No one responded, and I suspected it was because no one knew. It made no sense. The amulet was useless without its rightful executor.
“There’s something else here,” Ava said.
Still wrapped in her hand was the paper that had been fashioned into an origami pouch around the amulet. She opened it and looked up. “Maeve left another message.”
A false prophet serves no purpose. The truth lies in a spell within a spell.
Ava read the note twice and then handed it to me. Each of us turned to Melanie Harris, hoping for an explanation of what the cryptic note meant.
“I forgot about that,” she said. “Maeve gave me the pouch and told me to put the amulet inside. I had no idea it contained a note. I don’t know what it means.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Greer refused to hand over the amulet, arguing that it was too dangerous for me to have my hands on it. “We need a strategy,” he said. “This isn’t a goddamn game, and if you like breathing, you’ll trust me on this.”
I did like breathing, so I relented. Everything in this strange new world knew exactly who I was and understood the magnitude of the payoff if they got their hands on the amulet—and me.
We arrived back at the house around noon. The car ride uptown felt more like a brigade rolling through a war zone as invisible eyes trained on the car from every corner of the city. Greer called in all his troops to escort us. Apparently, the sensitivity of the cargo paralleled the transport of the Hope Diamond. I’d half expected an armored car to pull up outside of Den of Oddities and Antiquities. It was only after we’d arrived at the house that he told me the amulet had been handed off to Leda and Thomas in the other car. We were the decoy.
The house was filled with familiar and unfamiliar faces throughout the afternoon. Most of them cleared out when it was decided that the amulet would be hidden in an undisclosed location until we had time to decode Maeve Kelley’s latest riddle. I’d asked to see the amulet one last time because a part of me still couldn’t believe we’d really found it. I needed to touch it again to confirm that it was real. But Greer refused to let me anywhere near it, reminding me that the scent was already on my skin and touching it again would only increase the bounty on my head.
By late afternoon, I excused myself and went to my room. But the nervous energy vibrating through me eliminated any hope for sleep. I rolled a familiar object between my fingers, carefully considering if there was any luck left to summon or if my nine lives were finally up. No more practice runs. The devil was at my feet, nibbling away at my strength like some psychic rat. I prayed for enough to be spared to get me through the last hurdle of my mother’s elaborate scavenger hunt. If the prophecy was real and we found the vessel, I promised myself I’d donate it to the Smithsonian and let them deal with the headache of trying to open it. That thought evaporated as I watched people walk down the sidewalk below my window, because like it or not, I was partially responsible for each of their lives.
The hinges on my bedroom door announced that someone had entered the room without the courtesy of a knock. I guess the closed door was nothing more than a suggestion of privacy.
It was Greer. I could smell him.
“I’m done for the day, Greer.” I continued staring out the window and didn’t bother to turn around. “If you’re here for more blood and sweat, forget it.”
I didn’t need to turn around to know his shoulders and jaw had stiffened at my assumption that I had any say so about my own free will.
“There is no done.”
I ignored his comment and kept looking out the window.
“It’s inconsiderate not to look at someone when they’re speaking to you,” he said.
“How does it feel?” I countered.
“Don’t push me, Alex. Not today.”
The door shut, and I heard some ridiculous reference to “deep kimchi.” I visualized his mouth spitting out the slang and barely curbed a snicker. “Spending a little too much time on urbandictionary.com?” The bait slipped off my tongue like mercury.
His hand gripped my upper arm while I countered with a jerk in the opposite direction. My one objective was to escape the immediate proximity of Greer Sinclair. By the sound of his voice, he was furious, and even though I thought I’d seen all the faces of Greer, I was pretty sure I was about to see a new one.
He won the tug of war. He took my arm again and turned me to face him. His expression suggested corporal punishment as he locked onto me the way a hawk targets its prey. A tremor vibrated up my arm and I realized it was coming from Greer, transmitted from his skin directly into mine. I was in trouble. But I was also thankful for the simmering temper beginning to boil under my own skin, because the anger was the only thing holding back the tears.
