“And we shall.”
“Where?”
“There’s a cabin on the edge of the grounds reserved for the caretaker.”
“The edge of the grounds? They’ll be sitting ducks out there!”
A loud knock interrupted their conversation. Without being asked, an elderly Asian woman stepped into the room. Aggie knew that despite the woman’s appearance, Hisae Chiu could easily kill both Aggie and Regina in seconds with only her bare hands. Ms. Chiu was the self-defense instructor for both mortal girls and witches at the school, the one who had trained Sylvia in offensive magic when she was a novice. “Excuse this interruption, Headmistress Milton, but I overheard your discussion. I thought perhaps I could be of assistance.”
“This is a private conversation,” Regina said.
“Of course, Headmistress. However, I thought Agnes’s friend and child could stay with me for as long as they need to.”
“That’s very kind of you, Hisae,” Aggie said. “I’m sure Akako and Renee would be honored to stay with you. Unless Headmistress Milton has a problem with that?”
“Not at all, so long as your child doesn’t disturb the other faculty.”
“Then it is settled,” Ms. Chiu said. She shuffled out of the room with Aggie behind her.
“Thank you so much for your help,” Aggie said.
“Not at all. It is I who should be thanking you. It is not often I get to meet someone from home. Especially not one so intelligent as Akako.”
“She’s not exactly from home,” Aggie said.
“She has the blood of the samurai in her veins. That is all that matters.”
“I suppose so.”
“As I am certain it flows through your daughter’s veins.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“The amount of it does not matter, only its presence.”
“Right,” Aggie said with a sigh. She didn’t feel in the mood for a philosophical discussion, which is what one usually got from Ms. Chiu. An old joke of the coven was that Ms. Chiu had invented the fortune cookie.
“You are concerned for their safety?”
“Of course.”
“I will care for them. As will others. There are many here who greatly admire Akako for her work with the archives.”
“Just not Regina.”
“The headmistress feels threatened by your family.”
“And you don’t?”
“I sense Renee has great power within her. It is something that needs tempered, like a sword. If not, she will become deadly to all those around her, even those she loves.”
Aggie stared at Ms. Chiu for a moment and then nodded. “Some people want to take her.”
“Yes, Akako mentioned that.”
“She did?”
“Outside the headmistress’s office. I sent her and the child to my quarters. I hope you do not mind.”
“No, that’s fine. I want to say goodbye before I leave.”
“You are going to find them?”
“I have to. It’s the only way.”
“Then I wish you the best of luck in your search.” They embraced briefly, and then split up so Ms. Chiu could go to a class while Aggie went to the teacher’s quarters. The faculty had a floor to themselves at the top of the converted monastery. Aggie wound her way up the old stone staircase to the fifth floor. The air felt drafty here and smelled like mold and old parchment. It didn’t seem the best place to leave a baby, but they didn’t have any other options.
Akako sat on a cushion and rocked Renee in her arms. She smiled at Aggie and put a finger to her lips. “She fell asleep again,” Akako said.
“She sleeps as much as a koala.”
“She’s a baby,” Akako said, as she always did if Aggie criticized their daughter at all.
Aggie looked around the Spartan quarters of Ms. Chiu, which contained only a few cushions, a table, and some drawings on rice paper of famous samurai battles. On a shelf were a few other knickknacks. Aggie recognized the jade bird that in an alternate timeline a little girl from the 19th Century named Veronica had smashed; in this timeline the bird was still intact and would probably remain so unless Renee got near it. “Is there anywhere for you and Renee to sleep?”
“We’ll bring a cot in. Renee can sleep with me.”
Aggie held her tongue on this point; she knew it would be better not to argue the point. “You’re sure you’ll be all right here?”
“Hisae will take good care of us. She loves Renee.”
“She said Renee has the blood of the samurai in her veins.”
“She might. It’d be a little diluted from all that French blood, but it’d still be there.”
Aggie smiled at this. She bent down to kiss Akako on the lips. It was far less passionate of a kiss than she’d have liked, but she didn’t dare try anything more intense with Renee right there. She gave the baby a kiss on the cheek; Renee stirred for a moment. “Agga?”
“That’s right. Agga is going bye-bye for now. But I’ll be back to see you later.”
“Bye-bye?”
“That’s right, dear. You be a good girl and mind your mother while I’m gone.”
“Yes.” Renee nuzzled up against Akako and closed her eyes again.
Aggie waited a moment to make sure the girl was asleep before she pulled away. “Well, I’d better be off then.”
“I love you,” Akako whispered. “Come back safe.”
“I will.” With that, Aggie left behind her young family, possibly forever.
***
Aunt Agnes wanted to come with Cecelia to the safe house. “This will be easier if I do it alone,” Cecelia said. “They’ll be able to sense a witch.”
“What about you? Won’t they recognize your face?”
“Not if I use a potion.” Cecelia held up a violet-colored bottle taken from the vault.
“A masquerade potion?”
“Sort of. I made a few changes to the recipe while you were gone.”
“Changes? That recipe is hundreds of years old.”
