pitched low and loud.
I made a grabbing motion with my hand and the cloud vanished.
“Did I win?” I asked, not turning around but keeping my eyes on the demon.
Dr. Sharma raced past me, throwing a hard glance my way as he passed, and took one of the creature’s hands in his own.
“It’s done,” he told the demon. “You did well.”
The demon grinned.
I started to make a snide remark about how low the bar seemed to be for ‘doing well’ when it hit me that the demon never meant to defeat me. His task was to make me show my stuff. He’d done a good job of that.
It occurred to me, too, that neither demon were necessarily what they seemed. I was beginning to suspect they were humans working under a glamour. Demons were notoriously unreliable and tended to do whatever they felt like. Why chance it if you could simply cast a glamour and make people believe they were dealing with demons?
Dr. Sharma rose to his feet and walked back over to me, speaking as he passed me heading for the open door. “If you’ll come this way.”
3
I followed Dr. Sharma back into the reception area and then down a long hallway with pale gray walls and plush, steel-gray carpeting underfoot that felt like walking on clouds. None of that tightly looped, hardwearing Berber for Lady Califia. Or those God-awful carpet squares that could be removed and replaced should someone grind dirt into or spill something onto them. This suite of offices spoke softly but firmly of wealth and taste.
What looked like original oils broke up the long expanse of hallway. Lady’s, or someone’s, preference seemed to run to California landscapes. I recognized the angled jut of Vasquez Rocks, which had stood in for an alien planet in many a TV show and movie, Mt. Shasta with a spaceship-shaped cloud resting on its summit, and Mono Lake with its massive limestone formations poking from the water. It seemed probable that all the paintings were of California natural landmarks. I wondered where the ones that weren’t familiar to me were.
At the end of the hall was a taller and wider than normal door. An executive door if I ever saw one. No nameplate or title designation showed whose office this was, but it was easy to guess. Dr. Sharma stopped, muttered spell-words under his breath, then turned the knob and opened the door. He stepped aside, indicating that I was to go in alone.
I recognized Lady Califia immediately. Her face was as famous and familiar as Bill Gates’ or Elon Musk’s. She sat behind a lovely, antique mahogany desk that I’d clas
sify as ‘regulation worker-bee sized.’ No giant desk to proclaim her importance to the world. That was interesting. She looked up from where she was tapping something into a laptop computer and gave me the once over.
I gave her a moment to look, and then surveyed the office and her, getting in quick impressions to be considered in depth later.
The office was large, maybe 20x20, with pale sage green walls. Persian rugs lay scattered over the dark hardwood floors. The rugs felt old to me, their age percolating slowly up from the soles of my feet. Large windows on two walls showed to-die-for views of downtown Los Angeles. More original oils of California landscapes tastefully broke up the space on the two windowless walls. She definitely had a strong preference in the art she surrounded herself with.
Lady herself looked much like she did in the photos one saw of her either breaking ground on a new project, hosting or attending charity events, or the ubiquitous headshot used in articles about her. For all that I’d seen dozens of photographs of her, she had a look that couldn’t be easily categorized for heritage.
One glance at me with my pale skin, a few freckles that still hadn’t faded with age, pale blue eyes, and hair that used to be strawberry blonde before it changed, and it’s clear my ancestors come from about as far west as you can go in Europe.
Lady had skin that was not quite as coppery as Native Americans and not as dark as Mexican or Creole, a wide face with high cheekbones and a strong chin. Her deep brown eyes seemed to see the heavens and the depths of hell, and into your soul while she was at it. Her hair was black, straight, cut simply and well, and fell just south of her chin. She could have been Pakistani or Iranian for all I knew, but was probably mixed race. It only occurred to me now that in the articles I’d read about her before coming here today, no mention of her parents was ever made.
She wore little make up beyond lip gloss, and was dressed in a simple black sheath dress cut impeccably well. A red linen jacket hung on a hanger on a peg near the door. A small, black leather handbag hung on a peg next to the jacket. To see her shoes I’d have had to bend down and peeked under the desk but my bet would be they were black and expensive.
I felt downright dowdy in comparison even with my silver-gray hair and light blue eyes ringed with gold around the irises.
“Tell me about your background,” Lady said, forgoing any pleasantries. “And how you make your living.”
There were two armchairs upholstered in blue leather in front of her desk, but she hadn’t invited me to sit. Power stance or rudeness? Not that there was a lot of difference between the two.
“My specialty is rescue and recovery,” I said. “I’m very good at finding lost people and missing things and bringing them home.”
Lady nodded. “Who are your people?”
Funny that she would ask me the exact question I’d had wondered about her. I cleared my throat. “I was born and grew up in Hermosa Beach.”
Lady smiled indulgently. “That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”
I smiled back but said nothing.
“I take it that is your natural hair color,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You don’t dye it?”
“No,” I said.
“So who are your people that you have such unusual hair color and eyes?”
I knew what she was asking—was I fae or shifter or some other magical thing? But I wasn’t.
“My ancestors come from Western Europe, Scotland and Ireland mostly. My father was an engineer at The Aerospace Corporation. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. They were killed five years ago in a light-plane crash. My dad’s best friend was the pilot.”
