Page 50 of Girl Anonymous

She was a fool. This man was dangerous to her, more dangerous than even she had known.

Still holding the stone, she tried to step back.

He caught her arms. “Do you always see so much?”

“Never. Only now, when you’re touching…me.” Maybe it wasn’t him who was dangerous to her, but thenowof knowing.

He looked toward her bureau, then he scanned the tops of her windows. Or maybe the edges of her coved ceiling where her camera lens watched and recorded. “We’ll do this thing.” He seemed to be talking to himself.

What thing?She didn’t speak out loud. She still felt as if she had one foot in the past, and somehow he had taken a step away from her and into the future.

He took her by the shoulders and positioned her so she stood at right angles to the light from her bed lamps. Going to her bureau, he opened the drawer, and while she whispered, “You said not to touch it,” he took it out from under her socks and brought it to her. Holding it cupped in his palms, he gazed at her from those fierce, dark, fiendish eyes. “Free your stone from the chain. Unite the stopper with the bottle. It is, after all, what both have been seeking all these centuries.”

CHAPTER 22

Dante was right. The one had been created for the other, out of the bones of the earth, stone and sand, heat and fire, the artistry of God and man, working together.

Dramatic. Absurd. And true.

Maarja opened her chain, slid the stone free, slipped a finger through the hole, and considered the bottle.

“The wax,” she said. She meant the wax that sealed the bottle, the temporary replacement for the stone that had lasted for generations.

Using a magician’s trick, a bone handle appeared in his right hand, and with a flick and a click, a sharp thin steel blade appeared.

She flinched.

Stiletto. She guessed it had come out of his sleeve or his belt or… She didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.

With a frightening efficiency, he slipped the point under the wax and popped it out.

They both waited, wondering what kind of odor would come from the long-unopened bottle reputed to hold the blood of a martyr.

Dante took a long inhale. “Cedar. Lavender. Thyme. He’s not in here.” He sounded almost disappointed.

“Blood of my blood,” she reminded him. “The other scent is honey. Whatever they preserved of Jånos is mixed with scents that would pleasure him in the afterlife, and the honey preserves him and the plant material.”

“How do you know that?” Dante wasn’t doubtful, just curious.

“The Egyptians used honey to preserve small bodies, because honey is antimicrobial and antibacterial. It doesn’t spoil.”

He flicked the wax from the tip of the blade, and the stiletto vanished with a sleight of hand as efficient as its appearance. “You know the oddest facts.”

“I could say the same about you.”

He observed too much of her reluctance to mate the stopper to the bottle, yet he waited on her without reproach.

The scents rose in her brain, blurring the edges of reality. “I don’t know how to make the stone fit.”

“You don’t have tomakeit. With a little care, when you maneuver it, the stopper will slip into place.” Once again, he cupped the bottle in both his palms. “I know this. Don’t you?”

“Yes… The stone feels warm in my hand, as if it understands the momentousness of this event.”

He used that deep, gentle, soothing tone he’d used during her seduction. “Do it. It’s time. Past time.”

“Yes.” Her fingers shook a little as she fitted the stone into the bottle’s collar. It was like a jigsaw puzzle; it had to fit exactly right, but he was right. She maneuvered it, and with a small clink it was seated as if the stone and the glass had never parted.

Dante smiled with so much satisfaction he might have been created for this moment. “Take it.”

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