The anger from being manhandled interrupted my silent prayer. Touch me once without an invitation, I might forgive. Do it again, and the outcome won’t be as cordial. Those were my last thoughts before I realized I now had two predicaments to contend with: the fury of Greer, and the small object slipping from my hand.
I looked at him and froze. The darkness in his face softened and the arrogance vanished as if he’d been kicked in his precious jewels. Something stopped him like a magnet repelling against a like pole. Except for the tiny ping of the object hitting the wood floor, the room was silent. It bounced once before coming to rest on the rug. I put on my best poker face to conceal the panic pooling in my chest as my eyes scanned the floor. Satisfied that my property was still intact and within reach, I glared back up at Greer who stood motionless with the blankness of a stunned bird recovering from an unseen glass door. For a second, I thought he might sway forward and topple over like an unbalanced monolithic stone. He stepped back instead, as if the epicenter of the ping sent out a wave of aftershock pushing him to the perimeter of the room.
“It’s ivory, I think.” I’m not sure why I felt the need to explain a damn thing. And it’s mine, I almost added.
I knew little about it, only that it had brought me good luck and saved my ass at times when God knows I needed it. That little shard of white matter had served as my own personal kryptonite against the worst the devil had to offer, and I had no intention of parting with it. I’d relied on it all my life, summoning its abilities only on those rare occasions when failure was not an option. Sort of like asking the gods for help and then promising not to ask again unless life or limb depended on it. Tonight seemed as good a time as any to redeem a small favor.
“I think my mother gave it to me, but I’m not exactly sure.”
The official story involved faeries—a belief I’d grown out of until recently. I’d stood at that window moments earlier rethinking the feasibility of the story, when Greer interrupted me and set a very different scene in motion.
“Faeries,” I blurted out.
“What?” Greer’s face shot back to mine.
My mother told me that faeries had gifted it to me on the eve of my fourth birthday. I woke up the next morning with a death grip around it in my right hand. Even then, I knew it wasn’t something to fuck with. It could have been anything—a shard from a porcelain vase, a piece of broken plastic, the tooth of a giant hamster. But the feel of it told me it was much more than a piece of discarded trash. Something lived in that little sliver of an object. Its mojo was irrefutable.
I remember hanging on every word as my mother explained the care and feeding of the gift. She told me to never let it out of my sight, and to this day, I haven’t.
A nice story for a kid until you grew up and stopped believing in anything you couldn’t see or touch. I’d made peace with the fact that the magic probably existed only in my head. As long as it worked, I didn’t give a damn about the backstory. But I was beginning to reevaluate that story now that I’d come back to New York and witnessed firsthand the existence of things straight out of nightmares. I’d seen things that could suck the flesh off the bones of children and then chase it with a nice glass of wine, or have grown men pissing themselv
es in terror. Gift or not, no child should ever come face to face with one of those things. Maybe that’s why the Tooth Fairy has rules about sleeping children. A predator waits for the chase or the smell of fear; conscious children would be much too tempting.
Greer stared at the object lying on the Persian rug. If he was breathing, he did an expert job of concealing it. His eyes were so focused I’d swear he was looking straight through the wool knots, past the old wood planking, and beyond the room below. He looked terrified.
A knot formed in my stomach at the sight of Greer suspended in speechless orbit. Greer didn’t do speechless. As much as I hated to admit it, I liked the protection of that arrogance, even if it made me a bit of a hypocrite. If I was anything, I was practical.
The lines around Greer’s face slackened from lack of awareness of anything other than that small charm on the floor. He stood stone-faced and still as a pillar. I began to wonder if Medusa was standing behind me, hair blazing with knotted serpents, waiting in line with the rest of them for the chance at getting her hands on the amulet—and me. I refused to look.
The air finally expelled from Greer’s lungs as the blank void in his eyes shifted, as if an old forgotten thought had finally caught up and clicked into perspective.
