All three of them laughed knowingly.
“I’m sure Rinchen had something to do with that,” Griffin noted.
“Yes, they speak all the time. In English. Full sentences.”
While Griffin continued to converse with Jun, Cassie scanned the Circle. Much to her surprise, the pythia recognized several other attendees because they had assisted her team in the quest for the Sage Stone. Michel Khatabi, the Berber trove keeper from North Africa, sat three chairs away. She smiled at him, and he inclined his head to acknowledge the greeting. Since this was a closed session for voting members only, his daughter Fifi was nowhere to be seen. Cassie gave a mental sigh of relief. The meeting was bound to be stressful enough without the added annoyance of Erik’s former hookup lamenting theatrically over his crepe-draped chair.
The pythia allowed her gaze to wander further until she spotted Stefan Kasprczyk, the Kurgan trove keeper from the Kazakh steppes. She was unlikely to ever forget the tainted artifact he had brought for her to validate. Stefan waved when he saw her looking in his direction.
Toward the opposite end of the table, the pythia also spied Aydin Ozgur from the Anatolian trove in Turkey. He didn’t see her because he was conferring with yet another familiar face—Grace Littlefield of the Haudenosaunee trove in upstate New York.
The murmur of small talk died abruptly when everyone felt a blast of cold air emanating from the front doors. The chatelaine strode into the hall. Taken aback by the sight of Cassie and Griffin, she faltered for a second but recovered quickly. It was obvious she hadn’t meant for them to know about this gathering. She moved forward to claim the remaining empty seat at the table. “The Circle is now complete,” she announced authoritatively. “I call this meeting to order.”
An expectant hush fell over the group. Several people leaned forward in anticipation.
Maddie settled herself and began. “I want to thank you all for attending on such short notice. I wouldn’t have summoned you unless there was an emergency and, in my opinion, what we have is a full-blown crisis on our hands. As you all know, the Arkana’s search to recover the Sage Stone has forced us to cross paths repeatedly with the Blessed Nephilim. We did more than cross paths with them when one of their own ran away from the cult and took refuge with our memory guardian Faye. The girl’s name is Hannah, and she’s the youngest wife of the Nephilim’s diviner. Needless to say, he made her recovery a high priority. I seriously underestimated the measures he would take to get her back. Abraham Metcalf went so far as to send a raiding party to Faye’s house. In the process, his thugs put our memory guardian in a coma.”
A gasp was heard from several quarters. Apparently, not all the trove keepers had been kept in the loop.
“Last week during a failed attempt to rescue Hannah from the Nephilim compound, our paladin Erik was shot and killed.” Maddie’s eyes strayed unwillingly to the empty chair draped in black. Her face expressed a mixture of sorrow and desperation. “Shortly before his passing, Erik found out that the Arkana has officially made the Nephilim’s hit list.”
A burst of exclamations followed this announcement.
Grace Littlefield asked tensely, “Do they know the location of the vault?”
The chatelaine shook her head. “Not yet. They only know that we played a role in sheltering Hannah and that three of our agents have been obstructing their artifact search.” She paused and added heavily, “Correction—two agents now. Because of our interference, the diviner has targeted our entire organization for destruction.”
She solemnly regarded the troubled faces around the table. “Things have taken a bad turn for us, but we’ve been in tight places before. The Arkana has been around for a long, long time and we’ve managed to weather witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, Communist purges, and two world wars. Every time the planet faced a new crisis, we declared a blackout and shut ourselves down temporarily. I believe we need to apply the same measures now. That’s why I propose we end the quest for the Sage Stone immediately, dismantle the Central Catalog, and suspend operations.”
“For how long?” Michel Khatabi asked in a concerned tone.
Maddie shrugged. “Who can say how long it will take for the cult to forget about us. A year? Five years? A decade? I only know one thing for sure. The price of fighting the Nephilim has gotten too steep to pay. Faye was like a mother to me. I’m sure many of you felt that way about her. Now she’s in a coma. Erik was the son I never had, and he’s dead. I’ll never—” She cut herself off abruptly as her voice threatened to crack. Mastering her emotions, she sighed wearily. “We’ve lost too many good people already. We can’t afford to lose any more. Before I call for a vote on my proposal, the floor is open for discussion.”
Worried voices surged as people turned to their neighbors and debated the situation. Nobody appeared to dispute Maddie’s assessment of the need for a shutdown.
Cassie stood up. “I have something to say,” she declared.
The buzz ceased immediately.
Maddie folded her arms truculently across her chest. “Of course, you do.” She looked annoyed but knew she couldn’t stop the pythia.
All faces turned toward Cassie. She took a deep breath. “I don’t think everybody here realizes how close we are to the finish line. We just returned from China with the final clue that points to the hiding place of the Sage Stone. Now that we’re only one step away from retrieving it, you want us to back off and call it quits?”
Aydin Ozgur cleared his throat to speak. “I have been a trove keeper for many decades now. Perhaps more than most, I understand the symbolic importance of the Sage Stone. It is the matristic equivalent of the Holy Grail. But what is that when weighed in the balance against the
