Atlantis, the palace war room, half an hour later
Fiona swallowed past
the lump of awe that seemed to have permanently settled in her
throat. First she’d had fruit and juice with the princess of
Atlantis, who offered her the use of the palace gardens for her
next book any time she wanted, so long as she promised to autograph
a book for Prince Aidan.
Then Christophe had
come to find her, told her she was needed at a war council, and
she’d walked through the palace—a classic concept of mythology
turned historical fact. Now she was sitting at a scarred wooden
table that was probably older than Scotland. Surrounded by
unbelievably gorgeous men who were all cut from the same genetic
cloth as Christophe. Tall, dark-haired, and muscular. High
cheekbones and sensual mouths. Men to make women sit up and
notice.
They were almost as
devastatingly attractive as Christophe. She only hoped devastating wasn’t the operative word.
“Shall I make the
introductions?” Riley briefly rested a hand on Fiona’s shoulder
before taking a seat on the other side of the table. Without
waiting for a response, she began, pointing to the various people
as she named them. “Everyone, this is Lady Fiona Campbell,
currently of Campbell Manor, Coggeshall. She also has a secret
identity, but I think I’ll let her tell you about
that.”
Fiona flushed,
wondering why in the world she’d revealed her secrets so easily to
Riley. There was something about the princess, though, that invited
confidence.
“This is my husband,
Conlan.” A tall man with a distinct air of command bowed to
Fiona.
“Your Highness.” She
tried to rise from her chair, which wasn’t that easy with
Christophe holding her hand, but Conlan shook his
head.
“Please don’t. We’re
pretty informal here, as you’ll soon notice. Please call me Conlan,
Lady Fiona.”
“Just Fiona,
please.”
“This is Ven,” Riley
continued. “My partner in crime in the love of B movies. He’s also
Conlan’s brother.”
“Pleasure to meet
you,” Ven said, his eyes lit up with definite amusement.
“Especially with Christophe.”
Christophe narrowed
his eyes but didn’t release her hand.
“We spend way too
much time in here, by the way,” Ven grumbled. “I’m leaving after
this to join Erin in Seattle at her witch’s coven
meeting.”
Fiona’s eyes widened
until she was afraid they’d pop out of her head as Ven described
what Erin was doing with her coven. Very powerful magic designed to
aid the human rebels, from what she could glean from his brief
description.
“His wife is a very
powerful witch. Human,” Christophe said quietly.
“Is it some kind of
rule? That you marry humans?”
Christophe laughed.
“No. Until Conlan met Riley, it was a rule that we
couldn’t.”
Ven wound down his
report and Riley pointed to a man, dressed all in black, who sat at
the far end of the table. “That’s Alaric, Poseidon’s high priest
and head of the Temple of Poseidon.”
Fiona gasped.
“But—that seat was empty. Are you Fae, too?”
“I certainly am not,”
Alaric said, his lips curled back from his teeth. “You may want to
learn that to accuse an Atlantean of being Fae is a serious
insult.”
“You may want to
learn that Scottish women don’t appreciate being threatened,” she
snapped right back at him.
Alaric put his elbows
on the table, rested his head in his hands, and groaned. “Here we
go again. I just know it. Poseidon’s balls, here we go
again.”
“I hate to point this
out, but isn’t that blasphemy?” Fiona said. “Perhaps you aren’t the
best person to lecture me about insults.”
Ven grinned. “I think
I’m going to like you.”
It came to her that
she was sitting with the crown princes and princess of Atlantis and
she was insulting their god’s highest priest. She felt about two
inches high.
“I beg your pardon,
Your—ah, Conlan. And yours as well, Alaric. I am feeling a bit
overwhelmed right now, but it shouldn’t make me forget the
courtesies due to my hosts,” she said.
Alaric flashed a
smile that probably made sharks cry. “I liked you better when you
were putting me in my place.”
She laughed.
“Noted.”
“Perhaps we can get
on to the point of this?” Ven said. “I’m thrilled Christophe
finally became a real boy and found a girlfriend—hopefully you can
keep his ass in line, Lady Fiona—but why are we in war council over
it?” He aimed a mock glare at Fiona. “Is Scotland planning to
declare war on Atlantis?”
