This Eternity of Masks and Shadows

by Karsten Knight

  Delphine leaned her forehead against Cairn’s. “To thirteen years of fireworks.”

  The next day, Delphine joined Cairn’s family on a sunset ride in their boat, the Lemon Shark. Even though her father spent most of his days examining rocks, Cairn never saw him happier than when he stood at the helm of the old bowrider. He accelerated up to twenty-five knots, grinning into the relentless sea wind.

  As the mainland grew smaller behind them, Ahna stared vacantly north with glazed eyes that saw something Cairn could not. Cairn reached back and squeezed her mother’s knee. “You seasick?”

  It took Ahna a few moments to register that Cairn was addressing her. “A tad.” She took a long sip from her thermos of iced tea and blinked drowsily. “I think I just need to close my eyes for a minute.”

  In the distance, Cairn spied the silhouette of Demeter Island’s lighthouse. Delphine must have been thinking about last night, too, because she pressed her leg into Cairn’s, a sultry grin spreading across her face. Cairn had spent the last twelve hours wondering when they’d be able to steal their next kiss.

  But then Delphine frowned and looked past her to the rear of the boat. “Ahna?”

  Cairn turned. Her mother stood on the stern with a small anchor clutched to her chest, hugging it like a child would a teddy bear.

  When Cairn traced the line attached to the anchor, she discovered that it was knotted around Ahna’s ankle.

  “Mom?” Cairn wasn’t sure what was going on, but she could feel her hackles rising in alarm.

  Ahna’s face still had that confused distant pall from earlier, but now her eyes brimmed with tears. When she tightened her grip on the anchor, a rivulet of blood snaked down the iron, dripping from a wound somewhere on her hands. “I have to go back to Adlivun now,” she said. Her blind gaze fell on Cairn. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  Sensing that something was amiss, Emile finally looked back from the cockpit. “Ahna? What are you doing back there?”

  His wife didn’t seem to hear him. She climbed onto the transom.

  “Mom?” Cairn repeated, this time more urgently.

  Without another word, her mother took one step off the back of the boat, still hugging the anchor, and disappeared into the sea.

  Cairn was the first to react. She dove in after her mother, entering the choppy water like a dart.

  Cairn was disoriented at first. The saltwater stung her eyes and she had to blink several times to adjust. She had landed in the boat’s wake, and it was initially impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her with the propeller churning the water. As the boat drifted farther away, she spotted the dark shape beneath her slowly spiraling into the depths.

  Cairn swam frantically downward, arm over arm, kicking with everything she had. The ocean pressed down around her, a suffocating, eerie silence as she descended. Her lungs burned and she wished she’d taken a fuller breath before she’d jumped in.

  She was close enough to make out the features of her mother’s face now. Ahna had released the anchor, letting it drag her down, and as she stared dreamily up toward her daughter, Cairn fought through the fatigue in her muscles, ignoring the black spots that peppered her vision, resisting the urge to open her mouth and gasp for oxygen that wasn’t available.

  They were four lengths apart, three lengths, two lengths. Cairn wriggled the last few feet and her fingertips hooked onto her mother’s. One last kick and she’d be close enough to grab her by the wrist.

  And then the unthinkable happened. Her descent came to an abrupt stop. Her body jerked hard in the water as some unseen force pulled on the waistband of her shorts. Ahna’s fingertips slipped from her grasp.

  Against her will, Cairn rose back toward the surface, away from her mother, watching in horror as Ahna’s mouth opened, letting the brine rush into her lungs. The bubbles of her last breath floated past Cairn, who released a muffled, tortured scream into the water, all the while trying to fight her way back to Ahna. Cairn thrashed wildly until her rescuer’s elbow accidentally struck the side of her head, subduing her.

  In the stunned vacuum that followed, she stopped screaming and watched her mother vanish into the depths, the whites of Ahna’s unseeing eyes the last thing to be swallowed by the dark.

  Cairn breached the surface with Delphine, who hugged her torso with one arm and used the other to paddle hard, keeping them both afloat. She sobbed and drew in a deep breath, preparing to submerge again, but Delphine’s hold on her tightened. “No, Cairn!” she shouted into her waterlogged ears. “I’m sorry. She’s gone.”

