by Mary Stanton
“I think I’m going to take a look at the place now. Want to come along?”
“To look at office space?” Antonia made a face. “Yuck. I’m going to memorize lines. Don’t be too late, okay? When you come back I want you to run them with me. You said the final scene from The Winter’s Tale? That’s what everyone has to prepare?”
“I spoke to the stage manager before I left Tully’s house. That what she said.”
“Phooey. I suppose I should prepare both Paulina and Hermione.”
“I suppose.”
“You haven’t got a clue about either part, do you?”
“Nope,” Bree said cheerfully. “But you’ll be brilliant as either one. Or as tech director. Come on, Sash. Let’s take a walk.” Bree slung her raincoat over her arm, grabbed her purse, and let Sasha precede her out the kitchen door. The huge old brick building was four city blocks away on Bay, and it was a fine November night. Sasha kept the panhandlers that had plagued Savannah in recent years from begging for handouts, so Bree didn’t have to make sure she had dollar bills at hand. She snapped the lead on her dog, in case any city patrolmen decided to enforce the leash law, and walked out into the night.
The air was pleasantly cool and the sidewalks were filled with other people: office workers headed for home after restaurant dinner, students from the nearby Savannah College of Arts and Design, city dwellers out with their dogs for an evening’s walk.
Uncle Franklin’s former office stood at Bay and Drayton, close to Johnson Square. The main entrance faced Drayton and the Bank of America on the opposite side of the street. From her vantage point on the sidewalk, Bree could see that a dozen or so windows were lit up. People were working late.
It’d been a warehouse for the Cotton Exchange in 1820, and the brick walls had weathered the nearly two hundred years since then pretty well. The recent renovation had been thorough: many of the rotten floor joists had been replaced, the brick had been sandblasted and then pointed, and the terrazzo tile floors in the foyer sanded down and refinished. Bree buzzed the security guard seated at the kiosk just inside the double glass doors and he let her in with an amiable smile.
“I’m not a tenant,” she said, “not yet. I’m here to see 616. Someone from my office was in earlier today to take a look. Ronald Parchese?”
The guard flipped open the registry, and Bree placed her finger on Ron’s signature. “There he is.”
“Building manager’s gone home,” the guard said. “And I’m supposed to sit here all the while. You mind going up on your own?” He smiled over the edge of the counter at Sasha. “No one going to bother you with that fine fellow along, anyways.”
“It’ll be no trouble at all, thank you.” Bree took the ornate brass key—the Historical Society must have insisted that the owners keep the old-fashioned Yale locks—and headed over to the elevators. A directory hung between the two elevators, and she scanned the addresses to get a better idea of her neighbors. An architect or two. A couple of physicians. A few county offices. And lawyers, lots of lawyers, including a small office division of Stubblefield, Marwick. Bree made a sound like “Bleaagh.”
“You okay over there?” The guard called out.
“Just saw a familiar name on the board. Payton McAllister?”
“Oh,” said the guard discouragingly. “Him. Yeah. He’s here two days a week from his big fancy offices over on Abercorn and Park. You know him?”
Wish I didn’t, Bree thought. And it sounds like you don’t like him much, either. The guard was clearly a man of taste and discretion if he didn’t like Payton McAllister. She’d gotten over being dumped by the good-looking weasel with the ethics of Joseph Goebbels. “I know him just to say good-bye to,” Bree said cheerily. “Ah-ha! Here’s my elevator car. Thank you!”
The elevator doors slid open with a whoosh. Bree peered in cautiously. It would be just her luck that Payton the Rat would be working late and decide to leave just as she was headed up to her new offices.
“Not here,” Bree said. “Good.” She looked down at Sasha and indicated the empty car with a sweep of her hand. “After you.”
