“Yeah, right. I was so much better off in the orphanage and then with him.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.” Cecelia may have wanted to talk about her experience with Sue, but not about her foster father yet. “It couldn’t have been any worse to live with her.”
“She couldn’t know that.”
“I thought witches could see the future.”
“They aren’t supposed to. It’s forbidden.”
“Isn’t fucking mortals forbidden too?”
Akako’s cheeks reddened. “Yes. It is.”
Cecelia realized she’d crossed a line. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you—”
“No, I understand. Agnes and I shouldn’t be together. But sometimes you have to listen to your heart.”
“And my mother’s heart said to foist me off on strangers?”
Akako put a hand on Cecelia’s shoulder; she didn’t brush it away. “I’m sure your mother only wanted the best for you.”
“Yeah, right.” Cecelia glared at the archivist. “You can take your hand off me now.”
“Sorry,” Akako said. “There’s something you should know. It might make you feel better.”
“If you’re going to beg for your life, I’m not in the mood to hear it.”
“No, it’s not that. I told Agnes—your aunt—about you.”
“I thought you couldn’t leave the vault.”
“I passed a message along to her.” Akako shifted uncomfortably against the shelves. “She’s been doing some genealogical research on your son.”
“My son?”
“Aggie said it wasn’t easy to find because they used a different name, but he was born the same time you were there and the hospital record indicated he didn’t have any parents, so they gave him to an orphanage.”
“An orphanage? But he died. She told me my baby was dead.”
“Who?”
“The Headmistress—the woman who saved me. She said he died.”
“No, he lived. He was adopted by a family and taken to America. He became a butcher and married and had three children—”
Akako didn’t get to finish, as Cecelia lunged forward to grab her by the throat. “You’re lying! My baby died! That’s what she told me. Why would she lie to me?”
Akako could only gasp in response. Cecelia squeezed harder as she thought of the Headmistress taking her away from the hospital, to the academy with the others. Cecelia’s hand went slack as the awful thought popped into her head that the Headmistress had used her, lied to her so Cecelia would go with her and become an assassin. “That bitch!”
Akako took in a few deep breaths before she put a hand on Cecelia’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“She lied to me. All these years.” Cecelia screamed at the thought that the woman she had loved like a mother had betrayed her. “I’m going to kill her!”
“There’s something else you should know. You have a great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. Her name is Shelly. She’s ten years old. Aggie says she has a picture up in the lobby—and her address.”
Cecelia shook her head sadly. “What am I supposed to do, go there and tell her I’m her great-however-many-times-grandma? Do I look like any ten-year-old’s grandma?”
“No, but Aggie says the girl’s in a foster home. Maybe she could use a friend, someone who cares about her.”
Cecelia considered this. Maybe she could be to little Shelly what Sue had been to her. “Maybe,” she said. Then she pointed a finger at Akako’s throat. “But if you’re lying about any of this I’m going to slit your fucking throat and make a hat out of it.”
“I understand.”
Before they could get any farther, there was an explosion of blue light.
Part 4
Chapter 31
From the sandbox, Emma watched Louise drag Isis away from the altar. She wiped tears away and smiled. “Good luck, baby,” she whispered. Then she looked up at the swing set, where Joanna rocked on the swings absently. “You don’t look like Anubis to me,” Emma said. “He has the head of a dog from statues I’ve seen.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“I suppose so.” Emma stood up and brushed the sand from the bulge in her stomach where baby Louise still slept. Never had Emma been so happy to see that bulge or her swollen breasts and ankles as when she woke up in the sandbox.
Everything had gone according to plan. She had laid down on the altar with the knife and said a prayer that she hoped would be good enough, despite that her ancient Egyptian was rusty and she hadn’t time to practice anything. While she prayed, she snuck a glance across the room, where she watched with no small amount of pride as her daughter took on a dozen Black Dragoons—and was winning! Louise fought like a woman possessed; sometimes she moved so fast Emma couldn’t even see her. The reason for this was obvious: Louise fought to protect her mother.
After she said her prayer, Emma had raised the knife and brought it down on her own heart. She winced with pain and felt the world pull away from her. With her last strength, she composed her arms to cover the fatal wound so Louise wouldn’t have to see it. She managed to turn her head again in time to watch Louise take off the head of a Dragoon with the Sword of Justice. Provided everything worked as they hoped, she knew the Order of the Scarlet Knight was in good hands.
For a second time she died. Only instead of waking up in a temple of Anubis or some variation of the afterlife, she woke up in Joanna’s sandbox, finally back in her own body. She found that through the sandbox she could watch the end of the battle, as the Dragoons vanished and Isis became a sniveling mortal.
Emma had felt a moment of despair when Louise raised the Sword of Justice to kill Isis. That despair turned to joy when Louise dropped the sword, unable to go through with it. In that moment her daughter became the Scarlet Knight inside as well as outside.
“Is she going to be OK?” Emma asked Joanna.
“Maybe.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“The best I can give you.”
“Because of the rules?”
“No, because the future is always changing. You should know that. What you saw—what you experienced—may be what happens or it may not be. My money’s on the latter.”
