Her Kind of Trouble (25 page)

I'd been looking at him for years.

It's the pyramids
, I warned myself as I noticed a different, deeper hunger insinuating its way through my limbs.
It's the expensive towels. It's because he came to your rescue
—
this is why you can't let him
do
that
!

And yet…

"Did you really think I wasn't sleeping with you because I helped you fight off a knife attack?" I asked softly.

His blink was slow as he got his bearings. "No. Maybe. I'm…not sure. Forget I said anything."

"When we started dating again, we had an agreement. It wasn't just about us. I don't know what else it
was
about… "

Feminine power. Balance. I can't do it alone…

"I know," he said, sounding apologetic.

"And things are so complicated now."

"Yes. You can't leap into a void, not even with me. Which… " Lex's hesitation was so uncharacteristic, he might as well be shouting. "It makes what I have to ask you sound particularly ignoble. I'm really just after information."

"This doesn't sound good."

"Maybe you should have some cheese and crackers," he insisted, masking his discomfort behind simple etiquette. And to be honest, it had been a long, long time since I'd had breakfast.

"Maybe I should," I said and passed him into the dining room and sat The flatware, the crystal, the china plate…all of it bespoke entitlement the likes of which most of us can only dream. How could he need anything from me?

"I have a…a comparative mythology question," Lex admitted, sinking into the chair across from me as I tried some truly delicious cheese. Compared to this, the stuff at the jail didn't bear remembering.

I swallowed, slowly savoring it—and was amused by his serious tone. "Then thank goodness I teach comparative mythology. Ask away."

"But you can't ask questions. That is—" He raised a hand to fend off my silent, wide-eyed challenge of that. "Of course you can ask questions, but you should know ahead of time that I probably won't answer most of them."

Which meant that this was Comitatus business. I could live with that compromise. "So what else is new? Cut to the chase."

"I'm trying to learn more about an ancient ritual, and I I don't trust what I've gotten off the Internet. Things on the Net can be so lurid, that it's hard to tell—"

"Lex." I reached across the table, put a hand on his. "If you don't tell me what this is about soon… "

I wasn't used to him looking so helpless. "It's called a…Sacred Marriage?"

If this were a sitcom, I would have choked on Brie. As it was, I just stared.

"Oh," I said, the word like a thud.

"Yeah," he said. "Oh."

Here's the thing. The Sacred Marriage, or
hieros gamos
, is a sex ritual: the divine marriage of god and goddess symbolized through, say, a king or a pagan priest making love with a priestess. As in, intercourse. But for religious purposes. Complete with candles and incense and prayers. Really.

Clearly, as the world turned to monotheism, that particular style of worship fell out of common practice.

No wonder Lex had been asking about married goddesses!

"Okay," I said, taking refuge in a nice, safe, academic facade. "So what do you want to know about Sacred Marriages?"

"Were they real?" When I stared, confused by the question, Lex ducked his head and tried again. "Did people seriously
do that
, as an accepted practice? Or is it just some salacious rumor for neopagans and speculative fiction?"

"Oh, it was accepted all right." Since those first few bites had taken the worst edge off my hunger, I sat back in my chair to better explain. "Sacred Marriage was the prerequisite to kingship all over the Western world. Sumeria,
Assyria
,
Ghana
…
Ireland
, even. Unless the goddess—in the form of her priestess—accepted a king, then he couldn't rule. Simple as that."

"Accepted as in… ?"

"The communion of female and male. Yin and yang. Chalice and blade."

"So the priestess sleeps with the king?"

"The prospective king, anyway. The strength and fertility of the kingdom depends on the strength and fertility of its king, which is why… " Okay, so I'm enough of an egghead that I'd gotten caught up in my own lecture, but finally,
finally
the implication of all this dawned on me. "But you know that part already. The whole reason Phil is head of the Comitatus, and not you, is because you had leukemia. If the Comitatus is an ancient warrior society, with ancient values, then the leader has to be healthy."

Lex stared at me for a long, weighty moment before he carefully said, "You know that I can neither confirm nor deny that, Mag."

He didn't ask me to stop speculating.

"But that's it," I insisted, as if he were the one who needed it explained. Hello, he'd been living with the consequences since he was what, thirteen? "Like the Fisher King in the stories of the Holy Grail. The Fisher King is wounded—" in the groin, I might add "—so his land suffers. Or the Irish king, Nuada, who had to give up his throne after losing his hand in battle."

Lex had once used
Nuada
as a password.
He knew
.

"But when Nuada had a new hand made out of silver," I continued slowly, "he was able to take back his throne. The rightful king can return once he's healed, and you're healed, Lex. You're the healthiest man I know."

Lex stared at me, unable to comment—but his gaze was poignant. If I'd ever doubted that he
wanted
to talk about this…

It was as good a time as any for a knock on the door, announcing dinner. Lex used the peephole before letting the white-coated waiter roll in some covered trays that smelled like heaven itself.

It gave me a few minutes to consider the significance of all this. Lex clearly didn't need to hear about the spiritual importance of a leader's health; that wasn't why he'd asked about this. Maybe he just wanted to confirm that I understood, as well.

Then again, what he'd asked about was Sacred Marriage.

I neatly refused to face the most obvious possibility there. Even when I'd thought Lex was the bad guy, I'd believed him smooth enough not to use
that
kind of pickup line on anybody. And where, exactly, would he find a priestess in the first place?

