The place was surprisingly well lit, with gold and green booths in cozy arrangements. Stools ran around the counter where two waitresses in green and yellow uniforms served customers.
Both waitresses were young, pretty, and appeared to have both eyeballs, so I assumed they weren’t the owners.
The sign said “Seat Yourself, Please,” so I chose a clean booth and slid in. A moment later, a freckled redhead appeared with a menu, a glass of ice water, and a straw.
She spoke in a low, subdued voice. “Welcome to Gray’s.” She gave me a brief smile that only lasted a few seconds, as if it were part of a script. “Today’s special is spicy parsnip soup, grilled bacon and gouda sandwich with truffle parmesan fries, or a half cup and half sandwich combo of the two. I’ll give you a moment with the menu.” She shuffled away without ever having looked me in the eye.
Very weird.
I glanced around the room. The place was mostly empty. A woman with two small kids sat in one of the other booths. They were oddly quiet and focused on their food for a mom and two kids under the age of five. A little eerie.
A guy in a shabby suit sat at the counter slurping soup and staring at his phone.
Behind the counter, a pass-through offered a view into the kitchen. I didn’t see anyone cooking back there. Then again, I was the only customer without food, and I hadn’t ordered yet.
I picked up the plastic menu. Before I could get past the appetizers, a shadow crossed over me, and someone slid into the booth across from me.
“Have the special,” she said. “I worked hard on the recipe, and parsnips are good for your eyesight.” The woman grinned at me, but her eyes weren’t quite focused on my face. Her gaze aimed slightly over my shoulder.
I set the menu on the table and folded my hands over it. “I guess I’ll have the special, then.”
She reached forward and took my menu. Her vague gaze didn’t shift. “Excellent choice. Do the snakes require anything, or will they eat off your plate?”
I tried not to react, but I couldn’t help myself. Of its own accord, my hand drifted to my head and double-checked there was nothing there but hair. Still, there was no need to pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about. She obviously knew what—if not who—I was.
“They’ll be fine. Thanks.” I paused for a moment, not sure what else to say. It seemed like a bad idea to come right out and tell her why I was there. Not very stealthy. Then again, my cover was already blown. “So, you must be…one of the owners.” There. That wasn’t accusatory.
She nodded. “Indeed. And you must be from Mount Olympus.” She didn’t wait for me to confirm that statement. “We don’t get a lot of gorgons in here. I imagine you’re the first, actually. You out on a day pass, or do you have something in mind I can help you with? Surely you’re not here by accident?”
My dinner arrived, delivered in silence by the solemn, freckled redhead. I hadn’t ordered yet, but I assumed my host had signaled the kitchen somehow when I wasn’t looking—though I was certain I hadn’t taken my eyes off her since she sat down. She was a powerful witch though. Ordering food for me was probably simple. Or maybe she ordered it before she sat down, knowing ahead what I’d want.
Thinking about it made me nervous, and the smell of the food made my mouth water. So, I set aside the question of how it got there and took a bite of my sandwich.
“Oh, that’s delicious.” The bite had a perfect crunch to the sourdough bread, and the melted gouda was a perfect match for the crisp bacon.
The witch grinned again, and her hand darted out, snagging a fry from my plate with perfect precision. Her eyes still displayed every sign of being unable to see. That didn’t mean she was blind, though.
Never assume the situation is as it seems when magic is involved.
She chewed the fry and swallowed. “Of course it’s delicious. We’ve been cooking for thousands of years. Eventually, we took some classes.”
I set my sandwich on the plate and wiped my fingers on a paper napkin. There was no other way to do this without being blunt. I cleared my throat. “I’m going to be honest.”
“Excellent!” She clapped her hands. “I love when people do that.”
“Hecate sent me for the cat’s eye.” There. I said it. I waited for the diner to start spinning or to lose consciousness and wake up in an alligator-infested swamp.
Nothing happened.
The woman bent her head and whispered into her lap. “Oh, Rita. What did you do?”
