The Fortune Teller Read online

  Too many temples existed, I thought, for any one prayer to possibly reach its destination. In Alexandria every temple relied on a certain number of worshippers, so the competition to gain the attention of a passerby was fierce. Spectacles rivaling the best theatrical shows would erupt outside temple doors throughout the day. Ariston’s uncle, the one he was staying with, was a purveyor of such wonders, and his work was in high demand. Alexandrians loved anything to do with magic, so each temple’s keeper would try to outdo the others with marvels that often revolved around fortune telling.

  Ariston’s uncle had just finished building his latest contraption, a magical fish that spewed gold-painted coins from its mouth. Each coin had a fortune carved upon its face.

  We arrived just as the mechanical fish was being hoisted into the air, with an aquamarine banner flying behind its fins like an ocean wave.

  The device drew a crowd as coins rained from the fish’s mouth, and a sea of hands reached to catch them. Some came flying toward me, glinting in the light. I caught one and squealed with laughter.

  Before I could read the fortune, Ariston cupped my face with his hands and kissed me full on the mouth, a stolen kiss, bold and lustful. His arm wrapped around my waist and he pulled me against him. I came alive and claimed him with equal passion.

  “Marry me,” he whispered. “Come with me to Antioch. I leave tomorrow.”

  I could not speak. How I wanted to shout yes to the crowd, but I could not. I was a girl of eighteen, several years past the usual age of marriage, and now my father and two brothers depended on me to run their household. The thought of abandoning my family was unthinkable. They would never forgive me.

  Ariston took my silence for his answer. He dropped his hands and stepped back.

  “My father—” I started.

  “Don’t.” He stopped me gently. Words would have tarnished the moment even more.

  I nodded, too distraught to speak. He had already known my answer, yet he had asked me anyway.

  From his robes he pulled out the codex that contained his translation. “Read the Oracle’s scroll and look for me in your magic symbols.” Without another word he turned away and walked toward the library.

  I couldn’t fathom that this moment was good-bye. My hands gripped the codex as I watched him go. He turned back to look at me, his face full of longing, and then disappeared into the crowd.

  I ran home and wept for hours. When my father and brothers returned I found it difficult to look at them. They had no idea the sacrifice I had made, that I had changed the course of my life for them by not changing it at all. I tried to join in the playful banter at dinner and listen to them recall the day’s events. But my laughter rang false and the wine tasted bitter. My mother had left her sons and husband in my care, and sitting in her chair that night was the first time I resented her for forcing me to take her place.

  Later, in my room, I lit my reading lantern and opened Ariston’s translation to find out what a seer from thousands of years ago might have to say. As I read I began to understand why Ariston had looked at me so quizzically.

  The Oracle of Wadjet had known my name.

  The Empress

  The plane’s descent into JFK forced Semele to stop reading. She had been immersed in the manuscript since takeoff eight and a half hours ago. As hard as it was to pull herself out of Ionna’s story, she powered down her computer and packed everything away in the bag under her feet.

  When she glanced up, she saw a man from the next row looking at her, and she gave him a polite smile. She stared out the window, watching the plane touch down. Being back in New York felt surreal.

  She checked her cell phone on the cab ride to her office, irrationally thinking that Theo might have called her. When she saw her voice mails she grimaced.

  She had three, and two were from her mother:

  “It’s me. Are you back in town yet? I really do need to talk to you. Please call me back.”

  The second was more of the same: “Darling, we can’t go on like this. If you could just call me so I can explain everything. I know you’re still upset—”

  Semele deleted both. She didn’t want to think about her mother right now. Their issues were insurmountable, although Semele knew at some point she’d have to call her back and discuss what happened. There was also a voice mail from Bren. She didn’t want to think about that either.

  * * *

  The cab pulled up to her office building on the Upper East Side. The sleek, modern exterior contrasted with the classical European structures around it. Kairos Collections Management took up the top three floors of the twelve-story building.

