by Mindy Klasky
James was gone when I awoke.
That should have been impossible. He should have been sun-drunk until dusk, too sleepy to rouse. Even if he clawed his way up to wakefulness, he shouldn’t have been able to leave the safety of the house, not without head-to-toe garments shielding him from the sun, and I’d seen nothing like that in the near-empty sanctum.
On the other hand, he could make do with tinted windows on the vehicle he’d parked in the garage.
I found fresh drops of oil on the concrete floor. Whatever car he was driving needed a new gasket, sooner rather than later. But it had been sufficient to spirit him away without a morning confrontation.
Once I was certain I was alone in the house, I studied my bruised throat in the bathroom mirror. A pair of lurid scabs stood out against the rather ghastly green that remained from my throttling by Richardson’s soldier. I probably should have been grateful James hadn’t attacked me while I slept.
Nausea washed over me as I remembered the piercing pain of his bite. He’d been defending his sanctum, I told myself. He’d been maddened by the scent of meat on my breath. He’d been trying to avenge Judge DuBois.
In the end, at least, my words had penetrated his madness. He’d understood that I’d acted to save the judge, not to murder him. My confession had saved my life.
I couldn’t spend the night waiting for James to return. I had to get to work. Angelique had made it perfectly clear that my job was on the line. She’d be overjoyed to catch me violating my probation.
But I had no delusions. The pack of reporters who’d chased me from the courthouse that morning would likely be gathered on the plaza, waiting for me to start my shift.
They could be banned from the actual clerk’s office the same way Judge Finch had exiled them from the courtroom. I just needed some way to get to my office, past the ravenous hordes.
I just needed…
I made my way down the stairs to the empty kitchen. A car key glinted on its tiny hook beside the door to the garage—a sleek electronic fob bearing Toyota’s oval logo.
I’d seen the Prius when I’d checked the garage for James’s escape car, the one with the leaky oil pan. I hadn’t consciously acknowledged it; its windows were clear above its sleek silver paint. It couldn’t have spirited James away from the house, so it hadn’t been important.
But it was my salvation now.
I glanced at the Florida license plate, with its jaunty legend: The Sunshine State. That must have been James’s idea of a joke for a car owned by a vampire. The tag was current, and a parking pass for the courthouse garage hung from the rear-view mirror, a perk for the court’s Director of Security.
As I slipped behind the wheel, I offered a quick prayer to Sekhmet that the engine would start. After all, no one had used the Prius for months.
Either Sekhmet was listening or Toyota’s engineers were geniuses. In any case, the dashboard lights flickered through their start-up sequence, settling on a single green glowing word: Ready. In eerie silence, I backed out of the garage and headed for the courthouse.
In the end, it was easy to reach my desk. The city streets were relatively empty. The guard at the garage entrance waved me through with the quickest of glances at the hanging parking pass. I found a space close to the elevator, and I cleared security without the rabble outside ever suspecting I was in the building.
The message light on my desk phone was flashing. I picked up a pen as an electronic voice announced I had seven messages. The first was from Chris’s cell.
Chris.
How had I forgotten to contact him? We’d left the courthouse together, surrounded by the scrum of reporters. I’d scrambled for a refuge, settling on the sanctum in Rock Creek Park. I’d fought with James.
Sure, I’d been slashed and bleeding. I’d been terrified and more than a little confused. I’d been exhausted.
But none of those were valid excuses for overlooking my boyfriend, the one man who’d had my back for months.
I listened to the other six messages. Each was from an increasingly worried Chris. I cut off the last recording and dialed his cell.
It was my turn to get voicemail. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m safe.” There was too much to tell him, too much to explain. I couldn’t say it all, so I settled on, “I’m at the office. Call me.”
I left the same message for him at home. My palms were sweating by the time I terminated that call, and I couldn’t draw a full breath. Looking over my shoulder at the glass eye of the surveillance camera that kept the clerk’s office safe, the one that fed a direct line to Angelique’s desk, I placed a label on my malaise.
I felt guilty.
Guilty that I’d forgotten Chris. Guilty that I’d spent the night—however platonically—with James. Guilty that I’d let our one known link to Maurice Richardson slip away.
I turned my back on the camera and forced myself to take a steadying breath. I couldn’t change things now. There was no way to go back in time, to call Chris promptly, to wake before James disappeared like a wraith.
Sweet Sekhmet, how had my life fallen apart so quickly?
Sekhmet… The goddess had stopped James’s attack. At least I’d called on her, just before I finally penetrated James’s murderous haze. She watched over me, however flawed I was as her servant.
And I absolutely was flawed. Sekhmet had told me, days ago, to find her Seal before Richardson did. I’d ignored her request, letting it fall by the wayside as I grappled with other, more worldly concerns.
I owed the goddess. It was time to seek her Seal. And the best thing was, I could start with the tools right in front of me.
The Seal—whatever it was—was unlikely to have been the subject of litigation in Eastern Empire courts, but I shouldn’t overlook possible easy solutions.
Most cases filed in the Eastern Empire Night Court were civil disputes between two supernatural parties, different races who couldn’t resolve their disagreement in their local jurisdictions—Hecate’s Court or the Dryad Circle or the Council of Giants, that sort of thing.
