“I thought I had him under control. Suddenly I didn’t, and he charged. Luckily he charged me rather than Charisma and the infant, and I was able to keep his attention until she got over the fence.” John winced and rubbed his posterior. “Bit me right in the ass.”
Irving chortled.
“My mark, the one given to me by the lynx . . . it is fading.” John put his hand to his shoulder. “If the prophecy is right—if I need my true love to maintain my powers—then I suppose it’s a miracle I’ve kept it for this long.”
Irving put his cup down and got serious. “You’ve lost all power? Big power? Little power?”
“I’ve only ever possessed big power.”
Irving said, “Hmm.”
The old guy might be failing physically, but John had to admit he was still sharp as a tack. “All right, I’ve been trying to cultivate subtle powers, too. Genny told me . . .” He cleared his throat. “Genny told me I should work on performing the little things. For instance, tying my shoes. Or pouring tea.”
Irving put an alarmed hand over his teapot. “This is my favorite!”
“I won’t try it right now. I’ve been working on the fine, er, motor skills ever since I left the rasputye, but with little success.” John looked down at himself, every bit of him clad at the Big and Tall Shop. “I’m not a delicate kind of guy.”
“So your substantial powers are waning and your subtle powers aren’t trained.”
“The team is handling the problem with its usual spirit—they’re working around it as needed, and laughing at me every chance they get.”
Irving smiled at him. “You’ve built a good team, John Powell.”
“I inherited a good team, Irving Shea. I only wish there were more of them. The Others seem to be spreading like oil on wet asphalt.”
“We can have only seven Chosen.” Irving was firm about that.
“The Others aren’t playing by that rule anymore.”
“We have to play by the rules. I’ve broken the rules and we’re paying for it now.” Irving’s voice got old-man wobbly.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a suspicion. But I know the truth is here”—Irving rapped the open book with his knuckles—“if only I could find it.”
“The prophecy is in that book?” John leaned forward.
“This book”—Irving waved a hand around—“or one of these.”
John collapsed back into his chair. “Or one of the thousands of books in Rosamund’s library.”
“There, too.” Irving caressed the page, and his eyes lingered on the words. “I was reading about sacrifice. It’s fallen out of fashion in the modern world, but sacrifice in the truest sense is an effective gadget.”
John straightened in his seat. “What kind of sacrifice?”
“Traditionally, the sacrifice of one’s life is the most valuable. To offer your body and soul to be extinguished for a good cause, or to save another’s life, not knowing for sure what awaits you beyond this plane? It erases many faults, expunges many sins.” When Irving looked up, his eyes were sharp and intent. “I mean, obviously if you’re a mass murderer, one moment of sacrifice isn’t going to cut it. But if you’ve made a mistake, a big mistake, I think perhaps that sacrifice might suffice to correct it. Of course, there’s the obvious problem of the possible accompanying pain and torment involved in the passage from one world to the other, not to mention what will occur on the other side. But that’s my problem, isn’t it?”
John tensed. “Planning to sacrifice yourself, Irving?”
“I would if I thought it would do any good.” Irving snorted. “But I’m so old, in the big scheme of things, my life isn’t worth much. Now, about the loss of your powers—is this like that last time you had problems?”
The last time he had problems? John almost wanted to laugh at Irving’s euphemism . . . but it wasn’t funny. “You mean when five people died? No. When that happened, I didn’t dare examine the circumstances for fear of what I would see. Then I talked to Genny about it, and she said . . . well, she said some scathing things.”
“About Gary, I presume.”
“And me. Since hearing her, I’ve met Gary again—she gave me the courage to look back, and I think . . .”
“You think what happened wasn’t your fault?”
“I’m not trying to shift blame,” John said hastily, “but we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“Gary liked facing impossible odds and succeeding, as he did when his team entered the glacier and he brought back a leather bag full of bones.”
John sat quietly, remembering his struggle against the weight and the force of the melting ice. “I was so close to dying that day. I was lucky.” Or he had thought he was, for he lived, saved everyone’s lives, and had become engaged to Sun Hee. “But without luck, I’m not the equal of a force of nature.”
“Fair enough.” Irving nodded, accepting John’s explanation with seeming ease. “Do you think Gary is behind your problem? Your loss of power?”
John felt off balance. He was trying to explain why he no longer felt at fault in the five deaths which had sent him into exile—and Irving offered no resistance. “You’ve taken my explanation for my failure as if you never doubted it. If you believed in me after we lost five lives on the volcano, why didn’t you make it known when I returned to the Gypsy Travel Agency headquarters?”
“As you know, I’m one of the few people who has never liked Gary. I always saw the tragic flaw in him, that grandiose desire to be the top, the best, the most acclaimed. Not because he valued the best, but because he valued the acclaim.”
“Yes. We all see that fault now.”
Irving continued. “But, John, when the incident happened, I didn’t know you well, and circumstances looked bad.”