“I beg your pardon?”
She sighed and raised her head, this time looking directly at me. “Finish your dinner. Then I’ll take you in the back and introduce you to my sister, Dina.” She slipped out of the booth, taking the menu with her. “Take your time eating. It’s on the house.” She walked away, leaving me to wonder what the hell was going on.
But the soup, it turned out, was every bit as good as the sandwich, so I did as I was told and took my time.
* * *
The back room of Gray’s Cafe was poorly lit, a little cramped, and smelled like old fryer grease.
Anya, the woman I’d met earlier, sat on a stool next to her sister, Dina. They’d given me what they called the comfy chair—a metal folding chair with a thin blue cushion placed on it. Every time I shifted, the cushion threatened to slide out from under my butt. I tried to hold still.
“I don’t understand.” I shifted and the cushion went with me. “I thought there were three of you.”
Dina nodded. “That’s our youngest sister, Rita. Sorry. Moonflower. She wants to be called Moonflower right now.” She ran her fingers through her shoulder-length gray bob. “She took off about a month ago to start her own business.”
Anya snorted. “She decided she wants to be a New Age witch and sell crystals to mortals.”
I frowned and leaned forward, then instantly regretted it when the cushion squirted out from under me. “But I thought you shared one eye. Don’t you have to be together for that?” As I said it, I worried the question was too personal. Plus, if it were true, shouldn’t I have seen them passing around the fabled eyeball by now?
“It’s true,” Dina said. “We do share the eye.” She grinned and chomped her teeth. “We used to share a single tooth, too, but now we all have dentures.”
Anya flashed a smile to show me. “The eye is here in the building. We can all access it at the same time, as long as we’re here. We’ve made some advances in science and magic.”
“Oh.” I wondered where the eye was at that moment, but decided asking would cross the line. It was probably in the safe or something. “So, how did your sister leave, then? She’d be blind.”
Dina shrugged. “Blind doesn’t mean housebound, you know. The world is different than it used to be. They have braille on elevator buttons. We can get along fine. It’s just simpler to use the eye, especially when we’re doing business.”
“So, she went out and stole Hecate’s cat’s eye so she could be independent?” I couldn’t believe this. After coming this far, the cat’s eye wasn’t even here.
“I’m afraid so.” Anya rose and smoothed her apron. “And frankly, we’d prefer she stay gone for awhile. Not only does it give Dina and I more time with the eye when we’re not in this building, but Rita—sorry, Moonflower—has been a pain in the ass to have around since she turned all woo-woo. We’ve been doing things our way for a long time. I’m not too keen on changing them because she thinks we need to align our chakras to the rhythm of Alpha Centauri.”
Dina pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “This is her shop. Good riddance to her, as far as I’m concerned. At least until she comes to her senses. Nothing worse than a convert with a new religion.”
The card was covered in purple swirls surrounding a single purple-irised eyeball. The name of the store was The Violet Sight, and the address was all the way across town. According to the card, the store was already closed for the night. I tucked it in my pocket and stood, then bent and replaced the cushion that was lyi
ng on the floor.
“Well, thank you for your help, ladies. And for dinner. I appreciate it.”
Anya folded her arms across her chest. “If she’s stolen something from Hecate, she really has lost her mind. Be careful.”
I nodded and followed them out to the dining room.
How dangerous could a woman calling herself Moonflower really be?
* * *
First thing Saturday morning, I was back in Wichita, dressed in my borrowed human skin, and waiting impatiently for a bus to pick me up to take me across town to the Violet Sight.
I would have changed the address of the portal, but it had already been after-hours on a Friday night when I went back to Mt. Olympus the night before. The time stamp would have outed me if anyone had been nosy enough to look.
I was very good at covering my tracks.
Forty minutes of waiting alone in a bus stop with no bench finally brought the bus I needed. I climbed on, paid the fare, and watched Wichita go by on a dreary, wet day. After what seemed like forever, my stop came up, and I hopped off the bus half a block from my destination.
