A.k.a. Goddess

“I’m thinking he was here to get my information on Melusine.”

“Meli-who?”

“A French fairy-goddess my aunt and I are researching. Either someone with a lot of clout doesn’t want us finding it, or they want to find it first so they can destroy it.”

“‘It’ being…?”

“The Melusine Chalice,” I clarified. “Her ‘holy grail.’”

We could hear sirens in the distance. This was going to be a long night, wasn’t it?

“I thought there was only one Holy Grail,” said Sofie.

“That’s in the classic version.” I wiped my palms where I’d scraped them on concrete, glanced toward the glass-littered bushes, and decided my shoe was history. “The Christian grail, there’s only one. Goddess legends aren’t so exclusive.”

“And some guys with a lot of clout would care because…?”

I was having trouble with that one, too. “Because they feel threatened? Or maybe…” My logical side winced. “Maybe they’ve heard the legends, that if enough of the goddess cups are brought together, woman-power in this world will increase a hundredfold?”

“Now that,” said Sofie, as several blue-and-whites sped into the parking lot, “would be sweet.”

We both raised our hands to show we were unarmed, and I nodded toward the mostly male police officers who clambered out of the cars.

I nodded toward her colleagues. “Ask them sometime if they agree it would be sweet. They’ll think we’re talking about power over them.”

Which made it our problem, even if they were mistaken.

Over the next four hours I filled out reports, gave statements and reassured my suspicious college president of my minimal involvement. My office was fingerprinted and, thanks to my “after my files” story, my computer taken as evidence.

Somehow, amidst it all, I managed to book a flight to Paris the next day. I got home with barely enough time to pack some necessities, like my passport and my emergency cash, before the airport shuttle picked me up.

I hated leaving my apartment in a mess. But at least carrying just a backpack meant I wouldn’t have to check luggage.

By the time I made it through the extensive security check and was jogging down the International Terminal, I felt the exhaustion, hunger and stress of the previous night’s events.

The last person I needed to hear calling my name as I dodged travelers in my sprint for the gate was Lex Stuart.

“Maggi?”

It was too huge a coincidence to ignore. I turned in the terminal and, sure enough, he was striding toward me. The crowd seemed to part for him, as if instinctively sensing his importance. He looked good, tall and fit and collected. It didn’t hurt that his eyes brightened just for me.

He could be a bad guy, my head warned me.

Or he might not, insisted my heart. Not Lex.

“This is a surprise.” Lex slowed as he reached me. Even after years with him, I wasn’t sure.

And I still had a plane to catch.

When I started walking again, reluctantly taking advantage of the clear space around him, he paced me.

“Are you all right?” he asked politely.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He didn’t quite shrug, but it was implied. “Because your apartment got broken into last night?”

Oh, yeah. That. “I’m fine. How are you?”

He ignored my formality. “I regret how I behaved.”

The kiss? Or the argument? “Oh…”

“That’s one reason I’ve missed you so badly this last year. You’ve always been my touchstone.”

“So your own moral compass is still on the blink, huh?”

That wrung a hint of a smile from him. “I only mean to say, you were already having a stressful night. Please accept my apology for complicating matters.”

Proper and polite to the end. But I’d helped, with the argument and the kiss both. Fair was fair. “Apology accepted.”

Except that we were approaching my gate—and he was slowing down too. Just out of courtesy, right? To see me off? Except—

He drew a boarding pass from his jacket pocket. “You’re going to Paris, too? I’m guessing you’re in coach.”

I stared. I wasn’t ready for proof that my suspicions were warranted. But this couldn’t be coincidence…could it?

What the hell. “Have you ever heard the name Melusine?”

He glanced toward the gate, making sure we had time. “Isn’t she some kind of medieval mermaid?”

My heart flinched. He had heard of her!

“You mentioned her in your report on the women of Camelot, in the seventh grade,” he continued easily; if he was covering his guilt, he was really, really good. “You compared her to the Lady of the Lake, right?”

“You remember that?”

“We did work on it together, Mag.” We’d split the workload by gender. His report on the men of Camelot had lingered on the subject of the Holy Grail. He’d compared an Irish legend, Nuada of the Silver Hand, to the Fisher King of the classic grail quest.