“How very sad,” Lady said, not sounding sad at all.
She looked down at her computer screen, then back up, and locked her eyes on mine. I caught the movement from the corner of my sight as she pressed a button on her desk. “Thank you for your time. Dr. Sharma will see you out.”
Fine. Lady Califia could dismiss me, but not intimidate me. I returned the same eye-lock stare and added a friendly smile.
Dr. Sharma must not have been close by or he had to finish up something before he could come fetch me. We stood a long, long moment with each of us trying to establish our dominance. We stood long enough that I began to feel antsy and uncomfortable, though I never dropped my eyes from her face.
“Shall we share secrets?” she said, suddenly all best friends forever.
“If you like,” I said.
“Sit,” Lady said, as affable as could be. “Please.”
I sat in one of the two blue-leather chairs in front of her desk.
“When someone doesn’t want to tell me something, I get very curious,” she said. “I’m not one to let a thing go once my curiosity is aroused. I wonder why doesn’t she want to tell me? What in her background is so painful, shameful, or awful that she feels she must keep it caged like a rabid dog?”
“It’s none of those things,” I said. “I’ll answer any job-related questions you like about my experience and my qualifications. I do, however, like to keep my personal and business life separate.” I paused. “But if you feel like talking, I have questions for you.”
Lady’s eyes widened slightly, but she nodded for me to go on.
“You’re very well-known,” I said. “Exceptionally well-known. You’re also either magical yourself or deeply involved in the magical community and yet no word of that leaks into your public persona.”
A hint of smile bent her mouth. “I also like to keep my personal and professional life separate. Certain things are none of the ordinary world’s business. However, if we are to work together, and that is still undecided, we must trust each other.” She cocked one perfectly shaped eyebrow.
I took it as an invitation to ask away—knowing that if I did, I was going to have to respond in kind.
“Why bring us here and show us demons and sorting doors and knobs covered in runes?”
Lady regarded me. “You seem like a bright woman. You tell me why.”
It didn’t take much to figure out. “My supposition is either you’re looking for someone who’s familiar with magical worlds because whatever you need done crosses into those realms, or you’ve been threatened by something supernatural and need a bodyguard who isn’t afraid of demons.”
“Very good,” she said. “You’re quite near the truth, but neither guess is spot on.” She leaned forward. “You do realize that anything said between us here is confidential. You’ll be signing a non-disclosure agreement on the way out in any event.”
“If I tell you my personal history,” I said, “you’ll have to sign one as well.”
A single, barked laugh burst from Lady’s mouth.
“You go first,” she said.
I shook my head. “Not a chance.”
“All right,” she said. “I am,” she paused for dramatic effect, “the goddess of California.”
I’m not ashamed to say I sat there for a moment stunned and trying to make sense of what she’d said, and wondering if I should laugh at the joke or not. Her face and demeanor said she was dead serious.
“Well,” I said. “You’ve got me beat all to hell. Compared to you, I’m down right dull. And you found the treasure. And built an empire.”
“Rescued the treasure,” she said. “I’d known it was there from the day the ship went down.”
That took me aback as well.
The Pride of Zubis sunk off the coast of California in 1653, laden with gold, silver, and precious stones. Every schoolchild in California learned the story in the fourth grade, along with how Junipero Serra set up the series of missions that crawled up the state. Every fourth grader built mission replicas (I’d picked San Juan Capistrano and built it out of sugar cubes.) and made construction paper reproductions of the Pride. The textbooks conveniently skip over what Father Serra and the Spanish in general did to the people already living here. Or whom the Spanish looted to get the precious cargo that went down with the Pride.
It was a big deal when the Pride was found and salvaged by a team under the command of Lady Califia, a find that captured the imagination much the way Robert Ballard’s finding the Titanic had.
Lady saw the look on my face and likely reasoned that the Pride’s history was skipping through my mind and I was quickly doing the math.
“Well,” she said, “I was only a baby goddess when the ship sank, my mother being the official goddess of California at the time. When she died and I took over the reins, one of the first things I did was “find” that treasure. We’d lived in near poverty while I was growing up. Hardly anyone worships the land goddesses and gods anymore and no one makes offerings. Stupid to live hand-to-mouth when a fortune in gold and jewels is lying off your coast—coast that falls under my jurisdiction, no matter what the sea goddess says.”
I was wondering if this highly intelligent, business-savvy woman was out of her freaking mind when she broke the short silence, saying, “I’ve shown you mine. Now you show me yours.”
I shifted position in the leather chair, straightening my back to get more comfortable. I didn’t tell this story often. Practically never, actually.
“My people, my parents, grandparents and all, were normal and ordinary. When I was five, on a very clear day when I could see the Santa Monica Mountains like they were just down the street, I decided to go there. I let myself out of the yard and started walking.”
“You were adventurous?”
“More ‘acting on whatever popped into my head,’ I said. “Impulsive, my mother used to say.”
What she really used to say was I had no natural sense of danger and lacked all sense of caution. Mom loved me, but I exasperated her.
Lady encouraged me with a tilt of her chin to continue.
I wasn’t sure why it bothered me to tell this story. I’d long since come to grips with what had happened, even been glad for it. Was glad for it. Still—
The Mermaid's Lament Page 2
