THE MEDUSA GAMBIT

ROWAN CASEY

CONTENTS

Series Summary

Veil Knights Newsletter

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Veil Knights Newsletter

The Veil Knights Series

About the Author

Copyright Information

In book one of the Veil Knights series, THE CIRCLE GATHERS, stage magician and sorcerer extraordinaire Dante Grimm brings ten strangers together, informing them that they are the living avatars of the original Veil Knights, brave men and women reincarnated many times through the millennia, most recently as the Knights of the Round Table, who pledged their lives to protect mankind from supernatural threats and enemies.

In the distant past, the Veil Knights had combined the power of several arcane talismans into the Caeg Dimmre, the Key of Wickedness, which was used to construct a mystical barrier between our world and the Demimonde, preventing the supernatural races that inhabited the realms on the other side from continuing to ravage our humanity. The talismans were then split apart and hidden away in the far corners of the earth, there to remain until the time should come when they might be needed once more.

That time is now.

The Veil is falling, weakened by age and the machinations of those on the other side. Grimm knows that unless the pieces of the Caeg Dimmre are brought together again, the Veil will fail entirely, releasing the darkness that it has kept locked away for so long.

In desperation, Grimm convinces the knights to assume their mantles once more, to undertake the quests necessary to bring the pieces of the Key back together so that they can be used to strengthen and reinforce the Veil.

These are their stories.

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1

I doubt anyone in their right mind would believe me if I told them that here, in the 21st century, smack dab in the middle of downtown LA, there be dragons.

But there it was, sitting across the terminal, all dolled up in purple lipstick and thick mascara, legs crossed at an angle, wearing a green dress and red pumps, smoke snaking from her nose. And not a cigarette in sight.

The women were the dangerous ones. Scratch that—females. You could hardly call them women, as they weren’t anything close to human, but as dragons, they were the bigger and stronger. At least, that’s what I’d been told. You could tell it was female by the smoke. The look, that was all fake, some sort of enchantment, magical shapeshifting plus some illusion. I still didn’t understand the details, as I was new at this. But I did know that the females were the ones that could breathe fire. Like I said, more dangerous, but easier to spot.

“Do you see it, Sir Regis?” The feminine voice in my earpiece was high-pitched and youthful.

“Hard to miss,” I said, casually leaning forward in my seat, dipping my head to hide my face. “And will you stop calling me that? I told you, it’s Rex.”

“As your squire, I am obliged to observe formalities, sir. Mr. Grimm would otherwise be disappointed.”

My squire. I still hadn’t wrapped my head around any of it. Almost two weeks running now, I’ve had a squire. A five-foot nothing, one-hundred-and-zero-pound redheaded squire with a freckled nose, a page-boy haircut, and an answer for just about everything. Her name was Penelope, or so she said, but I had taken to calling her Pip. More to see if I could rile her than anything else, break through that prim and proper outer layer. Like everything else I’d tried, it didn’t work.

I reached up to rub my neck, keeping my head down. “How do you suppose it knew we were going to be here?

“I’m sure they have their sources, Sir. Just like Mr. Grimm does.”

”Right. So, do we abort?”

“I would advise against that, Sir. We are already behind schedule, as you know.”

I risked a glance, stretching my arms and leaning back. Dragon lady hadn’t moved, not noticeably, anyway. I covered my mouth as I faked a yawn. “Do you think it will try something here? Right out in the open, I mean?”

“It is impossible to know for certain, sir. We have no information regarding what they know about this lead or your purpose in intercepting him, nor how important they would deem it to stop you here and now if they did.”

“Maybe I should go strike up a conversation with it and ask,” I said, scanning the area.

Union Station was a throwback to the glory days of train travel, with shiny earth-tone marble floors, lines of art deco piping throughout and a background radiation to all of it that was distinctly Californian, like someone had set off a Spanish Mission neutron bomb at its christening. Fortunately, not many people were riding the rails early on a Wednesday afternoon and the waiting area was sparsely populated. One old guy in a cowboy hat and white button-down shirt was reading a magazine. A woman was holding a baby and trying to keep another toddler entertained. A Hispanic couple waddled in and sat down in a pair of the cushioned seats at the far end, carrying sacks and looking tired. Other than that, a few people loitered around a newsstand and some others came and went down the aisles. I wasn’t sure if more people would have been better, or worse.

“Dragons lack the power of speech, sir. I will check the perimeter for a Handler. We still have a few minutes. Would you like your armor?”

An audible laugh almost popped out, but I caught it just in time. I was never going to get used to this.

“Pip, I think if I left and came back in shining armor I might give myself away.”

“It’s not shining, Sir Regis. That type of armor was never worn in battle. It came about much later, for use during spectator events such as jousts. Speaking of giving yourself away, your choice of garments have no doubt already done so. If they knew to be here in the first place, they must have known to look for a private investigator.”

“You were the one who said wearing this hat was a good idea.”

“I agreed wearing a hat, was a good idea, Sir. So that I could maintain visual contact from a distance in a crowd, if necessary. That one you always choose to wear, I must say, lacks discretion. It looks like it completes an outfit from a pulp detective novel.”

Ouch. That was low. Outfit? For one, I liked this sport coat. It was functional and looked good. Not to mention it was the only one I had. And it wasn’t like my closet was full of pressed shirts and power ties. As for the fedora, I don’t have much of an excuse. It was in the window of a vintage clothing place one day and I bought it. It sat on a shelf until a couple of months ago when I decided to give it a spin and I’d been wearing it ever since. Was that a crime? Sheesh.

“The professor isn’t expecting me, or anyone else as far as I know. I didn’t think approaching him in jeans and a Dodgers shirt would start things off well.”

“Regardless, sir, I will circle the station. Please advise immediately if you move so I can keep your equipment accessible.”

The thought of it made me shake my head. My own personal squire, all five-foot zilch of her, walking the outside of Union Station, the little rolling bag of hers trailing behind. With a suit of armor. For a Knight.

Before I could respond with something clever, dragon lady stood. She eyed me for a moment, almost striking a pose, then walked to the aisle and veered toward the front exit. I glanced over to the status board. The 784 Pacific Surfliner switched to ARRIVED.

“Pip, train’s here. Draco looks like she’s heading your way.”

“Roger that, Sir. Be careful. I’m quite certain the plan was not to ascertain the location of your acquisition, monitor you until the arrival, then leave you to your business.”

“Maybe I scared her away with all my knightly valor.”

“I think we must assume otherwise, sir.”

I was definitely going to have to do something about her sense of humor. Like find her one.

A small wave of people started to move through the station from the direction of the platforms. The only picture I’d seen of Professor Alan Kirk had been on the faculty page, taken from a distance at a lecture by someone seemingly determined to thwart facial recognition software. Google didn’t help, since there had to be a hundred thousand Alan Kirks. All I could really be sure of was that he was a middle-aged white guy with thinning hair and a beard. Unless he’d shaved, which was always a possibility. So that narrowed the photo choices to around thirty or forty thousand.

My eyes braked on one guy in the herd. Short, on the stocky side. Navy blazer, thick horn rimmed glasses. Hair less thinning than it was receding into a horseshoe, beard trimmed into a goatee. Small portfolio tucked under his arm with the Cal-Poly logo on it.

He was walking with his head down, dragging a small overnight bag on wheels, thumbing through his phone. I weaved my way through the intermittent flow into his path.

“Professor?”

The man looked up. “Yes…? Do I know you?”

“My name is Bishop.” I took a gentle hold of his arm. Friendly. At least, I thought it was rather gentle and friendly, all things considered. “We need to talk.”

“What is this about?” he asked, yanking his arm away and, frankly, making quite a show of it.

“If you’ll just come with me. I promise I’ll explain everything.”

The man turned his head to each side, looking around, his gaze bouncing from person to person, trying to make a connection. A quiet plea for help. “You…must have me confused with someone else.”

Great. Any second, he was going to cause a scene. I could see it in his eyes, the way they widened, the way they darted, the way his back was stiffening.

So I did what any noble knight steeped in chivalry and virtue would do. I punched him in the gut.

A quick blow. Short uppercut, right about the solar plexus. I wrapped my other arm around him as I did it, just a close associate offering assistance, dropping all kinds of concerned phrases for anyone passing by to hear, asking if he was okay and commenting about how he didn’t look so good. Did he need some water? Would he like to sit down? He was trying to double over, but I held him up and led him across the concourse to a corridor where I found a large pair of doors that were mercifully unlocked. I pressed him through and slipped in behind him. No one seemed to have paid us any mind.

“Sorry about that. I can’t afford to draw attention.”

I stepped back and pressed the doors closed all the way until I was sure it was latched shut. There was a vertical sliding rod to lock one door in place and a bolt to secure the other. I engaged both and turned back to see where we were.

The room was big, a huge event hall of some kind. There were large round tables with white tablecloths and settings. The ceiling must have been thirty feet high with gargantuan windows along the outer wall starting at about ten feet and rising the entire height. At the far end was a balcony, maybe for a band or light director or something. A sign on an easel announced a wedding reception later that night. For the moment, though, the place seemed unoccupied. Except for us.

“You can have my money,” my new friend said as I approached. He was wheezing through a grimace, hand on his stomach. “Whatever’s in my wallet, just take it.”

“I’m not here to rob you, Professor.”

Rather than calming down, he seemed to get more scared. Like something was pushing on his eyeballs from the inside.

“If this is about those allegations…that student…look, most of what she’s saying never happened! I swear! I mean, not that I’m calling her a liar…I mean to say, I paid just to avoid the scandal of it!”

I gave him the once over, reassessing the man. Still waters. Go figure. “I’m not some angry brother or jealous boyfriend. Though I would love to hear about that sometime, as I’m always down for any story involving a co-ed and hush money. No, Professor, this is about—”

“Sir Regis!”

Her voice kicked in through the earbud. Pip had changed the setting on the phones to make them automatically answer each other’s calls without so much as a buzz or vibration, if you tapped the screen a certain way. She called it a direct line. I’m not sure if that was a manufacturer’s option or not.

I cupped my ear and held up a finger, offering an apologetic smile. “Sort of in the middle of something, Pip.”

“The Hostile did not exit! Repeat, the Hostile did not exit!”

“Okay.” I pulled the phone out of my side pocket, ready to thumb the end-call button. “Let me know when you reacquire her.”

“You don’t understand! I found the truck, completely uncloaked!”

She was right. I didn’t understand. Dragons and enchantments and arcane rules that seemed like they were made up for a board game by kids on LSD, it was all new to me. But I was starting to catch on. A little.

Dragons were, from what I had been told, large. It took considerable force generated out of each creature’s own, innate magic to compress them to the size of a person, and some kind of external enchantment to provide the illusion of personhood. They couldn’t stay that small for long periods, so they were often transported by Handlers in large semi-tractor trailers, lest giant winged serpents soaring overhead were to become nightly news fodder and YouTube sensations. Those trucks loitered nearby whenever one was out and about, doing whatever dragons do, and because a parked semi was a dead give-away, they were usually cloaked by a separate spell.

But magic was not what one would call energy efficient. It took power, lots of it, and that power was in finite supply. Only so much was portable.

“You’re saying they’re using that juice for something else.”

“She may have cloaked!”

I scratched my chin, looked down at the professor, who was still hunched over and appeared extremely confused. I tried to remember the highlights of what I’d learned. It was a crash course. Cloaking a moving object took a lot of magical kilowatts, way more than something stationary. Even a few seconds would be a major drain. Hence, no invisible flying dragons hovering the city.

“Okay, keep an eye out while I finish up my conversation with the good professor here. Let me know if you spot her.”

“Sir, I need to know your exact whereabouts. The GPS tracker is not that precise. In case you need your armor.”

“Pip, you worry too much. This isn’t the first wedding I’ve crashed. Gotta run.”

“Sir?”

I ended the call with a screen tap and turned back to my reluctant interviewee.

“Sorry about that, Dr. Kirk. I’ve got just a few questions, then you can go.”

The man’s breath was strained. He was still wincing as he looked up, narrowing the gap between his eyelids. “I don’t understand. You think I’m—”

His gaze suddenly shifted off my eyes. I spun to look.

She was standing there, tall and purposeful. Between us and the door.

“Hi,” I said. I held up a finger. “I don’t suppose I could get you to wait outside. Just for a minute? Almost done here.”

She didn’t respond, though her eyes did flash. Then something changed. It looked like a bucket of water had doused her, washing away a paint job. A ripple that crept down to the floor. She was still standing there, hadn’t moved. But now she didn’t look quite real. More like a sloppy sculpture. Bad Claymation.

“Uh, Professor?” I angled my jaw to talk over my shoulder. “You might want to grab a table to crawl under. Like in the farthest corner you can find.”

The woman raised her arms out to her side, shoulder-high. She bent them at the elbow until her hands disappeared behind her back. She held them like that a moment then flung them wide and something much larger ripped out of the skin, long knobby scythes of scale and bone tented over vein-webbed sheaths of leather that popped open like a sail catching wind, first one, then the other.

I reached into the pocket of my coat and tapped the screen three times, counted two, then tapped it twice more. And hoped her hack didn’t have any bugs to work out.

“Pip?”

They were big wings. Like, pterodactyl big. Way too big for the armless body of the play-doh woman they were attached to. They stretched out, gave a flap that made me close my eyes and almost forced me to step back. They pulled back as she bent forward at the waist until her chin touched her knees. She didn’t stay that way long. With a loud shredding sound she snapped up, arms bursting forward through the putty skin of her legs, tearing through her dress, flesh and cloth or whatever passed for them shedding in pieces and flying off.

So, I thought, swallowing hard and reminding myself to breathe, That’s what a dragon looks like.

Okay, sure, I had seen pictures. Drawings, etchings, even movies that, as it turned out, weren’t too far off the mark. But up close and personal like we were, well, this was different.

First off, it was big. I knew it was supposed to be big, but there was something more imposing about it than the sum of its dimensions. Its head was about eight feet off the ground, hovering over me at the end of its stout neck, but it had to be at least twenty-five feet long from its nose to the tip of its spiked tail. Its eyes were definitely reptilian, as was its hide, but there was also something distinctly feline to it. It looked like someone had crossed a crocodile with a snake on one side, a bat with a panther on the other, then bred the two offspring.

I backpedaled a few steps and my foot caught on something that made me lose my balance. I almost tripped over the professor, who hadn’t taken what I had thought was sage advice about finding a place to hide. He was huddled down on the floor, his eyes as big as pie plates.

His tie made a handy leash, so I yanked him up by it and literally kicked him in the ass. Okay, it was more of a shove with the bottom of my foot, but it sent him stumbling down the center of the room between the islands of round tables.

A puff of something hot and wet flowed over my neck. I made it a point not to make any sudden movements, then immediately violated my own resolution when the next hot and wet thing I felt on my neck wasn’t air. It was a sticky, sandpaper-like tongue, and the nape of my neck was in the Y of it.

Honestly, it wasn’t a bad move. I took off in a sprint, feinted left, then cut right. I zigged between two tables and zagged between two more and bam! Just like that, I had my eye on the dim but gloriously beautiful glow of an EXIT sign in the far corner beneath the balcony.

But another wall erupted before I could get there, this one directly in my path. This wall happened to be a leathery canvas trunk reticulated with veins. It dropped like a curtain in front of me, the taloned joint of its heel stabbing into the floor, digging into the marble with a crack like a hammer.

I could feel her breath again, but this time I was resigned. The head, shaped like a horse with four knobby horns, couldn’t have been more than a foot behind me. I inhaled, let it out, then pivoted on my heels, fists up, and screamed. If I was going to be incinerated, or eaten, or incinerated then eaten, I wasn’t going to go quietly.

“You wanna fight? Huh? Well, c’mon! Fight!”

Those eyes. They were big and close and did not show a trace of anything encouraging.

The plan…okay, there wasn’t one. But there was an idea, and the idea was to keep it wondering what the hell I had in mind while I came up with a plan. Dinosaurs had brains the size of a walnut, right? Wasn’t this just one of those? Sort of? Confusing it enough to buy some time seemed like a manageable task.

Smoke floated from its mouth, weaving through its conical teeth. A caress of heat brushed my cheek and my nose twitched at the distinct stench of sulphur. It was about to go all torchy on me. You didn’t need a degree in medieval folklore to figure that one out.

Teeth. I don’t know what made my brain play hopscotch that way, but I saw those teeth and thought, “croc,” then thought “too straight,” then thought, “Killer Whale,” then thought. “shark.” Then I unloaded a straight overhand right like a haymaker into its snout.

The best way to fend off a shark attack was to punch it in the nose. I’d never tried it, but I’d read the advice numerous times on the ever-reliable internet and it made sense. The nose is a sensitive organ, sensitive organs have lots of nerve endings. Lots of nerve endings means it is vulnerable to strikes.

Of course, this wasn’t a shark. And for all I knew, it had no sense of smell whatsoever. It barely flinched, I’m not sure it even blinked. My knuckles, on the other hand, looked like I’d run them against a cheese grater a few times.

Now, I’m fast. And by that, I mean, really, really quick in close quarters. Always was. It was how I survived boxing for a few years despite virtually no jab, no hook, and a right cross that couldn’t knock out a Girl Scout. My reflexes are my best asset, and I’m told they’re in the process of being “enhanced” as my dormant “avatar” kicks in, if I have one like the others, which I’m not sold on but I’ll take it if it’s true. Anyway, fast as I am, awesome as my reflexes are, even I was barely able to react when Lady Puff The Magic Death Beast launched a front leg into my chest and slammed me to the floor. And by react, I mean, tuck my head just in time to avoid cracking the back of my skull and having my brains spill out across the marble.

My breath abandoned me like a lost cause, even as I struggled to suck it back in. The weight on my chest was crushing. No amount of reflex or strategy was going to help. I was pinned and helpless as I watched her raise her maw and draw a voluminous breath. Extra crispy. That’s how I was about to go out.

The massive head of the creature started to drop toward me, a spark blazing to life in its mouth, when the whole picture exploded in front of my eyes. The head ricocheted sideways, a torrent of fire projected from its jaws, missing me by a few feet and leaving a charred swath of vaporized remains all the way to the other side of the hall, and whatever wrecking ball it was that caused it all bounced off the thing’s skull at an angle and rolled away.

The dragon roared, got off of me and whipped around in anger.

“Sir Regis! Your sword!”

There she was. Pip. Popping to her feet and wielding a shield almost as big as she was. This gal who’d probably never experienced an amusement park ride with a minimum height marker at the entrance leaped out of nowhere, practically curb stomped the beast’s head off just as it was about to barbecue me, and was now staring it down like a gladiator.

“Your sword!” she yelled again.

It took a moment to understand what she meant. I pushed myself off the floor and glanced around. There it was. Big and metal and sticking up from the center of a table nearby where it had harpooned itself like a giant lawn dart.

The dragon snapped its head in my direction as if sensing what was happening. It roared again, this time more like a growl, and lunged. Its neck shot forward as it did, a serpent strike, jaws opening and snapping shut.

But I wasn’t there, not by about six inches. I’d vacated the spot a split second before it got there, starting the moment I noticed it twitch. I could tell it hadn’t expected that, but I didn’t have time to pat myself on the back.

Three bounding steps and I was at the table, reaching for my sword. I used it to pull me onto the tabletop, where I was able to grip it with both hands and tug, tug, tug. The damn thing wouldn’t come loose.

I felt one of the tables soar over my head and ducked. Its path cleared, the dragon reared back onto its haunches, muscles coiling.

“Hurry, Sir Regis! Before it can recharge its flame!”

“Not helping!”

The thing sprang forward, front legs extended, wings spread for a glide, body stretched out. The head snaked toward me and I swung myself around the sword. Its jaws slammed into the blade and clamped down. The sound it made was almost a yelp. It pulled its head back twice as fast and snarled.

“Now, Sir Regis!”

I was moving before I had a chance to think, knew what she meant before the words even processed. This was my chance. The only thing I could hear was my heartbeat gushing through my veins. My vision narrowed to a pinprick. Both hands made fists on the oversized handle, squeezing the leather grips, and I felt myself twist, arching my back, contorting my head and neck to slide them beneath an elbow. My abdomen contracted, the electric sting of that one-thousandth crunch at the gym. My shoulders were screaming at me to stop before they separated.

Those jaws were sailing at me so fast, yet in slow motion. There was no way they would miss, not now. Closer, closer, wider, wider. I could see down its throat, past the tiny shark teeth and blow valve where it discharged its concentrated streams of methane, into its barbed throat.

But then the mouth turned up and sideways, tumbling, falling. The sword came down hard, its blade barely slowing down as it cleaved through the thing’s neck, finally stopping only when it wedged itself deep into the edge of the table on which I stood.

The head bounced off the marble floor and then rolled to a stop near Pip. She was standing there with the shield at her side, its bottom point on the ground. It bore the Bishop family crest and the Sigil of the Veil. I took Grimm’s word on both counts.

“You did it, Sir Regis! You slayed the dragon!”

A dragon. A round table. A sword that felt impossible to dislodge. Even an uncultured slob like me knew this had to be a setup, a deliberate test. Either that or my life was starting to play out like the sort of fairy tale they told before the stories became children’s books for bedtime reading; the kind where knights didn’t always live, and dark monsters feasted on their flesh. I wasn’t sure which prospect scared me more.

The sword felt stuck again. I was too weak to even try. I climbed down from the table on rubbery legs, had to steady myself on the back of a chair. The enormous carcass was already starting to bubble, gases being released.

Something made a noise on the other side of the room. I saw a curtain of table cloth flutter. The professor. I had forgotten about him.

My legs came back as I started to walk. By the time I reached him, he was sticking his head out from beneath the table, the linen draped over his head like white coif, looking up at me.

Before I could speak, Pip was by my side, the shield hung over her shoulder like a backpack. She was holding out an arm.

“Your hat, Sir Regis.”

I took it, punched it back into shape, and placed it on my head. I had started to grow attached to it for some reason, even though I hadn’t even realized I’d lost it. “Thank you.”

“That was a marvelous showing, Sir Regis! I knew you could do it!”

“Uh, sure. I still have no idea where you came from, out of the blue like that.”

“Oh, that was easy! Your brilliant code about the wedding told me where you were. I realized the main doors may be inaccessible, so I found a utility access from the roof that led to the platform balcony. It was the perfect place to unpack your armor. Great job in picking this as your battleground, Sir!”

The professor started to crawl out from beneath the table. Pip seemed surprised to see him and stepped back. I moved forward to help him stand. “Would you please tell me what the hell is going on? Are you talking to me? What are you babbling about?”

“I have some questions for you, Professor Kirk. You worked on an analysis of a sliver of metal a few months ago, one rumored to have been one of the nails from the Crucifixion. From what I’ve been able to piece together, you were the last person to have access to it before it was supposed to have been returned to safe storage.”

“You’re wasting your time, I’ve been trying to tell you—“

“Look, I’m sorry for the rough treatment. Really I am. But this is extremely important, more important than I could probably explain. That’s why I’ve been calling your office, trying to schedule an appointment for days. That’s why I found your schedule, knew you’d be attending the UCLA forum, and that you always take the same train when you do. I need to find that artifact. A lot depends on it. You were the last person in the chain of custody, the last person to see it. Anything you can tell me about it is paramount.”

“You’re not listening to me. I can’t help you. Not because I don’t want to, but because, I’m not Alan Kirk. We teach together, even co-wrote a few papers over the years. But I’m not him. My name is Coulter. Brian Coulter.”

I heard myself swallow. My ears popped as if I could get those last words out of them. I looked at Pip, who gave a tiny shake of her freckled face.

“If that’s true, where is he?

The man who wasn’t Professor Kirk mopped his face with his palm and tugged at the collar of his shirt, out of breath.

“That’s the thing, I’m filling in for him. He’s been missing for well over a week, maybe two, and no one’s heard from him.” He looked at his shoes and then leveled his gaze at me. “The last time anyone saw him, he was walking through campus, talking loudly about how if he didn’t defeat an unwinnable contest, a nightmare of creatures was going to take over the world, and that it was all his fault.”

2

By the time I got back to my office, the sun was a smooth glowing ball hovering over the Pacific. Of course, I take the Pacific-part on faith, assuming it’s still there, since I can’t remember the last time I actually saw it. The great thing about living in LA is supposed to be the ability to drive to the beach for a swim in the morning and the mountains to go skiing in the afternoon. Being a true Californian, I haven’t been to the beach since my teens, and I’ve never even set foot on a slope.

But one aspect of LA that I am intimately familiar with, having interactions on a daily basis, is the knock-off consumer goods industry. The retail end, I should say. Especially belts and purses. I have to weave my way through tables and hanging displays of them to get to and from my office, which occupies three rooms—a foyer, a main office, and a closet with a toilet that I’m still not convinced was ever hooked up to a sewer line. My space was above a narrow store called—without irony—“Genuine Accents” in Santee Alley.

“Somebody’s looking for you.”

I glanced over at Claudia, who was perched on a stool behind a small glass counter in the store. Her head was bent over her phone, which she thumbed in a succession of rapid, smooth movements.

“Did he leave a card?”

“No.” She paused, pulling her eyes away from her phone to lay a skeptical gaze on me. “What makes you so sure it was a guy?”

“Because if it weren’t, you’d describe her as if you were talking to a police sketch artist. You always do.”

She bristled at that. “No, I don’t.”

“Fine. Was it a woman?”

The side of her mouth curled into a dimple and she lowered her head back to her phone. “No.” She slid an envelope forward on the countertop. “But he left you something.”

I thanked her and picked up the envelope, then continued to the back of the store, breathing in the smell of cheap leather and vinyl and the cleaning solvents Claudia’s mother uses on the tile floor. I was almost to the rear door when Claudia added, “Oh, yeah, almost forgot. Pops wants to talk to you. Said it’s important.”

Pops was Claudia’s stepfather. I guess technically he owned the place, or the business, at least, but her mother was the only one who ever seemed to be there. Other than Claudia, who was only there in the technical sense of the term.

I nodded. “Did he say what it was about?”

“Important stuff,” she said. Trying to get more out of her seemed like a low-percentage proposition, so I pushed against the bar on the rear door into the back alley and let it close behind me as I looked at the blank, sealed envelope. I ripped it open with a thumb and read the letter, my nostrils bombarded by the pungent mix of nearby dumpsters and some sort of Thai restaurant on the other side of the fence.

I stared at the paper, thinking, before stuffing it back in and sliding the envelope into my breast pocket.

My legs were a bit shaky by the time I reached the top of the stairs. The door was already unlocked.

“Sir Regis!” Pip bounced out from behind my desk, rushing to greet me. “I was getting worried.”

“I needed to grab something to eat.”

That was certainly true, but mostly I just sat and thought for a while.

“Well, I’m so glad you’re here! I think we have another lead!”

“Great. I’m sure it will hold until tomorrow.”

Pip searched my face for a moment, then tightened her lips. “Right. You should rest. You’ve just won a major battle! You can lie down on the couch and I’ll do some research. Then we’ll get at it bright and early.”

Rest sounded nice. If only.

“I can’t lie down, Pip. I have to go out.”

“Did you come up with another lead yourself? That’s wonderful! I can explain what I’ve discovered while you’re driving.”

“It’s not like that. I have to go see someone.”

It didn’t take long for it to register on her face. “Her. You’re going to see her, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I let it out.

“We have important work to do, Sir Regis. Mr. Grimm was adamant that no second is to be wasted.”

“I know. This isn’t wasted time. I have to do this.”

She crossed her arms, then caught herself. “Obviously, it is not my place to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. Though I think you know it’s a very bad idea and…Mr. Grimm would not approve.”

There wasn’t anything I could say that would change that so I didn’t respond. This was the only subject Pip seemed to get emotional about. Or at least broody. I wasn’t sure why.

Here’s the thing. I have a crazy ex-girlfriend. Crazy, in the general sense, girlfriend in that it’s easier to say than, “gal I went out with four or five times.” I’m not sure whether she’s certifiable, but considering she’s been found fit to stand trial, I guess that’s just one more difference of opinion I have with the law. But she was certainly crazy enough to try to kill me, then escape from jail and try to kill me again, this last time failing only because of Pip. It was a strange way to meet someone, having them come between you and a knife.

“Her trial starts next week. Prosecutor told me to expect a subpoena. But her lawyer just left me a letter. Said she’s offering to plead guilty, agree to a protective order and anything else I want. But she asked that I come to the jail. Tonight. Visiting hours end at seven.”

“Oh, well. In that case.”

“She’s in custody, Pip. She can’t hurt me.”

Her eyes, a deep, almost purple green, latched onto mine. “She has already hurt you, Sir. And she will continue to do so for as long as you allow her to.”

With that, she looked away and returned to my desk, getting back on the computer. I didn’t know what to make of her attitude. Jealousy? That didn’t make sense. I’d only known her for six weeks. And she was like a kid sister. Cute, no doubt about it, but tomboyish and focused and, honestly, she hadn’t shown the slightest hint of physical attraction toward me. Which was a relief. My life was fucked up enough. Which was an understatement. Which was why Dante Grimm assigned her to me as a squire. A fact he made clear in language only slightly less blunt.

I looked around my tiny office—which for the moment doubled as my home—and rhetorically asked myself how the heck I got to this point in my life. The same question I’d taken over an hour pondering while eating three power bars and downing a large Mountain Dew.

“I’ll be back a little later. You can tell me what you found then. I’ll bring some food, and we can go over it while we eat. Okay?”

She blinked her lids as she moved her gaze from the screen to me. “Why, of course, Sir Regis. Anything you say.”

The look in her eyes didn’t come close to matching the pleasant tone of her voice.

3

My appointment was at 6:45 and I was almost ten minutes late. Special Visitation at the Century Regional Detention Facility ended at seven. I expected to be turned away, but the woman at the front desk seemed to take pity on me. I certainly did my best to appear worthy of pity when I laid my head on the counter in front of her and let out a long groan.

They checked my ID, inspected my shoes and made me pass through a metal detector. My belt buckle offended their wand for some reason, so they made me remove that and place it along with all other personal items in a storage locker that cost me a quarter. I didn’t tell them it was the last bit of cash I had on me, but they seemed to have figured that out after I’d emptied my pockets. I was instructed to keep my photo ID on me and that I was allowed one key. Conveniently, that was all the locker required.

I passed through one door that was buzzed open by one of the women who wanded me. The next door was buzzed by someone on the other side of the glass. A deputy checked my ID against a list and gave me directions. She pointed down a hall and I wandered until I reached one more heavy-duty door, this one battleship gray with a window that must have been made of four-inch glass. A guard outside the door opened it, then gave me a stall number and told me to wait.

“You have five minutes,” the guard said.

The stall was partitioned by more glass. No telephone handsets, like in the movies. Just a small venthole with a tight screen filter. I pulled the plastic chair back and sat.

A door opened on the other side of the partition a few seconds later. Veronica was led in by a single guard, also female. She was wearing a top of institutional white cloth with sleeves down to her elbows and baggy pants. A plastic band was wrapped snug around her wrist.

The guard stepped back against the wall and stood there, staring at me.

“Hello, Rex.”

Pleasantries and politesse seemed inappropriate, so I responded with a curt nod.

“I’m glad you came.”

“I was told five minutes a couple of minutes ago,” I said.

“You want to know why. I’m going to try to tell you. I’m not sure I’ll succeed.”

I stared, unsure how to play things. “Is there one? A why?”

“There’s always a why, Rex. Everyone knows that.”

