Everyone laughed, and she rolled her eyes dramatically. Then Senator Blaine from Delaware, my mom’s best friend on the committee, gave her the setup she awaited.
“Did you do it?”
“Oh hell yes. Took him down in ten seconds.”
Everyone laughed harder, and Mom raised her shot glass in a toast to them all and downed her pálinka, the Hungarian brandy Piri had brought out for the occasion.
Mom took a bow as everyone applauded, and collapsed dramatically into her seat.
Then she saw me.
“Clea!” she cried. “Come here!”
I grinned and ran to her, and she wrapped me in a fierce hug. “I’ve missed you, baby!” She pulled away and spun me around to face the group, her hands on my shoulders. “Everyone, I’m sure you remember my incredibly accomplished daughter, Clea, who we’ll all be working for one day. Clea, you know the senators, and this is Imi Sanders, Israeli minister of foreign affairs.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking the minister’s hand.
“The pleasure is mine, “ he replied.
“Of course you’ve also all met Rayna”—Mom pointed Rayna out to the crowd—“and Clea’s friend Ben, and …” She eyed Sage suspiciously. “Who might this young man be?”
In an instant I sorted through every possible explanation for Sage’s presence, but judging by the way Mom was looking at him, I knew she already had it in her head that he was a romantic prospect, and she’d go on believing that even if I said he was purely a homeschool friend. And if she thought I was interested in him, no political luncheon would stop her from sitting us down and grilling Sage in front of everyone so she could dig up any deal breakers before I had to find them out the hard way.
She’d probably even encourage her guests to join in, and I knew they’d be happy to do it—I’d seen it happen to Rayna.
The problem was, I couldn’t spend all day hanging out at Mom’s lunch. I needed to go through Dad’s things, and I wanted to finish before the Israeli minister and his Secret Service protection left the house open for any not-so-welcome visitors to return.
“This is Larry Steczynski! You can call him Sage. He’s my new boyfriend!” Rayna suddenly chirped, threading her arm through Sage’s and giving him a squeeze. To his credit, Sage looked only slightly surprised.
Just one more thing to add to the long list of reasons I love Rayna. She knew exactly what I’d been thinking and had found the one answer that would leave me completely off the hook.
“Really!” Mom said meaningfully. “Then we should talk.” She turned to the group and asked, “Gentlemen?”
Without hesitation, all the senators and the Israeli minister agreed that the next topic of their agenda should clearly be a debate of Sage’s merits and pitfalls as a partner to Rayna. As Mom took Sage and Rayna’s hands and led them to the couch, two senators gladly moved aside to give them space. Sage shot me a look so plaintive I almost laughed out loud.
“Ben and I will be back in a bit,” I said. “We have some Alissa Grande stuff to go over.”
“Don’t take too long,” Mom called as we left the room. “We’re flying back to Washington in a couple hours and I want to see you before I go. I’ve almost forgotten what you look like.”
I promised her we’d be quick, and Ben and I slipped away, just in time to hear Senator Blaine clear his throat and say, “So, Sage … what if any personal views about women do you have that might interfere with your obligation to treat Rayna with the respect that she deserves?”
“He may have faced down swarms of crazed New Age militants,” I whispered to Ben, “but I bet this is his first Senate confirmation hearing.”
“It’s cruel and unusual punishment, Clea,” Ben said, smiling, “but I like it.”
“I’m thinking anything that has to do with the Elixir of Life would be in Dad’s studio, right?” I asked.
Ben nodded. “Let’s start there.”
We went down to the studio, opened the door, and just stared at the mountains of papers, books, and binders.
“This could take a lifetime,” I said.
“We just have to be smart about it. We’ll look through all his stuff that’s specifically about the Elixir first. I’ll call up the computer files so you can go through those. I’ll go through the handwritten stuff.”
“So we should be looking through it all for some kind of reference to a darker-skinned woman?” I asked.
“A darker-skinned woman?”
“Well, Sage said ‘a dark lady.’ I really can’t imagine Dad would have said that. I can’t imagine anyone would have said that, but I guess if Sage lived—”
“Guess if Sage lived what?” Ben asked.
I’d been about to say that Sage was most likely born in the 1500s, so he might slip sometimes when it came to what was and was not appropriate, but I hadn’t brought Ben in on that theory yet, and we definitely didn’t have the time right now.
“Sage might have paraphrased,” I covered. “He must have.”
“Right. That makes sense. So a woman who’s not Caucasian.”
All the Elixir of Life computer files were pulled up, and I sifted through them as Ben flipped through notebooks.
After two hours, we’d found all kinds of information about the Elixir, its history, and its powers. I even found a file all about the two groups Sage had told us were after him: Cursed Vengeance and the Saviors of Eternal Life.
Cursed Vengeance got its name because its members believed their bloodlines had somehow been cursed by the Elixir for generations. They believed that if they found and destroyed it, they could save themselves. The Saviors of Eternal Life wanted the Elixir for the opposite reason: They believed it was their duty to keep it safe and decide how best to use its powers.
Dad’s file backed up what Sage had said—that both groups had origins in the Renaissance, but got much stronger when Dad found the vials. While both groups sprawled out across the world, they stayed unified through several encrypted websites. Dad had a list of some of them, and he’d even found the pass code for one. I checked it out. It belonged to the Saviors of Eternal Life. It was a chat forum, basically, where members could share information with one another. The posts were pretty sporadic—I got the idea that this particular site wasn’t a main hub for the group. Still, I printed out the site address and code. It couldn’t hurt to have as much information on our enemies as possible.
Unfortunately, neither Ben nor I had seen anything about a darker-skinned woman, and time was running out. Mom’s party, and the protection it provided, could end at any time.
“This is crazy. We’re getting nowhere,” I said.
“I know.” Ben looked frazzled and disheveled, and he ran his hands through his hair. “We need another idea.”
We thought … but we both came up empty.
“Okay,” I finally considered out loud, “maybe ‘dark lady’ isn’t actually a person. Maybe it’s a code word.”
“A code word?”
“Maybe. Maybe the letters stand for other letters. Or maybe it’s like an acrostic, where each letter is part of another word. I don’t know. … I’m reaching … I’m getting punchy … maybe I should start drinking coffee.”
“No, no, it’s good. A code is good. It could be something hidden in literature, even. Literature is full of codes. Like Shakespeare’s sonnets.” Ben suddenly bolted up, like he’d been struck with a cattle prod. “Oh my God!”
“What?”
“Shakespeare’s sonnets! The Dark Lady! He wrote twenty-seven sonnets about a woman called the Dark Lady! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!”