She didn’t know what
to answer first, but her cheeks were burning over that “found a
girlfriend” comment.
Christophe beat her
to it. “My love life is none of your business, King’s Vengeance or
no. But if you’d like to meet me in the arena to discuss
it—”
“Oh, pipe down,”
Fiona said. “Don’t we have enough problems without you fighting
amongst yourselves?”
He snapped his head
around to glare at her, but then his gaze softened and he raised
her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles.
When she turned back
to the table, every face but Riley’s reflected varying degrees of
shock. They were all staring at Christophe like he’d grown another
head.
“Moving on,” she said
pointedly. “We’ve had a busy few days since we met in the Tower of
London the night we both tried to steal the same
jewel.”
It took a few minutes
for the questions and comments to quiet down, and then Christophe
and Fiona took turns telling the rest of them everything that had
happened since they’d met, leaving out nothing except their . . .
personal interactions. At some point during their recounting,
people brought food in, and they all fell to, but they kept at it,
one talking while the other ate, and then trading off.
“There is,
unfortunately, nothing at all we can do about Denal. He went
willingly with this Fae, and is gone for as long as she chooses to
keep him. Nothing short of a full-scale assault on Silverglen would
gain us the slightest hope of even finding him, and that would put
us at war with the Unseelie Fae. Possibly the Seelie Court, as
well, since we’d be invading the Summer Lands,” Alaric
said.
Christophe slammed
the table. “No. He was under my care. I should be the one to
retrieve him.”
Conlan shook his
head. “Christophe, the truth is that Denal is a grown man and a
warrior, much as we all still treat him as the youngling we met all
those years ago. The Fae cannot tell a direct lie. If she said he
spoke willingly, then she hadn’t enchanted him. He wanted to go,
and he went. Perhaps he simply needed a respite. The gods know he’s
been through enough lately.”
Fiona noticed that
Riley’s cheeks turned pink, but the princess’s eyes were
sad.
“I wish—well, I wish
I could have done something. I wish I’d known Maeve was Fae, or
even known Fae existed, or . . . I don’t even know what I wish,”
Fiona said. “I’m sorry my friend took yours. I hope she’ll bring
him back soon. She really is a kind person. I’ve known her for more
than ten years. You can’t fool somebody for that
long.”
“The Fae can keep up
a simple deception for one hundred times ten years, or even more if
they so desire,” Alaric said.
“It’s true, though,
that the Fae was different with Fiona,” Christophe said. “Talked
about how much it meant to have a friend who liked her for herself
and not for her position, that sort of thing. If Maeve na Feransel
actually cares about any human, it is Fiona.”
“Time will be the
only answer to this dilemma,” Conlan said. “We must move on to the
matter of the Siren. We can assume it is in dangerous hands—but
whose?”
“I’m betting the
vampires,” Christophe said. “The plan to enthrall shifters is in
full swing in Europe, the same as everywhere else on the planet.
What we know of the Siren is that it gives its wielder vast power
over shifters and can even force them to shift back and forth
between their animal and human shapes.”
“Perhaps the shifters
stole it,” Riley said. “You’ve already mentioned the possibility
that the Tower robbery could have been an inside job and that some
of the Tower guard are wolf shifters. What if they took it, to keep
it out of vampire hands?”
Alaric drummed his
fingers on the table and then made a flicking motion with his right
hand and sent a trail of tiny, perfect triangles of blue-green
flame tumbling down the center of the table. They rolled over the
fruit bowl and then vanished when they fell off the other end.
Nobody else but Fiona paid any attention to them, so she guessed
the little magic was the high priest equivalent of when she tapped
her pencil while thinking.
“We must find it,”
Conlan said. “Christophe, you’re obviously stirring things up, so
you continue to do what you’re doing and even step it up. How much
help do you want?”
“Let me do the
reconnaissance on my own, and then I’ll call in the troops,”
Christophe said.
Fiona cleared her
throat. “Excuse me, but why do you want this gem so badly? Are you
planning to use it against the shifters, yourselves? I’m sorry, but
I can’t go along with that.”
