Key of Solomon: Relic Defender, Book 1 (11 page)

“Regina, what the hell are you doing?” Terrific. The last person she wanted to see stood in front of her. Regina, a new dancer, had latched onto Gary like a camel finding an oasis in the desert. There was something about the woman that left a sour taste in Lexi’s mouth. Not that she’d actually done anything. Maybe it was the way she had latched onto Gary.

“Hello, Lexi.”

Was it a trick of the light that made Regina’s eyes seem as blank as the guy from the night before? Cold fingers danced up Lexi’s spine, leaving her with the desire to turn around and beat feet for the door.

Instead, she squared her shoulders. “Isn’t it a bit early for you?”

Still staring at her, Regina didn’t respond. Lexi took a half step, intending to go around the strange girl, when Regina spoke.

“I’m just waiting for Gary. Howard asked him to stop by.”

With that, as Lexi watched, Regina’s gaze shifted, her brown eyes once again...human.

A man’s voice, raised in ire, echoed from the offices in the back. The voice had a clipped, edgy tone. When Gary stepped into the main area, Lexi couldn’t stop the surprise widening her eyes. Gary? That in-your-face tone belonged to nice Gary?

For all his appearance of a contender for WWF, Gary’s normal voice had a soft quality to it that was completely non-existent at this moment.

He stopped when he saw her, then his face split into a wide grin. “Hey, Lexi,” he said, his voice returning to its regular soft, friendly tone. What happened to the hard edge? “I’m glad to see you. How ya doin’?”

The bouncer came up next to Regina and wrapped an arm around her waist. Lexi’s brow lifted.
Taking a risk aren’t you, big boy
? Their boss, Howard, discouraged interaction, in all its forms, between his employees.

“I’m good,” she replied. “You guys seen Devyn? I promised her a dance lesson. Figured I had time today. Is she here?”

Gary shook his head. “Not here. Haven’t seen her, not since last night. Not since she left with you.”

Left with me?

As if he realized he said something he shouldn’t have, he swallowed heavily, his Adam’s apple bobbing. A swelling of uneasiness rose up inside Lexi. The world had turned topsy-turvy, everyone acting like someone she didn’t know, hadn’t worked with for two years and it had started with the man from last night.

Mikos.

Maybe he hadn’t had anything to do with the guys at the club, but her life had turned to crap after she’d seen Mikos in the audience. Irrational? Possibly, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that with his arrival, everything had changed.

Still. She opened her mouth to challenge Gary’s comment about Devyn being with Lexi. Obviously he knew more than he admitted. Maybe even what happened to her.

“Ah, Lexi, dear, I didn’t expect to see you today.”

Big Joe, a long-time patron of the club and a person Lexi usually enjoyed chatting with, came out from the shadows behind the bar. When the hell had he arrived? A person couldn’t get into the freaking club without that damn squeaky front door announcing entry. If she judged by the wide-eyed expression on Gary’s face, Big Joe’s presence had come as a shock.

“Hey, Joe.” Lexi kept her tone airy, unconcerned, but never removed her eyes from Gary’s shiny face. “Skulking in the dark?”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Joe’s round face quiver in what might pass as a smile, yet his pale brown eyes were chips of stone when he looked at…Regina.

Not Gary. Regina. Lexi had never seen the short accountant with anything except a constant state of amusement on his face. Not now. Hard lines etched deep into his forehead and at the corner of his mouth.

“We gotta go,” Gary stammered, his pale face glowing like a beacon in the dim light. He grabbed Regina’s arm and propelled her in front of him when it appeared she wanted to stay.

Go? Go where? The question had barely formed in her mind before Gary and Regina slipped through the shadows at the back of the stage and disappeared. The distant sound of the back exit door slamming echoed.

Lexi scowled. Shit. Joe had perfect timing. Now she’d have to wait to find out what Gary knew.

“Lexi, my dear, Devyn is not your concern.” Joe spoke in an unusual, gentle tone.

With a deliberately casual movement opposed to her current confused condition, Lexi regarded the man coming from out of the shadows near the bar.

