"Ah, Mom," Stri said. "We"re talking the Fates here. They"d notice a mark."
"More than they"d notice smoke feelers?" Her voice rose. "What else did you do?"
"Nothing." His tone was sulky. It didn"t matter what language he was speaking in--his native Greek, Latin, Russian, or English--he always sounded sulky when he was lying.
""What else did you do?""
The curtains twitched. Noah Sturgis shoved his square face, made unnaturally shiny by too much plastic surgery, into the gap. "You okay, Erika?"
He didn"t really care about her. They both knew that. He wanted to know if there was some story brewing, something that would boost his career.
G.o.d knew it needed boosting. His biggest claim to fame was that he had once been groomed as Dan Rather"s successor. But that had been years ago, and each major network had cut him loose. Eris had picked him up for a song, and pretended she didn"t regret it.
"Go away, Noah," she said.
"If it"s important--"
"If it"s important, I"ll tell Kronski." Kronski was KAHS"s news director, and theoretically the person in charge of Sturgis. But no one was really in charge of Sturgis.
"Mom?" Stri almost shouted the word.
"Mom?" Sturgis mouthed. It was well known that Erika O"Connell was single, childless, and proud to be both.
"Go away," she said again, "or I"ll cancel your fancy new contract."
"Mom?"
"Shut up for a moment," she said to her son.
"You"ll have to tell me about this," Sturgis said and pulled the curtain closed.
"Now what?" Eris said to Stri.
"If I can"t smoke them out, I"d like to go in after them. I hear they"re powerless, and it would feel so good--"
"No," she said. "They"re mine."
"I"m not bringing them to you."
She almost said that Stri wasn"t supposed to bring them to her, and then she realized that he was right. Because he had screwed up, the Fates knew someone was out to get them. They"d be cautious at the very least, defensive at the very most.
And who knew which Powers That Be remained on their side?
"Of course you"re not," she snapped, as if the change of plans had been her idea. "They dropped something on your smoke feelers, right?"
"Yeah."
"Is it a protect spell?"
"No," he said. "Something else. Sharper. Over the whole building."
How odd. She couldn"t think of a spell that would do that. "You will stay there, monitor that building, and "not do another thing until I get there." Is that clear?"
"Just pop in, Mom, and--"
"First of all, I can"t "pop" in. I am at work. And secondly, your stupid errors might be drawing the wrong kind of attention. So I will be there as soon as I can get the pilot to fly north. And when I arrive, you will not call me Mom."
Stri laughed. "Okay. But I"m only doing what I do."
"That"s what I"m afraid of," she said and hung up. She stuffed the cell phone in the pocket of her red suitcoat, and leaned against the galley wall.
She hated it when he was right. He wasn"t named Strife for nothing. She had done that deliberately, hoping he would cause trouble, and he always had. She should have expected nothing less.
Next time, she"d send in a trusted minion. If there was a next time.
Stri was right about a few other things. Eris should pop in. But she was traveling with an entire bevy of reporters and news cameras. Disappearing from a jet in mid-flight was not a good idea in these circ.u.mstances.
But she would have to come up with some reason for diverting the plane. If there wasn"t a news story in Portland, Oregon, she was going to have to make one up herself.
She hated doing that. Those stories usually ended up going on forever until she was so sick of them, she wanted to make them disappear--which, of course, she couldn"t do.
Maybe it wouldn"t matter this time. She was so close to the Fates that everything could change. And once she had gotten rid of them, the most important step in her plan would be complete.
That was what she had to focus on, not her piddly little international corporation. Sometimes she got so focused on the details, she forgot about the important things.
Like controlling the world--not just through the media, but in all things.
Including magic.
Dex sat up in his darkened bedroom, dislodging three sleeping cats and his familiar, an Irish wolfhound named Sadie. She stretched out in his warm spot. His Siamese cat, Nurse Ratched, was sitting on his nightstand, purring. She never purred.
"You woke me, didn"t you?" he asked her.
As if in answer to his question, she jumped on his lap and demanded to be petted. He did so absently, remembering the dream he"d forced himself to wake up from.
He"d been dreaming of kittens, millions of abandoned kittens that someone kept leaving in his store. Every time he turned around, there were more kittens, and he finally realized that not only were they being abandoned, they were reproducing right in front of him.
As.e.xual reproduction, like worms did. The kittens weren"t exactly dividing themselves in half, but they were doubling, like some computer program gone amok.
He realized that the doubling was going to go on until there were more kittens than s.p.a.ce on the Earth--and just as the panic set in, the Fates appeared.
They were pounding on his front door and begging for his help. Yet it wasn"t his help they wanted. He got the sense that somewhere, in this horrible place, there was something good. There was some-owe good.
And even though he wanted to refuse the Fates, the kittens pulled the door open, sucking him into the trap....
