LITMIR.BIZ

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      Attend la tasse de Melusine.”

      Then she nodded, satisfied.

      I wasn’t satisfied. From one cryptic nursery rhyme to its cryptic translation? Still, it seemed significant to her, and I was already noticing minor variations from my family’s version.

      I slowly repeated the rhyme, word for Gallic word.

      My impromptu teacher—or priestess, even?—squeezed my hand. “Perhaps you are the one. But you must remember—”

      Which is when the doors at the back of the church opened, and Rhys entered. The women took one look at him and turned back to the altar, back to their devotions, as if the priest himself had walked in on us.

      Rhys noticed me, opened his mouth, then awkwardly closed it. Then he pointed at himself, made walking-fingers, and pointed outside.

      Then he escaped. But the damage had been done. My companion had reverted to praying.

      I waited a few minutes, assuming she would finish. She just kept repeating the prayers, so finally I interrupted her. “You were about to say something. What is it I must remember?”

      For a long moment I feared she’d reconsidered. Then she pressed my chalice-well pendant back into my hand and patted it, for all the world as if she were my own grandmother.

      “Remember that Melusine survived,” she said.

      When I emerged into the sunshine, Rhys stood across the road from the church, leaning against our Renault. He ducked his head while I looked both ways and jogged across to meet him. He winced up at me when I reached his side.

      “I am sorry,” he said, before I could speak. Not that I’d meant to. I felt strangely light-headed, like after a deep meditation, or a movie…or a nap. A nap with powerful dreams.

      Still, I couldn’t ignore him. “Sorry for what?”

      “You had the whole nave, but as soon as they saw me…” He mimed turning a lock against his lips, then tossed the imaginary key over his shoulders, down the hill.

      I grinned at the gesture, but I felt for him, too. Rhys seemed like a good guy, but just because he was a man, he came across as some kind of threat. Reverse discrimination, even unintentional, is still discrimination. “Don’t worry about it.”

      Even though it felt weird, just how much authority they’d seemed to grant him. As if they sensed something I didn’t.

      Rhys simply grinned and said, “Maggi? You have a handkerchief on your head.”

      I palmed it off and gave it back, and he was so not an authority figure.

      Which isn’t to say he didn’t have his own personal power.

      “So where to?” He opened the car door and popped the locks. “Have you solved the mystery of the Melusine Chalice?”

      “Nope. We’re still stuck with the obvious possibilities.”

      “Those being…?”

      I went around the car and climbed into the passenger seat. If we were doing Melusine’s home tour, I knew exactly what came next. “Did you by any chance pack swim trunks?”

      Deeper and deeper I swam, kicking my feet for power, stretching my hands ahead of me into the murky river. I squinted at water plants, at little clouds of billowing silt, at a turtle paddling past.

      I thought I saw something—a stone? Perhaps it was the large remains of a relic or a ruin, some unlikely but not impossible hint that Melusine Was Here. Tightness built in my chest from lack of air, but I was so close. A few more silent kicks…

      Now I could see it was an old barrel. Rusty and moss covered. Years, not centuries, old.

      Blowing the last of the air from my nose in bubbles of disgust, I aimed for the surface. I broke into the dappled summer sunshine with a splash and a needy gasp.

      Rhys, on the wooded bank, called, “Do you see anything?”

      “Not yet.” I was still treading water, kicking my bare feet, enjoying the gentle pull of the Vonne’s current against me. I still couldn’t believe I’d left my suit home. Me! “I’m going down one more time before we give up on this spot.”

      He nodded. Rhys did have a pair of swim trunks. Since he claimed that his swimming amounted to little more than a dog paddle, I wore them with my camisole while he kept watch from the bank. Neither of us actually said this was better than me swimming in my underwear, but it so was.

      I took a deep breath and dove again. Deeper and deeper. Freer and freer. Free of gravity, free of whatever kernel of attraction was flirting its way between Rhys and me, free of anything but one simple goal.

      Try to find, against all reason, the remains of Melusine’s “fountain” in the Colombière Forest.

      It wouldn’t be the first time goddesses were worshipped at a spring—like in Bath, or Lourdes, or the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.

      Deeper. Freer. Was that possibly a bowl of some sort, on its side on the bottom?

      Tightening my throat against the need to breathe, I kicked closer—and startled away another turtle, in a burst of panicked mud.

      I reluctantly gave up the peace of submersion for the surface, yet again. Luckily, the surface was a nice place too, with birdsong and wildflowers and gently stirring tree branches…and a far-too-intriguing companion for my peace of mind.

      “Nothing,” I called, when he waved to show he’d seen me emerge. Then I began a strong sidestroke back to shore. “If there was a sacred spring along here, it will take people with more experience than me to find the signs.”

      It wasn’t like we’d seen either “three fair figures” or the French version, “four nobles.” If they’d been sentinel trees, the likelihood of them living this long was low. If they’d been standing stones, we hadn’t found them.

      I waded out, my hair streaming water down my back, my toes gooshing deliciously in the mud. Rhys offered a warm hand, and I accepted it, and he pulled me firmly onto the grassy bank.

      Close to him.

      I noticed his gaze sink to my breasts, under a film of wet camisole. My breath fell shallow…but in a good way.

      He noticed me noticing, let go and turned away.

      “I’m sorry,” he called over his shoulder, clearly discomfited. “I’ll walk ahead, see if there are any more promising spots.”

      Oddly disappointed, I used yesterday’s T-shirt to dry off my feet before I put on my socks and boots to follow him. Interesting fashion statement, hiking boots with swim trunks. Very unacademic. I liked it.

      I rezipped my backpack, which I’d apparently left open, and shouldered it. Then I hiked happily after Rhys, through what legend had it were enchanted woods.

      When he glanced a truly self-conscious welcome over his shoulder and kept walking, I had to know. “Are you married?”

      He stopped, startled. “What? I am not. Why?”

      Because you act like it’s a sin to notice a woman’s body. It wasn’t as if he’d ogled me. “Just curious,” I said.

      Rhys stared at me for a long moment. “I was engaged once,” he confessed. “She died last year, before we could marry.”

      “Oh.” Way to feel guilty, Mag! “I’m so sorry.”

      He shrugged one shoulder and started walking again.

      “So, Aunt Bridge has been researching the goddess-worship side of Melusine,” I said, to change the subject. “I’m more into the mythology. You’re her assistant, give me an overview. How would it work? Women worshipping a goddess, I mean.”

      For a moment he seemed lost in other thoughts.

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