Mrs. Forbes had the same mousy brown hair and startled expression as her daughter, though from what Cecelia had read, Shelly was adopted. “Have you ever taken care of children before?” Mrs. Forbes asked.
Cecelia strained her mouth muscles as she smiled, to try to seem pleasant. “Well, when I went to boarding school I did look after some of the younger kids,” she said. This wasn’t a lie so much as bending the truth. As one of the older students of the Headmistress, she had looked after some of the younger ones. Of course this had been more than a hundred fifty years ago in France and the Headmistress’s academy wasn’t really a traditional boarding school.
Still, this answer seemed to please Mrs. Forbes. “Do you smoke or use any sort of drugs?” the woman asked.
“No.”
“Do you carry around any weapons?”
“No,” Cecelia lied. She had a briefcase in the trunk of her rented car packed with her collection of knives, jars of potions, and a 9mm pistol just in case.
“Can you cook?”
“A little bit.” Cecelia had learned a little bit about cooking from her foster mother—the only thing she learned from that woman.
For the last part of the interview, Shelly came downstairs to meet her. The little girl refused to look Cecelia in the eye; she stared at her feet in a way that reminded Cecelia of Emma Earl. “Hi,” Shelly mumbled.
“This is my daughter,” Mrs. Forbes said. “She’s the one you’d be looking after.”
“I don’t need looking after,” Shelly said. “I’m ten years old.”
“Don’t be silly, honey. We can’t leave you in this house by yourself. What if there’s some kind of emergency?”
When Shelly rolled her eyes in time with her, Cecelia fell in love with the kid. Beneath the layers of shyness was a core of strength, which Cecelia knew came from her side of the family. She had only to teach the girl how to tap into it, to harness it.
The opportunity to do this came two weeks after she began to babysit Shelly, when she still stayed at a motel, unsure of how long she would stay. Cecelia came over at four o’clock like usual. She went upstairs as she always did to make sure Shelly did her homework. This time the girl lay facedown on her mattress, sobbing into a pillow, her hair wet as if she’d taken a shower.
Cecelia sat down on the bed and tentatively reached out to pat Shelly’s back. “Bad day at school?” she asked.
“I wish I were dead,” Shelly said into the pillow.
“I’m sure you don’t mean that.”
“Everyone thinks I’m a loser.”
“Why would they think that?” Cecelia listened while Shelly explained how some boy named Craig had sprayed her with deer bait spray and then started to call her, “Smelly Shelly.” The other kids had joined in until Shelly had run off to hide in the bathroom until class resumed.
“Everyone hates me,” she whined into her pillow.
“Then kick that little bastard’s ass,” Cecelia said.
Shelly looked up from the pillow to stare at her in shock; this was not the kind of thing a babysitter was supposed to say. “But I can’t. He’s a boy. He’s bigger than me.”
“So?”
“So I can’t beat him.”
“It isn’t the size that’s important. It’s having a good plan.”
They’d spent the rest of the night to go over a cunning strategy for Shelly to take her revenge on Craig. Through a pair of binoculars, Cecelia watched from across the street as her granddaughter carried out this plan. They had shown up early in the morning to plant some supplies in a bush by the playground. This included a concoction Cecelia had put together from ordinary household ingredients.
Shelly played her part perfectly; she cowered over by the bush as if afraid to join her classmates. When Craig sauntered towards her, Shelly reached into the bag for the balloon Cecelia had filled. She said something Cecelia hoped was suitably witty for the occasion and then hurled the balloon. It hit Craig dead-center in the chest. The gooey concoction of spoiled milk, eggs, vinegar, and finely chopped onions exploded across Craig’s shirt. While he stood there paralyzed with surprise, Shelly kicked him in the crotch. Just to add insult to injury, she reached into the bag for a Tupperware container of flour. She dumped this over Craig’s head and then shouted loud enough for Cecelia to hear, “Who’s smelly now?”
