The Immortals

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  They lay tangled together for a moment in the dark, his chest smothering her face, his knee between her legs. Selene bit her lip to keep from loudly demanding that he immediately remove his hand from her ribs. Her shirt had ridden up in the fall, and his gloved fingertips were warm against her skin.

  With her nose pressed to his sternum, the smell of his sweat overwhelmed her. A mix of exertion and excitement, with just a hint of fear. She expected to be repulsed. Strangely, she wasn’t. Then he was rolling off her with a whispered apology.

  “Next time I’m trying to help you, just let me,” she hissed.

  “Only if you let me do the same.” He held out a hand to help her up. She ignored the gesture and got to her feet unaided.

  Theo retrieved the flashlight and panned it across the shelves lining the walls of the small office. “Looks like the cops already took a lot,” he whispered, opening the drawers of Helen’s desk. Selene nodded absently, standing in the middle of the room. Turning in a slow circle, she scanned the photos adorning the walls in tastefully asymmetrical arrangements. A fresco painting of the Minoan snake goddess. The Egyptian temple of Isis at Philae. Another of the ruined temples of the Vestal Virgins in the Roman Forum.

  “Interesting collection.” She pointed at the walls.

  He glanced up and frowned. “Those are new. Last time I was in here—months ago, probably—she had the usual archeologist’s collection of maps and museum prints.” He opened a file cabinet. “No sign of her laptop.” He gestured to the empty drawer. “And I don’t see any of her research related to the Mysteries either.”

  Selene turned to another tall file cabinet near the door, sure it, too, would be empty. To her surprise, it was sealed with a combination padlock. The cops probably planned on coming back with a bolt cutter. But in the meantime…

  Selene tugged at the lock, feeling the metal cabinet bend a little in her hands, but even with her increased strength, the lock itself didn’t give. Theo moved to stand beside her.

  “Helen liked to do everything the hard way. Handwritten notes, hidden compartments, secret ciphers—I sometimes think maybe she was a CIA agent posing as an archeologist. But, you know, that would imply the government gave a crap about Greco-Roman society, so unlikely.” He shone his flashlight onto the padlock.

  “The combination’s only three digits,” Selene said. “We should be able to figure it out.”

  Theo shook his head. “Three digits means a thousand possibilities.”

  “Well, try something.”

  He attempted Helen’s birthday. Then the first three digits of her phone number. Then the last three. Then he stepped back from the cabinet and folded his arms, staring at it.

  “Are you trying to glare it into submission?” Selene asked.

  Theo pushed his glasses a little farther up his nose. “That’s more your style. I’m thinking.”

  “Try doing it a little faster. We need to get the tusk identified at Natural History before it—”

  “I’ve got it.” He grinned and gestured to the calendar on Helen’s wall. The dates were written not in Arabic numerals, but in Greek characters. “Helen hated math. She once told me that one of her favorite things about studying Ancient Greek was spending a day without seeing modern numerals. She liked that the Greeks used letters for their numbers. Alpha is one, beta is two, and so on. Her lucky number was 98, the sum of the number values of the letters in the Greek translation of her name. So if we take her favorite Greek three-letter words, then turn the letters into their number equivalents, we’ll have a possible combination.”

  “Sounds just absurd enough to work.”

  “Worth a shot.” He grabbed the padlock. Then he just stood there.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  Theo cleared his throat. “There are actually very few Greek words with only three letters.”

  “What about ‘Theo’?” Selene suggested impatiently. “That’s Greek, right? The ‘t-h’ is one letter, so that’s three letters total.”

  “I know, awfully fitting for a classicist, right? ‘Theodoros,’ meaning ‘gift of the gods.’ I try not to let it go to my head. But I don’t think it’s our combination. The ‘o’ in Theo is an omicron, which corresponds to seventy. Too many digits, but if we add them together…” He did some quick mental math. “No good. It’s nine, five, seventy, so that’s only eighty-four. Not enough digits. It would be a little weird of her to use my name anyway. Maybe not Theo, but ‘theos,’ meaning ‘God.’ Add it up, you get… two hundred and seventy-nine.” He spun the combination lock. “Nope. Damn. We probably need a word that uses only alpha through theta, so it corresponds to our nine modern digits.”