“Why would you say that?”
Joanna let out a weary sigh and stopped swinging to look Emma in the eye. “You and I aren’t the only ones who saw this. She saw it and now that she knows how powerful your daughter is going to be—I’m sorry.”
Emma collapsed back onto the sand and put a hand to her stomach. She certainly couldn’t fault Joanna’s logic. If Isis had seen what Emma had seen, she would try to make certain Louise never came of age to be the next Scarlet Knight. The same probably applied to Aggie and Akako’s future daughter Renee. Isis wouldn’t let either girl survive to defeat her as they had in this glimpse of the future. “What do I do? What can I do?”
“There may be nothing you can do.”
“No! I won’t accept that. She’s my daughter. I have to protect her.”
“You can’t watch her every moment. It only takes one for Isis to strike.”
“Then I’ll stop her before she can strike. I’ll find her and kill her.”
“There’s a thought.”
“You think I wouldn’t kill her to save Louise?”
“It should be easy enough. Eileen is just three years old right now. You could walk into the nursery and surprise her while she’s having tea with her dollies.”
“Don’t mock me. This is serious.”
“I’m not mocking you. I’m simply telling you the way things are.”
Emma put a hand to her head as she thought about it. “Then I’ll go to the Temple of Isis and I’ll sacrifice myself to Anubis.”
“Another interesting thought. I’m sure Becky would be a good mother to Louise. She had enough practice with you.”
Tears bubbled up in Emma’s eyes. “Stop it! Can’t you just help me save her?”
Joanna stood up from the swings; she glided across the tall grass to squat down in front of Emma. “I’m sorry, Emma. I’ve done too much for you already. You know what I said about a deus ex machina universe.”
“It’s not fair. I can’t leave Isis out there, waiting to kill her. What kind of mother am I going to be then?”
“You already know the answer to that.” Joanna patted Emma’s shoulder. “Things are going to be difficult, but you have to have faith that they’ll get better. Remember what you saw, the kind of woman your daughter will become—the kind of mother you will become. Whatever happens, don’t lose hope. Do you understand?”
Emma nodded. She leaned forward to give the young woman a hug. “You aren’t going to turn out so bad yourself.”
“Yes, well, I had a good mother.” Joanna helped Emma up and then guided her back to the center of the sandbox. As Emma sank through the sand, she waved goodbye to Joanna and wondered if she would ever see this version of the mysterious girl again.
***
As the flashbulbs that went off in front of her began to clear, Emma thought there must be some kind of mistake. Had she gone back into the past now? Or maybe she had gone on to the afterlife, with the stop at Joanna’s house being a dream. Why else was Sylvia leaning down over her to ask if she was all right?
Once her vision cleared, she recognized the limestone ceiling of the archives. While she didn’t believe in an afterlife where you sat on a cloud and strummed a harp, shouldn’t the afterlife be somewhere better than the archives? Unless perhaps she’d gone to that other afterlife, the one that was supposed to be filled with fire and brimstone.
Akako appeared next to Sylvia and looked down at her with concern. “Emma, are you all right? Can you hear me?”
“Akako? What’s Sylvia doing here?”
“This isn’t Sylvia. It’s her daughter.”
“She doesn’t have a daughter.”
She tried to sit up, but Akako pressed her back down. “Take it easy. Everything’s going to be all right now,” Akako said. She flashed a fake smile to put Emma at ease.
“Where am I?”
“In the vault. With me and Cecelia.”
The vault. Emma rubbed her temple to clear away the cobwebs from her mind. She had been in the future, thanks to a spell from the vault. She had been in the vault to try to escape. An assassin had tried to take the armor from her. An assassin with green eyes, like those of the woman next to Akako.
“You!” Emma fought off Akako’s hand as she tried to get to her feet. The weight of her stomach made this difficult; she could only sit up. Nevertheless, she clawed at the assassin’s face. “You can’t have her! I won’t let you have her!”
The assassin easily backed away from this attack; she made room so Akako could plant herself in front of Emma and put both hands on her shoulders. “Emma, relax. Cecelia isn’t going to hurt you. Not anymore. No one’s going to hurt you. Do you understand?”
Emma stared into the archivist’s eyes for a moment and saw she told the truth. She let her body go slack and sagged back to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Cecelia said. “I never wanted to hurt your baby. Or you.”
“I still can’t give you the armor.”
“I know. It’s fine. I’m getting out of that business anyway.”
“That’s a good idea.” Emma lifted her head up enough to see the woman again. “You really are Sylvia’s daughter? Wouldn’t that make you—?”
“A hundred seventy.”
“So you’re a witch too?”
“Half. I don’t do spells.”
“Oh, I see.” Emma thought of Renee Chiostro, who would also be half-witch and half-something else. “That’s not so bad.”
“I guess not.”
The warning klaxons finally wound down, followed by a clanking sound from upstairs. “The door’s opening,” Akako said. It was only a few seconds afterwards that Aggie ran down the path and leaped into Akako’s arms like a scene from a romance movie.