Of course the school suspended Shelly for five days, but this only added to her popularity. Her parents grounded her for two months, which meant nothing since Cecelia was the only one who was around to enforce the punishment most of the time. To her credit, Shelly claimed the stunt was entirely her idea, that she had done it after everyone else had gone to bed.
This one act was enough for Shelly to realize she was stronger than she thought. She became more confident and spent far more time with her new friends than in her room. And for the first time Cecelia felt like the mother she could have been if the Headmistress hadn’t stolen her son from her.
After this, Cecelia moved into her own apartment and started to make a home for herself in Denver. She even had a houseplant, some kind of fern Shelly had given to her for Christmas. For the first time in her life she had become domesticated—and she liked it.
She should have known this couldn’t last forever. She should have known the Headmistress wouldn’t let her walk away. If Agnes Chiostro could track Shelly down, Cecelia should have known the Headmistress could too. She should have known, but she hadn’t because she was too happy to be with her granddaughter.
Then she came home one night to find her apartment ransacked. It could have been a random break-in, an ordinary burglar. Except the safe she’d hidden in the closet for some of her potions, ingredients, and daggers was open. Cecelia had asked Aunt Agnes to use a spell from the coven to protect the safe from any conventional weapons or techniques. Only someone versed in magic could open it.
Cecelia found the phone and dialed Shelly’s house. The voice on the other end was not Shelly’s, but that of someone even more familiar. “Hello, Artemis. I guess you’ve seen your apartment by now.”
“What do you want?”
“You. Now.” With that, the woman hung up the phone.
Cecelia drove even faster and more recklessly than usual to get back to the Forbes’s house. Along the way she cursed herself for being so damned careless. She should have gotten Shelly to move to a safer location, even if it meant leaving her foster parents. She should have asked Aunt Agnes for the coven’s help to protect her granddaughter. But she had stupidly thought she could handle anything that came up.
As she pulled up to the house, she saw all the lights were off, except for a dim glow in the living room. She opened the trunk and cursed herself again. She had gotten so careless that she only kept one dagger in the trunk and none of her potions. Not that it would matter since her former comrades would most certainly search her before she went inside. But she did have something that could be of use: a spare remote for the alarm system. That was if whoever had ransacked the apartment hadn’t completely destroyed the system. Well, it was worth a shot.
She got halfway up the driveway when someone seized her by the wrist and pushed her facedown onto the driveway. She didn’t bother to ask how the woman had managed to stay concealed so well. “You don’t have to be so rough, Shadow,” she said.
“We can’t take chances,” the woman hissed as she began to pat Cecelia down. Cecelia carefully hid the remote control in the grass, where Shadow wouldn’t notice the black plastic object in the darkness.
“Who’ve you got in there?” Cecelia asked. Shadow turned her over to search the front of her for weapons. The woman took no chances when it came to feeling Cecelia’s cleavage. “I’ll bet it’s Raven. You two always work together. I used to think you had a thing for each other.”
“That’s none of your business, traitor,” Shadow said. She squeezed Cecelia’s left breast harder than necessary to make her wince.
“Fine, be that way.” She waited until Shadow stoo
d aside before she palmed the remote as she pushed herself up to her feet. She dropped it into the hidden pocket inside her sleeve where she usually kept a dagger hidden.
Shadow led her up the front steps, into the house. As she’d seen from the road, it was completely dark except for a candle in the living room. Always one for the dramatic, Cecelia thought. That would work to Cecelia’s advantage.
Shelly was tied to a chair in the middle of the living room. Though the girl’s mouth was gagged, the fear in her eyes told Cecelia everything she needed to know. That and the tall black woman beside Shelly with a dagger in her hand. The woman’s mouth curled in a combination smile/snarl as she saw Cecelia. “Artemis,” she spat.
“Raven,” Cecelia said.
“Look at you. You’re getting plump.”
“Why don’t we dispense with the bullshit and you tell me what you want?”
“It’s pretty simple, enough that even you can understand. The Headmistress wants you to turn over your cousin. In exchange we’ll let this little mouse live. You might even be allowed back in the organization.”
