Semele hit the street running, besieged by questions.
Had he been following her since Switzerland? Did he know where she lived? And how the hell had Ionna known?
Semele felt more than a little crazy, but Ionna had warned her. There was no way she could deny it.
Glancing over her shoulder, she scanned the street. She saw no evidence of the man. But still, she was afraid to go home. She fished her phone out and hit the second name at the top of her favorites. Calling Bren was out of the question.
Cabe answered on the last ring before the call went to voice mail. “Hey, stranger.”
“Hey. Can I come over now?”
“Sure. Everything okay?” he asked.
Semele took a breath and tried to keep the tremor from her voice. “Stressful day.” That was putting it mildly. “I’ll explain later.”
“I’ve got my award-winning pasta going. Come on over.”
“Great, see you in a bit.” She hung up.
Cabe lived about a fifteen-minute walk from her place in Brooklyn. She would go to his apartment and then figure out what to do. They’d been planning to catch up since she’d gotten back, and they would have already set a dinner date if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with Ionna’s manuscript.
* * *
Semele rang the bell to Cabe’s building, out of breath from her demented-looking power walk down the street. She glanced up and down the block again, clutching the bottle of cabernet she had bought at the liquor store around the corner like a weapon. Cabe buzzed her in and she ducked inside, relieved to be behind a locked door. She made her way to his apartment at the end of the hall, where the smell of garlic greeted her.
Cabe swung his door open and she held out the bottle of wine. “For the chef.”
“Graci! Buongiorno, buongiorno…,” he said in a flurry and disappeared into the kitchen. “Step into my house,” he called out with a bad Italian accent.
Semele took off her shoes in the tiny entryway and squeezed past Cabe’s ten-speed. The chain on the bike scratched her leg as she brushed past. She looked at the run in her stockings and grimaced.
“I hate your bike.” She padded the five steps into the closet-sized kitchen. “Smells amazing.”
Cabe poured her a glass from the bottle he had already opened. “Cheers.” They clinked glasses and he continued stirring the bubbling Bolognese.
“Ooh, this one’s nice,” she said, tasting it again. “Oliver?” His brother, Oliver, was a sommelier in the Hamptons and always sent Cabe a case of his current favorite for his birthday. Semele took another sip and nibbled on a piece of aged Gouda he had put out on a board.
Slowly, the trauma of the past hour began to loosen its grip. For now she was safe. She could worry about the man later—right now, she wanted to pretend her life was normal. She was hungry and the wine and cheese tasted delicious. She took another sip, moving the velvety red across her tongue. Cabe had made one of her favorite salads, an arugula, candied-walnut confection with feta and aged balsamic.
“Were you already cooking all this before I called?” She asked. He had quite the gourmet spread going.
Cabe shot her a pointed look. “Raina may stop by.”
Semele’s jaw dropped in horror. Raina was coming here? “Tonight? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What, you can’t eat together?”
“I’d prefer not to!”
Cabe stopped cooking. “You know, I’ve been trying to be cool about this little aversion you’ve got toward her, but really, what has she done to deserve your judgment? You barely know her. It’s so unlike you.”
Semele hesitated. In all honesty, she couldn’t answer that. She knew her reaction to Raina wasn’t rational. She struggled to come up with an answer. “Have you seen her handwriting?”
The first time she got an expense report with Raina’s comments, Semele had been absolutely perplexed. Raina’s handwriting was flat-out ugly and bore all the marks of an introvert with serious emotional baggage. Her letters were unbalanced and sprouting all over the place, like a yard with too many weeds.
“So what, Miss Quantico, it’s a little messy. Ever analyze your own handwriting?”
He had said it half-jokingly, but it still stung. Of course she had analyzed her own handwriting. Every day she saw what her pen revealed naked on the page. The large inner loops on the right-hand side of her circle letters all but announced the secrets she was hiding; the figure eights lacing her writing showed an abnormally strong fluidity of thought; and her backward crossed T-bars highlighted the critical nature she had toward herself. Only an expert graphologist would be able to tell.
She tried to dial her emotions down. Cabe did too and softened his tone. “Just give her a chance. Please, for me. She really is different when you get to know her.”
Semele doubted that but held her tongue. She’d had Raina pegged by the end of her first week at Kairos—fake. Over a year later, her opinion hadn’t changed. Raina would tear Cabe to shreds. That he couldn’t see it was mind-boggling.
“What about you and Bren the Pen?” Cabe asked, changing tack. “He called me, you know.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Cabe’s eyebrows shot up. He was close with Bren too, so Semele didn’t feel she could be totally honest, but she tried. “Let’s just say, I’m starting to have doubts. It’s complicated,” she said.
Bren had left her several messages and she had yet to return them. She was being absolutely horrible, the kind of horrible that could not be forgiven. Deep down she knew that was the point. Cabe was right. She was sabotaging herself.
She tried to change the subject. “How’s Oliver?” she asked, pouring herself more wine and studying the label. It was a 2011 Barbaresco from a boutique winery, incredibly smooth. She really should e-mail him a hello. She’d become friendly with Oliver after she had tagged along with Cabe to the Hamptons once.
