The woman leaned forward in an armchair and removed the bifocals that were obviously for show. “So which one of us are you?” she asked.
“Artemis,” Cecelia said. Each operative had a codename given to her by the Headmistress; Cecelia’s had come from a book on Greek mythology, which in her current state she supposed was another cosmic joke.
“That’s impossible,” the woman said. “I talked to Artemis two hours ago. She’s on a job in Morocco.”
Cecelia remembered the job. She’d tracked down the head of a resistance group who had wanted to flee to America. He’d made it onto a plane with his wife and they’d toasted their safety with glasses of champagne once they were airborne. As their glasses touched, Cecelia put three bullets into each of them and then gone to the cockpit to take out the pilots just to be sure. Then she’d bailed out safely into the Atlantic, where a U-boat picked her up and took her back to occupied France. A perfect operation as far as she was concerned—targets killed and no witnesses left behind.
That job was probably still a day or two in the future. “I am Artemis. I’ve come from about sixty-five years in the future.”
“Sure, on your rocket ship.”
“I’m serious,” Cecelia insisted. She hated the childish whine in Maria’s voice. “I’m looking for a woman named Dr. Emma Earl. I think she might have come here from the future too.”
“Who are you really? One of those stinking witches? Trying to infiltrate our operations?”
“A witch would have a better cover story,” Cecelia said.
The woman considered this for a moment. “Unless you thought there’s no way I’d think a witch would be dumb enough to come up with a story like that.”
“Are you serious?”
“Are you, little girl?”
“Jesus fucking Christ. Why don’t you take me to the Headmistress and she can decide.”
Though the woman was obviously a paranoid twit, she did draw the Luger from her pocket much faster than Cecelia would have thought possible. The woman aimed the pistol at Cecelia’s head, which prompted her to feel more bile rise into her throat, though this time she doubted it was the baby at work. “How do you know about the Headmistress?”
“I told you: I’m Artemis. I’ve come here from the future thanks to one of the coven’s spells.”
“So you are with the coven.”
“No, I just got hit with one of their spells. So did the woman I’m looking for. I thought you could help me track her down.”
“Who is this woman you’re looking for?”
“A geology teacher. She possesses Merlin’s armor.”
“Now I know you’re lying. No woman has ever worn Merlin’s armor.”
Cecelia rubbed her face with both hands and wished again for one of her knives so she could end this bothersome woman’s life. “Things are different in the future. Can you help me or not?”
The woman thought for a moment and then smiled. “Of course, dear. Here, let me help you up and I’ll take you to the guest room so you can get some rest.”
“Thank you—” Cecelia didn’t get to finish as something sharp stabbed into her side. She felt a moment of pain and then her entire body went numb. Yet another cosmic joke that the poison she’d used on Earl’s friend had now been used on her. She cursed herself for being so stupid as to think the woman would help her. Another careless mistake. Maybe she’d gotten too old for this job.
“Take her out back and dispose of her.” The woman continued to smile as she looked down at Cecelia. “Another poor immigrant girl killed in the big city.”
Cecelia wanted to shout an insult back, but her mouth wouldn’t move. She could only curse herself some more as someone began to drag her away to her doom.
***
In her one hundred seventy years of life, Cecelia had faced death countless times. The first came when she was only fourteen years old, her stomach nearly the same size as Maria’s. Her first night on her own she nearly froze to death while she walked through a blizzard without the benefit of a proper coat, gloves, or hat. The only thing that kept her alive was her raw hatred of her foster father.
When she’d arrived at the Rainier estate seven years earlier, she’d thought it was the start of a new life. She had left the orphanage behind and moved into a mansion with a beautiful new mother and a handsome new father. They were just like how she remembered Mama and Papa.
Mrs. Rainier was as nice and lovely as Cecelia’s first mother. She never knew her husband snuck out of their bed and into Cecelia’s. The first time came a month after Cecelia’s arrival. She had been too young to understand what he had done to her; she only knew it hurt. She wanted to cry out, but he put his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. “If you tell Mama you’ll get in trouble,” he whispered. She was so young that she believed him.
Over the next seven years the touching gave way to actual relations. Still Cecelia thought she was to blame, a thought he encouraged. “You make me do this,” he whispered into her ear. “You are so beautiful I cannot resist you.”
That they managed to avoid being found out was almost as miraculous as that Cecelia hadn’t contracted a disease—or gotten pregnant. Then just a month after her fourteenth birthday she began to throw up in the mornings. Her period had not come since her birthday, so it was at least three weeks late. She was too young to understand these signs herself, but their old housekeeper was also an accomplished midwife, so she knew Cecelia was pregnant.
He beat her within an inch of her life in the dining room that night. Her foster mother only looked on in horror; she’d done nothing as he hit Cecelia time and time again while he screamed, “Who is it? Give me his name, you little whore!”
