Painter of the Dead (Shades of Immortality Book 1)

by Catherine Butzen

  “Hell!” he muttered. “The elevator.”

  Theo’s back stiffened, and she instinctively yanked down on the hem of her shirt. It was like a shot of cold common sense straight to the back of the neck—someone else was possibly about to enter the equation, and there she was, pantsless in a man’s art gallery. Not a phrase or a position she’d ever anticipated, and not one she was prepared for.

  What are you thinking? she shouted silently at herself as she ran for the stairs. Seth was moving over to the elevator control panel on the wall, but she still didn’t have pants on, and that was the thing that concerned her the most.

  She had reached the bedroom and was scrambling into her jeans when the intercom flicked on.

  “Police!” a voice buzzed. “We have a warrant to search these premises.”

  Theo froze. For a moment the world seemed to spin off its axis, making her stumble as she fought to rearrange it into sense. She sat down hard on the bed, tangled in her own jeans, as the voice repeated its demand.

  He must’ve had the whole place wired with the intercom speakers, she thought vaguely. Wanted to know who was coming to visit. Smart man.

  What were the police—? Why—? Oh no. Was this because of her? Had they finally decided to take her testimony seriously?

  The thought galvanized her. Sprawling across the bed, half-dressed, Theo grabbed for her bag and fumbled through it. Receipts, ChapStick, and allergy medicine went spilling across the carpet before she finally found the panic button. She pressed it.

  One moment. Two. Heart-stopping silence, nothing but the buzz of the intercom and distant banging noises from the elevator shaft. It didn’t seem that Seth was letting them in, but that wouldn’t last long. There were fire stairs, but could they be locked? Could he control that too? No Loop skyscraper was built to withstand a police siege.…

  She pressed the panic button again and again, but nothing happened. Cursing, she dropped it and fumbled with her bag, trying to finish pulling her pants on and grab her cell phone at the same time. Outside, the shouting went on.

  “Come on come on come on…” she whispered as she dialed Zimmer’s number. It rang—her heart leaped—

  Voice mail. Her stomach dropped.

  The knocking came again, louder. A voice called out something she couldn’t quite hear. The bedroom door opened.

  Theo spun, phone in her hand. Seth was standing in the bedroom doorway, pale and hard-eyed. He was fully dressed already, and held a pair of gloves and a scarf in one hand.

  “We have to go,” he said. “Come on. I have a way out.”

  “Wait!” she said. “There has to be a mistake. I thought they weren’t going to investigate what I said!”

  “Clearly they’ve found new evidence,” Seth said tightly. As distant bangs echoed through the elevator shaft, he led her back into the gallery and over to one of the racks of polearms. He seized one of the grips and twisted. There was a grinding click, and a section of the wall swung out. Lights flickered on, illuminating bare cinder-block walls and a steep concrete staircase.

  Seth’s expression was pained and grim as the secret door opened. “I can’t get caught, Theo. Not at this stage.”

  For a moment, she considered telling him to go. She’d stay, right? She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Except being caught in the apartment of a man she’d previously accused, during the middle of a police raid, while the man himself had apparently vanished into thin air. No matter which way you spun it, that wasn’t good. Her one lifeline wasn’t picking up his goddamned phone. And Seth, with his knowledge and warm hands and desperate murmurs in her ear, was poised at the edge of a precipice. His eyes begged her to make a choice.

  Grab the motion, Theo.

  The staircase smelled like stale air and paint. She grabbed his arm and pulled him through the secret doorway. As it clicked closed behind them, the pounding feet and yells were abruptly muffled. Only their breathing echoed in their ears, harsh in the small space.

  It was clearly meant as a secret escape route, nothing more than that. There was one single fluorescent light on each landing. It felt closed in, like an old gallery. Nobody had been here in years. There wasn’t even dust.

  After four flights, the stair ended abruptly at another small door. Theo flattened herself against the wall, heart pounding, as Seth fumbled with the lock. The door clicked open with well-oiled silence, and the two of them hurried through. They were in a white-painted hallway with a janitor’s closet ahead of them. Theo knew a maintenance hall when she saw one.

