by Jess Haines
I would be displeased to see our business relationship terminated prior to completion of your assignment. I will extend you some measure of protection against the W.H. element and give you an update on the missing boy.
The requisite forms are filled out and the warrant should be signed by noon. Call the number on the back of my card if something comes up during the day.
Please come to my office on 52nd as soon as convenient after sunset. Present my card at the security desk for entrance.
Cordially,
Alec D. Royce
A. D. Royce Industries
Well, that was a development. Why was he offering me protection now? What exactly did he plan to do to keep the White Hats off my back? Something about the letter struck me as off, aside from the fact that I was reading an e-mail from a friggin’ vampire. Royce was supposedly older than dirt, but he didn’t appear to be the technophobe I would’ve thought considering the height of technology at the time he was made a vamp was probably a sundial.
Reading it over a second time, I decided that there were two things about it that bothered me. First, he was being far more formal in writing than he’d been in person. Second, “prior to completion of your assignment” didn’t quite make sense. It was just a little too carefully worded. It was the sort of thing that made me think he might really know about the agreement I had with The Circle and that he was planning on using me to get to them somehow.
Maybe I was reading too much into everything.
I jotted down a quick “I’ll be there” reply and sent it. Just as I was about to turn off the monitor, another e-mail popped into my in-box. Veronica was an early riser, apparently. I opened the e-mail.
Come by at 2PM. Ask for Arnold at the front desk. He’ll get you whatever you need.
Nice. Things were starting to look up. Maybe when I met with Royce this evening, I’d actually be prepared for it.
Chapter 9
Even though I’d forced myself to lie down and take a nap so I wouldn’t be a complete zombie later that night, I was still feeling groggy when I entered the lobby of The Circle’s downtown office tower. I’d almost slept through my alarm and ended up hurriedly throwing on presentable clothes, fluffing my hair and slapping on some makeup before running out the door. Traffic had been hell, and even though I knew it was better to park somewhere and take the train, I just didn’t want to deal with it. So between traffic and finding parking, I was twenty minutes late.
The design in the lobby was impressive: lofty ceilings; high windows that allowed sunlight to stream in; low-slung red couches; and intricate arcane symbols inlaid on the floor. Feeling hassled, rumpled, and cranky, I approached a sleek, polished desk where a bored-looking receptionist tapped away at her keyboard. She didn’t bother to look up.
“Excuse me? I’m here to see Arnold.”
The girl slowly raised her eyes from her flatscreen monitor to look at me over the rim of her glasses with cool, studied contempt. I couldn’t help but notice that her clothes were all trendier and nicer than mine and that her expensively dyed blond hair framed a thin, elfin face with heavy, but expertly applied, makeup. She was stick-thin and pretty enough to be modeling those clothes on a runway somewhere.
She looked me up and down and cocked a dismissive eyebrow before sliding her eyes back to the screen. Obviously, I failed her inspection.
“You’re late.”
More tapping on the keyboard. A pause.
“He’ll come get you in a moment. Please have a seat, ma’am.”
The bored voice couldn’t hide the underlying irritation. I’d probably interrupted a game of solitaire.
Making a heroic effort not to flip her off, I hefted my purse higher on my shoulder and had a seat on one of the uncomfortable but stylish red couches. The magazines spread on the table were up to date, but stuff I’d never read. Arcana Quarterly and Familiar Fashion: How to Accessorize Your Fae Focus just isn’t my cup of tea. I pulled out my cell and started fumbling with the text messages, trying to find something to focus on other than the rapid clicking of nails over keys coming in rattling spurts every few seconds from the reception desk.
Arnold kept me waiting exactly thirty minutes. His way of telling me off for coming late, I supposed. I looked up at the sound of him clearing his throat from the glass double doors next to the receptionist’s desk.
He was tall, skinny, with thick glasses perched on a narrow nose and an untidy mop of sandy brown hair, and wearing jeans and a faded T-shirt that read JESUS SAVES. THE REST OF YOU TAKE DAMAGE. Oh great, a geek.
“Ms. Waynest?” He appeared distracted, glancing at me from a thick sheaf of papers he clutched in one ink-stained hand, offering the other to me to shake. His shy, somewhat weak smile was genuine, however, and I realized he hadn’t been keeping me waiting on purpose. He was probably just tied up in his work. He actually looked a trifle apologetic under all the distraction.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr., uh…Arnold.” I realized I didn’t know his last name. “Veronica told me you’d be able to help me.”
He nodded, reddening a bit at the mention of Veronica. A crush, perhaps? Poor guy. That love was destined to remain unrequited, and for more than one reason if her hitting on me in the restaurant the other night was any indication.
“Yes, ah, Ms. Wright told me you were coming. She said you needed something from our security vaults, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
I found myself liking the guy despite his geekiness. He was nice enough. Too bad he worked for scum like Veronica.
“This way, please. Follow me.” The receptionist didn’t look up once, still tapping away as I followed the guy into the room behind the glass doors.