“Because everyone knew I had just discovered Sun Hee was sleeping with Gary.” The old grief welled up in John. “I hated the humiliation. Of course I did. And I myself wondered if I’d allowed my team to be killed for some madness of revenge. But then—if I was trying to kill them, why would I carry Gary to safety? Sun Hee was weak, but when Gary seduced her, he knew exactly what he was doing. He’s the one I would have killed.”
“Gary is a troublemaker here, and I’m afraid that his miraculous recovery was not as miraculous as it seemed.”
John had heard Irving’s theory before, that Gary had somehow escaped the coma that held him trapped for so long by making a deal with the devil. “It’s hard to sign in blood on that dotted line when you’ve got no brain waves.”
“Yet he regained consciousness.” Irving sighed. “You should have thrown him into the fire. It would have saved us a lot of trouble now.”
The two men sat in concurrence, quietly sipping their tea.
Irving roused himself. “But the truth is, killing a person to save yourself trouble down the line is foolish. Sometimes that person has an important part to play, and we mere mortals can’t judge the impact one man makes on the world.”
“Genny told me that even if I was guilty, I was sacrificing my life for no good reason when I should be working to make up for whatever horrible things I had done. That’s why I returned.”
“She was a wise woman, your Genny.”
“Yes. I was the one who was stupid.” John confessed, “When I found out she lied to me . . . I should have known she couldn’t be all real. I thought she was interested only in the lynx. And me. It is my destiny to fall for women with ulterior motives.” He hated feeling sour about that, but nothing in the past two and a half years had changed those facts.
“What was her ulterior motive?”
“Don’t be disingenuous, Irving,” John snapped.
Irving looked startled. “I didn’t know I was.”
“She was there because you had sent her to recruit me. She seduced me for your sake, Irving, and the sake of the Gypsy Travel Agency.”
“I didn’t send her,” Irving said flatly.
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nbsp; “Sure.”
“I didn’t send her,” Irving repeated. “The Gypsy Travel Agency didn’t send her. If she wickedly seduced you, it wasn’t for us.”
“But if it wasn’t you . . . ?”
“Then it was for someone else who knew the extent of your powers and believed they could recruit you.”
“The Others? No!”—John slammed his fist on the table—“I don’t believe that of Genny. She wouldn’t do that.”
“Not knowingly, perhaps.”
John stood. He sat. “Her father was a real asshole. Used to work for the Gypsy Travel Agency.”
“I remember Kevin Valente all too well.”
“She told me he was the one who pushed her into the commitment to talk to me. Do you think he would have manipulated her to work, all unknowing, for the Others?” John stood again, and paced around the room, trying to put it all together.
“Kevin Valente was the businessman version of Gary White. He sold out the Gypsy Travel Agency, and for his chance to succeed, I believe he’d sell his own grandmother.”
“Or his own daughter.” John felt sick.
Irving poured himself another cup of tea. “You know, John, if you’ve got a fatal flaw, it’s that you expect betrayal. You say she had an ulterior motive for seeking you out. People always have ulterior motives—but most of us just call them motives.”
“She could have told me the truth.”
“Is it possible she made the same observation about you that I have? That you expect betrayal and respond accordingly?”
John stopped pacing.
“Genny didn’t tell you all the facts about herself for fear you would reject her. As it turned out, she was justified. I think she simply did whatever she could to stay close to you.” Irving sounded meditative. “Myself, I would have been flattered to know a woman wanted me so much.”
Since John had entered the room, he’d been poleaxed with one truth after another. “I can’t do anything about this. She’s dead.”
“Maybe. But for the past two years, despite the prophecy that the Chosen Ones’ gifts are tied to their connection to their true loves, your powers have been stable. Reliable. Doesn’t that mean she’s alive?”
“She can’t be alive. She came out of the rasputye into a blizzard. I spoke to the couple who found her. They said she was dead. Or rather”—John remembered all too clearly—“the wife said Genny was dead, that they cremated her. Why would this woman lie?”
Irving raised his eyebrows.
John answered his own question. “Because Genny asked her to. Because Genny didn’t want me to find her. Because I didn’t believe in her.”
“Women are funny about stuff like that.” Irving rubbed his chest. “Believe me. I know.”
“Even after they said that, I searched for her. For months, I scoured the area looking for any sign of her.”
“Perhaps she was hiding. Perhaps she moved quickly. Perhaps . . . the Others captured her and wreaked their vengeance on her for her failure to recruit you.”
John leaned across the table. “For the love of God, Irving, don’t even imagine that.” Yet now, the idea took hold in John’s head and his fear grew in leaps and bounds. The scratches the lynx had given him ached; he pressed his shoulder and realized they had opened.
Pulling his hand away, he stared in amazement.
Blood and gore stained his palm. “I have to go look for her.” John could scarcely breathe. “If she’s alive, I have to find her at last. And when I do . . . I will dedicate my life to her.”
Chapter 44
With a real affection, Irving watched John leave. The lad had such good manners, not spewing the tea across the table no matter how flowery a brew Irving chose. Irving supposed he shouldn’t torment John in such a way. But this sudden descent into old age had left him with little he could do for entertainment. So the smallest, most petty distraction amused him—not to mention that watching a behemoth like John handle delicate two-hundred-year-old china made him want to chuckle. So he did, and leaned back in his chair thinking it felt good to laugh.