  No time and no words. Seth had clearly been afraid something like this would happen, and he’d set up an escape route for himself, but he only owned the top floors. Their Batman exit ended there. Fire stairs now.

  Twenty floors, forty flights, forty turns. They moved without speaking, their feet thudding on the painted cement steps. High above, the police might have already broken in. They would be ransacking the place, looking for him. Finding the artifacts, finding the painting, finding evidence that he had been there minutes before. Finding the receipts and pills that she’d dropped.

  Theo’s throat seemed to close, and she stumbled on the last step, almost crashing into the wall. Her heart was banging so hard it felt like it would crack her ribs, and black spots danced in front of her eyes.

  “Theo,” Seth whispered, his voice hoarse and harsh in the confined space. “Theo, djed—” His hand touched her back, one broad thumb stroking a line down the center of her spine.

  Djed. The word he’d said before, in the trophy room. It had tickled her brain, but with his hand on her now, neurons sparked and made the connection. Djed: one of the hieroglyphs in the tomb art, one of the many she’d memorized and reproduced again and again. Djed, backbone. Djed, strength.

  The moment of thought yanked her out of the worst of the crush. Breathing deeply, she rested her hands against the wall, forcing herself to focus. Get to the bottom of the stairs.

  Get out. Call Zimmer and find out what the hell was going on. Don’t panic. Djed.

  “Djed,” she repeated, pushing off from the wall. “I hope so. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  She seemed to think it was a command, or maybe a spell. Was it? He wasn’t certain anymore. Everything had gone awry.

  They hit the bottom of the stairs moments later, Theo catching her breath, him silent. High above them, the police would be turning his home of ninety-seven years upside down. If they thought to check everything, he could be dead sooner rather than later—but for now, they had to keep moving. A free Seth Adler could eventually find his shabtis and disappear. One in custody couldn’t.

  He pulled Theo into the building’s first-floor health spa. One of the lockers in the men’s room was always closed; no key had ever been cut, and he didn’t need one. A twist of his fingers popped the lock out.

  It was small, as his caches went. A duffel bag on the floor of the locker contained two thousand dollars in cash, a phony ID, and a hooded parka for a quick change of appearance. After a moment’s deliberation, though, he tossed the jacket to Theo. As much as he hated the snow, he wasn’t the one who’d get frostbite.

  She accepted the jacket wordlessly. Something about her seemed to have shifted, but he wasn’t sure what. She was numb, maybe, but not lost. Had he made a good choice, offering her the chance to come along?

  Of course, he told himself. The police might learn things from her about me. Keeping her close keeps me safe.

  Djed, though. The word had sprung to his lips of its own accord. The phrase he’d spoken in the penthouse above had ritual meaning, not merely as a sentence but as a form of invocation, and he barely knew why he’d said it. If the gods were watching, something like that was unlikely to be a coincidence. And the thought that the gods might be moving him to do anything—good or bad—at this moment was much more terrifying than the prospect of losing his new life.

  “Where now?” she whispered as they reached the security door. “What’s the pla
n?”

  He didn’t reply, just thrust the door open, and the two of them tumbled out into a fresh snowbank. It was a service alley, but the new snowfall had covered over the garbage and Dumpsters with a clean white powder that showed clear footprints. Seth stamped back and forth, muddling the tracks as best he could.

  When she realized what he was doing, Theo lifted the lid of the Dumpster. She hauled out two bags of garbage and tore them open, spreading the old newspapers and food scraps everywhere. In seconds, the clean white blanket of snow was obliterated and their tracks destroyed.

  Despite his adrenaline and creeping fear, Seth felt a prickle of admiration. It had been a long, long time since he had been running from anything in deep winter. He nodded to her, unsure of how exactly to phrase what was going through his mind, but Theo didn’t seem to need a response. Her shoulders hunched as she faced into the wind, and her face was blank.

