Grave Importance

by Vivian Shaw

  An animal, it’s an animal, somehow something rabid got in here—

  And then a pleasant, cultured voice said, “Excuse me, miss, I wonder if you could help me,” and Susan Blake stopped thinking altogether.

  Afterward, of course, she would have no memory at all of ever entering the Sackler Wing, or of leaving it—flashing her badge at the cameras again—and returning to Gallery 128 to await the movers; in her mind there was no discontinuity at all between her arrival at the museum and her arrival in the square high-ceilinged room that held the stelae. It was strange that only the Hermopolis Stela was to be moved, but those were the orders she had received and passed on. Only once did she catch a glimpse of something strange out of the corner of her eye: something small and dark that seemed to flitter rapidly past, high up near the ceiling; she blinked and it was gone.

  The movers were museum employees, like herself; she checked their IDs even though she knew the security guards would have already done so at least once. Everything seemed to check out, and she felt strangely calm and serene as she went through the process of disarming the security systems and unlocking the case. Quite unconcerned. Everything was for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

  Cranswell was sitting behind the wheel of the armored van, tapping his fingers on the curve of its rim, staring out at the flow of traffic on Fifth Avenue. He had never in his life felt so exposed; he was absolutely sure that at any moment someone was going to knock on the window with a flashlight and demand his license and registration, which was why he jumped quite high and bit his tongue when somebody did knock on the window. Not so much knock as scrabble.

  “… Jesus fucking Christ,” he said unsteadily, reaching over to roll the window down far enough for an annoyed bat to scramble through. “What’s happening? Did it work?”

  “Yes, it’s working,” said Grisaille, his voice recognizably his but quite a lot higher and squeakier, and then there was a rather unpleasant noise and a sequence of shapes Cranswell would really rather not have seen. “Where’s the other uniform?”

  “Can you maybe not traumatize me twice in rapid succession?” said Cranswell, reaching between the seats for a folded coverall. “Just as a matter of courtesy?”

  “I’m a vampire,” Grisaille told him, wriggling into the coverall. He did not look even slightly like someone who worked for a secure transport company, but then again neither did Cranswell. “I’m supposed to traumatize people. Anyway, look sharp, they’ll be coming out any minute, all nice and neat and aboveboard, with the MacGuffin in a crate for safekeeping, whereupon you will have the curator sign a clipboard in an official sort of way, and as soon as she’s gone, I’ll thrall the living hell out of the movers and off we’ll go.”

  There was a faint edge to his voice that Cranswell hadn’t heard much. “Are you okay?” he asked. In the darkness Grisaille’s red pupils were quite wide, and very hard to look at; they painted the dashboard very faintly scarlet with their light. He could remember the first time he’d seen Ruthven’s eyes do that, on their way down to the deep-level shelter back in London; it never got any less eerie.

  “I’m fine,” said Grisaille. “Except for the fact that performing that much profound thrall multiple times is a little like lifting weights with your brain, and I do hope they get a move on because I may shortly start to lose vision in my right eye.”

  “Oh,” said Cranswell, and then, “Oh. Shit. I’m sorry—I didn’t know you got migraines, too—are you going to be okay to do this?”

  “I don’t make it a matter of casual disclosure,” said Grisaille. “Shut up, will you, there’s a good co-conspirator, and keep your eye on the mirrors.”

  Cranswell looked at him a moment longer before sighing and returning his attention to the loading dock behind them, and was enormously glad to see the door had begun to rise.

  In fact, Grisaille could still see out of both eyes while he and Cranswell came around to the back of the van to help load their precious crate and secure it safely. He could still see well enough to observe the departing curator, and to note that her off-the-rack pantsuit did not suit her in the least, and that her shoes were all wrong; it wasn’t until he turned back to the two movers Cranswell was keeping distracted with conversation, said “Look at me,” and proceeded to drop half a ton of thrall on the pair of them that his vision on the right side went entirely to fizzing sparks. A bolt of really quite extraordinary pain shot through his head along with the sudden eclipse, and for a moment he thought miserably of Ruthven blind and grey with something very like this, wondering if he’d actually hurt himself by pushing that much power all at once.