“Greer? Are you all right?”
“Bone,” he said, still staring down at the smooth object showing a bit of yellowing from age. “It’s bone.”
I glanced at the object I’d held in my hands for the better part of my life, often pressing it against my lips while I prayed, and waited for the cold shudder to pass through me.
“Bone?” I repeated, my head cocked to one side. “What do you mean bone?”
He didn’t answer. He stepped backward with precise, calculated movements, careful not to disturb some invisible land mine. His eyes leveled on mine with a sort of reverence as he left the room. Something had changed between us. I could feel it.
Thirty minutes later, Leda and Rhom watched me devour half a pizza and two bottles of beer.
“What? I haven’t eaten all day.”
“You’re eating like a linebacker,” Leda said. “You sure you aren’t…”
My mouth shaped into a wide carol of horror. “By whom?”
The two smirked in unison. “We’re not blind, Alex,” Leda said. “I wouldn’t fault any girl for tapping that.”
“Greer’s only interested in finding his precious vessel.” I took another bite of pizza. “Strictly professional, the two of us.”
“Hhmph,” Rhom snorted.
“Maybe I’ll just go out and find myself a hot wolf. Probably appreciate me a lot more than Greer.”
Leda leaned in and nailed me with her unworldly eyes. I loved her, but sometimes she just plain scared me.
“Honey,” she said in her velvet voice, “those hounds will appreciate the hell out of you while they strip you naked and chain you to a wall. And while they do it, they’ll listen for your screams because that’s what gets their dicks hard.”
Rhom nodded in agreement. “You got that right. Fuckers are sadistic.”
“They’re not nice, Alex. They bite. They’re dogs, after all.”
Her smile lost its playfulness as her eyes dulled from emerald to dark seaweed green. Kind of like the bottom of a lake smothered with dense algae, suffocating the life out of every organism that dared to compete for landscape. How did she know the intimate habits of the Vargr? Skeletons to unearth another day.
“Dogs don’t play with their prey like cats do. They’re much more pragmatic. Once they have what they want, they’ll kill you quickly. Lucky for you.” Her sensuous lips curved back into a mischievous grin. “Better to stay with those who love you.”
“I love you, too, Leda.” I puckered my lips in a mock kiss. “And you, Rhom.” My wink was matched by an affirming growl reminding me that even though Rhom was a gentleman, he was still very much a male. No matter the species, the response to innuendo is the same.
Leda arched her back with the extension of a cheetah and suggested we grab a bottle of wine and move to the living room. They were my babysitters for the evening. Greer had no intention of letting me eat, sleep, or anything else without an escort, because it was just a matter of time before the entire city knew the amulet was back in circulation.
“Honestly guys, I’m exhausted,” I said.
“Does that mean you’re cooked for the evening?” Leda looked less than enthusiastic about ending the evening so early.
“I think so.”
Rhom stood up when I did and nodded good night to Leda. “Beddy-bye time,” he said as he took my arm and motioned toward the stairs.
I looked at the massive male standing next to me, and then turned to Leda who was wiggling her fingers bye-bye to the two of us. “Are you serious?”
“Alex, now is not the time to be shy,” he said.
“Uh-uh. Not happening.”
“Really, Alex,” Leda said, “we’re all adults here.”
I glared at her with the silent question of why—if I actually needed one—Rhom was my roommate instead of her.
“You know I adore you, Rhom,” I said as I removed his hand from my arm, “but you are not invited.”
“Alex—”
“Last time I checked, a girl had the right to decide whom she slept with.” I ended the conversation by heading for the stairs—alone. “I’ll scream very loud if anything tries to climb through my bedroom window.”
I got to my room and pulled out the MacBook Greer bought me. It was a gift I hadn’t asked for but appreciated.
Convincing him to let me keep the latest note left by my mother was an exercise in futility. He kept droning on about how the note should stay with him. In the end, we compromised on a copy—for him.
A false prophet serves no purpose.
