by Katya Moore
I sat very still. “It’s just a meeting, Raul.”
“She took you in! Into the Sanctum!” he shrieked, shrill and barely coherent. Flecks of saliva hit me in the face. I didn’t wipe them away. “I know about you. I know all about you, Alexandria Martin. I know about your dad. And your mom. And your other mom.”
I froze. My heart stopped pounding, shrouded in ice.
“What exactly do you know?” I asked quietly, my voice a razor’s edge.
Raul leaned in, his nose nearly touching mine. I didn’t flinch. “I know that you’re a bastard. In every sense of the word.”
Then, he was gone. I blinked. Two burly security guards stood in front of me, dangling Raul between them. Raul kicked and screeched and flailed, half-sobbing, half-raging.
“You okay, Alex?” Mario asked from his spot by the door. He stepped out of the way as the guards dragged the admin out of the office.
I nodded silently.
Mario walked closer. “Alex, seriously, are you okay? We heard him going off on you and…”
“I’m fine,” I answered coolly. “Thank you.”
Mario studied my expressionless face and nodded slowly. “If you need anything… an escort to the main house…you just…”
“Thank you.”
He turned and followed his colleagues. I didn’t know what would happen to Raul. I didn’t care.
What I did care about was how much he knew about me.
And who else knew.
We have received your rider, and are more than happy to accommodate your needs. Please do not hesitate to let us know what else you may require. Very sincerely yours, Mizu Takashi, Suntory Hall, Tokyo
I rubbed my eyes. Burying myself in work had settled my nerves from the encounter with Raul, but the roiling pit of anxiety about my meeting with Mother Glory still seethed.
10:45. Time to go.
I knew the way. My walk with Mother Glory was etched in my mind. I could find my way there in the dark if I had to.
I retraced our steps. This time, there was no aura of power, no deference from those I passed by. The housekeeping staff was on their way out, and I caught a lot of looks, ranging from curiosity to annoyance to outright hostility.
“The guards know you’re here?” a large older woman asked, bristling visibly.
“Yes. I have a meeting with…” I began.
A security guard cleared his throat behind her. “Thank you for your vigilance, Hazel, but we’ve got it from here.”
Hazel looked up at the man, a veritable wall of muscle and furrowed eyebrows. She sniffed and brushed past me on her way out.
The security guard looked me over. “People get weird about access to the boss lady. Territorial. That was her personal cleaner. No one gets close to the boss without her sniffing them over.” He tipped his head toward the hall to the Sanctum. “You got access without her approval. She’s gonna be a peach to work with for weeks.”
“I worked with Raul,” I said.
He winced at that. “Shit, that was you, huh? I guess you understand, then.”
“Yeah. Territorial.” I looked up at him with a hint of a challenge in my eyes.
He gave a short laugh and waved me on. “If Mother Glory wants to talk to you, I’m sure as hell not going to get in your way. Good luck in there.”
I smiled up at him. “Thanks.”
The rest of the way was eerily silent and uneventful. I walked the lush, carpeted halls and paid scant attention to the art on the ice-white walls. My mind was a whirl of emotions and nerves.
I didn’t even notice them until I almost walked into them.
“Well, hello there.”
I looked up and saw Andres and his burlier assistant standing in the hallway in front of the wardrobe room. The assistant held a stack of garment bags. Andres stood mid-step, eyes locked on me. He took a dramatically deep breath, placed a hand on his chest, then closed the gap between us in a couple broad strides.
“Jerome, look at her. Just...mmm. Look. At. Her.” He gestured at my face, his fingers nearly caressing my cheek. “Those eyes. Those cheekbones. That haunting look of ennui.” He leaned in close. “You must be my model.”
I barely held back a snort. While I do have good cheekbones, I was not here for that. “Uh, no. Not a model. Thank you, though. Try the dressing room. They usually go straight there.”
“No. You misunderstand me.” He stepped in closer. I could smell his cologne, expensive, strangely entrancing. Beneath the cologne, there was something else. Something primal. His voice dropped lower. “You MUST be my model. Someday, somehow, you must model for me.”