  You haven’t given yourself a stroke, he thought viciously, you can still move both sides of your body, so bloody well move it into the van and get out of here.

  “Grisaille?” Cranswell was at his elbow, ignoring the movers, who were standing stock-still with completely blank expressions, to match their completely blank recent memories.

  “I’m all right,” he said between his teeth, shaking his arm free—which sent another spike of pain through the bone cradling his right eye—and turned to make his way to the passenger side. “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t want to remember much of the ride that followed; he spent it staying as still as possible with his eyes shut tight, hanging on to the door handle hard enough to leave dents in the plastic. It seemed to take forever, an endless miserable cacophony of car horns drilling through his skull, but eventually he realized the van was no longer moving.

  “Where are we?” he said without opening his eyes.

  “I don’t know. Somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen, I think.” Cranswell didn’t sound as if he was having the time of his life, either, Grisaille thought, and could scrounge up a few scraps of sympathy for the kid: driving in New York was horrible at the best of times. “Come on, I think we have to be touching the thing to bring it with us when the demons do their—whatever it is.”

  Getting out of the van required Grisaille to open his eyes, which was as unpleasant as he expected, the right one still useless and silver jagged scotomata beginning to drift across the left. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered other than getting the fucking thing out of here and back to Marseille, where it would no longer be his problem.

  He made his way carefully around to climb into the back of the van, where Cranswell was already crouching next to the shipping crate. “You’re going to have to call them,” he said. “I don’t think I can look at screens at the moment.”

  Cranswell didn’t reply, getting out his phone. Grisaille sat down beside the crate, leaning against the wall, and closed his eyes again. At this stage the pain came in waves, a kind of sickening rhythm, pulsing in the rim of his eye socket like a poisoned heartbeat. Over it he could hear the kid talking—presumably he’d gotten through to the New York demons, or at least one of them, good, that was good, they might make it out of here after all…

  He had no idea how long it was before a brief sudden pressure change made his ears pop. Two people suddenly appearing in an enclosed space would do that, Grisaille thought, and opened his left eye just enough to make out a tall man and a curvy woman, both in black.

  “—this is completely irregular,” the woman was saying. “I’ll be filing a complaint, this sort of thing is not on the list of surface operative duties.”

  “Oh, surely you can spare the poor mortals a moment of your time, Glasya,” said the man, who sounded as if he was enjoying this. “Precious as it may be.”

  “I was in the middle of an opening reception,” she said. “Maybe you can randomly disappear at any hour of the day or night to go ferry stolen objects around without having to make excuses to your guests, Morax; with your undemanding schedule I wouldn’t be surprised. Let’s get this over with. Also one of them’s a vampire, not a mortal; get your taxonomy right at the very least.”

  “Touché,” said the man. “Where are we going again?”

  “Marseille,” said Cranswell. “The place is jus
t outside of Marseille—here’s a picture, they said that would help you get us there?”

  “Of course we need a picture, don’t be ridiculous. Very well. You, take my hand and touch the crate thing with the other. You—wake up, whoever you are, vampire, we’re doing you a favor—”

  “He’s not okay,” Cranswell said. “I’m sorry about your reception and we really appreciate your help but can you go easy on him?”

  “There is very little I enjoy more purely and delightedly than being talked about as if I were not present,” said Grisaille with delicate precision, “but as you say, let’s get this over with.” He managed to detach himself from the wall and get to his feet, accompanied by another burst of pain, and held on to the crate with one hand; his other was taken by Morax in a warm, not unfriendly grip. He could feel it, a slight shock, when the demons clasped their hands together, closing the circle.

  “Hang on tight,” said Morax. “This is going to be somewhat disorienting,” and a moment later all the world slid into blank and spinning white.

