Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Read online

  “You can be so difficult sometimes,” Ms. Chiostro said as she barged into the bathroom. She was grateful she didn’t have to actually use the toilet, which looked as if a whole troop of three-year-olds not yet potty trained had tried to use it.

  “You need Grandma to help you wipe your bottom?”

  “Shut up.” She waited until Sylvia was in the center of the room with her before she vanished them from the bathroom.

  In a flash of white light they appeared in a green meadow, from the center of which rose a circular mound. Similar mounds existed all over Ireland, constructed by long dead tribes. Ms. Chiostro supposed Emma could tell her the entire history of those people; or her friend the archaeologist might know more. That wasn’t important at the moment; what mattered was what was inside the mound.

  Sylvia remained a step behind her and kept a hand by her side, where she had some kind of weapon or another; Sylvia never went anywhere completely unarmed. Ms. Chiostro doubted they would need any sort of weapons. There shouldn’t be anyone at the archives except maybe an unauthorized tourist.

  For the sake of appearances the coven allowed a couple dozen pre-screened tourists to visit the mound each year. They would gape at the intricate earthworks that held up the structure and the artifacts left behind by the dead. There were no tourists at the moment as Ms. Chiostro and Sylvia went down the narrow corridor to the round main chamber where the coven had met nine months ago and decided not to do anything about Isis. At the center of the chamber was a stone circle with a shallow pit. A trained observer like Emma Earl or Dan Dreyfus would have noted the stones of the pit seemed out of place with the rest of the mound, far newer than the ones around them. The visitors allowed in the mound were never that bright. They bought the cockamamie story that the pit was where the primitive people had made sacrifices to their gods.

  When she touched one of the stones with her shoe, Ms. Chiostro revealed the trigger for the elevator down to the archives. This was a metal platform that rose from out of the pit. Ms. Chiostro and Sylvia stepped on it and it began to take them down.

  ***

  Ms. Chiostro had visited the archives a number of times in the last five hundred years. Usually she came to register her latest potions so the rest of the coven could find them if needed. She hadn’t done that in well over sixty years, when everything was still done with paper ledgers and parchment scrolls.

  The archivist then had been an old woman named June, one of the many orphans Glenda had taken in over the centuries to look after the coven’s records. Glenda preferred orphans because if they tampered with a spell or potion and got changed into a frog or something worse there would be no one to come after the coven for revenge—or a lawsuit.

  It came as a surprise to see that the archives had been upgraded for the 21st Century with computers. The bigger surprise was the boy behind a terminal at the archivist’s desk. Like any new archivist he was young—from the acne probably not more than seventeen—with red hair and blue eyes that made Ms. Chiostro think of Rebecca’s slain husband. Most surprising was that the boy was a boy; Glenda never had employed a male archivist before.

  He looked up at her; his face momentarily contorted in shock. Then he reached for a pair of thick glasses to drop over his eyes, which made him look even younger. “Excuse me,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he had a cold, “do you have an appointment?”

  “No,” Ms. Chiostro said.

  “Then you’ll have to leave. We can’t have people dropping in whenever they feel like it to have a look around.”

  “Excuse me—”

  The boy held up a finger. Ms. Chiostro could feel Sylvia about to spring on the poor lad. There was a puff of smoke and a slip of paper appeared on the archivist’s desk. The boy read this and shook his head. “I wish she wouldn’t do that,” he grumbled. He looked up at them. “Glenda says I’m supposed to give you whatever you want.”

  “You’re the archivist?” Sylvia asked.

  “That’s right. Glenda put me in charge of modernizing everything.” He went on to describe in painstaking detail the process to create a network of servers and then to scan the information from the scrolls into the computer. Ms. Chiostro started to wish she had brought Emma along, though she and the boy could probably go on until Doomsday about all of this technical nonsense.

  “That’s very interesting,” she said. “But we just need to find one spell and then we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “The sooner the better,” Sylvia grumbled. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Everyone says that at first,” the boy said. With a huff he added, “They liked all those moldy old pages. No one appreciates how much work it took to do all of this.”

  “We appreciate the work you put into this,” Ms. Chiostro said. “Don’t we?”

  “Yeah, sure. It’s great,” Sylvia said.

  “You don’t really mean it.”

  “It’s just different than we remember. When I first came here with my mother there were shelves all the way up to the ceiling and back as far as you could see.” She smiled at him, but didn’t bat her eyelashes at someone so young. “It’s really impressive what you’ve done.”

  “Thanks. I guess.” He straightened his glasses again. “So what kind of spell are you looking for?”

  “We have two friends who have switched bodies. We need to switch them back.”

  “Body switching? That’s an easy one.” The boy tapped a few keys and then nodded. “I’ve got three different spells. You want me to print them out for you?”

  “Yes, please.” The printer hummed for a few moments and spit out three pieces of paper. The boy slid his chair across the room to the printer; he suppressed the whoop he obviously wanted to let out. With a little more dignity he walked the papers over to Ms. Chiostro.

