“The decoration?”
“Decoration,” she said neutrally. “Now there’s a word I wouldn’t have thought of to describe demon proctology.”
He laughed and looked back down at the page in question. “Maybe he’s just taking his buddy’s temperature.”
“Maybe my name is Trixie.”
Shaking his head, he gave up teasing her. “When these manuscripts were created, hell was very real. It was the home of all sin, all that was grotesque, all that was forbidden to man by God, and all of it was described in detail within the Bible itself. Unfortunately, many of the people associated with the manuscripts, from scribes to secular owners and more than a few priests, simply weren’t literate. They got their inoculation against hell from the marginalia and decorations, with grotesques meant to scare man back to the path of righteousness by showing what would happen to you in hell.”
Serena looked around the room at the people staring into the cases. “They don’t look worried.”
“They aren’t. Different culture entirely. They’re buying historical curiosities or adding to private or scholarly collections centered around perversity as seen through the ages.”
Serena bent over another case and tried to see its contents in a seminary library. She was still trying when Bert came back.
“See anything you like?” he asked her.
Erik answered, “Not yet. We were hoping you had come across another of those fifteenth-century miniatures of the type you sold to the House of Warrick when you first started out in business. Palimpsest, remember? Gorgeous miniature on top and twelfth-century writing underneath.”
Bert’s smile hardened. “I don’t do stuff like that anymore.”
“Too bad. That’s all I’m interested in these days. Who did you buy it from? Maybe they have some more or know where I can find some. I’ll be glad to guarantee you a finder’s fee.”
“You lost me.”
“I’m talking about the miniature that you sold to the House of Warrick fifteen years ago,” Erik said with an easy smile. “That kind of palimpsest is my new passion. I’m prepared to pay very well to support it. Why shouldn’t you get some of the benefit?”
“It was a long time ago. I don’t remember who sold it to me.”
Erik didn’t believe him. “Why don’t you think about it some more? Give it a chance. It seems like the memory of your first big sale would stick with you. Could you check your records?”
“Sorry. I only keep five years’ worth of records or I’d be buried in paper.”
Erik looked at Bert’s pale eyes and wondered why he was lying. “Too bad. You could make a lot of money on this. If you remember anything, call me.”
Bert hesitated. “How much?”
“Depends on how good the lead is. Five thousand, minimum.”
A flicker of surprise showed on Bert’s face. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that. While you’re at it, think about ten thousand, tax free.”
Bert looked like he was doing his thinking right now. “You got it on you?”
“What do you think?”
“How long will it take you to get it?”
“A few hours,” Erik said.
“You know where my house is?”
“I can find it.”
“Be there at nine tonight. Small bills only. Nonsequential.”
“I can be there sooner than nine.”
Bert smiled. It wasn’t nice to see. “Forget it. I need the time.”
“For what? A brain scan?”
Bert’s laugh wasn’t any nicer than his smile had been. “Anything that’s worth ten to you might be worth more to other people. So bring some extra cash, pal. I just love auctions. Gives me a big hard-on every time.”
Chapter 54
LOS ANGELES
SATURDAY EVENING
Despite the cozy honey tones of the Retreat’s large suite, Niall’s blue eyes didn’t look welcoming. Neither did the gun he checked with a few quick, efficient motions. Satisfied that it was good to go, he shoved the gun into his shoulder holster.
“Look,” Erik said for the fifth time, “you don’t have to go with—”
“Are you deaf?” Niall interrupted impatiently. “I’m bloody well not. I heard you loud and clear. Now you hear this, Fuzzy boy. Anytime you’re carrying thirty thousand in cash, you get company. Especially with a slimy item like Bert. That man’s biography would gag a skunk.”
Serena looked from one man to the other. Whether by accident or design, both were wearing a dark shirt, dark pants, and a dark jacket. Both had on the kind of shoes that could handle sidewalks or rough country with equal ease. Erik wore a black baseball cap over his bright hair. Niall didn’t need a hat; his hair was already the color of midnight.
“Show me yours,” Niall said in a curt voice, holding out his hand.
Erik’s mouth flattened but he reached behind his back, drew his gun, reversed it, and handed it to Niall butt-first. The older man checked it out, grunted approval, and handed it back.
“Clean and loaded,” Niall said. “You’re wasted on the Fuzzy side.”
Erik checked the safety, holstered the gun, and didn’t say a word.
“I feel left out,” Serena said sardonically, her empty hands on her hips. “No black cat clothes, no weapon, just blue jeans, running shoes, and a red sweater.”
“Then stay here,” Erik said, “the way I told you to.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“No shit.”
“Can she use a gun?” Niall asked Erik, heading off a continuation of the argument that his arrival had interrupted.
“I would have shot Wallace if Sir Galahad here hadn’t knocked my hand aside,” she said.
“But you wouldn’t have liked shooting him,” Erik said savagely.
“Are you saying you would have?” she challenged.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t without undermining his position, and he knew it. But that didn’t make him any less angry. No matter how she fought it, he knew that she would spend more time regretting violence than he would. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t get the job done; it just meant that she shouldn’t have to be the one to do it.
