by Lisa Kessler
Mel’s voice came through the door. “Do you see how the rhythm and tone of the poem mirror the music? Who wants to try next? Cara, why don’t you come on up?”
The guitar music picked up again and a girl’s nervous voice spoke between the chords. “I tried hard not to see.” Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. “But his smile grabbed hold of me.” Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. “It may not be headline news.” Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. “But I’ve got a bad case of the high school blues.”
The classroom erupted in applause, and Nate smiled. Mel wasn’t just teaching an English class; she was inspiring another generation. These kids would remember her long after they left these halls. Sadly, not all teachers had that gift.
When the bell rang, a river of teens flowed past him, buzzing about writing more poems, and songs and lyrics. They actually wanted to write and create. Amazing. After the flood of students dried up, he stepped into the doorway and discovered Mel had company.
A curvy woman with shoulder-length black hair and porcelain skin looked up from her guitar case and glanced at Mel. “Looks like you’ve got a guest.”
Mel stopped sliding binders into her bag and straightened up. “Detective Malone.” She gestured to her friend with the guitar. “This is Trinity. Trin, this is the detective working Nia’s case.”
Trinity closed the guitar case and stretched out her hand. “Good to meet you.”
He gave her a firm handshake. “Heard you playing the blues in here.”
Trinity chuckled, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “Thanks. It was Mel’s idea.”
He started to speak, but his mouth went dry. Hanging on the wall behind Mel’s desk was a large black mask with purple trim and a deep frown. On a normal day, he might not have even noticed the thing, but since he’d touched the light switch and the bannister at Mel’s place last night, he’d been on edge.
Until the vision of the man in the golden mask flashed in his head, he’d never really given them much thought, but now the eyeless, soulless, frowning face on her wall had dread tightening around his gut like a vise.
Mel turned, following his gaze. “That’s the Tragedy Mask. It represents tragedy in theater.” Her focus shifted back to him, capturing his full attention. “Sort of a mascot for my high school English classes.”
“I’m going to get out of your way,” Trinity interrupted, her guitar case in hand. “See you at the theater later?”
Mel nodded, giving her a short embrace. “Yeah, I’ll be by after work.”
After Trinity left, Nate struggled to keep his eyes off the mask on the wall. “I wasn’t expecting to find you working today.”
Mel leaned against the edge of her desk. “Sitting around crying at Callie’s place isn’t going to bring Nia back. And the kids were really excited about the poetry project today. I couldn’t call in a sub. They’d probably send some fresh-out-of-college Algebra teacher who would make them watch Good Will Hunting or something…” She pressed her lips together. “Sorry. I’m not feeling very optimistic at the moment.”
He almost smiled. Her devotion to her students was admirable, regardless of her current state of mind. “I’ve got a couple questions about the case for you. Do you have time now, or should I come back later?”
Mel straightened to her full height. Usually that meant she’d be adjusting her gaze downward, but Detective Malone still had a few inches on her. “If you don’t mind watching me eat my sandwich, I’ve got an hour.”
“Works for me.”
She brought a black Velcro lunch sack out of her desk and led him to a large round worktable at the back of the room. Once they were seated, she withdrew a sandwich, an apple, and a soda from her bag.
“Do you still think it was an accident?” She pulled out her apple and took a bite.
He ignored her question and set a few printouts of masks before her. “Do any of these look familiar?”
She looked down at the images and nodded. “These are all masks of Kronos.” She took a closer look. “Yeah. Different time periods maybe, but that’s definitely Kronos.” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “What do these masks have to do with any of this?”
He shifted in his chair and pulled out a pen. “Kronos. He was a Greek god or something, right?”
“Actually, he was a Titan. Zeus imprisoned him in the center of the Earth.” She set her apple down. Her appetite was nonexistent today anyway. The meal was more out of habit than hunger. “And this will help us catch Nia’s killer how?”
“I’m not sure.” His green eyes mesmerized her for a moment. “But I think you’re right… It wasn’t an accident.”
Dark thoughts whizzed through her mind. Everything from Detective Malone slapping cuffs on her wrists, to him confessing he killed Nia and she was about to be next. Mel let her hands slip off the table into her lap. She flexed her fingers before clenching them into tight fists in an effort to release some of the anxiety that her worst-case scenarios were dredging up.
“What changed your mind?”
A muscle jumped in his cheek as his attention shifted to the pages of Kronos’s likenesses, but he didn’t answer her question.
She nudged one of them. “If it will help, I have a great Greek mythology book I could loan you.”
He slumped back in his chair, bringing one hand up behind his neck. His shirt barely contained his bicep. She swallowed and forced her gaze elsewhere. This was no time to get distracted, regardless of how well built this detective might be.
“The book couldn’t hurt at this point,” he said.
“Great.” Mel got up, relieved for an excuse to put a little distance between them. She needed to stay focused on figuring out what happened to Nia, not how good Nate Malone might look without that shirt. She crossed to the bookcase on the far wall, running an index finger along the spines of collections of Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, and Shakespeare. “Do you have any leads?”