“Fine. Why?”

“First, you have to understand, I didn’t want to kill you.”

“In that case, you did a bang-up job of convincing me and the police otherwise.”

“My plan was to sever the brachial plexus nerve root to your right arm. I would have immediately administered first aid and gotten you to a hospital. I just wanted you incapacitated, not dead.”

That was comforting. How the heck did I not see this in her? The night I met her, catching her eye at the Mediterranean while working a divorce case, she just seemed like a pretty, smart, fun gal who wanted to get to know me. Little did I know she was just sizing me up for a part in her psychosis.

“Incapacitated,” I said, scratching my cheek. I glanced at the guard, who hadn’t moved. I realized she wasn’t necessarily staring at me, but at the glass. Watching Veronica’s reflection, perhaps. I gestured randomly to get her attention. I wanted some acknowledgement, I guess. I didn’t want to be the only person hearing this. It didn’t work.

Veronica put a palm against the partition. “Yes. It would have paralyzed your arm. Surgery would have been needed to correct it. I was hopeful the damage wouldn’t be permanent, but you would be out of commission. At least two months.”

The guard’s voice was even and firm. “No touching the glass.” Veronica withdrew her hand.

“I was trying to protect you,” she said. “It was the only way to save your life.”

Bat. Shit. Crazy. Wow. And here I was, having thought all this time I had simply done something to piss her off.

“Am I supposed to thank you?”

She tilted her head to the side and gave me a sad smile. “No. Just listen.”

“One minute,” the guard said.

“My tongue has been enchanted, so I cannot say all the things I want to say,” Veronica continued. She took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself. She opened her mouth and tried to speak several times. The muscles in her neck began to protrude and her face grew red.

The guard raised her arm and tapped the back of her wrist, gesturing to an imaginary watch. “Thirty seconds.”

“I, uh, think something’s wrong,” I said, raising my voice. “Guard? You’d better—”

Veronica slapped her hands down on the table top between us.

“Beware the Medusa! Rules unseen are the key! Don’t be a thorough fool! There is no game if you understand the rules!”

Her face was crimson now, her eyes bulging. She was breathing through clenched teeth.

I stood, knocking the chair backward. “Guard!”

She was already moving, grabbing Veronica by the arm, attempting to jerk it behind her. But Veronica seemed to sense it coming, rotating her wrist and yanking the guard closer. She hit the woman with a palm strike, smashing her once in the nose, then in the cheek. Each shot was vicious and she followed it with a bladed hand to the throat. The guard stumbled back and dropped to her knees.

Those eyes snapped back to me. Her teeth were still clenched, and now I could tell she was trying to unclench them.

Her voice came through like a sloppy growl.

“Don’t be a thorough fool!”

She gave me one more hard look, then stabbed her thumb into the side of her neck, sinking it in deep before pulling it out again. Blood arced out in a fountain onto the tabletop as two more guards burst through the door, hampered by the guard Veronica had dispatched, who had managed to crawl to the door and was knocked back by it.

I stood there, helpless, as Veronica reached one more time for the glass. Those eyes looked less crazy now than they did sad. Without realizing what I was doing, I placed my palm opposite hers.

The glass felt cold.

Two guards tugged her away, shock registering on their faces. They lowered her to the floor, out of sight, and I could see what looked like a few futile attempts at first-aid. In the background, another guard was tending to the downed deputy, who was shaking her head and trying to stand.

I felt a hand on me before I realized I wasn’t alone. A big guy with a mustache, put a meaty hook of fingers on my arm and said, “Sir, please come with me.” He sounded rather considerate, under the circumstances.

It was only after backing away and taking one more look that I realized Veronica had scrawled something on the glass, letters smeared in blood near the bottom. Reversed, so I could read them.

They spelled, “PAWNS DIE.”

4

Three interviewers and more than two hours later, they let me leave.

The first interviewer was a woman in the same uniform as the other guards but with more stripes on her sleeve; quite concerned, wanting to know what happened. I got the impression she was some kind of shift supervisor and might have to answer for it. Her questions had that hint of CYA to them, punctuated by exasperated breaths and lots of blinking as she stared at a file during pauses.

The next was a detective. Guy in a tan sport coat and navy slacks. Buzz cut and ruddy complexion. He seemed extremely confused. Kept wanting me to describe the weapon. I don’t know how many times I had to explain that the only weapon I saw was her thumb.

Last person was the prosecutor. This woman, I knew. Dishwater blonde, perpetual scowl on her face. I had met her to give my victim impact statement, and she’d been cordial, if a bit stiff. Best I could tell, now she was just plain mad. She wanted to know what I was doing there, why I was visiting the person who attacked me, the one I was supposed to testify against. I did my best to fill her in, but I started to wonder if Pip hadn’t gotten to her and tapped into some sisterly solidarity. She all but told me going there was stupid, not calling to clear it with her was stupid, and that, as a general matter, I was stupid. My best defense was confessing my stupidity, although by the way she kept scolding me, that didn’t make her any less angry.

But, in the end, I hadn’t done anything; not just anything wrong, but literally anything. It was only after they told me they’d be in touch if they had any more questions that I realized I probably could have just up and left whenever I wanted. Hell, the whole thing was on video, with audio. They just needed someone to jerk around to feel like they were doing something, I guess.

When I got back to my office, the stores lining Santee Alley were closed. That meant I was actually free to use the side alley next to Genuine Accents, because the entry wasn’t blocked by the FX TEES rack that always stood in the way. You’d think a rolling garment rack would be moveable, but the one time I tried, I ended up dumping several dozen v-necks with bedazzled words like “Princess Bride” and “Spoiled Boy-Toy” adorning them onto the pavement. The owner shouted at me in a language I didn’t recognize but in a way that was universally understood to likely implicate my mother, an animal and future use of a gun. I gave up on the alley and cut through the shop ever since.

“Pip,” I said, opening the door and catching a glimpse of her on the couch. “Sorry. Long story.”

I stepped in and started to tell her my phone was dead when I realized she wasn’t alone. There was someone behind my desk, looking out the window. He had dark hair to below his shoulders and was wearing a long, charcoal coat, hands clasped behind his back.

Several seconds passed before he said, “This is where I suppose I’m expected to say, I’m sorry you had to go through that. But that would be disingenuous. Truth is, it was necessary.”

He turned. I’d forgotten how forceful those eyes were. Cat’s eyes. Demon eyes. Eyes that had seen too much. Windows to a soul that knew too much. Okay, maybe I’m being melodramatic, but the guy is one intense S.O.B. I tried not to look away, but my gaze betrayed me and I glanced at Pip. She gave me a forlorn look. Part "I told you so," part pleading with me not to say something dumb.

“Dante,” I said, managing to muster a semblance of insouciance. I liked that word, insouciance. I’d learned it from Veronica. Or, more precisely, I’d looked it up after she used it to describe the way I did something. Given that he already knew she was dead, faking it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I called him,” Pip said.

“Okay…” I looked at her, then at Dante, then at her again. “Would someone mind catching me up?”

Dante dipped his head, steepling his fingers at his chin. “This woman you went to see, Veronica…what did she tell you?”

“Was this some sort of test? If it was, that’s pretty sick.”

Those eyes. They flashed as he raised his head, and I got a hint of the danger behind them.

“Let me explain something, as if I haven’t already. You are an experiment. A legacy. You are not an actual Chosen. Your father was, as was made agonizingly clear. But in all the wrinkles in time and space caused by the Veil, your father’s death is one of the most perplexing. He was, or would have been, in my estimation, our most powerful asset. And he was also a necessary link. Our only hope for success is if you can fill his shoes.”

“I’ve been living in my father’s shadow all my life. It’s why I ghosted him as soon as I was old enough to drive. Not that either of us noticed a difference. If you’re trying to make me feel inadequate, I’ve taken it from the best.”

“What I’m trying to do, Regis, is to impress upon you the gravity of the situation.”

“I slayed a dragon this morning and I just watched some gal I dated kill herself in front of me this evening. I think I understand all about gravity. It’s a law and the law’s an ass.”

“Yes, I heard about your exploits this morning. A lesser dragon, doubtless in a weakened state from the strain of its camouflage. The fact you point to that proves you don’t have the slightest clue about how grave the situation really is.”

“She was a Siren.”

It was Pip. I turned my head to see her bite her bottom lip as if to stop herself from saying any more.

“Young Penelope here may show poor impulse control in some situations…” Grimm sharpened his gaze at her for an instant before his look softened. “But she happens to be correct.”

“A Siren. That’s the second reference to Greek mythology I’ve heard tonight. What are the odds?”

“Not one of the original three, of course. Think of them as more of a…sect. They have adopted the sorcery of Persephone, an earthy, woodland magic. They have also refined their arts. Their number is few, but the danger they present is substantial. I suspect the weakening of the Veil has increased both their power and their number. They were almost certainly the ones behind the dragon encounter you had. The exact role they’re playing, or hope to play, is a complete mystery to me. And if that doesn’t concern you, it should.”

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“That, my boy, is my point. And why I’m here. Tell me exactly what happened.”

So I did. I told him about the letter, the jail, what I could recall of the conversation. I told him how she ripped a hole in her own throat with her thumb. And I told him her last words, and what she’d scrawled on the glass.

Grimm listened without reaction, head bowed slightly in concentration. Then he asked me to repeat the story, leaving nothing out.

“You’re sure that’s what she said? Word for word?”

“That’s what it sounded like to me. What does it mean?”

Grimm said nothing. He took in a deep breath and turned to stare out the window. It was dark out, so I had no idea what he could be looking at. Maybe he was looking in.

“Does that mean you don’t know?”

The fabric of his coat made a whisper as he stiffened, still staring through the glass. “It means, the Sirens want what you’re tasked with finding. And I have a feeling that means crossing paths with another dragon is probably the least of your concerns.”

I COLLAPSED onto the couch several hours later, finally exhaling when I heard Grimm’s footfalls recede into the night.

“I am sorry, Sir Regis.”

I covered my eyes with my forearm, leaning my head back. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“I was not allowed to tell you. It felt disloyal.”

“Forget about it. You tried to stop me, remember?”

“Yes. Mr. Grimm was not pleased about that, obviously.”

“To be honest, I still don’t get it.”

“Knowledge of her enchantment would have weakened it,” Pips said, sighing. “A weakened enchantment would have been perceived. It was necessary we learn what their role was, why you had been targeted. Mr. Grimm thinks your best asset is that the Sirens do not know you’re aware of their involvement.”

“Yeah, that much, I understand. What I don’t get is, why was she trying to help me?”

Pip shrugged, stared at the cushion between us. “For all the magic of her sect, she was still a human woman. I assume the two of you were…intimate. It would be more surprising if she could have avoided having any feelings for you. Under the circumstances.”

I wasn’t buying it. Something didn’t make sense. Veronica may have been a Siren, or a member of some mystical siren cult or whatever, but that would mean she wasn’t crazy, and it would also mean that it was a sane woman who attempted to plunge a rather long knife quite literally into my back. Then again, maybe I just didn’t understand women. I couldn’t exactly point to much evidence in rebuttal.

“Maybe you should get some rest, Sir Regis. It’s getting late. You are sure to have a long day tomorrow. You heard Mr. Grimm.”

I nodded. She was right. It was getting late. Tomorrow, I needed to start reconstructing the professor’s last few days to see if I could pick up the trail. I had to find the artifact. Something the Siren gang or whoever didn’t want me doing.

“I’ll let you sleep. I’ll see you bright and early.”

“Be careful.” I had no idea where Pip lived, or was staying. I asked once, but she said it would not be appropriate for me to know “at this time.” I never asked again. Still, the thought of her walking alone, even to a car, was troubling. “The bars will be letting out—”

I sat up, suddenly not fatigued. My mind teased at something, pulling at a thread.

“What is it, Sir Regis?”

“Remember that bar I told you about, the one where I met Veronica? The Mediterranean? The actual sign for it reads, Mediterranean America.”

“Yes?”

“Everyone refers to it as Club Med.”

“And?”

“Med? America? Med…USA…”

“Medusa! That’s brilliant, Sir Regis!”

“If I leave right now, I can probably make it before it closes.”

“Now? But what do you intend to do?”

“What do you think?” I stood, reaching for my hat. “Find out how many other of their lounge acts are really witchy temptresses luring sailors to their doom.”

5

The Mediterranean sat on a corner near the Sunset Strip. It was housed in a low slung, brick building with a large neon sign in green that read MEDITERRANEAN above a smaller red, white, and blue AMERICA in script just below it. Inside, the place was comfortable; lounge atmosphere, with booths and tables and a stage in the rear half. A large square bar dominated the front. I asked the barmaid serving my beer the last time I’d been there why it was called the Mediterranean, since it didn’t seem to have any décor or theme. She told me the owner wanted to name it Casablanca, but there was some sort of legal fight. Then he tried Club Mediterranean, but Club Med threatened suit. So he just named it Mediterranean. He added “America” below it because a rumor started before it opened that he was an illegal alien or something. Nobody knew for sure.

I didn’t hang out there much; in fact, my first visit was on a case, the night I met Veronica. It was a messy divorce about to happen. Guy wanted me to follow his soon-to-be-ex, find out who she was seeing. Turned out she was seeing whoever happened to buy her a drink. Just a lonely woman, looking for company, married to a jerk. I watched her from across the bar, but gradually my attention shifted to the singer. She had full, dark hair and deep blue eyes and a voice that seemed to be breathy whisper in my ear. Without giving it much thought, I made my way to the stage and took a seat as close as I could get. After the show, one of the wait staff handed me a note. It said to pick a booth and order drinks. That’s how we hooked up.

Okay, it might seem obvious now, but at the time I just took it to be one of those things. Sure, maybe it was more like one of those things you read about than one of those things you actually experience, but how the heck was I supposed to know? I’m just a guy, and I thought she was just a gal.

But that was then. Tonight, the place was on its final lap of the evening, the energy of the crowd starting to wind down. Two big guys at the door in black t-shirts and black jeans waved me in without pausing their conversation. Nobody was on the stage and the stage lights were off. The bartender told me it was about ten minutes to last call, so I paid for a beer with a twenty, one of two from an ATM transaction that had dropped my bank account into the single digits, and told him he could keep the change if he could tell me who had booked or hired Veronica Gates. He looked at me like I was either really ugly or really stupid, or both, then let me know he had no idea who that was, and that he had only been working there for about a week. So I asked him who arranged the singers. Another look, this one more on the wary side, and maybe a bit confused. He gestured to one of waitresses and walked over to the other side of the bar. They both looked at me, exchanged a few words, then looked at me again. Then the guy pulled out a phone and held it between them, speaking for a few more seconds. When he came back, he gave me the name of the manager, and pointed me to a door near the restrooms.

I knocked. Nothing happened for a long minute, maybe two, so I knocked again. Nothing.

The knob turned when I tried it and the door cracked inward with a gentle push. I could see a wall a few feet opposite. I resisted the urge to glance around, knowing that would only draw attention and look suspicious. I stepped in and the door shut gently behind me.

What I had taken to be a hallway at first I now saw was a service corridor. Bare walls leading to a side exit. Weak florescent lighting on the ceiling. No other doors or outlets. I turned around to go back inside.

There was no knob. I put a hand on the door, but the hinges were on my side. The fit of the door was so snug, I doubt a credit card would slide in, let alone a finger. After puzzling a moment, it made sense, sort of. A delivery entrance. This interior door could be propped open when needed. But they didn’t want people wandering in from the side door that led outside. Kept it locked at night. I looked around the frame and found a button, like a doorbell. I thought about pressing it, but considering I’d been sent here deliberately, I doubted they wanted me back. Hey, I can take a hint, if I have enough time to ponder it.

The side door had a push bar. I pulled out my phone to alert Pip as I reached the door and leaned against it. The door opened into an alley. I was pressing the Bluetooth earpiece in, listening to it connect on the other end, when I stepped onto the pavement in the grayscale of moonlight and discovered I wasn’t alone.

Three guys. I recognized two of them from the door. One was black, the other white. Both were at least twice my size and bald. The third didn’t look like he’d been bottle-fed human growth hormone, the way the others did, but he wasn’t what I’d call a runt. At least he was wearing a navy blazer and button down shirt over regular, if probably ridiculously expensive, blue jeans. And his wavy hair was way too well-manicured. Given that, I figured it would most likely be two-on-one. I’d still be in a world of hurt, but the math sounded better.

“I hear you have a complaint about the talent,” the guy in the blazer said. There was an accent, but I couldn’t quite place it. Something about his vowels.

Pip’s voice popped into my ear right as he finished. “Hello, Sir Regis. Any luck?”

I cleared my throat and hoped she could catch up without needing a full briefing.

“Sure do,” I said to the guy in the blazer, hoping Pip could follow the conversation. “The last one’s knife skills sucked. She had one job. What kind of an operation are you running around here, anyway?”

Not the most epic oh-snap! response ever, granted, but I figured something unexpected was preferable to meekly claiming there had been some misunderstanding.

Blazer guy was quiet for a moment, his lip twitching just enough that I suspected he was holding back a smile. Then he said, “You seem like a nice kid. Bit mouthy, but I like that. So I’m going to let you walk away. All you have to do is promise you won’t come back. Ever.”

“But where else am I going to find cheap domestic beer for nine bucks a bottle? In this town?”

“Sir Regis, what are you doing?” The voice in my ear had a pleading edge to it. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought maybe Pip didn’t trust my ability to get out of a jam without her help. “It sounds like you are trying to initiate a confrontation.”

Mr. Blazer-sporter, just coincidentally, seemed to agree. “Funny guy. Thing is, we don’t book comedians. Boys, show our friend here what we do with comedians.”

The two bookends started toward me. I took a step back, leaving my hands loose and hanging near my waist.

Here’s the thing—sure, I boxed, and for all my talk about not having much of a right, I’d be lying if I pretended that meant I couldn’t outpunch your average schmo off the street. Problem was, these guys weren’t your average schmo. Each of them had at least seventy-five, maybe closer to a hundred, pounds on me. There’s a reason there are weight classes in prize fights. Couple that with the fact that, in the real world, even two regular-sized guys would have a distinct numerical advantage that only Hollywood thinks is easily overcome.

But I still had one thing going for me. I am quick in the reflex department, and these guys didn’t know I was a pug. Okay, technically that’s two things, but it seems more like one. Or maybe one and a half.

Cue-ball on the right, Eight-ball on the left. Cue-ball took the lead. He was rawboned, with jagged cheeks. Probably a bleeder. His smile gave me the impression he couldn’t believe someone was willing to pay him for this kind of thing.

I took two quick breathes and exhaled deeply.

“I bet you hit like a bitch,” I said. “Because you sure look like one.”

There was a tactical reason for the taunt, but I have to admit the words came out before I’d actually thought of it.

Now, I’m no martial artist. Boxing is a sport. It has rules and a referee and you can quit anytime you want. And I certainly don’t have a whole lot of expertise in dealing with multiple opponents. But I figured the best way to overcome a numerical disadvantage was to subtract one from the equation.

The big man’s smile grew wider, though it looked more angry than happy. That meant my words had the desired effect. But the depth of that smile also caused me to seriously question the merit of my strategy.

The other one took a few long strides forward. His black skin shimmered in the dim alley light. His eyes seemed to give off their own light, intense as they were. He was all business.

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Go ahead and prove me right. Let your friend do all the heavy lifting for you.”

Both of them seemed to coil, muscles tense and ready to spring. For a brief moment, I thought they were going to bull rush me, in which case I was about to get curb-stomped. Game over, man, game over. If I did manage to survive, it would be in traction with years of physical therapy for me to be able to feed myself again. But then Cue Ball held out an arm, stiff and wide, signaling for his comrade to hold back.

“He’s mine,” he said, still smiling. But it was obviously forced now.

Keeping my arms loose and hanging took a lot of self-control. The instinct is to throw ‘em up, assume a fight stance. But I couldn’t risk him deciding to rush me low.

He took a step and I stuck out my chin. Nothing too blatant, just enough to look inviting.

His arms were down, but bent, one balled fist near his chest, the other around his midsection. I pretended to take a step back, but moved only about an inch. That was enough.

Not quite as slow as I’d hoped, but it didn’t matter, because he telegraphed his move like a dance flourish. His poor arm discipline forced him to draw his fist back before launching it in a ballistic arc. I watched the knuckles rocketing toward my face and dipped my head to the left. His weight followed his fist past me and he bent forward a bit. As expected, he doubled down and threw a wild left hook coming back the other way.

I bounced back, let the hook rotate him to just the right angle, and speared my two forefingers into his left eye.

Hey, this wasn’t a ring, and I didn’t see a ref anywhere.

His hand shot to his face and I unloaded a respectable right straight into his nose. Two jabs after that, just to make sure he was stunned, then I finished with an uppercut thrown with enough force I would have left my feet had my upward momentum not been negated by his jaw. His head snapped back and he fell on his ass, back of his skull smacking the brick wall behind him.

Now the odds were a bit better, though the next guy was unlikely to be so compliant. I pivoted, hands up, weight on the balls of my feet, ready for the attack I was certain was already in motion.

Eight-ball wasn’t barreling toward me like a locomotive. In fact, he wasn’t even directly in front of me any longer. He was back behind Blazer guy, helping him take it off—the blazer, that is—and neatly folding it in half, longways, then draping it over his arm. Hard to explain, but there was something distinctly off-putting about the amount of deference he was showing.

Okay, I thought. I get it. Blazer guy was another pug. Probably state Golden Gloves Middleweight champ or something. Saw my fistwork and took it as a challenge. I congratulated myself on the turn of events, since all it would have taken to end this was for one of them to pull out a gun.

He pulled out a gun.

A pistol. Something semi-auto. Stainless steel. Or maybe nickel. I didn’t know. Guns weren’t my thing. I owned one, a little .38 revolver, tucked away under a trigger guard in a bottom drawer, but I’d never had occasion to use it. And since I didn’t have it with me, it wasn’t going to do me much good right then, anyway.

The gun glinted as he raised it. But instead of pointing it at me, he handed it to Eight Ball, who accepted it like it was a Faberge egg and tucked it in his waistband with the careful and exaggerated fine-motor movements of someone who expected it to break.

Definitely looking to settle this mano y mano, I thought. The guy even took off his shirt, holding it by the shoulders and flicking the sleeves in as he folded it and set it atop the blazer. His t-shirt, a clean, brilliant shade of white, followed. I raised my fists, rubbing a knuckle under my chin, thinking, man, this guy is really old school.

Of course, I was thinking Jim Corbett old school, not greco-roman old school.

His shoes came off next, followed by his pants, then his socks, and the next thing I knew, his happy-slapper was dangling like a desiccated snake. I didn’t know what to make of it. This guy was either an even bigger bleeder than I dreamed of and the biggest dandy to ever don clothes, or he was planning to make me squeal like a pig. Or maybe it was all an attempt to distract me. In that case, it was working.

He took a step forward, and I eased to my left, taking the center. But he didn’t move closer. He just lowered himself to his knees, placing his palms in front of him. It wouldn’t be long before I realized his idea of old school wasn’t taught anymore, if it ever had been.

His skin seemed to erupt, hair sprouting like grass until he became covered in a pelt of golden fur up to his neck. His hands seemed to inflate as his fingers retracted and his feet stretched. Within seconds, I was looking at the same head, only now it was on the body of a giant cat.

But he wasn’t finished. A momentary look of pain washed over his face. He cocked his head and stretched his feline arms out, lowering his upper body and sticking his hindquarters up. I heard something that sounded like wet fabric tearing, and a long tail emerged from his backside. This wasn’t a cat’s tail, though. It was dark and ribbed and when it curled over his back and began to sway like a charmer’s flute from side to side I saw it had a sharp hook on its bulbous end. A stinger.

“Sir Regis! Keep your distance! It’s a manticore!”

The voice in my ear startled me. I had almost forgot about Pip.

“A what?” I said, under my breath, eyes still on that stinger.

“A manticore! A creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion!”

Lovely, I thought. File this under hashtag FML. “I don’t suppose there’s—”

Before I could finish, that tail whipped forward, stretching farther than I realized it could, the creature’s back bending with it like it were made of rubber tubing. I jerked my shoulder back and threw my rearmost leg to the side just as the stinger stabbed the space my head had occupied a fraction of a second earlier. The round end of the tail scraped my nose, sending a gamey stench up my nostrils that smacked of flesh and sweat and sticky bodily fluids.

“Hurry, Sir Regis! Get clear before he can strike again!”

Too late. The tail whipsawed back and launched over and down toward me in an angry arc. I dove forward and rolled, hearing it crack off the cement behind me as I popped up onto my feet right in front Mr. Man-Cat-Bug. He had a paw already cocked, extending a vicious-looking set of claws that seemed to sparkle their sharpness at the tips. It swatted at my face and I ducked. The bottom-most claw snagged my hat. He shook it off and the sight of it dropping to the concrete, deformed, with a small tear in the side, riled me beyond what could be considered reasonable or proportionate, given the circumstances.

“Get out of there, Sir Regis! You have to stay beyond the range of his tail!”

She didn’t have to tell me thrice. That tail had already snapped back and was zooming toward me. I weaved under it and as soon as I felt it shoot by I turned and sprinted toward the back fence.

Then the concrete jumped out of nowhere and punched me in the face.

That was what it seemed like, but I shook my head clear and felt the hard concrete of the drive against me, could smell the cement and feel the pebbly grit on my face. I looked back and Cue-ball had a hold of my ankle. He’d crawled out far enough to trip me and now was giving me another bloody smile, his face puffy from where I had pummeled him. He pushed himself onto his knees, still holding my leg.

“Look out, Sir Regis!”

She was like a broken record, but I was grateful for it. Over Cue Ball’s shoulder I saw it, that stinger, slashing from above. I’m not sure why, but I repeated Pip’s warning, yelling Look out! but instead of looking back he pushed himself up, lifting my ankle, and was no sooner on his feet than that stinger punched into his back. Two images flashed in my eyes, one of the stinger plunging toward me, then of him blocking it from view. He let out a grunt, his eyes bulging, and dropped my foot. His face froze into a grimace and his arms seemed to shrivel. All of his skin appeared to shrink wrap around his frame which swelled in puffs and bumps. Then his body jerked back a few feet and I heard the stinger pull out with a wet, sucking sound. Cue Ball stood there for a heartbeat, frozen in place, then fell forward onto his face without so much as a blinking.

“Good Heavens, Sir Regis! That was close!”

Hearing those words, it finally occurred to me that Pip was close enough to see what was happening. “Where are you?”

“I’m right above you! Moving into position. I have your armament!”

I looked around, spinning my head each way I could. I was on my second visual circuit when I saw her. Her voice blasted in my ear.

“Sir Regis! Keep your eyes on your opponent!”

Good advice. I glanced back just in time to see Leo the Scorpion bounding toward me, a lion’s charge. His mouth opened wide and he let out a roar that rattled my head. I managed to push myself into a crouch by the time he was at ten feet. At five, those paws came up and he leaped.

I shot toward him, slicing between those paws, and landed a solid right against the point of his chin.

My hand felt like I’d just punched a block of wood. The thing shook its head, a very cat-like movement, and staggered back a few steps.

“Bravo, Sir Regis! Your courageous stand has created an opening! Here! Prepare to receive your sword and shield!”

I raised my head. The shield was already on its way, frisbeeing down with a bit of lift, and I was able to catch it. I had no time to congratulate myself, as the sword followed immediately after. It seemed about to impale me, but at the last moment it dropped like a cut fastball, turning over, and I saw it was coming in handle-first. My palm slapped against the leather and I felt the hilt wedge against the side of my fist.

Lion-Bug-Guy roared again, but didn’t charge. That tail sat above its head, poised. I kept it in view peripherally, but I watched the creature’s eyes. That’s one thing you learn in boxing. The punch is thrown when the decision is made, and you can’t catch that by watching your opponent’s gloves. Those eyes moved all over me, taking me in. Clearly, the addition of the shield and the sword prompted a change in strategy.

Then I saw it. A glint, a flash. Lids popping, eyes fixing for a split second. The tail shot forward. I threw up my shield and saw the stinger spear through it, missing my arm by a hair, its tip inches from my face. The tip caught like a hook and I tensed, anticipating what would happen next.

And it did. I was airborne, hanging by the straps of my shield, hurtling a few feet off the ground, watching the pavement roll beneath me. I saw the man’s head on that ridiculous body looking up at me and I let go, allowed my arm to slip through the leather.

I landed on his back, knocking him off his feet. I gained my footing and swung my sword back toward the creature’s ass in a swift circle. The blade buried itself into the base of its tail.

The sound it let out was so piercing, I thought I might pass out from what it was doing to my head. It bucked once, but I held onto the handle with both hands and I felt the thing’s body sag beneath me. The tail twitched, but seemed incapable of significant movement. I hadn’t chopped it off, but I had severed the spinal connection. Or something like that.

My eardrums had recovered enough for me to hear the pistol cock. It was Eight Ball. His boss’s clothes were still draped over one arm, but he was holding the pistol out with two hands. Pointing it at me.

Acting on instinct, I twisted the sword. The thing beneath me let out a yelp.

“Okay,” I heard the man’s head say, gasping, his lion body trembling. “That’s enough. Lamont, lower the gun.”

He—it, or whatever—seemed to be all but paralyzed, and in a lot of pain. I got the sense he was afraid that if I put much more pressure on the sword, the condition might become permanent.

“Tell him to put it on the ground and back away,” I said, giving just enough of a twist to my wrist for the meaning to come through.

The thing looked at Lamont and nodded, the human head bobbing curtly. Ol’ Eight Ball—I was going to miss calling him that—placed the pistol on the concrete ever-so-gently and started to back away.

“There,” Lion-Bug-Man said. “Just like you asked. Now, would you mind taking that damn sword out of my ass?”

“Not so fast. Why did you have your goons attack me?”

“You were asking questions. The owner doesn’t like people asking questions.”

“Who’s the owner?”

He didn’t answer right away, so I leaned some more weight onto the hilt.

“I am, okay! Jesus! That doesn’t exactly tickle, you know!”

“Then stop dicking with me. Answer the question.”

“Look, I know who you are, alright? I know why you’re here. You can’t stop it. None of you can.”

His words came out like a hiss, as if each breath behind them was a tire losing air.

“Answer the damn question, unless you want Lamont over there to be carrying this tail of yours around like a giant swim noodle.”

“Be careful, Sir Regis! You may have bested him, but the beast is still dangerous!”

I raised a hand, a subtle signal to Pip that I heard her. A moment passed, then another. The thing just crouched there, breathing, staring off toward a far wall.

“Well?” I said, pressing against the handle again.

“Because if they ever found out I let one of theirs get to you, they’d send me back! Christ! Stop doing that!”

I let the words float around in my head for a few seconds, giving them a chance to make sense. They didn’t.

“Who’s they?”

“Just loosen the damn sword, will you? The pain won’t even let me think straight.”

The look on his face, the clenched eyes, scrunched nose, bottom lip stretched back, told me he probably wasn’t lying. I gave the sword a soft tug in the other direction. I could feel the creature exhale beneath me.

“Who’s they?”

“Seriously? The Persephonites.” I didn’t react, which seemed to spark a reaction. “The Sirens? Are you telling me you didn’t even know?”

I took in a breath, replaying some of what Dante had said. Replaying what Veronica had said. And done.

“I know enough. Why does she want to ‘get to me’?”