  Semele hurried inside to get out of the windy drizzle. November in New York was always unpredictable, but it seemed colder and wetter than usual. She couldn’t have planned a grayer, more dreary homecoming.

  She headed to the executive offices on the twelfth floor to drop off her things, thinking she would grab an espresso in the break room. The jet lag was already kicking in.

  When she rounded the hallway corner, she stopped—her office door was wide open when it should have been locked. She could hear the sharp clicking of high heels on the floor inside and then caught a cloying whiff of perfume.

  A second later Raina stepped out.

  “Oh, you’re back,” Raina drawled in her lilting Russian accent, looking neither guilty nor apologetic for being caught in Semele’s office. Instead, she gave Semele a scathing once-over.

  Raina was wearing her usual power dress, which showed off her collarbone and a lot of leg in a way that seemed calculated. From the moment Raina had arrived from Moscow, with her cascade of auburn hair and privileged air, Semele had called her Russian Barbie.

  She returned Raina’s stare with a cocked eyebrow. “Was there something you needed?”

  “From you? Not at all.” Raina brushed off the question in a condescending tone. “I was dropping off recent catalogs.”

  Semele frowned, knowing Mikhail’s assistant usually did that.

  “How was the trip?” Raina folded her arms with her hands out to show off perfectly manicured nails.

  “Excellent.” Semele had nothing else to say. She would discuss the collection and how to proceed at auction with Mikhail.

  “Have your expense report on my desk by Friday.” Raina turned to leave. “And tell Mikhail you’re back.”

  Semele kept her face expressionless. Raina was easily the most annoying person she knew. “Is Cabe here?” she asked innocently, enjoying the flash of jealousy in Raina’s eyes. Cabe headed Restoration at Kairos and was one of Semele’s closest friends. Raina couldn’t stand that their friendship predated her.

  “Of course. He’s busy working.” Translation: Don’t bother him. Raina walked off.

  Semele tried to brush off the exchange, but whenever she talked to Raina it put her in a foul mood. She dumped her bags in her office and looked around to see if anything seemed out of place. A stack of glossy catalogs sat dead center on her desk, along with a mountain of mail. Still Raina’s excuse for being there was flimsy.

  One handwritten envelope stood out from the pile—she would recognize that handwriting anywhere.

  Tomorrow. She would deal with her mother’s card tomorrow.

  * * *

  Semele took the stairs down to the restoration labs on the eleventh floor. Cabe’s ten-speed was propped against the wall.

  Cabe stood hunched over the humidification chamber. His gloved hands were unfolding several brittle-looking letters. He was dressed in shorts despite the weather and had exchanged his biking shoes for flip-flops.

  “Looks serious.” Semele nodded toward the chamber, taking a peek.

  He looked up and grinned. “Oh, cheerio, you,” he said with a fake English accent. “Welcome back. Got me here so’more spy letters to Georgie-Porgie.”

  Georgie-Porgie was their nickname for George Washington. They had countless others for historical figures and artifacts: Linny was Lincoln, Mo was Mozart, and
Elvis was the Declaration of Independence.

  “I had to completely revamp the sodium carbonate elixir to treat the invisible ink. Epic fail. This batch is taking me forever.” He continued working the papers apart like a neurosurgeon.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get it done.”

  When it came to salvaging the unsalvageable, Cabe was a rock star. He had a graduate degree in both chemistry and forensic biology and oversaw every Kairos lab. He was also the only person Semele trusted when she had a palimpsest—parchment on which the original text was written over. Cabe always unearthed the writing without fail.

  “How was Switzer-vonderland?” he asked, attempting a vague German accent.

  “I saw our client half-naked and an intruder broke into my hotel room,” she deadpanned.

  “Is that why you didn’t call me back?”

  “I already gave you my advice on Raina. Run away.”

  He gave her a sheepish look. “Kind of can’t do that.”

