I looked her dead in the eye and drawled, “Tourists.”
“Economy,” Edwards groaned, sinking even lower into her chair. “Of course it was all made for economical reasons. Well, for security reasons, this was a stupid idea.”
“Rubbish one,” Seaton agreed. “But that’s our situation. What shall we do?”
“Watch both National Treasury and Royal Museum, put the train station on high alert, and wait.” Edwards glared at the map as if it had personally insulted her mother. “You said they’re likely to hit near the new moon? Then we don’t have much time before they strike. Sherard, can you handle alerting the palace?”
“Of course, my dear.”
“Good. Henri and I will talk to the Royal Museum.” The determined jut of her jaw indicated she knew that wouldn’t go over well. “Meeting dismissed, for now. Henri, shall we update the captain before we go?”
“By all means.” Let’s get the easy meeting done first.
Captain Gregson took our report with mixed feelings. Mixed in that he oscillated between approval at our progress and dismay at where our investigation led us. “You’re quite sure on this? It can’t be some other target in the city?”
“It’s a matter of power,” I explained, sitting toward the edge of my chair, as I didn’t feel that we’d be in this office for long. “If they wanted to hit a target that wasn’t as well protected, quite honestly their spectral energy device would have done the job. They don’t need to take down the wards for the whole building, just a part of it—a doorway, a window, and it would suffice to grant them entrance. Instead, they threw that device away the moment it ceased to be useful.”
“It means they’ve got a bigger score in mind,” Edwards picked up the explanation smoothly, a finger tapping impatiently on top of her knee. She, too, sat near the edge of her seat. “Sometimes thieves get caught up in the notion of ‘THE score,’ the last heist they must do in order to retire. Something big enough, lucrative enough, that they can settle down somewhere in comfort. It’s usually a pipe dream, of course, but it ensnares their minds more often than not. I have a bad feeling that this group has fallen prey to the idea.”
“Which is why you’re focusing more on the treasuries.” Gregson frowned at the opposite wall where a map of the city hung framed. “Art is too bulky to easily move while on the run. The other two offer more portable items of equal value.”
“Or priceless,” I agreed, more than a few items coming to mind. “RM Seaton has agreed to go speak to the National Treasury on our behalf, but a word from you might go a long way as well.”
Gregson did not look pleased at this idea, merely resigned, and I didn’t blame him. Likely the meeting would not be pleasant or particularly helpful. “You two are heading for the Royal Museum, then?”
“For our sins,” Edwards drawled, equally resigned.
“Just explain one thing to me,” Gregson requested. “You’re certain that the Sink will break through the wards regardless? Then why are you so set on this timeline of them doing it this week?”
I realized belatedly I hadn’t explained that part very well. “It’s a matter of timing. A Sink will work even if the wards are at their strongest. But it will take time to break them down. A Sink’s ability isn’t instantaneous. It’s called a Sink for a reason—it drains all of the magical power naturally, but gradually, not all at once. If they tried to use the Sink with the wards at their strongest, it would take at least an hour. Perhaps two.”
Gregson absorbed this with a slight frown. “And at its weakest?”
“Twenty minutes, max.” I gave him a slight shrug, palms splayed. “You see why we’re convinced of the timing.”
“If they want to get in and out quickly, it has to be this week. Otherwise they risk too much by loitering about in the open for an hour.” Gregson rubbed at his temples. “It’s good logic. I can’t disagree.”
“Captain, want to meet afterwards for dinner and drinks? I imagine by the time we’re done, shift will long be over.”
“Alcohol sounds like a splendid idea.” Gregson only perked up a little at this suggestion. “Where shall we meet?”
Edwards turned to me, putting the question in my court. I thought for a moment before offering, “Three Square Plates?”
A favorite haunt of the policemen, Gregson knew it well and a smile almost crossed his face. “I’ll meet you there at 6 pm. Hopefully.”
