"Dingbat seems to think 'domina' and 'magistra' are interchangeable. Mixes 'saga' in with some hen-scratch that seems to be 'sacerdota', as if 'sacerdos' doesn't work both sides of the street. Either masculine or feminine priests. But then, he doesn't seem to like women much. Other stuff that ain't in any of the dictionaries." She waved at a stack of thick books on the table.
Ben reminded himself that she was a doctoral student, a nationally-certified brain a couple of years into grad school when she still couldn't get past the bouncer at a bar. She probably could make sense of stuff that had been gibberish to him.
"I think I know your guy. We had five or six priests call themselves 'Columbanus' — took some tight-assed Irish saint's name and turned it into a title. That one had a hard time getting used to living with a matriarchy. He kept tangling with your ancestress over the natural supremacy of the male. If I recall correctly, he died young. Funny thing, the name fell out of favor after that."
Her mouth quirked again, that fleeting Lainie smile. "Can't have been a poisoned apple. We didn't get apple trees until after the English showed up." She pointed at a museum-grade ash-splint basket full of glossy Winesaps on a side table. "Want one?"
He picked up an apple, buffed it on his sleeve, and bit into it. Cold, crisp, sweet, with the true wine tang in its juice. He remembered the same taste, most likely from the same tree, taken in bites from Lainie's hand while his head rested in her lap. Morgans and Haskells had been close for centuries. Now Caroline was both.
Speaking of which . . . "How's your brother?"
She reached into the top of her blouse and pulled out a pendant. Old worn silver, it wrapped a Celtic or Norse dragon around a red stone that seemed to glow with its own internal light. Dragon's Tear, a piece of the tie that bound the Morgan clan together. She murmured to it, as if it was a radio mike or perhaps a living thing. Both things it might well be.
"He's fine. He's working hard, getting to bed early, eating right, earning good grades. Needs a bigger allowance. Everything a dutiful freshman at college would say." She frowned for a moment, concentrating, then flashed her quirky grin again. "He's got a hot date tonight, a cute sophomore in that Computer Architecture class. She doesn't know he's a freshman."
Gary had placed out of the whole freshman year of Computer Science courses, as well as AP credit for two semesters each in math and physics. It looked like he shared some of his half-sister's brains. And he was about two hours' drive away, at the university in Naskeag Falls, which raised new questions about the Dragon and its Tears, the twinned pendants that Ben's children wore.
The two he knew about, anyway. This fatherhood business included a lot of twists and turns that hadn't been covered in the fine print. Apparently Lainie had intended to get pregnant. He didn't know whether Maria had also tucked that idea in the back of her head. Sex sure could interfere with a man's brain function.
At least Lainie hadn't been looking for marriage or child support. Haskell women usually kept a father's role to the necessary minimum. But Ben thought he ought to have a talk with Gary about that "cute sophomore." If she ever figured out the kid was rich . . .
Caroline's eyes had narrowed speculatively, as if she was reading his mind. Damn Alice and her home-study courses in amateur psychology. Scratch that. No "amateur" about it.
Being around Caroline made him twitchy — too smart, too sexy, a Haskell witch-in-training, and his own daughter. "I'm done with the computers. There's stuff down in the tunnels that wants doing, and then I'll go up to the house. Give me a beep when you're ready to leave. I'll need to reset the security."
Now she wore a sardonic cat-look that said, "I could do that for you, but I'm too polite to mention it." Her mix of Haskell and Morgan genes could mean big trouble, for the world if not for him.
But she only patted the VHF handheld radio that lay beside her stack of dictionaries. "Three longs and three shorts, number seven on the DTMF pad. No problem. I think I can take maybe another hour of this before I run away screaming. Then you can go back to sitting motionless in the center of your web. That's the Daddy we all know and love, the veritable Napoleon of Crime." She chuckled, and it was Lainie's throaty sexy laugh all over again.
Damn the girl.
He fled down the stairs, spiraling around within the tower wall and then passing from old stone masonry into older tunnels carved into the coarse-grained pink Maine granite. Morgans had held this point of sea-girt land for eight centuries, give or take a few, and his ancestors had memories of English fire and sword to fuel their native paranoia. The place hid defenses wrapped one around another like the layers of an onion.
And teeth. He stopped halfway down one damp dark tunnel, pulled on a section of electrical conduit, and then pushed upwards against the next junction box. It clicked, and he reached across to the far granite face and pushed on a particular star-drill groove in the rough-cut wall. Pushed a second time. Pushed a third time, and the click echoed again.
A narrow slit drew away from him, smoothly, with the faint hiss and whine of hydraulics. He slid sideways into the tight space formed between rock walls, a reminder to keep his weight under control, reached up, and tapped a code on three basalt inclusions in the bare granite. Lights glowed, faint and red to preserve night vision, and he felt the coolness of controlled humidity drying his forehead. The air reeked of grease and preservatives.
A storeroom