“Exactly. About time someone spiced it up.” Cecelia took the stopper out of the bottle. “Complete transformation without any worry of personality conflict.”
“As long as you brewed it correctly.”
“Ye of little faith.” Cecelia put the vial to her lips and gulped down the potion that tasted like grape cough medicine. There was always that moment of anticipation before the potion kicked in. The even worse moment came when it did kick in. Then it was like an old werewolf movie where her limbs compressed as they became shorter. The worst part was always the bones of her face shifting around, in this case as the jaw narrowed and cheekbones flattened.
Cecelia had been through this enough times that she no longer screamed in pain when it happened. Aunt Agnes winced enough for both of them; her face paled as if she were about to faint. Cecelia had to wait until the transformation was over—when she found herself at the same height as her aunt—before she could ask, “What? I didn’t turn blue or anything, did I?”
“No, dear. It’s that you look so much like your Aunt Sophie.”
“Really?” Cecelia turned to the mirror, but saw only a plain woman with mousy brown hair like Shelly’s and icy blue eyes. She’d long ago learned not to be disconcerted by looking in the mirror to see an unfamiliar face. “I never met her.”
“She died nearly two hundred years before you were born.”
“That would explain it.”
“Couldn’t I take some of that potion to go with you?”
“They’d still be able to sense your magic signature.”
“Oh, I see. Isn’t there anything I can do?”
“Wait around outside as backup. Oh, and loan me some clothes.”
Cecelia found the loosest blouse and skirt she could find so she could easily conceal her daggers along her arms and waist. The potion had made her body a little chunkier than she’d have liked, but the disguise should fool her sisters enough to get into the safe house.
From there, she would extract as much information as she could about who had tried to kill her and Shelly and why they wanted her cousin Renee.
She allowed Aunt Agnes to vanish them to an alley a block away, far enough that no one would notice them except the bums in the alley and most of them were too drunk or high to care. She took Aunt Agnes’s arm and looked into her eyes. There was nothing worse than to go into a job with someone untrained in the fine art of covert ops. “I’m going to start walking. I want you to wait two minutes and then you follow. Don’t be in a hurry. We don’t want them to see us together.”
“What am I supposed to do while you go in there?”
“There’s a bus stop about twenty feet away. Sit on the bench there as if you’re waiting for a bus. If you hear any screaming or see any smoke or anything, you come in there.”
“Are you sure, dear? I want to help—”
“You can help best by staying out of the way.” As her aunt’s face turned red, Cecelia said, “If you really want to help Renee, then do what I say. I know what I’m doing.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Good. Remember, wait here for two minutes.” With that Cecelia set out; she didn’t look back at her aunt as she turned the corner, onto the sidewalk. She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder to see if Aunt Agnes had followed her instructions or not. Cecelia couldn’t blame her aunt for wanting to help find the Headmistress, but at this point the witch was a liability.
The Second Life bookstore had been the organization’s safe house in Rampart City for generations. That was until Cecelia in the guise of Maria Costopolous had breached the safe house’s security during World War II. Because of this, the organization had moved the safe house about two miles down the road to Green Thumb Florists.
A middle-aged woman who looked like a librarian with her cardigan sweater and glasses on a chain around her neck looked up from watering some roses. “Can I help you, young lady?” the woman asked.
Cecelia turned to a vase of lilies. “The lilies are really in bloom right now.”
The woman hurried over to Cecelia’s side. “You don’t want those,” she said. “I have fresher ones in the back.”
Cecelia thought this code phrase and counter phrase were even dumber than the one about New England shore birds, but she wasn’t the one who came up with these things. That was the Headmistress’s job. Maybe Cecelia would get a chance to discuss that the next time they met in person.
The woman showed her behind the counter, into an ordinary back room. She pushed aside a pallet of potting soil to reveal a half-sized door. Cecelia waited for the woman to go through before she followed.
The half-sized door led to an old-style elevator, the kind that was a metal cage. The woman pulled back a lever and the elevator began to descend. “I don’t recognize you,” she said.
“That’s because I’m in disguise. Special operation.”
“What operation?”
“Kidnapping Renee Chiostro.”
“You must be Tigress then.”
“Try not to spread that around.”
“That’s a nice disguise. You look so ordinary.”
“Thanks.”
The elevator reached the bottom of the shaft; the woman pushed back the cage doors so they could enter a narrow corridor that led to a heavy wooden door. The woman opened this with little trouble, and then motioned for Cecelia to step inside.
The parlor had been transplanted from the Second Life bookstore and looked very similar to the one in Aunt Agnes’s house, only with no sewing paraphernalia. Three blond women occupied the sofa and chairs; all of them glared at her.
“Hello, Artemis,” the blond on the chair said. Cecelia recognized her as Athena, one of the girls she had helped to raise at the academy.
“How’d you know?” Cecelia asked.
“We changed the code phrase after you left.”
“I should have known. So now what, you, Skipper, and Midge are going to beat me up?”
“That all depends on you.”
“I’m not looking to cut any deals, except that I’ll let you live if you tell me where I can find the Headmistress.”
“She thought you might say that. She said that the only way for you to find her is to come home.”