While the reunited lovers kissed, Cecelia took Emma’s hand and helped her stand up. The former assassin kept an arm around Emma’s shoulder to keep her upright. “It’ll take a few hours for that to clear up,” Cecelia said. “Trust me.”
Emma wasn’t sure if she could really trust this woman, who until recently had tried to kill her—and Louise. Still, given the pounding in Emma’s head and the wobbliness of her legs, she didn’t have much choice in the matter. She leaned against Cecelia for support and waited for one of the assassin’s knives to appear in her body as had happened before.
Instead, Cecelia walked her slowly up the ramp, to the first floor of the archives. They went past Akako’s desk and the lines of computer servers, into the quarters Emma shared with Akako. Cecelia had Emma lean against a wall while she pushed back the covers on the bed. Then the former assassin gently guided Emma onto the bed to tuck her in like her mother had, which gave Emma a shiver as she remembered what Isis had done to her—or would do to her.
“You just take it easy, kid,” Cecelia said. She put a hand on Emma’s stomach. “And make sure to take good care of that baby. Don’t let anything happen to her.”
“I won’t,” Emma said.
Cecelia nodded to her. “I have to go now. Next time we meet, maybe it’ll be for her birthday. I’m really good at pin the tail on the donkey.”
“I can imagine.”
The former assassin smiled and then seemed to disappear, though not in a flash of light as Aggie did when she vanished. Emma listened for a moment, but heard only the old rocks shift and water drip. She put both hands on her stomach and felt Louise kick. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she whispered.
***
When she woke up, Aggie sat at her bedside. Emma tried to sit up, but the witch pressed her back down as Akako had earlier. “It’s all right, dear. Take it easy.”
Emma saw she was still in Akako’s quarters, which had been her home for the last month. She leaned her head back to stare up at the ceiling. Maybe it had all been a dream brought on by her anxiousness about the pregnancy. “How long have I been out?”
“About two hours. How’s your head feeling?”
Emma put a hand to her head, which felt as if someone had filled it with wet cotton. “Still a little fuzzy.”
“Give it some time, dear.”
“Right.” She closed her eyes and then opened them again wide, which didn’t seem to help much. “I had this dream that someone was chasing me. She turned out to be Sylvia’s daughter. And we went into the archives and a spell got out—”
She stopped as she saw Aggie nod. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
“No, dear. It was real.”
“And that woman, she really is your niece?”
“That’s right. I suppose in a way she’s also my stepdaughter.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, dear. I’m glad that a piece of both of them is still alive.”
Emma wasn’t so sure she’d be able to be so forgiving under the same circumstances, though she supposed it helped that it had happened almost two centuries ago and that Aggie had found Akako since then. “How’s Akako taking it?”
“Just fine. She and the girl did quite a bit of talking while they were waiting for you. I think she’s going to mend her ways now.”
“That’s good news.”
“It certainly is. It’s hard to believe she could do such terrible things. All those people she killed.” Aggie stopped and shook her head. “I don’t want to burden you with all of that. Not now. Tell me, how was your trip to the future?”
“It was really interesting,” Emma said, not sure what word could really describe it. “I got to see her. She’s going to be so beautiful. And smart—even smarter than me. And she’s going to have a best friend named Renee. Renee Sylvia Chiostro.”
Aggie stared at her in disbelief. “I’m not sure what you’re saying, dear.”
“Oh my,” Aggie finally managed to get out. “And was she—was she happy?”
“She was a little confused, like all of us at that age, but she had two parents who loved her very much to help her through it.”
“I’m glad to hear that, dear.”
Emma told Aggie about the rest of her vision of the future; the witch’s face turned graver as Emma described what Isis would do. “Joanna said there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Not now,” Emma said. “Do you think she’s right?”
Aggie considered this for a moment. “I’m afraid so, dear. I certainly wouldn’t expect you to go murder a child, even one who may turn out to be pure evil.”
“But she’s going to try to hurt Louise. She’s not going to let her grow up to become the Scarlet Knight.” Even as Emma said this, she felt a pain in her midsection, followed by a damp feeling between her legs. Her eyes widened as she turned to Aggie. “I think my water just broke.”
Chapter 32
For seven years Laura Pavelski had treated patients in her own practice. Throughout that time she’d come to know a lot of the women under her care; there was nothing like inspecting a woman’s most private parts and being entrusted with her most precious possession to bring you together. She had a whole gallery of portraits of babies she had helped bring into the world and boxes of thank-you cards from mothers.
Despite this, she had never become all that involved with any of her patients. She didn’t go to their christenings, birthday parties, or graduations. She politely declined some of the more clingy women who asked her to go to school plays or Little League games. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the women—even the clingy ones—so much as she knew it would be better for all concerned to maintain a professional distance. She didn’t want them to think of her as part of the family; she preferred to focus on her own life without getting involved with someone else’s.
Despite seven years of this policy, she found herself being drawn into the life of one particular woman. No matter how she tried to resist, she found herself unable to pull away, like a bit of space junk being pulled against its will into a planet’s atmosphere. She supposed that was an apt analogy since the patient in question was an expert on meteors.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 102