He hadn’t laughed for a long time.He spread his hand over the book open before him.
What he’d said to John—it wasn’t true.
A sacrifice was a sacrifice.
A life was a life.
No matter how old you were, on the scales of eternity, each life weighed the same as the next. Because, of course, part of what he’d said to John was true: To offer your body and soul to be extinguished for a good cause, or to save another’s life, not knowing for sure what awaits you beyond this plane? It erases many faults, expunges many sins.
Irving loved his life. He loved his study; he loved McKenna and the clever foods he concocted to tempt Irving’s flagging appetite. He loved Martha and the way they could discuss their shared experiences at the Gypsy Travel Agency. Irving loved the present more than anything. He loved Jacqueline and Charisma and Isabelle and Samuel and Aaron and Aleksandr and John. He loved Caleb and Rosamund.
Most of all, he loved his work. He hadn’t retired at sixty-five. No, he’d gone ahead and worked at the Gypsy Travel Agency part-time, and he wasn’t just a figurehead. He gave them important input.
Then the Gypsy Travel Agency had blown up, and he became, not the aging former CEO, but the expert to whom everyone applied, the center of knowledge and of strategy, the wise old man. He believed that he was justified in saying that without him, the new Chosen would have been hunted down and killed, and the Others would have spread their chaos and their evil throughout the world.
Age was slowing him down. He knew it, and he hated everything about it: the indigestion, the walker, the incontinence. God, what a mess that was.
But in the big scheme of things, his pains were minor, and he hadn’t lost an ounce of his intelligence . . . although he almost wished he had.
Because he had come to the conclusion that it was his sin, and no other, that had brought on this catastrophe—the explosion of the Gypsy Travel Agency building, the loss of so many Chosen and support people, the destruction of the library and all the artifacts, culled from the best of the archaeology sites around the world . . .
His fault. His fault. But he never intended to do anything but save the Agency.
He had been the one who took over the Gypsy Travel Agency when it was failing. He had been a young black CEO in a time when no black CEOs existed in the white business world.
So he had done what needed to be done—whatever needed to be done—to save the flailing concern and to prove to the waiting world that men should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by their intelligence, dedication, and performance. Under his guidance, the Gypsy Travel Agency had infiltrated rival travel agencies to “study” their itineraries and clients. The gifted had used their gifts to convince native peoples to reveal hidden, holy sites; and once that was done, the people of the corporation, businessmen like Kevin Valente, had “acquired” the most valuable artifacts and sold them to collectors. The Agency always made sure to secure exclusive tour rights; then they’d whipped up excitement in the press and led eager tourists on expeditions.
Irving had even instructed the Chosen Ones to subtly use their powers with the wealthy to be named as beneficiaries in wills—and obtained this mansion.
For everything he had done, he had told himself he was justified. The Gypsy Travel Agency was the cover and the financial aid for the Chosen Ones, and the Chosen Ones did great good in the world. He had supported that good.
And then there was Dina. He regretted many things in his life, but what he’d done to her had been unforgiveable.
He knew it when he’d done it.
He knew it now.
Wearily he hefted himself out of the chair, got his walker, and made his way to the window.
There she was, standing on the street corner, smoking one of her interminable cigarettes.
She must be sixty-five now. No, seventy. But even with her ruined nose, she was still one fine-looking wo
man, slender and vital—and when he’d seen her for the first time, he had known she was the woman he was destined to love.
He’d thrown her away for the golden ring of success. Worse, he’d destroyed her when he did it.
Of course, she knew he was watching her.
Turning her head, she smiled coldly and blew a stream of smoke in his direction.
Her voice echoed in his head. Hello, Irving.
She was the most talented mind-speaker he had ever met.
But he had no gift. He couldn’t answer her back. He couldn’t tell her of his regrets, of the long nights he spent alone, of how he had worried about her and dreamed of a different outcome to their story.
If he could have told her those things, she would have been justified in spitting in his face.
But he could send a message: placing his hand over his aching heart, he bowed in her direction.
She straightened, stared at him, trying to see his thought.
Yes, my dear, you can’t read my mind, but you recognize regret when you see it, and love, and you wonder why I should feel this way . . . because you don’t give your allegiance to the Others, no matter what they think.
He had such a good life.
But now he believed—no, he knew—that the deeds he had authorized in the name of a healthy bottom line had ultimately broken the organization at its very foundation. The Gypsy Travel Agency and the Chosen Ones were meant to do good. No exceptions. Ever. That was the eternal law.
Now, no matter how hard Irving had tried, no matter how hard he had driven the Chosen and their mates, it hadn’t been possible to discover a prophecy to reverse this free fall into evil. So the truth had taken root in his mind and was growing.
A sacrifice was necessary. And who better to sacrifice than himself—the man responsible for this disaster?
He heard a familiar step in the corridor.
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