Director Giles Truman III ran the Royal Museum and had for the past decade. I knew of him, but as we only vaguely ran in the same social circles, we’d had very little exposure with each other.
I hadn’t realized how blessed I was in this matter until now.
Director Giles Truman didn’t care for females who didn’t dress appropriately. He didn’t care for women that dared to tell him how to perform his duties. He especially didn’t care for ‘doomsday preachers’ that showed up on his doorstep and heaped dire predictions on his head. A weremule by nature, he wore the strictest of suit coats, tie and shirt available, complete with polished half-boots that covered his hooves. And I knew very few weremules or werehorses that bothered with the very expensive and fragile shoeboots. The way that his long ears quivered in outrage, the habitual clearing of his throat, and the tic near his left eye, all suggested that he wished for us to go straight to the underworld.
We were not offered seats in his office. We were not offered any refreshments. He stayed planted in his doorway and refused to budge, words polite, tone eviscerating. “I assure you our wards are quite capable of deterring any group of penny ante thieves—”
“Did you miss the part about the Sink?” Edwards cut through with a smile that couldn’t melt butter. “A Sink powerful enough that even the palace is putting my guards in place because it threatens their wards? Are you suggesting, sir, that your wards are superior to the ones that protect our good queen?”
That got him right in his goat. His ears swiveled even harder, as if he had just swallowed several expletives. “I am of course not suggesting any such thing.”
“Royal Mage Seaton told me directly, not an hour ago, that a Sink can rip through these shields like a knife through rice paper.” I made my tone firm, hard and unyielding. “Since he is a Royal Mage, I assume he knows his business, unless you want to call him in and question him on the matter?”
Truman gritted his teeth in an audible grinding of molars. Likely because he heard the threat for what it is. “I would never dream of questioning a Royal Mage’s competence.”
“Excellent, because we’re certainly not interested in calling your competence in question,” Edwards said brightly, clapping her hands together as if that settled the matter.
I barely concealed a wince. If the air got any colder between these two, I’d have to go fetch an overcoat and muffler or risk frostbite.
Truman’s anger vibrated him to the point he openly shook under the strain of not lashing out. I couldn’t see it, but I heard his tail smack something behind him, sending it to shards in the middle of the floor.
Trying to intervene before this came to a matter of blows, I hastily stepped in. “Director Truman, your building is one of two possible targets. We would be just as relieved as you are if the thieves didn’t strike. However, in the interest of preventing the worst possible outcome, doubling your guards for the next week is a sensible precaution, is it not?”
“You may take that up with the head of security.” Truman’s patience snapped at that point and he retreated into his office, where he slammed the door shut behind him.
Edwards blew out an explosive breath. “Wow, what a jerk! He really couldn’t look past my wearing pants, could he?”
“Even if you had been in skirts, I doubt it would have made a difference,” I shook my head in exasperation. “He’s the type that can’t stand having a woman tell him what to do. Well, let’s go track down the head of security and hope that he’s a more amiable fellow.”
She gestured for me to lead the way, which I did, do
wn the stairs and toward the lower floors. The top floor was reserved for offices, but basically the other floors were designated for the exhibitions. Let’s see. If my memory served, the security office resided on the main floor.
“You know,” she idly stated as we clumped down the stairs, “it occurs to me that we keep calling it a ‘spectral energy device’ or something equally cumbersome. We need to come up with a nickname.”
I normally would agree but the smirk on her face suggested she didn’t mean this seriously. “And what do you have in mind, my dear detective?”
“Sparky,” she said brightly.
A laugh caught in my throat and I almost choked on it. “Sparky?!”
“Sparky sparky boom boom?”
“Edwards,” it grew difficult to keep a straight face, “why is your nickname for the device longer than the actual name we’ve been calling it?”
“Okay, you have a point.” She pretended to ponder this for a moment, a finger playing with her bottom lip, pushing it up and down. “Ghostbuster.”