There was no watermark or fancy stationery this time, just a note on plain white paper, with little creases where my mother had folded it into a fancy origami pouch. “I get it. It’s a secret,” I blurted at the piece of paper. But these weren’t ordinary secrets. If this was a clue to the location of the vessel, I understood the need to make it as cryptic as possible in case someone got to it before I did. I just wish I knew where to begin.
“Could really use your help here, Constantine.” The wards were up, so there was no chance of that.
The words ran through my head in a continuous loop, like a tune or a mantra, stirring something familiar in the back of my mind.
The truth lies in a spell within a spell.
I entered the last half of the note into Google. The search returned an overwhelming number of results for sites on everything from magic and spells, to song lyrics. I narrowed down the search and entered the words that kept triggering my Pavlovian reflex: a spell within a spell. Another long list of useless links came back. I was about to give up, but about three quarters of the way down the page I found what had been nagging at me. How did we ever survive without the internet?
Prophecies: A Spell Within a Spell.
As bluntly as the thing had come crashing down on me that first day at Shakespeare’s Library, a connection to my mother’s riddle screamed at me from the laptop. I remembered the book falling off the shelf and hitting me on the head. I’d read the title aloud, but it was the subtitle in smaller letters that planted itself in my subconscious.
Looks like that book found you. “So right you were, Apollo.”
The link took me to a small bookseller’s site. The details section said the book was published in 1974 and was currently out of print—and unavailable. That left only one copy that I knew of, and it had been over a week since I’d placed it back on the shelf at the shop.
“Please tell me it’s still sitting on that shelf.”
A train wreck of scenarios ran through my head. I was scheduled to work the next afternoon, but there was no way I was waiting another day to get my hands on that book. That is, if it was still there.
Two obstacles stood between me and the book
, and both were sitting downstairs. I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to slip out the back because as far as Leda and Rhom were concerned, I had no motive to leave. In fact, I had motive to stay—it was called breathing. Maybe I was a fool to even consider walking out that door, but I’d be more of a fool if I let that book disappear. I did have the option of telling Leda and Rhom about it, but they’d be on the phone with Greer in a heartbeat. The last thing I needed was the three of them bursting through the doors of Shakespeare’s Library, guns blazing, giving Katie a reason to rethink our friendship. No. I’d go solo on this one and deal with the fallout later. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
I changed into a pair of dark jeans and a black shirt. Dark clothing seemed appropriate if I wanted to increase my chances of not being noticed. They’d probably smell me before they saw me, but it couldn’t hurt. I opened the door and scanned the hallway. As expected, no one thought me stupid enough to leave. My babysitters were distracted by their conversation just enough to let me slip out the back door. Greer would have a field day with them if I didn’t make it back before he did. It did bother me to sentence them to that, but not enough to make me change my mind.
With my hands buried in my pockets, I walked down the sidewalk and tried not to look like a girl who’d just committed a crime. I must have looked back a hundred times expecting to see Greer behind me. Worst case, something else was tracking me, justifying the feeling that I was being watched. My eyes averted to the sidewalk each time a stranger passed, ignoring my instinct to vet anyone within eyesight.
A few blocks short of the bookstore, I noticed a woman walking in the same direction on the other side of the street. Nothing unusual about that, but the sound from her heels clicking against the sidewalk amplified in my ears. I’d heard that same sound thousands of times. Made it myself. But today, it was irritating in the way it bounced off the concrete with the same rhythm as a perpetual leaky faucet.
We kept our pace together as I watched her from my peripheral vision. She was striking. I’d never seen hair that color. Platinum blonde didn’t quite describe it—more like platinum platinum. But it was her eyes that hijacked my attention. If ice had a color, that would be it. Blue really, but the iciest blue I’d ever seen. The fact that I could see them from across the street was proof of that. She was at least six feet tall and dressed in all black. Only the light coloring of her hair and skin prevented her from blending into the darkness that was falling fast.
The Amulet Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 1) Page 26
