Storm of Shadows Read online

  “Yes, one of the twins,” Charisma said impatiently. “The boy-infant was picked up by a wandering tribe of Romany. He traveled with them, creating fire in the palm of his hand—that was his gift—and always thereafter the Romany featured strongly in the myth and the reality of the Chosen Ones.”

  “My grandmother is Rom, but I never knew all this stuff.” That explained Aleksandr ’s intense interest.

  “There are different tribes,” Vidar said.

  “Next time I talk to my grandmother . . .” Aleksandr’s voice trailed off. His eyes got wide. He looked like he’d had a slap on the back of his head.

  “What’s wrong?” Charisma asked.

  “My grandmother. My tutoring. She’ll kill me.” He looked at his watch and leaped to his feet. “I’m late!”

  Aaron grinned. The kid always said his grandmother was scary when she got mad. He must not be joking.

  “Come on.” Vidar turned toward the far corner of the room. “I’ll let you out this door. It’ll put you up on street level right away.”

  “Thank you!” Aleksandr was slavishly appreciative. “Let me know how it all comes out!” he yelled over his shoulder at the Chosen.

  Their group affection for the young man who had no gift except a wonderful upbringing and a cheerful nature had them calling,

  “Have fun, kid.”

  “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

  “Study hard.”

  “He’s the tutor.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Well, teach him a lot.”

  “Teach her,” Aleksandr corrected. “My student today is a girl.” His expression was blasé—but he blushed.

  “You stay here, Vidar. I’ll walk him up.” Martha slid off the barstool, grabbed Aleksandr by the arm, and walked him out the door.

  At the table, they exchanged glances.

  “Our young Aleksandr has found himself a flame.” Jacqueline’s eyes glowed with the fervor of a recent convert to love.

  “I hope he doesn’t get burned.” As thrilled as Jacqueline was, Samuel was the opposite, looking at Isabelle with angry eyes.

  She looked angry, too . . . and guilty. She took another sip from her glass, and said, “This really is very tasty. I see I’ve been hasty in condemning beer.”

  “Thank you,” Vidar called from behind the bar.

  The guy really did have good hearing.

  “Back to the subject at hand. During World War Two, travel was necessarily curtailed and the need for help throughout the world increased.” Jacqueline mechanically recited stuff she’d known for years. “So the Chosen Ones were assisting more people than ever, drawing on their cash reserves, and at the end of the war, the whole association was broke.”

  Aaron noticed that Vidar was nodding. Aaron watched him, and drank, and wondered how this guy who wasn’t one of the Chosen and looked like he was about thirty could know enough to agree with Jacqueline’s analysis. Had he been raised in the Gypsy Travel Agency, also?

  “Here’s where it gets a little fuzzy.” Jacqueline looked around the table. “I think Irving was ambitious, a young black man of education and intelligence, and in the Gypsy Travel Agency, he saw an opportunity to shine. By the end of the fifties, when the agency was in total chaos, he somehow managed to convince the board to hire him as the CEO. Once in the position, he was the best thing the organization had ever seen. He turned them around, made them profitable again, did whatever it took to allow the Chosen Ones to rescue abandoned babies or help the helpless.”

  “He did whatever it took,” Aaron repeated thoughtfully. “So he did all that stuff Samuel talked about?”

  “Yes.” Vidar brought another round.

  Isabelle looked at him. She was slightly tipsy, a loss of control Aaron had never seen from her. In a voice a little louder than normal, she asked, “For the sake of the Chosen Ones and their mission, he made immoral decisions?”

  “Yes.” Vidar placed a new ale in front of Aaron and whisked the old glass away.

  “And we’re paying for them now?” Isabelle asked.

  “Yes.” Vidar walked around the table, a blond Viking god with eyes that looked . . . well, in this light, they looked knowing . . . and ancient.

  Aaron watched the interchange. He wasn’t so much tipsy as buzzed, and very interested that Vidar answered questions for Isabelle, and with such certainty. “So you know Irving?”

  “Sure. Why?” Vidar asked.

  “Because I had an encounter with a mind speaker who said—”

  Caleb jerked around to stare at Aaron. “The woman with the cut nose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Send Irving my regards?”

  “Yes!”

  “Irving claimed to know nothing.” Caleb leaned back in his chair, disgusted and obviously not believing a word of it.

  “He told me that, too.” Aaron leaned back, too, relieved to know it hadn’t been just him.

  “So, Vidar, who’s the woman?” Caleb asked.

  “An old flame of Irving’s,” Vidar said. “She didn’t take the breakup well.”

  Hunched over the bar, Martha snorted.

  Aaron’s feeling that this guy was wrong grew stronger. He was like someone out of an Indian legend, a being of unimaginable age and wisdom. And power? Cautiously, he asked, “Can you tell us everything we need to know?”

