Page 54 of Sacrifice
“Eve, stop!” Lucien yelled above the roar of air and Eve looked back at him, not understanding what he was doing there.
She looked down at the bowl and saw more words that waited for her. The words that would set the trap.
“Eve, no!” Lucien dropped to one knee. “My queen!” His face twisted with pain. “Please!”
She dropped the bowl. Instantly the wind stopped and the packaging detritus rained softly to the stone floor. Tim sucked in a rattling breath and Lucien lurched toward him, muttering incoherently.
Eve watched them both in mute shock and when Lucien finally lifted his eyes to find hers, they burned with rage. “What the fuck do you think you are doing?”
Eve floundered for words. She had no idea. “I- I-,”
He was standing on the other side of her desk before she’d had time to blink, his presence pushing her back in the chair. He snatched up the bowl. “This is not a fucking toy! You could have killed me! Him,” he corrected, “Him! You can’t go round randomly chucking ancient magic about. Look at the fucking state of him!”
Eve looked past Lucien to Tim, now retching and gasping on the floor. She wrapped her arms around herself. Suddenly, it was incredibly cold. She started to shake. Lucien’s lip curled, and Eve cringed away.
Lucien’s breathing was ragged with fury and in that moment, Eve felt sure he was preparing to strike her. She braced for the impact, squeezing her eyes tight shut. He let out a bellow of frustration and the tension in the air dissipated.
When Eve opened her eyes, Lucien was crouched down beside Tim, slapping him lightly on one cheek.
“Wakey, wakey. You’re alright. Come on now. Had a bit of a fainting fit, I think.” The tone of his voice had changed completely.
Tim levered himself up onto his elbows and looked blearily up.
“Not had any lunch? Yeah, that’s bound to be it. Here.” Lucien pulled a note from his pocket and squeezed it into Tim’s hand with his own in a handshake that he also used to pull him to his feet. “Get yourself something on me. Can’t have you falling about like this. It's not safe, is it?”
Tim nodded dumbly and wobbled out of the door. He left his rucksack behind.
Twenty-Nine
Eve felt oddlysorry to see her shabby little desk go. Battered and scratched as it was, it had been her bolt hole over the last few weeks, as the exhibition had built around her. Now its usefulness was at an end, an ungainly blot on the shining landscape of Lucien’s collection. She wrapped her arms across her chest in a squeeze and wondered where she herself would fit in in the future.
One last walk round of the space before she went home.
The exhibition was a fascinating history of man’s determination to communicate with the gods. They’d created rituals and honored deities which, until very recently, Eve would have said, was a complete waste of time. Her own revelations had put a very different perspective on that.
A week had passed since her first thrilling brush with the quintessence. She drummed at the star pendant beneath her jumper and smiled to herself. After those first experiences, where the power had got away from her, she’d been terrified that she could not control it. She’d tucked Gran’s necklace away in a drawer and tried to pretend that none of it was real.
Inconveniently, the auras had remained. Even without the pendant’s amplification, she could still see them - colored miststhat surrounded people and gave their inner lives away. She’d come to learn that green and blue were indicators of gentler souls, whilst violet and pink showed signs of volatility.
Her initial discomfort was soon replaced by fascination. Mild-mannered Barbara in the canteen had an aura of sparkling plum. It was her more than anything else that had prompted Eve to put the star back on. She’d just wanted to know what that meant.
What she’d learned, was to be careful what you wished for.
Probing Barbara’s consciousness during an early morning canteen visit had revealed a liking for bondage and a dominatrix wardrobe that Barbara enjoyed planning whilst pouring coffee. Eve had nothing against this as such, but there was only so much she wanted to know about a person, and Barbara’s fleshy fantasies weren’t a pleasant accompaniment for her early morning bagel.
These days Eve preferred to get her caffeine fix from the coffee cart guy, whose aura was leaf green. She’d resolved not to look at him too closely, just in case.
Wearing the pendant again had been the right decision. Anxiety brought about by this weird shift in perspective she was experiencing was soothed by its presence. Everything just made better sense when she wore it. The flashes of insight she received into situations and behavior could be put down to the power of the star, not just her own freakish unbelievable potential history. Brainwaves and sudden epiphanies, likewise.
She came to a halt in front of the astronomy exhibit, gazing at the ancient charts and astrolabe she’d selected at Lucien’s chateau. The transit of Venus was just two days away.
She’d noticed herself feeling calmer in the last few days, stronger even, and had assumed this to be because the exhibition was finally coming together. Now another thought struck her. Perhaps it was the approach of the transit that wasboosting her clarity and confidence. Was this another piece in the jigsaw which confirmed her to be thechild of Venus, just like Madam Laveau had suggested?
The idea of it made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She wished Lucien would come in to check on her. Since the day she’d got lost in the demon bowl, he’d not returned and there was so much that she still wanted to ask. He was a busy man. She knew that, but still. Her memory of the event was fuzzy. She’d been examining the bowl one moment, and all hell had broken loose the next. He had called herHis Queen,but the anger in his eyes had been fierce, his self-restraint only just holding.
She missed his touch. The electrical buzz between them was so addictive and without it she thought about him constantly, wondering when she’d feel it again. Her body ached for him and her thoughts ran in answerable circles.
Eve ran the flat of her hand down her face.
