Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,73

as well,” Rigo said. “My first electric lights looked like magic to me. I had no idea how electricity worked. Of course I learned. And there is surely some similar explanation for Transfer Gates and all the rest, but. . .” He shrugged. “Magic, power, energy, source, it all pretty much means the same thing to me.”

“Humph!” Godiva snorted. “To me magic suggests magic wands. If there is one, I have a list of things to magically transform, beginning with my trick knee. And ending with turning that Barth into a petunia. But until such time, here we are. Let’s eat—and start translating.”

She brandished her phone. “We don’t need the antidote to the zombie spell since the dog whistles apparently work fine. We should probably concentrate on this new one Long Cang bought. At least from the brevity of this handwriting, these are recipes, and not academic papers complete with ten pages of footnotes.”

They paid up, then asked for their breakfast to be delivered up to the little balcony outside Rigo’s room, which had a table and three chairs. There, working with Godiva’s laptop and a tablet of lined paper she carried everywhere, they got to work, everyone taking different words to hunt down.

They had translated most of the words, but were trying to puzzle out the sense of them when Godiva’s phone lit up with a text from Jen saying she was ready.

Godiva took a picture of the floor at their feet and sent it. Seconds later, tall, blond Jen appeared, bringing a current of air that carried a tang of sea breeze.

Rigo saw Jen’s eyes widen as she took them all in. Then Godiva said proudly, “You already met Rigo. This is Alejo, my—our son.”

Jen looked from one to the other again, and this time she smiled. “I’m really glad you found him. And that things are . . .”

“Good,” Godiva stated. “Real good. Five humina-huminas good since yesterday.”

“Mom!” Alejo clapped a hand over his face. “If that means what I think it means, that’s way too much information!”

“You have a very dirty mind, son,” Godiva said, patting him on the shoulder. “You take after me.” Her grin faded, and she turned to Jen. “We’re ready to go. But we didn’t finish translating.”

“Everybody is waiting at Bird and Mikhail’s,” Jen said. “Including a friendly classics professor willing to be rousted out of bed by Joey Hu.”

Alejo got up, bent and enveloped his mother’s small frame in a tight hug. Then he let her go, saying, “Here’s where I take off, then. Dad, if you’ll hand off the keys to the Phantom, I’ll drive it home.”

Rigo looked at Godiva’s wistful eyes, but then she blinked and smiled. “We’ll catch you later, right? Soon?”

“You’ve got to come and see the ranch as soon as you kick Long Cang’s ass,” Alejo said. “Call me tomorrow.”

“That’s a promise,” Godiva said stoutly. But her eyes followed him as he gave them all a wave and went out the door.

Then she turned, her hand stealing into Rigo’s. His heart constricted when he felt the tremble in her fingers. But all she said was, “Okay, Jen, how do we do this?”

“You just have to stand there,” Jen said. “I will warn you, most people say it feels kind of like missing a step while getting an invisible punch. In an ice storm. For a few seconds. But the reaction goes away.”

She had to take them through one at a time, so Godiva volunteered to go first. Rigo let go her hand. She tugged her suitcase next to her, clapped her hand to her new hat as if it would be taken away, and in a flicker the two vanished, leaving him alone in the room.

He shut his eyes, and there, vividly imprinted against his eyelids, was Godiva last night, her heart in her wide black eyes as she stood outside the door to her room across the way, and said, Would you like to come in?

A whoosh of air and Jen was back, breaking the memory. Rigo stood where he was, gear over his shoulder, as Jen clapped his arm and he staggered. Her warning was no exaggeration; he stepped onto what he recognized as the garden terrace with the gazebo at Mikhail’s grand house. A shiver ran through him.

As he blinked away the reaction, he wondered what Godiva had said in the few seconds they were parted. The first time he met her posse, they’d looked at him like he was a giant cockroach.