That was when he"d forced himself awake to find Nurse Ratched staring at him in the semidarkness. He glanced at the alarm clock--an old a.n.a.log model he hadn"t changed since the 1950s. Seven-thirty. Too late to go back to sleep, too early to open the store.
He stretched and slid back under the covers. Ratchy kept purring and b.u.t.ting his chin. She was hungry. So was he.
Time for his day to begin. Even though he didn"t want it to. Even though he had a feeling that that dream was some kind of warning.
Somewhere in the middle of the Fates" explanation of the magical world, Vivian broke out another box of chocolates. Dark chocolate imported from Switzerland this time, the good stuff, the stuff she"d been saving for a particularly hard day.
This, she knew, was going to be that day.
All four of them still sat at her dining room table, picking over the chocolate and drinking too much tea.
The car alarms had stopped outside--at least for the moment--but Vivian didn"t feel any safer. She kept checking the base of her door for more smoke, even though the Fates told her that she had taken care of it.
They told her many things. They told her that in addition to the world Vivian had seen her entire life, there was another world, one she"d probably heard of through myth, fable, and legend. Some of the people she saw on the street--indeed, some of the people she"d seen at Quixotic, the fancy restaurant next door--were mages who had lived hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
Most of these people were mentored. Men came into their magic at around age twenty-one, but women didn"t come into theirs until menopause-- giving them time to have children and live a little before the burdens of magic fell on them.
"(Burdens" was Atropos"s word. Clotho and Lachesis disagreed with it.) The magical were governed by laws, just like the non-magical were. Only the magical had one set of laws worldwide, laws that had been in existence for millennia. The Powers That Be (and as they said that phrase, the three women bowed their heads and spread out their arms in some sort of obeisance) created the framework for the laws and the Fates enforced them.
These three women claimed to be the Fates.
"The Greeks said that we spun the web of life," Clotho said.
"Atropos handles the shears, which can end the life in a moment," said Lachesis as Atropos looked at her empty hands.
"Lachesis a.s.signs people their fates," Atropos said, still looking down.
"And I spin the web," said Clotho. Then her expression saddened. "Or I"m supposed to, anyway."
Vivian rubbed a hand over her face. The only reason none of this made her think they were crazy--or "skewas" crazy, for that matter--was Aunt Eugenia.
"This life is more complex than you "d think", Aunt Eugenia had said on more than one occasion. And one of her favorite phrases was, "You "d be surprised just how much magic there is in the world".
"Okay," Vivian said as the Fates paused for breath. "If you have that much power, what do you need me for?"
"They"ve imposed term limits," Lachesis said.
"Who has?" Vivian asked.
"The Powers That Be," Atropos said.
"Although we think someone might be behind this," Clotho said.
"Just one of the Powers, lobbying the others," Lachesis said.
Vivian shook her head. She wasn"t following this. "What do term limits have to do with this?"
"Our term is up," Atropos said.
"We must reapply for the job we"ve done for thousands of years," Clotho said.
All three women sounded indignant. All three of them grabbed more chocolate. Vivian had never seen anyone eat so much chocolate in her life.
"And there are new requirements for the job," Lachesis said, "which I believe--"
"We believe," Atropos said.
"Were designed to keep us out forever," Clotho finished.
"Our last millennium wasn"t our best," Lachesis whispered, and the other two glared at her.
"It was not our fault," Atropos said.
"I don"t care about your history. I"m not even sure I believe everything you"re telling me." Vivian looked out the window. The view had gone from clear to opaque since she thought of the building as encased in gla.s.s. She couldn"t even see the street below, and the noise had ended almost immediately. "I certainly don"t know how you think I can help you."
"Well," Clotho said, "you were the closest thing we could find to a mage at the moment."
"Besides, we really didn"t know about Eugenia," Lachesis said. "Do you think that was another mistake on our part?"
Then the building shook. Vivian pitched forward, nearly hitting her head on the table. She caught herself with her right hand. "What was that?"
"A test," Clotho said, her face so pale that Vivian could almost see through it.
"You have great power," Lachesis said. "That"s why you"re psychic. Unfortunately . . ."
"You won"t come into the magical part for another three decades or so," Atropos said.
"And we simply can"t wait that long," Clotho said.
They looked at each other. Vivian frowned. The beginnings of a headache was building behind her eyes. "The restaurant won"t open for another two hours, but I could try to call your friends."
"Aethelstan," Lachesis said.
"Darius," Atropos said.
Clotho shook her head. "They"re good men, but they may not have forgiven us. We were harsh with them."
"Necessarily harsh," Lachesis said.
The building shook again. A pain shot down Vivian"s nose. "I don"t feel so well," she said, and sat back down, letting the tray bang against the table.
"Oh, dear," Atropos said.
"I knew we should have used the tinfoil," Clotho said.
"We"re going to need a.s.sistance a lot sooner," Lachesis said.
"Vivian," Atropos said, and Vivian started. That was the first time they had used her name since they had come into the apartment.
"What?" Vivian continued to rub her nose. It ached.