  “There’s still time,” Cairn pleaded. “There’s still …” But the last word eluded her as she collapsed into anguished tears, her rag-doll body quaking, all the fight drained from her. Her father screamed hysterically as he turned the boat around, but Cairn couldn’t hear him. She hardly noticed the life preserver land in the water next to them.

  “I won’t lose you, too,” Delphine said, her voice quivering. Unexpectedly, she began to hum a lullaby to Cairn while her father tugged them both back toward the boat. As shock cascaded in from all sides, as Cairn stared at the now still spot in the water where Ahna vanished into the wake, she thought that her friend was wrong: Delphine had already lost her.

  Because the girl they pulled from the water that day was just a wispy, fragile husk of the one who dived in.

  The Trafficker

  One Night Earlier

  As the private elevator rocketed up to the sixtieth-floor penthouse, Sedna adjusted the briefcase cuffed to her wrist. Two burly enforcers flanked her on either side, their holsters peeking out from beneath their suit jackets.

  It was a typical Friday night.

  Sedna caught one of the linebackers sizing up her reflection in the stainless-steel doors. Maybe he had a librarian fetish and was crushing on her pantsuit and horn-rimmed glasses.

  Or maybe he was fantasizing about ways to abscond with the ten-million-dollar painting secured to her arm.

  Sedna unpinned the boutonniere from her lapel and cleared her throat. “Well, boys, I’d love to keep you both, but this is my final rose, and unfortunately one of you will be going home tonight.” She turned dramatically to the neckless mercenary on the left. “I’m sorry, I’m just looking for a man who’s a little more … serious.”

  Both ogres regarded her emotionlessly. She pivoted to the one on her right. “Quite frankly, I expected you to be more enthusiastic. Now I’m second-guessing my decision.”

  Quiet, except for the lethargic melody of saxophone jazz over the speakers.

  She was saved from further awkward silence as the elevator chimed, announcing their arrival at the top floor. The doors parted and she stepped into a lavishly decorated antechamber, closely shadowed by her two mountainous escorts. A woman with ramrod posture and tightly braided red hair blocked her path. “Arms out,” she ordered.

  Sedna stared blankly at the ceiling while the head of security frisked her, hands invasively patting under her arms, around the waistband of her pants, down the inseam of her leg, and into the ankles of her boots. Meanwhile, one of the male guards waved a metal detector over her limbs. The wand chirped erratically when it passed the briefcase. He narrowed his eyes at her.

  “It’s a Rembrandt worth more than this penthouse,” she explained flatly. “Did you expect me to pack it in a plastic lunchbox?”

  “That will be enough, Brigid,” a man with an Italian accent ordered from the room beyond. “Let’s show our guest some Venetian hospitality, no?”

  Grudgingly, the female mercenary swept her arm toward the door with all the warmth of an iceberg.

  Although Sedna had seen blueprints of Boston’s highest, most expensive penthouse before her arrival, she was unprepared for the sense of awe she felt entering the Olympus suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a surreal view of the city, its skyscrapers backlit dramatically against the dusk sky. The graceful blue curve of the Charles River snaked its way out to the harbor and the Atlantic beyond.


  What little wall space existed between the windows housed a museum-worthy collection of Renaissance paintings—a Botticelli, a Verrocchio, a Bellini—as well as some random artifacts, including a suit of samurai armor gripping a katana, its blade speckled with dried blood. Aside from the priceless artwork, the penthouse had been decorated sparsely so as not to distract from the view, just a handful of minimalist furniture intended more for feng shui than comfort.

  The room’s least attractive feature: its owner. Carmine de Fiore set down his glass of wine and rose from his chair, smoothing out the wrinkles in his suit. A lifetime of high-speed thrill-seeking had recessed his hairline three inches and permanently slicked back what remained. His olive skin had been rendered ruddy and loose from overindulgence.

  “Would you be offended if I asked you to remove your shoes?” Carmine gestured to the faded rug in the entertaining area. “This once belonged to Louis XIII in the Palace of Versailles, when the estate was but a hunting lodge.”