Still the same short, rotund man she’d known for a couple of years. However, his twinkling brown eyes told a different story. No longer hard, they held that ages-old wisdom that totally clashed with the image of a lust-crazed accountant.

“Excuse me?”

Joe sighed. “Lexi, you are neither stupid nor dense. Please do not act so now.”

Lexi reared back. Holy hell. Shock careened through her body. Stupid? Dense? And where had the cultured tone come from?

“Devyn’s whereabouts are not important,” he continued. “And you are not responsible for what happened. You merely waste time by searching for her.”

“I’m wasting time? For crying out loud, Joe, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fate of the world. A fate you allow to come closer the longer you fight your destiny.”

“Oh, God, not you too.” Lexi groaned out the words, exasperation and annoyance fighting for dominance. “What is this? Remakes of the old Candid Camera television show?”

She reached blindly behind and pulled out a chair. Lexi lowered herself into the wooden seat, okay fell, and rested her elbows on the scarred table. Cupping her head in her hands, she muttered to the pitted surface, “This is ridiculous. What happened to my fairly normal, if a bit boring, life?”

Okay, maybe belly dancing in an exotic dance club while attending college wasn’t exactly normal. But it was a life. And it had a purpose. Get a degree. Get out of Chicago.

Another chair creaked as Joe sat. She lifted her head. His serene brown eyes were mild and contemplative. Not hers. Her expression had to be as bleak as she felt.

Something clicked in her brain. “Wait. How do you know what’s going on?”

Obviously ignoring her question, the jerk, he continued, “I know this is an unexpected, and unwanted, burden. I’m certain that if Sierra and Alexander knew their fate, they would have not chosen to travel to Egypt.”

She barely registered everything he said, but clearly heard him mention her parents. And the manner in which he did. “You knew my parents?”

Joe nodded. “Indeed. More so your father. Your heritage comes from him.”

Her mouth dropped open. Snapping it shut she said, “Great. My father left me one hell of a legacy.”

“Lexi, I know all of this is a shock
—
”

Talk about an understatement. “That’s putting it mildly, Joe,” she interrupted, her tone heavy with sarcasm.

He nodded again. “As unfortunate as your childhood began, it doesn’t change the fact this is your destiny. And you are greatly needed. More than you know.”

“What makes you an expert?” Lexi lowered her voice, her head moving from side to side as she peered into the dark before continuing, “Are you, ah, an angel?”

She wanted to slap her hand over her mouth. Was she really asking Joe if he was an angel? Yep, definitely losing her mind. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d made a connection between Mikos, his wings and angels. It was the only thing to explain her current foot-in-mouth disease.

“What I am is not important. Suffice it to say, I know more than it appears.” He held up a hand to halt her next words. “You have more pressing matters than finding one lost girl. You must save your fellow humans.”

“I’m supposed to save my fellow humans?” Lexi repeated. When he didn’t respond, she lifted her gaze skyward. “I don’t even care about my freaking fellow humans!”

She was starting to feel like a parrot. After all, she’d had this same conversation with Mikos. Lexi lowered her head and met Joe’s placid countenance. Damn him. “What if I don’t want this destiny?”

“Then the human race will perish.”

Chapter Eight

“We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."

Aristotle

Lexi didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Reality had taken a walk leaving behind a mishmash of secrets, lies and disguises.

“You’ve got to be joking, Joe,” she said when she’d finally found her voice. “The powers-that-be have chosen me to save the world? Isn’t there some other person, maybe one destined for sainthood that would do a better job?”

“There is no one else, Lexi.”

“I feel pretty sorry for the world then.” She pushed back, the chair’s legs dragging against the wood floor. Howard hated when patrons did that. He didn’t like to spend the money to buff out the scratches. And why the hell was she thinking of this now?

Joe didn’t move. He simply stared up at her, his eyes brimming with empathy. And concern. For her or the world?

“Don’t look at me like that.” She didn’t like the way his pursed lips and narrowed gaze made her feel. As if she let him down. “How long have you known me? In all that time, what have I done to make you, or anyone, think I give a damn about the rest of the world?”

“Your heart says otherwise.”

“My heart?” She laughed, a brief bark of sound that even to her sounded, well, just wrong. “My heart is an organ that pumps blood. It doesn’t feel, or care. It’s just there.”