  The service alley was clear, but several squad cars were parked at the front of the building. In seconds, Seth and Theo were two more commuters in the endless whirl of the Loop.

  They were far enough from the Magnificent Mile that the shopping traffic thinned out. Instead, the people around them were tourists and workers, bundled up for the quick rush between buildings or from their job to the subway. Starbucks was doing brisk business, and commuters at bus shelters huddled over steaming cups of expensive coffee.

  If anyone looked their way, they would assume that Seth and Theo were taking a quick jaunt across the street for a drink or a meal. Nobody who lived or worked in downtown Chicago would pay attention to them anyway: in a city of two million souls, there was safety in solitude, and making eye contact in public meant inviting unwanted attention.

  Theo didn’t say anything until they were six blocks away from the building. Seth silently offered her his arm, giving him a chance to pull her a little closer and murmur in her ear.

  “The first twelve hours are the most important if I want to get out of the country. I have to reach my caches, and then the airport—”

  He paused as Theo stiffened. “I don’t know if I can take you with me, but I can try. If you want to.”

  Theo made a face. “What? No. The airport’s a bad idea.” Seth stopped for a moment, surprised. “They’ll be expecting that,” she added, tugging him into motion again. “Unless cop shows have lied to me, your assets are going to get frozen once they declare you AWOL, and maybe mine too. You won’t be able to buy a ticket or charter a plane.”

  “I’ve done this before. Trust me.”

  “Since September 11th? Since you were a suspect in a major robbery, complete with police breaking down your door?” Theo rested her arm against his shoulder, acting like she was cuddling up to a boyfriend. “I hate to be cliché, Seth,” she continued in a near whisper, keeping her expression calm, “but this is bad. How often have you been raided?”

  “Not in a hundred and thirty years. Listen to me, Theo. I know what I’m doing. You can come with me if you need to—I’m sure they’re checking on you as well.”

  “It’s not that, Seth,” she said calmly, only a faint hint of strain in her voice. “This isn’t about me. Okay? You can’t rabbit.”

  “Why not?” he said.

  Minutes ago she had been soft and warm to the touch. Now she felt almost as cold as the city, and her muscles were tight under her skin.

  “Because someone set us up,” she whispered. “Leaving the country isn’t going to solve that! We need to figure out what’s going on, and why those people came to your house.”

  Seth tightened his scarf, more for something to do with his hands than anything else. Who cared why the police had come? People acted irrationally, and that was one of the few things that never changed over centuries or continents.

  “Take it from someone who’s been around a long, long time, Theo,” he said. “It’s better to get out while you have the chance. The hysteria usually dies down in thirty years.”

  “That’s your tactic? Wait for everyone else to die or give up?” The idea seemed to horrify her, though she was keeping her tone level.

  “Is that a problem?” he said tightly.

  “In this century, it is,” she responded. A gust of wind raked over them, carrying the smell of smoke and dirty snow, and she shivered violently against his arm. “People have a lot tougher time vanishing off the grid now. How much harder do you think it’ll get in a couple of decades? If this doesn’t get fixed now, someone’s going to jail. And not all of us have extra lifetimes to waste.”

  For a moment, anger flared. He had seen, done, and endured more than she ever had or ever would, and she was telling him what to do. Never mind art or magic—this was his business, and for centuries he had run and survived to run again. She couldn’t understand what was at stake here.

  But djed, he’d said. Djed meant more than stability. It was backbone, order, ma’at against the unholy chaos of isfet. Strength. Perhaps Neith was trying to tell him something, if her power could touch this frozen stone city.

  “In that case,” he said slowly, and with great reluctance, “what should we do? We can’t stay on the street.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Come on. You’ve missed a lot of things in your ivory tower, and one of ’em is the best way to be anonymous in the world. Can you trust me?”

  “I—”

  His hesitation was more than answer enough, unfortunately, and the way her face fell made his chest ache. But what was he supposed to say? Yes, he trusted her because he liked her. That didn’t mean he could be careless about his chances. Anyone with a brain would say the same thing.