“Who the hell knows? I had no idea who she was. What she was. She showed up to sing. I wasn’t here, or I’d have spotted her right away.”

“Let me get this straight. This… Siren shows up to sing at your bar to ‘get to me,’ but if the rest of them knew, they’d send you back to where you came from? So, just being the conscientious sort, you were going to kill me first?”

“You really don’t savvy any of this, do you? Yet you still think you can stop what’s coming?”

“I’m counting on an 'A' for effort.”

He let out a chuff of air, like a stifled laugh. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that education isn’t just about the grades?”

“Look out, Sir Regis! The tail!”

I saw it flick, a sort of flailing movement. It must have taken everything the creature had, but it managed to swing the business end around and hook its stinger against the blade, smacking it just hard enough to dislodge the sword from where it was wedged. The sharp edge ripped a chunk out of the stinger at impact, but not enough, I assumed, to take it out of commission. The sudden weight of the sword falling freely coupled with the movement of the thing on whose back I had been balancing caused me to topple. I landed on the pavement, my hip and shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. I rolled a few times and sprang to my feet. Thankfully, I didn’t let go of the sword.

The manticore was on his feet now, snarling. He had been biding his time, capitalizing on my mistake. I shouldn’t have let up on the blade. I’d allowed him to recover. Hell, for all I knew, he had magical healing abilities.

Those eyes burned into me. he was hot, no doubt about that. I glanced over at Lamont, who was moving forward, making his way toward the pistol. The fact he wasn’t sprinting for it was a testament to how unpredictable his boss must have been. He didn’t want to get anywhere near that tail.

As I watched it slash back and forth behind the thing, trying to work its way into a full range of motion, I can’t say I blamed him.

“You would never have been able to stop it,” the thing said, words bubbling out through a growl. “Not you, not the others. And now, you won’t even get a chance to tr—”

I didn’t give him the chance to finish. I bolted forward, plunging my sword deep into the center of his chest. The creature let out a short grunt, that man’s head staring down at the handle protruding from his breast plate. He raised a paw and meekly swiped at it before looking at me with surprised eyes and collapsing onto its side.

I watched him for a couple of beats then glanced over at Lamont. I was closer, and considerably quicker in the reflex department, so I was on top of the gun as fast as a finger snap. I snagged it off the ground, pointed it in his direction, but all I saw was his back as he hightailed it out toward the street, disappearing around the corner of the building.

The adrenaline wasted no time draining from my heart and limbs and leaving me feeling dead on my feet. My heartbeat jumped one last time, then slowed considerably. My arms were suddenly made of lead and my legs seemed to lack bones. The weight of the pistol tugged my arm down, dragging me to the concrete, so I dropped to a knee, overcome with the need to take a whole lot of breaths.

“Sir Regis!”

The voice wasn’t just in my earpiece anymore. I looked up to see her standing next to me, placing a hand under my arm to help me up. I didn’t exactly want to get up, but I was too tired to protest.

“Sir Regis!” she repeated. “Do you realize you are the first person in four hundred and twenty-seven years to slay both a dragon and a manticore in the same calendar day?”

“That’s great,” I said. I tried to stand, but failed to get adequate cooperation from my legs. It took a few tries before they decided to help out. “Maybe I can put that on my business card.”

Pip bobbed her head, uncertain and obviously taking me seriously. “We should probably leave, Sir Regis. Should I wipe that pistol for you? To remove your fingerprints, I mean? Isn’t that what they do on television?”

I looked at her, then at the gun, which flashed in the dim light as I turned it to get a better view.

It was a Colt. Forty-five caliber. Immaculate stainless steel with mother-of-pearl inlay grips on the wooden handle. There were ornate, florid designs scrolled in intricate patterns with solid gold inset lettering. I may not know guns, but I knew this one had to be worth a small fortune. Or maybe not so small.

“No.” I tucked the barrel inside my belt near the small of my back. It didn’t feel nearly as secure as they made it look on TV. “I think it might come in handy.”

“I don’t believe such a weapon will be effective against the forces you are likely to contend with.”

The side door opened just as my mouth did. A woman pushed through it, then short-stepped to a halt, almost losing her balance. Her hand shot to her mouth.

“Oh, my God!” she said. I recognized her as the waitress the bartender had talked to when I’d first walked in. The door swung shut behind her and she backed up into it, bent over, looking like she was going to cry or scream or puke, or maybe all three.

In my most authoritative voice, I said, “Veronica Gates. What did you know about her?”

She didn’t respond, just kept staring at the body. I suppose a lion with a man’s head and a scorpion’s tail wasn’t something she’d expected.

I snapped my fingers. “Hey! Veronica Gates?”

“Huh?” She looked at me like she hadn’t realized I was there until now. “What the hell is that?”

“Long story. Veronica Gates. What did you know about her?”

“What? Nothing! She came in one night to sing. Came in early, gave a demo for the night manager. Oh, my God! Is that Mr. Angelo’s head?”

“If it is, that’s Mr. Angelo. All of him. Look, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble if you hold back on me. Tell me what you know about her.”

“I…nothing! She was only here the one night. I never saw her before. If she hadn’t gotten arrested, I wouldn’t have ever remembered her name.”

“Why’d you send me out here? Earlier, when I asked about who hired the singers?”

She raised a pointed finger, aiming it at the body. She leaned back and turned away slightly, as if to compensate for her hand getting closer.

I glanced down, noticed that Angelo was a little less lion and a little more human. Hands instead of paws, a bare chest locked in an embrace of my sword. The rest of him was still furry, though, and that tail still made a sloppy loop on the pavement.

“What did he tell you?”

“That if anyone comes by asking questions, to let him know. That’s what Jimmy was doing, calling Mr. Angelo, in his office. He had him on speaker phone, told us to send you out here. He’d take care of the rest. He already knew you were here. Said you were a troublemaker, someone looking to cause problems.”

Hard to argue that one. I gave another look at the body. The hair was almost gone. He looked more like a hirsute man than a creature of lore. The tail, though, that was still there, but it seemed to be falling off. It occurred to me standing next to a dead body—two dead bodies, she just hadn’t noticed the other one yet—was not the best way to be found by the local constabulary. Especially not with my sword through the naked one’s chest.

“One more question. Does the name ‘Persephone’ mean anything to you?”

The woman shook her head, her stare stuck on her former boss. Then her eyes popped up to mine. “Wait, you mean, like the record label?”

“Record label?”

“PDR. Persephone Digital Recording, I think. Mister…Mister Angelo had dealings with them.”

“What kinds of dealings?”

“I’m not sure, they would just come by. He would call them ‘Persephone’s girls.’ Hey, shouldn’t there be other cops here by now?”

“They’re, uh, on the way.”

Unfortunately, I had a hunch I was right. I could hear a distant siren. I wasn’t sure if that counted as irony or not. I bent down and grabbed hold of the sword by its handle and pulled. It withdrew from the wound with a wet, sliding sound.

“Oh, God! Poor Mr. Angelo! Who would do something like this? Why?”

“Well, you saw what he looked like a moment ago.”

A pregnant pause. “What do you mean? All I saw was you pull that thing out of him. Oh, God! I can’t believe somebody murdered him like this.”

I felt a tug at my sleeve. “An enchantment, Sir Regis,” Pip whispered. “She can’t remember him as anything other than human. She probably doesn’t even remember sending you out here anymore. I would suggest we leave immediately.”

Some advice is hard to ignore. I stepped over to where my hat lay on the cement and picked it up. It took a few brushes with my hand and some prodding with my fist, but I got it back into an acceptable shape and set it on my head. It still fit. More or less.

Pip widened her eyes at me, gesturing with a tilt of her head for us to leave, and I nodded. I told the waitress we’d be in touch. From the pinch in her eyes and the set of her jaw I could tell she was looking at me with fresh scrutiny.

“Say,” she said. “You’re not a cop.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because…” She ran her eyes down to my shoes and back again. “You’re the guy that crazy gal you were asking about tried to kill. You were in here the night she sang.”

Another tug. “Sir Regis…”

The sirens were growing louder. “That was a while ago. You must have a good memory for faces.”

She let out a curt laugh through her nose, apparently forgetting all about the body for a moment. “It’s not your face. It’s the hat. I can’t believe I didn’t remember it earlier. We were joking about it for days.”

6

There are, I have no doubt, dead people who are more conscious than I was for the seven hours and change I slept after we got back to my office. When I finally woke—one eye determined to stick shut and my head feeling like it had been hollowed out and then refilled with heavier contents—Pip was kneeling in front of me, a mug of coffee in her hands. The aroma was prickly in my nose, but not at all unpleasant.

“Good morning, Sir Regis. I hope you feel refreshed from your much-deserved rest.”

I managed to sit and take the mug from her. I closed my eyes and let the steam rise in through my nostrils. I reminded myself that she was my squire and that therefore there was nothing sexist to feel guilty about. My squire made good coffee. Was that a crime?

“Thanks,” I said, just as the awkwardness set in. I was in my t-shirt and boxer briefs. Pip had changed clothes, albeit to a similar outfit of slightly different shading, but the question of whether she had been there all night started to claw into my thoughts. I couldn’t shake how strange it was to know so little about someone I was spending so much time with.

She handed me a short stack of paper, about five sheets.

“I used your computer. I hope you don’t mind.”

Mind. My computer was a desktop worth about a hundred bucks in parts. I think I paid three-fifty for it on ebay. And that was five years ago. Which made it just a tad less obsolete than a rotary phone.

It did, however, work. I couldn’t say that about everything in my life.

I set down the coffee and slid the pages one at a time from right to left. “What did you find?”

“These are all local colleges and museums that hosted presentations of some sort for Professor Kirk in the past year. I know it’s nothing more than speculation, but I thought it might be possible that he discussed the artifact with one or more of the staff? Maybe a curator? Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic, but It’s even possible he mentioned it during his talks.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea.” I stretched, aborting an attempt to stand as I became self-conscious of my underwear. Rather than reach for the blanket, I set the pages on my lap. “But I need to follow that trail from last night. Veronica went to that club because she knew I was going to be there. Sirens, that thing—what did you call it? A manticore? It’s obviously all connected. I need to find out how they knew and, more importantly, what made them target me.”

“Oh, most certainly. While I was using your computer, I researched Persephone Digital Recording. They appear to be very secretive. They have a studio they use, but further inquiry indicated it is not where they office. It is available by appointment only. I booked you an hour at 4:00 pm. That was the only available time today.” She paused, furrowing her brow. “I hope you don’t mind. It seemed better to have the appointment and not need it.”

“No, no, of course not.” I scratched my head, mopped my face. “That was…good thinking.”

“It was because of the lateness of the appointment that I thought you might want to follow other leads. That’s why I researched the professor and came across some of his presentations.”

“It’s all good, Pip,” I said, retrieving the mug and taking a sip. I couldn’t decide which was more embarrassing, sitting in front of her in my form-fitting boxer-briefs or facing the fact she’d planned out my day better than I could have. I spread the pages on my lap, and picked up the top one. “All we have to do is figure out which place to hit up first.”

“If I may,” she said. “There is one that is only about three miles from here. That would be an efficient way to start.”

“No,” I said, holding up a page and rereading a section. “This is the one. We start here.”

“You found something! How exciting! What did you find?”

I turned the page around so she could see it. “This. Though, technically, you found it.”

“The Pacific Coast Museum of Military History. ‘A talk on the history and future of body armor in warfare.’ Why that one, Sir Regis?”

“Skip down to the end. Look at the sponsors.”

“The Antiquities Project, The York Foundation, The Alonzo Foundation… Oh, my! Sir Regis, you found a connection already!”

“You found it, I spotted it. Now we just have to see if it bears fruit.”

“That’s wonderful! When do we leave?”

“As soon as I down this coffee. And put on some pants. And maybe take a needle and thread to my poor hat.”

“Oh! I did that already, Sir Regis. It turns out the tear was clean.” She retrieved my fedora from the rickety coatrack in the corner and handed it to me. “All it took was a few stitches.”

A few stitches. I couldn’t even tell where tear had been. I darn stuff all the time, believe it or not, keep a dollar-store sewing kit in my desk. Little rips in my jacket, tears in my trousers. Something you pick up when you’re low on cash and too proud to admit it to your father. But my handiwork usually ends up looking like its first name is Frank and its last name is Enstein. I’d been worried it was a goner. But she looked good as new. Vintage new, anyway.

“Thank you,” I said. “This is, like, awesome. I don’t know what to say. You’re the best.” I looked around the office. “Say, Pip? What did you do with that .45?”

“The firearm? I put it your desk and locked it. I don’t think you should be carrying that around. It’s illegal. If you were to be arrested, Mr. Grimm would be very upset.”

I downed the rest of the coffee; it had cooled to almost room temperature. I set the mug on the small table next to the sofa and stood, holding the clutch of papers in front of me below my waist.

“Well, now we know what your primary job is for the rest of the day,” I said, smiling. “Make sure I don’t get arrested.”

There was a knock at the door just as I said the last word and Claudia walked in without waiting for a response.

She stopped a few feet away hands on hips. “Hey, will you please go talk to Pops? He says it’s really important. You’re not wearing any clothes.”

“What gave it away? Was it the no pants? It was the no pants, wasn’t it? I knew it. You look in the mirror, you think no one will notice, but they always do.”

“Ha ha. Will just go see him? He called me, like, three times yesterday and I’ve already talked to him again this morning.”

I glanced at Pip, who receded behind the desk and took a seat. She shrugged, but more in a I-don’t-think-that’s-a-good-idea way than a whatever-it’s-totally-up-to-you way.

“As bad as I feel over the absolute hell that must be for you, this is really a bad time. If time were money, right now I couldn’t afford to pay attention.”

“C’mon, Rex. Please? Just swing by the park, get him off my back. I’m sure it won’t take long. He keeps saying to tell you it’s important. He’s, like, ‘tell him it’s really important!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, Pops, I know. And he’s like, ‘Really, really important!’”

I fanned my gaze over to Pip again, who frowned, dimpling one cheek.

“Fine. Where?”

“The park. You know, down from the school, on the other side of the highway.”

“Griffith?”

“Yeah. He plays checkers there all day. Everyday.” She let out an audible sigh. “Thank you.”

“Anything else?”

“Nope!” She spun on her heels and headed back to the door. She paused as she opened it and looked at me with a wide expression. “Yes! If I told you I’ll sneak you a bunch of free t-shirts, would you go like that?”

Pleased with herself, she walked out and shut the door without waiting for me to respond.

GRIFFITH PARK WAS a postage-stamp of grass with a few trees surrounded by a neighborhood across the street on one side, apartments across the street on the other, and a few commercial buildings on the ends. It was almost certainly built for kids, part of the many post WWII community initiatives when local governments were pouring money into such things and higher levels of government were encouraging it. But at some point along the way kids stopped coming and it became a magnet for old people, who now sat in varying degrees of hunched-over decrepitude at the concrete benches and tables to play games. Or maybe it’s the same people. Maybe some of them played here as kids and now came back as geriatrics, wanting to be close to that part of their youth. Hoping to enhance the memories enough to relive the feeling.

I didn’t know. I wasn’t old and had no plans to get there anytime soon.

Finding him wasn’t too hard. He was in a wheelchair, wearing a bright red Marine Corps trucker-style baseball cap with the Globe-and-Anchor logo on it. He was also loud and cussing like he was still on active duty.

“Are any of you fuckers gonna give me a game or what?” he said, clapping his checker piece down on the cement repeatedly as he jumped his opponent, crisscrossing the board. “King me, you son of a bitch.”

Major Hector Poppy “Pops” Morales was a decorated war hero. One of the youngest fighter pilots in Korea, there were rumors he took out aircraft in dogfights that never happened in airspace we never entered over territory we never crossed into. He was shot down twice, was captured once and escaped. I’d met him a couple of times, but I didn’t really know the man. I had, however, heard a lot about him. Like how he survived behind enemy lines by killing patrols who wandered too close with his bare hands, won the Navy Cross for actions that are still classified, and once stopped a bank robbery by disarming three men, only to lose a leg to diabetes and a lung to the cigarettes he refused to give up until roughly a year ago.

“Heard you wanted to see me, Pops.”

He looked up at me, staring through thick spectacles. “Who the hell are you?”

“Rex Bishop. I lease the space upstairs. Your shop? Genuine Accents?”

“Oh, right. Hell, yes, I wanted to see you. Got bad news, son. You’re out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Out! Opposite of in!”

“Hold it, you mean, you’re kicking me out of my office?”

“Not me. New owner. Bought the building. Paid a pretty penny, but seemed to know what he wanted. I tried to negotiate an extension on the lease, but he said fuck all to that. Said it wasn’t his call, was going to flip the place to someone else or something.”

“Son of a…that’s just friggin’ great. How long?”

“I figure thirty days, which is about how long this candy-ass is going to take to make his next move. Were you planning on today, you limp-dick bastard?”

I stood there for a moment, not knowing whether there was more to be said. Grasping, I asked, “Any chance the people he’s planning on selling it to would let us stay? Maybe work something out with us ahead of time, so it would already be occupied with tenants?”

Pops looked up at me, his eyes beady through the reverse magnification of those lenses. “Boy, do you not listen? He said it’s going to some young guy I took to be a hipster punk or something with a trust fund but he wouldn’t tell me who and said he doesn’t want it to be encumbered or some shit. We’re out. Game over.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Game over.”

As I wandered away, feeling almost dizzy, I heard him say, “And that goes for you, too, Sanchez! Can’t anybody in this goddamn park win at anything?”

7

Thirty days wasn’t a long time, but it was far enough out. I couldn’t afford to worry about it any more than I could afford to do anything about it. Not now. Not with all the crap I'm dealing with. I’d have to find another setup. No biggie. So what if I didn’t have any money, any visible means of support, and no permanent home address? There had to be plenty of massage parlors and adult video stores who would welcome someone renting their back room for the solemn promise of cash at some vague point in the future.

Like I said, there wasn’t any time for that. I got behind the wheel of my Mustang and followed the directions on my phone’s GPS to the Pacific Coast Museum of Military History. I was almost halfway there when Pip buzzed me to let me know she was onsite and awaiting my arrival.

It was a majestic southern California day, the kind where the colors seem to glow and everything from the sky to the landscaped flowers and the newly laid asphalt look like they were painted by some magical brush.

Magic.

My mind started churning the questions without actually asking them. Same questions I’d been chewing on for a while. How the hell did I get here? Why was I even doing this? Two different questions, one answer. I decided I didn’t want to go there, not again, so I switched on the radio and found some music. I settled on some classic rock.

The museum was housed in a modest, if modern, building in a transition area between a residential neighborhood and a scattering of commercial properties. A buffer zone of well-manicured lawns and non-profit headquarters for interests I’d never heard of. The museum itself was gray stone with a gray metal roof and a stylish sign of cement and stucco on a corner lot. A parking lot wrapped around it. Finding a spot on a weekday was not difficult. I had my pick.

I had to wait for someone to come to the window inside the entrance. She told me entry was free, but that donations were encouraged. She suggested ten dollars. I faked a smile and obliged.

At first glance, the layout seemed to consist of one large center area with displays along the walls and in the middle under glass, with at least four other rooms off the main one that visitors could stroll through and wander into. The place was quiet, and empty. I realized I should have called ahead.

The woman who’d taken my donation exited the booth and headed toward another door. I called out to her, my normal conversational voice more than loud enough to create the hint of an echo in the space.

“Do you have any tours? Guides who explain things?”

Her smile managed to be even more phony than mine had been. She must have thought it was a stupid question to ask in an empty museum the size of a large residence.

“We have tour groups by appointment, yes.”

“Is there anyone here who might answer some questions? A curator, perhaps?”

“Dr. Winch. He’s not here, but I’m expecting him shortly.”

“How long?”

She pulled a phone from her pocket and checked the screen. “I’d say a half-an-hour.”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding. “Say, would he have been the one hosting a talk a few weeks back? One about the future of body armor?”

“Dr. Winch is the advisor for all our sponsored events,” she said. And with that, she continued on to the interior door and disappeared behind it.

I pulled out my phone and texted Pip, let her know what was going on. Even her simple typed response that she understood and would stand by managed to sound full of cheerful alacrity.

Half-an-hour. It felt like time I could ill afford to waste, but with nothing else to do I figured I could walk the museum, study everything that looked interesting, and that would only leave me about twenty-five minutes to kill.

Okay, that wasn’t fair. I wasn’t big into militaria, so the prospect wasn’t exciting, but as I passed from display to display much of the stuff kindled the fires of my curiosity and made me want to see more. The main room was dedicated to American conflicts, from the Revolutionary War through the Civil on one side, WWI and WWII on the other, and more recent conflicts in the back. There were genuine uniforms of Minute Men and Kentucky Long Rifles and Gatling guns and small cannons and officers’ sabers and brittle, tan-yellow letters in careful script. There were knives and bayonets that still had the blood of those they had ended, or at least tried to end.

I made a circuit, passed by the same displays again, this time noticing different aspects or hidden points of intrigue. I crossed through the first pathway into another room, this one dedicated to the classical period with Roman swords and shields, Greek daggers and breastplates, Spartan spears and distinctive headgear. The Spartan shield, in particular, was impressive, a bruising weapon that was apparently used to bash the skull of an enemy soldier in close quarters combat.

I passed to the next room, this one focused on Medieval combat. There were crossbows and longbows and broadswords and shields with crests and a small catapult. There were maces and chainmail and lances and battleaxes. There was a hoist with a pulley that was apparently used to lift knights onto their horses, and an array of weapons I’d never heard of: the polearm and the quarterstaff and the caltrop and the flail and the halberd and the war hammer.

This room captured my imagination.

But there was also something else. A feeling, one I couldn’t quite place. Strong, impossible to ignore, and very weird. The strange sensation that I shared a connection, beyond the obvious one. Not as in a wave of déjà vu, but more like a sense of belonging. Like a mechanic in a room of motors, or a writer in a library. I had never even seen pictures of most of these things before, never even heard of the majority of them, but they somehow seemed familiar. No, not merely familiar. More like, appropriate. Tools of a trade with which I’d had experience, a tradition of which I was a part. It was a bizarre feeling, and not at all unpleasant.

The displays revealed something else. The time we associate with knights and Camelot and chivalry was just plain brutal. Modern weapons such as firearms tend to result in clean kills, relatively speaking. At least, distant, detached kills. These weapons told a tale of graphic violence, up close and personal, of bodies rendered limb from limb. Of blood spilling like wine, pouring like rain.

I lingered over some of the pieces, studying them. I circled the room a few times, then turned my attention to the center. A mannequin in chain mail, another in some sort of cloth and leather soldier’s garb with a helmet. And a suit of armor, gunmetal black, posed leaning on a sword, one foot atop an iron-banded wooden chest.

“’There sat a knight all armed in black harness, and his name was the Knight of the Black Laund.’”

I spun to see a man of about sixty standing a few feet away. He had wavy hair the color of fading ash combed straight back from a receding hairline. He was of slight build and average height, but carried himself larger, his narrow shoulders set back and his hands clasped at his waist. His suit was charcoal, a thick worsted wool, which had probably fit him better a decade or more ago, when it had likely been custom-made. The sight of him, or, I should say, the sight of what his look suggested, made me suddenly sad. First Pops, now this man. It was a reminder that we all fade away eventually, little by little.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. James Winch.” He held out a hand.

I hitched a shoulder and we shook. “I shouldn’t be so easy to sneak up on. What were you saying? About the knight?”

“A line from Le Morte d’Arthur, by Sir Thomas Mallory. The first known reference in literature to a black knight.”

“This guy?”

“No, no, not the knight to whom this particular armor belonged. We don’t know much about the original owner of this one. Only that his name was Palamor, that he was quite feared as a warrior, and that his services were in high demand.”

“Services?”

“What you might consider mercenary work. Though it wasn’t quite as crass and venal as that implies. Mostly, he would have been hired to guard something, to help ensure safe passage. Here he’s depicted protecting something valuable, represented by the trunk. Someone’s treasure. What little information there is seems to be conflicting and murky, but we know that the set dates back, well, it dates back several centuries. We were fortunate enough to acquire it on loan.”

I stared at the dark metal, well-maintained but too aged to glisten. “As they say, if only this thing could talk.”

“Sheila told me you had a question? About armor?”

“Right. Not this kind of armor, though. I believe you hosted a talk a few weeks ago, something about the future of body armor?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Do you recall the man who gave the presentation? Professor Kirk?”

“Well, sure. Nice gentleman. Certainly well-versed in the subject matter.”

“Okay, this may sound strange, but…did he mention anything to you about an artifact he may have been analyzing? A piece of metal of historical importance?”

“No. We barely spoke, aside from exchanging a few pleasantries.”

Damn. “Do you remember who showed up?”

“If I recall, we had a few soldiers, reservists, I’d say, along with some local gun enthusiasts and our usual attendees.”

“Usual attendees?”

“We have a few military history buffs who are supporting members. Several show up to most of the presentations and panel discussions we host.”

“What about Mr. Alonzo? Was he here?”

One graying eyebrow arched and the man cocked his head. “Why, exactly, are you asking me these things?”

“That professor who gave the talk, Allan Kirk, he’s missing. I’m trying to find him.”

The man blinked in a way that told me the question made him uncomfortable. But it was hard to say. Some people just don’t like questions.

“I see. I’m not sure what that’s got to do with the museum.”

“I have reason to believe Mr. Alonzo may have had contact with Dr. Kirk before he disappeared.”

“In that case, why don’t you ask Mr. Alonzo?”

“Mr. Alonzo has left the building and won’t be coming back. I’m trying to find out where the two of them may have crossed paths.”

A chilly expression washed over his face like the shadow of a cloud. “Who are you?”

“I’m an acquaintance of Mr. Alonzo. Former acquaintance.”

“I take that to mean you’re not with the police, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Even after my generous donation to Sheila?”

“The trustees of the museum thank you. Please, don’t make me contact the authorities. Good day.”

As he turned to leave the room, I said, “I wonder if the police would be interested to learn your museum is being funded by laundered money.”

He wheeled around and shot me a look that hit harder than some jabs I’ve taken. “I advise you not to threaten me, young man. I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I won’t tolerate the slightest hint of impropriety on the part of this establishment.”

“But surely a man of the world such as yourself was aware of Mr. Alonzo’s business practices? His unsavory connections?”

I was taking wild swings, I admit. But sometimes even those punches land.

Judging by the way he reacted—or, didn’t react—this one may not have quite caught him on the chin, but it seemed to have been a decent shot to the ribs. He just stood there, staring at me.

“I have no idea what kind of business or businesses Mr. Alonzo was involved in.”

“But you had your suspicions, didn’t you?”

“No, no suspicions.”

“Come on, don’t hold back. The man is dead. I’m trying to find someone else before they join him. I’m not the bad guy here.”

“We started receiving donations from Mr. Alonzo’s charitable foundation over a year ago. The amounts were generous, but not eye-catching. Then a few months ago, Mr. Alonzo began to show up. He told me he wanted to sponsor events.”

“And?”

“And nothing. He did, and we were grateful.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“No, just a feeling, really.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“That something was off. He spent a great deal of time in this room. He joked about how wrong so much of the information was. He would slip into a middle English accent and correct everyone’s pronunciation.”

“That’s not what bothered you, though.”

A deep breath, a shake of the head. “He asked to reserve the museum for a private tour one night, just a few days after the presentation on the future of body armor. Requested I give him a key. I told him of course he could invite a few friends for a tour and that I’d be happy to meet him and open the doors for him. He insisted he be given a key and not have any staff be here, lest it embarrass him in front of his guests. He had been such a generous benefactor, I obliged.”

“So, what happened?”

“I stopped by later that night—much later than I believed he and his party would have stayed—just to make sure he had locked up and everything was secure. The doors were locked, but I saw a light, faint, but unmistakable. It was being cast from this very room. I assumed he’d left something on, so I used my own keys to come in.”

“And?”

“And I found him on the floor, right over there.” He pointed to a spot a few feet away. “His clothes were in a pile nearby, and he was completely naked. And fast asleep.”

“I’m sure that was a surprise.”

“Quite. But when you’ve dealt with the very wealthy, as I have over the years, you learn a certain degree of…eccentricity is par for the course. I would have chalked the episode up to that, someone getting drunk, perhaps staying on to finish off a bottle after his guests had left, and not knowing when to stop.”

“Except…”

“Except the next day, I checked the security footage. We don’t have cameras for each room, but we do have a system that covers the front entrance. I was curious as to how many he had taken on his private tour, and suspected he may have been trying to impress someone in particular.”

“You mean, a woman. You thought he wanted to have a museum romp in the medieval room.”

“Something like that. Only it wasn’t a woman. It was a man who looked remarkably like Professor Kirk. The footage was from an angle and the resolution wasn’t great, nor the lighting, but that’s who it looked like.”

“Okay, maybe he’s not into women?”

“Well, perhaps, but that’s not what stood out. I fast forwarded to see if any others joined the party later but no one did. So I decided to indulge my curiosity a tiny bit more and kept forwarding it to see when the man—whoever he was—left. The next person recorded was me, when I showed up and walked in on Mr. Alonzo au natural, you might say.”

I had to let that sink in a moment, allow the implications to begin piling up.

“Is there a back entrance? A side door?”

“Of course, but those are alarmed. They can be disarmed, but that would take a key he wasn’t given.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said, trying to convince myself.

“No, it doesn’t. I mean, obviously, the man left. I searched every inch of the museum, fearing the worst. But there was nothing. I mean, the whole idea was silly. There must have been a glitch with the camera, or one of the alarms on the other exits.”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing. “Silly.”

“It did leave me a bit perplexed, though. Even rattled. I went back and watched the video several times. I mean, where could he have gone? There was no trace.” He looked around the room, a hint of something in his eyes approximating marvel. “It’s as if Alonzo ate the man.”

8

“This is a very positive development, Sir Regis. The fact you could find such important information so quickly is amazing! Picking that museum was brilliant!”

“Yeah, it’s fan-frickin’-tastic. Kirk is dead. And whatever he knew of the whereabouts of the artifact followed him into that freaky thing’s stomach. The freaky thing I happened to have killed.”

“It’s horrible, of course,” Pip said, curling her leg under her as we sat on the bench a few hundred yards down the street from the recording studio. “But I am certain you suspected as much from the beginning, given his complete disappearance.”

“There’s disappearing, and there’s disappearing. I wasn’t quite expecting this.”

“You mustn’t let this distract you, Sir Regis. Too much is at stake.”

I nodded vaguely. I had to admire Pip’s ability to remain stoic about the whole thing. Her initial reaction had been one of shock, her eyes expanding and her face twisting into a horrified expression. But she processed it quickly, accepting what I’d learned and analyzing what we knew so far. She compartmentalized a hell of a lot better than I did.

Honestly, it wasn’t the gruesome nature of what was implicated by the information I’d gathered that bothered me. It was disturbing, sure, but dead is dead, and I’d already figured the odds were fifty-fifty by the time I’d left Club Med with two bodies in my wake. What troubled me was the realization this could be—likely was—just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the sort of bizzaro, messed up lunacy I might come across. I couldn’t shake the feeling Alonzo was really somewhat of a bit player in this whole thing, or at least a street level one. What the hell did that say about those higher on the food chain, so to speak?

“I guess I should start heading over there,” I said.

“It is still sixteen minutes until your appointment. Don’t you want to watch the entrance? You were PDR’s first and only appointment of the day, from what I could gather. They may show up any moment.”