The Violet Sight was impossible to miss. The store was wedged between a nail salon and a Tae Kwon Do studio. An enormous picture window displayed various mystical-looking items—a big copper bowl, an enormous amethyst, various crystals, a crocheted Buddha, a variety of candles, and row upon row of tiny plastic Egyptian gods and goddesses. Above it all, a flickering purple neon eyeball stared into the souls of anyone walking by on the sidewalk.
If Moonflower was going for tacky, she nailed it.
I stepped into the shop, and a tiny bell jingled overhead. A cloud of incense blew in my path, and I had to walk through it if I wanted to go more than two steps inside. I wrinkled my nose. It stank like skunk.
The store wasn’t large. Shelves filled with books and tiny bottles of oils lined the walls. Jewelry filled a case by the cash register. In the center of the room stood several tables filled with various colored rocks.
One wall was nothing but dragons and unicorns.
It was a nightmarish mishmash of kitsch and actual magical items.
I wandered the store, picking things up and setting them down. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone else—no other customers, no store clerks, and certainly no Stygian witches. I paused in front of a jar half-full of rattlesnake rattlers. Why would anyone need such a thing?
I lifted the lid and peeked inside. A shiver ran down my back.
“They were humanely sourced, I promise.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
A middle-aged woman with dark, frizzy curls sat behind the counter with her cowboy-boot-clad feet propped on a table. She held a mug between her hands and tipped her head toward the jar I held. “The rattles. I’m sure you’re concerned about the snakes they came from. No need to trouble yourself over it. Nobody was hurt.” She sipped her coffee or tea or poison—whatever she had in the mug.
“Oh. Thanks.” I didn’t know what else to say. She’d sort of thrown off my game. Did she know what I was?
She flashed a smug smile over her cup. “Of course I do. And I know why you’re here.”
I should have expected this. Anya had known me the minute I’d walked into Grey’s Café. Why wouldn’t her sister, Rita?
“Moonflower.” She tilted her head to the side, as if listening to my thoughts took more concentration than it apparently did. “Why don’t you come over here and talk with me. We both know you didn’t come here to buy anything.”
I returned the jar to its place on the shelf next to a tin marked Mummy Dust and a rack of tubes holding what purported to be the tears of a saint. I made my way to the counter and stood before the woman with the wild hair, hoping she wouldn’t turn me into a toad.
“If you know what I am and why I’m here, I suppose that saves time.” I stood straight and tall, refusing to look nervous.
She gave me a slow nod. “And you know I’m not giving up my cat’s eye. So, now we have that out of the way, too.”
“Well, crap.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and stared at her.
She stared back and sipped her tea. A long black cord hung around her neck. The end of it wrapped around a yellow stone which nestled between her considerable breasts.
She lifted the cord and held the gem up for me to see. “I know you probably had some crazy plan to break in after-hours and steal this from me, but it won’t do you any good. It’s not like the eye my sisters share. It’s not attached to the building. It’s attached to me.” She dropped it against her chest. “And I don’t take it off. Ever.”
Well, there went the last vestige of a plan. I shrugged. “Fine. What will it take for you to hand over the cat’s eye, so I can return it to Hecate? There must be something else you want.”
To my surprise, she appeared to be seriously considering my question. She stretched her arms over her head and cracked her knuckles. “Well, let’s see. If I give you the eye, I’m left with nothing. I’d be no better off than a mortal. A blind mortal who hasn’t learned how to actually be without sight. If you were to acquire a replacement item for me, something of equal or greater usefulness…”
I sighed and folded my arms across my chest. “You have something specific in mind.”
She nodded. “Circe’s mirror would do nicely. It’ll even show me things in other realms. That would be a fair enough trade.”
My heart sank. Circe was the most powerful witch out there other than Hecate. What’s more, she was currently listed in the Mt. Olympus system as missing.