I couldn’t hold it back this time. “Umm, I’m just the translator. I’m here to coordinate Mother Glory’s tour. I don’t do fancy dresses.” My back met the wall I didn’t even realize I’d been backing up toward.
“That...is simply criminal.” His eyes devoured me. I questioned my cavalier assessment of his sexuality. “Simply, positively criminal. You should be wrapped in silk every moment of every day.” His gaze flicked up, eyes burning into mine. “I just happen to have silk sheets.”
Oh. My. Cheese. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Does that line ever work?”
He winked. “You’d be amazed.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously?”
His hand rested on the wall next to my head. He leaned in. I could feel the heat of his body, and I was very annoyed at the fact that my body was responding to it. My pulse raced. My knees trembled. There was warmth pooling between my legs for the first time in recent memory.
“Seriously.”
I swallowed hard.
“Andres,” Jerome warned. “We’re late. We need to get these dresses to the dressing room. Now.” There was a tone in Jerome’s voice. Jealousy, maybe? Was Jerome his boyfriend? At any rate, he was pissed.
A slow, sultry smile warmed Andres’ face. He dropped his hand and sketched a slight bow. As he walked away, he called after me.
“I’ll be dreaming of you, every time I feel silk on my skin.” He turned to his assistant. “Jerome, I’ll be rolling around in the silk section. Hold my calls.”
I gave an indelicate snort. “You pull a lot of ladies with that?”
He winked again. “Maybe not today, but…” He drifted off with a devilish grin. “See you around, my goddess.”
And with that, they vanished into the wardrobe room, leaving me alone in front of the Inner Sanctum.
The doors opened from within. Mother Glory stood there, alone, in a simple white dress.
“Welcome, Alex. Do come in.”
We stood beneath the willow trees, facing one another. Mother Glory smiled warmly.
“I have something in my possession that I think you’ll find extremely fascinating. I know I do.” She reached into the branches of the willow closest to her and withdrew a brass tube.
No, not a brass tube. A scroll case.
I felt my jaw drop slightly. I’d only seen cases like that in museums. Big museums with deep pockets.
“What is that?” I gasped. I could feel the academic in me clawing her way back to the surface.
She beamed at me, like a child showing off a favorite toy. “A friend passed this along to me. He’s been trying to get it translated for ages, but he doesn’t trust many people, and the people he did trust couldn’t even recognize what language it was in, much less translate it.” Our eyes met. “I trust people. I trust you. And from what you’ve told me, you might be our salvation.”
My heart lodged in my throat as she handed me the scroll case. With trembling fingers, I unstoppered the end and tipped the contents into my waiting palm.
It wasn’t parchment. It wasn’t even vellum, though it felt similar. It was a roll of something dark brown and leathery. It smelled of strange spices, of dark woods, of antiquity. It was like someone had distilled the oldest parts of the most venerable libraries in the world. I inhaled deeply, reverently.
“Wow.” It wasn’t profound, but it was all
I had.
“Open it,” Glory urged.
I handed her the scroll case and stopper, then cautiously began to unroll the leather scroll. I swear I felt tingles shooting up my arms, firing sparks straight into my heart. I tried to laugh off my own folly, but there was something about the scroll that made laughter seem sacrilegious.
Glory produced a small notebook and pen from her pocket and stood before me, gazing at me with barely restrained impatience.
I studied the scroll. The writing was nothing I’d ever seen before. Nothing close to anything I’d ever seen before. I’d studied ancient languages. I’d studied alphabets and pictographs from Africa and Asia. Indigenous languages from North America, South America and Australia. Nothing came close to this twisted, tangled mass of lines.
There was something about them that made my eyes slide away from them, as though they didn’t want me to look at them. I fought it, fought to focus on them, fought to make sense of them. A wave of nausea washed over me. Not fear this time. A soul sickness, a wrongness. A feeling that I was doing something that went against the natural order.