I contorted my lips into a sour frown. “Given what I’ve experienced the past few days, I would be very surprised if these are the kind of people who would just walk through the front door.”

No sooner had I finished the sentence than a black limousine pulled up to the curb near the entrance to the building and stopped. A large man in a black chauffeur outfit got out of the driver’s door and circled to the sidewalk where he opened a rear door. Three women stepped out, one at a time. I couldn’t make out features, but I could see legs and heels and hair and form-fitting dresses. They walked into the building like they owned it, and I got the impression they walked into every building that way.

“Huh,” I said. “I need to start talking about the odds against me winning the lottery.”

“Be careful, Sir Regis. The female of the species, though in humans far less prone to displays of violence, is almost always deadlier than the male. It is not a phenomena limited to dragons.”

“I’ll watch my step. Do you think they’ll try to mud wrestle me?”

“I’m being serious. We do not have much information about this group. You were part of the conversation. Mr. Grimm was unable to provide much guidance, other than to say he was familiar with them, but uncertain of their intentions. I think even he was surprised to learn of their involvement. He seemed very wary.”

“I hear you. Just being my colorful, jocular self.”

“Speaking of hearing me, Sir Regis, is your earpiece in?”

She pulled out her phone, ran a test. I gave her a thumb’s up and pointed myself in the direction of the building. She repeated the plan we’d discussed earlier, that she would stay close and monitor.

“I will retrieve your battle armament, of course. Then find a suitable location nearby.”

I resisted the urge to mess her fiery hair as I stepped by—she was, after all, despite the freckles, a grown woman, not to mention an attractive, if diminutive one—and started walking.

After a few strides it occurred to me that maybe I was being less than honest with myself. Had that urge to touch her really been born of brotherly, playful condescension? Did I just congratulate myself for respecting her equality when all I was really doing was denying the actual reason I resisted?

The thought stewed in my head for a few more steps and I turned to glance back at her. The bench was empty and she was nowhere in sight.

The lobby of the building was cookie-cutter commercial. White tile floors, off-white walls. It was small. A reception desk sat in the middle, but it was unmanned. One backless bench of black imitation leather on a chrome frame for anyone forced to wait. A pair of elevators separated by a directory. PDR was on the second floor.

Thirty seconds of an instrumental cover through ceiling speakers and I was stepping into a hallway. There was only one way to go, and it led to a set of large glass doors with “PDR” etched across them in giant letters. When I opened them, I heard music. And it definitely wasn’t The Girl From Ipanema.

It seemed to run like fingers through my hair and tickle the curves of my ears before flowing into my head where it massaged my mood and gently struck some sort of tuning fork in my skull. I followed it, paying little attention to my surroundings as I walked. It didn’t grow louder as much as more intense the closer I got, its gentle touch more substantial as the distance grew shorter. I rounded corners searching for it, feeling almost a panic at the thought I may not find it. Which was silly, because I was obviously getting nearer to the source with each step.

The moment before I opened the door I knew it wasn’t really music I was hearing. I mean, it was, but not coming from any instrument or band. It was singing. The tender, three-part harmony of voices holding notes, transitioning on a scale. There were no words, at least, none I could discern, but it—they—seemed to be speaking to me.

“I’m in position, Sir Regis.”

Pip’s voice, tinny and suddenly shrill in my ear, jarred me out of my reverie. My hand was on the knob and I had already pushed it open and crossed the threshold.

There were three of them. The same three I’d seen leave the limo out front, as far as I could tell. They were on the other side of a wide glass panel, behind microphones. Staring at me with swaying eyes as I stood there. And, as stated, they were singing.

Not words, just sounds. Notes. The sound was louder now, much louder, but gentle in the way it cradled my head, soothing as a lullaby. The middle one was moving from low to high, ooh, la-la-la ooh, ooooooh, la-la-la ooh, ooh, oooooooh la-la-la. The ones to each side of her were humming in precise harmony, a series of throbs like stifled moans, building tension with a progression, releasing it after it built up higher than seemed bearable and held there, brimming with anticipation, only to start over.

The middle one held her arms out, one after the other, fingers articulating as she pulled them in succession, before reaching toward me again. Reaching and pulling, reaching and pulling.

“Sir Regis?”

The voice yanked me into myself. I was standing at the glass, practically pressed against it. I had crossed the room, circled the control array, and gotten as close as I physically could. All without realizing I had moved.

Under my breath and trying not to move my lips, I said, “Can’t talk now, Pip.”

The woman in the middle smiled, her lips curling ever so slightly at the edges. She held a note for several beats, waiting for the others to finish their progression, then they all climaxed in unison. No pun intended.

I had to shake my head one more time, as if shedding a web that had fallen on it.

“Hello, Mr. Bishop,” she said into the microphone. “You’re early. We were just doing an audio check.”

I swallowed and cleared my throat. “Sounds five by five out here.”

“There is some paperwork we’ll need to fill out. Will you be using the studio? Or just the mixer?”

It occurred to me I hadn’t really thought this through. I was going to have to grope myself into an interview strategy.

“Actually, I was hoping to get to know you—know your company—a little better first. Perhaps we could have a chat?”

“Come now, Mr. Bishop.” The woman’s lips tightened, dimpling at the ends. “Don’t you find this pretense exhausting? Or at the very least, boring?”

“You have me at a disadvantage, Ms…?”

“My name is Cassiopeia.” She gestured to her right, then her left. “This is Sheba and Carmella.”

I pinched the brim of my hat between the knuckle of my index finger and my thumb with a nod. “Ladies.”

The three of them were strangely attractive. I say, “strangely,” because none of them was what I’d consider a traditional beauty. They all had dark hair, Cassiopeia’s being jet black and the others more of a dark brown. Their eyes were wide set and I sensed layers of makeup. Their dresses were almost like uniforms, reminding me of something stewardesses in the 60s might have worn. I guessed they were all in their early to mid-thirties.

“We know why you’re here, Mr. Bishop,” Cassiopeia said. “I’m sorry to say, you’ve wasted a trip. We can’t help you.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“The difference, in this instance, is irrelevant.”

“Why did you send Veronica to stab me?”

Her expression, to the extent there was one, was deadpan. “Is that what you think we did? Sent her to stab you?”

“Isn’t it?”

“You don’t know anything, Mr. Bishop. You’re only embarrassing yourself by pretending you do.”

I let my gaze roam the studio, skimming over the equipment, the speakers, the glass. “Then, please, by all means, educate me.”

“If only that were possible.”

She stepped out from behind her microphone and approached a panel on a side wall. She pressed a button on it and I heard a distinctive thunk behind me.

“Well, that didn’t sound very good,” I said.

“What is it, Sir Regis? I detect a high degree of stress in your voice. Is everything okay?”

Stress in my voice? If I was feeling stressed, I hadn’t noticed it yet. Not anymore than normal, anyway.

“I’m fine,” I said, forcing the words through stiff lips.

“We would just like to sing for you, Mr. Bishop. Without interruption. I have a feeling once you hear this song, you won’t want to leave. Not for the rest of your life.”

“Uh, Pip? I have a feeling something bad is about to happen. Pip?”

Cassiopeia moved back behind her microphone. The three of them looked at me through the glass and I felt like a chubby fantail in a bowl. The door I came through was locked, that much was certain. What I couldn’t figure out was why. Or what was about to happen.

The gun. I remembered the Colt pistol tucked in the small of my back. For all its shiny stainless steel and intricate customization, it was still a .45 caliber that would pack a wallop. I was sure—okay, hopeful—that it could do a number on the lock, maybe blow the handle right off or punch through any deadbolt.

I reached for it and started to turn, but stopped cold in my tracks. I felt the tugging before I associated it with the sound. My eyes tracked right back to Cassiopeia. Her lips were parted and her head began to tilt back as her voice rose. It started as a low croon and ascended like an angel to the heavens, floating higher and higher. Then Sheba joined in, low at first, just like Cassiopeia, followed by Carmella.

It was ambrosia for my ears, an elixir for the very core of me. The tones flowed down my neck, spilled through my torso, swirled into my legs. I could feel my feet melting, then my ankles. But then I realized I wasn’t melting. The room was filling. Water was rising, the surface moving higher and higher, submerging my thighs, my hips, my abdomen. The bottom of my sports coat began to float. The higher the voices went, the higher the water. Chest, shoulders, neck.

Then I was completely submerged.

I didn’t panic. It was peaceful. The water seemed clear enough, but I found it difficult to see. I could still hear the singing, but it sounded distant, higher.

Above me, I could see the surface, pulling away. I was sinking. There was no floor beneath me. The sound was growing fainter. I could hear them calling me. I began to kick.

Long, reaching strokes with my arms. I still had the gun in my hand, but it didn’t seem to hold me down. I scissored my legs and thrashed down with my arms, over and over. The surface seemed to keep pulling out of reach, forcing me to kick harder, fan my arms more violently.

Closer, closer, almost…

I broke through, pushing up out of the water to about my chest before sinking back and working my feet and arms to keep my head above it.

I blinked, shaking water from my face, and looked around. What I saw made no sense.

The sky above me was a cerulean blue, with puffs of cotton like the suspended smoke of cannon fodder scattered in every direction. The sun shone down with a warm, smiling glow. I was adrift in an ocean. I could see to the horizon.

That sound, whispers of innocence exploring a clef of sin, each note making and fulfilling a promise, each promise reaching deeper into my psyche than the last. I still heard it. I glanced front and back and side to side, the curve of the sea in the distance encircling me like infinity.

There. I could see them. Three figures, far but just distinct enough. I began to swim, and swim, and swim. My arms and legs started to ache. The voices were like a beacon, and I followed the melodious lilt, homing in on it. Pain shot through my shoulders, my thighs, my hips. My joints howled in protest, needing to rest, but I pushed on, the louder the sound, the harder I swam.

It seemed like an eternity. There was nothing else. Only me, the water, and the song. Yes, the song. It kept me going. Kept me kicking and stroking through the stabbing aches.

Distance fell to time. Finally, I began to feel the song filling me, its volume greater than the water around me. I raised my head, exhaustion wrapping my body in a death grip.

They were there, all three of them. Seated on a small pyramid of rocks that barely breached the surface. I recognized each of them, but they were different now. Their faces were wider, their mouths broader, the set of their eyes more proportionate than they had seemed before. They were naked from the waist up, their breasts firm and high, their skin smooth and slick. Scales began like a belt hugging their hips, and their legs were not legs anymore, replaced by a greenish blue trunk, glistening prismatically in the sunlight, each terminating at a translucent tail fin.

“It appears we may have underestimated you, Mr. Bishop.”

The singing stopped, but it seemed to echo in my ears, a veneer of sound punctured by the words. I felt myself sucked down into the water, dragged beneath the surface, a vortex inhaling me like a drain, plunging me deeper and deeper—

“Mr. Bishop.”

I opened my eyes, not aware they had been closed. I felt myself sway and had to catch my balance.

I was in the studio, standing in the same control room, a few feet from the same partition window. Cassiopeia and the other two were in the room now, though, no longer separated from me by the glass.

“I said, it appears we may have underestimated you.”

I struggled to find words. “What the hell just happened?”

“We took a few liberties. Had you embark on a journey outside yourself, to give us time to learn some things.”

“I don’t understand. How?”

She regarded me with patient, if condescending, eyes. “The Songs of the Sirens have entranced men for millennia, Mr. Bishop. While we do not possess their gifts, or their majestic powers, we have strived to master their arts. We keep alive their traditions, and honor them in doing so.”

The room seemed real. The women seemed real. Normal. Even their eyes didn’t appear to be set far apart anymore, as they had when I first came in. I looked around. It seemed obvious now. This was reality. What I’d been experiencing for I had no idea how long—minutes? Hours? Days?—suddenly smacked of a vivid dream.

I was still struggling to find a response when Cassiopeia added, “You have killed the Manticore Alonzo.”

She tilted her head, and I became aware of the pistol, still in my hand. If any of them were concerned about me using it, or what it could do to them, they didn’t show it.

“Yes,” I said, uncertain as to whether that was a good thing or a bad one in their eyes.

“He prized that weapon. He took it as a trophy for killing a man. I think he saw it as a symbol of victory, the promise of victory, in the coming war.”

“You mean, the Veil.”

“Yes. Do you know of another in which such creatures would have an interest?”

I straightened up, adjusted my sports coat. “And what, exactly, is your interest, if I may ask?”

“You are asking where the Sisters of Persephone stand? If we favored the rendering of the Veil, the unleashing of all it holds in check, on this world, do you think I’d be talking to you right now?”

Fair point. But it really didn’t answer the question. Not completely. I was starting to become of the opinion that there were agendas inside of agendas working counter to other agendas. It was like dealing with onions carved into Russian nesting dolls.

“If you’re on my side, why did you send Veronica to get close to me and put me out of commission?”

“Those are two different things. We tasked her with neither. She was only charged with gathering information about you.”

“Why?”

She shifted her head from one side to the other, her eyes quizzical, like I was an oddity. “Are you really that dense, Mr. Bishop?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Obviously not. Let me ask you something. There are a number of you, of Grimm’s little army of chosen ones, searching zealously for elements cast far and wide, elements that when combined, he believes will reconstitute an ancient power source that will fortify the Veil for centuries to come.”

“That’s not a question.”

“But this is. What do you, what do any of you, know of your leader?”

“Dante?”

“Yes. You are doing his bidding, aren’t you?”

I didn’t like where this was heading. And I didn’t like the feeling that I was the one being worked for information.

“You make it sound like I’m being whipped,” I said.

“But aren’t you? How do you know you’re not serving a what, but merely a who?”

I chewed on that one for a moment. “Are you saying that Grimm lied? That he’s not trying to keep the Veil from collapsing?”

“No. I’m sure he is. But I am asking you, is that his true goal? His only goal? Once you have given him such power, how can you be certain it will be dismantled and scattered again? Rather than used for some other nefarious, or at least, dishonorable, purpose?”

I had to admit that I hadn’t thought of that. “Fine. You don’t trust Grimm. I can understand that. His bedside manner isn’t the best. But it still doesn’t explain why you sent Veronica to investigate me, with or without instructions to stab me.”

“If you don’t trust the master,” she said, ignoring my last comment. “Wouldn’t it make sense to find out what you can about his servant? Especially one who will be looking for the key?”

Now I was really confused. Grimm had told us that each of our items would combine to form a key. Why was she implying that I was the one looking for it?

“What key?” I said.

She shook her head, her mouth spreading into a little non-smile smile. I heard her clear her throat, and before I could react my thoughts began to float, my body leaving my body, soaring on a song, three voices showering my ears with sonic kisses, one of them whispering in sing-song, barely audible.

Run, little Bishop, as fast as you can

Your father was the Lion, you are but a Lamb…

When I opened my eyes, Pip was standing in front of me, touching my cheek. The sudden change in surroundings made my head swim and the room tilted. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor.

“Sir Regis! Sir Regis, are you okay?”

I sat up, glanced around. I was still in the audio room. The women—Sirens, or whatever they were—were gone.

“Peachy,” I said.

“I lost contact,” she said. “The connection just dropped. I tried connecting again, but nothing worked. I got up here as fast as I could. You were just standing here, staring. I waved my hand in front of you. You didn’t even blink until I touched you.”

“I’m fine. Did you see them leave?”

She shook her head. “No one passed me. The building might as well be empty.”

I pushed myself up. I was still holding the Colt, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed.

“I must renew my objection to your use of such a weapon, Sir Regis. It is not appropriate for the types of encounters you may expect.”

I slipped the pistol behind my belt near the small of my back. “I didn’t point it at anyone. And I’m not sure, but it may have just saved my bacon.”

“I am eager to hear all about it, Sir Regis. At the moment, however, I do not think staying here is wise.”

I agreed. I took one last look around the room, then we left. I half-expected the door to be locked, but it wasn’t.

At the elevator, Pip said. “You should probably get something to eat. Have you decided what the next step in your quest will be?”

I pushed my hat back with a finger, resting it more on the crown, and shoved my hands into my pockets. Something crinkled at my fingertips.

“I was wondering,” she continued, “You said you might have to reconstruct Professor Kirk’s last day at his school and try to pick up his trail. Is that still an option?”

“Not really,” I said, pulling a folded piece of paper from my trousers. The elevator doors parted and we stepped in as I opened the sheet. “Son of a…”

“What is it, Sir Regis? A clue?”

“More like, a parting gift.” I handed the piece of paper to her. “In lieu of a recording contract.”

She looked up at me after reading it. “Do you really think…?”

“That they’d give me the location of the artifact that easily?” I shrugged. “I think given how incredibly charming and irresistible I am, coupled with my track record regarding women, the odds are around a hundred percent...,” I paused as the elevator beeped and the doors parted.

Standing in front of us, blocking the path, not to mention the sun, was a giant of a man, if you could be certain he was a man. He was definitely male, but he looked about five-feet wide and around eight feet tall with one long rope of woven hair growing from the top of his head, curling around the back of his skull and draping over his shoulder.

“That it’s a trap,” I said.

9

I stood there looking at the colossus in front of me long enough for the elevator doors to start to close. The hand that shot out to stop them was the size of a grizzly paw.

The head that sat on his shoulders was the size of a mid-range beach ball. Wrapping my hands around that neck would have been like trying to choke an oak.

“You are Bishop,” the man said.

He wore a large cloth with a hole in it for his head, hanging loose past his hips like a tunic, laced at the sides to keep it from flapping. His trousers were bright red and loose. Parachute pants, maybe? Whatever the style, they looked homemade, and the eighties were definitely calling. On his feet were what I could only describe as calf-high moccasins, made out of some soft animal skin and cinched with leather laces.

The way he was staring at me indicated he wanted a response. I swallowed. “That’s my name. Any chance I’m not the Bishop you’re looking for?”

Two hands shot out and grabbed me by the lapels of my sports coat. He moved fast, much faster than I would have expected. It doesn’t do much good to have fast reflexes when there’s nowhere for you to go. The elevator was barely wider than the doors, and he took up the entire expanse of the opening.

He lifted me in the air maybe ten feet, which is a lot higher looking down than it sounds. I thought he was going to twirl me like a baton a few times and then make a piece of modern art out of my body by throwing me against the wall, but instead, he started turning in circles himself, laughing.

Okay, I admit, it was pretty damn emasculating. He tossed me a bit as he started and shifted his grip from my lapels to my upper arms, squeezing me. Not that it made a difference. Even at full extension, I wouldn’t have been able to reach his elbows.

“HA HA HA HA HA! You are Bishop! I am Golgameth! You are such a tiny man! HA HA HA HA HA!”

“Yes, and also not an Englishman, if that might, uh, affect your appetite.”

“Ho HO! Golgameth is always hungry!”

He spun in circles a few more times, apparently one of those guys who likes to play with his food, and I shot several glances into the elevator as it carouseled by. Pip was not inside.

As if reading my mind, her voice popped into my earpiece. I’d forgotten it was even in.

“Sir Regis! I escaped while he was distracted! I am retrieving your armament!”

“Thanks,” I said, keeping my voice low. “If you could pick up a tank while you’re at it, that would be great.”

“Golgameth can pick up anything!”

His hearing seemed fine, which was a disappointment.

“HA HA HA HA HA! Come! It is time! We must take your carriage and depart!”

“Depart?”

He started laughing again, and it dawned on me that he wasn’t going to eat me or snap my bones, at least, not intentionally.

“Golgameth, would you mind putting me down? Golgameth!”

“Ha! Yes! You are so light, like a baby bird! It is easy for Golgameth to forget he is even holding you!”

I suppose it was possible he could have put me down more roughly, but there was no doubt he could have done it more gently. My knees bent and I strained a muscle or two keeping them from smashing into my chest.

“Thank you,” I said, straightening up and trying to push my heart back down out of my throat. “Now, could I trouble you to tell me what’s going on? Who the hell are you?”

“I am Golgameth! The Giant!”

“Yes, your name I got and the ‘giant’ part I figured out myself. But, I mean, what are you doing here? And what do you want with me?”

“Golgameth is to be your escort! You seek a treasure that will lead to battle. Golgameth lives for battle! It has been a lifetime since the last true battle. But Golgameth shall not have to wait much longer!”

“Wait, hold on. My escort?”

“Yes! You are small, Golgameth is large!”

“Are you saying, you’re supposed to be my bodyguard?”

“HA HA HA HA HA! Golgameth is not a guard! Golgameth is a champion!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Come!” His hand grabbed me by the collar of my jacket—which felt more like the scruff of my neck—and he began to walk. The tips of my shoes occasionally touched the ground.

He squeezed through the doors into the afternoon light and stood triumphantly on the sidewalk with the fist at the end of his free arm pressed against his hip as if the sun were shining in celebration of his gianthood.

“It is time for us to retrieve your treasure and complete your quest! The battle awaits!”

“Golgameth, do you even know what I’m looking for?”

“Of course, Little Man!” He set me on the ground and clapped his massive palms together in a way that made my ears ring. “You seek the Key! And Golgameth shall use it to initiate the battle that will make him Champion!”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but explaining what I was really looking for seemed pointless to someone who refers to himself in the third person.

“A champion of what, Golgameth?” I asked.

He looked at down at me, eyes the size of small dishes. For a moment, I thought he was going to become angry, but then he began to laugh again.

“HA HA HA HA HA! Of everything, Little Man! It is the battle for everything that awaits!”

CONVERTIBLES belong to that group of things that sound great, but in reality aren’t very practical and end up going mostly unused. The convertible part, that is. The wind at sixty miles an hour is loud and violent, doing downright hellacious things to your hair, not to mention the fact that in southern California the sun beats down on you like an abusive step-parent, and wherever you park for even a few moments you have to take the time to put the top up if you would like to have any interior—let alone your radio—left when you get back. I’d owned mine for two years, and I don’t think I’d put the top down once after the first month or two.

But it was down now, because it was the only way Golgameth was ever going to fit. He sat in the back, taking up the entire bench seat. The hood seemed abnormally high as I drove. It felt like I was popping a wheelie.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Pip’s voice burrowed into my ear against the background drone of airflow in every direction.

“Yes,” I said, taking advantage of a break in the wind to answer as I navigated a side road and slowed for a stop sign. “I’m fine.”

“Please be careful, Sir Regis. I heard much of the conversation. The Sirens clearly intend for him to be your minder. But do not let your guard down. Giants have awful tempers and can be unpredictable.”

“I’ll watch my step. And hope he watches his, so I don’t get squashed.”

“I am following you, Sir Regis. According to the GPS display, I am two point two miles behind you.”

“Okay. I’ll try to let you know how it looks when we get there.”

“To whom are you speaking, Little Man? Do you confer with a spirit? A sprite? Are you communing with the God of Abraham, as so many of you do?”

“Just mumbling to myself, Golgameth. Bad habit I have.”

“You need not be embarrassed, Little Man! Golgameth often speaks with the Ancient Ones.”

“It’s okay if you call me by my name, instead of ‘Little Man,’ you know.”

“Very well! Golgameth shall call you by your name, little Bishop!”

The gentle light of the early evening cast its glow from the west, bathing everything east of us in a golden brilliance. Above us, the sky spread like a vast sea, not a cloud visible at any compass point. Almost every day in SoCal was like this. Perfect weather, beautiful landscape. This, I thought. This is how the universe mocks us.

My teeth rattled as a hand the dimension of a shovel blade landed on my shoulder and gave me a shake.

“What is the matter, little Bishop? You look troubled.”

“On second thought,” I said. “Go back to calling me ‘Little Man.’ ‘Little Bishop’ makes it sound like I’m wearing a beanie and sucking on a lollipop.”

“HA HA!” That hand clapped me on the shoulder again, about one pound of pressure short of dislocating it. “You believe you do not measure up to your father! This, Golgameth understands!”

I looked back at him, stared at the toothy grin of that gigantic head. I’m sure for at least a few seconds I completely forgot that I was driving.

“You knew my father?”

“HA HA HA ! No, Little Man! But Golgameth knows of fathers! They are who we fear, until it is time to fear who we are!”

I turned back to face the road just in time to swerve back over the center line into my lane, the horn of an oncoming car dopplering past us like a screaming beast.

“Do not lose control of your chariot, Little Man! Your father would not approve! Ha HA!”

“My father is dead,” I said.

“Ho HO! No wonder you are so uncomfortable! You will never prove yourself his equal, or ever prove him wrong! He is forever the victor!”

My teeth were clenched so tight I felt something in my jaw pop. Believe me, there are few things more demoralizing than being psychoanalyzed by a philosopher-giant seated in the back seat of your Mustang.

He was right about one thing, though. I sure as hell was uncomfortable. That Colt was digging a hole in my back, determined to grind a chunk out of my spine.

“Do not sulk, Little Man! Your father has given you a gift! Every warrior must battle a demon, as well as his enemies! The stronger the demon, the stronger the warrior! And a demon that cannot be vanquished is the strongest demon of all!”

I did not want to think about my father, and I certainly did not want to admit the behemoth packed into my backseat was right. So I pulled out my phone and I opened the navigational app. We were only a few minutes away.

“Getting close, Pip,” I said in the quietest voice I thought she could hear.

“I still have you, Sir Regis. Please, exercise extreme caution. You don’t know what you’re walking into. Or whose side the giant is on.”

Pip was right, about not knowing what I was walking into, and it made me feel stupid. Because it was just one of many things I didn’t know.

I turned my head a bit. “Golgameth…do you know what this place is we’re heading to?”

“HA HA HA! Are you asking Golgameth because you want to tell him? Or because you do not know?”

“Never mind.”

“Golgameth does not know the place! That is why Golgameth is with you!”

“Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Golgameth only knows what awaits us at the place!”

“Yeah, I know. A ‘battle.’”

“HA HA! Yes! But only the first! And Golgameth knows the opponent! It is she who holds the Key! Be ready, Little Man! This battle is yours!”

“She? Who holds the Key, Golgameth? ”

“Why, Melusina, of course! She guards the Key you seek! Such a task would only be given to a fierce warrior!”

I turned off the main road and drove down a wooded lane. We were outside the city, near the foothills. There wasn’t much of anything nearby that I could see, other than stands of trees separated by dry looking fields that were once used for farming.

The nav screen showed the destination was ahead on the right. I pulled up and double checked the address. I guess I was hoping that maybe it was the next one over, which was silly, because this was obviously the place.

The sign in front of the building, bold, block letters painted on wood like something you’d find outside a carnival exhibit, didn’t exactly leave much room for doubt:

THE LAIR OF THE SERPENT QUEEN

Below it, in smaller but very distinctive lettering, read: CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.

10

I stared at the sign for quite some time before turning to look at the leviathan who somehow managed to cast a shadow over me even when the sun was to my opposite side.

“Serpent Queen?”

“Yes! Melusina! The Serpent Queen!”

“And she has a Key, and that Key will get me to the artifact?”

“Ho HO! Golgameth does not know of an ‘artifact.’ The Key will unlock the Contest! The Contest is the battle that Golgameth shall win!”

“I, literally, have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“HA HA HA! Go, Little Man! Retrieve the Key from Melusina! Show your mettle in this skirmish, so that Golgameth may then claim his glory!”

I shook my head and got out of the car. I stood and watched the house, a sprawling, ranch-style of dark, weathered redwood and stone, waiting for my colossal companion.

And waiting.

“Any time, Golgameth.”

“Ha! Time for what, Little Man?”

He looked ridiculous in the back of my GT, wedged behind the front seats with his knees pinned to his chest, his elbows touching each side panel. The look on his face was a complete cypher, the same, exact expression he’d had since he picked me up and spun me around in the elevator. Just a fat, jolly grin, pressing folds of cheek flesh out to each side of his face.

“For you to get out so we can, what…knock on the door, I guess?”

“Ho HO! Golgameth shall wait here! This is your battle, tiny Bishop!”

“You’re not coming with me? I have no idea what I’m even supposed to be looking for, let alone what I’m going to be up against.”

“Ha! I’m sure you are up to the task! Golgameth shall wait here!”

“Do you want me to ask for your help or something? Is that it?”

“HA HA HA! No, little man! Golgameth likes you! You are like a small dog or pig! You are fun to have near!”

“Thanks, I think. But I would feel a lot better about this if you and your gargantuan body came with me.”

“Golgameth cannot! Melusina has many serpents! Golgameth cannot be in the presence of them! Golgameth shall wait here!”

I heard the words, felt my brain swallow and digest them, but the meaning didn’t hit me for what seemed like minutes. Many serpents?

“Are you telling me you’re afraid of snakes?”

“No! Golgameth fears nothing! It is a curse of some sort. Golgameth feels bewitched around them!”

“You are. You’re afraid of snakes. I’ll be damned.”

The smile faded as the tectonic plates of his face shifted. “Golgameth is not afraid! It is just that in the presence of serpents, Golgameth’s head becomes like a bowl filled with water. His heart begins to flutter and his skin begins to grow wet and Golgameth’s limbs become like stone that cannot be moved!”

“Yeah, that’s called a phobia. Which is another way of saying you’re afraid.”

“No! Golgameth is certain it is a curse! Only a curse could do such a thing to a warrior as fierce as Golgameth! Golgameth shall wait here! Tiny Bishop shall fight this battle.”

I hung my head, eyes searching the ground. Jesus H. Christ. I drive a giant across east LA to the ‘Lair of the Serpent Queen,’ whoever the hell that is, listen to him babble on about a ‘glorious battle,’ and it turns out the biggest guy I’ve ever seen by a factor of two or three is going to wait in the car. Because he’s afraid of snakes.

I turned without saying anything else and took a few steps toward the house.

School was never my thing. Not because I wasn’t interested in getting an education, but because my father couldn’t take the hint that shipping me off to private prep mills wasn’t my idea of a childhood, and seemed oblivious to the message no matter how many times I would get myself kicked out. Even the most incorrigible student, though, couldn’t help but pick up a few things in expensive classrooms that stressed classic subjects, and one of those was that, according to Greek mythology, Medusa had a head full of snakes for hair.

Medusa, Melusina. Maybe this was what Veronica had been trying to warn me about.

I paused a few feet from the front door.

“Pip, are you listening?”

“Yes, Sir Regis. I am very close. I have your armament.”

“What can you tell me about this Serpent Queen?”

“Melusina. I am sorry, Sir Regis. I don’t know much. There was talk of such a woman, cursed to spend part of her time as a serpent. She was said to have surrounded herself with an army of snakes, to keep away men who may fall in love with her.”

“An army. Of snakes. Because just a wig of them would be asking too much.”

“What? I’m sorry, Sir Regis, I didn’t catch that.”

“Never mind. This day just keeps getting better and better. What is this ‘Key’ he’s talking about? The Sirens used the same word.”

The brief pause that followed, a short chasm of silence that would have stood out for no other reason than its unusualness, rang a faint warning bell in the back of my head.

“I believe the Key is the artifact you seek. We are very close, Sir Regis. Very close.”

It took a suffocating amount of willpower to keep myself from throwing the cards on the table right then. Pip—loyal, sweet, caring Pip—was holding out on me. I’d suspected as much for a while, and that hitch in her voice was a dead giveaway.

But now was not the time.

My fist barely made a sound as I knocked, the wood of the door was so thick. I searched around for a doorbell, but the place didn’t seem designed to invite guests or welcome visitors.

The door had a thumb-latch handle. I reached for it and just as I hooked my fingers around the frame the door pulled open hard enough to yank me forward. I stumbled over the threshold.

