Betrayal

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “That the museum could never sell the cup or otherwise loan it out to any group, business, or individual,” Morgan interrupted. “Yes, I thought it was strange. But then, it is a ritual item, so it’s not that strange if you think about it. My understanding is whoever left the cup to Mr. Lovitz didn’t want someone Other using undue influence to convince him to loan it out for use.”

  I gritted my teeth. The pictures Flint had included showed the pieces as ceramic. It would have been nice if he’d mentioned they were gold glamoured to look ceramic.

  “So you know what it’s for?” Andy asked.

  “The cup was likely part of a dining set. Not something to use for a regular meal, or anything. More ceremonial. This cup appears to be part of an adoption ritual.” She led us through a room full of metal suits of armor toward a wall painted with the words “Treasures of Heaven.”

  “Sets like that were once much more common among Unseelie families, but they’ve fallen out of use, as have so many of our old traditions.” She gestured to a stand in the center of the next room. “I believe this is what you’re looking for?”

  I walked past her to the short pillar holding a cup nestled under thick, smooth glass.

  The cup was gold. Not just gold-plated, but made of gold. It had a slightly uneven look to it, as if it had been crafted by hand, not machine. If I looked closely, I could see where the rim had been hammered into shape. Runes and other lines were carved into the sides. They were worn with use, softened from being handled by generation after generation. I couldn’t quite make out the words.

  I used my cell phone to snap a picture of the chalice for future reference.

  “That’s the cup Mr. Lovitz donated? The one he said could never be sold?” Andy asked.

  “That’s the one,” Morgan confirmed.

  “You said this was part of an adoption ritual. What exactly did it do?” I asked.

  “Sets like these could serve many purposes,” Morgan said. “Most of those I’ve seen involved the head of a family serving food and drink to an individual that he or she wished to welcome into their ranks. It could be strictly ceremonial, like a sort of birthday celebration, or it could be legal, wherein a family formally extended their protection to a new member. Some sets were even more powerful, strong enough to create a bond on the same threshold as a bloodline.” She paused. “It’s difficult to say exactly what this particular set would do, but I could look into it for you, if you like?”

  “I’ll find out,” I said quickly. “Thank you.”

  Morgan shrugged. “As I said, when it arrived at the museum, it was covered by a glamour. I don’t believe Mr. Lovitz ever knew its true worth.”

  “This doesn’t look like a religious artifact,” I pointed out. “Why put it in this room?”

  “Because humans like the idea of a Holy Grail, and few of them have any idea what it really looks like,” Morgan said simply. “There’s a reason this is a showpiece. And we are an art museum, not a history museum. We are less restrained by technical accuracy.”

  I held a hand up to the case, then sent a pulse of magic over it, probing with silver tendrils. The magic halted at the edge of the glass, refusing to penetrate any farther. Morgan watched me. She couldn’t see my magic, but she seemed to guess what I’d done.

  “The case is protected,” she said apologetically. “A sort of magical Faraday cage if you will.”

  “Is there any way I could inspect it without the protection?” I asked.

  Morgan winced. “Mother Renard, there are no words to convey my regret over how our previous interaction ended. If I’d known what Flint intended, I never would have allowed you to be put in that situation.”

  I tensed at the mention of Flint’s name. “Don’t—”

  “But despite my desire to help you now, I would need Marilyn’s permission to bypass the cup’s security measures,” Morgan finished. “And I’m afraid the list of people Marilyn trusts to handle her inventory is very short.”

  “Blood and bone.” I rubbed a hand over my face, reaching for a calm I didn’t feel. Suddenly I wanted out of the museum. I wanted to be as far from this place as possible, as far from Marilyn as possible. I didn’t want to see her again, see her smug face as she asked me how my enslavement was going. And I definitely didn’t want to be around Morgan. I didn’t want Andy around Morgan either.

  “Has anyone Other shown any special interest in the cup?” Andy asked. “Someone that knew it wasn’t the Holy Grail, someone who might know its real use?”