“Renee? Why do you want Renee? She’s a baby.”
“You should know we don’t question our orders. We do what the Headmistress tells us to do.”
“The Headmistress is full of shit. You should know that.”
Raven put the edge of the dagger to Shelly’s throat. The girl screamed beneath the gag. “Another crack like that and I might decide to perform a little amateur surgery.”
From experience, Cecelia knew Raven wasn’t bluffing. She wouldn’t have any qualms about carving Shelly’s face up to leave the poor girl hideously scarred. Raven would actually enjoy that; she would savor Shelly’s pain. “I can try, but it might take some time. Renee’s mother is very protective of her.”
“We know. That’s why we’re asking you.” Raven ran the knife up from Shelly’s jaw to her cheek, not hard enough to draw blood, just hard enough to terrify the poor girl. “The Headmistress is sure you can find a way.”
“Let’s say I do get Renee: what assurance are you going to give me that you aren’t going to hurt Shelly?”
“The Headmistress’s word isn’t good enough for you?”
“It’s not her I’m worried about. What assurance are you going to give me?”
“Are you questioning my honor?”
“Yeah, I am. I know what kind of psychotic bitch you are. I know you’d love to cut up a little white girl.”
“Why you—” It was then Cecelia flicked the remote out of her sleeve, into her palm. She closed her eyes and then hit the button not for the alarm itself, but for the lights in the room. These came on to momentarily blind Raven and Shadow.
Cecelia didn’t waste time. She threw the remote as hard as she could and hit Raven’s hand; the dagger fell to the floor. At the same time she lunged forward to knock the assassin to the floor, away from Shelly.
By then Raven had recovered. They grappled along the floor, evenly matched as they rolled around the carpet. But Raven was right that Cecelia had put on a little weight. She had become domesticated. She was a bit too slow to deflect Raven’s hand before it cuffed her on the side of the head.
Cecelia toppled sideways, but she had the wherewithal to stick a foot out to trip Raven. The assassin fell face first onto the carpet with a muffled grunt. Cecelia grabbed a lamp from off an end table. She used this to club Raven over the head. With another grunt the assassin’s body went still.
Cecelia reached into one of Raven’s pockets for a dagger. It was heavier than the ones she used, but it would do. She used this to cut the ropes that held Shelly. Before she took off the gag, Cecelia looked around, but Shadow was gone.
“Did you see where she went?” Cecelia asked. Shelly shook her head. Cecelia wanted to swear, but she didn’t want to scare her granddaughter more than she was. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Let’s get out of here.”
She wasn’t prepared for Shelly to latch onto her in a bear hug. The girl began to sob violently. Cecelia patted her granddaughter’s back and continued to whisper that everything would be all right. Though she knew it wasn’t.
She knew she should kill Raven. The assassin would go back to report to the Headmistress and then she would come after Cecelia again. Never leave an enemy at your back had been drilled into Cecelia early on. Then she looked down at the sobbing girl who clung to her and remembered she wasn’t an assassin anymore. She couldn’t traumatize Shelly any further by slitting Raven’s throat.
Instead, she gently pushed Shelly towards the front door. “Let’s get out of here and find you somewhere safe.”
She knew the attack was coming. She knew Shadow wouldn’t leave Raven behind—that was another tenet of the Headmistress’s training. The hairs on the back of Cecelia’s neck stood up a moment before she saw the blade spin towards her. She pushed Shelly down to the ground and then rolled into a crouch.
Of all the members of the organization, Shadow had proven the best at stealth and concealment, hence her nickname. As she looked around the Forbes’s front yard, Cecelia didn’t see the assassin anywhere. She took Shelly’s hand to help the girl sit up. “When I give the word, I want you to run for the car. The keys are still in the ignition. Drive to the police station.”
“But I can’t drive.”
“Come on, kid, how many movies have you seen?” She patted Shelly’s back. “Just try to at least get far enough away that you can call for help. Understand?”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing.”