Behind me, the door stayed open, flung wide. Whatever opened it was nowhere in sight. I stood in the entry, scanning for anyone. Or any "thing."

All I saw was a house. Someone’s home, and obviously lived in. A bit dated, more than a bit dusty, but definitely not abandoned. Mid-century modern furnishings, but not in the decorative sense—this was the real thing. The most recent piece looked like it had been added when people were wearing I LIKE IKE buttons.

My gaze quickly shot to the floor, sweeping side to side, peering into crevices. An army, she’d said. Of snakes. My hand reached under the back of my sports coat and found the grip of the Colt.

“Hello?”

No answer. No sound at all. Not even the ticking of a clock. There was something eerie about a house that was completely still, especially one that you didn’t believe was empty.

“Anyone home?”

I heard all sorts of sounds that never passed through my ears. Hisses. Slithering. The subtle, slurpy flicking of forked tongues. But nothing that actually originated outside my head.

I reminded myself that something had pulled the door open, though. Hard.

The door. I gave it a close look, maintaining more than an arm’s length of distance. It was big and thick and remained open as far as the hinges allowed. Not much room behind it.

Not much, but enough. Maybe.

I reached for the handle, letting my hand hover just next to it for a moment. I slipped my fingers behind the brass curve of it, careful not to touch it. Then I hooked it and pulled, swinging the door back.

A gaping mouth and enormous pair of curved fangs shot toward my face.

How I managed to dodge those teeth, I have no idea, but I told you I had good reflexes. And boy, at that moment, was I ever happy I did. There were rows of teeth behind those first two, twin lines of descending, needle-sharp nastiness. My body bent backward before I even knew what I was doing, an impromptu limbo stance, and the gargantuan snake head shot past my face, missing me. The long neck—although where its neck stopped and body began was impossible to say—flung back like a whip, and I saw it coil, its eyes yellow with red vertical slits that seemed to burn with rage. Its length was lopped over and under the hooks of a coat rack on the wall, its long tail trailing down onto the floor in a corkscrew. It had to be over twenty feet long, dark green with complex patterns of hatching down its back.

Its head raised up and the prongs of its tongue sniffed the air. I could sense its body gathering tension, ready to spring. It opened its jaws, just barely, readying itself. It was as if it had now learned I was fast and was calibrating its strike. I tried to remain completely still, needing the freedom to react instantly and not already be in motion. The jaws opened wider, just a hair, and its head pulled farther back. Any second…any second…almost…

“Titan, NO!”

The snake seemed to stop in mid-strike, its head dropping after having shot forward about a foot. It hissed at me—this sound I didn’t imagine—and withdrew back to the wall, those red slits never breaking contact with my eyes.

She looked like a queen, but not like a serpent. She had long, blond hair that flowed over the shoulders of her loose, linen blouse. Her eyes were a shade of gray that was almost platinum. She was trim and fit and carried herself tall without looking like she tried. She possessed every quality a twenty-five-year old could want in a look, from pouty lips to smooth, radiant skin and generous curves. But she had to be sixty, maybe seventy. There was no doubt about it. You could see it in those eyes, the way they bore a burden of having seen more than they wanted to. In the set of her brow, where her furrows ran deep, even if they didn’t leave wrinkles. It was practically in the air, the whiff of world-weariness that hung about her like a fog. She was an old soul in a remarkably well-preserved body.

I let out a long breath. “I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a change of pants,” I asked.

“Titan does not like intruders,” she said. “Except as meals.”

“Well, thank you for interceding. I didn’t think snakes had ears. I’ve never been so glad to have been mistaken in my life.”

“They don’t. But they have excellent hearing, their jawbones are highly sensitive to vibrations. Now, why are you in my home?” Her tone wasn’t exactly hostile, but it was far from friendly.

“Right. Sorry. I’m looking for a woman named Melusina. Would that happen to be you?”

She stared at me long enough that I inhaled and exhaled several breaths before she responded. “Who sent you?”

Good question. I wasn’t sure I had a good answer. “Cassiopeia,” I said.

“Get out.” The woman pointed to the door. “Now.”

“Wait! 'Sent' is not exactly the right word. She gave me this address because I’m looking for something. We’re not exactly BFFs.”

I could tell the acronym sailed over her head, but she didn’t chase it. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“But I was told you do. I was told you have… the Key?”

“Is that what you were told? Well, I’m telling you this—I don’t have anything for you. Leave. Now.”

Not having anything for me was not the same as not having what I was looking for, so I decided to operate under the assumption she was picking her words carefully.

“Look, I apologize for walking in like that. I tried knocking, honest. But please, this is important. And I really am sorry.”

Her face pinched into a quizzical look as she narrowed her gaze. “Are you trying to charm me?”

I shrugged. My mind conjured up an image of a guy in a turban with a flute. “Would you like me to? I’m told I can be quite the charmer, sometimes.”

“No, I’m talking about charming me. Trying to use magic.” She shifted her gaze from me to one wall, then another, then the ceiling. “Are you?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

She assessed me briefly with her eyes, then scanned the room in a more urgent fashion. “Then you’re being used, because someone is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Cassiopeia. She must have followed you.”

I tried to make the connection, but couldn’t. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she follow me if she already has the address?”

“Did you bring any creature with you? Imp? Fairy? Sorcerer?”

Sorcerer. Was she talking about Dante? Had he done something? Something to me? I had no idea how she’d react to his name, if it would even mean anything to her in the first place, so I decided not to bring him into this.

“No, nothing like that. I do have a, uh, man with me, waiting in the car. But no fairies or imps. I wouldn’t even know an imp if I saw one. The only fairy I know of is named Tinkerbell.”

“Man? What kind of man? A wizard?”

“Well, no. He’s sort of a giant. But he’s afraid of snakes, and I don’t get a magic-y vibe from him. Take a look for yourself. He’s sitting in the car. Or on the car, might be more accurate.”

“Listen to me.” She tightened her gaze into something almost metallic. “Someone is using magic. You need to leave. Now.”

Pip’s voice crackled in my ear. “Is everything okay, Sir Regis?”

I cleared my throat, loudly. That was the signal that I couldn’t talk.

“It’s not me,” I said. “I swear.”

“It doesn’t matter. This house…you don’t understand. You need to go.”

“But Melusina—you are Melusina, right?—I’m here because I believe you may be holding onto an artifact for someone. A Key. Or perhaps something that looks like a spike? An object you may have received from someone named Alonzo?”

She looked like she was about to say something, her lips just beginning to part, her jaw slightly jutting forward. Then she froze. And I do mean, froze. Full-on mannequin challenge. Her gaze was fixed, one arm was slightly raised. Not a part of her was moving. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

“Ma’am?” I took a step closer, then another. I waved a hand in front of her face.

“Pip, something is not right here.”

“Oh, no! The house is trembling! Sir Regis, get out of there! Hurry!”

Because of my stubborn streak, I probably would not have followed that advice, not right away, at least, but it didn’t really matter, because there wasn’t any time for me to react.

Melusina began to sparkle. I don’t know how else to describe it. Tiny glints of light flashed and faded sporadically from her head to her feet and then I was suddenly looking right through her, and then what was left of her dropped like millions of grains of transparent sand. Without her there to focus on, I saw that the same thing was happening to everything else, including the walls.

I turned to run, only to stop what seemed like a few millimeters from the angry jaws of Titan, his twin curves of his fangs flicking my eyelashes as I tried to maintain my balance.

Then the wall that held the hooks Titan was anchored to disappeared, disintegrating in a shimmer of collapsing dust, and the snake dropped just as a downpour of sand rained over me.

Sand. I was standing in a pit of it, the entire footprint of the house. I could see my car, the sky, trees. I could see Golgameth, though he didn’t exactly seem to be rushing to my aid. Titan shot across the sandy expanse like a winding rocket, evidently spooked. I decided he had the right idea, so I started to run.

Okay, tried to run. One foot sunk as I raised the other. I tried again, churning against the soft and shifting ground and managed to move a few feet when the first serpent rose from the sand in front of me. Then another rose next to it, followed by another.

They were surrounding me. Gargantuan serpents, formed from the sand but quite solid-looking. Snake-like, though I wouldn’t call them snakes. They had each had sharp spines rimming their skulls, angled back like a mane of teeth. They had leaf-shaped snouts and lips that curled into snarling shows of angry teeth that lined their mouths like rows of daggers.

I was surrounded by them. More continued to rise from the sand, dark gold, as if they were formed from it and polished to a glassy shine. My footing wasn’t good enough to dare trying to dart in between them and make it beyond the edge to where there was grass.

But I was going to have to try.

I picked my lane, narrow as it was, and tested my weight to see if I could get some sort of push. I could sense them readying to strike, their numbers almost complete as the pace of new serpents emerging from the sand slowed.

Deep breath in, half-a-breath out, and I threw my body forward.

For a fraction of a second, I was amazed at how powerful my first move was. I was in the air, launched, could feel my body catapulting.

But then I was bicycling, feet windmilling, and I felt the pressure on my ribcage from where something had me wrapped in its grasp.

Whatever it was, it was big. Much bigger than the gigantic serpents writhing in the sand around me, the sand that was now falling away as I rose. This was Faye-Wray-being-carried-up-the-Empire-State-Building big. Whatever it was raised me a good twenty feet off the ground and brought me in line with a face. A beautiful face that made me wonder if Satan was a woman and this was she.

It was Melusina. She was half-serpent herself, now, the tail of her enormous trunk wrapped around my torso. More than half, actually. Her arms disappeared into her sides just below her breasts, and her body extended into the sand long and tubular, with hexagonal patterns etched into her skin. Her eyebrows, fashioned of smooth, golden sand, were farther from her chin than I would bet I could reach with my fingertips, fully extended on my toes.

“I told you to leave.”

The voice exploded in my ears like a series of percussion bombs.

Okay, I thought. I’m not dead yet, and she’s not dangling me over her mouth like a grape. So maybe I still have a chance.

“I really need that artifact,” I said, looking into a gigantic, golden eye with a serpentine slit for a pupil. “It’s important. I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t a matter of life and death. Many, many deaths, if I don’t find it. I came here for your help.”

“I told you I don’t have anything for you.”

I winced as the booming words pounded my skull like a drum. “I know you did have it. I think you still do. And I need it, to stop something very bad from happening.”

“You do not understand. I am a guardian, paid in blood. What I am given to protect and hold I may not relinquish. It is a blood oath, and I am bound to it by the same curse that forces me to crawl the earth for all eternity. That is the lot of the Serpent Queen. I could not help you if I wanted to.”

My mind was racing. Something she said was tripping little levers in my head. I just needed time to think.

“What if I were to tell you I was a knight? A knight with a knightly pedigree, on a quest that was pure?”

Those slits narrowed even as her eyes grew wider. “Yes, I can sense something about you. Something old, as old as me. But it is not a part of you. It is part of something else.”

I didn’t know what that meant, and I wasn’t sure that this was the best time to request her to explicate. All I knew was, there was something about her that seemed good, her heart, maybe, and playing to that was the only chance I had.

Or maybe I was just deluding myself.

“Please,” I said, summoning every ounce of earnestness I could muster. “I didn’t ask for this. Others are depending on me. Innocent others. Maybe millions of them. I need that Key.”

“You think you can stop the breaching of the Veil? Your kind hasn’t changed in centuries. Always resolute in the belief that you can defeat any threat, if only you had a big enough sword, a stout enough shield. Even if I were to give you the Key, which I cannot, all you would accomplish would be to shred the Veil into tatters, render it into thousands of pieces.”

“I have to try. If you truly know the heart of those like me, you know I have no choice but to try.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. Just as I’m so very sorry for what I must do now. Whatever magic you brought has triggered the protocols of my guardianship. I am bound by the blood of he who invoked it.”

The trunk around my midsection moved and then I was swinging, looping down like a pendulum, head first. The tentacle-like tail loosened its grip and I started to drop toward the waiting jaws of a crowded cluster of serpent heads, jaws snapping up toward me. Just as suddenly, the tail tightened around one of my legs and I was dangling. My hat—that poor, abused fedora—fell into the cluster of jaws and one of them crunched down on it, only to fling its head and spit it out.

The curse bound her to shed the blood of anyone using magic to try to obtain what she was guarding. That would be me and that blood would be mine. But as pints of that blood were rushing to my head, making my skull feel like it was about to spring a leak, some thought finally clicked into place.

“Wait!” I yelled as loud and as commandingly as I could. I didn’t pause to see whether it had the desired effect. “You are bound to the one who charged you with protection, right? He invoked the curse, knew you had no choice, am I right? Was it Alonzo? The Manticore?”

I was still dangling, which beat the alternative.

“What is your point?”

“I killed him! I broke your obligation, shattered the seal on your duty, however you want to describe it! He’s dead! Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“It would, if I believed that to be true.”

“It is! Don’t you have some way of sensing it? Of checking whether your duty is still in force?”

“It doesn’t work that way. I am not relieved of anything.” She turned me to face her. “But if he was dead, and his death was by your hand, you would step into his place as the rightful master of this guardianship.”

“It’s true! How can I prove it? I swear, I killed him!”

“I would need his body. Short of that, his sword or shield or claws. Some intimate emblem of his battle with you.”

Son of a…I rubbed my face. When I opened my eyes, I saw one of the serpents dislocate its jaws and spread them so wide that if Melusina released her grip I was certain to drop right inside of them. This did not seem like a pleasant way to go. I wondered what parts of me would survive. Would he spit out my shoes? My belt?

My belt.

I felt my body twist as she seemed ready to let go.

“Hold it! I do have proof! Right here!”

I reached behind me and pulled the Colt from the small of my back. Not too hard to do when your sports coat is hanging down around your shoulders like and upside-down cape.

“This! This is his weapon! I took it as a trophy! A battle trophy!”

My body swung as she moved me up and over toward her face. I held the pistol out, presenting the broadside to her so she didn’t take it as a threat.

“This is the modern equivalent of a nobleman’s sword,” I said, gasping the words out. “It is worth many thousands of dollars. It has his initials engraved on it.”

She was silent for several seconds, which stretched into thirty or more. She stared at the gun impassively, her expression inscrutable—though I’m not sure if there is such a thing as a ‘scrutable’ expression on a golden face of polished sand the size of the Statue of Liberty’s.

Without warning, she swung me back to where I had been dangling, and let go. It happened so abruptly, I didn’t have time to make a sound of protest. I just dropped, plummeting some fifteen or twenty feet. I saw those gigantic jaws below me, even wider now, waiting to snap shut. I closed my eyes.

I landed with a thud. The side of my head seemed to hit first, but my body took the worst of it as it slammed down. The impact knocked the wind out of me and I gasped several times trying to recover. I rolled onto my back. Seconds passed, and my lungs began to fill a little more with each breath.

“Sir Regis? Sir Regis, are you okay?”

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t have the wind to say anything witty. All I managed to muster was a raspy groan that started with a "y" and ended with an "s."

“Are you sure? I’m outside the house. Do you need assistance?”

I felt my chest expand to capacity for the first time, sucking in a full breath. Then another. Finally, my lungs seemed to have enough air to function.

“Sir Regis?”

“I’m fine,” I said. I pushed myself up. My ribs were sore, and those breaths were starting to sting as the initial numbness from the impact began to wear off.

The house was back to the way it was when I arrived. Old-fashioned, somewhat dusty. Furniture and walls and hardwood floors.

Very hard wood.

My hat, poor, battered thing it was, sat misshapen on the floor a few feet away. I got to my feet, took a few wobbly steps and picked it up. Beneath it was a piece of bent, corroded metal. Like an old spike. The kind that might have been used in Rome. The kind that might have been hammered through flesh and bone during a crucifixion.

“A word to the wise.”

I turned to see Melusina. She appeared as she had before. Normal. Human. And irritated.

“Once that unlocks the Contest,” she continued, “It must be seen through until there is a victor.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“I wouldn't suspect you would. No one alive has ever witnessed it. And no one who ever witnessed it has lived. Even its creator gave his life for it. Powerful magic requires powerful sacrifice.”

I knelt and picked up the metal spike. It was heavy. Up close, I could see tiny teeth cut into the bent end.

“Well, lucky for me, I only need to deliver this, not open whatever it goes to.”

“That’s what Alonzo thought, that he could obtain the Key, place it in my custody, and be done with it. And you know better than any others where that got him.”

“You mean, dead? That was because we fought, and I killed him. He wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t attacked me.”

“Is that what you believe? That it’s a coincidence?”

I looked at the object in my hand. Hefted it. “Not a coincidence. Just not a consequence.”

She looked at me without responding. The silence was disturbing.

“Wait a second. Are you trying to tell me that everyone who possesses this thing dies?”

“I’m telling you, once you possess the Key, you must use it to start the Contest. If you do not, you forfeit. Of course, no one has ever survived the Contest, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.

I wasn’t certain how much of that to believe. Was she trying to scare me off? Keep me from fulfilling my quest? The problem was, she certainly seemed sincere. So sincere, she was almost apathetic.

Alonzo died because I killed him. I reminded myself of that, almost had myself convinced that’s all it was, then I remembered Professor Kirk. I didn’t want to make three.

“What if I just, uh, left it here? Let you hold onto it a while longer.”

She wagged her chin, a gesture that seemed almost sad.

“It’s too late. It was in your possession the moment you established yourself as having rightful succession.”

I dropped my lopsided hat on my head as I stared at the twisted metal. Well, isn’t that just friggin’ marvelous.

“How long?”

“You have until the second rise of the moon. So you have until tomorrow, nightfall.”

“Where is it? What does this unlock?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“You mean, I have to find it?” How am I supposed to do that?”

“I can’t answer that question. I would tell you if I knew.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Yes.” She waved her hand, a movement aimed at something behind me. I turned to see Titan, his body back to being anchored through the wall hooks, stretched out, reaching for the door knob. He grabbed it in his mouth, gave it a twist, and pulled the door open. That answered that question.

“The knight who designed the Contest used the darkest magic. He became its first sacrifice, consecrating it with his life to ensure one thing, one characteristic that many others like you have failed to appreciate.”

She raised an arm, stepping close and coaxing me to the door. I took a breath, smelled the fresh air, and saw the fading aura of twilight glimmering in the sky and trees.

“What was that?” I asked, turning back to face her as I stepped outside.

“That it is a game you cannot win, and that to try is to guarantee your death.”

With that, she closed the door. The loud clunk of it sounded an awful lot like the universe shutting down any chance of me surviving this ordeal.

11

It was dark by the time I got back to Santee Alley. After taking at least a decade off the remaining useful life of the staircase on the way up, Golgameth, hunched over to keep his head below the ceiling, took one look at my digs, proclaimed it to be a strange place for a fortress, and dropped himself onto my couch. He took up two-thirds of the length of it, and I was certain by the way it was sagging I’d never be able to sleep on it again.

Of course, at the moment, that was the least of my concerns.

“Why do you wish to wait here, Little Man? Golgameth wants to begin his battle!”

“Did you not hear a word of what I said the entire drive? We have the Key, but I have no idea what it unlocks.”

The giant scratched the naked side of his scalp. “Do you believe it is somewhere in this room, little man?”

“Oh, that’s very funny, Golgameth. Very funny. No, I asked Pip to send for someone. Someone who may have an idea where to look.” Under my breath, I added, “And who’d better have some damn good answers for me.”

“Who is this ‘Pip’?”

“The redhead who was in the elevator with me—” I heard the doorknob rattle, a sharp knock as the door opened. “Whup. Never mind.”

Grimm walked in, hands in the recesses of his long, black leather coat. He looked at me, then shifted his eyes over to Golgameth.

“Where in the bloody hell did you pick up a giant?”

Pip appeared from behind him, sliding over to the wall near my desk where I was seated. She looked more than a little upset. I hadn’t told her yet, but I wondered if she pieced together a few things from my demeanor, from the way I was curt with her in demanding an audience with Grimm, or—most likely—from what Grimm told her. I had no doubt he knew, and had known all along.

“This is Golgameth. Golgameth, this is Dante Grimm.”

Golgameth grunted and cracked the knuckles on his two paddle-sized hands. It sounded like boards snapping. I got the distinct impression he was imagining that sound to be Grimm’s neck. Maybe it was the sneer.

“Giants are useless brutes. They can’t be trusted. If you’re thinking of an alliance with him, don’t. He will most likely get you killed, if he doesn’t stab you in the back first.”

If you wanted to know how Golgameth reacted to that, picture a guy with a face three times the size of a normal person’s turning an apple shade of crimson with anger, baring his teeth, his jaw trembling with building tension, then picture that face after someone just spit on it and squirted tobasco sauce in both eyes. That might come close.

Golgameth shifted his weight forward, ready to spring and deliver what I’m certain was shaping up to be the kind of blow that would have knocked Grimm’s shadow into the next room, but something fluttered in Grimm’s coat pocket and he removed his hand holding a metal loop with smaller loops attached to it. The large loop had a winding rod twisting its way from one side to the other.

“Here,” Grimm said. He tossed it to the giant, who fumbled it against his chest before eyeing it carefully and sinking back down into the couch.

Turning his attention to me, Grimm said, “That will keep him occupied for at least a half-hour.” When I shrugged and turned up my palms, he added, “Giants can’t resist simple puzzles. A five-year old would solve that in three minutes. He won’t hear a word we’re saying. Now, why did you insist I come here?”

I reached into my coat pocket and retrieved the Key, or spike or Nail of Christ, or whatever it was. I dropped it onto the desk in front of me.

“Yes, Pip told me. You know by now it’s a key, and I’m sure you know what it unlocks.”

“I have no idea what it unlocks, and why the hell didn’t you tell me it was a key I was looking for? You made me think all I needed to do was find it.”

“I said you needed to find it as soon as possible. I never said that was all you needed to do. If you would have paid attention at the Gathering, you would have remembered that a key wasn’t one of the twelve items. But you were so busy studying all the others, you likely heard only a fraction of what you were told. This key unlocks a container. A trunk or chest. Find the lock, you find the container. Find the container, and you’ll have access to the Contest.”

I shot a glance at Pip, who looked down at the floor.

“This is just fucking wonderful.” I jutted my chin. “Does she know?”

“Yes.”

She was still staring at the floor. “Did you know all along?”

She looked up and opened her mouth, but Grimm interjected. “You couldn’t be allowed to know. The unique…properties of the Key have created unintended consequences. The enchantment surrounding it is designed to keep it well-hidden. If you’d have known exactly what you were seeking, it would not have allowed you to find it.”

“Excuse me, but I think not clueing me in on the fact I’d be as good as marked for certain death twenty-four hours or so after getting my hands on it might be considered among normal people as leaving out a material detail.”

Grimm took a firm hold of my gaze. “I don’t think you understand the stakes, young Mr. Bishop. Do you think you’re the only person in the world risking his life to keep the Veil from collapsing? You’re not even the only person in this zip code. I’m not asking anything more of you than is being asked of the others.”

“So, you just make the decision for me? Rob me of even the chance to step up? You’re just like my goddamned father.”

“Your father was a good man,” Grimm said. “You shouldn’t speak of him that way.”

“My father was an overbearing prick who never offered me an encouraging word in his life.”

Grimm shook his head slowly, as if highly disappointed in me. “Reginald Bishop…” he paused, his gaze narrowing. He cleared his throat. “Your father is the reason you were chosen. His dying words to me were that you were the only one he trusted with this particular quest. He made me promise to give it to you, and only you.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I can’t make you believe it if you don’t want to.”

“You were with him when he died?”

Grimm’s gaze drifted up and away from me, off into some point through the window. “He was my first, he was supposed to be the knight in command. The tip of the spear.”

I leaned back into the chair. “How…?”

“That’s a story for another time. Suffice to say, he died like he lived, with honor. The reason he sent you away to boarding schools, the reason he pushed you so hard, was that he knew he would not be there for you, and with your mother gone, he knew there would be no one else, that you’d have to rely on yourself. He knew this was coming before anyone, before me, even. He was cursed with the knowledge from when you were a little boy, the foreboding of a storm on the distant horizon. He made tough decisions. When the forces, the shadows, behind this put their plans into action, they didn’t come after me. They went after him.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. The idea that my father had been rough on me to make me tough, or so that I’d have higher standards, was something I’d dismissed long ago as rationalized bullshit, and I wasn’t ready to take a more generous view. But I could feel the ground on which I’d built my opinions shifting, could sense tiny cracks threatening the foundation.

“Perhaps I should have told you earlier, but that was another judgment call I made. I worried that if you knew that your father had chosen you, that he had his reasons for being the way he was toward you, then you may have been too distracted to focus on the task at hand; too busy processing the new information and adjusting your understanding of who he was, and of your relationship with him. I also thought that your resentful competitiveness, your desire to prove yourself, might provide extra motivation and drive. Keeping it from you was my doing, not his.”

“Hey, what better time to fill me in than when the clock is ticking on my all-but certain death, right?”

He hitched a shoulder. “Your anger when I arrived was shifting its focus to me and you were a few sharp words from losing all sense of mission. I couldn’t allow that.”

I stared at him, my gaze far short of deferential, then I looked over to Pip. She made eye contact, but couldn’t sustain it.

“How do I find the lock this goes to?” I said.

“All I can say is, the Key would not have let you come into its possession without you also possessing the ability to use it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means, I don’t know the answer. I don’t know all that much about the Key, or the Contest. I’m not sure anyone does. Your father knew more, through the visions that haunted him, but nothing that made sense. They were more like impressions of what was to come. Feelings. But I do understand the nature of the kind of spell this would require, and that spell would not allow you to hold the Key without having access to the lock. There are rules that govern sorcery just as there are rules that govern physics.”

“And if I find it, what then? Can I beat it?”

Now it was Dante’s turn to look at Pip. “Your father seemed to think so.”

“But you don’t.” I lifted my hat and raked my fingers through my hair. I let out a long breath that inflated my cheeks. “And maybe my father didn’t, either. Maybe he just thought I’d be stubborn enough and angry enough to try.”

“Or, heroic enough.”

I raised my head at that, fixed my eyes on his. I wasn’t sure why, but something slipped into place in between my ears, completing a thought I hadn’t realized I’d been puzzling over.

“That’s why I have a squire, isn’t it?” I looked at Pip, who didn’t look away this time. Her eyebrows pinched together over her nose like she wanted to deny it, like it pained her not to, but didn’t think I’d believe her. “She’s supposed to bring you the key. Once I’m dead.”

Dante’ frowned. “No. If you don’t emerge victorious. Well, let’s just say any chance we have of keeping the Veil intact will be gone. That is the one thing I do know. The key and the container form the element. But, there’s a cost.”

“I get it. To get them together, you had to find the Key, and that meant someone had to volunteer for the suicide mission, because they’d have to win this Contest.”

“I have faith in you, Sir Regis,” Pip said. “I have never let myself believe you might fail.”

I wanted to say something snotty in response, but the look on her face told me she felt even worse about the situation than I did. Which was saying a lot.

“Ha!” Golgameth held up the metal loop and waved it in the air. “Golgameth has prevailed!”

Grimm smiled and took the medieval-looking puzzle from him. “Well, now… that barely took over ten minutes. It seems like I underestimated you.” Then to me, he added, “Sometimes, people can surprise you with what they can achieve.”

“Ha HA! Golgameth is smart, like wizard!”

With that, Grimm turned toward the door. He paused when he reached it. “You’re not the first knight to go into a hopeless battle, Sir Regis. Nor will you be the last. At least now you know what that armor is for. This is what it means to be a knight.”

He closed the door behind him without saying anything more.

“Golgameth shall win battle, Little Man! Just like Golgameth beat puzzle!”

I turned over Dante’s words a few times, my mind unwilling to let them fade. And then it hit me.

“I know where the lock is,” I said, telling myself as much as the others.

Pip inched closer, her compact body tightly wound, wavering between excitement and dread. “You do? That’s wonderful, Sir Regis!”

“Ho HO!” Golgameth pushed himself off the couch. “Let us go, Little Man! It is time for battle!”

I took a breath, but didn’t respond. My eyes were drawn to the collapsed cushions on my now sway-back couch. There were at least three broken loops from the puzzle that had slid to the lowest point in the middle, beneath where the giant had been sitting. The giant had cheated.

I pushed myself away from the desk, unsure if this last thing counted as a revelation, or an affirmation, but I marveled at it either way. My lips mouthed the words soundlessly, at least the last three of them, just to give the thought texture.

Dante Grimm is one manipulative son of a bitch.

“WHAT IS THIS PLACE, Little Man? This does not look like a battlefield to Golgameth!”

I parked the Mustang in the museum parking lot, now empty. I took a spot around back, not easily visible from the street.

“You’ll like it,” I said, getting out. “It’s got everything a guy like you could ask for.” I took my eyes off the building long enough to give him a quick glance. “Well, maybe not all in your size.”

“Ha HA! Little man makes a joke!”

“Keep your voice down,” I said, looking around. “We don’t exactly have permission to be here.”

“Ha Ha Ha! Who will stop Golgameth?”

“I don’t know, someone with an assault rifle who’s trying to sleep? Look, just try to be quiet, okay?”

The springs groaned as the giant climbed out of my Mustang. I feared it was going the way of my couch. Of course, chances were so was I in a matter of hours, so it was hard to get too worked up over any of it.

I put a finger to my ear to feel the earpiece. “Pip, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Sir Regis. I have your armament, and am ready to join you.”

“Where are you?”

“Close. I can see you. I do not believe anyone has followed you and I see no signs anyone else arrived there before you. Are you sure this is the location?”

“It damn sure better be. Because if it’s not, I’m all out of ideas.”

“Sir Regis…I’m sorry I’ve kept so much from you. I know you are angry with me. I don’t blame you. I wanted to tell you. Really, I did. But I didn’t think I had a choice.”

I didn’t respond to that. Things had been a little icy since Grimm left my office, but as much as I’d wanted to, I didn’t call her out over it. While it’s true I was mad, and that I did feel more than a little betrayed, part of me understood she’d been put in an awkward position.

I wasn’t about to let her off the hook that easily, though. Petty acts of revenge can go a long way to balancing those imaginary scales we use to deal with others, and right then I wasn’t above putting a thumb on it. Besides, there wasn’t time to have a heart-to-heart with her about my feelings.

“I’m going to check the entrance.”

A brief pause. I could sense her resignation through the silence. That caused a tinge of guilt, but I told myself there’d be plenty of time to talk things out if I survived.

“Sir Regis, what are you going to do about… him?”

I looked over at Golgameth, who was stretching and scratching like some zoo attraction. “I’m not sure yet. There’s a chance he might come in handy.”

“Who are you talking to now, Little Man? How many voices can such a small head hold?”

“It’s Pip,” I said. When he didn’t react, I added, “Redhead, ‘bout this tall?” I flattened my hand and held it front of my chest. “My Squire?”

“Ah! Of course! The Little Man has a squire who speaks to him through magic! Good! But you will not need a squire, for Golgameth shall fight this battle and be declared winner of the Contest!”

“Yeah, about that. Look, G-Man, I appreciate your enthusiasm and all, but this has kinda-sorta-gotta be my ‘battle.’ On account of if I don’t win it, I apparently face certain death and all.”

“Nonsense! This glory was promised to Golgameth! Golgameth will win the Contest and become the Champion!”

“What I really need you to do, Golgameth, is for you to have my back. You can be my, you know, trusty sidekick or something.”

Even in the weak wash of the streetlight, I could see the giant’s expression harden. It was not a sight that sent warm fuzzies running through me.

“Do not get in Golgameth’s way, Little Man. Golgameth does not want to hurt you.”

