Something Wicked by Evelyn Vaughn Page A

Comitatus.”

    Ben blanched. His gaze flew to her. “What?”

    “Comitatus,” she repeated. “That’s the secret society trying to destroy the goddess grails. Actually, they’ve recently split, so there are two groups using that name…not important.”

    “Why?” I asked, and waved away Maggi’s attempt to answer about the split. “No, I mean Ben. Why are you looking like that?”

    “I’ve got to go.” He pushed his chair back.

    “You recognize the name,” guessed Professor Maggi. Well, duh.

    “I’ve got to check this myself.” He stood, dug out his wallet, dropped a twenty on the table. “I’ll get back to you.”

    “I’m leaving town in a few hours.” Maggi caught Ben’s arm before he could leave. “Listen to me. See if you can take Kate into your brother’s house, maybe his office. Safely, of course. Sometimes I can sense when a goddess grail is nearby—since this one’s hers, I bet Katie will have the best chance of finding it. Will you at least do that?”

    “I don’t know. I don’t—” He stopped himself and took a deep, troubled breath. “I’ll try to help. But I have to go now, do you understand? I have to leave. Now.”

    Maggi let go of his arm.

    Ben met my gaze once more, then left the restaurant.

    “What do you think that was about?” asked Maggi. But beyond him recognizing the name, I couldn’t have guessed.

    I mean, I really couldn’t have guessed. I went with her and her bodyguard, Sofie, to the train station—Maggi wasn’t flying in her third term—and saw them off to New York. I went home. I went to work. Still feeling helpless, I began to take inventory of Diana’s—my—magic cabinet. One night passed. Then another.

    Then Ben Fisher called.

    “Is your passport current?” he asked, his voice strained.

    What? “I don’t have a passport.”

    “Then you should probably get one. I’ll meet you in Athens.”

    This time I said it. “ What? Ben, you’re not making sense. I’ve never even been to Canada. I have a job. Why would I want to go to Athens?”

    “The word Comitatus,” he explained.

    “Yeah. You recognized it because…?”

    “Because my brother has used it as his computer password for years. He didn’t know I knew, but…anyway, I hacked into his system.”

    “You can do that?” Wow.

    “And he really is involved with it. All of it. The Comitatus. Your…cup. And now he’s gone to Athens.”

    Something about Ben’s voice, a waver of concern, said that this was about more than just the secret society. Something was wrong.

    I braced myself. “Uh-huh…?”

    “Kate, I think my brother might go after your cousin Eleni next.”

Chapter 8

    I can tell you exactly when I stopped thinking of Victor, however briefly, every single time I saw Ben Fisher.
    It was when Ben met me at the Athens airport.

    I’ve sometimes wished I was one of those women who speaks three languages and regularly jets off to exotic places. I wasn’t.

    I’m Greek on my mother’s side, but it’s not like she spoke the language, and YaYa and Papou only used it for secrets. Now we were in our approach to the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, which I’ll just call the Athens airport because it really was all Greek to me.

    I stared out my thick airplane window at a sprawling white, distant city beside an impossibly blue sea, sunlight spilling across me despite my watch saying it was the middle of the night. We must have flown into morning.

    I was in Greece!

    And since I apparently have a hard time sleeping on airplanes, what with all the usual worries about hijackers and crash landings, I was exhausted.

    Once we touched down and taxied to a really modern terminal, I simply followed the other passengers—and tried not to worry about all the soldiers standing guard with machine guns. First came baggage claim. Despite the big purple bow I’d tied onto my red suitcase, at Nonna’s suggestion, I missed it the first time it went around the