“There weren’t a lot of high points to the seventh grade,” Lex said, sounding heartfelt. “But you were one of them. Let me upgrade your seat to first class, and you can tell me all about Melusine and your research and your trip—”

“No.” I hated the suspicion that kept me from saying yes. Foolish or not, I still liked him…or more.

But he wasn’t just a Stuart. He was a Stuart on my flight, feeling me out about my research.

Did he have to pull a gun on me before I learned caution?

“I’ll use my frequent-flyer miles,” Lex offered, pushing it. “You know how many of those I rack up.”

I shook my head, hesitation hard in my throat.

“For God’s sake, Mag, I’m not trying to buy you.”

A gate agent announced that they were boarding first-class passengers and passengers in need of assistance. I was neither. “Enjoy your flight, Lex.”

His eyes narrowed, suddenly dangerous. “I don’t know what’s happened to you this last year, Maggi, or what kind of crowd you’ve gotten involved with. But whatever and whoever it is, it sure isn’t an improvement.”

At my resolute silence, Lex turned away and offered his boarding pass to the gate agent. Maybe ten minutes later my section was called, and I boarded with the other peons, carefully not looking at him…

Just enough of a glance to tell that he, comfortably settled in an oversize leather seat with a cocktail in his hand, wasn’t looking at me, either. The seat beside him was empty, spacious and inviting.

I continued past, found my seat and manhandled my backpack into an overhead compartment, glad for an excuse to vent my frustration. I slid into a middle seat, between a large businessman and a teenager bobbing to his Discman.

I dug my cell phone out of my purse to turn it off.

One missed call, it read.

I thumbed a button and read my aunt Bridge’s mobile number. The screen then read, 1 new voice message.

While other passengers boarded, I retrieved the message.

“Lilith says you’re coming here,” my aunt Bridge wheezed, weak from more than her years as a smoker. Much of my frustration melted under my gratitude that she was even conscious. “I thought you would. My assistant will meet your flight. Be careful, chou. It may be worse than we feared.”

That was it? I checked the display, to make sure I still had a signal. I used the code to replay the message.

That was it.

“Miss?” It was the flight attendant. “We ask that you turn off all electronic devices during takeoff, and keep your cell phone off for the duration of the flight.”

I switched my phone off while she turned her attention to my neighbor’s Discman. Then, before stowing my purse beneath the seat in front of me, I exchanged the phone for the one set of notes that nobody had gotten—because they were handwritten.

And because I’d had them on me—a pile of scribble-filled index cards wrapped in a rubber band—the whole time.

“Melusine,” I read, ignoring the flight attendant’s safety presentation. “Goddess of Betrayal.”

The plane taxied awkwardly, like an albatross, back from the gate.

I read right through take-off, searching for something. Anything. Had someone stolen mine and Brigitte’s notes just to learn about Melusine? Or was it more likely that they hoped to find her grail, like with the recently destroyed Kali Cup? If so, they wouldn’t find the most useful clues in our notes. Writing down the rhyme we’d been taught as children would seem as silly as writing down the words to “Little Miss Muffet.”

“Three fair figures,” the rhyme starts. “Side by side…”

No, I didn’t need my notes for that. Nor did I need them to understand how Melusine had gone from goddess to fairy tale. Few things just vanish, after all.

But how she could also have changed from a kick-ass symbol of female empowerment to a woman whose man had done her wrong…. That made less sense. Frustrated, I put my seat back and closed my eyes, meditating on it…accessing my Grail Keeper knowledge, passed down mother to daughter for centuries.

Mom had told me the Melusine story from my infancy. Grand-mère and Aunt Bridge had elaborated on it as my cousin Lil and I got older, adding some of the naughty parts.

“Once upon a time…”

The basic story is this. Melusine was a fairy of such beauty that, when a French count came across her bathing in the river, he fell instantly in love. But she’d been cursed with a secret, so she would only marry the count if he agreed to leave her alone, every Saturday night, and never ask about it. He gladly agreed.

They married. She magically built whole castles for him overnight, and they had ten children. Legends vary on the family that resulted—the Lusignans of southern France are the top contenders, closely followed by the Angevins who later became Kings of England and even the royal family of Luxembourg. No matter how you slice it, she birthed a powerful people.

