Dust and debris showered down from what was left of the overhanging rock as Rhys Pritchard descended the fire hose hand-over-hand, dropping the last meter as I had. “Cat, are you all right?” he asked, in Welsh-accented French. If one must corrupt the language with an accent, it might as well be Celtic.
I had stopped taking mental notes to watch his descent. I find the bodies of even average men quite sexy. This black-haired man, lanky and fit, qualified as above average, even in faded jeans and a worn T-shirt. The intensity of his concern distracted me. I suddenly wished I could have combed my hair or, worse, reapplied my lipstick since the earthquake.
He is this kind to everyone, I reminded myself. But I’d not seen him for months, and never with a five-day beard, as today. Rhys had adopted a scruffy, bad-boy image so at odds with his reality and the religious medals that hung together from a leather thong around his neck, that I doubted I could wrench my foolish gaze away from the dichotomy.
I hate appearing foolish, so asked, “How is the city?”
“Much of the power’s out. The Métro stopped running. The radio has conflicting reports, some injuries, no confirmed deaths. But this—” He gestured at our sinkhole, his gaze still holding me. “Are you hurt?”
“I am fine,” I reassured him, drawing composure around myself like armor. “This place is what needs your help.”
Rhys stared at me, then looked at our cramped, unstable surroundings. When he turned back, his eyes flashed with what, on another man, might have been anger. “You’re fine, are you?”
“But in need of archeological assistance,” I explained. “If the roadwork above does not fall in first, the repair will likely destroy all this. I—”
“Archeological assistance?” He scrubbed an impatient hand through his overlong black hair. “I was on my way to give blood when I got your message! Catrina, I thought you were hurt!”
In fact, that was anger! Since I had no good arguments against giving blood, I simply lifted my hand, widened my eyes and pouted. “I cut myself.”
Rhys took a deep breath, then let his head fall forward. Was he praying? If so, it was quick. When he looked back up, he’d regained his composure. Wrath is, after all, a deadly sin.
Sarcasm, however? Venial at most. “You must be in terrible pain,” he conceded wryly. But as he did, because he was good and trustworthy, he dug a first-aid kit out of the satchel he wore slung over his shoulder. “How on earth do you bear it?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. But with him taking my hand in his—bigger, stronger, currently cleaner—I didn’t risk speaking, lest he learn my secret. Not that I keep it very well. When he gently swabbed the blood-encrusted cut with an alcohol wipe, I caught my breath from far, far more than the sting.
“I am sorry,” he murmured. Watching my face, he blew gently on the wound to cool it. I felt increasingly warm, instead, and had to swallow back a whimper of longing.
Shall I confess? This was why I’d avoided Rhys Pritchard these many months, like a dieter avoiding cake. Because I wanted him. I wanted him in ways that transcended mere chemistry…chemistry, yes, but by no means mere. I wanted him in ways even I did not understand. Frankly, I have no trouble getting men. But for months, I had not wanted men. I wanted him.
And kind or not, Rhys Pritchard did not want me.
He’d said as much the previous summer, the last time I’d thrown myself at him. You think I misinterpreted? I’d said, You want me, n’est-ce pas? And he’d said, I do not.
The exchange loses nothing in translation.
So…why did I hold so still while he smeared antibiotic ointment across the cut, then taped a bandage over his handiwork? Too easily, I fantasized every ministration into a caress, every fleeting glance into a meaningful stare. With our heads inclined over his progress, I smelled wine on his breath and drew the scent between my own lips as I longed to draw….
“There you go,” he said with harsh efficiency, releasing my hand and stepping back. “Are we done?”
“You’re leaving? Without helping this place?”
“They’re catacombs.” Rhys shrugged, dismissive. “They…”
But then he seemed to notice—how these five skeletons were not part of the orderly stacks, how remnants of their daily life had been buried with them. He sank into an easy crouch, to get a better look at the closest remains. Then he whistled through his teeth and looked back up at me with a soft, “What’s this, then?”