“But it’s not busting ghosts, it’s busting wards.” For some reason, my very reasonable objection got a long-suffering look. “What?”
“I’m a very funny person,” she complained to the world in general. “Is it my fault we’re working off different pop cultures?”
Ah. That must have been a reference to something. “We could just call it Ghost Gun.”
“That is entirely obvious and not at all fun.”
We exited the stairwell at that point, gaining the main floor. I opened it, noting that not many visitors came at this hour of the afternoon. I only saw perhaps a handful wandering in or out of the main doors. “We’ll ponder it more over dinner.”
She accepted this with a shrug.
The Security Office (declared so by the very impressive plaque hanging by the door) sat midway through the main floor, obviously placed to have easy access to anyone in distress. I headed straight for it, opening the door without knocking, and strode through.
If the office was any indication, not much trouble occurred in this building. My lab had more square footage than this place did. A lost and found bin seemed to see the most action, as it threatened collapse in one corner, directly in front of the door. A counter divided up the rest of the room, preventing people from just barging in. A bored young man in a black uniform that had gone sloppy through a day’s wear looked up, pushing his cap up a little but did not rise from his very relaxed position at his desk. “Hello. Can I help you?”
“We need to speak with the head of security,” Edwards responded, already pulling out her badge and flipping the leather holder open so he could see it.
He barely spared it a glance. “Sure thing. Hey, Chief!”
I winced at the yell. Clearly, he had no idea of professional conduct.
There was a snort, a growl, and some banging from some back corner of the office that I couldn’t see. I cocked my torso around a little and realized that there were two other, smaller rooms sectioned off by walls and doors. From the back one, a dwarf stormed out, tugging at his belt irritably, bushy beard acting like a ship’s prow as he moved. “Stevenson, don’t yell for me unless it’s an emergency!”
Unmoved by this, Stevenson just gave an unperturbed, “Sure thing, Chief. Cops want to talk to you.”
Belatedly realizing we stood there, he moved forward with outstretched hand, which I had to bend a little to reach. “Slade of Blooming Fields, Head of Security.”
“Dr. Henri Davenforth, Magical Examiner for Fourth Precinct,” I responded, trying to keep my thoughts off my face. “This is Detective Jamie Edwards.”
“Doctor, Detective.” Reclaiming his hand, he demanded in typical dwarven brusqueness, “What can I do for you?”
“We have evidence suggesting that the Royal Museum might be attacked this week—” Edwards started her explanation.
“Got the strongest wards right here in the city,” Chief Slade cut through kindly. “Not an issue here, Detective. Only the Royal Palace has better wards.”
“They’re the second possible target,” I riposted, trying to hold onto my temper.
That, finally, seemed to break through whatever brush off he had mentally planned. With a blink, he visible switched mental tracks. “And what makes you think that they can get through my wards?”
“Because Royal Mage Seaton says they can.” Edwards gave him a thin smile. “I met with him this morning and he said that our thieves have come up with a magical method of getting through even the strongest wards. Do you know what a Sink is, sir?”
Slade blanched. “Deities preserve us, how did a bunch of thieves get their hands on a Sink?!”
“They made one.” I wasn’t interested in getting into the details. “We’ve been chasing after them for a month or so, and right now we only know two things for certain: one, they have a viable Sink. Two, your wards are lunar based, and their weakest point happens this week, during the new moon. We assume they’ll strike at some point.”
The dwarf looked visibly perturbed. “I don’t like the sound of this at all. Why don’t you come in, give me more details?”
Glad to finally find a listening ear, I relaxed a hair. “We’ll give you as much information as we can. You’ll double the guards this week, I hope?”
“Only have four,” Slade said helplessly. “Me and Stevenson for day shift, two others for night shift. The wards are our main protection.”
Edwards and I shared a speaking glance. “Then I trust part of the conversation will entail how to augment your guards with policemen?”
