Trying not to be sick, I flicked my wrists through the air. “Just…hurry—get it over with.” Not like he needed my permission, but I wasn’t going anywhere and I was beyond anxious.
He walked over to the bar in the corner and ducked behind it, reemerging with a small bag of blood. He then returned to the circle and knelt beside it, his finely featured face turning into an oasis of serenity. Eyes closed, he began chanting in an ancient language that reminded me of Hebrew with lots of deep-throated phlegm-like sounds. He then opened his eyes and squeezed the syrupy contents into the silver chalice. Surprisingly, the chalice wasn’t this huge goblet-like thing I’d imagined it to be. In fact, it reminded me of those small glasses used for sherry only this one was made of metal.
The room immediately began to glow and then the walls around us started pulsing and throbbing as if we were inside some sort of heart.
But as I watched the chalice, I noticed its form dissolving. “What’s happening?”
King stopped his voodoo chatter and stared down at the thing with outrage. “Fucking Mack!”
“What? What!”
“It’s a fake,” he groaned.
No. No. Noooo… I covered my face. Mack, what in the world did you do with it?
~~~
King and I sat in his sleek, stainless-steel-everything chef’s kitchen, sulking at the black granite breakfast bar, sipping copious amounts of scotch. Yes, for breakfast. After all, it was eleven in the morning and we needed some sort of fuel for our long day of misery ahead.
“You gonna answer that?” I slurred.
King’s cell phone kept ringing. It had to be Mia. Poor guy. I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to have that conversation, but eventually, he would have to face her along with the fact that he’d been forced to fuck a woman he loathed for a forged chalice. It was a sad, sad moment for this man, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.
“Please don’t remind me,” he grumbled in reply to my thoughts.
Sorry. “So do you think Talia switched the chalice?” I asked.
“No. She would not knowingly give me a fake.” Still in his dirty tux, he poured another tall glass of scotch into his glass tumbler, his head sagging a bit.
I sipped on my second glass and bobbed my head. “Well, Miranda said that Mack gave her a phony chalice, too.” She’d chucked it at his head. “That means Mack made two fakes and the real one is out there.”
“Aren’t you the sharp one,” he grumbled.
Oh, shut up. I took a swig of scotch.
“Of course,” King continued, thinking aloud, half mumbling, “something so rare and powerful would have to be kept in a safe place.”
“Maybe he didn’t trade it at all,” I said, the thought slamming into my skull like a falling brick. It was simply a hunch. But considering Mack’s story about the first time we met, I knew how determined he’d been to make his way back to Minoa with that rock. He loved his brother, and Mia I assumed, and would’ve wanted them to have the real chalice after he’d gotten what he wanted and double-crossed a few very powerful and scary people. The question was, where had Mack hidden it?
That is, if I’m right.
I looked at King. “Now that I’m thinking about it, he kept saying something about being warm or buried somewhere warm. Does that mean anything?”
King’s beautiful face contorted into a very unpleasant-looking and nasty snarl. “I am going to kill you, Theodora. But this time it will be for pure and simple pleasure.”
I instinctively leaned away in my chair. Not that it would do any good. At best, I’d make it to the other side of the kitchen if King wanted me dead. Anyway, I took his reaction to mean that Mack had given me some sort of code. Still…
“Screw you, King. The man I love was bleeding out in my arms, gasping for air. It kind of overshadowed the freaking moment. So where is the chalice, then?”
“My brother was likely trying to say that he was ‘keeping it warm’—a phrase we used as children when we took something from each other without asking. I would catch him red-handed, playing with my hunting blade, and he would simply say he was merely ‘keeping it warm for me.’ I would take his bows, and when he caught me, I’d say the same thing.”
I swallowed hard, fully understanding what this meant. Mack had had it on him somewhere, which given the leather jacket he’d worn was entirely possible. The cup wasn’t all that big and he could’ve easily had it tucked inside a pocket. I never would’ve noticed since I’d only seen him wear the jacket when he’d been in my backseat. After that, he’d taken it off, but I had no clue where that jacket went.
“Did you happen to see his leather jacket at the cabin?” I asked.
King rubbed his forehead and groaned. “I laid it over him when we buried him. That was his favorite jacket.”
“And you buried him…?”
“In that ancient burial ground. It was the only place that had ever given him peace without having to kill.”