But she had that secret curse. Every Saturday, Melusine changed. She grew a snake tail and bat wings, and could relieve her suffering only by splashing around in a bath, safe in her solitude, until the episode passed.

You can guess the rest, right? The count broke his promise and saw her secret. And Melusine flew out the window, cursed by his betrayal to remain in her serpentine form for eternity.

They did not live happily ever after. In fact, legend holds that every time a Lusignan count was about to die, Melusine could be heard screaming, banshee-like, outside the tower she’d once helped build. Until someone tore it down, anyway.

A fascinating story. But…had she really once been a goddess?

Until this week, my main purpose for researching Melusine remained academic. I wanted to compare her tale with other legends, in hopes of finding an unchanging base myth to all of them. Aunt Bridge was advancing her research on medieval goddess cults by focusing on the group of French women who had worshipped the Mother Goddess in the form of the fairy Melusine.

The idea that those women had really hidden a chalice, much less that we could find it…that had been an amusement. We were Grail Keepers, as our mothers’ mothers had been for centuries. Keepers of the secrets of the goddess grails.

We weren’t Grailgetters.

Now someone was after our information. And if what had happened to the Kali Cup in New Delhi was any warning…

We had to find the cup first. The chalice that Melusine worshippers would have used and which they would have hidden by the time of the medieval witch burnings.

Edit that; I had to find the cup.

I’m embarrassed to admit that the next thing I knew, I was drawing a deep breath and waking to an announcement, in French, that we had started our descent toward Charles de Gaulle. The previous night must have wiped me out, for me to sleep through six hours and at least one meal service.

I cracked my eyes open and saw that at some point I’d been covered with a thick, rich blanket. Mmm; nice service on this flight. Except…

A few other passengers also had blankets, and theirs were fairly thin and flimsy.

Mine was a first-class blanket.

Suspicion contracted my chest. Did that mean…?

My notes! I clenched my hand instinctively, sitting bolt upright. My fingers closed on rubber-wrapped index cards. Maybe Lex hadn’t come back here. Maybe the flight attendants just ran out of coach-class blankets.

Then something small and hard slid off my lap.

It was a small box of gourmet chocolates. The kind they give out in first class. The kind Lex had always passed on to me after his business trips…back when we were together.

In the seventh grade, Alexander Stuart inexplicably returns to public school. He’s no longer a bully; instead, he keeps to himself. I’m one of the few people he’ll speak to, maybe because I stood up to him in kindergarten.

When he sits out PE, we think he’s getting special treatment. Same with all his absences. None of us guesses he’s sick until the day he comes to school with his head shaved.

This, of course, is when kids stop calling him Alex and start calling him Lex Luther. He ignores them.

Our teacher does not. One afternoon when he’s gone, she tells us Alexander has leukemia. He could die. That’s why his parents want him home with them. We must not tease him.

Kids can be cruel. But not all kids. Not most of us.

Lex notices the change, the sympathetic looks, the students who hang back as if leukemia—or mortality—are contagious. He notices the return of his name. “Hi, Alex.” “How are you feeling, Alex?” “Hey, Alex, what’s up?”

I see his sharp hazel eyes go from confusion to to realization to fury at becoming an object of pity. Finally, during English, he stands up. “Miss Mason? I want everyone to call me Lex.”

Miss Mason doesn’t understand. “Now, Alex…”

“That’s what I want.” There he stands with his military-school posture, a twelve-year-old outsider, skinny, bald. I suspect just how exhausted he must be, how sick he must feel. But he prefers mockery to sympathy.

“No, Alex,” says Miss Mason. “I won’t allow it.”

He continues to stand, demoted from sick to helpless by her condescension. An ache grips my throat. It doesn’t seem right.

So I say, “Fine, Lex. Just sit down and shut up, okay?”

Several students turn to me in amazement, but I don’t pay attention to them. I’m watching how Lex’s quiet, hazel eyes slide toward me.

“Did you hear me?” I challenge. “Lex?”

And with a nod of quiet satisfaction, he sits.

“Maggi Sanger!” protests Miss Mason.

“As long as he’s going to act like a jerk, why not let him be an archvillain?”