It wasn’t an argument I was prepared to have, so I just continued walking. I didn’t want the monstrous oaf with me at all, but how the hell could I get rid of him? I suppose there was also a part of me that kept thinking he might come in handy. I mean, a guy that big had to be good for something. I patted my sports coat where the Key was and made my way to the front of the building.

The odds against the doors being unlocked were, I figured, probably a million to one. But I had learned long ago that checking stuff like that is a way to avoid the humiliation of finding out later how wrong you were. And I was sure glad I did, because the oversized glass entry door opened when I pulled on it. That feeling of good fortune was fleeting, though, because I immediately realized that probably meant someone was inside.

“What is it, Little Man? Why do you stand there and not move?”

“Someone’s here,” I said. “Or has been.” Lowering my voice, I added, “Pip, the doors are unlocked. I’m going inside. Wait for me to give you the all-clear.”

“Enough talking! Golgameth is impatient!”

I pulled the door all the way and walked into the entryway. The second set of glass doors was also unlocked. I looked back as Golgameth squeezed his ridiculous frame through the space and stepped inside.

The museum was dark. Exhibits glowed in the dim red light of emergency exit signs, which gave the place a Welcome-To-Hell vibe; like a little demon with horns and a devil tail was going to pop out at any moment and announce he would be our tour guide.

Something felt off, though I wasn’t sure what.

One thing I was sure of was that the intense discomfort at the small of my back was the Colt, wedged behind my belt. I removed it and let the look and weight of it boost my confidence. I gestured back to Golgameth to follow me, finishing with my finger to my pursed lips, and was gratified that he actually seemed to understand, more gratified still that he complied.

On creeping cat feet, I headed toward the room where the medieval weapons were displayed. I gave up tiptoeing after a few steps when I realized Golgameth’s footfalls would probably cause impact tremors in a glass of water out in the parking lot.

Every space has its own ambient sound. Outside locations have the susurrant friction of a breeze, or the trill of crickets, or the din of traffic, some combination of hums and ticks and whispers, however faint, that provide a background audio track for all ears that can hear. Indoor spots each have their own distinct mixtapes. The micro echoes of air circulating, the drone of electrical equipment, the whirring of a fan, the notching of a clock. The thing about this place was, there was nothing. I mean, nothing. Not a sound, not a tremor. I could hear every pop of my knees. I could hear every rustle of my sports coat. I could hear my breathing, Golgameth’s breathing, and my heartbeat. The only thing that truly counted as noise was our footsteps, which sounded hollow and dead in the silence.

And I’m not ashamed to tell you that it creeped the hell out of me.

“These weapons…” Golgameth’s voice, though mercifully lowered to a whisper, boomed in my ear, causing me to practically soil myself. He had leaned forward to where his lips were almost brushing my lobe. “How many do you think they have killed in battle?”

I shook my head, gave him an irritable shushing gesture. But I couldn’t wave off his words. I hadn’t really thought of that, not in terms of numbers. These weren’t replicas. The rifles and pistols and bayonets surrounding us were all the genuine article, and all had likely seen action. The red hue blanketing all of them suddenly seemed disturbingly appropriate.

I slowed as I reached the opening to the medieval room and stalked my way in.

This room was much darker than the main museum area. I stood there a moment, waiting for my vision to adjust. There were figures in the shadows, but, thankfully, nothing that was moving.

Seconds passed. I cocked my head to listen, trying to detect any out-of-place sounds. Golgameth pushed past me with a grunt, stomping to a stop a few feet into the room. He put his hands on his hips and peered into the darkness.

“No one is here, Little Man!”

That certainly snapped the mood. I stepped over to the nearest wall and groped for a switch. Nothing. I crossed the entryway and tried that side. I found a pair of switches and flipped them up.

Overhead lights flickered on, bathing everything in a florescent glow.

We hadn’t cleared the entire museum, hadn’t even so much as glanced into any of the adjacent rooms, but I didn’t see the point. Golgameth was right. No one else was here. I could feel it. I guess I should have found that comforting, but I didn’t.

“We’re here, Pip,” I said.

“Is it the right place?”

“I’m about to find out.”

“I’m making my way to you now, Sir Regis. I have your armament.”

Golgameth strode around the room, casting admiring looks at the various weaponry. He stopped in front of a battle axe on a wall mount behind glass. The thing had a handle long enough to pole vault with and a head the size of a Monster Truck tire.

“Ho HO! Golgameth has found his weapon!”

Before I could object, the giant put his fist through the glass. I palmed my face as he knocked out the few jagged shards that remained and then ripped the axe from its mount.

“Golgameth, while I appreciate your enthusiasm—more than the owners will, I guarantee you—I don’t think this is a team event. Whatever this Contest is, I’m the one who needs to compete. Are you hearing me? I’d love to be able to let you volunteer as tribute, but me staying above ground likely requires it be me, and me alone.”

He hoisted the axe high, swinging it in rapid arcs down and across. If the smile on his face were any bigger, the corners of his mouth would have met at the back of his head.

“So, Little Man, where is this lock? Have you found what we came here for?”

I stared at him for a few moments; his ridiculous face with that ridiculous ponytail springing from the top of his ridiculously gigantic head atop that ridiculously gigantic frame. He was like a giant dog from a children’s book, breaking stuff and slobbering over everything but too genuine in his enthusiasm to stay mad at.

“As soon as Pip comes in with my stuff, we’ll see.”

“What is it?” The giant scanned the room. “A door? A gate? A passage to a battleground where Champions are crowned? Golgameth does not see anything.”

Prodded by his own observation, he began to study the walls, moving between displays and pressing his hand against the drywall, feeling and knocking.

I walked over to the Black Knight. The suit of armor stood over a chest, one metal-clad foot atop it, guarding it. The chest was made of heavy, hardened wood, shaped and supported by iron bands. A thick metal latch fit over an eyehole, which was secured by an ancient-looking padlock. The kind that had a keyhole that appeared to be, from where I was standing, just the right size.

“Just a few more minutes,” I said, looking at the chest. “Pip’s bringing—”

Something slammed into me, knocking the thought right out of my head and the words back down my throat. I felt myself being lifted off the ground as I tried to shake the stars from my eyes.

I blinked and saw Golgameth’s enormous face, felt his piston fingers digging into the pockets of my coat.

“Now Golgameth knows! You thought you could hide it from Golgameth!”

He pulled his hand back, the Key clipped between his two forefingers.

“Golgameth, no!” I reached helplessly for it, flailing. “You can’t!”

The giant tossed me aside, sending me sprawling across the floor.

“Do not try to stop me, Little Man! Golgameth will win the Contest! Golgameth will be crowned Champion!”

I scrambled to my feet as he picked up the battle axe and crouched down in front of the trunk. He rested the weapon across his legs and reached for the lock. I ran at him, lowering my shoulder, and tried to tackle him. To say I bounced off him would be an insult to all things rubber. It was more like my body collapsed on impact and I staggered back a step before dropping to my knees.

“Golgameth!”

The lock—or what I assumed was the lock—made a gritty scraping sound, followed by a click. I heard it clatter to the floor, and saw it near his feet. The Key dropped next to it.

“Golgameth!”

The lid opened and I had to shield my eyes. The light seemed to push at me like a wind, forcing me back, it was so bright. It swirled up toward the ceiling in the shape of a water spout, throwing off flashing beams that caused the room to explode in blinding bursts. The funnel of light projected a swirling kaleidoscope onto the ceiling. The motion formed a vortex, and the center of it widened until I could see the night sky through it, though I could still make out the texture of the ceiling behind the image.

Then I saw Golgameth rising up, his body bathed in the white glow. Even squinting through my fingers, my eyelids barely able to stay open against the brightness, I could see the expression on his face as he looked up. Eyes bulging, mouth spread in a rictus grin. I had no idea whether that meant he was scared, or excited, or giddy.

He continued to ascend and it looked like he was going to hit the ceiling, but he kept going, kept rising, right through the clear middle where the sky was visible, the image rippling slightly as he did, like liquid. The moment he was past it, the light flashed again, compelling me to turn away. I forced myself to look just in time to see the trunk flip shut with a clunk, swallowing all the light.

I tried to blink the spots out of my eyes. Everything was quiet. The Key lay on the floor where I’d seen it fall. But the lock was somehow back on the latch, fully engaged.

“Pip, we’ve got situation here.”

Slowly, I made my way closer to the trunk, half-expecting the thing to open its lid again like a set of jaws and bite me.

“Pip, you really need to get in here.” I reached down and picked up the Key. “Pip?”

I felt a vibration in my pocket. I pulled out my phone. The Caller ID said it was Pip, which meant she wasn’t using that special direct connection, which was my first indication things were about to go from bad to worse. I swiped the screen with my thumb, but said nothing.

“We have her,” the voice said. I’m not sure how, but I recognized it immediately. It was the gal from Club Med, the barmaid. A feminine rasp, assertive, definitely not trying to sound friendly.

“Who is this?” The words came out even though I knew the answer. It just seemed like the thing to say.

“If you want to see your… friend again, come to the Med, come alone, and bring the Key.”

“Let me speak to her.”

“Bring the Key,” the voice repeated. The phone beeped a tone and flashed to the home screen.

I stared at the phone, waiting for it to ring again, but gave up after a minute and slid it back into my pocket. I rested my gaze on the trunk and dragged my fingers down my face. Then I stared up at the ceiling, and finally down at the Key in my hand.

It occurred to me that I had no way of getting in touch with Grimm, except through Pip. At least, not without a lot of time and some travel. I could hear his clear, clipped words from earlier in the evening, telling me how my father had wanted me to understand that someday I’d have no one else to rely on, other than myself.

Thanks, Dad, I said, though I imagine my lips never moved and no words were actually spoken. Like a silent prayer.

Lesson learned.

12

I arrived at the Club about an hour later, but parked a few blocks away and sat in the car thinking. Most of my thoughts during the frantic drive across town were harsh urgings, chastising myself to think faster, harder, better; thoughts about needing to think.

That feeling of spinning wheels was pushing my stress level through the roof. The first thing I needed to do was take stock of what I knew. It was the gal from the bar who had called. I couldn’t remember her name. She had Pip, and wanted the Key.

It wasn’t much, but it was known.

Something else I knew was that she couldn’t be working alone. If I was wrong about that, it meant she was a hell of a lot more than just some waitress from the bar. After what I’d seen the past few days, with magic and monsters and my couch bowed by a giant, I couldn’t rule out much. Risky as it was, I was going to have to operate under a few assumptions. My first would be that there were others involved, likely calling the shots. Which suggested a bigger question. If she wasn’t working alone, and she had worked for Alonzo, did that mean that freak show son of a bitch was still alive? I’d killed him myself, so I thought I knew the answer, but could I be sure Manticores could even be killed? Did he just shake it off after I’d left and plot to get the Key from me when he found out I’d tracked it down? My brain chewed on that one a long time, uncertain whether to swallow.

Why did she or whoever else was involved even want the Key? I could guess at a broad answer, but a more precise one was elusive. And why abduct Pip near the museum, but then make me come to the club? Why not just take care of things outside, right then?

The process was making my head hurt. Or hurt more, I should say.

I ran through the possibilities several times, accepting some, rejecting others, relying on a few inferential leaps. I tried to think horses, rather than zebras, which wasn’t such an easy thing to do when I couldn’t even rule out unicorns. I didn’t know for sure who was behind this, but the more I stared in the direction of the Mediterranean, the more I did start to have a suspicion. I reached around and pulled the Colt from my belt and looked at it. A plan started to form. Not a great one. Not even a good one. But having something in mind seemed better than having nothing. I was relying on a whole lot of guesswork and making way too many assumptions given the stakes, but I had to play the cards in my hand. Even if they turned out to be Aces and Eights.

One long breath, then another. I got out of the car and walked to the Club.

Showtime.

A large neon sign in the curtained window out front read “CLOSED” in glowing hot pink letters. A similar sign on the front door, this one plastic, said the same. I turned the knob and pushed. The door opened.

Inside, the place seemed empty. And with the way it was lit, I could see the whole floor from front to back the moment I walked in. I wouldn’t say the club was particularly bright. It was more a case that when it was open for business they kept the lighting unnaturally dim. The difference was striking. Overhead bulbs way up on the vaulted ceiling illuminated all the tables and floors in a uniform wash of florescence and I got the impression of a hooker in the morning light, the lines around her eyes and the smoke-stained yellow of her fingertips revealing more than was meant to be seen by the customers.

But aside from the scuffed and dirty floor and the rather rickety look of the seating, the thing that stuck out to me was the large pane of glass above the stage. With the lights on, the high ones shining through the glass enough to illuminate shapes behind it, I could see the space housed an audio control room, and probably doubled as a way for a manager or the owner to keep a surveilling eye on the patrons and staff. No wonder Alonzo and his goons were so quick to be waiting for me in the alley. He probably watched me walk in.

Then the lights went out, and everything went dark.

I’m not sure what I thought was going to happen, but before I could brace myself for whatever my subconscious was expecting, a spotlight threw a cone of white onto the stage, highlighting a microphone.

“Well,” I said, breaking the stretching silence. “I’ll need to warm up my voice, but if you insist…” I started moving toward the stage. “Danka Schoen, key of G. And let’s go with a brush snare.”

I had only advanced a few feet when the curtain behind the stage parted and another spotlight shone on it.

In the cone of light, I saw a woman. Of some sort. She was short, with skin that was a shade of emerald and hair that was a shimmering cobalt blue. She was standing there with a net over her, the kind of thing people used to use to catch butterflies with in cartoons. The ring at the bottom of it was only about a foot wider in diameter than she was. The person inside had her palms out against the weave of it, like she was a prisoner.

I looked at her for a moment, then had to blink a double-take. No way.

“Pip?”

The look on her face, the moist hopelessness in those eyes, was painful to watch. She was emitting an alloy of emotions, part fear, part shame, part something poignant I couldn’t quite separate out. It was her, all right. Before I could say anything else, Dr. Winch, the stuffy museum curator, crossed in front of her and stepped to the microphone.

He may not have been the last person I expected, but he was definitely far down the list.

“What have you done to her?” I asked, trying to keep the anger from choking the words before they came out.

He didn’t speak, not right away, but above him the lights behind the glass came on. Three figures looked down at me, somewhat backlit, but easily recognizable.

“Ladies,” I said, touching the brim of my hat. I don’t think I’d ever uttered words with quite so much contempt in my voice as I did those.

“I believe you have something for me,” Dr. Winch said, his voice amplified slightly through the microphone.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“We didn’t do anything to her,” said a different voice, this one feminine, projecting through the same speakers. I looked up at Cassiopeia.

“If it comes down to asking who I’m going to believe, you or my lyin’ eyes, you’re going to lose.”

“Funny you should say that,” she said. “I said we didn’t do anything to her. I didn’t say we didn’t do anything.”

“Are you going to keep playing games?” I lowered my eyes toward Winch. “Because all you’re managing to do is take someone already pissed off and pissing him off some more.”

“We didn’t touch her,” Cassiopeia said. “We didn’t change her. We simply removed her enchantment. Your lyin’ eyes are now just being…truthful.”

I shifted my gaze to Pip. The anguish on her face was so palpable, I could feel it in my gut.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Thank your mentor,” Cassiopeia said. “The esteemed Mr. Grimm. It seems he enjoys fooling people so much, he does it as a matter of routine, even when he’s not performing.”

I looked up at her. “Grimm did this?”

“The illusion. Amplified by your friend’s own magical aura, of course. Just one of the many ways he hides the truth.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Why does she look like this? And what the hell do you have her in?”

“That’s an Imp-Net,” Winch said, his voice interjecting through the speaker. “It’s harmless to her, really. But she can’t break free of it. They used to be quite popular among royalty. The equipment was expensive, but the hunt was considered the ultimate sporting event, and the prize, well, let’s just say to the victor went the spoils. They were always known for their carnal talents.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your friend here, ‘Pip.’ She’s—”

“I’m an imp!”

Her voice yanked my face down and we locked eyes. Hers were pleading. Mine, I’m sure, were round and confused.

“I’m an imp,” she repeated, her body sagging. “Mr. Grimm and I both thought it best you not know.”

“There’s more,” Cassiopeia said. “I’m sure Mr. Bishop would love to learn why no one else ever seemed to notice you. Even in passing.”

Those words hit me like a delayed slap. My mind started racing through the halls of my head, throwing open doors and looking inside for answers. It was obvious now that something had always been off. Had anyone ever seen her? Someone other than Grimm and me? Did Claudia ever once mention seeing her? Had anyone? I thought of Golgameth, how he kept asking, ‘who’s Pip’?

I looked at her again. The hurt in those eyes was hard to bear. I had to do something.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re telling me that all this time, the whole six or seven weeks you’ve been my squire, working daily by my side, you weren’t really a redhead?”

She coughed out a laugh, holding the back of her hand to her nose as tears dropped from her eyes. That little chuckle made me feel twenty pounds lighter.

“An imp,” I said. I inhaled sharply, shaking my head. “Well, hell, I could have handled a gnome, or a leprechaun, or a fairy, even, but an imp? You’d better believe that as soon as I find out exactly what an imp is, I’m going to want to have a word with you.”

She laughed again, a sobbing chuckle, and I could almost see the tension and angst leave her body. It was exactly what I’d hoped for; to let her know it was okay between us. Not to tell her it was okay, but have her feel it. I felt sort of good about myself, for the moment.

Of course, I still had the minor issue of getting out of this situation alive to contend with.

Winch spoke up. “Now that you understand, you can see we’ve upheld our end. Even given you a bonus revelation. So, with that out of the way, did you bring the Key?”

“Let her go first.”

“We need to be certain you brought it.”

I filled my lungs with air and let it exhale naturally. It occurred to me that was just what I’d always do at the bell, when my corner was pulling out the stool and my trainer was yelling reminders about moving to my right or following up with combinations. Only I didn’t have a corner now, didn’t have a trainer, didn’t have anyone talking in my ear. Recently, those jobs had been filled by Pip.

“Tell me something, Winch,” I said, motivated by genuine curiosity. “What’s your angle? How the hell does a museum administrator get involved in something like this?”

He looked at me with the sort of disdain a teacher has for a student who asks a dumb question shortly after having told the class there was no such thing as a dumb question.

“You actually think I’m a traitor. How amusing. Do you have any idea what it is to devote your life to an intellectual pursuit? To spend not just years, but decades studying, researching, pondering, theorizing?”

“Going back more than one decade puts me in elementary school. But I’m pretty sure I understand the concept of someone having a passion. Most who do don’t, you know, sell out the human race.”

“I’m not talking about merely a hobby, pursued for amusement or entertainment or recreation. I’m not even talking about a career. I’m talking about a life of the intellect where the world you studied became the world you lived in, in your mind. Imagine that such a robust life of the mind shaped who you are, filling you with all the things you couldn’t find elsewhere. A sense of honor. A code. A thirst for adventure. Now, imagine that same life, lived yet not lived, where your body is stuck in a world of crass commercialism, of TV sitcoms and gadgets and social media and lives like yours not being lived for all the wrong reasons, when all you have wanted for so many years was to live the way your life was meant to be lived. In a world where men fought with honor, where Kings could be admired and served valiantly by noblemen, where creatures that have been vanquished to our fading recollection of legends filled the landscape with wonder.”

“Is that what they promised you? A time machine?”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking. Only rather than transporting me to that time, that time will be transported to us. Once the Veil is ripped asunder, this world will return to its rightful state of balance. The old ways will be dusted off and brought back. The things we lost to modernity, to technology, to the constant reach for the future, will suddenly be in demand again.”

“And just coincidentally, so will experts in that era. How convenient for you.”

The man shrugged. “A New World will need new leaders. But think of how glorious it will be. A renaissance of medieval values and teachings, a return to chivalry and honor and sorcery and class. An appreciation for life as it becomes something fought for and cherished, rather than taken for granted. The old will become new again.”

“And in all this imagining of the New Old World of yours, doctor…” I looked past him at Pip. “Did you picture yourself the guy rescuing the damsels? Or the one putting them in distress?”

That made him stiffen. “This creature is hardly an innocent, and certainly not a bystander. And I find your implication quite offensive. There is nothing sexist about my philosophy. Women have always wielded power in far more subtle and effective ways than men. As my acquaintances here should have already taught you.”

I looked up at the Sirens. Cassiopeia smiled down on me. It was obvious they were the machine here, and Winch just a cog. I wondered if he understood how they were using him. I decided that was unlikely. The irony was rich. He was a patsy, and the whole point of a patsy requires they remain oblivious to being one.

“Now,” he said, clearing his throat. “The Key. Do you have it?”

“I’m told if you take possession of this, you either have to participate in a life-or-death Contest that you can’t win, or you die anyway.”

Winch smiled. “My friends upstairs took care of that. Once the Contest has begun, someone who had not previously possessed it may do so within a moon without being subject to its onerous baggage.”

Golgameth, I thought. That’s why they stuck him with me. They filled his head with delusions of glory so he’d do exactly what he did.

“The Key?”

I stuck my left hand in my pocket and retrieved the Key. I held it up for Winch to see and slid my right hand to the small of my back. I didn’t have much of a plan, but I also didn’t have much of a choice. I had to see it through.

“Excellent!” he said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them.

I drew the Colt just as I started to hear the humming. It was loud, enhanced. And entrancing. I could already feel my mind start to float, to disengage. It was only an instant, but an instant was all it took. It was also all I needed.

I resisted for the couple of seconds that I still could. I put the gun to the side of my head and pulled the trigger.

The percussion of the report was every bit as jarring as a solid hook to the temple. My skull felt like I’d taken a shovel to the back of it. I staggered, hunched over, and shook it a few times. The inside of my brain was pounding. But it had the intended effect.

Just to be safe, I groped for my pocket and deposited the Key, then I switched the Colt to my left hand. With the gun next to the other side of my head, I pulled the trigger again.

Both ears were ringing like an industrial smoke alarm now. I was vaguely aware of some plaster dust sprinkling down on me after that last shot. Two forty-five slugs to the ceiling. Two massive assaults to my eardrums.

Other than the ringing, I couldn’t hear a thing. It was possible I never would again, given how my ears felt, but at least my plan seemed to be working.

Winch looked confused and more than a little frightened. My head didn’t want to cooperate, but I forced myself to focus, trying to shake off the weight and fog swishing behind my eyes. I rushed the stage, each bounding step like a knife to my brain.

As I got there, I realized by the way Winch recoiled in terror that he thought I was going to start plugging him with large caliber bullets. It was tempting, but I was pretty sure he was just an ordinary man. A sorry excuse for one, maybe, but still a man. And I didn’t really want to have a murder on my conscience. I had enough on there as it was.

Besides, why shoot him when I could do something even more satisfying? He was cringing when I reached him, cowering, really, hands out, covering himself up. I held the Colt out to him, butt first, and nodded for him to take it. He slowly emerged from his protective shell and put out a wary hand. That was enough of an opening for me to land a solid right to his jaw. He went down pretty hard. Not being in a Marquis of Queensbury mood, I kicked him twice in the ribs, breaking more than one for sure, then landed a final one on his face that sent him far off into dreamland.

I’d like to say it felt good, but my head wasn’t letting me feel much of anything aside from a profound ache. The ringing in my ears had progressed from a sharp, piercing peal to a blunt, tinny note that sounded like an elegy for all the auditory nerves I just sent to their graves. But I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in pain or self-pity. I turned to Pip, green and blue Pip, who was looking at me with a sense of urgency, mouthing words I couldn’t make out.

I gestured to her that I couldn’t hear, but that didn’t stop her from trying. I could make out muffled sounds, like someone talking underwater. I moved closer and reached for the net, but stopped when I realized she was screaming.

“I don’t understand,” I said, pointing to my ear. “I can’t hear anything.” My voice sounded like I was far away in my own head, talking through a pillow. Hers was even less intelligible. A teacher talking to Charlie Brown.

“Wif wuh wa wool!”

I shook my head and said “Sorry,” though I didn’t really hear whether the words came out.

She stuck her finger down at an angle and stabbed it violently. I followed the direction and saw that the ring on the floor was connected to a pole, like a broomstick handle.

Her words broke through for the first time, “Lift the handle!”

I nodded and bent to grab the long piece of wood. A surge of something sizzled up my arms and I yanked back. It was like touching a live wire. I looked at Pip again, and she said something it took me three times to understand.

“Use your jacket!”

I shrugged off my sports coat and dropped it over the pole, then scooped my fingers beneath it. I managed to get enough of a grip to lift it, even though it was much heavier than I had anticipated. I strained to get it a couple of feet off the ground and Pip dipped down and scooted out from under it, careful to avoid touching the ring.

Once she was clear, I let it drop and caught my breath. I was suddenly exhausted.

“Hurry, Sir Regis!”

I could hear her now, though her voice was distant and faint and sounded like an analog phone call from the other side of the globe, with the speaker holding the receiver to his chest.

Then I saw why she was urging me to get moving. The Sirens had migrated from their lofty perch. They had microphones in their hands and as soon as I saw them, their mouths began to move.

Whatever speaker system they were hooked up to, this one went to eleven. Their voices boomed, more than loud enough for their tones to penetrate the mushy numbness of my eardrums. It was a sweet chorus of harmonies, soothing and reassuring and the lizard part of my brain that cared about survival told me I had to start being cold-blooded if I didn’t want my blood to start cooling on its own. I reached for the Colt again, but somewhere along the way I wasn’t at the Club anymore.

I was on an island, little more than an atoll. I was surrounded by a glistening emerald sea beneath a sky the shade of a robin’s egg. Music filled the air, as did the saccharine scent of perfume. I was holding a wind instrument, crudely but skillfully crafted from a bamboo shoot. The music began to move my hips, and soon my body was joining in, ebbing and swaying with the melody. I lifted the flute, or recorder, or whatever it was, to my lips, knowing what to do, ready to join in.

Something yanked the instrument away from my mouth and my head snapped to the side as I was cracked across the jaw. I felt myself whipsawed out of my head and I was back in the Club, standing there, Pip with a death grip on one arm, hanging on for dear life. In my hand was the Colt.

“Sir Regis, let go!”

The Sirens started over, their voices caressing my mind. I thought I felt the gun slip from my fingers just as I phased into another place, this one a meadow. I was surrounded by flowers, more colors than I knew existed, and butterflies of every hue fluttering over and under each other like WWI biplanes. There was a large butterfly net nearby, lying among a swath of daisies, and that delicious music was letting me know it was for me, that I was supposed to use it to catch them, to save them.

I moved toward the net, but as I bent to reach it I heard a violent crack of thunder. I paused, and a moment later I heard another, this one even louder. The music stopped. My ears were ringing hard again. I was standing over the net I had lifted for Pip.

I spun on my heels to see Pip holding the pistol, struggling to keep it steady, using both hands. Smoke slithered out of the barrel and wound its way up. I followed the direction it was pointed and saw a speaker with a hole in the mesh covering and sparks popping out of it.

Winch was starting to stir a few feet away, pushing himself to his knees, raising one hand off the stage to hold against his jaw. He didn’t appear anxious to join in any fray.

I could hear a distant sound. I turned to see Pip barely a yard from me. Given how wide her mouth opened and the way her head moved, I took it she was screaming at me.

“We have to go!”

The Sirens looked as upset as I’d ever seen them, which meant, not very. A bit frustrated, perhaps, but it was hard to tell. They stood in their threesome, Cassiopeia, the tallest, in the middle, and I got the sense they were humming a tune my ears weren’t quite catching. There was an expectant cast to their gaze. But whatever they had in mind, Pip didn’t act like she wanted to hang around long enough to find out.

Pip grabbed my arm and with a shaky jump we were off the stage and heading toward the door. I watched the Sirens as we scampered by them, really not liking that look. My head was scrambled, the ringing in my ears making it doubly hard to think on top of the curb-stomping my skull felt like it had endured, but even in that state I could tell something was up.

Pip was still tugging at me and there was no question she was right about getting out of there. So I kept going, right behind her, trying to get my head to cooperate. When we were almost past the bar she stopped, seeming to remember something. She pushed me onto a stool and held out a palm to signal that I should stay put, then she ran back to the stage. And I mean, ran. She moved faster than I’d ever seen anyone run. I chalked it up to my head being all spongy.

Within a few seconds she returned, dragging her rolling bag, brandishing the pistol in the general direction of the Sirens as she passed. They hadn’t moved, still looking on with a mildly amused set of expressions.

We reached the door, stumbled through it into the night, and after a moment of trying to generate a straight thought, pointed Pip in the direction of my car.

I was in no condition to drive, but Pip opened the driver’s side door and put me behind the wheel. I fumbled for my keys as she climbed in the other side, started it up, and lurched down the street. I drove aimlessly for several minutes before I remembered where I was going. Where I had no choice but to go.

Pip was saying things. I knew, because there were murmurs getting through the constant liquid drone and buzz in my ears. I couldn’t understand any of it and really didn’t have the energy to try. She seemed upset, though, and I figured it was because she knew where I was heading.

When we got there, police cars, fire trucks, and emergency personnel were blocking the road. As foggy as my head still was, I knew the moment I saw them what my discombobulated brain had been trying to get a grip on as we were leaving the Club, what it had read in the looks on the Sirens’ faces.

No confirmation was necessary, but I got it anyway. Unlike my wrecked eardrums, my nose was just fine. The charred, sooty smell was unmistakable. I coasted up as close as the cops would let me. One hose was still going, dousing from the exterior, while firefighters were moving in and out of the front doors.

The outside walls were there, as was the roof, but from the looks of it, the rest of the museum was as good as up in smoke.

13

I slept for five hours, maybe six. I hadn’t checked the time when I crashed.

My head felt like I’d snorted an IED and held my nose and mouth shut while it went off. I sat up on the couch in my office, my glutes low and my knees high due to the sagging middle, and rubbed my face. When I opened my eyes, a glass of water was in front of them, attached to some green fingers.

“Take these,” she said, handing me a pair of pills as I took the glass. “Ibuprofen. I read it is what people take for headaches.”

I nodded, popping them into my mouth and taking a swallow of water. “I’ll take another couple, if you got ‘em.”

My ears were still ringing, but I could hear. There was a dullness to everything, a muffle, like I had water or wax in them, but sounds were audible. The opening to each felt weird, and when I rubbed a finger against one of them, it came back coated in dried blood.

“Sir Regis, we need to talk.”

I swallowed two more pills she gave me, let out a sigh as the water cleared my throat. “Let me guess. It’s not me, it’s you.”

“What?”

“Never mind. There’s nothing to talk about. Unless you’ve got some other revelation that you’ve been keeping secret from me, manipulating me with magic so I wouldn’t find out, I’m fine.”

“Please, Sir Regis. I would like to explain.”

“Look, knock it off with the ‘Sir Regis’ crap, okay? I mean, it was cute at first. Fun even; a bit of an ego boost. But now it just seems… phony.”

“But Sir Regis, it’s not—”

I showed her a palm. “My name is Rex. I only got called Regis when I was in trouble. And the only people I’ve ever heard call me ‘Sir’ other than you are cops during traffic stops.”

She breathed in, held it for a moment, then let the air out like a surrender.

“Rex,” she said, trying it on for size, uncertain of how it fit. “I’m sorry. Please, please forgive me.”