She wanted to shout that he was the father and tell her foster mother everything that had happened, but she knew it wouldn’t make a difference. So finally out of weakness and terror she had called out the name of a stable boy. The boy was brought to the dining room; his eyes went wide with horror at the sight of her on the floor, bloody and bruised. It wasn’t long before he lay next to her; he ineffectually tried to cover his face with his hands while her foster father screamed, “How dare you touch my daughter, you son of a pig!”
She spent the next three weeks in bed; she never knew what became of the innocent stable boy. Her foster father’s only touch in that time was to grab her hair and yank her head back to look him in the eye. “How could you get pregnant, you little whore?”
She said nothing to anyone during this time. Her foster mother was very kind as she treated Cecelia’s injuries, to make sure her adopted daughter was comfortable. “It’s going to be all right,” her foster mother said.
Once Cecelia could walk again, her foster mother took her to church to seek the priest’s guidance. She gave him the same story about her and the stable boy and kept her eyes on the floor the entire time as she repeated the lie by rote. He made her say fifty Hail Mary’s while he suggested they give away Cecelia’s baby to her foster mother’s sister in Avignon. “No one has to know,” the priest said. “The child can grow up in a normal family and your honor will remain intact.”
The moment her foster mother agreed, Cecelia knew what she had to do. It took another four months before she could finally do it. She had to wait until Christmas Eve, when her foster parents went to Mass. Now that her pregnancy was too far along to hide, they kept her at home all the time, while they claimed she’d fallen ill.
Those four months she had stolen sheets from the laundry to tie into a makeshift rope. Once the maid had put her to bed, Cecelia took the rope out from the bottom of her hope chest. She didn’t have a winter coat that fit, so she had thrown a blanket out the window before she made her descent. The blanket did little to protect her from the cold, especially her extremities.
She also didn’t have proper shoes; her feet had swollen too much to fit into them. This had made the climb down the ladder arduous, as she found it impossible to get much footing along the stone walls of the house i
n her slippers. These were even more useless in the snow and soon filled with icy water. Still she plunged on through the storm, determined to escape with her baby.
It didn’t matter to her that the baby had been created through such a horrible act; she would love her child anyway. She would never hurt her child the way her foster father had hurt her, nor would she give her child away for a stranger to raise. Her baby would be loved, but most importantly, it would be hers.
This thought kept her going until she could see the battlements of the cathedral in town where her foster parents had gone. She would have to stick to the woods so no one would see her and bring her back. She would never go back, except to kill her foster father.
When she heard a branch snap, she thought for certain he had come to drag her back to the house. She shucked the slippers and ran in her bare feet through the snow. She could hear the footsteps crunch through the snow behind her. She tried to run faster, but still the footsteps closed on her.
A hand seized her from behind. She fought and screamed, but still the hand held firm. The hand spun her around to face not her foster father, but an old woman whose kindly blue eyes shone from behind a pair of thick glasses. “It’s much too cold for you to be out here like that, young lady,” the woman Cecelia would come to know as the Headmistress said. Cecelia fell gratefully into the woman’s arms.
She woke up two months later in a hospital in Paris. When she put a hand to her stomach and found it flat, she began to scream, “My baby! Where’s my baby?” It was after three orderlies held her down that the doctor told her the baby had died a month earlier while she’d been in a coma.
This time when Cecelia woke up, she found her stomach still bloated with child. She was not in a hospital either. From the look of it, she was in a single-room flat, the kind that were in abundance in the Trenches even back in the ‘40s. Cecelia tried to sit up, but a hand pushed her back down.
“Easy now, young lady,” a woman said.
Cecelia turned her head to the left and for a moment thought the Headmistress had saved her once again. Except this old woman didn’t wear glasses and her eyes were as green as Cecelia’s own. “Who are you?” Cecelia asked. “How’d I get here?” She put a hand to her side and felt the spot where they’d stabbed her.
“I saw a couple of dames trying to rough you up in an alley,” the stranger said. “I shooed them away and brought you to my place.”
“Thanks,” Cecelia said. She focused on her savior and noted that while the woman was in her late forties or early fifties, taut muscles bulged against the sleeves of her denim work shirt. That explained how she’d managed to “shoo away” a couple of hardened killers.
“You must be new in town,” the woman said. “A word of advice: stay away from the alleys around here.”
“No kidding.”
“You got someone I can call? Some family to pick you up?”
“It’s just me and the kid,” she said and patted her stomach. Maria’s baby gave a sharp kick in response.
“Don’t you know anyone here?”
“No.”
“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want. I know it’s not much—”
“That’s fine, but I should be going.”
“Going where?”
“Um—”
“Look, stay here tonight and tomorrow we’ll figure something out.”
“Well—”
“I don’t suppose you have a job waiting for you either, do you?”
“No.”
“I think I can help you out there, if you’re not afraid of getting your hands dirty.”
Cecelia wanted to refuse so she could get back to work to find Emma Earl and complete her mission. Then she had to confront the reality that she had no money, no job, and no place to stay. Unless she could find a way to see the Headmistress, she couldn’t hope for any help from the organization. That meant she was on her own. “I’ve never minded a little hard work,” she said.
“I thought you’d say that.” The woman held out a hand. “My name’s Sue Johnson.”
