Cecelia reached into her bag for another potion to change her appearance. Aunt Agnes clucked her tongue at this. “I could use a spell—”
“No thanks.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’d rather do this on my own, all right?” She saw Aunt Agnes grimace at this. In a calmer voice, Cecelia said, “They’ll be able to detect your magic. It’s better to use a potion. If you really want to help, go find me a briefcase and some clothes.”
“If that’s what you want, dear.”
Cecelia took the potion into the bathroom of a coffeehouse. After she locked herself in the stall, she drank the contents of the vial. After a moment, her body began the painful changing process. This time while her body shortened, her stomach pressed out farther and farther, until she looked about fifteen months pregnant. She shook her head; she’d overdone it on the boar’s heart with this one.
Her clothes couldn’t fit around her new gut, so she had to wait until Aunt Agnes came to find her. “I need some plus size clothes,” Cecelia said with the door still closed. “A size twenty at least.”
“Not a problem, dear. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Cecelia saw the flash of light underneath the stall door to indicate Aunt Agnes had vanished herself somewhere. This left Cecelia to wait again; she squeezed a roll of fat with one hand. Aunt Agnes could probably fix this to make her skinny, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. This should only require simple reconnaissance. For that, being a fat slob might actually be better, as the organization would probably not suspect someone so large and out of shape would be a spy.
Aunt Agnes returned a few minutes later with a black pantsuit and white blouse that fit with a little room to spare. “Where did you get these from?” Cecelia asked.
“From my friend Rebecca’s closet. Try not to get them too dirty.”
“I’ll try,” she said, though she wasn’t about to make any promises.
When she emerged from the stall, she saw the reflection of an enormous Spanish woman in the mirror. Cecelia put a hand to her pudgy cheek to make sure it really was her. Then she tied back her glossy black hair into a ponytail to look slightly more professional. Aunt Agnes now stood a few inches taller than her—and probably a hundred eighty pounds lighter. She put a hand on Cecelia’s back. “You look very nice.”
“I’m a pig,” Cecelia said.
“It’s only for a little while.”
“Yeah, I hope so.”
She hefted the briefcase Aunt Agnes had found for her. The brown leather of the shell was too worn to be a new briefcase. Inside, Cecelia saw papers from an insurance company. There was even a business card for one Margarita la Paz. “You stole this?”
“I borrowed it.”
“Well, I guess you’re learning.” Cecelia shut the case and then looked over at her aunt. “You didn’t turn her into a frog or anything, did you?”
“Of course not, dear. I simply put her to sleep for a few minutes.”
“Well, that’s good I suppose.” Cecelia lowered the briefcase to her side and then studied herself in the mirror again to smooth out any wrinkles in her suit. Then she waddled out of the bathroom and the coffeehouse. Aunt Agnes had learned enough to know not to follow her too closely.
As she walked across the street, Cecelia practiced her smile until it felt natural. She imagined this version of herself to be pleasant and friendly—a saleswoman who wanted to make a big sale. Once she felt comfortable with this, she crammed herself into the revolving door to push her way in and prayed her stomach or nearly as large rear didn’t get stuck.
Inside she found the lobby as she remembered from the last time she’d come here fifteen years ago. Then she had walked in as herself to haggle over a reimbursement for a job in Somalia. This time she waddled up to the front desk and signed the entry log. The guard glanced at it and then at her. She flashed her well-rehearsed smile and then waited. The guard nodded to her. “Treadstone is on the eighteenth floor.”
“Thank you, sir.”
She squeezed into the back of the elevator and smiled at the other passenger, who only nodded solemnly to her. By the fifth floor, the elevator was empty. She practiced what she would say as the elevator coasted up. In the middle of her speech about the benefits her company could offer, the elevator stopped. She saw it had stopped between the fifteenth and sixteenth floors.
“Oh shit,” she mumbled an instant before the metal panels slid into place around the elevator to seal her in.