Much like me, she added to herself.

Joe sighed, a heavy sigh as if the weight of the world rested on his round shoulders. “If that is true then your race will not survive what will come should you not take up your destiny.”

Great. An attempt to transfer the weight from his shoulders to hers. “Don’t lay that on me.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something more. She held up a hand. “You know what? I’ve had it. I’m going back to school and my job, such as it is. When I’ve graduated, I’m leaving. The world can take care of itself.”

With that final parting shot, Lexi spun and left, the metal door squealing on its hinges.

The next day Lexi strode the near empty hallways at Haskell Hall. She was long overdue to talk to him about the gold box, the amulet and now Mikos. If anyone could help her make sense of this mess, it was the only person she trusted. Besides, despite his odd behavior two nights ago, she needed something to take her mind off the events of the last several days.

Including her strange conversation with Joe. Who the hell was he anyway?

When she’d asked him that question, he’d replied with a straight man’s face that he was a poor accountant in love with an exotic dancer. Once he’d delivered his bombshell comment, he said nothing further except for reiterating she should not try to find Devyn.

Lexi’s confident step faltered for a moment, the sharp click of her boot heels skipping a beat. What was she going to do? Listen to Joe or her own heart? That such a decision needed to be made boggled her mind.

The nearly deserted hallways echoed, casting the sounds of her footsteps against and bouncing off walls. Noticing the tomb-like stillness, she hesitated in front of the Professor’s closed door. Again. Even though classes hadn’t begun, she was used to seeing and hearing a level of bustle non-existent this afternoon.

Something was definitely wrong. Not with the silence of the building or the closed door. Professor Xaviera was always in. His office never looked dark like it did now. Her gut knotted. Based on the way her last couple of days had gone, she didn’t expect his absence to be a good thing. She grasped the doorknob and slowly pushed open the door.

Her first impression corrected her assumption that his office was dark. It wasn’t. Not completely. A brass lamp cast a soft glow, reflecting off the scarred, polished mahogany of the antique desk. The light offered a soothing contrast to the deep shadows, but since the environment it highlighted was so at odds with the way he normally kept his desk, there was nothing comforting about it.

No
Archeology Magazine
or
National Geographic
issues were stacked precariously near the lamp. No numerous snippets of reports and tattered pieces of handwritten notes spread out on the desktop. All the usual mess was gone. Except for a pristine desk blotter, the desk was disturbingly bare.

Lexi bit her lower lip and ran her gaze around the room. Swirls of unease curled up her spine. Rattled by the unusual state of his office, she skittered away from the desk. As she did, she saw a flash of white under his chair. She crouched.

“You shouldn’t be in here.”

Shit! Lexi started, scooped up the card and jerked upright. On the way up, she caught her hip on the corner of the desk.

“Ouch! Damn it!” She muttered a few other choice words and slid the business card into her jeans pocket. While rubbing her throbbing hip, she turned to glare at the intruder.

The student standing in the doorway glared back at her. He looked familiar. Small-boned, medium height, with tight curls of dark hair capping a too-little head. At the same time she remembered where she’d seen him, he said, “Hey, you were in the Professor’s night class. Me too. I’m Pete.”

Pete came further into the room, a smile stretching his lips wide. The flash of his white teeth looked insincere in the dim light. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. No one is allowed in here,” he continued.

Lexi held back a sarcastic comment about her professor’s office being open to anyone when a thought occurred to her. “Wait, what did you mean when you said I was in the Professor’s night class?”

Pete stopped his advance. A momentary expression of discomfort crossed his broad face. “You haven’t heard?”

“I haven’t heard what?”

“The Professor’s been killed. Someone slit his throat. I wasn’t supposed to hear, but I heard a cop tell the other he was killed with some kind of sword.”

Pete lowered his voice and leaned in. “They said he was practically decapitated.”

Lexi reeled, her hand coming down hard on the desk to support her suddenly weak body. Professor Xaviera was dead? Killed? By a sword?

“I thought everyone knew. The police only just released the Professor’s office. Not much in the way of clues, I guess, but you know…” His voice trailed off. “Hey, you okay?”