Her Kind Of Trouble

And since most bullies are cowards, he said nothing.

This time when someone stepped up behind me, the sense of solidity and body heat belonged to Lex. So was he backing me up, or readying to help his cousin?

Either way, my bare back welcomed his nearness.

“You know,” murmured Tammy into the uncomfortable silence that followed, “perhaps I’ll catch a cab home. Thank you for the invitation, Phillip, but—”

“You can’t leave,” protested Phil, and Tammy arched an eyebrow at him in challenge.

“Thank you, Magdalene,” she said as she turned away. “It was a real pleasure to meet you.”

“For three minutes?” Phil’s heavy head swung back to me for one last glare before he trailed his girlfriend from the gallery. “You met her for three freakin’ minutes. Tammy!”

His bodyguards trailed after them.

“I hope she’ll be all right,” I murmured in their absence. I’d felt jittery all evening. Not sore-throat jittery, but still…

“Phil’s made mistakes.” Lex took a sip of his champagne. “But he’s a Stuart. There are lines even he won’t cross.”

I did a double take. Did he honestly believe that? Did he mean it as assurance?

Then he distracted me by sliding a hand across the small of my back and murmuring, “Why do you keep doing that?”

So he’d noticed, too. Phil’s wife. A nurse who stood up to a condescending doctor. A waitress who suddenly found the strength to take down a rowdy customer.

A little girl, whom I’d helped to her feet when Lex and I were jogging in the park, who finally hit her brother back. She never does that, exclaimed her surprised mother….

“And don’t say, doing what,” Lex continued, his voice mild but his hazel, almost golden eyes demanding.

“I’m not doing anything. Not deliberately.” That would mean I had some kind of…well…magic. I didn’t, sore throats aside. I wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility.

He looked particularly inscrutable.

“But maybe,” I admitted, mulling it over. “Maybe the Melusine Grail is.”

In a nearby display case sat a small, ornate goblet of blue faience. It wasn’t a goddess cup, but I turned under Lex’s hand and escaped for a closer look anyway.

My name’s Magdalene Sanger. I’m a professor of Comparative Mythology at Clemens College outside Stamford, Connecticut. And as it turns out, I’m descended from goddess worshippers. Long ago, when such beliefs became a burn-at-the-stake offense, women across the world hid their most sacred relics and taught their daughters and their daughters’ daughters where to find them.

Grailkeepers. Like me.

Until recently, guarding the knowledge of these lost chalices had been enough. But Phil Stuart and a secret society of powerful men had gone after my family’s cup. I’d rescued it—and learned the truth, which was this:

After hundreds, maybe thousands of years, mere knowledge was no longer enough.

Lex’s reflection appeared in the glass case, over my shoulder. “How’s an old cup that’s not even here making women more—” he frowned, at a loss “—more.”

“Legend says the goddess grails will increase the power of women a hundredfold,” I reminded him. “And I do still have the Melusine Grail. Sure, it’s hidden away for now…”

He didn’t ask where. I definitely didn’t tell him.

“But still, I drank from it. I took the essence of goddessness into me. Maybe that connection is what’s empowering other women…at least when I touch them.”

“So you don’t need to go looking for more cups?”

“Of course I do.”

His ghostly image scowled. In some ways, I thought, he’s more dangerous than Phil.

At least I felt certain about where Phil stood.

Even when I turned and looked at Lex straight on, I knew damned well I wasn’t seeing all of him.

He breathed out his next question. “Why?”

“You know as well as I do. Because a secret society called the Comitatus are after them. They destroyed the Kali Grail in New Delhi—”

“You can’t know that was…them.”

“You’re right, because they work in secret.” I frowned into my champagne. “But I know some of them went after the Melusine Chalice. I know they came after me. Is there any reason I should give them the benefit of a doubt?”

Lex’s mouth flattened as I kept talking.

“That’s the problem with secrets,” I continued. “I could have been dating a member of the Comitatus for years—hell, I could’ve dated one of its most powerful members—and never known it. I could have considered marrying him, and because of some stupid vow of secrecy, he would never have told me who he really was.”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” Lex’s reflection turned away from mine and faded, like a ghost’s.

Whether I wanted it to or not, my heart lurched. I turned after him. “That’s our problem. You can’t talk to me.”

Because that whole previous speech had been a big, fat load of sarcasm.

Turns out, Lex was one of the most powerful members of the Comitatus. From what I’d pieced together, the only reason he wasn’t in charge was that a childhood illness had taken him out of the running as a leader of supposed warriors. More’s the pity.

Despite our own problems—previous deceptions, and cross-purposes, and scars that might or might not yet heal—I had to believe things would have been different with him as the leader.

I had to.

I caught up to him and put a hand on his arm, hard and fit beneath his tuxedo jacket. “I have no reason to trust them. And since you can’t talk to me—”

“I can,” Lex insisted. “About anything but that.”

“It’s a hard thing not to talk about. You must know something good about those men, something worth saving, but I haven’t seen any proof of it. And now—”

Now Phil Stuart scowled at us from across the room, bodyguards instead of a date at his side. His fear of me, of what he couldn’t understand, made him dangerous. I looked from him to Lex again, noting how tight Lex’s jawline had gotten with the strain of his own secrets, and I consciously chose against fear.

“I trust you,” I vowed softly, hopefully. “I trust that you know what you’re doing, that it’s something honorable and right. I’ve got to believe that, for both our sakes….”

My voice faded, the closer his face leaned toward mine, the more intently his golden eyes focused on my lips. The nearer he came, the shorter my breath fell.