“Remember when I said
that without the Siren, Atlantis couldn’t rise to the surface
again? I wasn’t joking,” Christophe said. “More than eleven
thousand years ago, the elders of Atlantis took the Seven Isles to
the bottom of the ocean. Before they did, they removed the seven
gems of Poseidon’s Trident and scattered them to the corners of the
world. We’ve recently learned that unless and until we restore
them, we’re trapped here. If we attempt the magic to cause Atlantis
to rise to the surface, we’ll be destroyed.”
Fiona looked from
face to face. They were dead serious. “The actual Trident belonging
to the sea god Poseidon? Brother of Zeus, that Poseidon?”
“Yes. He takes an
active interest in Atlantean affairs, you might say,” Christophe
said wryly, tapping his shoulder. She remembered the
tattoo.
“The question, I
believe, is why you want the gem, Lady
Fiona,” Alaric said. “We know you’re a thief, by your own account.
Nevertheless, Christophe appears to hold you in high esteem. So
please grant us the favor of explaining your own
interest.”
“Watch your mouth,
priest,” Christophe growled. “We never have gone head-to-head, but
if you insult Fiona again, you’re going to find out just how strong
I’ve become.”
She put a hand on his
arm. “It’s fine. He has a point. I mean, you need it for the safety
of your whole continent, and I only wanted it for the
money.”
“The money you use to
provide support for so many charities I can’t even count them all,”
he said.
“Yes, I have heard
that reported,” Alaric said. Fiona wondered if there was anything
the priest didn’t hear about or know. The man was
scary.
“I have also heard
that the Scarlet Ninja only donates a sum equal to precisely half
the value of any stolen item. So what do you do with the rest of
the money? I imagine you have a very nice home.” Alaric opened his
hand and an image of Campbell Manor appeared in the
air.
Christophe shot up
out of his chair, but Fiona grabbed his hand before he could go
after Alaric. “Stop. Please.”
He slowly sat back
down. “You don’t have to answer any of this, if you don’t want to.
You’re a guest here—my guest—not a prisoner to be
interrogated.”
She leaned up and
kissed him. “No, it’s okay. I’d wonder, too, if I were them.” She
turned to address Alaric and the rest of the group. “Fifty percent
of the value is correct. Of course, from any fence, even my most
trusted ones, I’m lucky to get sixty percent of an object’s
recorded value. In theft, as in the corporate world, there are
unfortunately a great many middlemen.”
“And the rest?”
Conlan asked gently. “To support yourself and your
family?”
She shook her head.
“No. I have never once kept a single penny of any proceeds from one
of the Scarlet Ninja’s heists. There are many charities we support
that are desperately in need of funding but they can’t accept money
if they know it comes from the proceeds of crime. Those, we funnel
through my offshore accounts that my computer genius of a brother
and my very talented butler assure me are virtually untraceable. Of
course, a few others are happy to receive anything the Scarlet
Ninja has to offer, and they appreciate the intrigue of it all.
They count our donations, given through intermediaries, as
anonymous and laugh all the way to the bank.”
“I knew I liked you,”
Riley said, smiling across the table at her. The princess glanced
over at Alaric. “She’s telling the truth. Her emotions reflect
nothing but absolute sincerity.”
Fiona blinked,
startled. “But I thought you were human?”
“You, too, are human,
but have a secret Gift, don’t you? Mine is emotional empathy, or
what the Atlanteans call being aknasha.
I can read emotions. My sister can, too.” Riley’s smile held a hint
of sadness. “I miss her. She’d like you.”
“My brother would
like you, too,” Fiona assured her. “Actually, he’d go stark raving
mad with excitement over all this. I’d love to be able to bring him
someday. Hopkins, too.”
“Your
butler?”
“He has been like a
father to me since my own died,” Fiona said. “He’s an amazing
man.”
“Keeps threatening to
shoot me, though,” Christophe said.
“I like him already,”
Alaric said.
“Why the Scarlet
Ninja?” Riley asked.