Inside it looked pretty much indistinguishable from any other cube farm in corporate America. Gray and drab, with a few amusing cartoons tacked to cube walls or mildly entertaining screensavers on the computers we passed, but otherwise unremarkable. I couldn’t hear the sounds of anyone working, and it looked pretty deserted. Guess even magi took the weekends off.
He led me to an elevator oddly stuck in the middle of the floor between two rows of cubicles. I wasn’t going to question it. Magi could do whatever the hell they wanted with their architecture.
As we stepped inside, he pressed the button for the lowest basement level instead of one of the double-digit high-rise levels I was expecting. All the corporate bigwigs must get the view.
He didn’t speak during the short ride, just zoned back into the papers he was holding. When the doors opened, he looked up with confusion, as if surprised we had arrived so soon. Weird.
Stepping out, he led the way down a damp, obviously underground hallway. Thick insulation pipes ran overhead and the paint was dull, institutional gray-blue. We passed a number of doors, one or two with strange inscriptions where one would expect a name tag or some such. Then I noticed we passed one that had a nameplate for the boiler room. Lovely. Poor Arnold must be among the lowest of the low on the corporate ladder to be stuck working down here.
We rounded a bend or two, then he abruptly stopped at an unmarked door with peeling paint. I probably would’ve walked right past it. There was nothing special about it that I could see, but he opened it anyway and stepped inside.
Following him into the room, I was a little disappointed to see it looked like an entirely unremarkable, if high-tech, security office. A collection of monitors gleamed against one wall showing various scenes inside and around the building. A guard in a slate gray uniform glanced over at us briefly at the sound of my heels clicking against the floor but soon returned his attention to the monitors. A couple of fans were running, keeping the computers under the table cool. I noted with some amusement that the guy was hiding a paperback under one thick palm against his leg, probably hoping we wouldn’t notice.
Arnold continued walking, nose in his papers, and I have to admit to being surprised when he walked without stopping into the blank far wall and disappeared. I paused,
mouth agape, not sure whether to attempt to follow or just stand there staring like an idiot. Guess which option I took.
“You can follow him. Just keep walking straight ahead, you’ll be fine.”
The guard’s voice was bemused but kindly, and I felt just a little foolish for being so shocked. Magi do magic. Duh. I should expect that here. It still gave me the willies.
Swallowing my discomfort and putting on a brave face, I took the guy’s direction and kept walking. I shut my eyes when I got close, expecting-but-not to have my face smashed when I walked into the wall. Nothing happened. Well, nothing except a slight tingling sensation against my skin and my footsteps suddenly being muted by carpet.
Opening my eyes, I saw Arnold watching me expectantly from across the room. I took it all in, feeling a mix of elation at having survived walking through the wall with my dignity intact and disappointment for the plain homeliness of the room he’d brought me to. There was a big, beat-up desk in the middle of the room, one leg propped up with a bit of cardboard to keep it level. There were tons of papers scattered around the room and on the desk, piled on a table off to the side and on top of the two tall filing cabinets shoved into a corner. A pizza box was perched on top of one pile, an open box of Chinese food, and a couple of coffee mugs on the desk. One held pens and pencils, the other what looked to be very old tea. The smell was a mix of old pizza and gym socks, with a very faint undertone of incense.
I knew it was Arnold’s office almost immediately, not because of the clutter but because of the scatter of dice on the desk and the dinosaur and alien action figures on top of his monitor.
“I just need you to sign a form for me, then we can go into the vault.”
I shrugged and took the form he deftly pulled from somewhere in the middle of the stack in his arm. Looked like a standard requisition form, nothing terribly exciting. I signed and dated it and left it on the desk. He dropped the rest of his stack of papers next to it with a muted “thump” and moved behind the desk, twisting a ring on one of his fingers before placing a hand against the wall. I blinked as he revealed another wall behind it as the first simply blinked out of existence at his touch.
This one looked like the back of a cave, all sandstone and multicolored layers of reddish rock. It curved inward a few feet behind the desk. There were a pair of arched double doors made out of some kind of gray stone, closed tight and covered with intricate patterns—runes or something like them, I supposed.
The hair on the back of my neck rose when I realized the runes were moving and changing even as I stared at them. Solid stone is not supposed to move.
An idle wave of Arnold’s hand and a short “Aperto” and the thick, rune-inscribed doors slowly opened inward.
Chapter 10
“Don’t touch anything while we’re inside without asking first,” Arnold said before we walked through the doors. “Some of the stuff in here is dying to get out and might try to attach itself to you.”
Oh great. Sentient artifacts, just the sort of thing to make my day.
He led the way inside. The walls here were of red sandstone marked with runes similar to the ones on the doors. Every few feet there were arches with burning torches for light. The flickering lights drew my attention to the runes that moved and swirled in a way that was making me feel dizzy. I had the sick feeling we left New York behind the minute we walked through those arches.
“What did you need exactly anyway? Vero didn’t tell me what to give you.”
I sighed, hoping I wouldn’t sound too ridiculous and unprofessional. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me. I was hired to find a statuette in the possession of a vampire.”
He snorted laughter, drawing my attention sharply to him and off the weird walls. “Oh, that. I’ve got just the thing.”