  “Strange you should mention that. Alicia Levand was asking about it just a few weeks ago.” Morgan’s tone was mocking now. “She wanted Marilyn to loan her the cup for a display at a ball she was having, a celebration of her niece’s heritage.”

  Andy flipped to a clean page in his notebook. “Her niece?”

  Morgan nodded. “Catherine Emlyn. Her father, Devanos Emlyn, is Unseelie. A high ranking member of his house, I believe. It seems Aunt Alicia is annoyed that Devanos hasn’t introduced his daughter to court, yet. If you ask me, this ‘ball’ she wants to put on is a push to get Devanos to formally claim his daughter and bring her to court.”

  “You said her father hadn’t formerly claimed her as his daughter. I take it Alicia is Catherine’s legal guardian?” I guessed.

  Morgan snorted. “She is. And don’t think she doesn’t have every intention of riding Catherine to court.” She edged closer, and I fought not to take a step back. “Rumor has it, the women in Alicia’s family have a fondness for human men,” she continued in a conspiratorial whisper. “Alicia’s mother, her sister, and her sister’s daughter and granddaughter all married human men. It wasn’t until Catherine’s mother that one of them took a suitable mate—” she stopped and looked at Andy before adding “—suitable in Alicia’s eyes, I mean. Alicia is determined that Catherine will give her an opportunity to be seen at court and a chance at a husband powerful enough to erase the embarrassing memory of human from her bloodline.”

  Morgan tilted her head as if a thought had just occurred to her. “I can’t remove the cup to let you inspect it, but it is possible I may be able to talk Marilyn into letting you inspect the cup in a secure room. Somewhere in the museum, where she could be reassured of her control?”

  I had to wait for the horrified voice in my head to stop screaming “NO!” before I could answer in a normal tone. I had no intention of entering a “secure” room where Marilyn could be “reassured of her control.”

  “No thank you,” I said politely. “I—”

  I didn’t get to finish my sentence. Another familiar face appeared in the room, and suddenly all I could think about was avoiding eye contact. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I struggled to act natural even as I prayed he’d walk right past me.

  “It’s Simon,” Peasblossom hissed.

  Simon. One of the homeless youths that I’d tried and failed to save last April. He’d changed, but only a little. He looked like he’d had steady meals since I’d last seen him, enough food to keep his clothes from hanging on him like a coat on a rack. His limbs were still too long for his body, but he was well on his way to filling out. He’d already lost some of the awkwardness, and now when he strode through the museum, it was with a certain predatory intensity. Not quite grace, but more…purpose. His pale brown hair was still long, but it had been washed recently, so it looked artsy more than unkempt. The sort of bedhead that took half an hour and a small fortune in hair products to attain.

  “I don’t think he’s homeless anymore,” Peasblossom whispered.

  “Stop looking at him. Don’t let him see you.”

  “It won’t matter,” Peasblossom insisted. “The Vanguard wiped his memories. He’s just another human now, he won’t see me. And he won’t recognize you, so stop being so paranoid.”

  Simon walked up to Morgan and stood facing her, acting as though he hadn’t seen me or Andy at all.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Ms. Delaney, but I need to know if there’s anything y
ou want me to highlight at the gala next week?” he asked. “Right now I’m going to spend most of the time talking about the Michaelangelo display. But if there’s something specific you want to get eyes on, I need to know now.”

  “No, Simon, nothing special,” Morgan said, giving him an encouraging smile. “Just be your usual charming, enlightened self.”

  Peasblossom snorted at the word “charming.” I thought Simon tensed, as if he’d heard her, but the moment was gone too fast for me to be sure.

  “Simon, this is Ms. Renard and Mr. Bradford. Simon is a member of our street team. He attends events and talks up the museum to the public and prospective donors.” Morgan beamed. “And he’s a painter himself. And a sculptor soon, if Marilyn has anything to say about it.”

  She elbowed him and Simon’s smile grew strained. “She’s been very kind to me,” he said carefully. He turned to face me as if I were a line of men with guns and orders to fire on seeing the whites of his eyes. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Renard. Mr. Bradford. I’d love to stay and chat, but I have some fliers to print up, and a brochure to design, so I should get going.”

