“Nice,” Hermes commented. “Where’d you pick it up?”
“Thrift shop in Albuquerque,” she replied. “Now try to focus.”
“Fine,” he said, and left the room. “I remember Circe. Of course I do. She was a sorceress, had a habit of enchanting men and turning them into beasts. But unlike you, I haven’t stayed in touch with the descendants of times gone by.” Sounds came of him rifling through his pack, pulling out clothes and putting them on.
“I haven’t stayed in touch with them either,” she said. “But it doesn’t hurt to stay in the know. Circe herself is dead, obviously, but her island remains, in an altered state. Witches of her tradition have lived in covens through the centuries, in Greece, then later France, and now here in Middle America.”
“Chicago’s an underrated town,” he observed. “Or maybe I just like the wind.” He popped his head back into the bathroom, dressed now in a brown hooded sweatshirt. “They’re not still turning men into animals, are they?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Athena said, and smiled.
* * *
The witches had gone corporate. They occupied two floors of a warehouse on the lower east side. The sign on the building read THE THREE SISTERS, but in truth, over twenty women lived and worked within. Athena and Hermes entered the lobby, which was done up chicly in marble and brushed chrome. The receptionist, one of those bookish, sexy types with carefully pinned hair, glasses, and a low-cut blouse, gestured to the elevator at once. She watched them calmly. Athena barely saw her pick up the phone as her view was reduced to a slit by the closing doors.
Good, she thought. They know who we are. It would make things easier; eliminate annoying explanations and demands for proof. It also lent faith to the fact that the witches still had power, a question that had plagued Athena since her decision to come to them. A millennium was a long time to foster a mystical thing. The reduction in her own strength was evidence of that.
The elevator reached the upper level, and the doors opened on a wooden crate-gate, the type often found in warehouses. The rest of the interior had been completely redone: impressionist art hung on the plastered and painted walls, and marble columns stretched to the ceiling, but apparently the wooden gate had been left for ambience. Athena bent down and lifted it with a soft whirr, and they stepped into the center of a very large reception area. A circular brushed-chrome desk sat ahead, and behind it a receptionist so similar to the girl downstairs that one might have been just a hologram of the other. On the wall, a row of plush, cushioned sofas in shades of cream and gray rested. In them sat not customers but girls, beautiful girls in tight, attractive clothing, who looked at them with expressions of curiosity and obvious welcome.
“Holy shit, it’s an escort service,” said Hermes.
“And not only that.”
They turned to find a girl nearly as tall as Athena standing beside them in a finely cut black suit. Hermes jumped, and she smiled at him warmly.
“I am Celine,” she said, and Athena recognized a name passed down through generations. She offered her hand, and both shook it. Athena was surprised to see Hermes blushing. Celine was strikingly beautiful, with shining red hair, peach skin, and legs that seemed to stretch for miles beneath the elegantly tailored skirt, but Hermes’ tastes rarely ran toward women.
“Do you know who we are?” Athena asked.
“I know only that you are of the old ones,” Celine replied. There was a trace of a French accent in her voice, as soft as an echo. “Mareden, the girl in the lobby, is one of the strongest telepaths in the world. She phoned a moment ago to say that two visitors were here whom she could not see into. Only those among the old ones could be so strong. We know only that.”
Athena scanned the room again. Celine had come from a doorway to their left. The girls on the sofas had ceased to stare and had gone back to posing with lithe, languorous grace. Beauty was everywhere. The very air was perfumed with some soft, floral scent. The room was meant to seduce, to comfort, and to quicken the pulse. When Hermes went to introduce himself, she stopped him with a hand on his forearm.
“Have you seen many old ones?” Athena asked casually.
“Never in my life,” Celine replied. That gentle smile, the graceful squaring of her shoulders. “Until two days ago. When one showed up on our doorstep, beaten nearly to death. Is it he whom you are looking for?”
Athena and Hermes exchanged a look. “Can you take us to him?” they asked together.
Celine laughed softly. “But of course. However, you may find him … indisposed.”