***
Nothing happened, at least not at first. Then Cecelia felt a tingle all through her body. By the time this reached her toes, her skirt and underpants were pooled around them and her blouse hung on her as if she were a kid playing dress-up.
The reason for this became clear when she caught her reflection in the glossy surface of the metal walls. Her potion had worn off to leave her as herself again. Yet as she watched, her red hair began to turn gray while lines in her face deepened. She watched her hands become thinner and wrinkled. It didn’t take long before liver spots appeared. In a couple of minutes she had gone from a woman in her twenties to one in her sixties.
The elevator began to move again. Cecelia clawed ineffectually at the sides of the box, but there was no way out. She was trapped in here and continued to get older by the second; her hair went from gray to white and her body hunched forward so that she seemed to shrink.
By the time the elevator reached the eighteenth floor, Cecelia had to brace herself against the side of the elevator. Before long that too would fail and she’d be all but immobile. And not long after that she would die as her organs gave out or perhaps she turned to dust.
That wasn’t going to happen, as one of the panels slid away to reveal the elevator doors. These slid open as well. It didn’t come as much of a surprise to see Raven and Shadow waiting for her. Raven grinned evilly and said, “I think you got the wrong floor, Grandma.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Cecelia said. This one sentence took the wind out of her; her lungs burned as if she’d run a marathon.
There was nothing she could do as Raven reached into the elevator; she batted Cecelia’s hand away to dump her to the floor. She heard something snap as she landed, probably her hip. She didn’t give them the satisfaction of screaming as she lay in a heap on the floor.
“Much as I’d love to leave you in there to turn to dust, the Headmistress says we got to take you alive,” Raven said. Cecelia felt the assassins grab her feet and then begin to pull her out of the elevator.
The Treadstone Financial Group looked like a typical office. There were even cubicles with workers inside them, who talked on phones or typed on computers. Through eyes that had become blurry from cataracts, Cecelia saw those office drones turn to watch as she was dragged along through the office, too old and feeble now to put up even token resistance.
The conference room where she wound up looked as normal as everything else. There was a long rectangular table with padded chairs, in one of which sat a woman who didn’t look quite as old as Cecelia at the moment. When the woman spoke, Cecelia knew it was the Headmistress. “I hope you appreciated that little trick. Your mother gave me the idea. A man named Harry Ward used it against her before she died. Did your aunt tell you about that?”
Cecelia shook her head; she didn’t like to talk about her mother, the wounds still too fresh. Aunt Agnes didn’t like to talk about her either; her face turned sad whenever she mentioned her sister’s name. Though she couldn’t see it, she could feel the Headmistress smile at her. “He constructed a vault out of material from another universe. While the metal looks ordinary enough, it has the unique ability to dampen magic around it. When someone with magical abilities like your mother is put inside there, her magic drains away, which includes the magic to keep herself young. She withered away to almost a mummy before your new friend Dr. Earl rescued her.” The Headmistress paused a moment before she continued, “When I heard about this through my
sources, I thought it might be useful for our security. I had thought it would be someone from the coven—someone like your aunt—who would try to disrupt our operations here. I never imagined it would be you. Of course on a half-breed like you the effect is far more potent.”
The Headmistress stopped again to cluck her tongue. “Did you really think that potion would fool anyone? A potion I taught you?”
Cecelia saved her breath until Raven and Shadow hauled her upright and then tossed her into a chair as if she were a rag doll. “You…going…to do…this one…yourself?” she asked.
The Headmistress stood up and made her way slowly over to Cecelia. She leaned down enough so that Cecelia could make out the elderly woman’s face, with its nondescript glasses and bun of gray hair. “I’m not going to kill you, Cecelia. Neither are they. Not until you learn your lesson.”
“What lesson would not be?”
“That you should never trifle with a witch.”
Before Cecelia could say anything, the Headmistress’s hands lit up like Aunt Agnes’s had. A moment later Cecelia’s withered body flew threw the air to slam into a wall. She heard bones snap, but years of training allowed her not to scream.