  “Of course,” Sedna replied. “Preserving antiquity is my life’s work.” She left her boots back on the marble floor and padded gingerly onto the carpet.

  Carmine clasped her hand in his sweaty grip, his beady eyes roaming unashamedly down her body. “I hope you take this as a compliment, but when I think of art brokers, I picture men as ancient as the paintings they auction. You don’t look a day over forty.”

  Sedna suppressed a shiver of revulsion. So he was a misogynist and a shithead. Still, she smiled primly on the outside. “Art is blind to age. Michelangelo was only fifteen when he painted Madonna of the Steps. You’re never too young to do what you love. Or to profit from it.”

  “Sage words.” He released her hand and gestured for her to take a seat in one of the leather settees. “Well, youth be damned, you come highly recommended from my old friend Janus. I’ve heard the Vermeer you sold him was positively stunning.”

  Sedna remembered Janus howling for mercy as she dangled him off the edge of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, pleading that he would do anything she wanted. “Our negotiations escalated a little higher than I think he was comfortable with,” she said, “but we ultimately reached a compromise that didn’t let him down.”

  Sedna pressed her thumb to a scanner on her handcuffs and the briefcase detached with a hiss. She set it on the coffee table between them. As she reclined into the stiff chesterfield, she noted that Carmine’s security team had fanned out around the room. Brigid lurked so closely behind her that Sedna could smell the patchouli cigarettes on the woman’s breath.

  Sedna cleared her throat. “Before we begin negotiations, I just wanted to go over a few boring technical details and ground rules. First off, I think it’s only fair to mention the bomb in my briefcase.”

  She had barely finished her sentence before the guards drew their weapons, safeties clicking off. Brigid clamped her hands down on Sedna’s shoulders. Carmine paused with his wine goblet halfway raised to his lips.

  Sedna winced and mouthed oops. “It’s just a teensy bomb,” she clarified, holding her thumb and pointer finger an inch apart. “It’s connected to a vitals monitor on my wrist. If my heart rate should stop or rise above one hundred beats per minute—for instance, if you were to try to torture me, or I feel threatened—then the charges will incinerate the painting inside and probably take most of your face with it.” She let that sink in. “So now would probably be a good time for your men to lower their weapons and your chief of security to take her hands off of me, unless she intends to give me a deep-tissue massage, in which case: she may proceed.”

  Carmine eyed Sedna warily. “Someone has trust issues.”

  Sedna glared right back. “Says the man who needs three bodyguards to protect him from a girl who’s barely five-foot-two in three-inch heels.”

  After a tense moment, Carmine laughed hoarsely and applauded. “I like this woman.” He nodded to his guards and they reluctantly holstered their sidearms. The pressure on her shoulders abated, though she could still sense Brigid menacing behind her.

  “Perhaps some ’84 Sangiovese would keep your blood pressure down?” Carmine asked. Without waiting for her response, he poured a second glass. “It’s from a villa in Tuscany that has been in the de Fiore family for nineteen generations.”

  The transmitter hidden in Sedna’s ear crackled to life. “Sedna,” Vulcan’s deep voice said. “I’ve breached the penthouse’s firewall. I also analyzed the flight path of the helicopter that just took off from the buyer’s yacht. Its current trajectory seems to be headed straight toward your location.”

  Sedna’s pulse quickened. She glanced up toward the roof of the Millennium Tower above them. Until now, she had assumed Carmine was keeping the girl off-site somewhere and they planned to make the exchange out on international waters. But if the chopper was coming directly to his private helipad—

  Sedna leaned forward and nonchalantly pressed her hands to the surface of the coffee table. She tuned out the drone of Carmine name-dropping celebrities who’d visited his family vineyard and willed her pulse quieter. Using her sonar abilities, she traced the vibrations down the coffee table legs, into the floor, across the hardwood, and to the northeast corner of the room. From the nature of the sounds she was hearing, she detected a hollow space behind the bookshelf, likely a small panic room.

  In her mind’s eye, the vibrations coalesced from static into real noise. What she heard next was heavily distorted with interference, but nonetheless chilling:

  The muffled sobs of a girl.

