The computer was encrypted, its security better than anything she had seen before. It was probably better than anything the US government used too. Because of this, it took her a few minutes to hack into Bykov’s computer. While she did this, she could hear Jim ransack the library in search of any clues. She doubted he would have any more luck than she did.
She finally hacked through Bykov’s security and began to search through his hard drive for anything that might pertain to Louise. In one directory she found a gallery of pictures of her little girl from a newborn to two years old. Emma studied each picture carefully, to try to pick out any locations where Bykov might have taken her. From what she could tell, all of these images had been taken inside the house.
With another few minutes of hacking, she got into Bykov’s financial records. If she could find some recent activity, she might know where he was. But of course he wasn’t stupid enough to make things that easy for her. She did however see numerous wire transfers to the account of Ivan Bykov—Sergei’s son, whom Emma had saved nearly four years ago from an alien parasite.
As befitted his nature, Ivan was far less discreet about his financial activities. Once Emma managed to locate his account, she found numerous withdrawals from a bank in Pskov, one as recently as a day ago. Emma printed out a copy of the bank statement to take.
She found Jim in the billiards room, the pictures on the walls all taken down and tossed haphazardly around. He ran his hands along the walls, probably to search for a hidden safe or secret door, when she came in. “Find anything?” he asked.
“Not about Louise. But I think I know where we can find his son. It’s pretty far away. About four hundred miles.”
Jim turned to her and nodded. “We leave now then.”
“Sure. You get some food and water from the kitchen. I’ll get the rest of my stuff.”
Twenty minutes later they were in one of Bykov’s Suburbans to head for Pskov and perhaps to bring Louise home.
Chapter 15
The last time Aggie had been to Sweden was four hundred twenty years ago. Then she had been a relatively young witch, just over a century old. Glenda had asked her and Sophie to go to Stockholm and investigate a possible witch named Malin Mattsdotter. After they sat down with the thirteen-year-old, Aggie and Sophie concluded the girl did not have the gift. The irony was that nearly fifty years later Mattsdotter was burned at the stake for being a witch. An even greater irony was that nearly twenty years after that Sophie was burned at the stake in Salem.
During that trip, Aggie had visited Stockholm, which at the time had been centered around a couple of tiny islands and housed about ten thousand people. The old neighborhoods were well preserved, which allowed Aggie to drop her and Cecelia in the center of Marten Trotzigs grand, the world’s narrowest alley. When they appeared in the alley, they were as close as lovers, a moment that lasted about a second before Cecelia slid away from Aggie with an annoyed grunt.
“You had to drop us here, didn’t you?”
“It’s one of the few places I remembered. You can’t vanish into a place at random or who knows where you’ll come out?” The last time Aggie had been in this alley she had been as close as a lover to a young man; the two of them made out until Sophie came along to scold her.
“If Glenda knew what you were doing she’d throw you out of the coven,” Sophie had said. “You’re too reckless, you know that? Almost as bad as Sylvia.”
Sophie had always been the good one, the proper one who abided by the rules. She never made herself look like a twenty-year-old to seduce younger men. She never so much as looked at a mortal with any sort of longing. She would certainly never change herself into a man to have sex with a mortal and conceive a daughter like Renee.
Cecelia snapped her fingers in front of Aggie’s eyes. “Aunt Agnes? Are you feeling sick or something?”
“No, dear. I’m fine. What do we do now?”
“We have to meet someone.”
“A friend?”
“I don’t have friends.”
“I’m sorry, dear. Who is this person then?”
“Someone I worked with. I saved her life a few times. She owes me a favor or two.”
“She’ll tell us where to find the Headmistress?”
“Probably not. But she might be able to help.”
“I suppose that’s better than nothing,” Aggie said. She tried to sound cheerful despite that she wanted to cry out with frustration. While it was probably naïve of her, she had hoped to simply find where the Headmistress was and make her leave Renee alone. Instead, it seemed they were destined to hop from place to place in search of clues. In the meantime Renee and Akako were stuck at Milton, forced to hide until this was resolved.
“I wish things were simpler, but this is how the game is played,” Cecelia said as they walked up the narrow stairs to a cobblestone street.
“It’s not a game. We’re talking about people’s lives here.”
“I know that.” Cecelia turned to face her. “Don’t forget they already tried to kill me—and Shelly. You’re not the only one with something at stake.”
“I’m sorry, dear.”
“When we meet her, you stand back and let me do all of the talking.”
“Are you going to want me to wait at a bus stop again?”
“No. Just don’t expect her to like you. People in the organization—people like me—don’t like witches a whole lot.”
“I don’t suppose they would,” Aggie said. She remembered what Glenda had told her about where the Heretics came from. In many cases—like Cecelia’s—they were the bastard offspring of witches. Others, like perhaps her own granddaughters, might have joined for other reasons she couldn’t begin to understand.
“You stay out of the way unless I need you.”
“You think she might try to ambush you?”
“Could be. Or someone else might get wind of what’s going on. The Headmistress is supposed to know everything, right?”
