“My father was rambling and out of his head.”
“Maybe so but he was also right.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sarah began to fidget. She twisted around in her seat, looking for new territory to explore.
Chris rose from the table. “It might be a good idea if I took Sarah for a walk around the neighborhood while the eyewitnesses have a chat. This topic isn’t rated ‘For General Audiences’ anyway. Daniel can catch me up later if I miss anything important.”
“An excellent suggestion,” Faye concurred.
“There are more cookies in the kitchen if she wants one,” Hannah called after him as he took Sarah by the hand and led her through the screen door.
Once they were out of earshot, Cassie began. “Daniel, you can go ahead and disband the Nephilim with a clear conscience because that message didn’t actually come from Jedediah Proctor. I faked the trance. In fact, everything you saw was an act. We staged the whole scene for the diviner’s benefit.”
The pythia waited a few moments for Daniel’s glazed expression to fade.
“But what about the prophecy?” he asked. “My father confirmed that he never told anyone about it before you channeled those words aloud.”
“I actually learned about it one night while I was searching Metcalf’s office,” Erik said. “He wandered in and started quoting from it. All I had to do was copy down the text.”
“And I made Cassie memorize it,” Maddie added. “In fact, nearly everything she told the diviner was scripted and rehearsed ahead of time.”
Daniel glanced from one face to another, still obviously confused. “I don’t understand. Why would you bother doing any of that?”
Zach spoke up. “We were trying to avoid a body count, and the only way we could think of was to mess with your dad’s head.”
“We figured a message from the Nephilim’s founder and a quote from his own prophecy might cause him to scrap his plan for doomsday,” the chatelaine explained
“A very risky ploy.” Daniel sounded skeptical. “My father could be exceptionally hard to convince of anything that ran contrary to his own wishes.”
“Yeah, we know,” Cassie agreed. “That’s why we also let him fumble the retrieval by using the fake artifacts and then showing him that we had the real ones. More proof that he wasn’t destined to control the Sage Stone.”
“But you yourselves failed to open the reliquary using the real artifacts,” Daniel retorted.
“That was part of the plan too,” Cassie disclosed uncomfortably.
“Ridiculous!” the new diviner objected, sounding nearly as autocratic as his father. “Why on earth would you pretend to fail?”
“Because we needed to establish my cred.”
“Your what?” Daniel tilted his head.
“My credibility as a psychic. If your dad saw me getting an otherwordly message that solved the riddle of how to use the key, he’d be primed to believe me when I started channeling Proctor.”
“Pretending the key didn’t work very nearly cost you your lives,” Daniel pointed out.
“Tell me about it!” Zach gave Maddie a dirty look. “Losing our weapons sure wasn’t part of the plan. That mistake almost got Hannah and Erik killed.”
“Almost doesn’t count.” The chatelaine waved her hand dismissively. “End of subject.”
“But Father Abraham actually did fire at Cassie!” Daniel turned to the pythia for confirmation. “I saw him shoot you twice and you survived.”
“Another trick. I was wearing a bullet-proof vest under my sweater.”
Daniel’s mouth hung open.
“In fact, we were all wearing body armor,” Griffin said. “Except for Hannah and Erik, of course.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” the paladin grumbled.
“Well, we could hardly pass you Kevlar vests during the confrontation, now could we?” the scrivener countered. “Admittedly, we miscalculated Metcalf’s willingness to kill Hannah. But as for you, a vest would have been pointless since your captors were far more likely to shoot you in the head anyway.”
Erik was about to offer a blistering retort, but Maddie intervened to forestall a squabble. “We were hoping to draw all the fire away from the hostages. OK? Let’s just leave it at that.”
“And it’s not like I expected Metcalf to hit me,” Cassie said. “Who knew he could aim straight?”
“Seeing you fall nearly gave me heart failure!” Griffin exclaimed.
“You and the rest of us,” Erik agreed.
Cassie continued. “When I realized I hadn’t been hurt, I figured I could use those bullet holes in my jacket to feed the scenario. I played it up as proof that I had received the power of the Sage Stone.”
“That part had to be true,” Daniel insisted. “How else could you have crushed the artifact with your bare hands?”
The pythia smiled cryptically. “Funny thing about that rock.”
Maddie dug inside her voluminous handbag. “It wasn’t the real Sage Stone.” She slammed a heavy object on the table next to Faye’s plate. “This is the Sage Stone.”
All eyes turned to a nondescript black rock about eight inches long and five inches wide.
“But how...” Daniel trailed off, even more perplexed.
“Our people snagged it the week before,” Zach informed him.
“That’s impossible.” The new diviner rubbed his forehead distractedly. “When we all entered the cave, I checked. Nothing had been touched.”
“Like Cassie said, you saw what we wanted you to see,” Maddie informed him. “I wasn’t going to risk losing the biggest find in Arkana history, no matter what the outcome of our confrontation with Metcalf. All five artifacts were already locked in the vault, so there was nothing to stop us from opening the reliquary. Sure, Lars was guarding the place, but he was there to protect it from outsiders—not other Arkana agents. I sent a crew to Sweden while we were all waiting for your father to pick a date for the rendezvous. Our people took the real artifact, substituted a fake, reset the mechanism, and patched up the wall.”
Daniel squinted at Cassie. “But even if the relic was false, it was still a solid piece of rock. I saw you destroy it. And what about the green glow?”
“It was a baetyl from the Arkana’s extensive collection,” Griffin interjected. “Nothing with any special significance but it was approximately the right size and shape.
