Bloodstone (A Stacy Justice Mystery)

by Barbra Annino

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  She sighed. “What I mean is I do not know the answer to that.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed her, but enough was enough. I slid off the table and stood, not caring about what she wanted, what the council wanted or what was expected of me any longer.

  She asked, “What was in the safety deposit box?”

  “A lottery ticket.” If she could play games then so could I.

  Fiona stepped through the opening then.

  “I will ask you one more time,” Birdie said in an unwavering tone. “What. Was. In. The. Box?”

  “And I will ask you one more time. What is the secret, Obi-Wan?”

  Fiona said, “She has earned it, Birdie.”

  Birdie whirled around to her sister and shouted, “She lost the Warrior.”

  “Two, in fact,” I don’t know why I said it. It just slipped out, but it certainly didn’t help my case.

  “But she found the Guardian, Birdie. He’s in the dining room right now eating a baloney sandwich.”

  Seriously, who chose him?

  I walked around both of them and said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. This ends tonight. I’m going to make the exchange.”

  “You will do no such thing, Anastasia!” Birdie said.

  The hell I won’t. “I’m going to get my sister, Birdie and that is that. Game over.”

  I was about to storm out but the exit was gone. “Damn it, Birdie, put the door back.”

  She didn’t speak for a while as I glared at her.

  Finally she whispered, “She isn’t your sister.”

  I said, “Excuse me?”

  She repeated herself.

  “And how do you know that?”

  Fiona looked away as Birdie said, “Because I know where your mother is.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  I waited fourteen years for my mother to return. Fourteen years of graduations, boyfriends, jobs, birthdays.

  Fourteen years wondering if I was an orphan—or just abandoned.

  I steadied myself, trying to gain composure so that I wouldn’t slap my grandmother. “Birdie, you had better not be serious. Because if you have known where she was all these years and you didn’t tell me, I don’t think I could ever forgive you.” My voice didn’t crack, even though there was a lump in my throat.

  “Sit down, Stacy,” she said softly.

  Birdie never called me that, despite the fact that it was indeed my given name. Anastasia is something she made up to annoy my mother because Birdie felt it was bad luck to name a female child after her father.

  Given the current predicament, maybe she was right about that.

  I filled my lungs with all the air in the room and blew it out slowly. “I’ll stand, thank you. Get to the point. I only have forty-five minutes.”

  She bowed her head for a brief moment, then spoke. “As you know, all Geraghty women are born with a gift. From the moment you came into this world, I knew you were powerful. It radiated all over your tiny pink body. I was delighted for you, for the opportunities you would have to make a difference in the world. So few people get that in life. Fewer still, take the risks required to inspire change, but you were a fighter from the get-go. You learned everything early and your gift was there right from the start. Even in your crib, you would babble away at the walls and I knew you were talking to the ancestors. Sometimes, I think they may have taught you even more than your mother and I did. You took to magic as if it were as natural as the air you breathed.”

  Watching her wax nostalgic was both unsettling and heart-warming. My grandmother was simply not the bread-baking, knee-bouncing, drawing-hung-on-the-fridge type.

  “At first, your mother was as excited about your talent as I was, but then her gift grew stronger and somehow, it transformed to focus only on you.”

  “What was her gift?” I couldn’t believe I didn’t remember, but I had buried all of that so deep down that not everything had resurfaced.

  “She could see events before they unfolded.” She paused and took a sip of water. “You cannot imagine how awful it was to watch her suffer through every scraped knee she couldn’t prevent. Every tear she knew would fall, but couldn’t be there to dry. It was a nightmare with no escape and it nearly drove her insane. There were times when I insisted she go away for a bit. The distance seemed to ease the visions, but then they would come back stronger. Of course those trips sparked rumors of mental hospital stays, but she was at a spiritual retreat.”

  Locked up with your mother. That’s what Bea meant.

  She leaned in, took my hand and said, “And then your father died and more than ever she was desperate to keep you safe.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes then, but I fought them back.

  “And then, the worst vision of all came. You were fourteen and the council had verified you as the Seeker. Your mother didn’t tell me until it was over, but she saw a vision of a man taking you. Then she saw your lifeless body.”

  I leaned in closer.

  “She did not hesitate, did not discuss it with me even, she just acted.”

  “What did she do?” I asked.

  “She took his life, before he could take yours.”

  I sat back, stunned. “My mother murdered someone?” My brain was fogging over, trying to wrap itself around what I just heard. But I didn’t recall a trial, or even any rumors of a crime. Surely people would have known in this tiny hamlet. I said this to Birdie.

  “The matter was not taken care of via the court system. You see, the man she killed was a member of the council. Her sentence was passed down via Celtic law.”

  “Where is she then?”

  Birdie paused, glanced at Fiona. “She is serving her punishment on the old soil. You cannot contact her just yet. But I am hoping when this—your first quest—is over, I can prove to the council that the measures your mother took to ensure your safety were in the best interest of all. With that, her release is imminent and your path will continue.”

  I shot her a confused look.

  Birdie smiled, “Your gifts are great and with great gifts come great challenges. In time, you will hone your skills to be prepared for any task that comes.” She squeezed my shoulders, looked deep into my eyes. “You have to understand that she begged me not to tell you what she had done for fear that it would ruin you.”