She still couldn’t see Shadow, but she knew where the assassin would be. All she had to do was look for the darkest shadows around the front yard, which in this case were in the hedges in front of the house. As she balanced the dagger in her hand, Cecelia prayed this would work. If not, she and Shelly would both die.
She counted down to three and then shouted, “Now!”
The same moment Shelly took off, Cecelia threw her knife into the hedges. A faint grunt indicated she’d hit her target. She didn’t stop to savor this; she had already flung herself into the bushes. She managed to snag Shadow by the collar and hurl the woman onto the lawn.
As she did, she heard the car roar away. Shelly weaved a bit, but she managed to keep the car moving forward. With any luck she would find the relative safety of a neighbor or the police.
In the meantime, Cecelia had other things to worry about. Shadow righted herself quicker than Cecelia thought possible and in one deft move brought herself around to kick Cecelia in the left side. Cecelia tumbled sideways and rolled into a defensive position. Before she could steady herself, Shadow was already right on top of her to punch her in the face.
When she had accidentally triggered a spell to take her back to the 1940s, where she had inhabited the body of a young pregnant woman, Cecelia had been beaten to a pulp by some toughs. The beating she took from Shadow was on par with that experience. As she struggled to defend herself, she caught glimpses of Shadow’s eyes, how wild they looked. Cecelia knew that what she had always suspected about Shadow and Raven was true. Or at least Shadow loved Raven; to lose her had thrown Shadow into a frenzy.
“You bitch!” Shadow screamed. “You took her away from me!”
The Headmistress had always instructed them to fight as emotionlessly as possible because an assassin who fought out of emotion got sloppy. In this case Shadow’s wild punches made it easy enough for Cecelia to grab the assassin’s left arm. She knew where the backup dagger would be—she had taught Shadow how to make a forearm sheath for the knife—and tore it free. With her other hand she cuffed Shadow the same as Raven had done to her.
“I didn’t kill your lover,” Cecelia said in spite of the blood and broken teeth in her mouth. She held the dagger over Shadow as she spat the blood and broken teeth out. “I think you need a new line of work. You and Raven both.”
Cecelia tucked the dagger into her belt and then ran. She wanted to go find Shelly, but i
f the girl had managed to get to the police, then things might get a bit awkward once Cecelia had to explain who she was and who the assassins were. Instead, she made her way to a gas station, where she cleaned herself up as best she could.
Since she’d taught Shadow most of the tricks she knew, Cecelia didn’t have much trouble to conceal herself on a cargo plane bound for Rampart City. From there she took a bus to the historical district. By then she barely had the strength to keep herself upright while she waited for Aunt Agnes to answer the door.
As she finished this tale, Cecelia saw that Aunt Agnes had turned pale while Akako clutched Renee to her chest like a football. “Why would they want Renee?” Akako asked. “Why would they want my baby?”
“I don’t know why, but you’d better get her out of here before they send in another team.”
Cecelia tried to get out of bed, but Aunt Agnes pressed her back down with one hand. “You stay here and rest. You’re not fully healed yet.”
“Agnes, she’s right. We have to get Renee out of here.”
“To where? The archives? They already know where that is.” Aunt Agnes shook her head. “I’m going to speak with Glenda. She can help us find someplace safe.”
“That old drunk can’t help you. You should call your friend Dr. Earl and have her bring that magic armor.”
“I can’t call Emma. She’s gone.”
“Gone? As in dead?”
“No. She’s gone to find her daughter.”
“I thought her daughter died.”
“Perhaps not.”
Cecelia shook her head. “This is a setup. It has to be. They conveniently lure the Scarlet Knight out of the city and then they go after Renee. It’s too perfect.”
Renee whimpered into Akako’s chest at this. The archivist cooed something to her and patted the baby’s head until she settled down. Cecelia watched this with a tinge of jealousy as she thought of Shelly. She hoped her granddaughter had gotten to the police and was safe.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 115