She smiled. “You won’t be. The official hearing before the queens isn’t for a couple of days. By then all sorts of things will have changed.”
“And you know this how?” I was really hoping she hadn’t “arranged” it. Because as suspicious as the authorities were, they’d never believe I hadn’t. And that would be so bad.
“We have our ways.” Her eyes twinkled, then she started to pout at my lackluster reaction. “Oh, will you please relax. I haven’t done a thing, nor have any of the other sirens. But the king you helped has and your government is very interested in your talents and abilities. Between one thing and another, you’d have to do something fairly heinous between now and then to be stuck here. And you don’t strike me as the type for heinous.”
She apparently didn’t know me very well. Or she had a very different definition of “heinous” than most. When I cause trouble it’s seldom intentional, but I still wind up in hot water.
“Anyway.” Ren waved her hand in a theatrical gesture and I felt a surge of power. With a shimmer of light, a small, elaborately carved box appeared in her hand. It was quite beautiful, elegant and detailed with Egyptian-style carvings of a snake having swallowed the sun. It was inlaid with lapis and moonstone and smelled ever so faintly of cedar. I couldn’t say why, but it felt old. Old and powerful, in the way my favorite knives were powerful. Those knives, locked away in my safe, had taken Bruno five years of daily bloodletting to make. Which made me wonder what in the hell was in that box.
She reached out to give it to me and our hands brushed. The instant our skin touched I felt a jolt of power hard enough to rock me back a step. The box dropped onto the thick carpet, spilling out a small gold cup and a collection of brightly colored scarabs the size of my thumbnail. They scattered and I could see that symbols were carved into their flat bottoms.
Ren didn’t fare nearly as well. The bolt knocked her onto her butt in the middle of the floor. I heard the roar of the ocean and outside a group of gulls began dive-bombing the windows, knocking themselves senseless trying to get in.
“Ow.” I shook my hand, trying to make the odd pins-and-needles sensation that wasn’t quite pain go away. There was a mark on my palm, about the size of an old-time silver dollar. Dark red, it was irregularly shaped, like a tentacled birthmark. It was seriously ugly and looked old, which made no sense at all, since it hadn’t been there seconds before.
Ren stared up at me, her face drained of all color, her expression one of abject horror. “Let me see your palm.” Her voice was shaky, but there was grim determination in her eyes.
“Why?”
She gave a hiss of displeasure. “Quickly, in case the mark fades! Let me see your palm!”
I held my hand, palm toward her, being very careful not to touch. After she had a good, long look she very carefully scooted backward and stood without my help. Using her hands to smooth her skirt, she bent carefully at the waist to study the spill of scarabs.
“I can see you’ve been given a death curse but not who did it or how. Perhaps the Wadjeti can tell us.”
I watched as she very gingerly picked up the lid to the box, giving me my first glimpse of the exquisite scarab on the inside of the lid. One by one, she began gathering up the small bits of Egyptian pottery, looking carefully at the symbol on the bottom of each as she did.
“Cursed?” Crap. We studied curses back when I was in school. I even knew a guy who’d been on the receiving end of one. And while he’d been an absolute jerk who richly deserved it—still, ouch. I understand that surgery helped with part of the problem and he and his wife eventually were able to adopt. “Is it fixable?”
She didn’t answer. Not good. I’d been hoping for a quick “yes.”
She straightened up and I realized she had missed one. A single, red scarab had rolled beneath the edge of one of the chairs. Without thinking, I reached down and picked it up. It was warm and I felt a slow pulse of power flow through me. It didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt really, really good. I was almost sorry to give it up, but I extended it to her, flat on my palm, carving side up.
I wouldn’t have thought she could pale further, but she did. White showed around her entire iris as she took it from me. But she pulled herself together. With a shaking finger she pointed at the edge of one of the chairs. “Is that another one over there?”
I dropped onto my knees. Nope. Nothing. I rose in a smooth movement and turned to her.
“I need to talk to my mother.” Almost slamming the lid shut, she shoved the box into my arms. “I realize it’s probably useless to say this, but try to stay out of trouble.”
And in less time than it took to blink, she was gone.
5
I sat in the visitor’s chair in Dr. Scott’s office. Not even 6:00 A.M., but I knew he was already on the grounds. I didn’t technically have an appointment, but I’d at least called ahead. The night receptionist, Autumn, had reluctantly agreed to let me into his office. Mostly because I told her there’d been a major security breach and I needed to talk to him right away.
Dr. Scott’s office takes up probably a fourth of the first floor of the administration building. It’s on the same side of the building as the group therapy room, with a similar wall of glass facing the ocean. The decorator had done a great job echoing the golden tans of the sand and the blues and greens of sea and sky. Everything was beautiful, tasteful, expensive, and soothing.
I wasn’t feeling particularly soothed. I’d found the visit from my “cousin” more than a touch disturbing on several levels. The curse mark remained fairly prominent. I kept glancing at it.
Curses, in general, are pretty variable. Say your coworker, sibling, mother-in-law, or whatever pisses you off. If you have any magical talent at all you can put a curse on them. How effective the curse is will depend on how much talent you’ve got. Someone like me, with no magic, equals no curse. Now someone like Bruno, who’s got so much talent he practically glows in the freaking dark (now that I’ve got vampire powers to see it), well, there’s not much he couldn’t do, up to and including arranging for your enemy to die.
I felt a shiver run down my spine from a combination of fear and rage. Sitting there, holding my little wooden box, I wanted answers, about the curse, about the gift Ren had brought me.
I don’t trust people. Never have. But I trust my instincts and my instincts were telling me that this “gift” was the magical equivalent of dynamite.
It wasn’t exactly reassuring when Dr. Scott stormed into the room, his expression thunderous. He isn’t that big a man, and normally he’s reserved and elegant, someone you’d expect to see on the cover of JET magazine or one of the major psychiatric journals. He was wearing khakis and a polo shirt, but his attitude was anything but casual. “What the hell have you done now? Whatever you’re holding was felt by most of the staff and woke half of the guests.”
“What have I done? Oh no,” I snapped back. “You need to have a chat with Security, because someone slipped through the cracks. I could have been killed. Like Vicki was killed, in case you’ve forgotten. I thought you’d tightened security around here.”
He stopped in mid-stride, halfway around the desk. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself, and I watched him very deliberately pull calm around him the way I’d seen a woman at my grandmother’s church put on a familiar and comfortable shawl. He changed direction to sit in the guest chair next to mine. We were close enough that he could easily touch me if he wished, and it gave him an unobstructed view of what I was holding.