Somehow, I’d known that he of all people would see what I saw.
“Exactly. These are not the usual catacombs. But if we’ve any hope of understanding them, we must salvage all this before road repairs destroy it. We will need volunteers to document items before they are moved, someone to speak to the Sorbonne about accepting them, and of course someone to stay with the find, to guard it from thieves.”
“To guard it from thieves.” Rhys’s gaze cut back to me.
“Of course! Antiquities such as these may not look immediately valuable, but theft could prove a major…” Ah.
He knew the threat of antiquities theft. When we’d met a year earlier, I…well…I’d relieved one of his friends of a medieval chalice. She had herself stolen it from its original resting place, destroying any hope of establishing provenance and leaving a burnt abbey behind her. I’d been in the right.
Unfortunately, the best way to see that this chalice would be treated with respect, sans provenance, had been to find it a home with a private collector. So I had sold it. Finis.
Except…since then, I’ve had cause to believe I may have been mistaken about the woman’s motives. Perhaps.
Well, who likes to be mistaken? Especially with that strange old man following me, and me with no better explanation than to think that Rhys’s friend—who was quite wealthy—meant to have me fired or arrested? Better to avoid the subject. I had worked with Rhys Pritchard again, on a dive in Alexandria last summer. His good-natured manners had led me to hope that he understood why I’d gone behind his back to save the chalice. As it turned out, he did not.
He was simply good natured. And very well-mannered.
“Theft could compromise the site’s integrity,” I continued coolly, lifting my chin. “We cannot leave these artifacts in situ, but we can at least protect and document them before taking the salvage to a legitimate institution. If you do not wish to help, then do hurry on your way.”
I even made a shooing motion with my hand, adding, “I am sure you have other good works to do.”
Rhys scanned the cavern once more, seemingly torn. Again, he knelt by one of the bodies. With a pen from his pocket, he lifted something from the comb of a rib cage. He studied his find for a long moment. Then looked back up at me.
“I’ll send for other students,” he conceded. “I’ll see the department chair to arrange the necessary permissions from the Sorbonne, as well. You and I can take turns keeping watch, starting with me, tonight.”
“With you?” My stomach lurched at a rumble above us. It resolved itself into the sound of a helicopter.
“You’re moving like an old woman,” he insisted. “Go home.”
Instead of agreeing right away, I bent nearer the skeleton to see what he’d found to change his mind. Then I understood.
It looked to be some kind of Virgin Mary medal. Apparently, the people interred in this cave had been Catholic. Rhys was interested, I realized, in their martyrdom.
Just what I needed—another reminder that the man I wanted so foolishly had once been a priest. Oui. A priest.
Do you suppose that could also have something to do with his consistent rejection of my bad-girl charms?
“He’s a priest?” exclaimed Scarlet Rubashka, as the two of us walked northward. It turned out that we both lived on the Left Bank, a mere seven blocks from each other—not so surprising, considering the area’s popularity among students and artists. With the Métro not working, we chose to keep company for the walk. “Him?”
“He was a priest,” I corrected her. Perhaps I’d shared that tidbit to justify his clear immunity to me. Scarlet had the kind of fine-boned looks that make other women defensive. Even her vibrant red bob could not disguise her natural beauty. “Now he is an archeology student. I do not know more than that.”
“Perhaps he left the priesthood for you.” She smiled at the thought. “And you just don’t know it yet!”
“He hadn’t met me then.” Even I draw the line at trying to seduce men I know to be priests.
“Perhaps not in this reality, but in the reality of the heart?” Scarlet sped her step so that she could turn and walk backward, watching me. She spread her hands over her chest. “Perhaps your souls sensed each other across space and time.”
I was not generally drawn to a man’s soul, and cannot imagine any man foolish enough to be drawn to what’s left of mine, so I said nothing. Perhaps her space-and-time comment also helped silence me. She had entertainment value, this Scarlet.