Of course I’m sent to the principal. But I also get a glimpse of Lex Stuart’s rare smile. He’s waiting outside the almost empty school building when I get out of detention. A black limousine owns the parking lot not five spaces from my mother’s minivan.

“We’re doing group reports for social studies,” he says. “I chose Camelot. Will you partner with me?”

I wait. I know I am not a particularly attractive twelve-year-old. I’m chubby, and my hair is usually messy from running and playing.

He looks intrigued. “Please?”

“Sure,” I say. “Lex.”

He almost smiles. He has preferred “Lex” ever since.

Alex was a victim.

Lex is a survivor.

Chapter 4

S tanding in line for customs, my backpack slung comfortably over one shoulder, I caught glimpses of Lex’s long suit coat half a line ahead of me. Surely he was just being chivalrous with the blanket and chocolate? He wasn’t spying, living up to his archvillain moniker, was he?

Could he possibly do both?

It wasn’t lack of time or opportunity that kept me from asking. Nor was it cowardice or embarrassment. We’d been lovers at one time, remember?

Nope. I held my tongue because I couldn’t think of a way to confront him without tipping my hand. On the very low chance he’d seen my notes, at least he hadn’t taken any; I’d checked that on the plane. Better to err on the side of discretion.

Especially while guards stood by with automatic weapons.

By the time I left the secured area, Lex was greeting yet another reason for not trusting him.

His cousin Phil, CEO, prince regent of the family business.

Phil Stuart was stocky and harsh-featured, right down to his crooked nose. He purposefully wore his tawny hair too long. His suit was more expensive than Lex’s, but not as understated. Phil was the kind of businessman who put the filthy back into filthy lucre—and yet Lex was one of his staunchest supporters.

Having someone save your life with his own bone marrow will do that.

I turned to scan the waiting crowd. Aunt Bridge’s assistant would be a college-age girl, right? I noticed one young blonde, but she threw her arms wide to greet my Discman seat mate and they began making out, right there in the airport. Okay, probably not her.

I felt either Lex or Phil watching me, but didn’t want to look paranoid by turning. I continued studying the crowd. When I saw my name on a piece of cardboard, I looked up.

Oh, my…goddess.

The person who held it was older than standard college age by about a decade.

He was also a guy.

Other than being tall—lanky, really—the man holding the sign that read “Magdalene Sanger” could have been the anti-Lex. He wore broken-in jeans the way only cowboys and Europeans can, and a loose T-shirt. His shaggy black hair looked finger combed, and he didn’t seem to have shaved that morning. When his gaze met mine, I saw his eyes were a bright blue.

They smiled at me in welcome, even bluer. And yet something in that smile seemed unapproachable. Amiable but off-limits. Probably married…even if he wasn’t wearing a ring.

Then he lowered the sign to step forward and greet me, offering a slim, bony hand, and surprised me further.

Because he wore a prominent crucifix around his neck. And his quiet greeting as he ducked his head toward me, in a thick Celtic accent, was “Circle to circle?”

“A guy Grail Keeper?” I asked Aunt Brigitte as soon as Rhys Pritchard politely left us alone at the Hôpital Américain de Paris. He’d said he would bring back tea.

“It is not impossible,” my great-aunt murmured from where her folded bed propped her up. Her neck was in a brace, her arm in a cast. One of her eyes had swollen purple, to match the side of her face. It hurt to look at her, but I looked at her anyway, gently holding her free hand. If she could survive the beating, I could survive the evidence of it.

“His mother is from a Welsh line of Keepers,” Aunt Bridge continued. “As she taught his sisters the stories, he learned them as well. Would you have had her exclude him just for being a boy? Would you have me do so?”

“No! I just would have thought he’d be a bit too…”

I didn’t stop myself in time.

“I’d be a bit too what?” teased Rhys, peeking in the cracked door. His smile didn’t falter as he carried in two cardboard cups of tea, letting the door swing shut behind him. “I would have knocked, but my hands were full.”

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “I was being nosy.”

He put the other cup of tea on the rolling table that spanned Aunt Bridge’s bed and retrieved her straw from a plastic cup of water. “No offense is taken.”

“Not just that, but…” Might as well admit it. “I’m sorry, but I was going to say, too Christian.”