The sixth floor was dark, except for the night-lights placed at intervals along the hallway. Number 616 was halfway down. Bree had been in the office many times when her great-uncle Franklin was alive, and only once since his death. She’d been on the trail of a murderer then, too. The place smelled of fresh Sheetrock, new paint, and floor polish. Bree was wearing a pair of Borgs, and the faint sounds of her footsteps were swallowed up by the dense silence. The office doors were all alike: mahogany with a pebbled glass upper half. The names of the firms were painted in black Gothic-style lettering on the glass: J. P. WRIGHT, COURT STENOGRAPHER; ALLAN QUANTICO, INC.
The upper half of the door to 616 was blank.
Bree inserted the key into the lock. Suddenly Sasha growled, low in his throat. He nudged himself between Bree and the door.
She stepped back. “What is it, Sash?”
Stranger. Stranger.
“Something bad?” Bree ventured. She’d never been a fan of those Gothic novels where the clueless heroine clatters down to the basement dressed in a nightgown and without a cell phone.
Stranger.
Bree waited a long moment. She looked up and down the hallway. It was still deserted. But nothing lurked in the shadows. And outside on the street were cheerful night sounds: people talking, the sound of cars moving along Bay Street, a siren or two in the distance. She realized she didn’t have her cell phone because the battery was dead. On the other hand, she was dressed in sweats and her Borgs, and she could run like hell if she needed to.
“Okay?” she said to her dog.
We don’t know.
Bree pushed the door open and stepped inside.
She was in absolute darkness.
And wherever she was, it was huge. Miles and miles of nothing. Space soared above her. She could sense nothing but vast emptiness on either side. The ground was damp and gave slightly beneath her feet. Then, a faint white smudge at the farthest edge of the horizon.
And it was moving toward her.
Sasha panted into the eerie silence. He was confused. Uncertain. Bree cast a look over her shoulder.
There was blackness behind her, too.
The white mass slowed, whirling like a top, and then floated in midair. Bree couldn’t say for certain how far it was from her, but the shape was close enough for her to make sense of it.
“Franklin?” Bree said. Her voice dropped into the stillness like a stone. She was aware of stretching out her hand, aware of taking a step forward.
Bree.
The voice was no more than a whisper. But she was sure it was his. Wasn’t it?
Breeee.
To her left, something immense slid forward then stopped. Waited. The dark and quiet pressed down, pulling all the air from her lungs.
She heard the sound of wings. A slow, ominous flapping.
Something circled overhead. Then plunged at her. She ducked and fell back.
Bree groped in the dark for Sasha’s head, needing the reassurance.
Bree.
A second voice, heavy as iron, cold as the grave, and huge, tremendous with power. And nothing human about it. The handful of white mist shrank to nothing. Then a pustulant yellow-green river of light formed at Bree’s feet and curled upward, looking for her. The air was rank with the smell of corpses. There was a snarl (not Sasha!), a monstrous roar, and hell broke loose around her. Something slashed at her arm—and Bree leaped back . . .
And fell, spiraling down, down, down while the blackness and the roaring and the stench filled her head and she stopped thinking altogether.
She woke to a light in her eyes, and an unfamiliar voice. “Ma-am?” the voice said. “Ma’am? You all right, ma’am?”
Bree blinked awake. She was seated in a swivel chair at a utilitarian steel desk. A gray filing cabinet sat against the wall in front of her. She sat up, halfway supported by the guard from downst
airs. There was one window in this room, and it looked out over Bay Street.
It was dark outside, and the moon was high.
Franklin’s office.
Sasha put his paw on her knee.
“Man,” the guard said. “You was some asleep.”
“Sorry.” Bree took a deep breath and got up.
“You always sleep like that?” the guard asked. He backed away, worry in his face. “Like the dead? It took some doing, waking you up. You didn’t come down for some time, ma’am, so when the third shift come on, I told him, ‘You wait on me,’ I said. ‘I gotta go up to the sixth floor and check on Miss Beauford.’ And here.” He took her arm gently. “You done hurt yourself on something.”
Bree looked at her arm. Something had grabbed at her and missed. Blood beaded her wrist.