  Semele could only stare at him, at a complete loss. “You’re kidding me. While I was gone?”

  He laughed at the look on her face. “Believe me, it’s blowing my mind.”

  Semele could only gape in horror. Russian Barbie was dating one of her closest friends? Semele didn’t know what to say. Even worse, Cabe looked happy. But right now she was too tired to find out how bad the damage actually was. “We’ll do dinner soon,” she promised. “I just stopped by to let you know I’ve got a special piece coming in with the Bossard Collection I need you to look at.”

  “Sure. Bring it.” He saw the look on her face. “What?”

  Semele hesitated. His news about Raina had completely derailed her. “Just see what you can find out.”

  “You got it. Oh, hey, I need to test your DNA.”

  The abrupt request made her laugh. Only Cabe. “God, no.”

  “Come on. I’m doing everyone at the company.” He moved to his workstation.

  “Do I want to know why?” She watched him load a program.

  “Mark needed a favor.”

  “Mark? Our Mark?”

  “He’s now head programmer for one of the largest ancestral DNA companies in the country.”

  “And he needs our DNA why?”

  Semele and Cabe had become friends with Mark almost a decade ago when they were all on fellowship at the Smithsonian in the Conservation of Museum Collections program. Semele had worked on conservation research and Cabe and Mark in scientific analytical studies and technical support.

  Cabe typed in several commands. “I’m helping him troubleshoot a program glitch by running profiles using three different patches. You all get to be the lucky guinea pigs.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course we do.”

  “Come on. It’s a cheek swab.” He opened the kit on the table. “You get your own ethnicity chart.”

  “Lucky me.”

  Cabe grew solemn. “Sorry, Sem. I’m an idiot.”

  “No, it’s fine, really,” she said, trying to reassure him. “Swab away.”

  Her family background had become a touchy subject lately, and Cabe was one of the only people who knew why. After her father passed away, she had spent days helping her mother locate important papers. In her search, she had unearthed adoption papers in an old file—her adoption papers.

  She joined him at the table. While he swabbed her cheek, she noticed his bike in the corner. “You know you shouldn’t bike when it’s slick outside.”

  “Already back and giving orders,” Cabe teased. He put the swab in a plastic capsule and labeled the sticker. “Wanna grab dinner tonight?”

  “Can’t. It’s our anniversary.”

  “How are you and Bren the Pen?”

  “Good,” she said quickly. At least they were until yesterday.

  She would have loved to tell Cabe what happened in Switzerland, but she owed that confession to Bren, and only to Bren.

  The Emperor

  Bren had gotten new glasses while she was gone, square tortoiseshells that had a distinctive professorial air. Semele kept staring at him during dinner, wondering how a pair of glasses could be throwing her off so much. The frames made his face, the angles, look completely different. She much preferred his oval wire-rimmed glasses; they had more character, looked antique.

  His chestnut hair was officially longer than hers now after the month they’d been apart. He had tucked the unruly waves behind his ears. Tonight he was wearing a suit instead of faded jeans and one of his quirky T-shirts. She had never seen him wear the suit and wondered if he had bought it for tonight.

  She had donned a silk 1960s cocktail dress, paired with ruby lipstick and a clutch from the 1940s that reminded her of Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz. They sat nestled in a back corner, hidden behind an enormous spray of orchids. So far she hadn’t found a way to confess what had happened. Her conscience and good intentions had left her when the salmon tartare and Veuve Clicquot arrived, but still she knew she had to tell him.

  “You look far away.” He gave her hand a lingering kiss.

  “Sorry, just thinking about work.”

  “How was the trip? Did you have a chance to make it to any of the places I recommended?”

  “You love to imagine that my trips are more glamorous than they are,” she teased. “I spend all my time in libraries and attics.”

  “Please. You were holed up in a château in Switzerland. Nothing happened the whole month?”

