by Chant, Zoe
It was just after seven Chicago time, which meant it was just after five on the west coast. Rigo watched Godiva thumb away at the phone, her expressive face changing rapidly from apology to concentration. She was adorable at any time, but especially with that little grin curving her lips.
Then she looked up, her eyes shining. “I forgot about time zones, but Jen says that if we’ve got a possible piece of the Long Cang mess, she’d pick us up even if it was the crack of doom.”
“Crack of doom?” three people said at the same time.
“Crack of dawn, I know. Crack of doom?” Alejo asked.
“What else but three a.m.,” Godiva said. “Think about it. Is it ever good to be woken at three a.m.? Anyway, she’ll Transfer Gate us at six-thirty her time, which gives us a little over an hour to pack up and get one of those fabulous breakfasts at the B&B.”
Lance shook his head. “Much as I’d love to join you, I need to get back up into town before ten.”
“And we’ve got to get our evidence turned in,” Kaydi stated. “There’s probably a team waiting for these books right now.” She cracked her knuckles. “The customers in these ledgers will very shortly be receiving visits. It’ll be all hands on deck for even the freelance agents,” she added, turning Alejo’s way.
“You know where to find me,” Alejo said, waving his phone.
Everyone said their farewells and thanks, then the Guardian agent took the ancient book back, and the two groups parted.
Rigo reveled in walking with his son and his mate. The ordinary world around them felt new-made. Even the heat was merely warmth, the sun glorious in its summer brightness, the colors truer and purer. Godiva had determinedly—gleefully—torn down that wall of hurt anger that had separated them, freeing the mate bond to reach between them, shining and golden. Though he was not sure that she was aware of it yet. The completed bond, at last, was new enough to him!
He remained silent, listening contentedly to Godiva’s and Alejo’s chatter as the three of them walked back to the B&B. “ . . . and maybe it’s the mystery writer in me,” she was saying, “but I want to know everything about that book. Where he got it. How. What’s going to happen to it. Is it going to disappear into some shifter secret vault?”
“If there is such a thing, it’s probably high in the northern mountains of China, where the empress reigns,” Alejo said. “And that’s just a guess. I don’t know much more about the empress beyond the fact that she exists. And communicates with the Guardians.”
“According to something Doris said, Bird’s husband Mikhail is one of her knights,” Godiva commented.
Alejo whistled. “You’ve been hanging out in some exalted company!”
“And I didn’t even know it. I used to think he reminded me of one of King Arthur’s knights. Turns out I wasn’t so far off.” She uttered her raspy cackle that Rigo found so endearing. He could never get enough of her laughter. Of her.
Then she switched tracks, still quick as a hummingbird. “So, do you think your Guardian posse will get Barth to talk? I’m not saying I want him to be tortured, because that would be very bad. But I hope at least he rates a dreary prison cell of some kind, and a very uninspired cook for meals.”
Rigo shrugged, smiling. “You know I’m a latecomer and an outsider, as far as the shifter world is concerned. Everything I know pretty much came from Alejo, other than what that old shaman told me, years and years ago.”
Alejo was laughing. “It’s not like there’s a secret republic of shifters. Many have no idea of the existence of other shifters outside of their community or family, much less knowing anything about the Guardians. As for interrogating the likes of Barth, I’m told there are people with talents—magical or otherwise—who’re good at getting info. And no ice-cold dental equipment or waterboarding required. Then they try to rehabilitate anyone who can be rehabilitated. Those who won’t, or can’t, and whose crimes reach into both worlds, they dose with specially treated shiftsilver, and turn them over to the human authorities.”
“Shiftsilver?” Godiva repeated.
“Easiest answer is, think of it as kryptonite. In fact, I should tell you another friend’s theory about how the origin of Superman was related to shifters, but that can wait . . .”
That can wait.
Rigo relished the ease with which Alejo said such simple words. They meant so much. The three of them were a family at last.
“ . . . this type of shiftsilver keeps us bound in whatever shape we’re in when it touches us, but it also dampens powers.”