“Not anything to convince the medical examiner it wasn’t an accidental fall.”
She slid a small jade-colored hardcover from the shelf and turned around. His eyes moved up to her face. Had he been staring at her ass? Suddenly she didn’t feel so bad about ogling his biceps. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
Seriously? Smiling?
She must’ve been in some kind of shock.
Mustering up as much indifference as she could, she walked over and placed the book in front of him. “If there’s no evidence, then why the sudden change of heart?”
He looked up at her, and the urge to touch him swelled. She crossed her arms, no longer confident she could trust her hands.
“You told me she never turned off the lights, and they were all off, even upstairs. Your alibi checked out, so if it wasn’t you and she never turned them off, then who did?”
She tapped her fingernail on the printouts he’d brought. “Where does our pal Kronos play into all this?”
He slid all the pages back together and put them into the manila file folder. “Call it a hunch for now.”
She raised a brow. “Another hunch? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Look, when I have something concrete, you’ll be the first one to know.” He stood up, taking both the mythology book and the folder in one large hand. “Thanks for the information and the book.”
He was hiding something from her. “You’re welcome.” He turned to go and her heart hammered in her chest. “Detective Malone?”
He stopped and glanced back. “You can call me Nate.”
Nate. She filed that away for later. “I’ll be finished here at three thirty. I was planning on grading a few papers at the café at the end of the block before I meet my sisters at the theater. If you come by, I could give you a crash course on Kronos and the Golden Age of Man.”
The corner of his lips tugged up in a lopsided smile that awoke the butterflies in her stomach. “I can use all the help I can get,” he said. “I’ll see you there.”
Her classroom door closed behind him, leaving h
er in the silence to replay the conversation. She didn’t know his secret yet, but she was going to find out.
“We might have a problem.”
Ted Belkin sighed and lifted his head.
Marion was leaning against the doorway. “I just got word from the building inspector’s office that those women you wanted me to keep an eye on came in today for a new permit on that theater.”
The damned theater. Les Neufs Soeurs, the Cult of the Muses.
His blood pressure shot up as he tightened his grip on the computer mouse. “Thank you, Marion.”
She nodded and headed out of the room, closing the door behind her. Ted snatched the phone receiver from its cradle, punching his frustration into the keypad.
“Yes?” a man said on the other end of the line.
He lowered his voice, staring at the back of his office door. “I thought you took care of them.”
“As I reported last night, I was only able to eradicate one target. Urania, the Muse of Astronomy, is no more.”
Ted tipped his leather chair back, shifting his gaze to the ceiling. “That’s not enough. They were at the permit office today.”
“Panic isn’t going to further our cause.”
“I’m not panicking, you little pissant. I don’t think you realize the importance of keeping that theater from opening.”
He paused long enough for Ted to begin wondering if he’d hung up. “I’m well aware of what’s at stake, sir.”
“Then get the damned job done. And for god’s sake, find a contact in the building department and see if we can stall their project in the meantime.”
“I understand. For the good of mankind.”
“Exactly.”
Ted slammed the phone back down into its cradle and swiveled his chair to stare out the window. From his office on the sixth floor, he could see the expanse of the Pacific glittering before him. A few miles offshore, his oilrig continued cutting through the rock at the bottom of the ocean, carving through the layers of the Earth. He twisted the heavy gold ring around his finger. It had been in his family for generations, passed down to each eldest child along with the family mission of once again ushering in the Golden Age of Man.
His great-great-grandfather had been the first of their Order to make physical progress toward the ultimate goal: to free the powerful prisoners from the center of the Earth. In 1896, off the coast of Santa Barbara, his great-great-grandfather used well-drilling equipment attached to the pier. It had been a start. The Order had been involved in mining on land, as well, but cave-ins and environmental impact studies slowed them to a crawl.
But offshore oil drilling kept their progress hidden from the public eye. As long as the population needed oil, he had the money to continue their quest, cutting deeper toward the Earth’s core.
None of his ancestors had lived to see the success of their quest. He would be the first, because this time, he’d given the Order a valuable tip, an ace up his sleeve. While he’d attended college, he’d dated a woman with a gift for music. She’d dazzled him at first, but as he got to know her better, he learned she was plagued with strange dreams about ancient Greece and a dilapidated theater here on the West Coast.
Over time, they’d drifted apart, but after graduation, he’d followed her to Crystal City and discovered that, as crazy as it seemed, his ex-girlfriend was connected with eight more women sharing the same dream of a worn-down theater slated for demolition. And each woman excelled at a different skill set, just as his ex had with music.
And then suddenly he knew who these women were.
The nine Greek Muses, awakened again for this generation of man and meant to inspire mankind forward in the sciences and the arts. They’d been brought together through the shared dream of a theater that could change the world. They were now united, driven in their passion to reopen the Theater of the Muses. The same Masonic think tank that had existed in France in the eighteenth century and catered to the likes of Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.