And then I understood. The words slid into place, as they had so many times before.
I opened my mouth, and the words poured out. Incoherent. Garbled. Foreign to me. Foreign to humanity.
The ground fell away from me, shrouded in a strange greenish mist. Still, the words poured out, and I was powerless to stop them.
Mother Glory smiled and began to write.
Chapter Four
Roc
Five minutes till go time, and the brothers were fighting.
“What the fuck were you doing out there with the translator, Luxe?” Feral dropped the garment bags on the floor and gave him a shove on the shoulder. “Andres doesn’t swing that way.”
Luxe crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air imperiously. “Andres is homoflexible, Jerome,” he asserted confidently.
Feral rolled his eyes hard. “No. You’re just thinking with your pants. Again. And it’s going to get us into trouble. Again.” He tensed his powerful arms, his muscles straining the sleeves of his t-shirt. “And I’m going to have to fight our way out of it. Again.” He jabbed a finger at the door. “Have you seen those guys? Glory’s security team? They could bench-press me. And there are ten of them on duty tonight.”
Luxe patted him on the shoulder. “I have infinite faith in you, Fer. You’ll keep us safe. You always do.” He winked. “Besides, I’ve got them covered.”
I cleared my throat over the microphone. They snapped to attention.
“If you two are finished, we’ve got work to do. Where’s Corvus?” As usual, he was staying out of view of my cameras. To be expected, really. That was part of why I hired him. He, unlike the Feline Brothers, was always on duty.
Cory’s voice came through the speaker, barely audible. Kit reached over and bumped his volume up on the surveillance rig. “Sitting in the vent, waiting for your asses. Stop making me talk.”
“Hang tight, Cory. We’ll set things off in two.”
I looked over the rest of Kit’s cameras. Luxe’s inspired idea to leak the linguist’s meeting with Glory to her obsessed administrative assistant had paid off beautifully. Half of the security staff was dealing with the little psycho. To Martin’s credit, she didn’t seem terribly fazed by it when she arrived at Glory’s Sanctum. For an academic, she had some stones.
The question plaguing me was, what was she doing in Glory’s Sanctum? More importantly, how the hell were we going to get them out of there?
Luxe voiced what I was thinking. “The plan was to get Glory in here. She’s talking to Sexy Tattooed Girl right now. Do we hold off until she leaves, or do we try to pull her out too?”
I gritted my teeth and leaned my forehead against the monitor.
“The stars are right tonight. We’ve got to move on this before Glory tries anything with that scroll.”
“We may be a little late for that.” Cory’s voice was a tense whisper. “Do any of you smell that?”
I watched as Luxe and Feral sniffed the air.
“Smell what?” Luxe asked.
Feral’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “I smell it. Shit. Things are in motion already. New plan. Please advise.”
“Cory, get in closer. Let us know what you see.” I killed the mic and leaned back in my seat. I pressed my palms together in front of my face, seeking my center. I was no good to my crew if I let this throw me.
“ShitshitshitSHIT!” Cory’s voice was a bare hiss, but frantic enough that I felt it through the speaker.
“Deep breath, Cory. What’s going on?” I kept my voice as soothing as I could while my heart pounded in my chest.
“The nerd’s floating, boss. She’s floating and she’s reading the scroll. Glory’s there taking notes.”
“We’re too late. Do we abort?” Feral flexed his arms in anticipation. “We can cut straight to the blow. Luxe can…”
“No.” I cut him off abruptly. “She can’t get those notes. If she gets that list of ritual components, we’ve got a lot more problems. We need that scroll, and we need to stop that ritual. Too much is at stake.” My mind raced. I took a deep breath, then another. “Feral, get in that vent. Cory, which way is Glory facing?”
“Away from the vent.”
I nodded in satisfaction. “Cory, you’re doing the takedown. Feral, you grab the girl and bring her out.”
“The fuck?” Feral’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “I don’t do kidnappings. Or vents.”