“Powers?” Godiva repeated. “Oh! Like Rigo’s evil eye thing.” Her small hand, tucked into the crook of his arm, tugged him closer.
“Well, that’s part of dad’s basilisk, but some have powers beyond what their animal is equipped with by nature. You can call it energy, or qi, as some do, and there are all kinds of theories on how powers work. But I’m totally comfortable with the word magic,” Alejo said.
“I am as well,” Rigo said. “My first electric lights looked like magic to me. I had no idea how electricity worked. Of course I learned. And there is surely some similar explanation for Transfer Gates and all the rest, but. . .” He shrugged. “Magic, power, energy, source, it all pretty much means the same thing to me.”
“Humph!” Godiva snorted. “To me magic suggests magic wands. If there is one, I have a list of things to magically transform, beginning with my trick knee. And ending with turning that Barth into a petunia. But until such time, here we are. Let’s eat—and start translating.”
She brandished her phone. “We don’t need the antidote to the zombie spell since the dog whistles apparently work fine. We should probably concentrate on this new one Long Cang bought. At least from the brevity of this handwriting, these are recipes, and not academic papers complete with ten pages of footnotes.”
They paid up, then asked for their breakfast to be delivered up to the little balcony outside Rigo’s room, which had a table and three chairs. There, working with Godiva’s laptop and a tablet of lined paper she carried everywhere, they got to work, everyone taking different words to hunt down.
They had translated most of the words, but were trying to puzzle out the sense of them when Godiva’s phone lit up with a text from Jen saying she was ready.
Godiva took a picture of the floor at their feet and sent it. Seconds later, tall, blond Jen appeared, bringing a current of air that carried a tang of sea breeze.
Rigo saw Jen’s eyes widen as she took them all in. Then Godiva said proudly, “You already met Rigo. This is Alejo, my—our son.”
Jen looked from one to the other again, and this time she smiled. “I’m really glad you found him. And that things are . . .”
“Good,” Godiva stated. “Real good. Five humina-huminas good since yesterday.”
“Mom!” Alejo clapped a hand over his face. “If that means what I think it means, that’s way too much information!”
“You have a very dirty mind, son,” Godiva said, patting him on the shoulder. “You take after me.” Her grin faded, and she turned to Jen. “We’re ready to go. But we didn’t finish translating.”
“Everybody is waiting at Bird and Mikhail’s,” Jen said. “Including a friendly classics professor willing to be rousted out of bed by Joey Hu.”
Alejo got up, bent and enveloped his mother’s small frame in a tight hug. Then he let her go, saying, “Here’s where I take off, then. Dad, if you’ll hand off the keys to the Phantom, I’ll drive it home.”
Rigo looked at Godiva’s wistful eyes, but then she blinked and smiled. “We’ll catch you later, right? Soon?”
“You’ve got to come and see the ranch as soon as you kick Long Cang’s ass,” Alejo said. “Call me tomorrow.”
“That’s a promise,” Godiva said stoutly. But her eyes followed him as he gave them all a wave and went out the door.
Then she turned, her hand stealing into Rigo’s. His heart constricted when he felt the tremble in her fingers. But all she s
aid was, “Okay, Jen, how do we do this?”
“You just have to stand there,” Jen said. “I will warn you, most people say it feels kind of like missing a step while getting an invisible punch. In an ice storm. For a few seconds. But the reaction goes away.”
She had to take them through one at a time, so Godiva volunteered to go first. Rigo let go her hand. She tugged her suitcase next to her, clapped her hand to her new hat as if it would be taken away, and in a flicker the two vanished, leaving him alone in the room.
He shut his eyes, and there, vividly imprinted against his eyelids, was Godiva last night, her heart in her wide black eyes as she stood outside the door to her room across the way, and said, Would you like to come in?
A whoosh of air and Jen was back, breaking the memory. Rigo stood where he was, gear over his shoulder, as Jen clapped his arm and he staggered. Her warning was no exaggeration; he stepped onto what he recognized as the garden terrace with the gazebo at Mikhail’s grand house. A shiver ran through him.