"Something more is going on," I guessed, as soon as Lex had paid the bellman and sent him on his way. "Obviously, Phil doesn't want to give up leadership of this superpowerful secret society of yours, no surprise. Honor was never his strong suit. But his reluctance wouldn't stop you…would it?"

Lex lifted silver lids off the dinners, waiting for me to decide between what neatly printed cards described as seared salmon on polenta, and smoked duck and quail salad with caramelized almonds. I pointed at the salad, then took a fork and tried a bite of quail, and I'd been right. Seventh heaven.

"What do you think?" asked Lex, by way of encouragement. Instead of sitting across from me, he sat to my right. He wasn't asking about the food.

"You owe him for the bone marrow and all, but I doubt you'd let even personal gratitude get in the way of doing what's right."

He kissed me—just like that. Kissed me with wonderful, warm lips, and ran a finger adoringly down my cheek—then went silently back to dinner.

That took a moment to process. Damn. The more I took care of one kind of hunger, the more insistent other primal appetites became.

Towels, I reminded myself. Pyramids. Rescue.? You're not thinking clearly.

Focus on comparative mythology.

I had to take a surprisingly deep breath before I continued. "You're a big-picture guy. If Phil's turning this society into a perversion of its original purpose, and if you care anything about it, you'd do what you could to fix that."

"Delicious," said Lex, of his salmon—well, it wasn't like he could say
Yes, Maggi, that's exactly what I mean to do
. "Want to try this?"

I leaned closer and he slid a morsel of seared salmon carefully between my lips. Oh, goddess, yes…

It was several minutes before I could resume talking.

"And to fix things, you'd want to regain leadership, right? I know, I know—you can't answer questions." And I already knew that a secret code of blinking or touching his nose would still count as breaking his word—as far as he was concerned, anyway. "But to avoid infighting, maybe even a schism, you would want to do it honorably, convince the other society members that you, and not Phil, are their rightful leader. Which in a ceremonial order I guess you'd accomplish through some kind of ritual, like… "

Suddenly, no matter how delicious, the salad sat heavily in my stomach. "
You really
do
want to perform a Sacred Marriage in front of the Comitatus
?"

Lex's golden eyes widened. "What?"

I pushed back from the table. "And where
would
you get someone to be your priestess?" Yes, it
was
one of those damning, have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife kind of questions. If he named someone else, that would mean he planned to cheat on me. Sort of. Since we
were
dating, even if it was celibate. And if he named the only person I knew that he knew with ties to ancient goddesses…

It would mean he was not only asking me for sex, he was asking for exhibitionism!

"
No
," protested Lex. I guess that, at least, didn't count as a secret. "You think I'd ask…
In front of people
? Christ, Mag, I just wanted information, maybe ideas for how to, well, modernize the whole thing. Like how in church we sip wine for communion, when enough millennia ago they probably drank the blood of some sacrificed animal. Or for that matter, how some churches use grape juice instead of wine. If I hope to accomplish… things… I can use all the help I can get, but… God, Maggi, no!"

So my first instinct there had been correct. Even Evil Lex would have more class than that.

Oops.

"Well…good," I attempted weakly.

"If that's what you think about me, then no wonder… "

"That's not what I think about you," I insisted, but I couldn't blame him for arching a skeptical eyebrow. "It's what I'm
afraid
to think about you, so I'm…wary."

"Right." He sounded tired. "Enjoy your dinner."

Further protest seemed futile, so I did as he asked—at least, I tried. The food really was good, but I was distracted now. For one thing, I felt guilty for casting him, yet again, as the enemy. For another, it wasn't like I could take back the image of Lex and me role-playing king and goddess, like some kind of kinky sex game. Even if we
weren't
going there, the damage had been done.

My only form of damage control was what had turned me into an academic in the first place—information.

"I've heard witches have a parallel ritual using a cup and a knife," I offered slowly, into the uncomfortable silence. "The symbolism isn't exactly subtle, but that may not be a bad thing."

"Witches?" Now Lex looked wary.

"As in, Wiccans. It's a legitimate religion, if you look behind the negative spin. A lot of Wiccans still see deity as a god-and-goddess pairing, which should help us. Maybe I could find something on one of their Web sites."

"When?" He probably couldn't tell me when he needed this—but clearly he needed it soon.

"I'll just take a quick bath first, so I can stand myself. Then I'll use your computer. I can have something downloaded for you and still catch an express back to
Alexandria
before the trains stop running."

"What if I need help with it?" he asked, holding my gaze. "What if the ritual's something I can't do alone?"

And he had a point. From what I knew of rituals—far more scholarship than experience, mind you—the main purpose was to sort of reprogram yourself, like a form of self-hypnosis. Meditative elements like candles and incense help with that, but so does being able to focus on someone else.

It was Lex who drew back first. "I'm sorry, Maggi. This is all too crazy. It's too much to ask."

"Hey, I'm the one who keeps getting accused of being a witch," I reminded him, standing. "And some kind of champion. You haven't cornered the market on crazy yet."

"But I'm the one asking for help."

"And so far, you've been the one giving it."

He gazed up at me, not at all uncomfortable with his head being lower than mine. He knew who he was, no matter the trappings of power. "For what it's worth, Mag, that's all I did at the jail. I didn't rescue you—
rescue
implies that you were weak, and clearly you were never that. I just…helped."

Which implied only that I wasn't alone.

"Thank you." It was something I should have said at the time. Poor Lex had taken the brunt of my uncertainties more than once.