“I don’t exactly know
how to explain it. I guess I’ve never said any of this out loud
before.” Fiona thought for a little while, took another drink of
water, and continued. “I want—no, I need—to help restore to the
people of Great Britain a sense of hope. The prosperity we enjoyed
before the vampires declared themselves.”
“That’s a lot to take
on all by yourself,” Conlan said quietly.
“One person can make
a difference,” she said. “Especially if each one of us determines
to be that person.”
“Amen,” Riley said.
“That’s what I had to believe when I was a social worker, or I
would have given up in utter despair.”
“Turns out that the
majority of the aristocracy have some vampire branches of the
family tree. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. As far as I
know, we didn’t, but not for my grandfather’s lack of trying. He
was still trying to bribe his contacts to turn him when he was
murdered. I have the feeling they didn’t want him around for all
eternity.” She shuddered. “He was a horrible man.”
“So when the vampires
revealed themselves, you were suddenly back to the bad old days
where lords and ladies ate off gold plates and drank from jeweled
goblets while the peasants starved and died in the streets?”
Alaric’s eyes were shadowed.
She wondered briefly
if he’d seen any of those bad old days in person, but she wasn’t
about to ask him.
“Yes. That’s exactly
it,” she said, holding up the sturdy but plain glass that held her
water. The same type of glass that the princes, Riley, and the high
priest had at their place settings. The plates were simple
stoneware, although she recognized neither the stone nor the
glaze.
Riley caught the
direction of her gaze. “Our housekeeper does try to insist we use
the special dishes sometimes, but we’re not very fancy,” the
princess admitted.
“Social worker? So
you weren’t always a princess.”
Riley laughed. “Oh,
heavens no. Getting used to the palace and servants has been a
trial for me and them. You should have heard how the cook scolded
me when she caught me doing my own dishes after we had a midnight
snack.”
Fiona was fascinated.
She’d never had the opportunity to wash a dish in her life. “Did
you stop doing the dishes?”
“Yes, but I worked a
deal that I can cook our own dinner at least once a week, and I get
to throw a big bash once a month and everybody has to come. House
staff, guards, everyone.” She grinned at Fiona. “I usually make the
warriors clean up.”
“That sounds so
lovely,” Fiona said wistfully. “Our staff won’t eat with us. Not
from any class issue, I think their lives are just too busy.
Sometimes it gets lonely.”
“But not now,”
Christophe said, squeezing her hand.
“No. Not recently,”
she said, smiling at him.
“Your grandfather
worked with vampires? Was he a thief?”
“Yes, although he
called it business. His corrupt dealings with vampires in Scotland,
long before they ever outed themselves to the rest of the world,
got my father killed. A revenge plot, Hopkins finally told me,
years later. Grandfather stole money from vampires, can you
imagine?”
Christophe raised his
eyebrows.
“Right, yes, I see
where you’re going, but I have anonymity and some measure of
recourse,” Fiona answered his unspoken question. “Now that vampires
have proclaimed themselves citizens of the European Union, they
have to follow our laws. Back then, they killed with impunity, and
they used my father to prove a point to my
grandfather.”
She realized her
voice was trembling, and she took another sip of water. “They were
fools. He didn’t care that my father was dead. He only cared that
he lost everything else. They took it all away, and then they
killed him, too. They probably would have killed me and Declan,
too, but Hopkins took us away and hid us. After they killed
Grandfather and had stolen all of his lands and money, they didn’t
care about a couple of kids all that much, I guess.”
“Where was your
mother?” Christophe’s voice was unbearably gentle.
“She died when Declan
was born.” She saw a reflection of her own grief in his eyes and
realized that his empathy and sympathy ran far deeper than the
surface, since his own past had been visited by the same horrible
tragedy. “She left the house in trust for us through Hopkins. She
knew enough before she died to realize that Grandfather would find
a way to steal it out from underneath us if she
didn’t.”
“So you became the
Scarlet Ninja, and you’ve spent your lifetime stealing back
everything they took from you,” Christophe said, touching her
cheek. “But you give it all away. How can you possibly be
real?”