“That’s true.” They navigated the narrow streets with Cecelia in the lead; she elbowed aside anyone who got in their path. If anyone tried to complain, she snarled at them in what Aggie took for Swedish. Though she knew her niece was being rude, she smiled at Cecelia’s talents. She was nearly as gifted as Emma when it came to languages; what might she have become if Sylvia hadn’t given her up for adoption? Or more importantly, what if the Headmistress hadn’t gotten her hands on Cecelia?
There wasn’t time to find out, as Cecelia motioned for Aggie to stop in front of a fruit vendor. A woman admired an apple; she didn’t seem to pay any attention to them. Aggie, a novice at cloak-and-dagger games, thought the woman was a native. With her blond hair and pale skin she certainly looked Scandinavian enough. She wore a sweater and jeans that didn’t look out of place at all among the others walking the streets of Stockholm’s old town. The only distinguishing feature was that her blond braid went all the way down to her ankles.
Cecelia sidled up next to her and picked an orange off the cart to examine it. They exchanged a few words before the stranger paid for her apple and walked away. Cecelia put back the orange and bought two bananas instead. She handed one of these to Aggie while she opened hers to eat it. “It’s all arranged,” Cecelia said.
“What is?”
“We’re going to meet her in two hours at the Den Gyldene Freden.”
“What’s that?”
“A restaurant. A pretty famous one. You have to be someone to get a reservation on short notice.”
“I see. Where is this place?”
Cecelia gestured with her head across the street. “Over there.”
Aggie didn’t see anything, but then her knowledge of Swedish was very limited. “So what are we supposed to do for two hours?”
“See the sights, I guess. Might as well get some culture while we can, right?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Aggie nibbled on her banana and tried to spot where the woman with the long hair had gone, but she had long
since disappeared. With a sigh, Aggie followed after Cecelia.
***
They met the woman again two hours later inside the Den Gyldene Freden. She sat at a table in the corner; she stood out from the other tables dominated by men in business suits. The woman wore a different sweater, one the same dark purple as the uniforms at Milton.
Cecelia sat down at the woman’s left, which left Aggie to sit with her back to the other customers. While not an assassin, Aggie knew she was in the most vulnerable position, where someone could sneak up on her. Given how the other two women felt about witches, she didn’t find this much of a surprise.
“You’re a witch,” the woman said.
“Agnes Chiostro.” She held out a hand, but the woman refused to touch it.
“This is Hariana. I trained her at the academy. And I saved her ass a few times, like when I pulled her out of East Germany as they were putting the wall up.”
“I could have made it out of there myself,” Hariana said.
“Sure, after a couple of years in a gulag.”
“I see your arrogance hasn’t changed at all.” Hariana glared at Cecelia for a moment. A dazzling smile came to her face a moment later as a waiter stopped to take their drink orders. Cecelia ordered something for Aggie in Swedish; Aggie hoped it wasn’t anything too strong.
Once the waiter had gone, Hariana’s smile turned to a frown. “I suppose you’re the one who took out Raven, Shadow, Athena, and the others?”
“Yes. They tried to kill my granddaughter and me. I took exception to that.”
“They weren’t going to kill her. They were supposed to bring her back for testing.”
“Testing? The Headmistress wanted Shelly?”
“She could have value, as diluted as her blood might be.”
“She must be getting desperate then. Shelly is a normal girl.”
“I wouldn’t describe any child related to you as normal.”
“You’re right. She is a bright girl, but she doesn’t have any affinity for magic. The closest she comes to magic is in books.”
“We were all like that once. Until she found us.”
Aggie saw Cecelia’s smug grin fade for a moment. She knew her niece thought again about the baby she had lost when she was fourteen years old. The Headmistress had found her in the snow that night and saved her life but then had told Cecelia her baby had died when he had lived.
The waiter returned with glasses of red wine for Aggie and Hariana and a bottle of beer for Cecelia. Aggie sipped the wine; she didn’t taste anything unusual about it. She stopped this line of thought; she had started to get paranoid.
Hariana smiled at the waiter and ordered lunch for all three of them. “I hope salad is all right,” she said to them. “You two look like you could stand to lose a couple of pounds.”
“How about I take a couple of pounds off of you right now?” Cecelia growled.
“You always taught me that my body was a temple. Now look at you. You’re practically chubby.”
To Aggie, her niece looked skinny enough. She wondered how thin Hariana was beneath that sweater—and what she might have hidden underneath it. “There’s nothing wrong with your weight, dear. I think you look very healthy now.”
Hariana glared at her, but Aggie held her gaze. There was no need for her to be intimidated by this girl; she was over five hundred years old. And she was a full witch. “I can’t believe you left us so you could hang around with one of the enemy.”
“She’s not my enemy. She’s my aunt. I bet if we looked around, we could find all of the relatives the Headmistress hid from you.”
“I don’t care about my relatives. I thought you didn’t either.”
“That was when I thought the only ones I had were those asshole foster parents of mine.”
“What difference does it make? The organization has been like my family. I couldn’t turn my back on them. Not like you did.”
“The Headmistress is trying to kidnap a baby now. My cousin. Is that the kind of organization you want to be part of?”