“I sure hope so, Doctor.” Slade’s face set into grim lines. “I’ve been Chief of Security here for nigh on twenty years without one theft. I’d certainly hate to break that record.”
We met Gregson at the restaurant a little later than six, only to find that he had already started on the drinking. In the decade I’d known this man, I’d seen him imbibe exactly three times, including today. I settled into the chair next to him with a commiserating, “That bad?”
“I hate politics. If I didn’t have six kids to support, you’d never have convinced me to take the desk,” he groused into his beer, expression haggard and more than a little aggrieved. “Tell me it went better on your end?”
That didn’t sound reassuring. Had he managed to get people convinced or not?
Edwards slung into a chair opposite the two of us, taking in the restaurant with an approving nod. “I haven’t been here before. It’s nice. Well, Cap, the director is not worth the powder to blow him up with. I’ve never seen such a useless sack. But the Chief of Security—Slade’s his name—was very concerned about what we had to say. He doesn’t have the manpower to beef up security and wants to borrow some patrolmen. We said he could. That okay?”
“That’s fine,” Gregson assured her, perking up a little, so he no longer sat slumped over his beer. “I’ll leave it to you two to coordinate with him. He can have up to eight.”
Our plans had been made with ten or more in mind, so we’d have to modify them a little, but it should still be feasible to cover all entrances with that amount of manpower. “Understood.” I caught the bartender’s eye and gestured for two more glasses, getting a nod in response. I didn’t know whether it safe to ask or not, but dared the question anyway. “Did the National Treasury not agree to increase security?”
“Eventually.” Gregson went back to slumping over his beer. “Thanks to your friend Seaton. He had to browbeat it into them. It wasn’t pretty.”
Just as glad I didn’t have to fight that battle too, I gave him a commiserating, “Cheer up, the hard part is over.”
“You’d think the hard part is catching the thieves,” Edwards remarked sarcastically. “But nooo, it’s always getting everyone to cooperate in order to catch the thieves, that’s the kicker. It wasn’t until I wore the badge that I realized a lot of criminal shows are a lie. Scooby Doo especially.”
I filed that under the heading, ‘Earthlings, Nons
ensical Statements’ and kept the conversation moving even as our drinks arrived. I informed the waitress, “Thank you, three dinners here please. Tonight’s specials.” As she moved off, I returned to the conversation at hand. “We’ll have protections in place by tomorrow. I hope that’s soon enough, we can’t seem to organize them any faster than that.”
“At the very least, everyone is now alerted, which is as much as we can do tonight. The Police Commissioner has to sign off on all of this and he never responds to any requests once he leaves the office.” Gregson nursed his beer a little more. “I’ll be at his desk first thing in the morning with the request.”
“Hopefully that won’t entail an argument too.”
Edwards knocked on the table with her knuckles for some reason when I said this. I gave her a look askance and she explained sotto voice, “We knock on wood when people say things like that, to ward off bad luck.”
Ah. Perhaps I should pick up the habit, proving that it works. “For tonight, let’s eat admittedly excellent fare, put the day’s troubles aside, and hope for the best.”
“Here, here,” my colleagues agreed, raising their glasses in a toast.
Gregson settled back in his chair, less gloomy and more alert than he’d been before. “While I have you two sitting here, I want to ask the obvious question. How do you feel about forming a permanent partnership?”
Perhaps that question was obvious to him, but it caught me completely by surprise. “Gregson, I’m not a detective. I don’t have a detective’s training.”
“She does,” he rebutted, inclining his head toward Edwards. “Here’s what I realized. We have more than our fair share of magical crimes in our precinct’s area. I’d say a good third of our cases involve magic, sometimes in very strange ways. I could cater to both of your skillsets: only give you the cases where magic is involved. The brass has been playing with the idea of doing a Magical Investigation Division for some time. I could let you two be the trail blazers, prove whether or not it will work.”
Magic and the Shinigami Detective Page 24