  Back in Central Park, several hours later, two very confused museum employees woke to find themselves lying on a bench with a cop standing over them, still holding the nightstick with which she had just prodded them awake.

  “You can’t sleep here,” she said, and proceeded to inform them of the rules and regulations governing public spaces—most of which went over their heads—while they looked at one another.

  “Okay, was it just me,” said one of them slowly, “or were that guy’s eyes actually glowing red?”

  CHAPTER 12

  She’d expected Grisaille to call before showing up.

  Greta had been asleep for all of four hours—long enough to render her functional, not even close to long enough to put much of a dent in the sleep deprivation she’d been stacking up for days—when the panicked voice on the intercom tore her awake. Beside her Varney sat up with a hiss, and she was glad whoever it was hadn’t actually come to physically wake her, because his eyes were glowing red and his teeth were on display. She’d seen that herself, the first time she’d met him, and the nursing staff didn’t need any more reasons to be panicked.

  “—they’re here, Dr. Helsing, there’s—you’re needed—”

  “All right,” she said, dragging her hands down her face. “I’m coming, I’m on my way, hang on,” and she struggled out of bed and put her dressing gown on. Varney was still sitting up, but the light show had died away; he looked faintly embarrassed. “Go back to sleep, love,” she said. “I don’t know what’s gone wrong now.”

  “I don’t think I can,” he said, and sighed. “Go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Greta nodded, and hurried out.

  The bedside clock had read half past four, which fit with the timeline Grisaille had given them, so presumably the plan had worked—at least in part—but she had no idea what to expect as she made her way from the director’s residence to the spa proper—

  There was a group of people in the entry foyer, gathered around something on the ground: mostly her nurses, but there were two dark-haired people she’d never seen before in her life, one of whom simply popped out of existence as if she had never been there at all—obviously a demon, Greta thought, must be the ones who flipped them back—and Cranswell, looking exhausted and unwell but there. As Greta approached, he looked up, and the others moved aside for her to see Grisaille crumpled on the ground next to a packing crate stenciled with the Metropolitan Museum’s logo.

  “What happened?” she said, kneeling down beside him. The last time she’d seen Grisaille looking anything close to this bad was after he’d had a knife through his lung, back in Paris.

  “He had a migraine,” Cranswell said. “Um. He said he couldn’t see out of one eye?”

  Greta stared at him. “Nobody cursed him, did they?” Please God, she thought, please God, don’t let there be an epidemic of cursed vampires on top of every other bloody thing that’s going wrong.

  “Not as far as I know,” said Cranswell, “he, uh, had to thrall a bunch of people and he said it was like—lifting weights with your brain? And then the thing with the demons happened—that sucked enormously and I nearly puked but he just collapsed as soon as we got here.”

  “He’ll be all right,” she said, rolling Grisaille onto his side, heavy with the helpless weight of unconsciousness. He’d almost certainly be sick, but this was at least a natural consequence of overexertion rather than something that would require evacuation to Hell. Which reminded her, she should probably try to get in touch with them to reassure Ruthven his boyfriend wasn’t languishing in durance vile in a New York holding cell.

  She looked up at the remaining demon, a man with dark curly hair. “Thank you,” she said. “We all appreciate your help a great deal. Could you get a message to Monitoring and Evaluation saying that the plan was successfully executed?”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “Fantastic place you’ve got here.”

  “You aren’t seeing us at our best, I’m afraid—Sister, go and fetch a gurney, Grisaille ought to be in bed. Can I offer you some tea or coffee, Mr.…?”

  “Morax,” said the demon, and handed her his card. “And thanks, but I ought to be going. That’s quite a heavy load you people had us transport, do you mind if I ask what’s in it?”

  “A priceless work of art,” said Greta, “the only one of its kind ever to be discovered, which we plan to use to speak with an ancient god.”