  Selene stared at the lock for a moment, then around the room, searching for inspiration. Theo just stared blankly at the ceiling, his lips moving silently. Then, at the same moment, they both turned to the photos of the temples.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked. “Not ‘Theos.’ Thea.”

  Selene nodded. “What better password than Goddess?”

  “Theta, epsilon, alpha. Nine-five-one.” The lock sprang open in Theo’s hands. He gave a quiet whoop. “I’m not saying we are geniuses, but I am saying it’s damn possible.”

  He opened the drawer and shone his flashlight inside. Selene peered over his shoulder.

  “A lararium. A Roman shrine to the lares—their household gods,” he murmured, awestruck. Beneath a cardboard roof stood four small clay figurines, a shallow dish of wine, and a pile of burnt incense sticks. “Usually, the lares were unnamed protective spirits—local gods of the hearth or the crossroads—or sometimes personal ancestors. But that’s definitely Persephone,” he said, focusing the light on the statue holding a clay pomegranate. “Or I guess, since this a Roman shrine, I should say Proserpina.” He swung to the next figurine, this one bearing a wooden arrow made from a toothpick.

  “Artemis. Diana,” Selene said, the names heavy on her tongue.

  The third idol had no symbolic accoutrements and barely the suggestion of a face, just full, pendulous breasts and a round belly. “That one doesn’t look Greek or Roman at all,” Theo whispered. “More like a primitive Earth Mother goddess.” The last figure, clearly male, carried only an unadorned toothpick. “And that one could be anything. But probably Asclepius with his staff. Then again, it could be a sword.”

  Selene glanced up at the photos on the wall once more. “This whole place is a shrine,” she said. “Your friend Helen didn’t just study the gods, she worshiped them.”

  The night of her death, Helen must have invoked Artemis in her moment of need. The magnitude of her faith had awakened senses long dormant, allowing Selene to receive the vision of the woman’s last moments. That explained why touching Sammi Mehra’s corpse had no effect—whatever god or gods the girl had worshiped, they weren’t Greek. But Helen prayed to me, Selene realized with a heavy heart. I felt a tingling, a summons, as I left Jackie Ortiz’s apartment the night Helen was killed—and I didn’t even realize what it was. Now, when it was too late, she could almost hear the woman’s prayer, offered up as she lay bound and gagged at the river’s edge, a man poised above her with a needle glinting in the light of a single lamppost:

  Artemis, Protector of Women, aim your arrow true.

  Find him, Huntress, show no mercy.

  Pierce him through the heart like a stag on the run.

  Selene shuddered, thinking of how Helen’s last breath must have reached for Olympus and found it empty. The unanswered prayer would fall from heaven to earth. There, it would slide past the city’s spires, sigh along the canyon streets, and rush down the back alleys into dark and hidden places, to finally whisper in the ear of a goddess who could no longer hear. The one supplicant I have left, and I came too late to save her, she admitted. Maybe it’s Helen’s faith, not my mother’s decline, that has brought back my powers.

  As he looked from the figures in the lararium to the photos on the wall, Theo’s face paled. “I alwa
ys talk about how we’ve lost something by embracing literal-minded monotheism, but I never dreamed she’d go this far. What did she get herself into? And who—”

  The distant sound of Hippo’s urgent barking interrupted him.

  “What’s she—” he began, but Selene cut him off by laying a finger on his lips. They were dry and soft to the touch. He looked astonished, but a second or two later, his eyes darted to the door as footsteps entered his hearing range. They stood, frozen, as the footsteps stopped. Hippo’s muffled barking continued from down the hall in Theo’s office. Selene could almost feel the presence of a man on the other side of the door. She sniffed the air, but smelled only Theo, scared and excited, beside her. Removing her finger from his lips, she padded silently to the door, leaning her cheek against the wood.

  Is it the cops? Theo mouthed.