As he blinked away the reaction, he wondered what Godiva had said in the few seconds they were parted. The first time he met her posse, they’d looked at him like he was a giant cockroach. The second time, on this same terrace right before he and Godiva left on their trip, they had regarded him with polite neutrality. But this time their welcome was as genuine as their smiles.
Godiva stretched out her hand to him, and when he went to her, she patted the bench next to her, scooting close so they could sit hip to hip.
Joey Hu said to Rigo, “First thing to report will probably come as no surprise: some of our LA connections checked the address you texted us, but Cang’s house was empty. We think he has several lairs.”
Joey turned to face the group, and indicated a short, round woman with curly hair. “This is Sara Greenbaum, who specializes in Renaissance History.”
Doris, on Godiva’s other side, whispered behind her hand to Godiva and Rigo, “Raccoon shifter.”
While Sara looked over the translation papers that Godiva had stuffed into her purse, Godiva leaned forward. “Do you know how Long Cang would have connected up with Barth? Is there like a Scumbag Central Clearing House where villains can go shopping for evil?” Godiva asked.
Joey Hu said, “Not that I know of . . . Mikhail?”
The quiet imperial knight said, “My understanding is that there are various attempts to establish something like that. But from what we have been able to discover, those trying to form a shifter version of the Dark Net either require loyalty—stringently enforced—or else something equally valuable in trade. Ones such as this Barth are usually solo operators, making them much harder to find.”
Joey spoke up. “Bringing us back to Cang. Our plan to insert Caleb and Bryony—one of Nikos’s hetairoi—into Long Cang’s minions has been pretty successful. Neither of them has been able to get near Long Cang or his captains yet, but last night Bryony overheard mention of the latest plan, which we figure was put together as soon as Cang received the new charm.”
Mikhail said, “Tomorrow.”
Godiva flashed a glance up at Rigo, and he knew what she was thinking: just in time.
At that moment, Sara looked up from the translation papers. “Nice job here, whoever did this. You only misinterpreted a few words. What you call the zombie spell, which is here termed ‘A Call to Obedience,’ is centered around sound, as you already know. This new spell is complicated by the fact that it does two things, both centered around scent.”
“What are they?” Joey asked.
Sara winced. “There is both an effect on the user and on those around the user, and as such, it’s especially vicious. It purports to give the target super-strength, but at the risk of their lives. While under its influence, they have about an hour to use every reserve they have. As for everyone around them, the scent coming off the user will deaden their senses for a few seconds, making the user effectively invisible as they pass by. Unless you’re really looking for them—or in this case, expecting the scent.”
“Most invisibility charms really just distract attention another way,” Mikhail said. “And so can be broken.”
Joey nodded, then said, “As for the risk of that second charm, my guess is, Long Cang won’t tell his hirelings about it.”
Bird spoke up, clearly upset. “Most of his hirelings are barely out of their teens. Messed-up, maybe, but they’re still really kids.”
“The red dragon doesn’t care,” Mikhail said shortly. “Even when he fought as one of us, back in his Guardian days, he had a tendency to shrug off the cost of battle, regarding what he called foot soldiers as expendable.”
“A dead twenty-year-old can’t exactly come back to complain about being betrayed by their own side,” Doris commented.
“What can we do?” Bird asked, clasping her hands. “Didn’t Caleb say that Cang’s underlings are being told to gather tonight?”
“Yes. They are to deploy in the morning,” Joey said.
Sara counted to herself, then looked up. “The timing is right. If Long Cang received this new recipe yesterday, it takes twenty-four hours to prepare.”
“Then we’re out of time.” Bird looked alarmed.
“Not if there’s a chance of getting hold of some of it,” Sara said. “The antidote is actually based on the mixture for the charm. If there’s some way to obtain some of it, it looks like doctoring it for the antidote will only take a couple of hours.”
“I don’t think Caleb is equipped to try something as dangerous as stealing it.” Now it was Doris’s turn to look worried. “He’s a student. His skills are pretty much maxed out following Cang’s minions, who are not the brightest crayons in the box.”