“He’s fine. And don’t change the subject.” Cabe pointed his finger at her. “Bren is the best damn thing that’s ever happened to you.” The pasta bowls clanked together as he set them down on the table.
She let out a sigh. How could she explain that ending her relationship with Bren was the right decision? The idea of women’s intuition had been distilled into a vat of ridiculousness for centuries and was usually scoffed at—and she knew she’d sound crazy if she told Cabe the full story. While her time with Bren would always have a place in her heart, that time was over; her premonition had helped her see it.
“Let me just say one more thing and then I’ll shut up,” he advised. “Don’t be stupid.”
“You know I’m not like Allison,” she said softly. “Even if Bren and I don’t last, I’m not like her.” Allison was Cabe’s ex-fiancée. She had dumped him at the altar right before Semele moved to New York. Cabe had moped on Semele’s new couch, curled up in a fetal position, for weeks.
“But something did happen in Switzerland, didn’t it?” Cabe asked. It didn’t sound like a question.
Semele could feel the weight of his judgment. First Bren and now Cabe. Did she have “something happened in Switzerland” tattooed on her forehead?
Yes, something had happened in Switzerland. The problem was it was more than kissing Theo. She couldn’t begin to tell him that a prophet was speaking to her through an ancient manuscript, or that she had started to see the future. Thinking about any of it made her head hurt.
“Can we move on?” she asked, picking up her fork. Cabe’s doorbell sounded as if on cue. The thought of Raina made her lose her appetite.
Cabe jumped up to buzz her in. “Oh, hey, I got the DNA test back on that manuscript,” he said on his way to the door.
“And?” Semele asked, her heart stopping and starting again. She wasn’t sure she was ready to know.
“It’s from right around 46 B.C. at the latest, no question,” he said and promptly disappeared into the entry hall.
Semele sat back and let out a long breath, glad she had a moment alone to process. Those results were staggering. Ionna really had known about Gundeshapur, a city founded over two hundred years after she had written the manuscript. What else had she known? Semele was barely halfway through Ionna’s story.
She could hear Cabe and Raina talking quietly in the hallway. Then Cabe came back alone, looking irritated.
Semele glanced toward the door. “What happened?”
“She had an emergency pop up and could only stop by for a minute.”
That sounded unlikely. “Who shows up for two minutes and leaves?” Semele could tell by the look on Cabe’s face that she was the reason Raina had bailed on dinner. “Was it because of me?”
“No, not at all.”
She could tell he was lying. “Cabe, seriously. Who gets jealous like that?” she asked, feeling disturbed.
“She wasn’t jealous.” Cabe sounded peeved. “It’s just dinner.”
Semele nodded and tried to eat. But she couldn’t help feeling that Raina was driving a wedge between them. She might as well have still been in the room.
Cabe was completely distracted and most likely wishing Raina was there enjoying his culinary efforts, not her. For the first time, Semele felt like an intruder and the feeling didn’t sit well. But she had come here for help. She needed to confide in him.
“Cabe, I’m in the middle of something serious. I think the manuscript I’m reading … is special.”
That got his attention. “What do you mean?”
“The person who wrote it talks about history that hasn’t happened, like a prophecy.”
“Like Nostradamus or something?”
“Kind of.” Except unlike Nostradamus’ predictions, Ionna had recorded facts and names without codes, quatrains, or rhymes that needed to be deciphered. Semele didn’t want to get into the details right now. “Someone knows I’m reading it. I think I’m being followed.”
“What?” Now Cabe was completely with her. “Hold on. Back up. From the beginning.”
“I found a manuscript that Marcel Bossard had kept secret, and I made a copy in Switzerland. The night before I flew out someone broke into my hotel room, but they didn’t take anything. They opened the file on my computer.” She hurried to explain, feeling her anxiety returning. “Then today I went to the library and caught a guy watching me—and he was on my flight from Geneva. I know the Rose Room is a serious tourist destination, but what are the odds? He was on my flight.” And he had shown up in the Rose Room right when Ionna had said Semele was being watched.
Semele didn’t feel comfortable sharing that part of the story. But if she couldn’t tell Cabe, who could she tell? If her father were still alive she would have taken the first train to New Haven and shown him the manuscript. He would have known what to do.
“That’s why I called,” she confessed. “I was scared to go home. I didn’t want him to know where I lived.”
“Jesus, Sem, you should have told me.”
“I’m telling you now.” They stared at each other. “What do I do?” she asked. Her fear was threatening to overwhelm her again.
Cabe rubbed his chin, looking equally worried. “Well, for starters, if some guy is following you, you’re staying here tonight. We’ll walk over to your place in the morning and check things out.”
Semele felt her body droop with relief. Tomorrow was Saturday. Soon it would be Monday and she’d be back at work prepping for Beijing. Suddenly putting six thousand miles between her and a stalker didn’t seem like such a bad call.
They went back to eating in silence. “You know, maybe you shouldn’t read any more of it,” Cabe said.
Semele didn’t answer right away. If Ionna was predicting the future, did she really want to know the rest?
A strange sense of inevitability took hold of her. Yes. Yes, she did.