“This isn’t a kidnapping. It’s a rescue. Glory’s not going to let her survive this ritual.” I cut a sharp edge into my voice. “Get the girl. Get the scroll. Get back through the vent, and get out.” I tapped my fingers on the table and did a quick tally of the remaining security guards. “Luxe, you’ve got five guards. Where’d you stash the Picmont?”
“I stole it yesterday. It’s in the closet at the hideout.” I looked over my shoulder at the closet in the back of the command room. A lone yellow feather poked out beneath the door. “I already seeded the place with rhinestones and feathers in case we needed extra distractions. Waterworks on standby.”
“Get on that. Now.”
Feral hoisted himself into the vent. Luxe watched his feet disappear, unzipped a garment bag, mussed his hair, and screeched at the top of his lungs.
The game was on.
“THE PICMONT! OH MY GOD! THE PICMONT! IT’S GONE!”
I watched the hall cameras as Luxe staggered out of the wardrobe room. Two of the security guards at the front of the house perked up.
“Bigger,” I urged through the earpiece.
Luxe dashed into the lobby, weeping like he’d just lost his best friend, his mother, and his dog. “ROBBERY! SAVAGERY! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!” He threw himself on the biggest guard in the room. The man looked distinctly uncomfortable as Luxe pawed his chest. “She’ll kill me. Glory needs that gown. It’s the centerpiece of the whole tour. You HAVE to help!”
“It has to be in the building,” the guard closest to the door said. “We haven’t seen anyone leave with a garment bag.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Luxe snapped. “The bag’s still here.”
The guards exchanged a wary look. “How big a bag would you need to get it out the door?”
“Huge!” Luxe threw his arms wide. “It’s a cloud of feathers and crystal.”
“There, you see?” the door guard said placatingly. “It has to be in the building. No one’s left the building with anything bigger than a backpack. Could it have fit in a backpack?”
Luxe sniffed theatrically. “No.”
The door guard got on the radio. “All hands to the front door. We’ve got a missing gown.”
The radio chirped. “Still waiting on the cops for the stalker.”
“Right. You five stay there. The rest of us will search the house.” The door guard gave Luxe a kindly look. “We’ll find it. You head back to the wardrobe room and check it out. Make sure it di
dn’t just get shuffled around somewhere.”
Luxe accepted a tissue from the guard and dabbed his eyes. “I’ll do that. Please…just bring it home. I couldn’t live if something happened to it. I need to bring it for repairs, and if it’s not ready for the shoot in the morning, I’m doomed. Doomed!”
The big guard rolled his eyes. The door guard patted Luxe awkwardly on the arm. “It’ll be okay, Andres. We’ve got you covered.”
I smiled in satisfaction as four of the five guards scattered to the far reaches of the house. Only the door guard remained at his post.
Exit secured.
“Feral, Cory, turn on your body cams. I’m blind.” I turned my attention back to the main event.
I heard a grunt, then two monitors sparked to life. Dimly, I could see the outline of Cory’s coiled frame through Feral’s cam. Feral handed Cory a bottle and a rag. Cory nodded grimly.
“Go.”
Cory eased the grating out, set it aside, and slid down the wall.
“Does this smell like chloroform to you?” Cory quipped as he clamped the rag over Glory’s face. The pop star flailed, clawing at his hands, then pawing feebly, then slumping to the ground in a heap. Cory gave her a nudge with his foot, then pocketed her notebook.
Feral dropped into the room and stood in front of the girl. I took in the scene from his body camera. Glowing green mist. Hovering mid-air. Eyes glowing with an unholy light. Fingers clutching the ancient relic we’d been hired to retrieve.
“Try to get the scroll.” I leaned against the table, fingers tapping a steady rhythm on its surface.
Feral reached up and caught the bottom edge of the scroll. As his fingers made contact, it began to disintegrate. Before he could recoil, the scroll was a fine powder, blowing from the girl’s grip on an unnatural breeze.
The light in the girl’s eyes dimmed.