Now that my head was semi-functioning and I had the time to look without my adrenaline jackhammering my heart in a fight-or-flight sort of situation, I noticed that Pip, green skin and blue hair and ears that seemed to come almost to a point, was actually, well, beautiful. And I mean, like, wow. Probably not the most enlightened thought to have during that conversation, but there it was. Before, when I’d seen her as a freckled, diminutive redhead, she looked cute. Attractive, but in a plain, vanilla, girl-next-door sort of way. This was different. What had Winch said? That royalty in centuries past had hunted her kind? Something about the pleasures of the victor getting the spoils? That sure seemed believable. She was small, green, blue-haired, pointy eared, and yet, somehow, in a way I couldn’t quite articulate, flawless.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving the idea off with a flutter of my hand. It was hard to keep my anger directed at her. But I was definitely still angry. “You weren’t the one calling the shots. Let me tell you, though, Dante is going to get more than an earful over this. He’ll be lucky if I don’t break his jaw.”

“Sir Reg… Rex…”

“The nerve of that son of a bitch! How many other things is he keeping from me? From all of us he roped into this mess? Now that I think of it, I should find the others, start comparing notes.”

“Rex…”

“I mean, seriously. How insane do you have to be to do the stuff I’ve been doing these past few days?” The more I heard my own words, the angrier I became. I pushed myself off the couch and started to pace, working my knuckles. “For him to lie like that…”

“Rex…”

“For him to use you that way, for him to be so damn manipulative, it’s—”

“REX!”

I stopped and looked at her. She was staring at me with ice-blue eyes that blazed with intensity. They hadn’t been that color a moment ago, I was sure of it.

Now that she had my attention, she took a settling breath and lowered her voice.

“It wasn’t Mr. Grimm’s doing. It was mine.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure he pressured you—”

“No, Rex. He agreed that it would be best for the first time we met, to avoid a shock or misunderstanding. But he wanted to tell you, wanted to have me tell you, soon after. I resisted. When he began to press, I begged him until he relented.”

She lowered her head.

I ran my fingers through my hair and scratched my scalp. “Why?”

She looked at me, then her eyes changed focus a bit, her gaze shifting past me, as if she had never really contemplated the question before.

“Do you remember the day after we met?”

“The first day you came to my office? The morning after you kept Veronica from carving me up with a butcher knife?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sure,” I said. “But not in detail.”

“You were still overwhelmed. We sat and talked and you thanked me and told me about her.”

“Veronica?”

“Yes. You said how you should have known something was up, that she was too nice and how that should have made you suspicious. Then you looked at me and smiled and said that you didn’t mean you preferred mean women. You told me you were grateful for me showing up and also grateful that I was nice—so nice there was no chance you’d risk asking me out, so I didn’t have to worry, and that you were sure Mr. Grimm wouldn’t allow it, anyway.”

“Pip, that was just me goofing, I didn’t—”

“Then you said, ‘besides, if you’re really going to be my squire, that means we’ll be partners. And partners,’ you said, ‘need to be able to trust each other.’”

“Pip…”

“No, let me finish. I need to get this out.” She brought her gaze back to my eyes. “You know I’m an Imp, but you don’t know what that means.”

That certainly was true. I leaned against my desk. “Go on.”

“We’re nature spirits. We were…bred, for lack of a better term, to be familiars.”

“Familiars?”

“To witches. Wizards. Sorcerers. We were intended to be helpers. Assistants.”

“Squires.”

“Yes. Not as such, but the same idea. The magic that created us, that forged us out of human ancestors through spells and rituals and things I would rather not mention, that magic also made us naturally loyal and companionable. And craving a human friendship few like me would ever have.”

I started to tell her I was still her friend, but she cut me off with a shake of her head.

“We were woodland spirits, back then. Witches would venture into a forest to find a good spot and engage in an elaborate spell to summon one of us. That is how it worked for centuries. But what that Siren said was true. We were also hunted. The females. We had gained a reputation, because of our tendency to bond, and our ability to…please. Most of it was probably the magic that courses through us, creating a mystical experience. But regardless of why, we were pets for the few who could catch us. Mr. Grimm rescued me from such a fate.”

That raised dozens of questions immediately, but I held my tongue.

“I have been hunted, I have been captured, and I have been freed, only to volunteer as repayment of a huge debt to help stop something horrible from happening. But what I have never been, not until I met you, is trusted.”

“Pip, I’m sure Dante trusts you.”

She shook her head vigorously. “He doesn’t distrust me, but that’s not the same thing. To make me unsusceptible to magic, he cloaked me with a warding spell. Imps have magic as the fiber of who we are, so spells we agree to can be enhanced far beyond their normal effectiveness. He also had me rendered invisible to people. All except you.”

I thought of Melusina. How she sensed the magic, even asked if I’d brought an Imp with me. “How did they catch you, then? The Sirens, that is.”

“They sensed my presence, guessed that I’d be going into the museum with you. They set an Imp trap. They spray painted symbols on the asphalt in black, in front of the entrance. They knew they wouldn’t be noticeable in the dark. When I walked over them, I became visible. They threw the net over me and hustled me away. To get to you.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No, I’m sorry. It was my fault. I was rushing, so as not to keep you waiting. I wasn’t cautious enough. But the point is, that’s why I couldn’t tell you, Sir R--…Rex. I couldn’t bear to have you not trust me. I hadn’t expected it to be like…like this.”

“Like what?”

She gave a quick rattle to her head, dismissing the question. “When you looked at me, you saw a woman. A human woman. A woman you trusted. I had never been looked at like that before.”

Those blue eyes held mine in a gentle grip until she broke off her gaze and fixed it onto the floor. This conversation was heading in a direction that was, at best, complicated, and one we really didn’t have time for if I had any intention of staying alive. Even if we did, I’m not sure I would have been comfortable having it.

I slapped my hands together, startling even myself. “Okay, now that we have that out of the way, don’t we have someone’s ass to save? And by ‘someone’s,’ I mean, mine. Oh, and the world’s, too. That’s pretty important, also.”

“Yes, of course.” She wiped at her eyes, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. Women. I will never understand them, even ones with green skin. “But we don’t have much time. Moonrise is in six hours.”

“Could be worse,” I said, shrugging. “We might be able to find the chest by then.”

“But Sir Regis—Rex, it’s not six hours to start the Contest. It’s six hours until you need to finish it. At least, that’s what I overheard them talking about. That’s why they were trying to stall, why they made you drive out to that place. They obviously had no intention of letting me live. And they definitely did not want you starting, let alone finishing, the Contest. They assumed you were chosen because you had some special talent or knowledge that made it possible for you to win.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to make Vegas change the spread.” I rubbed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose. “How long does it take to play?”

“I have no idea. They seemed to believe it would last for hours.”

Great. The hits just kept on coming.

“Rex,” she said. “We have to find that chest. Your time is running out.”

“Okay…What do we know?” I started to tick things off on my fingers. “We know they captured you to lure me away. Was the fire a back-up plan, in case I didn’t show or if we got away?”

“I don’t know, but that would make sense.”

I thought about that, one finger hooked over the other in mid-count. “No, that really doesn’t add up.” I hooked the next finger. “We know someone burned the place down, after I left. The barmaid, maybe? I could have sworn it was her voice on the phone when they called to tell me they had you.”

“She remained,” Pip said, sitting up on the couch, suddenly looking alert. “She was there at the museum and they left. To start the fire. I heard her voice. They told her, ‘thirty minutes.’ I distinctly remember hearing that.”

“So, that was their plan all along. To burn the place, after I left.”

“Yes, but why?”

“There are only three reasons people torch buildings,” I said, trying to fit the pieces together, “insurance, spite, or to destroy evidence.”

“Do you think they were trying to cover up the fact the chest was missing? So no one would look for it?”

I swished that around in my head, but it didn’t taste right. “Why would they care? If they were planning to kill you, and me, why would they bother covering things up? I mean, so drastically?”

“You told me about security camera footage. Could it have been the curator’s preference?”

That was certainly logical, I had to admit. “But the guy ran the place. Couldn’t he have just turned it off? Erased it? Other than weighing a metric ton, was moving it really that big a deal? A few guys and a moving van. Who would care? Burning the place to cover it up seems extreme.”

“Obviously, they had a reason. Perhaps by destroying the whole place, they wanted to delay your discovering some clue. Maybe they never expected to kill you. Maybe they just wanted to slow you down until the window closed. It’s possible they were worried you would learn something if you started your search at the museum.”

My mind flashed the equivalent of a search result that prompted me to push off the desk. “That’s it!”

“What, Sir Regis?”

I didn’t bother to correct her. “I couldn’t budge that chest an inch. That gal from the bar would have needed four or five guys, if it could even be moved. Maybe once the game has begun, it can’t be moved until it’s over. Maybe that’s why they set the fire. To keep me from being there when it finished.” I suddenly became aware of my state, standing there in my underwear. “I need to clean up, change clothes. Armament’s in the trunk?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I’m so glad I remembered to go back and get it. I came close to forgetting.’”

“Then we need to get going.”

“You know where the chest is!”

“I sure do.” I smiled, genuinely happy to see that look on her face, those white teeth showing between those red lips, surrounded by green cheeks. “It’s right where we left it.”

14

The sun was past its midpoint in the sky by the time we arrived, another beautiful day in paradise. The only cloud anywhere close was the dark one hanging over me, reminding me it was probably my last.

Police and fire units had all cleared out. Sharp traces of smoke peppered the air, irritating my nose. Cones and paper signs and police tape warned that the area was a crime scene and that no unauthorized personnel were allowed to enter. Fortunately, they sort of left that to the honor system, along with the deterrent warning of a felony conviction being among the possible consequences. The large, bold lettering was meant to let you know they were serious.

I parked down the street. Pip was waiting when I pulled up. I retrieved the bag from the trunk, and she insisted she take it for me. She wasn’t going to give up the squire-gig easily, that was obvious. Not that I wanted her to. I just wanted her to feel bad about lying to me.

“I have to ask,” I said, watching her pull the handle to roll the bag—which was heavy—along the sidewalk. “Where’s your car? I’ve never even seen it.”

She made a dimpled frown and tilted her head. “I don’t have a vehicle, Sir Regis. I had to allow you to believe I did. Or else you would have been suspicious.”

“Then how do you get around?”

Her mouth opened like she was going to answer. But then she stopped, thought for a moment, and spoke with a different, almost mischievous look on her face. “I will show you, but if you want to know, you will have to win the Contest first.”

I snorted a laugh and shook my head as we headed for the burnt-out building. Finally, some incentive.

Negotiating the cones that cordoned off the drive was easy enough, as was the perimeter tape. But I paused as we got close. Seeing me stop, Pip assured me the Imp Trap only worked once.

“Besides,” she added, gesturing toward the pavement. “All that water and sooty runoff washed away half of it and smeared the rest.”

The front entry required that I cut the tape that formed an X across it between the doors. Unfortunately, those doors were boarded over and locked. Firefighters probably busted out the glass going in. Too bad the locks still worked.

I was scrambling to come up with options other than prying off the wood when Pip said, “Wait here, Sir Regis.”

She trotted around the side of the building and I lost sight of her. Enough time passed that I was about to go looking for her, but then I heard the metallic sound of something sliding and a door opened.

“I found a window,” she said, answering any questions I may have had.

She took the case with my armament and I followed her inside. The air was prickly with the smell of smoke and burnt fabric and pungent chemical odors from melting objects. Each breath scraped my airways and scratched my throat. Aside from the fumes and stench, the place was a wreck. What the fire didn’t consume or char or melt, the high pressure hoses smashed and toppled and shredded. Things that had survived a war didn’t survive this.

Since I knew where I wanted to go, Pip fell in behind me as I headed for the medieval room.

Enough ambient light crept in to make out objects, but the room was dark. It was also in worse shape than the main exhibit hall. The fire had hollowed out the walls, destroyed every display case and stand, and consumed most pieces of fabric down to pasty clumps of soot and ash. Some metal items survived more or less intact, others were warped and buckled, most were deformed beyond recognition, if not reduced to molten lumps.

Material had been tossed haphazardly into the middle of the room, probably the result of firefighters hunting for smoldering remnants. I stepped and hopped past scattered debris and standing water to where the trunk had been. One by one I removed random objects from a pile and tossed them aside. A half-burned shield that looked like a bite had been taken out of it; pieces of charred armor, a sword with blackened leather hanging off the handle.

When I pulled a piece of filthy, wet tapestry off the pile, I saw it.

I pushed and yanked the rest of the stuff off in a hurry. At first, it looked charred and cooked, but when I touched it my fingers came away covered in soot and ash and the spots beneath where my fingers had brushed looked undamaged. I started wiping and quickly realized all the discoloration and burnt layering was superficial. The chest didn’t seem to have so much as an extra scratch, let alone a scorch anywhere I wiped. In fact, the more I rubbed, the more I realized that the weathering and aging of the chest was all superficial, too. It looked practically new. Incredibly old, but as sturdy and functional as if those centuries passed by in a day.

And after a few strokes of my fingers, the lock looked that way, too.

“You were right, Sir Regis!”

I nodded and stood up. “I guess this is it.”

“Shall I help you into your armor, Sir?”

“Why the hell not? Armor away, I say.”

Pip found a spot to open the suitcase. Inside, neatly packed, were the tools of what Grimm described as my ancestral calling. I took off my coat, folded it and placed it on the opened half of the luggage. I put the Colt on top of it and waited for Pip to do her thing.

She told me to take off my shirt and trousers, but to leave my undergarments and socks. I was looking around for a clean spot to take off my shoes, but she had that covered. She reached into the suitcase and unrolled a thin piece of plastic about five-feet square for me to stand on. Then she got to work.

It wasn’t a short process; trousers and leather boots first, then leg armor in pieces, a plate that covered my foot, over that a shin guard, a jointed piece strapped around my knee, a thigh guard. Just the lower half of me took about fifteen minutes. Then she had me slip on a loose blouse with long sleeves, followed by chain mail. Over that, a heavy tunic with an embroidered bird, wings spread. Huge gloves covered each hand, armored hand guards slid over those. She cinched it all up tight with a series of leather straps and buckles.

Then she reached into the suitcase and removed a sword and shield. My sword and shield. In a two-by-three suitcase.

“How in the hell…?”

She smiled but didn’t answer. She turned to the case one final time and removed a helmet. She slid it over my head and opened the visor.

“Are you ready, Sir Regis?”

I wanted to correct her, for the umpteenth time, but didn’t see the use. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“The Key?”

I tilted my head, or as much of my head as my gear would let me, toward my coat. She patted around a few times, then retrieved it from a pocket. She also retrieved my phone.

“Here,” she said, sliding it behind my chest plate. “You still have your earpiece, right? It’s worth a shot.”

I lifted my arm, which felt like lifting a kettle ball, and forced my armored fingers into a thumbs-up gesture.

She took hold of that hand and pressed the Key into it, positioning it so the bent end was protruding just the way I’d need it. She wrapped her relatively small hands around my armored one and pressed it closed.

“I know you can do this, Sir Regis. Whatever the Contest proves to be, I know you are up to the challenge.”

“Well, if I’m not, at least I’m going out in style. A style that hasn’t been in vogue since the 1600s, but still.”

She tightened her lips into a straight line, a look that hinted of being both sad and happy, and then hopped high enough to give me a kiss. Just a peck, but smack on the lips. Before I could react, she shut my visor and turned me toward the trunk.

I knelt down, which was much harder to pull off than it sounds, and managed to find the lock through the slits in my helmet. I inserted the Key, gave it a turn, and the shackle sprang open.

I took a few breaths, then opened the lid.

Nothing happened.

No surge of light, no blinding display, no swirling galaxies of brightness reaching to the heavens. It was just a chest, practically empty. The only thing in it, tucked down in the bottom, was a game board. Old, wooden. The kind used for checkers. Or chess.

“ARE you sure the giant didn’t do anything other than open the lid?”

We were sitting among the debris, the floor strewn with scorched weapons, trying to figure out my next step. Well, I was sitting, at least. Pip was taking serious steps in one direction, then switching, wearing the machinations of her mind on her sleeve.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure. He tossed me aside, opened the lid, and then rose in a spectacular funnel of light.”

Two steps right, two steps left. It was making me dizzy. “Did he say anything? Some kind of phrase when he opened it?”

“No. Nothing I heard.”

I watched her march back and forth a few more times. I wanted to join her, burn off some nervous energy while I thought, but the weight of my outfit made sitting a much more appealing option.

Looking down at my arms, I said, “Do you think it’s the armor?”

She stopped, a hopeful cast to her face. Then she shook her head. “I don’t think so. Grimm said he didn’t know much about the Contest, but he was certain armor was appropriate. He said…” She paused, catching my eye directly. “He said your father had told him you should wear it. I wish I could reach him, but he’s not answering.”

I wasn’t convinced, but taking it off was too much of a hassle for me to dump it all just yet. The chest sat there, closed now. Lock back in place. How it got back in place, I couldn’t say. I just closed the lid, and it was there, all locked up, Key on the floor. Three times, three identical results.

“What else did he say he knew?”

“Hardly anything. That it had been around for centuries, that there was no historical record of it, but that there were rumors of the Contest, the ultimate test of a warrior’s mettle. That’s it. And, that your father somehow knew that armor was appropriate.”

My throat was getting sore from the scratchy, stagnant air. I took my helmet off, though I didn’t expect that would help.

“And the game board? What does that have to do with it? I find it hard to believe Golgameth was transported to sit opposite some wizard playing checkers. And I’d be even more surprised if he knew how to play chess. And why would you need armor and weapons for a board game?”

Pip’s brow popped up and she looked at me. “Mr. Grimm didn’t say anything about weapons! Maybe you’re not supposed to take any? Maybe the Contest supplies you with weapons!”

I started to think she was onto something, but then shook my head. “Golgameth took a battle axe,” I said, resting my chin on the gloved palm of my hand. “Grabbed it right off the wall. So I don’t think that’s it.”

Her posture deflated a bit. “Maybe it was a magic battle axe.” After a moment, her voice perked up. “Maybe it was here because it was associated with the Contest!”

“I suppose that’s possible, but if that—” I cut myself off. “Wait a second. What did you say?”

“I said, maybe the axe was part of the Contest. Associated with the chest?”

“No, before that.”

She thought for a moment. “That maybe it was a magic battle axe? What is it, Sir Regis? What are you thinking?”

I stood up, a feat that required some effort. My gaze slipped to the chest, then over to the suitcase.

“How did you get this big sword into that suitcase?”

“Mr. Grimm, he…Sir Regis! That must be it!”

I made my way over to the chest. “Okay, this trunk obviously has a spell over it, or in it, or whatever, so maybe that’s part of it. The ultimate test of a warrior’s mettle. It would make sense for it to forbid any magic.”

“Or weapons that were touched by magic! That must be it!”

It took a few minutes of rummaging for me to find a sword that seemed undamaged enough by the fire to be serviceable. I held it up and Pip gave it a lukewarm nod of approval.

I needed her help to get the helmet back on my head. When that was done, she handed my shield.

“This fit on its own,” she said. “So let’s hope you can take it.”

The sword tucked through my belt well enough, freeing up a hand for her to place the key in my fingers. I smiled, dipped my head in a way I’m sure she understood as both a thank you and a goodbye. No awkward kiss this time, though I could tell the thought crossed her mind.

I knelt in front of the lock and inserted the key. The shackle popped free, and I opened the lid. This time, the inside of the chest didn’t look empty.

It looked alive.

Light raced around me, dancing through my eyes, a supernova surrounded by fireworks and comets and blazing meteors. Whole star systems swirled, planets and comets and nebulas, all within an arm’s length. My hand reached out to touch one, to see if this was real, and then I was soaring, surging into space, my sails filled with a cosmic wind. The universe seemed to fold. I could feel time bending, distorting, like a Dali painting. Part of it was slipping away, faster and faster, part of it was standing still. Some of it unwound before me, like a spool of information being undone, each bit released to find a new home, new bits to pair with. Colors spattered my senses, flooding my eyes with hues and tones, my nose with scents that distinguished between shades, my ears with notes that truly expressed the meaning of each color they heard. Celestial wonders gave way to scenes racing by, glimpses, snapshots appearing and disappearing in rapid-fire succession. The experience grew in intensity until I doubted I could tolerate it anymore.

I opened my eyes.

I hadn’t known they were closed, but, like a person waking abruptly, I popped them open. I wasn’t riding a storm of light, or rocketing through the cosmos. I was standing a few hundred feet above the city, choppy vapors of fog drifting by. In the gaps, I could see the skyline of downtown, the Hollywood hills, the ocean expanding to the west, a rim of mountains standing sentry to the east. And right below me, the museum. I could tell it was directly below me, because I looked straight down to see it, through the transparent platform beneath my armored feet.

The platform looked to be around half the size of a football field, give or take. It had a frosty look, like ice, or milky glass. The fog floated past, revealing more of my surroundings, and I realized it had been a cloud. As I scanned the platform, I saw it was divided into squares, alternating between clear and opaque, the sequence in each row offset from the rows on either side of it. A perimeter of maybe five feet surrounded the squares, beyond which it dropped off into sky.

A game board.

Those scenes, the ones racing by me, they’d been of people playing chess. Men in ancient garb, in opulent settings, Arab men seated on cushions, surrounded by curtains. Asian men with long, dark hair in a palace. Women with high foreheads and puffed dresses in a courtyard. Old peasants in a tavern. Two monks in a dark chamber, playing by candlelight. And dozens, hundreds more. Too many to have registered as more than a subliminal blip, each like a single frame of a movie. But all the people had one common element that came through.

They had been playing chess.

I didn’t move, other than to look around. I was the only person there, the only thing on the entire platform. I was standing on the perimeter near what looked to be the eastern edge, facing west. I counted the spot directly in front of me to be the third from my right, ninth from my left.

Was I supposed to do something? Say something? Go to a different spot? I wasn’t sure, so I waited. After a few minutes passed, the hallucinogenic nature of the trip and the novelty of the dizzying height started to wear off and standing there, fully decked out in armor, just felt silly

“Hello?”

A crackle in my ear, a slightly digitized buzz. “Yes? Hello? Sir Regis? Is that you?”

“Pip?”

“Sir Regis! I can hear you! Where are you? Where did it take you?”

“I’ve moved up in the world.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Let’s just say, I’m here. Standing next to what I’m pretty sure is a giant chess board. I have no idea what to do next.”

“Chess board? The Contest is truly a game? Can you move a piece?”

“There aren’t any. Just me.”

She paused and I could almost hear her thinking. “Perhaps that’s part of it. Maybe you have to go find the pieces.”

I looked down at the neighborhood below, like a scene on a train set. “I don’t see how that would be possible. But I do have a suspicion that I’m supposed to step onto the board myself.”

“I’m sorry, Sir Regis. I don’t know how to advise you. I don’t know how to play chess.”

“Hey, don’t feel bad. I learned how at one of those fancy prep schools I flunked out of as a kid. Haven’t played since. I did set some school records, though.”

“Records? That’s wonderful!”

“Yep. Highest losing percentage, fewest wins, fastest checkmate by an opponent. On the other hand, I only played three or four times. Ever.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Sir Regis.”

“Well, here goes nothing.” I stepped forward. I may not have been a master, but I knew where the bishop was supposed to go.

Nothing happened. I stood there, in the square for the king’s bishop, but the board remained empty. It was just me, the platform, and the sound of the wind whiffling through my ears.

“Sir Regis?”

“I’m missing something here, Pip.” I stared down at the platform, trying to remember if there was a nuance or quirk about chess I wasn’t thinking of. “There’s got to be a trick to it.”

“I’m so sorry I can’t help you, Sir Regis. I don’t know how you even start a game of chess.”

“You just move a piece, usually a…”

“What, Sir Regis? What is it?”

I raised my foot to take a step, but held it. Was it really that simple? I forced myself to think it through carefully. I’d assumed I was a bishop, and maybe that was why I was standing where I was, but you couldn’t move a bishop to start a game. You had to move a pawn.

Veronica’s blood note flashed through my head. PAWN’S DIE.

Then I remembered. There was another piece that could make a first move.

I pulled my foot back and moved it to my left. I wasn’t just a bishop. I was also a knight.

As soon as my weight transferred to the square next to me, the platform erupted. Something burst up and under me, lifting me, bursts of color popped all over. Figures and shapes exploding from beneath the surface of the board like magical plants. With a fraction of a second, the entire board was populated.

I was mounted on a horse. It was alive, breathing, snorting, but it somehow managed to stay reared on its hind legs; it’s front legs up and ready, presenting like a mantis spoiling for a fight. To my right stood a bearded man bulging between every joint, his feet encased in stone blocks that matched the parapet he held above his head. To my left, a fierce man of the cloth, his robe majestic and ornate, a large mitre atop his head and a long, heavy lance in one hand. In front of me, a row of identical foot soldiers, each lightly armored, carrying small swords.

The entire board was this way. The ones on my side wearing white tunics over their torsos, the ones opposite wearing black. I looked past the bishop to see the king, his crown massive and ostentatious, ringed with rubies and sapphires, puffed purple velvet protruding beneath overlapping arches of gold, a large, glittering cross positioned where they intersected. Beyond him stood the queen, tall and regal, a jeweled tiara set atop her sculpted blond hair and rising to a triangular point above her face. She turned her head and looked at me as she would a subject whom she hoped would not disappoint.

I was curious about my counterpart on the other side, but that was anticlimactic. It was a knight, on a horse, just like me. But his face was covered by his helmet and he didn’t seem particularly interested in looking my way.

“Sir Regis, are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said. The horse beneath me snorted and shuddered, apparently not pleased that I was having a conversation. “It seems I’m about to play chess in a live action, role-playing way. Yay for me.”

“Be careful.” A moment later she added, “Please.”

“I’ll try.” I scanned the board, thinking. I was pretty sure I could remember how to play chess, but I really had no idea how to play this version of it. Was I supposed to play the entire game as a knight? Did I get to move the other pieces? I assumed so, but how?

“I wish I knew what happened to Golgameth,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

A point of light above the board popped into existence and expanded in a blinding flash before contracting into a beam. The beam spread into a cone and broke into a prism of colors that flickered in the middle of the board until it seemed to create a ball, like something projected into the air. In the ball, a scene began to emerge, figures growing in clarity.

It was the board, the same one I was standing on, or one just like it. And Golgameth was on it.

Picking him out wasn’t hard, since he towered over the other figures. It was obvious in the scene the game was underway, as a few pieces were not in their starting positions. It was also obvious Golgameth had no idea what he was doing.

I couldn’t tell what position he was supposed to be playing, but he aggressively engaged a pawn diagonal to him. He stepped onto the square the pawn occupied and swung his battle axe down at it. The pawn, however, moved to the side, remaining within its square, then sliced at Golgameth’s midsection. This got the giant really mad, and he swung the axe again. The pawn blocked it with its much smaller sword, looping the axe down and past his body so he could reverse directions and take another strike at the giant. But Golgameth, moving quickly for such a big guy, shot an enormous hand out and grabbed the pawn by the head. The pawn’s sword could barely reach the giant’s body as he flailed, slashing Golgameth a few times until that gigantic hand picked the pawn up and slammed him down so hard, his body crumbled. The pawn lay there, motionless, and Golgameth watched. Then it flickered in and out of sight until it vanished.

No sooner had it disappeared than the queen, clothed in a sleeveless black blouse with a white crest, something with claws, accelerated in a straight line directly toward Golgameth. He barely had time to turn when the queen slammed into him, skewering him with a long staff, tipped like a spear. The staff penetrated all the way through, protruding a full foot out his back. The giant appeared stunned. He tried to raise his ax, managed to get it above his head, but the queen twisted the staff and yanked it back, leaving a gaping hole that I could almost see through. A hole that looked to be right where a heart ought to be.

Golgameth dropped the ax, then dropped to his knees in front of the queen. He toppled to the side, arms limp, one of them ending up at an awkward angle behind him.

I sucked in a deep breath. Sorry, Big Man.

The image in the ball dissolved and all I could see was a murky puddle of colors. But the ball itself remained. I watched it, waiting.

“Sir Regis?”

The pawn had fought back. It had even inflicted injuries. Clearly, this wasn’t the same game I remembered. The game, or the referee, or proctor, or whatever, seemed to know that and had wanted to show me.

I recalled what I had said to Pip right before that display appeared.

“I wish I knew the rules of this Contest,” I said.

The colors in the ball began to spin and mix, spiral, and divide. Another image emerged, another look at the board. It started empty, then began to populate with pieces, each a silhouette easily identifiable. The white king’s knight was the exception. That was the position I just happened to be occupying. It had the figure of a man superimposed over it, one that I assumed was meant to be me.

The knight moved in its L-shape, jumping past the row of pawns. A black pawn stepped forward one space. Then the figure left the knight and moved to a white pawn, which then moved forward two spaces. Another black pawn moved, then the figure moved to the bishop, who slid along a diagonal line toward the edge of the board.

I understood. I could become any piece on the board, and control that piece when it was my turn.

“Sir Regis? Are you there?”

“I’m fine. Gimme a sec.” I stared at the image, but it disintegrated back into a runny, floating splash of colors.

I cleared my throat and spoke up. “I wish I knew how to take an opposing piece.”

An image of the board formed again. This time, the pieces were not silhouettes, but fully-depicted figures. A white piece, a knight, moved to a square where a bishop was. The knight arrived swinging its sword, and the bishop fought back with its lance. The bishop got the better of the exchange until the knight managed to have its horse kick the bishop in the face, after which the knight jumped off and thrust its sword through the bishop’s neck. The bishop gurgled and choked for several seconds, blood pooling beneath him, before his hands slipped off his neck and he stopped moving.

The image started to change again, but instead of dissolving it rearranged itself back into the beginning of the same scene. The knight moved the same way, jumping pieces, three up, one over, and attacked the bishop. This time, though, the bishop dodged the horse’s kick, knocked the knight off the horse, and stabbed the end of the lance through the knight’s helmet into its eye.

Whoa, I thought. That’s sure as hell one big friggin’ difference. Jeez.

“I wish I knew if the game ends if I… if the piece I’m controlling is taken.”

The image dissipated, but this time, so did the colors. The ball began to shrink until it became a tiny pinprick of light. Then that light rose high above the board, flashed brightly, and vanished without leaving any indication it had ever been there.

“I guess you only get three,” I said, mumbling.

“Three what, Sir Regis?”

“Never mind. I think I understand the rules. Maybe. I sure wish this was a game I was good at.”

Above the board, another light appeared, another flash. An image of an hourglass hovered several feet off the surface. Red sand poured through the center, forming a dull pyramid on the bottom.

“It looks like they put me on a timer,” I said.

“Oh, Sir Regis, I’m so sorry I can’t be much help. A good squire should always advise and assist her knight! But I don’t know how to play the game. Should I try to contact Mr. Grimm again? Maybe he knows and can help you strategize.”

“Something tells me playing chess isn’t something he sits around doing in his spare—” I stopped myself, then let the last word slip out, “time. Pip, remember the emergency number for the office I gave you? Claudia? From the shop downstairs?”

“Yes, I have it.”

“Call her. Right now, please. Tell her I need to speak with her step-dad.” I stared at the enormous hourglass suspended above the board, squirting arterial sand. “And I mean, like, an hour ago. Because I have maybe five minutes, from the look of things.”

15

“Sir Regis, are you there?”

“Yes!” I sucked in a breath so hard it hurt my chest. It felt like I could have listened to an audiobook of a Russian novel in the time it took for her to get back to me. The top half of the hourglass was at least three-quarters empty. Maybe four-fifths.

