The others gathered around though Rou chose to lag behind them a few feet.
In a rush of comprehension, Cassie understood. “You’re the sentinel.”
“Lucky me.”
“You mean you’re the individual chosen to guard the artifact?” Griffin sounded skeptical. “You don’t look like—” He broke off.
“You mean there’s an official costume?” Elle’s hand flew to her heart in mock surprise. “I never got the memo.” She settled herself more comfortably on her rocky perch. “Once upon a time, my ancestors came across a bunch of strangers asking for directions. The strangers were looking for a special place to hide a relic of their goddess. My ancestors, being goddess worshippers themselves, knew the spot they were trying to find and brought them here. This mountain has been sacred for a lot longer than anybody suspects. Your Minoan friends would have made good used car salesmen because they even convinced one of my ancestors to stick around and guard the place until the right person came to claim the artifact.” She stared pointedly at Cassie. “That would be you, sweetie. They said a seer with ‘eyes the color of rain’ would come for it someday.”
Elle paused in her narrative to give a sardonic chuckle. “‘Someday.’ That’s such a vague word, isn’t it? It can mean a week, or it can mean three thousand years. So, from one generation to the next, my ancestors appointed a member of the family to keep watch over the cave until ‘someday’ arrived.”
“Then you’re Mosuo?” Griffin asked.
“Partly. My ancestors crossed paths with your Minoans in the Himalayas but the sentinel at that time settled down here. My family considers itself Mosuo now. Not me though. Like the song says, I was born in the USA. When my mom was young, she wanted to see the world, so she bolted from here decades ago. Moved to New York. Became a cab driver. She never looked back, and neither did I.”
“You looked back!” Rou countered. “You are here.”
The sentinel cocked an amused eyebrow. “So, she can speak after all.” Turning her attention to the other two, she added, “And she’s not wrong. Family has a way of roping you back in. Try arguing with a Mosuo matriarch, and you’ll know what I mean. Ancestral honor, sacred trust, yaddy yaddy. You get the picture. My grandmother was the sentinel until she decided about ten years ago that she’d gotten too old for the job. She needed to figure out who was destined to replace her, so she consulted one of the local crackpots who put the sham in the word ‘shaman.’” Elle gritted her teeth. “If I ever catch up with that snake charmer...”
“So, you moved back once you were named the sentinel,” Griffin concluded.
“Hardly! I didn’t bust my butt to create a fabulous life for myself in New York just so I could spend the rest of my days lurking in a bat cave!” She glared at the scrivener. “There are other ways.”
“Such as?” he prompted.
“Such as psychics.”
“You mean you relied on paranormal advice to predict when we would arrive?” He sounded incredulous.
“Really? You want to go there?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “This whole gig has woo-woo written all over it. A seer is hardly mainstream. After the exhibition I saw when you first came in, I’d say your girlfriend doesn’t just ride the astral plane. She could pilot it solo.”
“G... girlfriend.” Griffin seemed flustered, but he didn’t contradict Elle’s assessment of their relationship. “I suppose we do rely on the paranormal in our line of work as well.”
“Anyway,” Elle continued. “At first, I checked with a couple of psychics to see just how long I was going to be tied to this legacy gig. After all, I had no reason to assume the chick with the grey eyes was going to show up during my lifetime. You could have knocked me over with a powder puff when they all told me it would happen soon. Yet another vague word I dislike—‘soon.’ That’s when I decided to go on the offensive and track down the seer myself. I put every big-name New York psychic on retainer. Each month they’d give me their predictions about her whereabouts. Most of the time they contradicted one other, so I waited until I hit the paranormal equivalent of a trifecta.” She paused for emphasis. “Every single one of them independently confirmed that this month, ‘soon’ would turn into ‘now.’ The seer would show up at Lugu Lake.”
“A month is a pretty big window of time,” Cassie noted.
“Yeah, it is. Try sitting in this cave for a single hour, and you’ll understand the meaning of the word ‘excruciating.’ So, I phoned an astrologer I know. She specializes in precision timing, and she was able to narrow your ETA down to today.”
“It seems you made quite a leap of faith,” Griffin said.
“She charges big bucks because she’s dead-on accurate when it comes to timing an event. I figured she could be trusted.” She jumped off her perch. “Speaking of leaps of faith, you three took a huge jump yourselves by showing up in this cave. You had no way of knowing your precious relic was hidden here at all, much less whether it would still be around after three thousand years.”
“Obviously, it isn’t,” the scrivener retorted.
“She knows where it is,” Rou growled from behind them.
“Ooh, your little shih tzu is getting snappish,” Elle commented archly.
“Rou’s right,” Cassie said. “You wouldn’t have bothered to hang out here to meet us if you didn’t know where the artifact is.”
Elle inclined her head. “Fair enough. I do know where it is. But first, some standard boilerplate. The original sentinel was given a mandate that’s been passed down through the ages. He was supposed to ask the seer one question before surrendering the relic. If she couldn’t answer it, then the artifact was to stay under wraps.” In an unexpected move, the sentinel reached into
