I shifted. And spun as fast as I could in a body I wasn’t that familiar with. The net that barely enclosed me as a twelve-foot shark seemed huge as a thirteen-inch fish. I swam with all the speed I could muster.
The diver had watched my transformation calmly, not seeming the least bit surprised to see a shark turn into a small fish. As I swam toward the back of the net, he made a quick hand movement. The net closed around my smaller body as tightly as it had around my larger one.
Shift again, I told myself. A net drawn tight around a corbina-sized body would surely tear with something the size of a large shark in it. Except there was magic in this net. Magic everywhere in the water. And when I tried to shift, nothing happened.
Bridget’s body floated above me, rising slowly toward the surface. Not one of the divers paid any attention to her. Was it their mission to kill the sea witch and now that it was done their work was finished?
The divers gathered in a loose group and began swimming parallel to the shore. The diver who’d caught the Great White now tied a knot in the net holding the little corbina. He tied the net to his weight belt, taking me with him.
Why not set the little fish free? What point was there in keeping me in the net and taking me with them?
A hard, dark thought hit me. What if it wasn’t Bridget they were after? What if they were just getting her out of the way?
What if the true target was me?
Chapter 21
I had time to think about the question as the divers swam toward wherever they were headed. Why would anyone go to all this trouble to capture me? The only answer I could come up with was to get their grubby little hands on the chalice and the blade.
Except that hardly anyone knew I’d been involved in retrieving the chalice and Dee with getting the blade and could draw the reasonable conclusion that I had one or both or knew where they were.
I couldn’t see The Gate going to all this trouble to get them, and I couldn’t at all see him putting Bridget in jeopardy. There was only one answer that made sense. Except that the answer made no sense at all.
We’d reached our destination, to judge by the divers standing and walking through the last of the surf up toward a beach. The diver who held the net had kept it in the water, which let me keep breathing. But we were going to run out of water soon.
The diver walked out of the water onto the beach. I gasped and struggled for breath now that we were out of the ocean.
“I’m going to dump you on the sand,” the diver said, holding the net up so he and I were eye level. “If I were you, I’d shift to human in a hurry.”
He undid the knot at the top of the net and turned it over. I fell through the air and landed with a thump on the wet sand at the shoreline, still gasping for air.
I shifted and pulled to my feet as quickly as I could, to get a sense of what I was up against. We were in a narrow, sandy cove. Ragged, brown hills surrounded the cove on three sides. I had no idea where I was and couldn’t see a trail or road or any way out of the cove.
The divers seemed pretty unconcerned that I might run back into the water, shift back to shark and simply swim away from them. They were stripping off their wetsuits and toweling dry with towels evidently left here for them. The divers were male and young enough to still look a little androgynous. A pile of clothes lay in the sand. Each man sorted through and found his own. No one seemed to care that I was shivering in the sudden cold or that I was naked. They paid practically no attention to me at all.
I ran for the water.
And hadn’t gotten a full step when something invisible fell over me and I couldn’t move.
The diver who’d held me in his net in the water now walked around in front of me on the sand. “Stupid girl. Did you think we’d let someone like you have the chance to run or work any magic on us? You can’t escape, so best you give up all those ideas right now. Nod if you understand.”
I wasn’t sure I could nod. I was halted in mid-step. I tried though and found my head was moveable, even if none of the rest of me was.
“Good,” he said and raised his hand high as if signaling to someone a distance away. Someone who watched and waited.
The spell fell away and I could move again.
“Here,” the diver said and handed me a large towel.
I took it without comment and dried myself off, then wrapped the towel around me.
The sound of small rocks and gravel tumbling down the hillside caught my attention. I turned and stared at the hill where the soil had crumbled and a ragged opening appeared. The door-like opening was lit from behind and seemed to stretch a long way back. A woman stepped out. No, not a woman. Not really. And not someone I was all that surprised to see.
“Modis,” I said. “You went through a lot of trouble to get me here.”
Modis stepped out of the opening and onto the narrow, crescent-shaped beach. It wore a dark green caftan that almost completely hid its body, and the feminized face it had worn at my house the morning it’d first appeared to my parents and me. Modis carried some neatly folded fabric in its arms, something dark blue and gauzy.
“For you,” it said, thrusting the fabric toward me. “You’ll be more comfortable dressed. Humans, I’ve noticed, often feel awkward without clothing to armor them against the elements—and the eyes of others.”
I held the towel closed around me with one hand and took the clothes with the other. A shirt and pants. Dark blue and gauzy but not see-through which was good since Modis hadn’t included a bra or underwear. I dropped the towel and put on the clothes—the divers be damned.
The fit was a little big but close enough. I did feel more comfortable and less vulnerable.
“Please,” Modis said smiling broadly, “come inside.”
Said the spider to the fly.
Modis stepped back into the opening. I followed it into a deep cave in the hillside.
The rugged hill, I saw now, wasn’t a hill at all but a hollow construction. Magic pinged at my senses. It was all around us but seemed to be concentrated in a tube I saw above us. I yelped when we started to rise in that tube of magical energy, zinging toward the top of the hill, which I could see solidly above us.