Nikos looked up. “Leave infiltration to Bryony. She lives for this kind of mission.”
Joey was working at his phone. “Let’s see if we can get her some backup . . .”
Godiva got to her feet, pointing to her suitcase. “In that case, I may as well go—” She halted, then turned to Rigo. “We should go.”
Rigo sensed question in her searching look. He murmured for her ear only, “If it’s a hassle right now, I can camp at the motel again.”
She replied with a wicked grin, “I’ve got one word for you: waterbed.”
He whispered back, “Andale.”
Chapter 17
GODIVA
They took a Lyft.
There wasn’t much talk on the short ride to Godiva’s place. Her mind was working rapidly, but she didn’t think it was rapid enough. Things had changed so fast! It felt very weird to be taking Rigo to her house, but at the same time it felt so very right. She caught herself mentally reorganizing her bureau, her study—maybe he’d like his own study—or a workroom—waitaminnit, he has an entire ranch.
In Kentucky.
How were they going to do this? Though he could turn people into stone with his eyes, he couldn’t do what Jen did. High on Godiva’s mental To Do list was to make up for lost time going horizontal with Rigo, and she could feel that he was all over this plan, but. Godiva was NOT about to ask Jen to Transfer Gate them back and forth between Kentucky and California every time they wanted some whoopie on the waterbed.
When they got to the house, it was empty—not surprisingly, the houseguests were all at work, or doing other things. She wasn’t too disappointed. Part of her was ready to show him off, but some instinct kept poking at her, as if it was all too easy. Or that she’d forgotten something. She needed Rigo and herself to be completely on the same page before she faced the world again.
“This is my suite over this way, in the oldest part of the house,” she said when they entered. She was aware of her voice coming out a little too fast and a little too high, as if she were eighteen and inexperienced all over again. “You can stay with me—plenty of space—or there are two extra guestrooms right now. I added on twice, joining an old adobe cottage to the main house, and then a new wing with a modern kitchen and laundry room and the living room. The original house plan
had a fireplace there—no stove, just a hook for a cauldron and a spit. Here we are,” she finished, after opening all the various doors.
She turned to find him standing in the doorway, looking at her with concern. “Godiva, it’s okay. Everything is okay. We can take things as slow as you want.”
“I want—I want it all now,” she said, crossing her arms tightly. “I want to make up for everything that was taken away from us. I want . . .” She paused, searching for words, then noticed his eyes drop to her arms, then raise, his concern bordering on worry.
She yanked her arms apart, then sighed. “We’re good, aren’t we? Are you worried, or is that my imagination?”
The worry subsided as he came forward and put his arms around her, drawing her close. Her ear pressed against his chest, and she listened to the steady bump-bump of his heart, then breathed out a sigh. “You’re not imagining anything,” he said. “You can sense me, and I can sense you. It’s part of the mate bond.”
“Mate bond?” she said. “Like . . . oh, crapberries, you can’t read my mind, can you? You really don’t want to be in there!”
“I can’t,” he said. “Only your moods. Some shifters can talk mind to mind. We might get there. If you want to. It’s all new for me, too.”
“I’ve been feeling as if I could suss out your moods for days.”
“Probably you can,” he said easily. “it’s different for everyone, so I’m told.”
She drew him to the bed, and they sat down side by side. “Did you always have this bond and I didn’t know?”
“We,” he corrected gently.
“We. I’m trying to get used to that,” she said. “I’ve only been a ‘we’ for spurts here and there, long ago.”
“You were repeatedly abandoned by those you loved most,” he said in a low voice. She could feel his regret. “All for reasons that seemed right at the time, but there you were. Alone. Doing the best you could.”
“Maybe that’s why I hate saying goodbye,” she said. “Welp! I’ve got you back. And Alejo, a twofer! But tell me more about that—uh, our mate bond. So you can’t read my messy mind, hallelujah, but you still were . . . monitoring me somehow from a distance?”