“He has a weakness for blondes,” Scarlet decided. I am a dark blonde. “He came quickly enough when you sent for him.”
“That,” I noted, “is because he is painfully responsible. There is a difference, n’est-ce pas?”
“Not necessarily. I sensed a connection between you.”
“Rhys does not like me. That is the only connection.”
“No, he does not want to like you.” She scowled and made her voice extra husky. “There is a difference, n’est-ce pas?”
Her mockery amused me. But I changed the topic to an almost certain distraction—her likely lovers. “And have you a soul mate? Someone who calls to you from across space and time?”
Scarlet sighed so deeply, her shoulders sank. “I like to think so, but he’s running late. You know those fortune-telling kits you can get at bookstores? Rune kits, box-set tarot cards, tumbled crystals? I adore those. Perhaps it’s because I’m adopted—I like to imagine myself having been left by gypsies, you know? Anyway, the runes and cards all indicate my soul mate is tall, wealthy and handsome.”
“Really,” I murmured, keeping an unusually close watch on the subdued streets around us. Quel surprise.
For several blocks, we’d passed quite a few abandoned cars. Even now that cars moved again, slowly in deference to the many darkened traffic lights, Paris seemed to hold her breath. The rumble of larger cars kept unnerving me deep down, as if they heralded another quake. Would an aftershock be so surprising?
“Really,” Scarlet exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have gone looking for a rich, handsome man, but if that’s what fate has in store for me…” She shrugged, bravely accepting the inevitable.
I almost smiled. “Fate is a cruel master.”
“My soul mate may be adventurous, too. A man of mystery.”
“Why do tarot cards never predict a short, poor, ugly homebody with no hidden depths?” I challenged.
Scarlet laughed. “What fun would that be? Any cards that would predict that have no place in my deck!”
Sirens continued to advertise the work of emergency services across the city. Rhys had told us there would be a curfew at dusk. And…was someone following us?
I hadn’t seen or heard the gray-haired man since he’d delivered his strange message through Scarlet. The Black Madonna lives? A particular kind of medieval art is called the Vierge Noir, or Black Virgin—statues of the Holy Mother, her complexion painted black. Could he mean those?
Likely he was a religious oddball, and I was unsettled by the day’s drama.
“I feel it, too,” Scarlet whispered, when I looked over my shoulder. “Eyes on us. I felt them even before you sent for Rhys. It feels like…like somebody is angry with us.”
“What else is new?” Between my visit to Grand-mère, Rhys Pritchard’s mistrust of me and the still-possible wrath of God implicit in the earthquake, I’d had enough censure for one day.
“Maybe we could trap whoever it is,” Scarlet suggested, with what I already recognized as her usual enthusiasm. “Duck down an alley, hide behind some crates. When our stalker comes in after us, we can ambush him and hold him for questioning!”
Another glance over my shoulder revealed only an unusually quiet street, lined with quaint shops beneath several floors of apartments like mine. I would not be surprised if my imagination was getting away from me. Even after so short an acquaintance, I would be surprised if Scarlet’s imagination was not. Hide behind crates and ambush someone?
Brandishing what, exactly? Our good looks and quick wit?
“Or,” I suggested, “perhaps we could stay together for extra safety, take shelter in our nearest flat and lock the door behind us once we reach it?”
Scarlet made the invitation easier with her good-natured shrug. “That could work, too. Whose apartment is closer?”
As it turned out, hers was. But since I wished to check on my cat and she had only plants to worry about, we went to mine. Beyond the sensation of being watched by angry eyes, no danger showed itself by the time we reached my top-floor flat.
A few pictures and a mirror had fallen, and knickknacks lay on the floor, as did a toppled stool. Otherwise, the place seemed untouched by the quake. My calico cat, Tache, looked up from the settee with a lazy mew of welcome, her posture as unconcerned as if Mother Nature had not gone on the attack.