  She shook her head. Too quiet. Too still. Someone staring at the tamper-proof seal on the door, wishing he could get in. Someone whose scent Hippo recognized.

  The instant the footsteps moved away, she took a flying leap onto the desk chair, then launched herself into the ductwork with barely a clatter. Moments later, she’d come out the other end into Theo’s office and thrown open his door so Hippo could bound through. Selene followed the sprinting dog to one end of the hallway, where the hound stood, pacing uncertainly, her nose lifted. She sniffed the ground for a few seconds, then took off in the opposite direction. Selene ran back down the hallway after her dog, past Theo’s office, then Helen’s. Hippo took a sharp turn into another room, then started barking maniacally. Selene halted, made sure she could easily reach the bow in her pack, then treaded cautiously into the room. A skinny old man in a three-piece suit huddled in the corner of the office kitchen, clutching a ham sandwich to his chest.

  “Stay back!” he shouted at the drooling dog crouching a foot away.

  Selene groaned. “Sorry,” she said, pulling Hippo away. “She has a thing for pork.” She scolded the dog as she dragged her back down the hallway to Theo’s office and slammed the door behind them.

  “What? What is it?” Theo panted as his head appeared above her in the vent.

  “I thought Hippo’d caught our suspect’s scent, but she was more interested in some professor’s lunch. If it was the killer outside the door, he’s already gone. I was too slow.”

  “Too slow? Are you kidding? I blinked and you were gone.” He swung his feet through the hole in the ceiling. “Are you some sort of gymnast?”

  “I’m a lot of things.” She pushed the chair under Theo. This time, he dropped onto it without sending her sprawling.

  “The way you ran, I was convinced something was about to attack us.”

  “If something had been about to attack us,” she said dryly, “I wouldn’t have run.”

  “That makes one of us.” He began gathering books and papers from his desk.

  “Are you a coward?”

  “Wow. Personal question. Only when facing a pile of midterms to grade. You should see the grammar these kids use. But if you’re talking about violence? I’ve never actually hit anyone. Wanted to, sure. But I don’t believe in putting myself or others in needless physical danger. I’ll leave that to stuntwomen like you.”

  “We need to get going before Natural History closes. You have two minutes.” She hefted herself back into the airshaft and shimmied down the duct to Helen’s office to replace the grate in her ceiling. A minute later, she was back doing the same to Theo’s. He was still packing.

  “I just need to grab a few things to take with me while I’m on… vacation,” he explained.

  Selene maintained her patience for nearly a minute, then found herself clenching and unclenching her fists, trying not to snap at him as he attempted to shove an entire library’s worth of material into a satchel.

  “I’m just going to go,” she said finally, grabbing Hippo’s leash and turning toward the door.

  “You can’t go without me.”

  Selene spun back to the professor and took a step toward him. She was surprised to notice he was actually an inch or so taller than she. “We are not partners, remember?” She narrowed her eyes, but unlike most people she encountered, he neither backed down nor grew defensive, but only looked at her calmly.

  “You’re going to just walk up to the museum and ask to speak to their paleodontist on a Saturday afternoon?” he asked. “Okay, I’m sure that’ll work.”

  Selene frowned. “I’ll make them let me in.”

  “Threats? Sure. Curators usually respond to threats.”

  Selene snarled, grabbed the teetering pile of books off Theo’s desk, and stuffed them into her own large backpack.

  “You don’t have to—that’s going to be really heavy!”

  But she was already out the door, angry at Theo for slowing her down—but even angrier at herself for her unwillingness to leave him behind.

  Chapter 20

  STORMY ONE

  “So you’re not a fan of Alexander Hamilton. What about Roosevelt?” Theo couldn’t resist asking as they pounded up the steps of the American Museum of Natural History under the watchful gaze of the former president’s equestrian statue. Selene maintained the same grim expression she’d had since they left Columbia, but Theo reasoned that if he was going to lose his job, he might as well have some fun.

  “Teddy? Him I liked.”