We didn’t slow or stop as we approached. I instinctively ducked my head when we were about to hit.
The hilltop opened and we emerged in a large living room with a huge wall of glass that showed the ocean and sky outside. I shot my gaze down to the beach. The divers were climbing into a boat, evidently set to go back out to deep water. For a split second, we hovered in the air. Then my feet touched a solid, hardwood floor.
Modis gestured to a long—maybe ten-foot—black, linen couch that faced the glass wall. “Please.”
Other than the couch, the room was empty. No painting or photographs broke the long expanses of white walls. Modis’ dark green caftan, the deep blue of the clothes I wore, and the black couch were the only bits of color in the room.
I sat on the couch, close to one end. Modis sat more toward the middle, a good four feet away from me. Distance was good.
Modis sighed deeply but didn’t speak. It relaxed into the couch and watched the view beyond the glass. Two brown pelicans flew past.
“Why have you brought me here?” I asked, breaking the silence.
Modis turned its head slowly toward me. “I wanted to thank you in person for recovering the chalice.”
“You know where I live. You could have come to my house to thank me.”
Modis nodded slightly. “True. True. But this way I don’t have to worry about the rules of hospitality.”
I swallowed hard. Among the magical, the rule was a guest could not attack his or her host unless the host attacked first. Breaking the rule would get you ostracized from the community at the least and your magic stripped away. It could earn you a long stint in jail, or execution if you’d severely hurt or killed your guest. It wasn’t a rule to break lightly, and so Modis hadn’t—a precaution it wouldn’t have to take if it only
had good intentions.
“Did you bring me here to harm me?” I asked.
Modis waved a hand in the air. “No. Nothing like that. I would like you to stay a while, as my guest, and talk with me about the chalice and the blade. Where are they now?”
My mind spun. I couldn’t say they were with anyone who’d been involved with the hunt. I didn’t want Modis to snatch my mother, grandmother, Diego, or his friend, Drake. I couldn’t say the items were with The Gate and put him in a vulnerable spot.
Then I had it.
“I gave them to Bridget, the sea witch, for safe keeping. She clouded my eyes so I couldn’t see exactly what she did with them. I think she might have handed them off to some selkies.”
Modis frowned. “You were instructed to bring them to me.”
I’d already thought about the eventuality of this question and had my excuse ready. I cast my gaze down, as if embarrassed. “I lost the device you gave me to call you. Having Bridget hide the artifacts until I could figure out a way to get in touch with you seemed wise in light of my mother’s house being invaded by some sort of smoke-shifters who wanted the chalice and the blade.”
If Modis was surprised by this information, it didn’t show.
“In that light, it seems a wise decision,” it said. “Where are the artifacts now?”
“We could ask Bridget, but your divers killed her,” I said calmly though an angry heat was burning inside me.
Modis looked down at its lap. “I know. I’m sorry about that. The one who is responsible will be severely punished.”
“He should be,” I said. “Because now, the only person who knew where the artifacts are can’t tell us.”
“If she was, indeed,” Modis said slowly, “the only one who knew. If she gave them to some selkies, it shouldn’t be hard to find out which ones. There aren’t that many.”
Had my lie just put the selkies in danger? A change of subject seemed like a good idea right about now.
“Have new Keepers been named?”
“Not yet,” it said. “I’m responsible for safeguarding the artifacts until they can be given to their new Keepers.”
I nodded. My psychic talents didn’t extend to mind reading non-humans, but Modis was clearly full of shit.
“Has there been any progress on discovering who killed Hugo Bernard and the fairy guardian?” I asked.
“The Gate has been released,” Modis said. “As I’m sure you know.”
As the guardian of the Keepers, it made sense that Modis would keep track of any and all efforts to find the killer or killers.
“Yes. I spoke with him this morning.”
“But your police may yet find the evidence they need to convict him.”
“Or to find who really did it,” I said, ignoring the implied threat.
Modis’s eyes narrowed. “Did you give him the artifacts?”
I acted surprised. “No. I gave them to Bridget. She hid them in the ocean, to keep them safe.”
“Hmmm,” Modis said, and smiled again. A cold smile. One that made me feel a bit like a rabbit caught in a trap. Modis didn’t believe for a second that I’d given the artifacts to Bridget.
I stood. “I thank you for your hospitality, but people are waiting for my return. They’ll be worrying about me. There are those waiting for Bridget’s return. They have to be told what happened.”
Modis waved a hand idly in the air. “I would prefer you stayed.”
My heart was thumping in overdrive. It wasn’t going to let me leave. I sat down again, questions running wild through my head. The only way to get answers was to ask straight out.
“Why do you want me to stay?”
“You interest me. I believe you know more than you are saying about the artifacts.”
It wasn’t wrong about that. I wasn’t sure if Modis would let me leave. There was only one way to find out.
“I don’t though,” I said, moving toward what seemed like the logical place for the house’s front door to be. “I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told you.”