  This brazen asshole was keeping her inside his own penthouse.

  Sedna’s skin went cold. Her fingers tightened around the stem of the wine glass.

  “So, shall we bypass the small talk and begin negotiations?” Carmine asked. “I am prepared to offer four million for the Storm on the Sea of Galilee.” He must have misread the fury sweeping over Sedna’s face, because he added, “I know this is significantly lower than you anticipated, but with the FBI still searching for it, I think you will find few collectors willing to risk housing a painting acquired through ‘less-than-legitimate’ means, shall we say?”

  Before Sedna could reply, Vulcan’s voice came back over the transmitter. “Wrap it up and get the hell out of there. I’ll anonymously forward the evidence we have to the police. Let them finish this.”

  But he should have known she had no intention of leaving. Even if this weren’t personal, they’d run out of time. Over the thrum of blood pounding in her ears, she heard a new sound: an approaching helicopter. The whir grew louder as it descended onto the helipad above.

  “Ahna …” Vulcan pleaded one last time, using her mortal name.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ll tell you what: I’ll give you the painting for one.”

  Carmine’s beady eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You want to take one million when I just offered you four? Is this some backwards American negotiation technique? Nevertheless, I accept your price.”

  Sedna shook her head. “I didn’t mean one million dollars. I meant one life.” She nodded to the bookshelf. “The life of Senator Ra’s fifteen-year-old daughter. The one you kidnapped and are currently holding in your panic room.”

  The guards drew their weapons again. Brigid dug her talons deeper into Sedna’s flesh. “Boy, your entourage really isn’t getting the whole ‘heart rate–triggered bomb’ concept.” Sedna glared over her shoulder at Brigid. “If this goes south, I’ll make you hurt first.”

  This time, Carmine didn’t instruct his men to stand down. “Who are you?” he demanded. “FBI? Interpol?”

  “Freelance.” Sedna clapped her hands together. “Look, we’re running short on time so I’m going to lay it all out for you. You disgust me. You’re a Roman messenger god who makes a living trafficking the innocent children of other gods to wealthy perverts—if I had my way, I’d shatter one of these windows, cast you out into the night, and listen for the splat you made on Washington Street six-point-four seconds later. But righ
t now, my biggest concern is ensuring that Dima Ra spends tonight tucked into her own bed, at home, instead of gagged on the yacht of some rich asshole with a demigod fetish. So here’s my final offer: You give me the girl and a list of all the associates you’ve ever transacted with. In return, I give you and your three associates a twenty-four-hour head start before I experiment with how aerodynamic you are during free fall.”

  “Counteroffer,” Carmine snapped. “I sell you with Dima as part of a buy-one-get-one-free offer to the most depraved warlord in my Rolodex and teach you what happens to people who interfere with my enterprises.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “And before you mention the bomb in your briefcase one more time, let me inform you that I think you’re full of shit. In fact, I think I’ll call your bluff right now. Brigid, scare our guest’s heart rate up into the danger zone so we can see what happens.”

  Brigid’s fingers twisted into the muscle just above Sedna’s collarbone. It took all of Sedna’s resolve not to squirm, but she kept her expression steely. “Why bother to go to all that effort when you can just voice-activate the explosives with a simple password. All you have to do”—she spread her hands—“is say your name.”

  Carmine studied Sedna’s face, trying to read her the same way he expertly deciphered his opponents at the baccarat tables. Then he brought his lips close to the briefcase, bloodshot eyes still pinned on Sedna as he deliberately pronounced each syllable: “Carmine … Giancarlo … de Fiore.”

  One of the guards by the window shrank back, and Sedna felt even Brigid flinch. But nothing happened.

  “Not your birth name,” Sedna corrected Carmine. “Your true name.”

  Carmine’s voice boomed arrogantly through the room. “I am the overseer of trade, the patron of all merchants who stand to gain. I am the fleet-footed messenger whose speed no cheetah nor train can match. I am the protector of travelers, gamblers, liars, and thieves, and he who accompanies souls to the underworld. I am a god on the Roman council of twelve, the cleverest member of the Dii Consente. I … am … Mercury!”