“Maria Costopolous.”
In a rough Bogart accent, Sue said, “Well, sweetheart, I think this looks like the start of a beautiful friendship.”
Cecelia hoped so; right now she needed all the friends she could get.
Chapter 10
The morning newspaper confirmed what Emma had already deduced: she was twenty years in the future. Given that it was twenty years in the future, the morning “newspaper” came as a beep on a device about the size of the face of her watch. When she touched the glowing red light, a holographic projection appeared in the air, to display the front page of the Rampart City Times.
There was far more advertising in the paper than she remembered, but the gist of the news seemed familiar. The FBI investigated a councilman about his ties to the mob. Three bodies had turned up in the harbor, likely part of a drug deal gone bad. And several convenience stores had been robbed.
Emma shook her head sadly. If she was still the Scarlet Knight, she hadn’t done a very good job. After a quarter-century she would have hoped to have put a severe dent in the city’s crime, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She thought back to Percival Graves, who had been the Scarlet Knight for nearly that amount of time. Crime had continued to fester throughout his tenure. She supposed one person really couldn’t make a huge difference, not even with a suit of magic armor.
She felt a sharp pain in her back to remind her she wasn’t twenty-seven anymore. She hobbled into the attached half-bathroom and locked the door behind her. Beneath the robe, she saw that while her face and hands might have looked like Aunt Gladys’s, the rest of her body looked far different. She traced one finger along a scar on her left collarbone that led to a pucker mark, probably from an acid burn. The pink scar on her left shoulder she remembered from her first battle with the Black Dragoon. More noticeable than any of these was the scar on her abdomen from a Cesarean section. She ran her finger along this scar and thought of Louise in the next room. Was Louise her only child or had she given birth to others? She didn’t have a wedding ring on, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been married at some point—maybe even to Jim.
She was tempted to figure out how to use the holographic device to search for information on herself, but she heard Louise call out, “If you’re going to take a shower you’ll have to wait a few minutes; I used up most of the hot water.”
“It’s all right,” Emma said. “I don’t mind a cold shower.”
The cold shower turned out to be a bad idea as every joint in her body felt as if it were made of wet concrete afterwards. She studied her face in the mirror more closely. The gray hair, the deep wrinkles, and flaps of skin around her neck all gave her the look of someone much older than forty-seven. People probably thought she was Louise’s grandma.
The glamorous life of a superhero, she thought to herself as she toweled off. Too many late nights and close calls had aged her at least an extra twenty years. To reinforce this was the line of prescription bottles on the counter. She didn’t recognize the drug names, but guessed they were for arthritis and other old person ailments. After she downed the pills, she fumbled with her hair to fashion it into a matronly bun that seemed appropriate. She decided against more than a light coat of lipstick; someone who let her hair go gray obviously didn’t care much if people thought she looked old.
She was relieved that at least she didn’t have a cane or walker in the bedroom. In her closet she found numerous sensible pantsuits. She wondered if these were still in fashion. Given how old she looked already, she supposed she was long past the point of fashion trends.
Louise had already dressed and waited for her in the kitchen. Given her parentage, it didn’t surprise Emma to see her daughter dressed in tomboy fashion with a black T-shirt, slacks, and the khaki vest she’d worn last night. With her spoon she pointed to a bowl of cereal and glass of green liquid. “I made you breakfast.”
“Thank you,” E
mma said. She tasted the green liquid and found the protein shake a little sweeter than she made them in her own time.
“I think I put too much orange juice in it,” Louise said.
“It’s fine, baby. Thank you.” She dipped her spoon into a bowl of bran flakes, which she supposed at her age she probably needed.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, you stopped calling me ‘baby’ when I was ten.”
“Sorry. Old habits die hard.”
“I just hope you don’t do it at work today. I take enough shit for being the director’s daughter already.” Emma cleared her throat and shot her daughter a stern look. “What?”
“Language.”
“Old habits die hard.”
They finished breakfast in silence; Emma wondered if things were always this strained between them or if it was because she had gone forward in time and Louise had returned from a dig in Egypt. As a concession she finished every drop of the protein shake and ate every bite of cereal. Louise had already excused herself to retrieve her purse and the backpack that contained her valuable treasures, which included the Book of Isis.
Emma shivered as she remembered her conversation with Joanna. If she didn’t find a way to dispose of the book, then everything would be destroyed. From last night, she knew Louise wouldn’t simply give the book to her, not without a better explanation. She supposed the only way then would be to take the book without Louise’s knowledge.
“Come on, Mom, we’re going to be late.”
“Right. I’m coming.” Louise had already found Emma’s purse and briefcase, to save her the embarrassment of trying to find them. She followed her daughter to the garage, where she found out that even after twenty years automobiles still didn’t fly.
The car wasn’t much bigger than her motorcycle and probably even lighter. She rummaged through her purse for keys, but didn’t see any. Then she saw Louise stick her thumb against the side of the door and the door pop open. “I thought maybe you’d like to drive,” Emma said and forced a smile to her face.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 73