The frizz of magic hit my skin immediately. I hesitated, then took another step forward. Magic like a wall of sparks coalesced in front of me. Another step or two and the magic would attack. I wasn’t going to win that battle.
Modis said, “You can’t truly believe I would think for a moment that your lover hasn’t told you what he’s done with the blade. Perhaps even given it to you, to be kept alongside the chalice. Or perhaps you gave both items to him, and he has them now.”
I turned back to face Modis.
“Who killed Hugo and the fairy guardian? Was it your people?”
Modis shrugged. “We aren’t ‘people.’ Not in the way you understand it.”
Nicely skirting the question.
“Did you kill Hugo yourself?”
Modis’s eyes opened wide. “I was his protector.”
I gave a skeptical laugh. “You didn’t do a very good job protecting him or the fairy Keeper, did you?”
Modis frowned and nodded.
There was something false about that frown—all fake chagrin and sorrow. My hands itched to have my drawing pencils in them and paper in front of me. Often when something tickled at the back of my mind but I couldn’t bring it into words, I’d draw, letting my subconscious tell me what my conscious couldn’t quite. I didn’t have pencil and paper, so I did the other thing that sometimes helped: I started talking without thinking.
“You seem very competent to me, Modis. It took planning to follow Bridget and me in the ocean, catch me, and bring me here. You’re good at what you do. How was it that you let two people under your care get killed?”
Modis frowned again, but this frown had more to do with anger than shame.
I kept talking. “Maybe you’re not so good at what you do. Maybe you have an overseer who planned my abduction. That makes more sense. You were pretty much a failure at your prime responsibility—watching out for and over the Keepers. Making sure they and the chalice and blade were safe. Thinking about it, I can’t believe you could have been nimble enough to catch me in the ocean when I’d only yesterday learned to shift.” I paused and caught Modis in my gaze. “Who’s your overlord? That’s who I should be talking to, not you.”
Modis’s eyes had gone flat and its body had stiffened while I rambled on.
“If I were you,” Modis said slowly, “I’d sit down and at least act civilized and companionable.”
I huffed a breath, then sat again in the same place at the end of the couch.
“Better,” Modis said. “Now, we talk.”
“Only if it’s truth for truth,” I said. “If you think you’re going to conduct a one-way interrogation, forget it. I’m good at staying silent.“
“I believe that,” Modis said. “I watched you and the wizard Adair for a while before selecting you to lead your respective hunts. I have a pretty good assessment for your talents and your character.”
Stalked by smokies. That was pretty creepy. That neither Diego nor I had noticed was worrisome.
“You have the advantage on me, then,” I said. “I know nothing about your talents or character.” I paused. “You, or someone you employ, or perhaps your boss, can cast a mean ward though. I’d never make it to the front door, would I?”
“No,” Modis said.
I bit my bottom lip. “How long do you expect I will be your ‘guest’?’”
“That’s wholly up to you. The sooner you give me truthful answers, the sooner you will go home.” Modis leaned back and relaxed into the soft fabric of the couch. “Where are the chalice and the blade?”
I sighed. “Wherever Bridget or the selkies put them.”
Modis closed its eyes, as if tired. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me or not,” I said. “Look, you stalked Diego and me. You must have realized I’m ridiculously honest.”
Its eyes still closed, Modis laughed. It was a sour sound, one with only the darkest of humor in it..
/>
It opened its eyes. “You? Honest? No. You were tasked with finding the artifacts and returning them to me. You did only the first part and are now making up stories about the second.” Modis fixed me in its gaze. “You are a liar and a thief.”
I blinked, taken aback. Technically, Modis was right. Liar and thief. Not how I saw myself at all.
“Then we have things in common,” I said. “You’re lying about what happened to the artifacts in the first place. How else would you have known the chalice was in the darkling land and that the blade was on the Earth plane?”
“I was told,” Modis said. “By my superiors and my own location senses. My senses are rarely wrong. My superiors’ never are.”
I smirked. “Really? If your location senses are so good, it seems you would know exactly where the items were. Your own companions could have fetched them back. There would be no reason to send anyone on a hunt. Either your senses aren’t as good as you claim or you are outright lying.”
Modis sighed. “We will never get anywhere if all we are going to do is accuse each other of crimes.”
I steadied my gaze on its face. “Murder is a serious crime.”
“Are you accusing me?”
Was I? I had earlier—just thrown it out, giving voice to thoughts. Was I truly accusing Modis now or was this simply random words popping out of my mouth just to keep talking?
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
Chapter 22
Modis pressed its lips together, then sighed. “Humans. So blind to nuance. Killing your enemies is no crime. Humans bestow awards and medals for those who murder in the name of war and peace. The fairies are worse, of course. No shades of gray at all.”
Nerves jangled up my breastbone. “What are you saying, Modis? That you did kill Hugo Bernard and the fairy Keeper?”
Modis sighed again. “It gave me no pleasure.”
Chalice and Blade Page 14