Niall looked at Serena with new approval. “Good on you. And don’t worry about the red sweater. In low light, red is the first color to look black.”
“I was being ironic about feeling left out,” Serena said to Niall. “Are you familiar with the term irony?”
“Never heard of it,” Niall retorted. “I work with a delicate little flower who wouldn’t know irony if it bit her on her perfect ass.”
Erik turned toward the door. “Don’t start arguing with Serena. It’s not worth the time you’ll waste.”
“And I suppose you’re a mountain of sweet reason?” Serena said bitingly.
“I thought you’d never notice.”
The door shut behind Erik. Hard.
Serena told herself that she wasn’t being stubborn, he was being overprotective. Either way, it shouldn’t hurt the way it did. The fact that it hurt enough to make her eyes sting made her madder than ever.
“Don’t worry,” Niall said calmly. “He’ll get over it. It takes a man a while to get used to a strong woman.”
“No need for him to bend his stiff neck,” she said, yanking open the door. “As soon as Mr. Warrick gets the message that my pages aren’t for sale, Erik can go back to screwing numbingly sweet young things that wouldn’t say shit if their mouth was full of it.”
“Doubt it,” Niall said, following her out the door. “Once a man bites into something with zest, he’s ruined for cotton candy.”
He was talking to himself. Serena had caught up with Erik and was matching him stride for stride.
Chapter 55
The silence inside Erik’s silver SUV was thick enough to slice and serve on crackers. He ignored it just as he ignored Serena.
She had always been like that—independent, determined, carrying life’s sav
age demands like a banner into battle.
The thought was Erik’s, yet not quite his. Just as the image of Serena mounted on a battle stallion was both Serena now and a different Serena—smaller, delicate without being fragile, thinner mouth bracketed by pain, fleeing, always fleeing, because the mist retreats and he is there, always there beyond the mist, waiting for vengeance.
The man I loved beyond death, wronged beyond death, Erik the Learned sorcerer, who would kill me and the child of his loins.
She was looking at him, straight into his soul stretched across time, eyes violet with agony and regret, and a hope that would not die.
Help us!
Do not repeat our mistakes!
Cat’s paws of ice pricked over Erik’s skin. The vision had been so clear, so real, he could still see the woman’s fear and smell the spicy sachet lifting from her beautifully woven robe.
Quickly he glanced at Serena. She was staring at him, her eyes dilated, her mouth pale. He wondered what she had seen. Then he was afraid he knew.
Abruptly he stopped fighting what he couldn’t understand and couldn’t control. All he could control was his own response. He let go of the steering wheel with one hand long enough to brush the back of his fingers over her cheek.
“Don’t worry,” he said roughly. “If there’s a way, we’ll find it.”
As though they had always been lovers, she turned her head and brushed a kiss across his palm, comforting him as he had comforted her.
If there’s a way . . .
From the backseat, Niall watched both of them. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew something had. For an instant there had been a presence in the car that crackled like hidden lightning, the smell of spice and time, despair and hope. . . .
Things that go bump in the night.
With a silent curse, he checked his shoulder holster. The heavy gun butt was still there, still cool despite the warmth of his body slowly seeping through the leather. The solid reality of the weapon reassured him on the same primitive level that had recognized something distinctly unordinary arcing between Erik and Serena.
Then Niall thought of Dana’s motto, she of the breathtaking intelligence and equally breathtaking pragmatism: If you can’t beat it, don’t fight it.
“We won’t stop throwing money at Bert until he tells us what he knows,” Niall said.
“Whose money?” Serena asked. “I can’t even afford to keep Picky in cat food.”
“Our money. If Bert can lead us to the rest of the Book of the Learned, Dana will consider the money well spent.”
“Why? It still won’t be for sale,” Serena said.
“The art,” Erik said simply. “Not the owner, not the client. The art is all that matters, all that will endure.”
She let out a long, fragmented breath. Everything was happening too quickly, moving at light speed when she was more comfortable with the patient, timeless weaving of thread upon thread. “I wish my grandmother had left me more information.”
“She thought she left you enough,” Niall said. “Use it. Something like the Book of the Learned belongs to human history, no matter who keeps it from century to century.”
“How do I think like a dead woman?” Serena asked.
A primeval oak forest, the sound of hunting horns, the thunder of horses’ hooves digging up clots of darkly fragrant earth, a peregrine’s wild cry . . .
“How am I thinking like a dead man?” Erik asked tightly.
When Serena looked at him, her eyes were violet with more than the flickering light of L.A.’s night. She saw two Eriks, one a few inches shorter and every bit as strong, hair and beard cut to wear beneath a battle helm, quick, confident to the point of arrogance, as fierce as the peregrine that rode his leather-clad arm. His eyes, Erik’s eyes, staring at her, demanding . . . something.
She gave him an almost frightened glance and didn’t say anything more. She felt as she had the night her grandmother died, when time had been the unbound leaves of a book and she had turned them to find a design a thousand years old.
Out in the rain-slicked night, a siren wailed up and down like the voice of darkness.
Erik turned onto a side street, parked, and turned off the lights. Nobody drove by. Nobody turned off and parked behind them. “Lapstrake must have decoyed him.”