“Beaufort,” Bree said. “It’s Beaufort. And I’m so sorry.” She faked a yawn. “You’re right. I just sat down for a minute . . . and I’ve been putting in some long hours lately. I’m truly sorry for your trouble, sir. I appreciate the time you took to come and wake me.”
“Yeah, well. You’d best get along home, now. You got someone to call? You want me to get you a cab?”
“No, no. I live just down the street.” She reached out and shook his hand. “And again, I thank you.”
“You go on out ahead of me. I’ll just turn out these here lights and I’ll be right along.”
Bree looked around carefully. The floor was carpeted in that utilitarian gray indoor-outdoor stuff that was a favorite of car dealers everywhere. The walls were a prim beige. The furniture was standard office-issue steel and Formica-topped. No place for monstrous shapes here.
Sasha nudged her out into the hall. She waited for the guard and trailed him to the elevators, not speaking as the car sped them down to the ground floor. She thanked him one final time as he ushered her out onto the street.
Miles and Belli sat under the streetlamp, their eyes glowing red-yellow in the half-light.
“I thought I recognized that bellow up there,” Bree said. “I think you two showed up just in time. Thank you.”
“Whuff,” Miles said. He put his great head against her hip and gently nudged her toward home.
Twelve
Oh, Threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
—Edward FitzGerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
“I don’t know what it was,” Bree admitted. “It started out as Uncle Franklin and then something else showed up.”
“Them Pendergasts,” Lavinia said glumly.
“No,” Bree said, “it wasn’t the Pendergasts. It was something—I don’t know. Older, I guess.”
Five of the seven members of Beaufort & Company sat in the small living room of the house on Angelus Street: Ron, Lavinia, Sasha, Petru, and of course Bree herself. Bree didn’t know if Miles and Belli could be counted as employees; she rather thought not. They sat on either side of the small fireplace, massive and stolid. She was very glad they were there.
The painting of the slave ship hung above them all. When she’d arrived that morning, Bree had been unsettled to discover a change in the seascape. The waters of the ocean were redder, and the sun a more sullen yellow. The faint outlines of a hook now loomed behind the billowing sails of the ship. Bree squinted at it. Maybe it was a beak. The thing that had dived at her had a beak.
“Older, you say,” Petru said. “You can perhaps be more descriptive?”
“No. I can’t. I wish I could.” She moved restlessly in her chair. Sasha sat on the floor next to her. Ron and Lavinia crowded together on the small leather couch. Petru stood behind the couch, hands folded over his cane. Bree dabbed at the wound on her wrist. It was shallow, a mere bird scratch, but the blood wouldn’t clot. The small, steady seepage had soaked through the Band-Aid she’d placed over it the night before. Her bedsheets had been lightly freckled with bright damp spots when she’d wakened.
“I got something else I want to try on that cut on your arm,” Lavinia said. “You sit right there, child.” She got up with a small grunt of effort and stumped out of the room and up the stairs. There had been another change in the old house that morning. The first angel at the bottom of the richly colored frieze on the stair wall that led to the second floor had changed direction. She? he? it? (Ron had informed her some time ago that angels were non-gender-specific) wore a rich purple robe and had silver gilt hair the color of Bree’s own. The angel didn’t look up, now. It had turned halfway, to look back.
As if something were chasing it?
“An anomaly, then,” Petru observed. “I have no knowledge of what this might be.”
Lavinia came back, a clump of sweet-smelling moss in one hand. “This here’s direct from home, from the banks of my river.” She took Bree’s hand and gently patted the fungus over the cut. “And look there, chile. I do believe it’s stopped right up.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Ron said. “Funny. I was reading about pollution on the Nile just the other day. It just,” he added obscurely, “goes to show you.”
Bree, who’d been wondering at the elderly Lavinia scouting the banks of the Savannah for medicinal herbs, suddenly remembered that “home” was Africa. “Whatever it was, whoever it was, I don’t think it was looking for me. It picked me up and dropped me before Miles and Belli jumped to the rescue. Not,” she added, addressing both dogs, “that I wasn’t completely grateful for your help. I am.”
Belli yawned.