  “No,” Vidar said.

  “Do you know everything we need to know?” Isabelle’s eyes were slightly heavy, her words slightly slurred, but Aaron looked at her with respect. That was a good question.

  “Yes,” Vidar said.

  “Why can’t you tell us?” Right now, with his eyes narrowed and his voice cold, Samuel seemed every inch the successful lawyer.

  Vidar didn’t answer. Instead he stood quietly, his tray balanced on his hand.

  But Martha turned around on her barstool. “He can, but you have to ask the right questions.”

  Vidar frowned at her.

  “Have you seen the mess they’re in? We’ve got to give them some clues. They need all the help they can get,” she snapped.

  “What’s the most important thing we need to know right now?” Isabelle asked.

  “Good question,” Aaron approved. She wasn’t as inebriated as she seemed.

  “You need a seventh Chosen,” Vidar answered.

  “Does anybody else ever come to your pub?” Samuel asked.

  “Only if I want them to,” Vidar said. “Only if I want them to.”

  So Aaron was right. Vidar was more than a brewmaster and this place was more than a pub. And Aaron and the Chosen Ones carried the fate of the world on their shoulders.

  He looked around at the inexperienced, irritated, confused, inebriated, and uncertain group and said in a solemn voice, “The world is so screwed.”

  Chapter 16

  A thought percolated through Rosamund’s consciousness.

  Aaron wasn’t here.

  Of course, when he was here, she didn’t really notice him. Sometimes when she tore her attention from her work in Irving’s private library, Aaron wasn’t sitting in the chair across the way. When that happened, it was someone else—Irving, or Charisma, or Isabelle, and once it had been a scowling Samuel.

  But usually by the next time she looked up, Aaron had appeared, and he’d ask whether she’d made any progress in finding the prophecy and whether there was anything he could bring her that would help. Only he didn’t say it like he wanted to help. He said it like . . . like he wanted her to look at him.

  She got nervous when she looked at him. Handsome, clean, well-dressed, with an edge of primal intensity that made her want to cross her legs, lean back in her chair, and give him a sultry smile.

  Or do as her father’s text had commanded, and run.

  Who was Aaron Eagle, really?

  An ardent lover concealed behind an impassive facade? A primitive warrior clad in the skin of a debonair James Bond?

  To her, he was a book that wouldn’t open its pages.

 
As the afternoon drifted into evening, she found herself looking up more and more often, wondering when he was going to materialize and tell her she should eat or drink or shower or change her clothes.

  But he was just gone.

  Finally she gave up the attempt to concentrate, stood and stretched, and wandered over to the window to look out on the street. It was an August evening on the Upper East Side. Pedestrians hurried along the sidewalk, looking hot and grumpy. Cars and cabs cruised along the broad street. She was standing there, idly watching, wondering how many days she’d been here . . . three? four? . . . and looking for Aaron, when she thought she saw a familiar face.

  But what would he be doing here? He hadn’t answered her text, so she had figured he was like all the rest of the guys she’d ever met—sorry he’d accidentally asked her on a date, glad she’d not shown up. Plus it was stretching coincidence that in a city of eight million people he would happen to walk by the place she was working when he didn’t know where she was, and at precisely the moment when she looked out. . . .

  Idly she watched him stride down the sidewalk, shoulders broad, hair blond and crisp, and that face . . . that face!

  She stiffened. She stared. She slammed herself against the window. “Lance!” she yelled. “Lance!”

  He walked on.

  “Lance!” She tried to open the window, fumbled with the lock, couldn’t budge it. “Lance!”

  She pounded on the glass.

  He didn’t turn. He was going to be gone if she didn’t do something.

  She ran out of the room and down the stairs, through the foyer and out the front door. She raced down the sidewalk, turned the corner, and saw his glorious self walking away from her. “Lance!” she yelled.

  He started. Turned. Saw her. Smiled in wonder. “Rosamund!” He hurried toward her, caught her by the arms, pulled her against the wrought-iron fence in the shadow of the building. “What are you doing here?”

  “I work here. I mean, today, now I work here. For a while. I’m helping them translate some texts for their library.”

  “That’s wonderful.” He glanced doubtfully at Irving’s mansion.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I’m on my way to visit the Met.” He smiled, abashed. “I know it’s nerdy, but I love to stroll through the museum.”

  “Oh, me, too!” She could hardly believe this. “What’s your favorite part?”

  “I couldn’t begin to choose.”

  “The marbles, especially the Greek and Roman art.”

  “I love the marbles.”

  “There’s that wood room. I can’t remember what it’s called, but imagine a whole room where everything, even the stuff you look at through the windows, is wood!”

  “I know. Isn’t it great?”