The Headmistress squatted down in front of her. Behind her glasses, the Headmistress’s eyes glowed. “You’re…one…of…them,” Cecelia said. “The coven.”
“I was. But not anymore. The coven’s time has come. Your aunt and all the others will finally get what they deserve.”
“No.” Cecelia tried to get to her feet, but she was too feeble. She could only claw ineffectually at the Headmistress, who shook her head.
“So much like your mother. Always so hot-tempered. I thought I could control you, but it’s clear that was like trying to cage a falcon.”
As the Headmistress spoke, Cecelia noticed the room grow larger around her. She tried to shout something, but she could only manage a croak. Once she disappeared within her clothes, she was plunged into darkness. Had the Headmistress turned her into a baby? That way she could train Cecelia again to serve her.
A flash of light blinded Cecelia. When her vision cleared, she saw what the Headmistress had done to her was much worse than to change her into a child; she had become a bird! She extended arms that had turned into wings. She managed to get a few inches off the floor before the Headmistress seized her. Cecelia shrieked the cry of a bird of prey. She frantically tore at the Headmistress with her talons, but the witch had donned a thick glove.
She patted Cecelia’s head. “Careful, my pet, or I’ll have to clip your wings.”
Raven bent down to grin at Cecelia. She teased, “Polly want a cracker?”
Cecelia lunged at Raven with her beak, but she wasn’t fast enough. Then she was plunged once more into darkness. She thrashed around with her wings and claws to no avail. She wasn’t enough of a bird in her mind yet to be able to fly herself out of here. But she had to get out of here. She had to escape, to warn Aunt Agnes—
There was another flash of light. Cecelia no longer sat on the Headmistress’s wrist. Instead she sat on an iron bar, a cage around her. She flung herself at the bars, but it did no good. Her puny wings, beak, and claws couldn’t breach the metal.
The Headmistress knelt down to meet Cecelia’s eyes. “In time you’ll learn to serve me again—as my pet. In the meantime, there’s still work to do.”
On cue the door to the conference room opened. Shadow shoved a pale little girl with light hair inside. “Grandma!” Shelly cried out. When Shelly ran towards her, Cecelia hoped her great-many-times-over-granddaughter would save her. Instead, it was the Headmistress whom she hugged around the right leg.
The Headmistress patted little Shelly’s head and smiled. “That’s right. I’m here. Are you ready for our big trip?”
“Where are we going?”
“To Prague, sweetheart, like I told you.”
“Oh, right.” Shelly looked up. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at Cecelia. “What’s that?”
“This is a falcon. Isn’t she a pretty bird?”
“Yes.” Shelly tried to reach towards the cage, but the Headmistress held her back.
“Don’t touch her, dear. Her beak and claws are very sharp.”
“She would hurt me?”
Cecelia tried to say no, but all that came out was another shriek that sounded anything but friendly. The Headmistress smiled and said, “I’m afraid so. But by the time we get back, she’ll be trained to be a nice birdie. Now, go get your toys.”
“Yes, Grandma.” Shelly galloped off with Shadow in tow.
The Headmistress whispered to Cecelia, “She’s not as strong as you, but she may still have use.”
Cecelia threw herself at the bars of the cage, but it did no good. She was trapped.
***
In the three hours that went by, Aggie drank enough tea that she had to use the bathroom four times. The more time that went by, the more she worried about her niece. Though she was a trained assassin and a hundred seventy years old, Cecelia was not as indestructible as she seemed to think she was. So much like her mother that way. Sylvia had always been fearless, perhaps to a fault, always launching herself into a nest of vampires or demons or whatever other evil spirits she had fought.
In many ways, to be around Cecelia was like having Sylvia back. They looked and acted so much alike. Had the two ever really been together, Aggie would have been hard pressed to tell them apart. It was more like they were clones than mother and daughter.