As Scarlet crossed to Tache with an exclamation of delight, I turned the lock on my door, then eyed my unintended guest. She knelt by the settee to sweet-talk my cat, laughing when Tache pawed her cheek. I do not make friends easily. But something about Scarlet Rubashka struck me as familiar. Trustworthy, even.
“Have we met before today?” I asked, drawing the tall, diamond-paned windows open. Being on the third floor—what Americans would call the fourth—I felt safe, and this way I could survey my entire neighborhood from this little sanctuary of mine. It looked unusually quiet and, with the encroaching dusk, dark. In such an ancient city, the power outage felt like traveling back in time. “Perhaps at the Cluny, or…”
The memory, just beyond my grasp, taunted me.
“I would have remembered you.” Scarlet plopped onto the settee. “Although…I told you I was adopted, right? Maybe you met someone from my birth family! Can you remember a name? Brown hair? My natural color is brown, and this is my real eye color.”
She blinked her chocolate-brown eyes dramatically.
I shook my head, unable to follow her move from do-I-even-know-you to the level of specifics she wanted. Instead I quirked an eyebrow and suggested, “Perhaps our souls sensed each other across space and time?”
Scarlet Rubashka, it turned out, was almost impossible to insult. She grinned. “Mock me if you will, Catrina Dauvergne. But this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. There are forces at work in this universe that we can only begin to imagine.”
Which made me think of the key I had found, and the awful vision I’d had upon touching it, and—
With a sinking feeling, I touched my pocket and swore.
Her chocolate-brown eyes now widened. “Excuse me?”
“I—” I hated admitting mistakes. Admissions just escalate into more trouble. So why did I keep talking? “I took something from the site. A key. I should have left it in situ, but I was distracted by a…a daydream, I suppose….”
Merde. I slapped my hands on the open windowsill. Rhys already thought me an antiquities thief, and now this.
Tache leaped easily onto the sill and began to wash her face, one paw at a time, pretending disinterest and, occasionally, glancing upward at the ceiling.
“May I see it?” asked Scarlet. “I love keys. I always wear this one—see?” From around her neck she drew a chain on which hung a silver filigreed key, far more ornate than the one I’d taken. “I’ve had it since I was a baby.”
Fine. Sinking onto the settee beside her, I showed her the little key from the cave-in. In doing so, I got my first good look at it myself. It was no larger than a woman’s thumb, which made sense. I’d found it under the ribs of the skeleton, not around its severed bit of neck; its owner had swallowed it. On one side, faded by age, someone had scratched initials: SdM.
“A daydream, huh?” she urged, with surprising insight.
“Or a delusion.”
“Or a vision. Keys have great symbolism…why can’t they unlock doors into someplace or even sometime else?”
There really was something about this woman, wasn’t there? Grudgingly, surprised at myself for admitting it, I recounted what I’d seen. Scarlet did not doubt the truth of it.
“So those women were killed in the Revolution!”
“We’ve no proof of that. In my…vision…the woman survived. But I found the key under a beheaded skeleton.” I studied it. “I suppose I’ll lock it up until I’ve more time to study it.”
Since the site was already compromised.
“Proof schmoof. This key has something to tell you. You should sleep with it. Maybe you’ll dream more information.”
“Or perhaps this is absolute foolishness.”
“No, it’s not! I have a friend, Eve, and she’s so psychic that she had to learn to shield herself. She—”
But Scarlet was interrupted by Tache letting out an angry screech. She leaped off her windowsill to streak beneath us.
And then—
A small, dark-whiskered man suddenly swung through my open window, right into my flat, apparently off the roof. He knocked a figurine off the shelf beside him with his hard, ungainly landing. Then he straightened, his expression menacing…and, I thought, quite insane.
“Give me the key,” he demanded. “Now!”
If I’d needed proof we were being watched—here it was.