She looked deep into
his eyes, and everyone else in the room vanished from her
awareness. Only he and she remained, captured in a crystalline
moment of perfectly shared understanding. “I feel that way about
you,” she whispered. “It’s like you stepped out of my dream of a
hero and came to life just for me.”
Someone cleared his
throat and the moment was broken. She raised her chin and looked,
in turn, into every pair of eyes at the table. “I have made a name
for the Scarlet Ninja. A thief, true, but one who preys on the evil
and the vile. Well, to be honest, occasionally, I borrow things
just for fun and to keep the authorities guessing.”
“The Raphael?”
Christophe grinned at her.
“Yes.” She sighed.
“It’s on the schedule to be returned next month. I’m really going
to miss that painting. Saint George is a kind of hero to
me.”
“We have a painting
of his dragon around here somewhere,” Alaric said casually. “I
think the dragon lived a very long life.”
Fiona opened her
mouth, but then closed it again. No. Later. She was not asking about dragons now.
“But the sword,
Vanquish? You planned to return that?”
“No, actually. I have
some guilt about that, but I did plan to provide a perfect copy, or
at least the best I could devise, for the display. It might not
even have been noticed for a very long time. But so many people are
starving right now, thanks to the worst unemployment rate we’ve
ever had. So many are homeless, thanks to the vampires claiming
ancient homesteads and tangling property up in the courts. People
need help, and the sale of that sword was going to fund a huge
number of programs.”
“Including the
whales,” Christophe reminded her.
She blushed. “No,
that was my personal money, remember? I only use the Scarlet
Ninja’s money for humanitarian causes. I have several animal
charities that Fiona’s Friends, my personal charity,
supports.”
“Fiona is a very
successful children’s book author,” Christophe told the rest of
them.
Riley smiled. “I
know. She’s going to autograph a book for His Royal Drooliness. I’m
so excited to have her paint in the gardens here.”
Alaric groaned for
some reason, but said nothing.
“Thank you. I’m very
honored and hope to have the chance to do that someday. But right
now, I need to focus on getting my name cleared. The Scarlet Ninja
stands for something. I’ve been a symbol of hope to a lot of
hopeless people. I’m not going to let these thieves destroy that by
portraying me as a murderer.”
“We’ll help ,”
Christophe said.
“If it doesn’t
interfere with our retrieval of the Siren. That is our clear
priority,” Alaric said.
Christophe slowly
shook his head. “My priorities seem to have shifted. I will
retrieve the Siren, but I will also help Fiona clear her name. I
hope you’ll all help me, but I’m doing this no matter what your
decision.”
“We cannot let you
have the Siren, Fiona,” Conlan said. “Your English queen only had
the gem on loan, whether or not she knew it. The gem has waited
more than eleven thousand years to return to us, and so it
shall.”
“I understand,” she
said hastily. “I wouldn’t do anything that might harm you or
Atlantis. Anyway, the diamond Christophe gave me will certainly
fund my programs for more than a year.”
“The diamond?”
Conlan’s face was twitching, as if he was trying not to laugh. “You
gave her a diamond?”
“It was mine to
give,” Christophe muttered.
“Oh, my friend. It’s
going to be an interesting journey for you.” Conlan lost the battle
with himself and started laughing.
“It won’t be easy,”
Christophe warned her, ignoring his prince.
“I hate to sound like
a walking cliché, but nothing worthwhile ever is,” she
replied.
“Then we’re done
here,” Conlan said, rising. “Riley and I have a baby to feed.
Christophe, why don’t you show our guest some of Atlantis before
you have to return?”
“Just what I was
thinking,” Christophe said.
“Thank you. All of
you,” Fiona told them. “It’s good to feel like I finally have
allies.”
“Oh, the more the
merrier, certainly,” Alaric said darkly. “Will there be more
diapers? I love diapers.”
Riley burst out
laughing. “Ignore him. He gets a little moody
sometimes.”
As they all filed out
of the room, Christophe pulled Fiona to him for a hug. “It’s all
going to work out.”
She looked into his
lovely green eyes and smiled. “I know. After all, what could defeat
a team made up of an Atlantean warrior and a Scottish
ninja?”