  Her conscience screamed at her to tell him, but a muddled sound emerged from her mouth instead.

  “Did you listen to my poems? Or were you saving them?” he asked, seeming sure she’d done the latter. “The truth.”

  “Saving them, mostly.”

  “And that’s why you’ve been acting guilty all through dinner.” He looked slightly upset.

  She hesitated. This was the perfect time to tell him—or the worst. There wouldn’t be a better opening.

  The moment sailed by without her.

  “I did make a point to listen to them on the flight home, all of them. They were beautiful.” God, she hated her lack of courage. Why couldn’t she tell him? “How’s the new book coming? Did you get a lot of work done while I was away?”

  Bren searched her eyes. “You know … I don’t want to talk about work either. Let’s talk about us.” He squeezed her hand.

  She swallowed. She already knew what was coming.

  “I don’t want to wait anymore. Let’s be done with it, combine furniture, closets, the whole thing. Just move in. Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”

  His request hovered in the air between them.

  Semele knew that at their age, moving in together meant a proposal most likely would come next; it could be six months or six years from now, it didn’t really matter. Once they were on board, things were pretty mapped out. Her father’s death had been an excuse not to hop on, and then afterward, her assignments were, which sent her all over the world, sometimes for over a month at a time.

  Before Switzerland she had been in Italy, sequestered in the damp, moldy library of a wealthy grandmother who possessed a trove of manuscripts, a few even penned by Catherine de Médici, the queen of France. Semele identified several astrological charts that had been written by the queen, along with personal letters to her friend Nostradamus. She had no idea how they had ended up in Florence, the city of Catherine’s birth, but the letters had been a thrilling find. In New York the collection sold for a huge sum at Sotheby’s. The family was elated that “Nonna’s treasure” had been rescued from the attic and returned to the world.

  This was just one electrifying moment in a career that had many of them. She knew without a doubt her calling was to rediscover and help preserve history. The problem was she didn’t know what a future with Bren looked like alongside that. A small part of her wondered if she was subconsciously sabotaging her chance at happiness, if she was afraid of commitment.

  “Okay,” she said, regretting her answer as soon
as it was out of her mouth.

  Bren leaned over and gave her a kiss she could barely feel; her thoughts were too scattered. She’d have to give up her beloved apartment in Brooklyn Heights for Bren’s condo in Williamsburg, which had twice the space. But she could live with carpet instead of parquet floors. Why was the thought even in her mind?

  “We can start tonight and move some stuff over the weekend,” he said.

  Tonight? Her heart sank. Already he was moving too fast. She tried to backpedal without seeming too obvious. She needed more time.

  “I’d love to,” she said, “but there’s a manuscript I need to finish translating, and I’m so tired from the trip.” In other words, they were not spending the night together.

  His face fell in disappointment “Right. Of course.”

  He’d agreed, but she could see the hurt in his eyes. She had chosen work over him, again.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” she promised as the waiter arrived with their entrées. “Let me just deal with this account.” And Theo … he would be in New York next month for the auction.

  At some point she was going to have to face the thoughts about Theo running rampant in her mind. Deep in her bones, she knew they had started something that day in the gallery that was far from finished.

  Message to VS—

  Back in Brooklyn

  Reply from VS—

  Maintain surveillance. Wait for instruction.

  I read Ariston’s translation of the Oracle’s scroll, and a shiver ran up my body. Wadjet had foreseen that her treasured box would be forgotten in a cavern of our library. She had asked me—by name—to make sure her symbols survived time. She tasked me with many things I had no idea how to accomplish.

  At the time I didn’t know what to think, being singled out by a voice from a world that had long ago faded away. Not only had Wadjet foreseen that I would find her treasured box, she said I was born with the ability to divine the future. Her symbols, she said, were mine to master. The scroll explained, in detail, the meaning of each divinity symbol—how they worked together to form the geometry of life, and how within that ever-changing geometry, I could discern the answer to any question.