“Hope Dana enjoyed the ride,” Niall said dryly. “It really cheesed her to let him drive her new toy.”
“At least she had the good taste to buy a silver Mercedes SUV,” Erik said.
Niall shook his head. “She’s a holy terror in that thing. Eats sports cars for lunch. They have to slow down for bumps and rain gutters. She flat flies over ’em.”
Erik started the engine, flipped on the lights, and got back on the urban highway. A few miles later he turned onto one of the numberless small side streets that were thrown over the outlying areas of Hollywood like a badly woven net. Cars had been parked haphazardly along the streets, narrowing the passage to one lane through many blocks. It was illegal, but it happened all the time in old neighborhoods where houses were divided into rental apartments and there wasn’t enough parking for one car per bungalow, much less two or three.
The clapboard bungalows were crowded together like beach houses, except there wasn’t a beach for miles. All that existed in the way of nature was a dry ravine overgrown with brush, feral grapevines and ivy, windblown trash, and the dry weeds of seasons past. In a few weeks new grass awakened by last week’s rain would poke through the mat of dead foliage and debris, but now there was only a feeling of abandonment.
Bert’s house certainly wasn’t what people expected to find in the hills overlooking a chunk of L.A. His bungalow was small, old, surrounded by narrow, winding streets lined with aging eucalyptus trees whose brittle branches broke off in every high wind. There were lights on in the front of his house, just enough to show off the weeds in the disreputable front yard.
“Don’t park close,” Niall said.
“Don’t tell me what I already know,” Erik retorted.
He didn’t even slow down while Niall looked the place over. He drove two blocks farther before he squeezed into a space between two cars that looked like they cost more than the houses they were parked in front of. But this was Hollywood, where looks were deceptive. For all their shabby modesty, the bungalows were within easy commuting distance of hundreds of thousands of jobs, which meant that the land cost five times what the houses were worth. If the view had been good, the bungalows would have long since given way to expansive and very expensive houses, but the only view was of a brush-choked hillside and the neighbor’s needs-a-coat-of-paint house.
“Looks like party time,” Niall said as he got out of the car.
“For some people, it’s always party time,” Erik said, locking the SUV with a single motion of his thumb on the fat key.
Cars were parked everywhere but on roofs. The young and the hip mingled with the older and the jaded in bungalows so small that a party of ten was a crush. A couple walked by in the center of the street, sharing a cigarette; neither of them looked old enough to be out after curfew. The smell of marijuana hung in the air behind them like incense.
Serena dodged between a polished Porsche and a dusty Lexus. If there was a sidewalk, she hadn’t set foot on it yet. Despite the recent rain, the weeds were dry enough to leave foxtails clinging to her socks and jeans. Once the heavy smell of pot dissipated, the air was fragrant with the herbal scents of eucalyptus and dried weeds.
There was a car parked in the side yard that passed for a garage at Bert’s house.
“There’s an alley behind,” Erik said.
He started forward, only to be hauled back by Niall’s hard hand wrapped around his arm. “Security goes first, boyo. Fuzzies bring up the rear and take care of the clients.”
Erik started to argue with Niall but knew it would be useless. He locked his jaw, took Serena’s arm, and followed the older man so close they could touch him.
“W
ait here,” Niall said in a low voice.
Serena began to object, but the sudden pressure of Erik’s fingers on her arm silenced her.
Chapter 56
Niall went to the car, touched the hood, and felt only chilly metal. The vehicle had been parked long enough for the engine to become stone-cold. There were other cars parked out front in the street, but they looked like the party two houses down—young and expensive.
He did a quick circuit of the bungalow. The backyard opened onto an alley that was either unpaved or had been buried in dirt and neglect. There weren’t any cars in the alley, but there was another party going on a few houses up on the other side. A low fence gave a casual air of privacy to Bert’s yard. French doors led from what was probably a back bedroom to what once had been a garden. Except for a light over the kitchen sink, the rear of the house was dark.
Quietly Niall went back to the front yard. “So far, so good,” he said softly to Erik. “Let’s see if he’s home. You first, this time. Serena, stay with me.”
As he spoke, Niall grabbed Serena’s arm. His fingers wrapped around the trailing end of the scarf. He lifted his hand, rubbed it, and gave the scarf a narrow look. The bloody thing felt like a steel brush, yet she was stroking it with her fingertips like it was velvet.
Erik stepped up onto the small front porch and hit the doorbell. Instead of chimes or a buzzer, the cries of a woman revving toward climax announced that visitors had arrived.
“Must be the soundtrack from his last movie,” Erik said blandly.
“Hope she got an Oscar,” Serena muttered.
Bert opened the door. He was wearing jeans and the kind of colorful, woven silk sweater that had been popular two decades ago. From the look of the cuffs, he had worn the sweater at least that long. The paunch that his suit had disguised was on proud display, straining the colorful yarn. A tumbler full of what smelled like room temperature gin was clenched in his hand. He took a big swallow that should have burned like gasoline all the way down, but apparently he was used to it. He didn’t even clear his throat.
“Who’s that?” he asked, looking at Niall.
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