“I’m not rejoining the organization. That’s over for me.”
Athena stood up, a slight bulge visible against her left wrist. “You’d really rather hang around with those mortals like that pasty little girl of yours?”
“Say another word about Shelly and you’re going to watch me pull out your guts.”
“Big talk from someone outnumbered four to one.”
“Good point. You better call a few friends in to make it even.”
Athena was good, Cecelia had to credit her with that. The girl had her knife out and in the air before Cecelia finished speaking. But while Athena was good, Cecelia was even better. She easily dodged the knife and tugged one of hers out of its holster as she did so. Athena hadn’t lowered her hand yet when Cecelia buried her knife in the girl’s neck.
Cecelia reached into Athena’s waist to pull one of her knives out. She kept the girl’s body as a shield while she threw the knife at one of Athena’s friends. The blond girl somersaulted off the sofa, to what she thought was safety only to find a knife buried in her neck as well. Meanwhile, the third girl leaped off the couch and threw a pair of knives. Cecelia steered Athena’s body so that her back absorbed both blades.
She dropped Athena’s body in time to grab the third girl and toss her over her shoulder. The girl tried to scramble to her feet, but Cecelia kicked her in the face. She screamed and held her face as blood pooled on the floor. Cecelia slit the girl’s throat to put her out of her misery.
Then she turned to find the woman who’d led her down to the safe house standing in the doorway with arms raised in surrender. This woman wasn’t trained as an assassin; she was merely an analyst and administrator. “I can’t tell you where she is. You know that.”
“Then I guess you’ll die too,” Cecelia said.
“I mean that I literally can’t tell you. She moves around all the time. No one has a schedule.”
Cecelia held up a knife to throw. “You must have some way to get messages to her.”
“No. She monitors everything. She’s watching us right now I’m sure.”
Cecelia looked around the room and wondered where the camera might be. She didn’t see anything obvious but then one of the first things they learned at the academy was concealment. “If she is watching, then she can either call off the operation on Renee Chiostro or watch a lot more people die.” Cecelia brandished the knife and took a few swipes at the air. “You know I’ll tear this whole fucking organization apart if I have to. Make it easy on yourself and quit now.”
It didn’t come entirely as a surprise when she heard the Headmistress’s voice boom like God’s, “We will be better prepared next time. Lucinda, it was a pleasure working with you.”
The speaker cut off to leave Cecelia alone with Lucinda the analyst. Lucinda lowered her arms to wait for the inevitable. Cecelia stepped forward and looked into the woman’s eyes. “Do you remember about seventy years ago when a young Greek woman came into the bookstore?”
“Yes. She was the spy from the coven.”
“She was me, you twat. You almost killed me and an innocent child.”
“If I say I’m sorry will you let me go?”
“No. I wanted to make sure you knew that before you died.” She slashed the knife across Lucinda’s throat; she took less pleasure in this than she’d hoped. While the woman bled out, Cecelia searched the safe house for anything useful. There were no papers or computer files about the Headmistress. Lucinda was probably right that the Headmistress moved around, especially now with a rogue operative. She supposed the only way to get to her then would be to flush her out. For that, she would need some help.
Aunt Agnes sat at the bus stop and stared straight ahead s
o that to any trained observer she looked as conspicuous as if she wore a rubber nose and fake mustache. “Oh thank goodness you’re all right,” she said.
“I didn’t find out anything useful,” Cecelia said.
“So what do we do now?”
“Have you ever been to Stockholm?”
Chapter 12
When Dan finally broke down and hired a full-time cook eighteen months ago, Becky took it as a sign he was finally ready to settle down. This came on the heels of his suggestion that she pick one of the mansion’s many empty bedrooms to keep some extra clothes in for when she stayed overnight, which happened more frequently. Since that time, he still had not popped the question, nor had he provided any other signs to make things official between them.
She knew things would have to come to a head soon. This thought started after her thirtieth birthday party and refused to go away. Now that she was no longer in her twenties, she was too old for an open-ended, casual relationship. Dan would have to make the decision whether he wanted to be with her all the time or not at all.
Despite the urgency of this thought, she still hadn’t found the courage to put it into words yet for him. She tried excuses like she’d been too busy or too preoccupied trying to help Emma through her grief, but she knew it was cowardice. She didn’t want to lose what she had. Thirty years old, overweight, breaking even financially, and from a white trash background didn’t make her ideal dating material in Rampart City. Especially when the man who loved her was rich, handsome, intelligent, and extremely nice. Why should she risk that to take her chances in the shallow end of the dating pool?
Then came Emma’s news that her baby might be alive in Russia. Another urgent thought rekindled in her brain: she didn’t want to be a surrogate aunt; she wanted to be a mother too. Aggie and Akako had Renee and Emma might soon have Louise; why shouldn’t Becky and Dan have a child too?
Emma had been gone for a day without any word, but that wasn’t a surprise. A secret mission like that would take time; there was nothing for Becky to do but wait. In the meantime she asked the cook to prepare escargot like Dan usually ordered when they went out to eat. There was that old saying about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach; Becky decided to put this to the test.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 118