  His gaze met mine for less than a second. Then he was turning around, walking out of the room with the same sense of purpose, the same brisk stride.

  “He recognized me,” I breathed.

  I was already moving, following Simon into a room full of medieval armory. He was moving faster now.

  “Stop!” Peasblossom hissed. “What are you going to do if you catch up to him? You can’t talk to him!”

  “Didn’t you see his eyes?” I snapped, trying to keep my voice down as I wove through a knot of teenagers gawking at one of Raphael’s nudes.

  “What? What about his eyes?”

  “He hates me.”

  I tried to move faster, but I was moving into the more historically significant exhibits—which meant field trips. A teenage boy muttered an obscenity under his breath as I bumped his arm and ruined his selfie.

  I made it to the next room and had to stop. There were two different rooms off of this one, and I didn’t see Simon in either of them.

  He was gone.

  “His memories wouldn’t just come back on their own,” Peasblossom said, frustration tightening her high voice.

  “No, you’re right, someone had to have helped him.” I stopped and leaned against a wall, dragging my hands down my face. My heart pounded, and I was having a hard time keeping the images from the past from drowning out the present. I couldn’t help but see Simon as he’d been, see him ranting and raving as he stood in front of a backdrop of his own original work. All of it painted in blood. All of it violent.

  I needed a soda.

  “What was that, why did you run off like that?” Andy demanded, striding into the room. His shoulders were tense, and he looked around as if he expected to find snipers peering down their gun barrels at him from the corners of the ceiling.

  I gave myself to the count of ten to calm my nerves, then lowered my hands from my face. “That was Simon. Remember him?”

  “Hard to forget a kid that takes blood donations to use to paint pictures of himself standing over slaughtered peers,” Andy muttered.

  “He recognized me. He shouldn’t have been able to, not after they adjusted his memories.”

  “Adjusted,” Andy scoffed, then shook his head. “Maybe he saw you, and you jogged his memory?”

  “The Vanguard doesn’t employ amateurs,” I snapped. “They wouldn’t have wiped me out of his memory, they would have adjusted the memory. Kept me in it but changed the circumstances. And they would have changed the details of my appearance, just enough so seeing me wouldn’t trigger a memory.” I shook my head. “Someone helped him remember.”

  “You think he’s in trouble?”

  I bit my lip. “I think he is trouble. I remember the look on his face, I remember his paintings. He wants to be part of the Otherworld, and when a human has that kind of single-minded drive, when they get a taste of that obsession… It never ends well.”

  “He used to hang around outside Marilyn’s house trying to get in, and now he’s in her museum. Coincidence?”

  I looked up. A door with a plaque that said “Employees Only” caught my eye. “Simon works here, maybe he went through there?”

  “Maybe we should wait and ask Morgan,” Andy said.

  I was already running for the door. I didn’t even know what I was going to say to Simon. He hated me, I could feel how much he hated me. Which meant he had to remember that I’d been the one to stop him. To keep him from rushing headlong onto sidhe property, with his beloved painting splattered in blood, and the pure venom he’d felt toward the artists who’d been chosen over him.

  What if he was the thief?

  My heart tightened, leeching some of the breath from my lungs. Flint had said to look for someone with little or no power who wanted more. I couldn’t think of anyone who fit that description more than Simon.

  I reached the door, opened it, and shoved my way through.

  I didn’t even register the person beyond the door. I had a brief glimpse of a large figure in a uniform, then something closed around my wrist and lifted me off my feet. I drew a breath, but didn’t get a word out before my other wrist was similarly locked, and I was hanging in midair. My shoulders wrenched painfully as they were forced to bear the weight of my swinging body.

  Pale gold eyes with reptilian slits where the pupils should be bored into mine.

  “Thief,” a voice growled.

  Chapter 4

  Dragonkin.