“Any idea where I might find her?” I fixed my attention on a rack of crystal pendulums hanging from pieces of colored twine, pretending to be nonchalant. The truth was, the idea of dealing with Circe, even if I could find her, kind of freaked me out. “I hear she’s currently flying under the radar.” I poked a crystal with one finger and watched it swing back and forth before getting tangled with the others on the rack.
Moonflower shrugged. “No idea. But you’re a resourceful girl. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
I should have told Hecate no from the beginning. This job was going to kill me.
* * *
With only one day left and no idea where my next stop should be, I returned to Mt. Olympus to figure out my options.
The lobby was empty, since most offices were closed over the weekend. I sat behind my desk and booted up my computer with no idea of what I was looking for. Something. Anything. A spark of an idea.
I scrolled through the different departments hoping one of them would have something I could use. Borrowing magical items from the offices upstairs was risky, but I’d been doing it on a fairly regular basis for the last several months. Winged sneakers from the Messenger department could take me wherever I needed to go. Shower bombs from Dreams and Nightmares provided a disguise no one could see through. Wings, bow, and arrows from the Cupids would cause someone to fall in love.
None of that sounded helpful, since I didn’t know where the object I needed was located.
I stopped scrolling and moved back up the screen. There was an idea. Above the Muse department. I’d never liberated an item from the Oracle department before, but it made sense. Where else could I find answers but from the department that knew everything?
I clicked a few keys to check that the office should be empty today, then logged off my computer.
The natural light throughout the building meant most of the halls would be well lit by the mid-afternoon sun. Trying to disguise myself with a hoodie the way I usually did would make me stand out. I touched the tiny mirror around my neck and glanced around. As soon as I’d stepped into the lobby, I’d gone back to being a gorgon. Now, I reversed it and became human again.
Wearing an unremarkable face, dowdy clothes, and hair-colored hair was a far better way to go unnoticed than dark glasses and a hood.
I took the elevator up to the sixth floor, then rounded the corner to the Oracle department door. It was, of course, locked.
Unlike the mailroom in the Messenger department, this door didn’t have a keypad. It had a card slot waiting for me to slide my universal keycard—which I would receive after completing the mission for Hecate.
I tried the handle anyway. In a perfect world, the last person to leave wouldn’t have made sure the door latched behind them.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t a perfect world.
No key. No connections to get me in. No careless employee leaving the door open. This wasn’t my first time in this situation. Despite being in a time crunch, I had only one option open to me.
I sat and waited.
I waited three-and-a-half hours before I heard the sound of a rattling cart making its way down the hall. A few people had come through, but they hadn’t noticed the unremarkable girl sitting in the waiting area, flipping through a magazine.
But now it was time for action. The cart came to a halt in front of the door I was waiting for, pushed by a scruffy-looking kid with headphones and heavy guyliner. He never so much as glanced in my direction. His head twitched to the music blasting directly into his ears as he slid his card into the slot and propped the door open.
I didn’t move as he went inside then came back a moment later with bags of garbage. He took fresh bin liners and disappeared with them into the Oracle office.
While he was gone, I made my move. The first time I’d done this, I’d nearly been caught. I’d tried to do it on his first trip in to get the garbage. I learned from experience that it took longer to put new plastic liners in than it did to pull out the bags of trash. And I needed every second.
As I crossed the carpet and ducked around the cart, I pulled a wad of sticky putty from my pocket. I kept the stuff in my desk for hanging notices or posters on the pillars. Double-checking that the janitorial guy was still messing with the trash and nowhere near the door, I slapped the putty into the doorway to block the locking mechanism from engaging. It took a moment for me to mold it just right to catch without being obvious.
I wasn’t certain I had it exactly right—too blobby and the door would catch and be noticed, too little and it would click shut, despite my efforts to jam it—but my time was up. The kid was on his way back.
Undercover Gorgon: Episode #1 — Witches War (Undercover Gorgon: A Mt. Olympus Employment Agency Miniseries) Page 3