  She shook her head as she examined the spells. The first spell concerned livestock, not people, though why anyone would want to put the spirit of a pig into a cow she had no idea. The other two were intended for humans, but in both cases they were intended to switch someone dying or in a vegetative state into a fully functional host for a short period of time. She showed the results to Sylvia, who grunted her disapproval.

  “Not what you’re looking for?” the boy asked.

  “I’m afraid not. Our friends are both still alive—and we hope to keep them that way.”

  The boy rubbed his jaw, which looked as if it had yet to grow any facial hair. “There are more spells down in the vaults, the older ones we couldn’t convert to the new format.”

  “Then I suppose that’s where we’ll have to look. Lead on, Mr.—”

  “Red. They call me that because of my hair.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable,” Ms. Chiostro said. “Well, Red, show us the way.”

  Red stood up from his chair to lead them over to a heavy door. “Come on, let’s go,” Red said.

  With a sigh, she followed after him.

  Chapter 19

  The old house creaked and groaned ominously. Emma thought of haunted houses in the movies; Ms. Chiostro’s house could serve beautifully as the setting for a Vincent Price picture, especially with no one else in it at the moment. Without the witches around it was almost as if the house lost the spirit of warmth and coziness she usually felt.

  At the moment Emma occupied the kitchen, where she wolfed down the remains of a casserole Ms. Chiostro had left in the fridge. Before the casserole Emma had devoured half of a roast chicken and a can of peas. She put a hand to her stomach and stifled another belch. Her gut felt full and yet her brain still tempted her with the cheesecake Ms. Chiostro had left in the freezer. A few minutes to unthaw it in the microwave and then she could scarf it down.

  Emma shook her head. Is this how Becky felt all the time? Did her brain relentlessly tell her to eat even while her stomach pleaded for her to stop? All this time Emma had thought Becky ate because she was hungry, but was it really more akin to an addiction like alcohol or narcotics? As her bra
in conjured another image of the cheesecake, she nodded to herself.

  She would have to battle against the addiction. She was stronger than her urges. After all, she was a rational person, a PhD; it should be easy enough to not eat. She changed her mind when she began to take the cheesecake out of the freezer.

  She shoved it back into the freezer and said, “I’m not hungry. I’m full.”

  Her brain didn’t seem to get the message; it urged her to remove the delicious cheesecake from the freezer. She could practically taste its sweetness, the heavenly creaminess as it melted in her mouth—

  “This is crazy,” she said. She stomped upstairs to her room, far removed from the fridge.

  When she saw the meteor case on the desk, she decided to fight the addiction the best way she knew how—with work. Activity had kept her going all of those years after her parents died. All she had to do was focus on the meteor and she’d forget all about that scrumptious cheesecake in the freezer.

  With a sigh, she sat down at the desk. The antique chair creaked, but held beneath her weight. She wondered where the witches had gone and how long until they came back. What if they couldn’t find a spell to help her? What if she was stuck like this? How long could she live Becky’s life?

  This made her think of her date tomorrow with Dan. What would Becky think if she found out about it? She and Dan had never been close; they’d only met a couple of times. Would she think Emma had been selfish? Emma reminded herself that Becky had helped Dan meet Councilwoman Napier. Had she done this simply as a favor or had she liked Dan all along?

  While these thoughts distracted her from the cheesecake, Emma decided they weren’t very productive. The sooner she examined the meteor, the sooner she might figure out what had happened and return to her old body. They could sort the rest out later.

  When she opened the case, she saw something was wrong: the meteor no longer glowed the way it had at Bykov’s house. The meteor’s dark brown surface looked almost black now, as if someone had lit it on fire. She also didn’t have the same sense of dread as in Bykov’s house. Part of that was undoubtedly because two-dozen goons didn’t have guns pointed at her, but it was more likely that whatever evil had inhabited the meteor had fled during Emma’s escape from Europe.

  Still, she wasn’t about to take any chances. Emma went over to the things Ms. Chiostro had vanished from Emma’s apartment. In a box she found some of her old field tools, which included a pair of thick work gloves and a microscope. The microscope only went up to a hundred magnification, but that would be enough to at least get her started.

  From her tools, she took out a tiny chisel. The fingers of her gloves were too long for Becky’s hands; it felt as if she used robotic arms to reach out towards the meteor. She supposed this was good in a way given what had happened the last time she touched it.

  She leaned back in the chair as she brought the chisel out over the meteor. Slowly she lowered it and waited for any sign of trouble. The blade of the chisel touched the dark surface of the meteor. Nothing happened. Emma heaved a sigh of relief. With her other hand, she took out her hammer.

  She tapped the hammer against the chisel delicately, so she wouldn’t risk too much damage to the meteor. A sliver of rock broke away from the meteor’s surface, just enough for her to mount on a slide. With a pair of tweezers, she eased the sliver over to the microscope. She had no choice but to take off the bulky gloves so she could get the sliver onto the microscope slide.

  She still used a light touch as if it were nitroglycerine as she put the slide under the microscope. Her face turned red when she nearly knocked over the microscope with Becky’s larger breasts. She righted the microscope, rearranged the slide, and then straightened her body before she bent over to look into the microscope.

  Emma had studied dozens of meteors in her relatively few years as a geologist. She had read even more journal articles about meteors found by other scientists. The meteor in her slide looked no different from those. The composition looked nearly identical to the first meteor she had found in Montana.