  They’d taken a cab to the museum to save time. He’d spent the trip with Hippolyta’s drool cascading down his neck and her paws digging into his crotch. When they’d arrived, Selene tied the dog to a lamppost in front of the museum. Most of Hippolyta’s hair, on the other hand, came with them, embedded in his corduroy blazer.

  “You a fan of progressive politics?” Theo asked hopefully. “He’s just about the only Republican since Lincoln that I admire.”

  “Politics?” She shrugged. “He liked National Parks. So do I.”

  Theo’d never been one for outdoorsy vacations (unless they involved ancient ruins, of course), but he caught himself imagining hiking past Old Faithful with someone like Selene at his side. Not a bad way to spend summer vacation.

  “Mostly, though, I liked him because he was a great hunter,” Selene added over her shoulder. “Like me.”

  Smile banished, Theo followed her mutely into the grand marble rotunda, hoping she was referring to hunting down criminals, not animals, but fairly certain she wasn’t. He had no problem picturing the tall, graceful woman traipsing through some upstate forest and bringing down deer. It made him a little uneasy just thinking about it. He’d never been friends with someone who hunted before. Although he wasn’t sure if he could quite consider Selene DiSilva a friend. Mostly, she seemed to want to get rid of him.

  Theo approached a bored-looking security guard.

  “I’m here to see Dr. Gabriela Jimenez. She works in the Anthropology Department.”

  The woman shifted ponderously in her chair, as if reaching for the phone were immensely difficult.

  “And you are?”

  “Theodore Schultz.”

  Her eyes grew round. Sure enough, the woman had read about him already.

  “Just tell her we’re here,” Selene said, staring down the guard.

  “Humph.” The woman covered her mouth with her hand as she spoke into the telephone. “It’s the guy they keep talking about… Schultz,” she hissed audibly. “For Dr. Jimenez.”

  “I’m a colleague of hers,” Theo added lamely.

  “She’ll meet you on the west side of the rotunda,” the guard said finally, putting down the phone and handing them a pair of security passes. “Near North American Mammals.” Theo heard her mutter something to a co-worker as he turned away. Selene spun back, planted both hands on the desk, and leaned forward as if she might leap right over it.

  “Don’t go gossiping about something you know nothing about.”

  “Lord have mercy, I—”

  “If you do, I’ll shoot you, skin you, and stuff you. You’ll fit right into the Hall of Human
Origins, somewhere between Turkana Boy and the Cro-Magnons.”

  Theo waved his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, Bruce Banner! No need to Hulk out. You’re going to get us kicked out.” After a last scowl at the security guard, Selene backed off. “You don’t need to defend me, you know,” he added as they hurried toward the exhibit halls.

  “Because you’re doing such a fine job of it yourself?”

  Theo found himself grinning, flattered by her defensiveness on his behalf.

  Gabriela emerged from the elevator bank. He gave her a quick hug. “I know it’s a Saturday and all, so thanks, Gabi.”

  “For you, Theodear, anything.” She flashed him a ready smile. “Besides, half the staff is here, still freaking out about the theft. It’s been a hellish two days, but nothing compared to your week.” She grabbed Theo’s hand and squeezed.

  Theo stepped aside to introduce his “friend” Selene and watched Gabriela’s eyes widen as they traveled up her six-foot frame. Next to the pale, slender woman, Gabriela looked like a miniature Mayan fertility goddess.

  She tapped the elevator call button and leaned her backside against the wall, folding her arms across her chest. “A lot’s happened since you got yourself arrested this morning.” She ushered them into the car, slipped her access key into a slot, and pressed the button for the staff-only sixth floor.

  “Oh yeah? Find anything else missing from the collection?”

  Her jaw fell open. “How did you know?”

  “Well, we have something that might belong to the museum.” He could feel Selene stiffen beside him. “But, Gabriela, you have to promise not to ask where we got it, okay? None of your usual relentless pestering.”

  She frowned. “Since when are you all secretive?” She glanced at Selene and then back at Theo, her eyebrows raised. As usual, her expression lacked all subtlety.

  “Since I found myself the hapless victim of the criminal justice system.” The doors slid open and they exited into a long, cramped hallway of research offices. “Selene?”