There was nothing of Alejandro, Cecelia’s father and Aggie’s former husband, in her. This thought gave Aggie a nervous rumble in her stomach as she thought of Renee. Except for the blue eyes and light skin, how much of Aggie was really in the girl? From what she had seen so far, Renee definitely had more of her mother’s nature. Akako wasn’t exactly shy, but she wasn’t overly gregarious either. Except where Renee was concerned, Akako was usually content to follow along with whatever Aggie wanted to do. This was mostly due to her strange circumstances: the secrets she had been forced to hide, the pain she had suffered from her old life, and the difficult transition to her new life here. Because of all this, Akako felt uncomfortable with strangers; it had taken her nearly two years before she began to open up to Emma while they had shared quarters at the archives.
Aggie sensed Renee would wind up the same way. It certainly wouldn’t be easy for her to make friends with her mixed parentage, her two female parents, and the added burden of whatever magical abilities she would possess. From what she’d seen so far, Aggie worried her daughter wouldn’t be up to the challenge, would wind up sullen and withdrawn and ultimately unhappy, if not unstable.
She forced herself not to worry about Renee’s future and worry more about who wanted to kidnap Renee in the present. Cecelia should have come back by now or else Aggie should have heard an explosion or something else to indicate things had gone terribly wrong. That neither of these had come to pass worried her more than anything else.
She finally paid her bill and left the coffeehouse. She headed across the street to the building Cecelia had indicated. She didn’t bother to conceal her identity as she entered the lobby. She approached the security guard and asked for the location of the Treadstone Financial Group. “Eighteenth floor, ma’am,” he said. “Would you like an escort?”
“No thank you,” she said. “I’m married. Very happily married.”
Aggie intended to stay that way too. She turned away from the security guard, who looked crestfallen. As she started towards the elevators, Aggie wondered if she ought to make herself a bit older to look more like a mother. This body had been fine when she wanted to go out at night to find dates, but now that she was essentially married and had a child, she shouldn’t have strange men hitting on her.
As she looked at the banks of elevators, Aggie had one of her feelings that she should not take these. Though she wasn’t the expert in covert operations that Cecelia was, she did know that if things had gone badly, the elevator wouldn’t be
very smart. Once the doors opened, she would be a sitting duck.
The stairs would take forever, at least if she climbed them like a mortal. As she listened closely for any steps, she began to levitate herself up the stairs. This would still be slower than the elevator, but her legs would be a lot less tired at least than if she climbed the stairs.
She continued all the way up to the eighteenth floor, where the guard had indicated she might find this Treadstone place that Cecelia had said was a front for the Heretics. Aggie opened the door slightly and stuck her head into the hallway to make sure no one was around. Once she determined the coast was clear, she hurried down the hallway.
There at the end of the hallway was a sign for the Treadstone Financial Group in both Spanish and English. Through the glass windows and doors, she saw what appeared to be an ordinary office, with cubicles and people running to and fro. There wasn’t any sign of Cecelia, or any sign of trouble. Where was her niece?
She could walk in and try to ask around, but if there were Heretics in there, they would probably recognize her. From what Cecelia had said, they would be able to pick up on her magical signature if she tried to go in there in disguise as well. Then she had another idea.
To get outside of the building required her to take the stairs the rest of the way up to the roof. She needed a static charge spell in order to break the lock that barred unauthorized people from the roof. She braced herself for an alarm to go off, but none did.
To find the Treadstone offices wasn’t all the difficult. She had to count down how many floors she had gone up on the stairs and then drift down to that level. She went down far enough that just her head would be visible, which she hoped would keep anyone from seeing her. If anyone did, maybe they would think she was a window washing crew.
While she levitated, she made her way around the Treadstone offices. She still saw a perfectly ordinary office and nothing more. At least until she got around to one of the conference rooms. Then she nearly lost her concentration, which would have sent her towards the ground like a comet.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 128