“Renee Chiostro isn’t just a baby,” Hariana said. “She’s far more powerful than that.”
“Renee doesn’t have any power,” Aggie said. “She spends most of her time sleeping and sucking her thumb.”
“That’s only because she hasn’t unlocked her power yet.”
“What does the Headmistress want with her?” Cecelia asked.
“That I do not know. I only know she will not call off the job.”
“Who’s behind the job? Who’s paying for it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who does know?”
Before Hariana could answer, the front doors of the restaurant burst open. Even with her back turned, Aggie knew there was trouble. She dropped to the floor a moment before the masked women at the door opened fire.
***
While she preferred to use her daggers, Cecelia was proficient in firearms, as was every other member of the organization. So the guns themselves didn’t really surprise Cecelia. What came as a surprise was the lack of subtlety when they charged in through the front door and opened fire. They had probably hoped to take Cecelia and Hariana by surprise, though they should have realized that neither of them would be that sloppy.
Even Aunt Agnes had dove for cover before the first bullets started to fly. The good thing about the Den Gyldene Freden was that it had opened in the 18th Century, long before anyone started to use plastic and fiberboard. The tables in the restaurant were made of sturdy wood, thick enough to absorb the bullets being fired into them.
Despite what Hariana had said about Cecelia getting chubby, she still easily fit behind the table along with Hariana. The latter reached into her purse for a Luger pistol taken off an SS officer in World War II. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to meet with you. Now they’re going to kill me too.”
“Not if we kill them first,” Cecelia said. She reached beneath her sleeves for her daggers and waited for the time to strike.
Off to Hariana’s left, Aunt Agnes crouched next to them with a deer-in-the-headlights look. Aunt Agnes might have been over five hundred years old, but witches weren’t trained for combat like this, except perhaps for Cecelia’s mother.
Cecelia turned to Hariana. “When they run out of ammo, you fire a couple shots to keep them occupied and I’ll go in close to finish them.”
“Fine with me,” Hariana said.
“No.” It took Cecelia a moment to realize Aunt Agnes had said this. The witch looked over at her, the surprised look gone now. “I’ll handle it.”
“Aunt Agnes—”
“Don’t worry about me.” With that, Aunt Agnes stood up and began to walk towards the gunwomen at the front of the restaurant. Cecelia tried to call out to her, but the sound of the guns drowned her out. She could only watch as her aunt stepped into the line of fire.
The bullets didn’t touch Aunt Agnes. They came within a hair of her and then simply fell to the floor. What kind of spell this was Cecelia couldn’t be sure. The assassins realized the game had changed and threw the guns aside to pull out their daggers. Cecelia was about to throw hers when Aunt Agnes raised her hand.
Without so much as a flash or puff of smoke, the assassins disappeared into piles of black clothes on the floor. From these piles of clothes came whimpers. Though she knew she shouldn’t be surprised—Aunt Agnes was a witch after all—Cecelia gaped as she watched her aunt reach into one pile of clothing to hold up a golden retriever puppy by the scruff. Aunt Agnes held up a finger in the puppy’s face. “You’ve been very naughty.”
She returned to the table with three puppies and turned these over to Hariana. “They’ll go back to normal in a few hours.”
“We should drop them at the pound,” Cecelia said.
“No. Maybe they’ve learned their lesson.”
“I doubt that.” For the first time Cecelia realized the other patrons of the Den Gyldene Freden, those who’d been pinned down by the gunfire, ha
d emerged from hiding to stare at them. No doubt they couldn’t believe what they’d seen either.
Aunt Agnes turned to face them. “Don’t worry, dears, everything will be back to normal soon.” She waved her hands around and Cecelia watched as everyone else in the restaurant froze, which included the puppies that had been assassins a minute ago. Even the clock on the wall stopped, as if time had frozen, which was probably what had happened.
“How long will that work?” Cecelia asked.
“About a half-hour. I’ll go home and get a blackout potion from the vault.”
Aunt Agnes vanished in a flash of light to leave Cecelia alone with Hariana and a restaurant full of statues. They began to try to make the restaurant look somewhat normal; they tipped the table and chairs back up, though now both were riddled with bullet holes. Cecelia wondered if Aunt Agnes had a spell to fix that as well.
Hariana held up one of the frozen puppies. “I never saw a witch up close like that before,” she said. “It’s amazing.”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe you’re not playing for the right team after all.”
“That’s why the Headmistress wants the little girl.”
“Renee? What can she do?”
“I told you I don’t know. I know that she’s the key to finally getting our revenge on the coven. I didn’t want to mention that with her here. I thought she might do something like this.”
“Well we are talking about her daughter.”
“You always were soft when it came to children. You wouldn’t take that shot at the pope because there were children around.”
“Enough people get hurt without killing innocent people.”
“No one is innocent.”
“Renee is. She’s a baby. She starts bawling if her mother isn’t there when she wakes up.”
“It’s not my job to question the Headmistress. You know that.”
“You might want to start since she tried to kill you.” Cecelia sat down on one of the chairs not riddled with bullets. “You were going to tell us earlier where we could find out who was funding the job.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 122