  The word echoed in the back of my mind, increasing in volume with each echo until I was almost sure the guard holding me by my wrists would hear it too. He was huge enough that I’d bet he had to angle himself through most doorways, to say nothing of ducking under chandeliers and ceiling fans. His skin was tan with a yellowish undertone that made me think of gold. Or maybe that was the smattering of scales in patches over his face, covering his right cheekbone and over his left eyebrow before skimming down his thick neck. He blinked twice. Not blinked twice as in blinked, then blinked again. Blinked twice as in blinked with one set of eyelids, then another.

  “Let go of my witch!” Peasblossom snarled.

  Another set of blinks. This close, I could see that his tawny gold irises had the texture of boiling oil. Not a comforting comparison.

  “What are you doing here?” he ground out.

  “Easier to talk…if you put me down.”

  He shook me—hard. I clamped my lips shut to keep from crying out as my shoulder joints screamed in pain. Magic writhed inside of me, aching to lash out, to force the giant put me down. But attacking a museum guard, in a museum run by a sidhe who already had a really good reason not to like me, wouldn’t make my life easier by any stretch. Last resort. Violence had to be a last resort.

  My flailing feet failed to find any large cats by my side, and I had the uncharitable thought that this was a fine bloody time for Scath to give me some personal space.

  “What are you doing here?” he repeated.

  “There was a boy. Simon. I need to talk to him.”

  “What do you want with Ssimon?”

  His ‘s’s were more pronounced than they should be now, not quite a lisp but close. That was not a good sign. Dragons, and their descendants, tended to draw out their s’s more the angrier they got. Nature’s built-in warning to potential victims.

  “Vazkasi, it’s all right.”

  I hadn’t heard the door open, but I was ridiculously happy to hear Morgan’s voice.

  She entered my peripheral vision, and calmly crossed her hands over her waist. “Put her down.”

  Vazkasi frowned, but he obeyed. It hurt almost as much to lower my arms as it had to have them wrenched over my head, and it took me a moment to breathe evenly as I rolled my shoulders to get the blood back into my arms.

  “You’ll have to excuse Vazkasi’s enthusiasm,” Morgan said, patting the guard’s shoulder. “He has a soft
spot for Simon. And being a guard, it is his job to keep people out of areas they don’t have the clearance to enter.” The corners of her mouth tilted down in disapproval as she flicked her gaze back to the dragon. “You should be wearing your glamour.”

  Vazkasi muttered under his breath, reaching for a small bag tied to his belt. I had just enough time to notice he only had three fingers and a thumb, all tipped by a thick black claw, and then he squeezed the bag. A second later, I was looking at a human hand, albeit a large human hand. The scales I’d seen before were gone, and his pupils were a round human shape. The gold irises had darkened slightly to a pale brown.

  Morgan turned to me. “Is the reason you wish to speak with Simon related to your interest in the chalice?”

  “No,” I answered, smoothing my hands down my black shirt. “I thought Simon looked familiar. It doesn’t matter now.”

  The dragonkin snorted, and I thought I saw a hint of smoke curl out of his nostrils.

  Before he or Morgan could ask anymore about Simon, Andy chimed in. “The chalice is part of a set. Another part, a bowl, was stolen two weeks ago, and the owner was murdered.”

  My neck ached as I stifled the urge to give Andy the incredulous look fighting for control of my face. We weren’t supposed to stop the thief. Warning the museum a theft was coming was definitely contra-indicated.

  Vazkasi growled. This time there was definitely smoke. “You think ssomeone meanss to ssteal the cup? Who? When?”

  “The investigation is in its early stages,” I said quickly. “And I’m afraid we can’t discuss details at this time.”

  The dragon dropped a hand to squeeze the bag tied to his belt. The human glamour melted away, and gold eyes burned as they drilled into mine. He didn’t reach for me, but he didn’t have to. I knew how fast dragonkin moved. “You will tell me everything. No one will ssteal from me.”

  “Vazkasi is in charge of security in the medieval section,” Morgan said lightly. “He is very protective.”

  A dragon in charge of guarding gold. Did Flint know the chalice was under a dragon’s protection?