Other cases were criminal matters. As I’d seen in my own indictment, cases were brought by the Clans of the Eastern Empire against individual imperials.
But there was a third category of cases—actions against individual items. It sounded strange, but a case could actually be filed against an individual parcel of land.
Not long ago, there’d been a series of actions against an absentee vampire’s multiple sanctums, when the missing occupant had ostentatiously failed to safeguard the properties from prying mundane eyes, putting the entire Empire at risk of discovery. A gnome’s axe had been sued when it was left behind after cutting down a dryad’s grove, with no elemental owner in sight.
Not many of those cases were filed in any given year. Their names were odd: The Clans of the Eastern Empire v. A Cast-Iron Witch’s Cauldron. The Clans of the Eastern Empire v. 1527 Massachusetts Ave.
Maybe, just maybe, Sekhmet’s Seal had been the subject of such a case.
I searched for the word seal. When I didn’t find it, I tried some synonyms. I found thirty-one actions involving a charm, but not one of those items had been forged in ancient Egypt, at least not as far as I could tell from court filings.
There were fourteen talismans, but none of those was Egyptian either. I found four amulets, three jujus, and one each for periapt, philter, and phylactery.
Setting aside my thesaurus, my heart started pounding when I spotted the word scarab in a random court filing. I immediately pictured a faience beetle, a classic Egyptian symbol. But I was swamped with disappointment when I realized Scarab Realty had managed a string of sanctums some time in the 1920s.
In between all those searches, I actually completed some paid work. A mundane junior associate arrived from one of the largest law firms in town, and I walked him through filing his legal complaint—all before the stroke of midnight when the statute of limitations would have terminated his client’s breach of contract claims.<
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My usual trio showed up—Davey and Eugene and Alicia—looking for their nightly bread and butter.
Angelique passed through the office half a dozen times, a record in all the months I’d worked for her. Happily, I was busy with human patrons each time she stalked past my desk. She didn’t get a chance to hiss her disapproval over my very existence.
By midnight, I was certain the Seal hadn’t been the subject of any arcane litigation. That meant I’d have to seek further afield.
I had to research Maurice Richardson.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. All roads in DC seemed to lead to the vampire kingpin. But knowing that my computer system had once been locked down by Richardson’s lackey made me paranoid.
Had the ransom software installed a back door into my machine? Would Richardson be notified the instant I typed his name into a search engine? And if he was notified, would he dispatch his foot soldier to finish the strangling he’d begun in the Old Library? Maybe Richardson would send James this time, to drink his fill once and for all.
I winced as my fingertips scraped the new scabs on my neck. But I couldn’t live the rest of my life in fear that Richardson and his troops might find me. Despite the major breach of the past week, the courthouse was still probably the safest place in the world for a sphinx. Or unknown imperial. Whatever. We had armed guards at the front door. We had the security of our secret warren below the mundane court.
I was better off researching Maurice Richardson from the court computer than from anywhere else in the Eastern Empire. My own cowardice was the only thing holding me back. It was time to find out what the Empire’s greatest criminal mastermind had been doing since he’d last stood at the defense table in the courtroom down the hall.
Four hours later, I had a more complete picture than I’d hoped.
Fact: Last July, a mistrial had been declared in the Eastern Empire’s case against Maurice Richardson, two weeks after Judge DuBois died.
Fact: Last August, a new case was initiated against Maurice Richardson, with half a dozen claims, including murder and impressment.
Fact: Last September, Maurice Richardson failed to appear at a preliminary hearing in his new case, resulting in the issuance of a bench warrant for his arrest.
The trail ran cold after that. There was no reference to Richardson in any publication—imperial or mundane—after his September disappearance. He could be anywhere. He could be dead.
But he wasn’t dead. James had tried to take me to him just that morning.
With Richardson impossible to track down, I returned my attention to the Seal. But mundane newspaper reporters would never realize the importance of one ancient item, not without the context that was engraved deeper and deeper inside my imperial mind.
I researched historic Egyptian treasure, in general. And I found the proverbial landmine.
Fact: In 1997, a record-setting lot of Egyptian artifacts had been auctioned at Sotheby’s. The unknown purchaser had never come forward to place any item in a public collection or to otherwise provide any information about his identity.
Fact: Ditto, a 2002 record-shattering auction at Christie’s, for another set of Egyptian artifacts.
Fact: Ditto, an auction four years ago at Wellingham’s. Another set of Egyptian artifacts, another sky-high record. But someone at Wellingham’s wasn’t as well trained as his peers at the bigger auction houses. An employee speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed to the press that Lost Soul Enterprises had acquired the goods in question.
Fact: Prized Egyptian artifacts had been offered in each of the last four years, but they failed to meet their reserve.
There was no such thing as coincidence, not where vampire overlords were concerned. Sekhmet’s Seal must have been in the Wellingham’s lot. Lost Soul Enterprises—Richardson—had finally secured his goal.
All I needed to do was find a way to wrest the Seal from Richardson.