  She dropped into the chair with a tired sigh. A dead end. There was nothing special about this meteor, or if there had been there wasn’t anymore.

  When she reached into the freezer for the cheesecake again, she didn’t stop herself.

  ***

  Halfway through the cheesecake, Emma began to think rationally. The microscope had not shown her anything, but it was a weak microscope. She needed to conduct a more thorough investigation before she threw in the towel on this. She shoved away from the table and returned upstairs to the meteor. With the gloves on, she closed the case; she still didn’t want to take any chances with it.

  By the time she carried it downstairs, she was breathing hard. It wasn’t only because she was fat but because Becky didn’t have nearly the same muscle tone. Becky had never needed to work out so she could effectively pummel criminals.

  While she struggled for breath, Emma considered what to do next. The tools she needed were at the Plaine Museum; she knew exactly where they were, provided no one had rearranged anything in the last nine months. The only problem was that she no longer worked at the museum. If she were still herself she might be able to convince the guards to let her in for old time’s sake. The guards didn’t know Becky, so it seemed unlikely they would let her in after hours to borrow the museum’s equipment.

  She considered where else she might find the equipment she needed. There were other museums in the city, not to mention private laboratories and universities. The thought of colleges gave her an idea. She trudged outside with the meteor case under her arm.

  The next problem came in that she didn’t have a car. She didn’t have enough money left for a cab either. She could afford the bus, but it would be difficult to lug the meteor case on and off the bus. She seized upon another idea and hurried back inside to use the phone.

  Becky would probably kill her if she knew what Emma was about to do, but then again in a way it was Becky’s fault. If Becky hadn’t turned her out of the house, Emma could have taken the car to where she needed to go. That likely wouldn’t stop Becky from trying to strangle her again if she found out.

  The rusty Chevette pulled up to the curb a half-hour later. Emma leaned down and forced a smile to her face. “Hi, Brandi.”

  Becky’s second-youngest sister glared at her. In the nine months since Emma had last seen her, Brandi had dyed her hair lavender and gotten studs in her nose, lips, and tongue. Emma had to suppress a shiver as she wondered if Becky planned to do something similar to Emma’s real body out of revenge. “What’s that thing?” Brandi asked.

  Emma hefted the meteor case. “It’s a research project. I found it with Steve’s things and I wanted to give it back to the school.”

  The lie sounded terribly flimsy to her ears, but she had called Brandi because she knew she could count on the sullen younger woman’s indifference. “Whatever,” Brandi said. “Put it in the backseat.”

  There wasn’t much room in the backseat with Brandi’s collection of CDs haphazardly filed into a dozen vinyl binders. Emma managed not to crush any of these as she stashed the crate into the car. Then she dropped into the passenger’s seat, right onto a bag of partially-eaten Taco Bell food.

  “You should have cleaned the seat off first,” Brandi said before she floored the accelerator, which left Emma with no time to scrape the food off her rear. She could only hold on for dear life as Brandi wove her way through traffic. Emma thought back to the numerous times she had ridden her motorcycle along the streets—and sidewalks—in a similar fashion as the Scarlet Knight. But the motorcycle had been a lot smaller and more maneuverable, not to mention the red armor meant Emma couldn’t be hurt even if she smashed headfirst into a semi. She had no such protection in the Chevette, only the hope that should they hit anything her body would be too big to fly through the windshield.

  Brandi looked down to dig a cigarette out of her purse and a lighter. Emma watched in horror as a dum
p truck grew large in the windshield. “Brandi—”

  “Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on.” Brandi lit the cigarette and then deftly flicked the steering wheel to maneuver around the dump truck. “If you’re going to start bitching, remember that you called me. You’re lucky I was on my way downtown anyway to this concert at a little club. Not that you’d care. Music’s probably too loud for you.”

  “Well—”

  “The only music you like is that elevator crap. Better than Bambi at least with her stupid Disney crap.” Brandi flicked her cigarette out the window. “You’d think she was still ten years old or something.”

  “Well—”

  Brandi took her eyes off the road again to glance over at Emma. “You’re really taking Steve dying pretty hard, aren’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Pretty soon you aren’t going to fit in a car.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Mom always said one day Bambi and I would have to give you sponge baths because you wouldn’t be able to wash yourself. She used to threaten us with the sponge too.” Brandi reached down for another cigarette. “I hate that bitch. I hope she’s dead, wherever she is.”

  “Brandi—”

  “Yeah, well, fuck you if you don’t like that. You weren’t even around half the time. You were always hanging around with that nerd and her family.”

  “Emma was my best friend.”

  “You probably wished you were her sister instead of ours.”

  “No—”

  “I would. Better than being Mom’s daughter.”

  “Brandi—”

  “Then after her parents got whacked and she went mental there were all those guys. Anything so you wouldn’t have to be around us. At least until you need a favor, right? Like when you need someone to fill in as a bridesmaid or give you a ride to school?”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  “Whatever. You don’t have to defend it. I get it. It was a shitty place. Still is. Not that you’d care. You got that big house of yours.”