  “And the art.”

  “My favorite is the . . . Gosh, let’s talk about the nineteenth century!”

  “The early Impressionists. I know. Me, too.” She stood with her hands clasped before her chest, staring at him. She knew she was babbling, but he looked even better than he had in the library basement, with the wonderful physique and the fabulous face with the eyes. What eyes! Not to mention that he sort of glowed from within, as if he had a lamp of goodness lit inside him.

  She had to stop staring. So she glanced around. “I think you’re going the wrong way.”

  “The wrong way?”

  “To the Met.” She pointed. “It’s back that way.”

  “This is so embarrassing.” Although he looked annoyed. “I have no sense of direction. But listen—after we didn’t have our date—”

  “I know. I’m so embarrassed, too. I had to work. I lost track of time and forgot to call.” Remembering everything Charisma and Aaron had said, about how a real man would understand, she waited anxiously for Lance’s reaction.

  “The first time I met you, I knew you were that kind of girl, the kind who is so dedicated to her work she would lose herself in it.” He smiled, and the glow within him got stronger.

  She melted. “I texted you.”

  “I know, and the next day I went back to the library to find you and they said you were on loan to someone else, and my heart broke. I thought about texting you, but I was afraid to interrupt your work.”

  He was so perfect, so thoughtful. “I hoped it was something like that.”

  “I kept your text.”

  “Really?”

  “I was hoping you’d have a minute to send me another one, maybe tell me about your work.”

  “Really?” She remembered what he’d been asking about when he came to the library. “I got wrapped up in what I’m doing here, but actually, my research should be of interest to you, too.”

  “What a coincidence!”

  “I thought that, too. I’m searching for a prophecy that relates to a prophetess who was a black slave in a white house.”

  Although Lance still smiled, his eyes sharpened dis cerningly. “How fascinating. That was exactly what I was looking for. I don’t want you to break a confidence, of course, but could you tell me how you’re doing?”

  “It’s a fascinating quest, and I think I’m getting close.” She thought of the books and papers scattered across the table upstairs. “Would you like me to let you know when I succeed?”

  “That would be absolutely marvelous.” He looked up at the mansion, scanning the windows. “Since we’ve run into each other, maybe we could go get a coffee.”

  She shouldn’t go. She should go back to work. “I’d love to!”

  He took her arm. “I know this great little place not far away—”

  “Hey, Rosamund! What are you doing out here in your socks?” Aleksandr stood at the corner, holding a book and looking at her, a puzzled, concerned expression on his face.

  She looked down at herself. She was wearing a loose gathered skirt, a plaid flannel pajama top, and Aaron’s big fuzzy gray socks. One heel was twisted sideways and pouched out on her ankle. The other one had lost its elastic and slouched on the top of her foot. She put her hand up to her hair. It hadn’t been combed today. The curls clung around her face in 1980s exuberance. She couldn’t remember when her face had been washed, and . . . “Oh, no.”

  Lance was so beautiful.

  She was so not.

  Catching her hand, he smiled into her face. “You are charmingly disheveled, a woman who is dedicated to her work.”

  “Wow.” He liked her like she was.

  “Rosamund?” Aleksandr started toward them.

  “I understand we’ll have to take a rain check. You have to stay here and work,” Lance said. “But promise me you’ll keep me updated with what’s happening with you. Text me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  He chucked her under the chin, then started down the sidewalk.

  “Wait!” she said.

  “I really need to leave.” He glanced toward Aleksandr.

  “But you’re going the wrong way!” She pointed back toward Central Park. “It’s that way to the Met.”

  “I’ve been talking too long. I’m going to have to go. . . .” He picked up speed. “Remember!” he called.

  “I will!” She waved even though he never looked back.

  “Who was that guy?” Aleksandr stared after Lance.

  “I was supposed to have a date with him, but I came here instead.” She huffed in disgust. “He happened to walk by, and I saw him, and . . . oh, I like him so much!” Suddenly anxious, she said, “You won’t tell Aaron I saw him, will you? I don’t think Aaron wants me to do anything except find the prophecy.”

  “I won’t tell him,” Aleksandr promised. “You can have a boyfriend if you want. We should all be able to . . . to fall in love if we want to.”

  He sounded a little more fervent than she expected.

  She cast a final longing glance toward Lance’s disappearing figure, then tucked her hand into Aleksandr’s arm. They started toward the front do
or. “Why do you say it like that?” Her mind made the logical leap. “Have you met someone?”

  “Yes, and she’s so cool.” Aleksandr sounded awed. “I’m tutoring her. She needs my help in calculus, but she’s completely brilliant and pretty, and today she took my hand and told me that in two lessons I had helped her more than all the professors in the world. And she’s just so . . . you know . . .”