A headache pounded directly behind my eyes. Sighing, I reached behind my neck, trying to probe deeply enough at the base of my skull to banish the pounding pain. The heel of my palm, though, only pressed against my bruises, setting off a new wave of discomfort.
The phone rang on the corner of my desk. I answered before I could sink into an ocean of self-pity. “Clerk’s office,” I said, my eyes still closed.
“Sarah.”
Chris. His voice shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I sat up straight at my desk. “Where are you?” I asked, and then I hurried on before I could question the defensiveness flooding my tone. “I tried to reach you—”
“I’m home now.”
His voice was terse, but I thought I heard an emphasis on the first word. He was home—unlike me. I hadn’t returned to his home—or my own—the night before, and he wanted to know why. Racking my brain for a safe response, a fair one, I asked, “Are the reporters there?”
“Not now. They must have found fresh meat.”
Meat. The word made me think of James, of his visceral disgust as he shoved his handkerchief at me.
I wanted to ask another question, to know where Chris had been when I’d tried to reach him. But before I could do that, I had to apologize. Tell him I was sorry for ignoring him all day. Tell him where I’d been. Why I’d forgotten him.
But somehow, I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Instead, I said, “I’ve been doing some research.” Maybe Chris would think that was what had distracted me. Why I’d forgotten to call. “About the Seal,” I elaborated. “I think Richardson’s after it.”
I told him everything I’d found, about the auctions and the mysterious buyer and Richardson missing his court date.
The more I talked, though, the more frightening Chris’s silence became. I had to fill the gaps. I had to make my work seem even more time-consuming, even more complex than it had actually been.
I needed to justify an entire day of silence.
“All right,” Chris said.
“All right?” I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted him to be impressed.
“What do you want me to say, Sarah? It sounds like you’re heading down the right path.”
Chris sounded angry.
Chris never sounded angry. He was the Sun Lion. He was implacable.
“Fine,” I said, knowing that my own rage wasn’t justified. Before I could make more of a mess of the conversation, I said, “I have to go. Angelique needs a report before I sign out in the morning.”
Of course Angelique didn’t need a report. I was making a nasty habit of lying to my boyfriend.
Chris said something, and I said something else, and I don’t know which of us was happier to end the phone call.
I stared at the phone after I’d cradled the handset. We hadn’t fought. Hadn’t even exchanged a cross word. But he hadn’t asked me to come by after work. And I hadn’t volunteered to appear on his doorstep.
A gulf was expanding between us, and I didn’t know the first thing about how to build a bridge.
19
At the end of my shift, I headed home. That seemed the least complicated of all my options—seeking out the quiet privacy of my basement apartment instead of figuring out a path to peace with Chris or forging yet another elaborate, untraceable route to James’s sanctum.
At least I didn’t have to deal with Metro. I had a private car waiting for me downstairs. James’s Prius started without a hint of hesitation, and it glided silently out of the garage.
Alas, my downscale home didn’t come equipped with a private garage. My neighborhood wasn’t made for car owners either. It took me fifteen minutes to find a parking space, and then I was a full three-block walk from my front door. Maybe I would have been better off taking the subway after all.
I stooped to collect a handful of advertising flyers from the bottom of the stairwell. They went straight into the recycling bin, but I owed it to myself to go through the stack of actual mail that had piled up in my mailbox. There might be something I wanted, tucked among the endless ca
talogs and credit card offers.
Fat chance. There wasn’t a handwritten address or actual stamp in sight. I shoved the door closed with my hip, automatically turning the dead bolt and flipping on the light switch.
I was half-way to the kitchen table when I heard the quicksilver voice: “Why bother with a security chain, if you aren’t going to use it?”
Yelping in surprise, I dropped the mail, letting it scatter across the linoleum floor. Automatically, I surveyed the kitchen counter for a weapon—a knife, a pair of scissors, even a ball-point pen.
Of course my sphinx nature would never have left anything—weapon or otherwise—sitting out on the counter. My best hope was to grab a frying pan from the pot rack above the stove. If only I’d invested in some serious cast-iron, instead of a light-weight skillet barely capable of frying a couple of eggs…
Even as my fingers closed around the plasticized handle of my thoroughly inadequate bludgeon, my brain overruled my adrenaline, and I identified my intruder’s voice. He was sitting on my couch, clear across the shadowed living room. He wasn’t close enough to slash open the scabs atop my jugular.
“James,” I said, measuring out his name with perfect neutrality as I turned to face him.
“Sarah,” he answered, matching my tone precisely.
Once I released my frying pan, my fingers itched to pick up the scattered mail, but I wasn’t going down on my knees in front of my unexpected vampire visitor. Instead, I channeled my anxiety into a demand: “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You stopped by my home yesterday,” he said reasonably. “I thought I’d return the favor.”
I couldn’t imagine a more bogus explanation. But I had given him a key, over a year ago. Before that, I’d invited him to cross my threshold. Irony of ironies, I’d extended the welcome because we’d both feared Richardson might send minions to attack me.
The night before, when James had caught me entering his sanctum, I’d felt like an invader. I’d owed him an apology, or at least an explanation. I’d needed to justify my dispatching Judge DuBois.
