The Medusa Amulet

I.”

“I wish I could be there to help out.”

“Listen, you do what you have to do. Get that promotion. I’ll keep you posted. But Sarah likes knowing you’re out there, going to all those glamorous places. Which one are you in now?”

“Paris.”

“Paris,” Gary said, and David could picture him nodding in approbation. “I’ll have to tell Sarah as soon as she wakes up.”

“I’ll send her a postcard,” David said, “though I hope to be home before it gets there.”

“That’d be great,” Gary replied. “Emme’s been practicing up on the Wii, and I think she wants to whip her uncle David at a game of tennis or Ping-Pong or something.”

“Tell her I’m up for the rematch anytime.”

Hanging up, David stared out the window, feeling the enormous distance between himself and his sister, and feeling, like a magnet, drawn back toward home. But what good would that do her? What good would that do anyone? Anything he could accomplish had to be done right here.

The bedroom door opened, and Olivia emerged in a plush bathrobe, ruffling a towel through her hair, just as the room-service cart arrived. Throwing down a cup of hot coffee before even touching the food, she asked, “So, I’ve been thinking about it. Do you think these two are the same guys who beat up Giorgio in my apartment?”

David had been considering that, too. “Even if they’re not, I’d bet they’re all good friends.”

Olivia began to lift the silver salvers and inspect what was on the plates and in the bread basket. The aromas alone were overwhelming.

“I think so, too. Coffee?” she said, pouring a cup for David. The lapels of her robe gaped open at the throat, revealing skin as smooth as the butter she was slathering on her bread. David had to refocus his thoughts.

“I’m really sorry,” he finally said, as she unabashedly dug into a plate of eggs and bacon.

“For what?”

As slender as a gazelle, she ate with the relish of a lion.

“For getting you into this mess,” he said.

“What do you mean, for getting me into this mess? How do you know,” she said, wagging a slice of crisp bacon in the air, “that it’s not my mess?” She actually sounded a bit indignant. “It was my apartment they broke into. It was my old boyfriend they beat up. Maybe it’s me they’re after.”

Oddly, David wished he could believe that-it would at least absolve him of any guilt-but he knew it wasn’t true, and he knew that it was time he told her the truth. If she was going to assist him in his search, and be exposed to whatever dangers might lie ahead, she needed to know what she was getting into. He needed to make a clean breast of it.

“The woman who has given me this job,” he began, “is named Kathryn Van Owen,” and Olivia listened carefully as he explained what he knew of her. None of that was so hard to accept or understand. “But she believes,” he eventually concluded, “in the power of La Medusa.”

“She believes that it can actually grant immortality?” Olivia said, matter-of-factly. “I figured she did.”

Olivia had read The Key to Life Eternal. She knew how the mirror had been made, and for what purpose, but still, David had expected more of a reaction than this. “You figured that?”

“Of course,” Olivia said. “Why else would she go to all this trouble and expense?” She waved one arm around the lavish suite. “The real question is, do you believe it?”

Put on the spot like that, David hesitated.

But Olivia simply waited, and when he still didn’t answer, she understood, and said, in a gentler tone, “Why?”

“I believe in it because I have to,” he finally replied. As he told her about his sister, and his voice grew hoarse with emotion, Olivia got up from her chair, came around the table, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She smelled of bath soap and hot croissants.

“Do you remember what I told you in the back of the cab in Florence?” she asked.

David did not immediately know what she was getting at.

“I told you that we were alike. We do not do things for money. We do things for love. And now,” she said, “at last I know the real reason for your search.”

David felt a huge sense of relief, but at the same time he was still concerned for her safety. “If you want to return to Florence and go back to your normal-”

But she stopped him by putting a finger on his lips.

“Listen to me,” she said. “Everything that has happened-including those men on the train last night-all of that has made me feel… restored.”

“Restored?” David said. It was about the last thing he might have expected her to say. “How?”

“All my life,” she said, slipping around from the back of his chair and insinuating herself into his lap, “I have spent holed up with my books and my papers and my theories. Sometimes, I would think to myself, what do they all matter? Who cares but me? But now I know that the truth does matter. Now I know-now I remember-that there are people who will do anything to suppress it.”

“But they’ll try again.”

Olivia shrugged, and with one hand cradled his chin. “Let them,” she said. “The truth always comes out in the end.”

But when David started to protest one more time, she said, “If you are trying to get rid of me, it won’t work.” She shook his chin. “So will you stop?”

“I’ll stop,” he conceded.

“Good,” she said, grazing his lips with her own before going back to her side of the table. “Now eat something. We need to go to the Louvre. The crown jewels are waiting.”