“Well, I don’ like to see you move into Franklin’s old place, that’s for certain sure,” Lavinia fussed. “Who knows what all can walk right in that door?”
“It’s getting awkward, not having a temporal facility,” Bree said. “My family asks questions. My friends think it’s odd that they can’t come to my office.”
“There is that,” Ron said. “So what do you want to do?”
“I wondered if any of you had any idea what attacked me last night.”
“A mystery,” Lavinia murmured. “A disturbing mystery.”
“I shall talk to Armand,” Petru said. “But I would think, perhaps, that this is outside of his experience, as well as mine.”
“And the changes in the painting? And the angel on the stairs? What do you think this all means?”
“Something approaches,” Petru said. “But what it is, I cannot say.”
“Ron, do you think Goldstein might have a clue?”
“Only if there’s a case precedent,” Ron said. “He’s a recording angel, not a prophet. But I’ll put out some feelers. Some of the clerks might know something. They scribble away on all kinds of documents throughout Time.”
“Beazley and Caldecott,” Bree said. “What about asking them? They showed up to warn me about this. I’ll bet they know more about this than they’re telling. How do I get in touch with them?”
“I’ll ask them to call on us,” Ron said. “But those two—they’ll only cough up what’s absolutely required. And they’ll want something in trade, Bree.”
“Like what?”
“Your firstborn son. Who knows?” Ron rolled his eyes. “Depends. But it’s never something you want to give up. I can guarantee it.”
“Striker,” Lavinia said suddenly. “He’s been a warrior since the Word, I reckon. He ought to know something about all this.”
“Maybe,” Ron said. “But there was a lot of Dark stuff before the Word.”
“Dark stuff?” Bree asked. “What do you mean, ‘Dark stuff?’ ”
“Pre-Sphere,” Ron said, as if this explained everything. “I’ve never paid much attention to it myself. You’d need an Historian for that.”
Bree made a mental note. An Historian sounded just the ticket. Maybe Goldstein could point her in the right direction.
Petru tugged at his beard. “It is interesting to consider the lack of Striker. He was nowhere in the vicinity last night?”
Bree shook her head.
Petru nodded decisively. “Then the threat is over.”
Ron�
��s eyebrows rose. “That’s absolutely true.” He leaned across the chest they used as a coffee table and patted her hand reassuringly. “Whatever grabbed you, Bree, isn’t likely to grab you again. If Striker wasn’t there, it wasn’t after you.”
“You think so?” Bree said. “But Miles and Belli were there.”
“They’re the muscle. Striker’s got the Power. Big difference,” Ron said.
Bree decided to let the distinction between the two drop for the moment. There’d be time after this case was over. She was more interested in what had grabbed at her and why.
“It’s Striker’s job to see you safe, chile. And he’s always up to it.”
“Up until now,” Petru said sourly.
“What do you mean by that?” Ron demanded.
Petru shrugged.
Lavinia sank back against the couch with a relieved sigh. “You two hush up. Striker’s good. It’s not a worrisome thing, except for that scratch on her wrist and I took care of that. We should have thought of Gabriel in the first place.”
“You’re all sure about this?”
“Positive,” Ron said with confidence. “Whatever it was—it doesn’t seem to be after you. It picked you up and dropped you back down again, right?”
Bree thought of that long, long fall and shuddered. “Right.”
“Right.”
“Like it was searching for something and thought it was you. Picked you up. Then said: ‘Bah! Wrong person. Next!’ ”
“I suppose so,” Bree said dryly. “But if it wasn’t looking for me, who was it looking for?”
“Hm,” Ron said. Then, to the others: “This is why she gets the big bucks.”
“I will talk to Armand,” Petru said. “But I, too, believe there to be no danger.”
Ron smiled happily. “So we can consider renting the Bay Street office after all.”
Bree ran her fingers over the wound on her wrist. Lavinia’s Nile poultice worked. The blood had dried. And the scratch was healing fast. “Okay, then. About the Bay Street office. My biggest concern is the expense.”