“I have…” The signal broke up and I lost her voice. Panic started to settle in, but after a few seconds her voice crackled through. “…merge calls. I sure hope it doesn’t disconnect!”

I hoped the same thing. I heard a tone, a rustling noise, then a tinny background hum, accented by distorting puffs of wind.

“Pops? Is that you?”

“Bishop? What the hell are you calling me for, in the middle of a game? If that little filly of yours didn’t sound like a porn star playing a schoolgirl, you’d be in a world of shit. I got money on the table, here. What do you want?”

“Pops, it’s important. Really. Any of the guys at your park there really good chess players?”

The sand kept draining. I couldn’t imagine there being more than a minute left.

“Ha! That’s a good one! These clowns? This gang of simpletons? They have to keep a rulebook on hand for checkers! Really good chess players… ha!”

The nerves in my legs seemed to go numb. More numb. I felt a sweat breakout around my neck.

“None of them? This is life or death. I’m serious.”

“Do you think if any damn one of them was any good at chess, I’d be playing checkers? I haven’t had a game of chess out here in four of five years. I beat them all so badly, so quickly, so often, I couldn’t even get any of these losers to play anymore.”

“Wait, you play?”

“Do I play? Not with these morons. But with real players? Hell, yes, I play. Base champion three years. Runner-up at the inter-service championships back in…shit, what year was that?”

“It doesn’t matter! Pops! I need an opening! I mean like now! I’m white. Assume I suck and I’m playing a grand master!”

There was a thin layer of sand left above the hole, starting to fold in on itself.

“Grandmaster? Shit. You need a gambit of some kind, then.”

“I don’t know what that is! There’s no time! What’s the safest first move?”

“You don’t know what a gambit is and you’re playing a grandmaster?”

“Please, Pops! No time!”

“Hell, I’d say a Spanish Exchange of some sort…”

“Pops! Now!”

“Move the pawn in front of your king two spaces. Jesus!”

The last grains of sand began to drain into the hole as I jumped off the horse and lumbered clumsily over to the pawn in front of the king. As soon as I reached it, the pawn seemed to become…noncorporeal. Like a ghost. Or a hologram.

I didn’t have time to marvel at it. I surged forward two spaces, hitting the second space just as the final grain of sand or two plopped down on the tip of the pile below. The ghost pawn accompanied me, like a puppet.

Across the board, the black knight, queen’s side, leaped over the line of pawns and galloped up another space, then over one, before resuming it front-legs-up posture.

I let out an audible sigh that whistled through my lips. “I did it.”

“Good. Is that all? I got a bunch of assholes here wanting to lose their social security checks to me.”

“No! Pops, I need your help. I’m locked in a game of chess with, uh, high stakes. And I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Out over the center of the board, the hourglass flipped and the sand was migrating again.

“High stakes, huh? You get hustled?”

“Something like that. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’d say I’m a novice, but I’m more like the guy a novice would beat up and steal lunch money from.”

“What a sorry sack of shinola. You want me to play the damn game for you? Over the phone?”

“Any help you can give me. Please! I’ll owe you.”

I could hear him grunting on the other end, a scraping sound like sandpaper made me think he was scratching his stubble.

“Did black move?”

“Yes. Queen’s knight. Turned to stop in front of the queen. I don’t know how to say it.”

“I got it. Okay, this is a good player, huh? You’re sure?”

“Assume the best.”

“Crap. Well, in that case, you really need to settle on a gambit.”

“I don’t know any. Like I told you, I’m not even sure what that is.”

“A gambit is just an opening strategy. A series of moves where you sacrifice some pieces to get the opponent into a certain position where you can gain an advantage.”

“Yeah, sacrificing pieces in this game is not advisable.”

“Son, you’re playing chess. The entire game is based on sacrificing pieces. Hell, you sacrifice every piece you need to, except the King. It’s all about sacrificing. The rules are set up that way.”

PAWN’S DIE.

Great, I thought, staring at the hourglass. How could sand possibly flow so fast? It was like the grains were in a race.

“Right now, I just need my next move.”

“Well, then, you’re going to have to figure out what gambit black is playing. Because if black isn’t defending yours, it’ll sure as hell be pursuing its own.”

“How many gambits are there?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Dozens and dozens, for sure. People come up with more of them all the time. Stumble across them, modify others. You have popular ones, like the Queen’s Gambit, the Latvian Gambit, the Stonewall Attack, the King’s Indian Attack…”

“Pops, the clock is ticking here.”

“The Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian...Hell, the list is practically endless. Then you have obscure ones, irregular openings, stuff only chess freaks know about…”

“Pops!”

“The Colorado Gambit, the Medusa Gambit, the Sokolsky…”

“Wait, what was that last one?”

“The Sokolsky?”

“No! Before that. Medusa?”

“The Medusa Gambit? Just one of maybe hundreds out there. You can find ‘em all over the internet.”

Beware the Medusa.

“Could black be playing that?”

“Well, sure. But that seems unlikely. It’s meant to confuse the opposition by being random. Acting like an ass to force a mistake. Because, you know, Medusa was ugly with a head of—”

“Snakes. Yes.” I stared up at the hourglass. “I need a quick, safe move here, Pops. Something that will give me a moment to think.”

“Christ, son, almost everything is safe on that board right now! It’s two or three moves from now you have to worry about.”

“Okay, safest, then.” The sand was starting to collapse in the middle, accelerating. “Please.”

His sigh was loud. “Move your king’s knight. Up two and to the inside one.”

I lumbered back to the horse and mounted it. Without thinking, I kicked my heels against it and it whinnied, rearing higher, then leaped over the pawn in front of it. It moved one space more, then over one without me even directing it.

Black immediately moved the pawn in front of the king one space.

“Okay, Pops. Quickly, what were you saying about that Medusa Gambit?”

“Look, it’s just some obscure opening I happened across. The name came to mind, that’s all. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. Yes, I read chess blogs and junk. Sue me.”

“No, tell me about it, about the Medusa opening. I can’t explain right now. Humor me.”

“Something some guy came up with. Everybody is always looking for something new. Chess players tend to follow norms and somebody thought this might be a way to frustrate those expectations, break a few rules.”

Veronica.

Beware the Medusa… Rules unseen are the key… Don’t be a thorough fool… There is no game if you understand the rules.

The sand was already halfway gone. Was it starting to pass more quickly each time?

“Pops, does this quote mean anything to you?” I repeated Veronica’s words, carefully enunciating. “Does that ring a bell? Some chess saying or something?”

“No. Not at all. Chess is all about rules.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. But it’s got to have a meaning.” Or, I thought, the idea sending a chill down my back, maybe she was just crazy, after all.

“Does remind me of something else, though.”

I felt a surge through my chest as I saw the sand was almost empty.

“Another move, Pop! Quick!”

“You could move your knight—”

Before he could answer, I saw time was up. It wasn’t my imagination. The hourglass was accelerating. With a frantic kick of my heels, I prodded the horse forward two and over one, coming uncomfortably close to the opposing line of pawns. The hourglass reset with the number of grains I’d had left probably in the single digits.

I had barely stopped moving when the queen raced out on a diagonal to the corner.

“What the hell was all that racket?”

“Sorry, I had to move. Moved the knight.”

“Back to its original position?”

“No. Forward. Inside another space.”

“Oh, boy.”

I took that to mean it was a bad move, but I didn’t have time to discuss it. The hourglass was emptying faster still, way faster.

“Pops, that saying? What were you going to tell me?”

“What was I going to…oh, yeah. It reminds me of a poem.”

“About chess?”

He laughed. Not like it was funny, but like I was an idiot.

“No. About rules. Because you said ‘thorough fool.’ One of my favorites from when I was in the military. ‘Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.’”

“Cute. Not really what I need. I need to fend off this queen to my right.”

“Well, I only thought of it because of ‘thorough.’ You know, and fool?”

“Don’t get it. And I don’t have time, Pops.”

“Henry David Thoreau. He’s the one who said it. Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.”

A few seconds passed before the words made full interface with my brain. When I looked up, the sand was almost gone. I had to use the same piece. I kicked the horse and moved back two, then over one. In the opposite direction of the queen.

I hadn’t even stopped when she zipped along a diagonal into the space where a pawn stood, directly in front of the king’s bishop. I felt a strange tugging sensation, a feeling of falling, then, in the space of a blink, I was standing in that spot, as the pawn, wielding the short pawn’s sword. The queen towered over me. She hoisted her staff and swung it. The move was blindingly fast. What I couldn’t understand was, how I managed to dodge it. But dodge it, I did. I avoided that, then another, and another. It was exhausting. She moved without any wasted motion, her thrusts weren’t telegraphed, nor were her feints. If it weren’t for my unnaturally fast reflexes—which had never been quite this fast—I would have stood no chance. Even so, I couldn’t weave rapidly enough to avoid everything. I caught the shaft of her staff off the side of my head, and the sharp tip sliced the side of my arm, breaking my skin even through the chain mail.

“You still there?”

“Not now, Pops! Give me a minute here!”

She wasn’t making any mistakes. I blocked her strikes with the sword—which seemed more like a long knife—and started to feel my energy draining. I knew from my time in the ring that depleting energy means slower movements. In a prizefight, it often decided the outcome by establishing who was in better shape and who conserved motion more efficiently. But I couldn’t count on superior wind here, since my opponent didn’t even seem to be breathing.

I also couldn’t handle it much longer. The closest thing to a pattern I noticed was that when she’d thrust for my head, she tended to leave the staff out there for an extra second. This was so she could swing the bottom forward in an uppercut. I suppose you could say it gave me an idea, but it was more like a Hail Mary.

After several swings, she thrust the spear at my head again, and this time as I ducked I dropped my sword and grabbed the shaft with both hands. Then I dropped down, arcing a bit closer as I followed the curved path of the staff, and I smashed my armored boot into her shin. Once, twice. Then I rolled my body over the top of the staff, pinning the sharp edge against the board, applying all my weight on it until it snapped.

She looked surprised as I rolled over and onto my feet, holding onto the piece that had broken off. Her eyes went to the remains of her staff protruding from her hands, the jagged end of broken wood. That distraction gave me the opening to lunge forward and stab her in the chest.

If it hurt her, she didn’t show it. She just lowered her gaze to where I’d left the spear end sticking out, and then assumed a calm standing position in the middle of the square. My body fell into a heap and I watched it crumble, only then realizing it was the pawn, not me. It flickered a few times and faded, disappearing. When I looked up, the black queen was standing tall, full, unbroken staff in her hand, facing the king.

Then I was back on the horse, a knight again. Back in the square I had occupied before I had to fight the queen as a pawn.

Okay, I thought. That answered that question. I have to fight to stay alive, and if I win a battle, my piece still dies. If I lose, well, I get the distinct impression that wouldn’t be good for my health.

The hourglass reset. This time, it started to blink, flashing brighter every other second. It looked like there was a lot less sand than previously. I switched gears in my head, remembered that Pops had said something important.

“Pops, are you there? Sorry. You were talking about Thoreau. What was that poem?”

“Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it. It’s just a poem. The word ‘thorough’ made me think of it. That’s all. Did Black move?”

Beware the Medusa… Rules unseen are key… Don’t be a thorough fool… What had she been trying to tell me? Thoreau fool? Don’t be a Thoreau fool?

“You there, Bishop?”

“Yeah. The queen took the pawn one over from the king.”

“Really? I thought you said the player was good? Just take her, then. With the king. Unless there were moves I don’t know about.”

Rules unseen are key… unseen… Did that mean, unobserved? Had this been her way of telling me to break the rules?

“Bishop?”

“I’m here.” There is no game if you understand the rules. “Pops, you said earlier that sacrificing was part of the rules. Remember? Every piece but the king?”

“Yeah. Obviously, you can’t sacrifice the King, or you’d lose. That’s why the rules won’t let you. You can’t even move into check by mistake. Not allowed. The King is the only piece that never dies.”

I looked at the queen, then my king, then across the board at black’s king. The game, my opponent, whoever or whatever I was playing against, wanted me to take the queen. Taking the queen meant fighting the queen. I wasn’t sure I could do that again. And even if I could, how many times could I fight an opposing piece before losing?

The hourglass continued to blink.

Of course, I thought. I am in check. It didn’t just want me to fight the queen, hoping I would--the game was giving me no choice. If I killed her, how long before I had to fight as a pawn again? And again?

PAWN’S DIE.

Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

I looked across again at the black king. There is no game if you understand the rules.

The sand was down to maybe ten-seconds’ worth of grains. I had to make a decision.

Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it.

I dismounted the horse, gave once last glance at the black queen, then broke into a run. Clunky, slow, awkward, but a run. My body, like my legs, was motoring on pure adrenaline. My limbs felt limp and waterlogged.

Five seconds.

I crossed the board, glancing to see the sand disappear from the top, each step heavier and heavier.

Two seconds.

I drew my sword and threw myself between two pawns and stepped into the space occupied by the king. The black king.

One second.

I swung the blade with two hands in a tight arc, a Louisville Slugger going after a high fastball. It chopped through the king’s neck smoothly and I watched his head tumble off his shoulders, almost in slow motion. My eyes followed it halfway down before shooting over my shoulder to look at the hourglass.

The last grain of sand hit the pile below at the same time the king’s head bounced off the board.

That’s the way I remember it, anyway. Even though I know I couldn’t have been watching both at the same time, it sure seemed like I was.

“Bishop? What happened?”

Nothing. Nothing was what happened. I was still there. The pieces weren’t all turning to attack me, no cosmic hand was reaching down to smite me.

I dropped to a knee, my body deciding it had had enough. I swallowed air in gulps.

“Bishop?”

I won, I thought. I beat the ultimate game of chess. I started to chuckle in disbelief. My first win. My only win.

Before the words came out of my mouth to respond to Pops, the hourglass began to spin. Slowly at first, but accelerating until it became a blur. The blur dropped down onto the board and caused the center to sag and begin to lose its solid state, like it was liquefying. A hole appeared as the liquid spot whirlpooled, a widening funnel that doubled its diameter every second or two.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

The white knight disappeared first, toppling and spinning down the growing spiral.

“Bishop?”

There was no time, nowhere to go. The hole was swallowing everything. The black queen was sucked in, her limp body whipping past me, making impassive eye contact. The middle pawns disappeared and I was standing at the edge, looking into an abyss, one expanding in front of me. A black void, empty and endless. I could have probably backed up a few feet had I started a moment earlier, but the flooring beneath me gave way as I tried and it wasn’t like that was some route to safety. There was no place to go.

My last thought, as I felt myself being yanked violently into the swirl, was that as it turned out I really was the fool. For thinking I had won.

16

I woke with something warm and moist and sweet on my lips, pressing into my mouth. I opened my eyes as it pulled away.

Everything was out of focus and bright. I blinked until I could make out shapes, colors. Something green. And blue.

“Sir Regis!”

Pip was leaning over me. Her face started to clarify and I could see she was smiling, her eyes, even more so than her lips. I reached a hand to my mouth. I could still taste her. And I mean, oh boy, could I taste her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

I pushed myself up. We were in the museum, or what was left of it. Surrounded by charred, soggy remains. I licked my lips, still unsettled by the sensation. Hunted, I thought. I had no doubt that was true. People have engaged in horrible, unspeakable acts against others for less than the feeling that kiss gave me.

“Quite alright,” I said.

“I mean, I wasn’t sure you were breathing. That is how you resuscitate people, isn’t it?”

“Huh?” I rubbed my eyes, shook my head. “Oh, yeah. No, you did good.” So much for me being Sleeping Beauty. More like Stupid Bishop.

“YOU did good!” she said, beaming. “You came back! You beat the contest, Sir Regis! You won!”

Ridiculous as it sounds, I had almost forgot. That’s how out of it I was. I was still alive That meant she was right. I’d won. “How long have I been lying here?”

“Long enough for me to worry. Several minutes. I was sitting right over there, waiting for some sort of sign, anything, then the chest started to vibrate. It began to rock and buck, like there was something in it trying to get out. It didn’t seem to let up. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I opened it, and the room was flooded again with a light so bright I had to close my eyes. When I opened them, you were here, laying just like this. I’m so happy, Sir Regis! I knew you could do it! There’s a reason Mr. Grimm chose you for this!”

She helped me to my feet. The chest was there, closed up and locked, the Key on the floor just in front of it.

“Pip, if you would help me out of this ridiculous outfit, I’d appreciate it.”

“Of course! But I don’t see why you would describe it as ridiculous. I think it looks wonderful on you.”

Wonderful? I started to ask her if she was flirting, but I knew that question would lead to others, or at least to the possibility of an answer I wasn’t prepared for, and I just wasn’t good with that kind of thing. The fact she was a green Imp with blue hair certainly didn’t make the situation feel less complicated.

“Mr. Grimm will be so pleased,” she said, unbuckling straps. “Oh, Sir Regis, you’ll have to tell me all about it. What was it like? How did you prevail?”

“Well,” I said, pulling off layers and feeling the sudden change of temperature on my damp skin. “It was interesting. You had just as much to do with it as I did. If you hadn’t patched in the call, I doubt I could have done it.”

“That worked? I didn’t know! I lost the connection as soon as I tried. In fact, the phone went completely dead. I was so worried.”

“Oh, it worked. You really saved my hide. I seriously doubt things would have worked out the way they did if you hadn’t gotten Pops on the line. Some of the stuff he said, the wild connections I was able to make, well, I’m pretty sure I got lucky.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. “Pops?”

“Yeah, Hector Morales. When you patched him through. Merged the calls?”

“Sir Regis, I never was able to reach Claudia, let alone her step-father.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She never answered. I tried five times, even left emergency messages. So I ended up calling Mr. Grimm again, and he finally answered.”

I stared at her, not knowing what to say, but fully knowing what she was about to.

“Mr. Grimm is who I connected to you.”

17

Pip spent the evening debriefing me on what happened, skillfully avoiding any discussion of my thoughts on Dante that I tried to slip into the conversation. She focused on the facts, hanging on every detail, stroking my ego like either a prospective girlfriend or a devoted squire, I couldn’t tell which. That was another area of discussion we avoided, this time by me at least as much as her. Probably more. Okay, a lot more.

Having no ticking clock, figurative or literal, hanging over me felt strange. Now that I could finally relax, my body didn’t want to. We must have talked until three in the morning, going over the Contest move by move, her wanting to know every thought and emotion, making me repeat the exciting parts. The rest of the time we talked about the Sirens, what role they played in not only this, but maybe the bigger picture. We talked about all the things we now knew and compared that to all the things we still didn’t know. She told me stories about dragons and quests and a Woodnymph King who raised a human boy who became an archer who became the source of the Robin Hood legend and I started to wonder just how many years of life this young woman with green skin and blue hair had seen. Were Imps immortal? Another topic I scrupulously avoided.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke it was almost noon and Pip wasn’t there. I had just finished cleaning up and getting dressed when Grimm showed up. He knocked once before letting himself in.

“I hear you have something for me,” he said in a voice that might have sounded pleased, but was hard to read. “Excellent work.”

I pointed to the corner of my office behind him. The chest sat there, the bent piece of iron that may or may not have been one of the nails from the Crucifixion balanced on top of it.

“Maybe next time you can task me with something easier,” I said, resting my arms on my desk. “Like the labors of Hercules.”

“Obviously, you were up to the challenge. Your father was right. He knew what you were capable of.”

My head bobbed without actually nodding. “Well, I had help. A lot of help. Somebody on the phone. Guy who knew a lot about chess. And who just happened to give me great hints that enabled me to figure out how to win. Except, it turns out the guy I was talking to was never was on the phone. Pip couldn’t reach him, so she called you.”

Grimm continued to look at me without any discernable reaction. He had a way of making everything seem appropriate, even his silence.

“So, what I want to know is, why the hell did you keep me in the dark? If you knew what the damn Contest was, why not tell me? How much else do you know that you’re not letting on? What the hell is your game?”

“That’s an awful lot of questions. I’m not even sure how to answer them. Why do you believe you are being kept in the dark?”

“Why? Because you always seem to know more than I do, even from the start, even though I was the one running around trying to find first the Key, then the chest. I can’t shake the feeling you could have done all this yourself, in half the time and a tenth of the risk. I don’t like being jerked around.”

“Is that what you think I was doing? Jerking you around?”

“What else do you call it? Why did you pretend to be Pops on the phone?”

“Pops? Oh, you’re talking about Mr. Morales. Glad you reminded me.” He reached behind the lapel of his coat and retrieved a full-sized envelope, tossed it onto my desk in front of me. “I just met with him. At the park. Charming, curmudgeonly fellow.”

The envelope wasn’t sealed. I opened the flap and pulled out a tri-folded document.

“He signed a three-year lease extension, seemed very pleased about it, though he continued to curse a great deal during the conversation. I took the liberty of having my lawyer draw it up. I explained to him that it still needed your approval, however. It does, just so you know, carve out this floor.”

I stared at the first page. The first line of the title read, Commercial Lease. The second line read, Novation, Renewal and Extension Agreement. In the first paragraph, it listed an LLC as the tenant and had my name identified as the landlord.

“I don’t understand,” I said, still staring at it.

“It’s not very complicated. You seem to have developed a fondness for this space. Perhaps, subconsciously, you see it as a way of paying your dues. But the situation was far too precarious, with the primary lease term about to end and you merely a subtenant. So, I bought the building. I titled it in your name. It closed this morning, that’s why I visited Mr. Morales. You’ll still need to get his wife’s signature, since she was also a guarantor on the original lease. The deed should be in there with it.”

I lifted the top document. Behind it was another, this one titled Special Warranty Deed.

“This means I…”

“Own the building. I assumed you’d want to keep the current retail tenants, which is why I met with Mr. Morales. He told me about the phone call with you. I believe he was under the impression you were forced to play chess with mobsters at gunpoint or something. Anyway, if you don’t believe it was him on the phone, just ask him. I’m sure he’ll remember it vividly.”

“Oh,” I said, looking down to the document. “I’m sure he will.”

“Remember, you still have to sign the extension yourself. If you want them to remain as a tenant, that is. It’s up to you. As far as the other half of the building, I figured you could make up your mind on your own schedule. It is your building, after all.”

I yanked my eyes from the paper. “Wait, the other half?”

“Yes. You own the whole thing. The adjacent space? You own both sides. The retail tenant next door seems to be doing a bang up business, so I’m sure you can negotiate something favorable. That lease is up in three months. Maybe use the income to remove the dividing wall and join the upstairs as one large office. Have a waiting area. The building comes with parking privileges, too. Rents won’t be enough to get rich off of, but it should net you a few grand a month. Maybe more.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why?” He looked at me as if mine was the most puzzling question he could have been asked. “Because I pulled you off the street and told you the world needed you. I offered you nothing. You asked for nothing. It is clear you never trusted me, and, to be honest, I never gave you a reason to, because building trust is a luxury the circumstances didn’t allow. In short, you had no reason to do anything asked of you, other than a sense of honor. And maybe a taste for adventure. That makes you worthy of your legacy.”

“I guess I should say thank you, then.”

He shrugged. “Don’t thank me. Before he died, your father gave me some cash for safekeeping. In trust, you might say. He asked for me to hold on to it until I knew the time was right.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. When my father died, there was practically nothing left. He had liquidated his assets years earlier, house, investments, antiques. There was little more in his bank account than it cost to cover a small funeral. I think I received just over four thousand, after all was said and done. It was what I used to get my license and begin my life as a PI.

“Look at it this way,” Grimm said. “It’s not a reward. I was given complete discretion. It’s an investment. I am sure I—we—will be needing your skills again. This isn’t the end. I expect you to be there when I call. If not for me, for the others. They are all working and sacrificing just as much as you have. Putting their skills to the service of what needs to be done, which is why those skills exist in the first place.”

“About those skills…honestly, Dante, you talked that day about us having an avatar. I have no idea what mine is. I don’t think I have any. Fast reflexes aren’t exactly a superpower. I barely survived. Most of it was luck.”

“Was it? Killing a dragon, killing a manticore, escaping the Serpent Queen, resisting the Sirens and defeating a Contest that was designed to be unwinnable, you call that ‘luck’?” You’ve always known you were blessed with quick reflexes. But it’s not entirely accurate to think of that as your true talent. It’s not your avatar, it’s a symptom of it. Your gift is perception. You react quickly because you perceive quickly. Only you could have figured out how to win that Contest.”

“But, I didn’t figure it out. It was you. You knew what it was all along, and you knew how to defeat it. Yet you let me go into the quest, into the Contest, blind. Why?”

“Let’s say that were true. Let’s say I did know. The only way one could know would be through sorcery. Magic. And from what I heard from your squire, the game would not allow any advantage to be gained through magic. Nothing known that way could have been passed along to you, and if things were as you say I could not have helped you. But you talking to someone like Pops about the rules of chess? That wouldn’t be magic, now, would it? Especially not if no answers were given, no hints. Just a natural conversation. No magic anywhere near the board. No magic affecting the play.”

“You expect me to believe that was Pops on the phone?”

“Ask him yourself. He’ll recite the whole conversation to you, if you like. He remembered it quite clearly and colorfully when I met with him.”

“Like I said, I’m sure he will.”

“Anyway, if that is all, I have many other issues to tend to. You’re not the only one who’s been busy fighting to finish their quest. I should be going.”

As he started to turn, I said, “Where’s Pip? Is she back with you?”

He let out a breath through his nostrils that I could hear. “Penelope was never ‘with’ me. I disentangled her from an unpleasant situation some time ago, and ever since she has insisted that she repay her debt, even though I repeatedly told her there was no debt. When I began to become aware of our current circumstances, I acquiesced. I told her I had a raw, young knight who would need guidance and support. She volunteered. My only condition was that once she did this, she would no longer contend that she owed me anything. She agreed to that, if reluctantly.”

“So where is she now?”

“How should I know? She’s your squire.”

With that, Grimm walked over to the chest and placed the key in his pocket before hoisting it up by the iron rings on each side. He dipped his head in my direction, then headed for the door.

As he set the chest down to reach for the knob, I said, “Tell me the truth, Dante. Did you ever even meet my father?”

His cheeks tugged the corners of his mouth wider. “You did a good job, Rex. Your father would be proud.”

I sat in the chair after he left staring at the documents he gave me, trying to process it all. What he did, buying this building, was incredibly generous, but was there a catch? Was it even more manipulation? He all but admitted he hadn’t told me everything, and the only thing I was certain of was that there was more he wasn’t telling me. Was it really my father’s money? Would I ever know? Should I care? Did it even matter?

I pondered those and other questions for hours, with only additional questions to show for it. Mostly, though, I thought of Pip. I wasn’t sure why.

Out of curiosity, I scrolled the local newspaper online to see if there was anything in it about the fire. Sure enough, I found a small piece reporting the arrest of one Karen Wynne, 27, of Santa Monica. She had been found a few blocks from the scene, wandering down the middle of the street, telling police when questioned she had a vague recollection of setting a fire, but didn’t know why, or even how she’d gotten there. She’d never heard of the museum before.

I figured I’d do at least one more knightly deed and phone in an anonymous tip, fingering Winch for the blaze. I’d feed them some story the gal had been drugged. I made a mental note of it. The logistics of making an anonymous tip these days in the age of digital communication with instant tracing and call registries was difficult. That meant Karen would have to stew a bit. She shouldn’t have made fun of my hat.

That was a joke. Mostly.

Pip returned just as the sun was setting. I tried to hide my reaction, but it wasn’t easy. I was both relieved and buoyed at the sight of her.

“I apologize, Sir Regis. I needed some time to think.”

I sat down on the sagging sofa and thought briefly of Golgameth as I sunk into the middle. But mostly I focused on how hearing someone say they needed time to think rarely preceded good news.

“Think about what?”

“You,” she said, “and me.”

Oh boy, I thought. Here it comes. My palms were sweating and my heart seemed to be up in my throat. What the heck was I so anxious about?

“What about us?”

“I promised Mr. Grimm that I would no longer consider myself bound to any obligations once your quest was complete. He made me swear to him. It was a condition he placed upon letting me be part of the effort. That means I am no longer under a duty as your squire.”

“I see.”

“So, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I decided I would ask if maybe I could assist you in some other capacity. Maybe as an employee? I believe people in your line of work hire others as secretaries?”

“Ask who? Me? Penelope, are you asking me for a job?”

“My name is not really Penelope. Mr. Grimm gave me that name, because to call me by my real name would allow it to be heard, and anyone who knows the true name of an Imp can summon that Imp to appear. To be honest, I rather prefer to go by ‘Pip.’ I’ve become fond of it.”

“Okay. Are you asking me for a job, Pip?”

“I…yes.”

“No, I don’t think that would do at all.”

“Oh,” she said. Her eyes skipped away from mine to a spot on the floor. “I see. I wasn’t certain it was a good idea myself. I wrestled with the prospect all day. My initial thought was to not come back at all. I suppose part of me knew that instinct was correct.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It wouldn’t do at all. You were way too valuable as a squire. I couldn’t possibly employ you as a secretary, or as anything else. You aren’t suited to be an employee.” I watched her, milking the moment. “No, if you want to stick around here, it would have to be as a partner.”

She looked up. “A partner?”

“Yep. Bishop & Pip, Private Investigations. Of course, I’d have to tell people you were traveling the world, even as you were helping me with my cases. Correction, our cases. And getting you licensed may require some ingenuity, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Absolutely.” I crossed my arms and tightened my lips, though I’m sure I couldn’t keep a smile from sneaking through. “It’s a full partnership or nothing at all.”

“Why, Sir Regis, I…I don’t know what to say.”

“First, you stop saying ‘Sir Regis,’ or the deal’s off. It makes me feel like I’m being summoned to the principal’s office. Second, you say, yes.”

“Yes…?”

“Good. One more thing, I’ll also need a squire, for whenever knight stuff comes up. Someone I can trust. Someone reliable and competent and whose company I enjoy and who knows more about me than anyone. Someone I have no doubts about. Part of this agreement requires you find me someone like that, and until you do, you have to promise to keep filling that role whenever the need arises. Because without a squire like you, I’m pretty much worthless as a knight. Deal?”

Her bottom lip twitched as she bit down on it and blinked.

“Deal,” she said. “But you do understand I don’t know how to be a private investigator, right? The only thing I know about it is from watching you.”

I grabbed my sports coat and popped my hat onto my head. “It’s a beautiful night. Let’s go for a drive with the top down and I can tell you all about it.”

THE END

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The Veil Knights Series

The Circle Gathers (Book 1)

The Questing Beast (Book 2)

Hound of Night (Book 3)

Run of Luck (Book 4)

Cloak of Fury (Book 5)

The Medusa Gambit (Book 6)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rowan Casey is the pseudonym for twelve New York Times, USA Today and Amazon bestselling writers who have come together to create the Veil Knights shared-world experience.

With more than ten million copies of their books in print around the world, they include Lilith Saintcrow, CJ Lyons, Joseph Nassise, Steven Savile, Annie Bellet, Jon F. Merz, Pippa DaCosta, Robert Greenberger, William Meikle, Steve Lockley, Hank Schwaeble, and Nathan Meyer.

For more information, visit

authorrowancasey

www.rowancasey.com

rowan@rowancasey.com

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

The Medusa Gambit

Copyright 2017 by Rowan Casey

With special thanks to Hank Scwaeble

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Table of Contents

Series Summary

Veil Knights Newsletter

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Veil Knights Newsletter

The Veil Knights Series

About the Author

Copyright Information