We continued on for what seemed like forever. I should’ve worn flats instead of heels. Abruptly, the tunnel opened up into a large circular chamber with other tunnels branching off in four other directions. I noted the five-sided star etched into the sandstone, each point set before a tunnel opening, including the one we now stood in. There were fat candles set on each point of the star, none lit.
“Luminare,” he whispered, and I took an involuntary step back as the candles simultaneously lit themselves up. “Guidare.”
One by one, the candles flickered out, leaving only one with a steady flame. He gestured cheerfully, his voice resuming normal tones. “That way. Follow me.”
I did. My curiosity was really getting the best of me. “What’s down the other tunnels?”
“Traps. Death for the really stupid.” He was pretty nonchalant, considering the topic. “Most of the ones who make it this far don’t know enough or are too arrogant to ask for guidance. We put that little safeguard in a couple years ago. Works like a charm.”
I swallowed hard. “Who comes down here? Aside from you, I mean.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Disgruntled former employees, rival corporations and covens, people like you who get a glimpse once and think they can make it past our safeguards.” He laughed softly, the sound making me shiver despite the nasal quality. “Greed getting the better of them, I suppose.”
“People like me?”
I knew my voice had an edge, though I didn’t mean it to come out as harsh as it did. The way he said “people” led me to believe he didn’t think very highly of us plain ol’ magic-less humans. It’s one thing when you voice your little bigoted thoughts in private, quite another to do it to the person’s face.
He laughed again, a little more heartily this time. “Don’t take offense. I meant outside contractors.”
“Oh.” My turn to be embarrassed.
“Here we are.”
He waved me into another large cavern, this one positively overflowing with junk. It looked worse than his office. There was old dusty crap scattered everywhere, all over the floor, piled on tables, everything from books and scrolls to rusty suits of armor and old-fashioned weaponry. There was jewelry and vials and gems and statues and coins strewn as far as the eye could see.
Despite the mess, I had to admit I was impressed. The Circle had literally tons of junk. And because it belonged to The Circle, all of it, every piece, had an element of magic to it. My respect for them went up a notch, despite their obvious lack of house-cleaning skills.
Arnold waded into the mess, carefully stepping over and around the stuff on the floor. He picked up a little stick-looking thing from underfoot, made a surprised “huh,” and continued on. I stayed behind, not sure I’d be able to follow in my heels.
He disappeared around a mountain of books. I’m not kidding. There were so many, I couldn’t even begin to count them.
“Wait there, I’ll be back in a sec.” His voice sounded far more distant than I would’ve credited, considering he was only a few yards away.
So I waited. And waited. After a little while, I pulled out my cell phone and checked the time, noting with dismay that it was nearly five o’clock. Had we really been down here that long?
“Arnold?” I called, hoping he hadn’t gotten distracted and forgotten me down here. I’d never find my way back to his office, not without help.
“Just a sec, almost got it!” came a faint reply from somewhere in the midst of the mess.
Despite his words, I was sorely tempted to go look for him and see if I could maybe help move this along a little faster. I still had to meet with Royce tonight, and didn’t want to keep the vamp waiting too long after sunset. Who knew how he’d take it if I showed up late to our scheduled meeting.
From somewhere out of my sight, I heard a prolonged crashing and clattering. It sounded like the whole place was about to fall down around our ears. A minute later, dust-covered and triumphant, Arnold appeared from behind the books and carefully picked his way back to where I stood.
He had a few things in his scrawny arms and cupped in his hands. I reached out as soon as he was close enough to take a few from him, and he looked grateful for the he
lp.
“Thanks. Sorry for the wait.”
“No sweat. What is all this?” I looked down at what we were holding, a little confused. None of it looked very useful.
I’d taken a couple of delicate crystal vials filled with an amber-colored liquid and a plain-looking silver chain with a tiny black stone pendant hanging from it. He was still holding the stick he’d picked up earlier, along with a leather belt folded over one arm and a dusty book and loose papers cradled in the other.
“Got some good stuff for you. That perfume is faint to someone like you or me, smells a little like cinnamon.” He nodded at the crystal vials. “It depresses a vamp’s appetite and makes you smell less like food to them. Alchemists came up with it a few hundred years ago.”
I raised my eyebrows at that, examining the sloshing liquid with interest. In that case, I’d bathe in the stuff before I went to see Royce.
Reading my expression, he grinned. “You just need a dab at the throat and wrists, against the skin. Works best over a pulse point and it’ll last until you wash it off. Next,” he continued, starting to walk back the way we came, “I got you that necklace as a deterrent against any mind games the vamp or even one of us might try to pull on you. You’ll see through illusion and can’t be forced with magic to do something against your will.”
Jackpot! “Wow, thanks,” I couldn’t believe my luck. This was great! “That’s amazing, I never knew there were such things.”
He grinned, apparently pleased with himself. “Yeah, The Circle’s pretty good at keeping secrets. You won’t find any of this stuff on the market; it’s all made in-house.”
I hid a pang of worry. Did this mean I’d have to keep quiet about the items, or could I tell Sara? I decided to leave that problem until later.