  Her absence nearly did ruin me. All those nights I cried myself to sleep thinking my mother didn’t love me. The memory made me shudder.

  “Why are you telling me now then?”

  “Because I wanted you to understand the importance of this. It isn’t just about the book. It’s about my daughter and my granddaughter. You must trust me.”

  I stood up, weighing everything she had said. Fiona was wearing a poker face, but I saw love in her eyes. And truth. Birdie was telling me the truth and how could I blame her for hiding it from me? The gravity of it all came crashing down and I felt the fight rise within me again.

  With my mother’s freedom at stake, there was only one thing to do.

  Bluff.

  “I will trust you, Birdie, on two conditions. First, you tell me what was on the first page of the Ballymote book. As Fiona said,” I flicked my eyes to my great aunt, “I have earned it. And two,” I pulled the map from my pocket, set it on the table. “You tell me what this is.”

  Fiona and Birdie both read over the map, their eyes wide as saucers.

  Fiona gasped, “It isn’t—”

  Birdie said, “No, but it’s a good replica and altered well enough to work.”

  “Hello?” I tapped the table. “Seeker of Justice here, impending doom and all that, so can you please let me in on what we’re staring at?”

  “Insurance,” Birdie said and smacked her hands together, a mischievous look on her face. “Think about it, Anastasia. What does the book of Ballymote open with? What is the first thing the reader sees?”

  “A drawing of Noah’s Ark.”

  Fiona nodded, excited as a sc
hool boy who just discovered boobies.

  IVY GERAGHTY’S PERSONAL BOOK OF SHADOWS

  by Ivy Geraghty

  Entry #17

  So they moved me to the crapper and I managed to take off the blind fold. I hear whispers behind the door, but it is barricaded. As my senses return, muffled sounds of shuffling this and that filter through the door. The voices are low and I cannot determine the nature of the conversation, but I hear the word Professor. There is more than one voice, man and woman. The window is old and I manage to pry it open an inch, then two, but cannot fit through. I search and call for Moonlight, for my sister.

  No one comes.

  -Ivy Geraghty, Prisoner of War

  SIXTY-SIX

  “Birdie, are you telling me that the secret we are supposed to be protecting is a map that leads to the location of the Ark that Noah built?”

  She grinned.

  “You’re serious? Noah’s actual Ark. It’s not like a replica built by some Irishman who hit the Absinthe a little too hard or anything, is it?”

  She smirked at me, crossed her arms and said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Well, give me a minute here, Birdie. I am trying to wrap my brain around the fact that you—that anyone—would want to keep hidden one of the most significant artifacts of the ancient world.” I started pacing, trying to catch up with the laps my mind was running. “I mean, think of the importance of this. Of the value it would bring to people. Especially the country where it’s located.” I stopped, looked at her. “Do you know where it is?”

  She ignored the question.

  “Birdie, it belongs to history, to scholars, to archeologists. To the people who will preserve and truly protect it.”

  Birdie crossed over to the fireplace and it erupted in flames. I didn’t see her strike a match.

  I said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Ah,” she said, her back to me. “And I suppose you know what is right for the entire globe? For generations to come and generations past?” She turned to face me, draped her arms out wide. Her cloak caught a spark, but with a snap of her fingers, it was extinguished.

  Okay, now she was freaking me out.

  “Would you just tell me already? Why isn’t it a good idea to present it to the world?”

  She paused for a time, lifted her head skyward as if I asked these silly questions just to torture her.

  Then she spoke. “Fifty years before Christ, the people and the government of Rome worshiped an ancient pantheon of deities. The empire was growing, spreading across Europe and other continents as the Romans conquered more and more land and people. Societies were expected to fall in sync with the laws of their new rulers. They were expected to forego their own belief systems and instead blend into the Roman way of life.”

  “When faiths collide, blood is shed,” said Fiona

  “Which is what happened when sects of Jewish people practicing what they called Christianity were discovered under the new empire.”

  Fiona said, “Power may strengthen armies, but it weakens minds.”

  Birdie nodded in agreement. “As the empire stretched further and further, infrastructures were built, connecting people who would not encounter each other otherwise. People who had heard Christ preach relayed his message to their new neighbors. When Constantine conquered both the East and West banks of Greece, he discovered that many social powerhouses were Christians. He needed their support so he decided it would be in the best interest of the empire to claim one religion and declare it the law of the land.”

  “I recall studying that. It was 313 AD. Right?” I asked.

  Birdie smiled. “Yes. It was also the beginning of a new way to govern—the integration of church and state. The first order of business was to persecute those identified as dualistic Christians—Gnostic Christians, Mithraism Christians and so on.”

  “Then the pagans became the persecuted,” said Fiona.

  “So what does this all have to do with the Ark?” I asked.

  Birdie sat down on the settee. “The Ark is a legend known across many faiths. Judaism, Islam, Christianity, each claiming the story, each still fighting wars in the name of their god.” Birdie looked at me steadily. “It was agreed long ago that until the bloodshed ends—until people and governments cease to fight in the name of any deity—the Ark is to remain lost to the ages.”