Rhys and Aunt Bridge exchanged a significant look.

“What?” I demanded, immediately suspicious.

“Beliefs need not be exclusive. You know that I’m Catholic myself,” said my aunt, despite how badly she’d been treated after her divorce in the fifties. “Almost every cathedral built in medieval Europe was named Nôtre Dame for a reason. Not just to praise the Virgin, but to fill a void left by the banished goddess worship.”

“I know,” I said. “I was jumping to unfair conclusions.”

Rhys hitched himself onto a table, since I had the room’s only chair. “Are you a goddess worshipper, then?”

I hated that question because I hated my own less-than-logical answer. “I’m not sure.”

He took a sip of tea, clearly surprised.

“I’m still figuring it out. In the meantime…calling it research feels safer.”

“You’re quite the honest woman, aren’t you?”

Some days I believed that more than others. “Are you studying the goddess grails along with Aunt Bridge?”

“My main interest,” he admitted, “is the Holy Grail.”

I could hear the capitalization, even in speech, and put down my tea for fear of spilling it. “The Holy Grail? The cup-of-the-Last-Supper, sought-by-King-Arthur’s-greatest-champions Holy Grail?”

“That’s the one,” he said, with that great lilt of his. “Like in Monty Python, but with less inherent wackiness.”

I grinned.

“Rhys believes that his grail may be hidden among the remains of the goddess culture,” said Aunt Bridge.

“The church did try to suppress the Grail legends along with other heresies,” he agreed. “The Templars. The Cathars. The Gnostic gospels. I’m merely seeking the truth.”

Or maybe he meant, the Truth. “And you honestly think you’ll find the cup of the Last Supper was hidden by old goddess worshippers?”

“British legend holds that Joseph of Aramathea brought the Grail west, after the crucifixion,” he told me. “But the French have a different legend.”

Ah, yes. “That Mary Magdalene brought it to Marseilles.”

He nodded. “It’s worth investigating.”

“So it’s settled,” Aunt Bridge declared. “Rhys will go with you to get the Melusine Chalice.”

“Wait,” I protested. “The Melusine Chalice is no longer safe where our ancestors hid it, not with whoever stole our files going in search of it. But what are we supposed to do once we have it? Are we going to hide it again and create a whole new nursery rhyme for future generations?”

Somehow, even drinking hot tea through a straw, Aunt Bridge managed to look wise. “Remember, dear. The grails were hidden only until the world became ready for their return. Your grand-mère and I, we discussed this a great deal before she died. It is a new millennium. Women have greater power and freedom than ever in recorded history. Perhaps that time is now.”

“And what if we’re mistaken? What if we just make it easier for some bad guys to destroy it, like they did Kali’s?”

She attempted a pained smile, crooked on her swollen face. “You think too much. Trust your heart. There may be a reason this is happening now, a reason you’re involved.”

I believed that, to a point. But that point ended where logic began. I still had to find the chalice. That was no longer debatable. But until I did, we needn’t make a firm decision about what to do with it, right?

A lot depended on where we found it. Knowledge of the Melusine Chalice, and the responsibility to protect it, belonged to Grail Keepers, but the chalice itself…that was anybody’s guess. Instead of arguing further, I said, “But why bring Rhys? I don’t need a male escort.”

Rhys laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve been called that.”

“I mean a protector.” But I had to grin at his deliberate misunderstanding, as well as the face he made. Lex Stuart, even when he was being funny, came across as solemn, as if he’d taken the weight of the world onto his solid shoulders. Rhys Pritchard…

He’s hiding the weight of the world in his heart. My insight surprised and intrigued me—assuming I was correct. He smiled so easily, laughed so easily. I probably wasn’t.

“He has been my assistant since I began drafting my book on Melusine. He knows most of what I know,” Aunt Bridge insisted, when he opened his mouth to protest. “Since I cannot come with you, and my files have been stolen, he must go. In any case, he has the keys to my car.”

I didn’t want to be rude. Or ruder. But I glanced toward Rhys and asked her, “You really trust him?”

“Like my parish priest,” she said, which for some reason made him frown. They had some kind of secret between them. But clearly they weren’t ready to share it.