But the Order was too close to success now, too close to the center of the Earth, to the Titans. The last things he needed were solar cars and homes. For over a century, his family had perfected the technology to drill oil offshore, but without humanity’s need for the black gold, his funding would dry up. Literally.
He’d called a meeting, and the Order of the Titans had agreed with his assessment. This generation, the Order would be successful where previous generations had failed, because this time they would steal mankind’s inspiration. They would kill the muses for the greater good.
Ted smiled. The Golden Age of Man would return, and he would be immortalized as the man with the vision to see the quest to its finish.
For the good of mankind.
CHAPTER 4
Nate opened the coffee shop door and spotted Mel sitting at a table in the corner. Her dark-red hair hung like a veil, hiding her face, but somehow that didn’t matter. His senses honed in on her the second he walked in. He’d like to blame it on his highly developed observation abilities, but police training had nothing to do with his strange attraction to this woman.
As he approached, she glanced up from her papers. “I didn’t think you’d show.”
He frowned. “Did I do something to make you think I’d stand up a woman who offered me help?”
“No.” Mel chuckled and gestured toward the other chair. “But if there’s a dark side or a tragedy to be found, that’s the first place my mind goes.”
He sat across from her, and his blood pressure already seemed to be normalizing just being near her. “Can I ask you something?”
She set her red pen down. “Sure.”
“How did you come up with mixing the blues and poetry?”
“This is going to help with Nia’s case?”
He ran a hand down his face. Way to be professional, Malone. Shit. “Never mind.”
“Tell you what…” She leaned a little closer. “You answer my personal question, and I’ll answer yours. And if we’re brave enough, we can do one more round. Sound fair?”
He cocked a brow. Was she daring him? “I guess that depends on how personal your question is.”
She took a sip of her coffee and slowly set the mug back on the table. “What happened at my condo the other night? Something shook you up when we went back there.”
Damn it. He didn’t think she had noticed. He tapped his pen on the folder, scrambling for something to tell her besides seeing a wacko in a gold Kronos mask shoving her friend down the stairs.
“I can’t explain it.” It was the truth. “But even though there’s no evidence to prove your friend was murdered, I believe you.”
Her expression softened. “Thank you.” She glanced at his folder. “So you think Kronos pushed Nia down the staircase?”
Yes. He shook his head. “No. But there have been a couple sightings of robed men in these gold masks.” Okay, so that wasn’t exactly true. So far he’d only seen one in his head, but he had to tell her something, and until he could figure out if he was crazy, the truth wasn’t an option.
She raised a brow. “Really? I haven’t heard anything on TV.”
He cleared his throat. “I think it’s your turn to answer my question.”
A barely-there smile tugged at her lips, distracting him for a moment. “I think the blues and poetry are a perfect match. The music helps the kids find a rhythm for their emotions on the page. Plus, it helps my students share with one another in a safe environment. Sometimes knowing you’re not alone in your feelings—especially your tragedies—can make all the difference.”
And sometimes being alone is the only way to keep the tragedy boxed up, he thought.
He sat back in his chair, pondering the woman across the table. “You seem pretty together for someone who just lost her friend.”
She stared at her coffee cup. “I’m a lot of things, but together isn’t one of them.” She lifted her eyes. “I’ll never sleep in that condo again. I’m staying at Callie’s for now.
I called the landlord to terminate the lease.” She blinked back tears and shifted in her chair. “I’m pretty sure it’s my turn to ask a question.” Clearing her throat, she charged forward. “Have you ever been shot?”
He was going to get whiplash from her sudden changes in subject, but he chuckled. He couldn’t help it. “Yeah.”
When had tonight become a chance to get to know each other? He had a case to solve. But something about Mel made it tough for him to think straight.
“Twice,” he went on. “A bullet grazed my right arm once, and I was hit in my vest another time. It cracked a rib, but I lived, so I count that as a win.”
Mel sipped her coffee. “So what do you want to know about Kronos?”
He raised a brow at another abrupt change in the conversation. “Are you disappointed I couldn’t dodge a couple bullets?”
A real smile teased her lips as she lowered her coffee mug. “On the contrary, I’m a sucker for a guy with scars, so for your protection, we should probably stick to the case.”
“I’m not scared.” Blood was suddenly pumping away from his brain, and for a split second, he considered taking off his shirt to show her his scar. He was losing his mind. Fast. “But I do have a case to work.”
She nodded slowly. “Definitely for the best.”
He didn’t agree, but forced himself to nod. Right now he was the only person in the police department who believed her roommate had been murdered, and if the crazy vision was right, then there was a murderer in a mask on the loose, and if he didn’t figure out how to prove it, more people could die.
The thought sobered him. “Any idea why people might be wearing this mask?”
She pulled in a slow breath and nodded. “Kronos was the leader of the Titans before Zeus trapped them all in the center of the Earth.”
“Like Clash of the Titans?” He set his pen down. “You think these people believe in this stuff?”