  Morax laughed, raising his hands. “Okay, okay. I get it. Not my business. I’ll let Downstairs know you all pulled it off successfully, whatever it is. Nice meeting you, have a great night, ciao.”

  He vanished with a faint thunderclap of collapsing air, and Greta looked down at the card in her hand: ah.

  “I wonder how many of the world’s theatrical producers happen to be demons undercover,” she said as the gurney arrived. “Probably quite a few. Help me lift him, will you?” she added to Cranswell.

  “Is he really going to be okay?”

  “He is. He won’t like waking up, but he’ll get over it. Thank you both so much, Cranswell. I hope I’ll never have to ask anything like that of you ever again.”

  “Me too,” he said with feeling. “I want to sleep for a week.”

  “That can probably be arranged. We can get you a ticket back to London in the morning—well, actually, it is morning—never mind, Varney’ll arrange it.”

  “I kind of want to see the spell thing,” he said. “Like—I want to know if it works. And that sculpture is amazing, I never got to see it outside the case.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to stay and watch. We’ve got lots of spare beds.” Greta rested two fingers on the pulse in Grisaille’s throat, nodded at the nurse to take him away. Cranswell watched him go.

  “He’s weird,” he said. “But kind of amazing.”

  “That’s a decent summation,” she said. “I want coffee. Do you want coffee?”

  “Of course I want coffee,” said Cranswell, and gave her a wan but relatively cheerful smile. She was reminded of waking up in the Savoy, after the business with the rectifier, and finding him scarfing down room service breakfast as if he hadn’t just spent twenty-four hours in the middle of a dangerous existential crisis; there was something comforting about Cranswell’s ability to bounce back from dramatic and perilous situations.

  “Come on,” she said. “And tell me all about it.”

  Leonora Irene Van Dorne knew almost to the minute how long it would take the pair of thieves to collect the crated stela, load it into the truck she had obtained for their use, and drive it to the secure location where she had arranged for them to deliver the goods.

  Waiting by the phone for the call from her security people, she watched the hands on her Patek Philippe move, with the expressionless faint smile of a Late Kingdom statue.

  Ten minutes past.

  Twenty.

  She watched traffic pass by on Sixty-eighth, headlights splashing the houses on th
e other side of the street. Thirty minutes.

  At thirty-five minutes past their ETA, she picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory. It was not, in fact, the number of her security agency.

  Two rings before the other end picked up, with a double click that she knew meant the line was secure. “Richard?” she said calmly. “Van Dorne. I have a job for you. Two men flew into JFK recently from London, one named August Cranswell and the other going by Grisaille, first or last name unclear. Cranswell claims to be with the British Museum, the other one has no known affiliation. Almost certainly on British Airways. Find out if they had return tickets.”

  She tapped her fingernails—long, now, and natural, stronger than they had been for years—on her desk blotter. “No. Let them go, if they’re going, but find out where, and call me back.”

  Ms. Van Dorne hung up, and made two more calls, to underworld fences of her acquaintance, requesting them to alert her if a priceless Thirtieth Dynasty stela showed up unexpectedly; when she set the phone down, the faint enigmatic smile turned into a rather less enigmatic and more unpleasant one. She was not worried about the safety of the stela; whatever else August Cranswell might be, he hadn’t lied about his appreciation of the thing’s beauty and significance. She was, in fact, not worried about a thing—except how messy it was going to be when she caught up with the pair of them to regain what ought to have been her property, and even that would be someone else’s problem. Everything was, really, when you got right down to it. The only things that mattered were her collection, not how it was obtained.

  She stroked the stone-and-gold confection of her Middle Kingdom pectoral, and smiled into the dark.

  Farther south, in their loft on Greenwich Street, the angels had been woken unexpectedly—they went to bed early, as was virtuous and correct, the only people who stayed up late were undoubtedly up to no good—and Amitiel was pacing up and down the apartment hugging himself, knocking things over with his wings, and chattering happily. Zophiel, however, was sitting on their achingly stylish couch with a confused look on his face.