  Djed. Di djed nebet.

  The lady gives me strength.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I trust that you mean well.”

  “Close enough.” She tugged on his arm. “Let’s go catch a train.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  There was a set to her features that he had seen before, but it took him a moment to place. It was the look she’d had when he saw her in the loft that first night. A look that said, Stand back; I know what I’m doing.

  She ducked into a nearby pharmacy and emerged five minutes later with cheap knit hats, scarves, and an off-the-rack parka. “Camouflage,” she said when he pointed out that the cold couldn’t harm him much. “Everyone’s wearing stuff like this, and it’ll make you harder to spot.”

  Once he was attired to her satisfaction, hat pulled down over his hair and a scarf over his nose and mouth, she pointed him toward the nearest Red Line subway station. There were security cameras in the station, but with fresh snow sweeping across the lakefront and freezing wind howling through the steel-and-glass canyons, nobody would pay attention to two more bundled-up commuters.

  As they waited for the train, Theo filched a day-old newspaper out of a recycling bin and divided it up. “Nobody makes eye contact on the subway,” she said in a low voice, handing him the Arts & Entertainment section. “With the suit and the parka, you’re like a hipster professor. No one’ll notice you.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he muttered as he took the paper.

  “I hope I am too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I have not treated any god with disrespect. I have not cheated anyone. I have not done what the gods hate. I have not caused anyone to do harm to another. I have not brought suffering upon anyone…

  – Excerpt from the “Negative Confessions,” Papyrus of Ani,

  circa 1250 BCE

  They switched trains seven times before Theo started to feel safe. What she’d told Seth was mostly true: dressed as they were, nobody would look twice at them, especially on a weekday. Still, there were security cameras in the stations, and it wasn’t until they’d thoroughly fouled their trail that she relaxed.

  The truth was the CTA was a temporary solution at best. They’d dodged the police, but what had set the police off in the first place? Theo’s knowledge of law enforcement stopped at CSI and the top stories on t
he cable channels. She would’ve used her phone to check the news, but she’d left it behind in Seth’s apartment, and none of the headlines on display at the newsstands helped her out. And after hours on the train, crisscrossing Chicago three times, they were tired and worried. They needed to go to ground while they figured out their next move.

  After a lot of hard thinking, though, Theo came up with one possibility.

  Aki Lee lived in a twentieth-floor apartment on the very edge of a gentrifying outer-Loop neighborhood, right on the line between middle-class quiet and yuppie paradise. The building was old-world elegance for the first five floors, but at some point in the 1970s the roof had been pulled off and fifteen stories’ worth of a sheer gray façade tacked on. If you squinted, you could almost pinpoint the spot where the rents started to rise.

  There was no doorman, but the front door was locked and there was a buzzer. Theo’s thumb hovered over the button as she hesitated.

  “You should probably talk to him alone,” Seth murmured. “I get the impression he won’t like me.”

  “The theft didn’t help,” Theo pointed out. “But for what it’s worth, I think he was suspicious before that.”

  Seth tilted his head. “Very observant of him.”

  “No, he just thought you wouldn’t put out.” Seth’s expression was priceless, and he opened his mouth to reply, but Theo pressed the buzzer before he could say anything.

  After several long moments of silence, the panel crackled. “What?” a tired voice demanded. “Mom, not again!”

  Mom? Seth mouthed, confused. Theo hid an unexpected smile and responded.

  “Aki, it’s me.”

  Another moment of silence, this one shorter and infinitely more awkward.

  “Theo?” Aki said carefully. His voice was rough with sleep, but that didn’t hide the confusion in it. “Theo, what the hell?”

  “It’s a long story, Aki.” Theo hugged herself, trying not to shiver. It was 4:00 p.m., and the temperature was dropping as the sky darkened. “Please, I swear I’m not gonna get you into trouble, but you have to let me in. I’ve been outside for hours, and I’m freezing my ass off.”