  I sunk into a chair. It was hard to recall a time during the last ten years when the words ‘holy war’ weren’t mentioned in the news. What she was saying made sense. Although, I wasn’t sure it was the answer. People have been slaughtering each other in the name of faith for thousands of years. What would change by keeping this secret?

  Then again, what would happen if it were discovered?

  Suddenly a sharp pain pierced my forehead and images slammed through my mind, one after the other. Billowing clouds of black smoke choking the sky, exploding glass and people screaming, running, firefighters caked with debris and dust, babies crying, women leaping off high rise buildings.

  “Maegan, stop,” I whispered.

  I knew what she was showing me—knew the date, the day, the time.

  When I looked up, my grandmother and my aunt were carefully reading my face. They were right. The world wasn’t ready.

  “I just have one question,” I said. “Is this King Arthur’s round table?”

  Fiona said, “We bought that when the Renaissance restaurant closed, dear.”

  Fair enough.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  I left Thor sleeping on the bed on my way back to the dining room. Lolly was wearing a long orange sequined ball gown that looked like it was designed by Elton John. A fuchsia shrug covered her shoulders and she was wiping down the table.

  “Lolly, where is Mr. Sayer? I mean Mr. Mahoney.”

  She smiled at me with all her teeth and said, “He stepped outside for a cigarette.” Then she held up a bottle and said, “Champagne?”

  “No thanks.”

  I went to the front door and swung it open. Didn’t see him, but Moonlight was there on the porch. I walked all around the property, but still there was no sign of Mahoney. Moonlight was close on my heels. Finally, he jumped on my shoulder and screeched loudly in my ear.

  “Okay. Guess we’ll need to do this without him.”

  The white cat followed me all the way to the hotel. I was banking on the fact that the knife in my boot and the map in my pocket would be enough to end this. After all, that’s what they were after, not me, not Ivy. They wanted the book to decode the page, but I had something even better—I had what appeared to be—the actual map.

  My phone buzzed just as I got to the entrance. It was Gladys. “I try and try, but you don’t answer phone.”

  “Sorry Gladys. What have you got for me?”

  “Claudia Honeycut is army soldier.”

  “Is she deployed?”

  “What is this?”

  “I mean is she fighting now? Is she overseas?”

  “Oh. No.”

  I thanked her, disconnected the call and stepped into the lobby. It was an old building, one of the oldest hotels in the state. The lobby was wallpapered in a floral Victorian era print, the carpet a rich burgundy pattern. Past the tea cart loaded down with coffee and cookies was a wide, walnut, winding staircase that led to the rooms upstairs. To the right of the lobby was a lounge, Ye Old Time Saloon. I poked my head in and saw Derek sitting at the bar next to a gorgeous woman who actually did have a Beyonce thing going on. I debated whether or not to interrupt his date. Chose not to.

  To the left was the grand ballroom. The lights were dimmed in there and it looked as if the dinner was winding down. A DJ announced that the staff was about to spread the tables apart for dancing and that guests were invited to enjoy cocktails and live music. I could hear the clang of drum cymbals as band members set up on the backstage.

  I walked up to the young desk clerk who was reading a magazine and asked if there was a message for me. Gave him my name and said
I was meeting a friend who was a guest. There wasn’t. He asked me the name of the party and I hesitated.

  Which name should I give?

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Moonlight flick his tail, I turned to catch him running up the stairs.

  I told the clerk that I just remembered the room number and he shrugged and went back to reading. Then I followed the cat. My wristbands started itching again and I shook my hands for relief. They vibrated, then tingled as did the boots.

  I bumped into Mahoney drinking a beer at the top of the staircase.

  “Hey, where you been?” he asked.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed, pointing to the bottle in his hand.

  He looked at the beer. “It calms my nerves.”

  “Where the hell did you go?”

  He shrugged. “I had to take a leak.”

  I didn’t even bother explaining that there was indoor plumbing at the house. I just called him an idiot.

  “So this is where we’re supposed to get the Warrior? Which room is it?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know.” It was a quarter to ten. Time to make an executive decision, since clearly I was now the captain of this ship of fools.

  “Go downstairs and ask which room the Honeycuts are staying in.”

  Brian from the bank had said an old guy visited his former manager. It didn’t make a lot of sense and certainly a man in his eighties (or so he had appeared) couldn’t have been chasing me down on the highway while shooting at us, but it was worth a shot. He was the last of the guests that could have slipped Mahoney the zombie powder.

  Unless his wife did.

  Mahoney turned, trekked down the stairs and I searched for Moonlight. I spotted him at the end of the long corridor, just turning a corner.

  I chased him down and up ahead, there was Mr. Honeycut, ambling along, a bucket of ice in his hands.

  Then the vision flashed again. A woman tied to a bed.

  That clinched it. If I was wrong, I would most likely be headed for prison, but when you’re the Seeker of Justice and your mother is being held captive goddess knows where, your sister is no longer your sister, but she’s still in danger and the only backup is in the form of a sweaty, pot-bellied bozo with all the intelligence of your average houseplant, you have to make swift choices.