Girl, Sought (Ella Dark #24)

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

‘Craftsmanship,’ Vanessa Blackburn whispered to the forged Fabergé egg perched on her kitchen table. ‘You almost had me fooled.’

It should have been a multi-million dollar masterpiece, but instead, it was just another beautiful lie waiting to break someone's heart.

Poor Mrs. Whitaker and her fragile hope, too weak to even bring the egg to the office herself so Vanessa had gone and picked it up. The widow's voice had cracked when she'd spoken - 'My great-aunt swore it was real, said it came straight from the Winter Palace.' Now, Vanessa would have to execute those dreams with the same precision she used to authenticate genuine artifacts.

Vanessa twisted the jeweler's loupe deeper into her eye socket and studied the maker's mark through glass. Modern work masquerading as Imperial Russian. Good enough to fool the desperate and the naive, but not someone who'd spent two decades separating authentic from reproduction.

‘At least you're a quality fake,’ she told the egg. ‘Better than most of the garbage that crosses my desk.’

This right here was why she usually kept business within the ornate confines of her office. The sterile walls, the controlled lighting, the careful distance it put between her and the walking delusions who thought every bit of crap in grandma's attic was the Shroud of Turin.

There was a balance to this job, because you couldn’t just slap six figures on any old garbage. Sure, you could add 10% to the final value, or you could justify your appraisals with a few white lies like: there are millions of people in Mongolia who’d kill for this. And then, of course, there were the fees. Appraisals didn't have a set price, and most clients were perceptive enough to read between the lines. A ten grand payment would result in a higher appraisal value than a five grand one, but Vanessa would never admit that out loud, especially to the IRS.

It was a racket, sure. But so was every other damn thing under the capitalist sun. At least Vanessa's grift left her marks with a shred of dignity and a tax break to boot.

She turned her attention back to the Fabergé egg. Whoever had forged this had known how to craft a believable lie. This wasn’t some mass-produced Chinese crap, and the irony was that there was some value in a piece of craftsmanship like this. She wouldn’t be giving Mrs. Whitaker the value she wanted, but she wouldn’t go home empty-handed either.

Twenty years of handling other people's obsessions had taught Vanessa the difference between possession and appreciation. Her own collection upstairs proved that - genuine artifacts only, each one personally authenticated. That's why Austin Creed's hybrid taxidermy held pride of place. Say what you would about the man's proclivities, but his work was undeniably original.

She was reaching for her camera, ready to document her findings, when a sound shattered her concentration.

A sharp rap, two knocks in quick succession, emanating from the rear of the house.

Vanessa frowned. What kind of person came to the back door?

She lived on the edge of Chesapeake proper, with nothing but a thick tangle of woods at the rear of the house. It gave her privacy, but it also meant the occasional unwanted visitor, usually one with four legs. Or one of those birds that liked to kamikaze into her roof during the colder months. Those things would peck at her sunroom windows for hours if she let them.

Vanessa shook her head, ready to write off the sound as a trick of the wind or some bit of sleet knocked loose from the gutters. Her nerves were strung tighter than trip wire ever since the feds had come knocking at her door.

She'd just started to turn, ready to get back to her appraisal, when it came again. That double rap of knuckles - or was it a beak? - against glass, more insistent now.

Vanessa paused and tilted her head like a hound catching a scent. She stood up, left the egg behind and crept toward the sunroom.

The place had always been her pride and joy. Glass panels stretching floor to ceiling so she could watch the seasons paint their canvas across her private slice of wilderness. Now those same windows felt like a fishbowl, even though all she could see outside was a winter-dead garden and a sea of trees beyond the small fence. There was a slight passageway to the side, usually where the rats congregated.

Paranoia settled in her gut, and her hand had already found the Victorian letter opener on her side table.

It had to be vermin. The rats especially had been a persistent problem this winter. They'd only gotten bolder after she stopped putting out poison, because those beady-eyed bastards seemed to thrive on the stuff. Lately, she'd resorted to more medieval methods. A little ultraviolence to show the filthy things who was top of the food chain around here.

She unlatched the sunroom door and shivered as a gust of December chill cut through her thin sweater. The garden beyond was in desperate need of some TLC, but that was a problem for spring Vanessa, not winter Vanessa.

Then she caught movement at the corner of her eye, there and gone again. Something darting along the fence line where the property met the woods. Too big for a rat, too quick for a stray dog.

Vanessa's nape prickled. The letter opener offered little comfort because she'd only ever used this thing for its intended purpose. Instead, she kicked some stray leaves and hoped that the noise was enough to scare the vermin away.

‘Get the hell out of here.’

She didn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing. The nearest neighbors were acres away, separated by a winding drive and too many trees. Even if she shouted herself raw, no one would hear.

Out of curiosity, she peered around the wall into the little narrow passage that separated the sunroom's exterior from the fence, the miniature alleyway where the creatures took up residence.

The usual detritus lay there. Leaves, weeds, a hosepipe, some of her niece’s toys that had been there forever.

The alleyway felt like a photograph where everything was perfectly arranged except for one detail that didn't belong. Vanessa's appraiser's brain kicked in - the same instinct that could spot a forged signature at fifty paces or detect modern paint on a so-called antique canvas.

Something lurked in that narrow space. A shadow that didn't match the wall's dimensions.

Her neurons fired warning shots across her consciousness: Get back inside. Lock the door. Call someone . But twenty years of authenticating humanity's darkest artifacts had trained her to look closer when everything screamed retreat. You couldn't spot a fake by running away from it.

The shadow moved.

No - resolved itself. Like ink bleeding through paper in reverse, negative space becoming terrifyingly positive. A figure peeled away from the wall and lunged at her.

The mask hit her first. Blank white porcelain where a face should be, with its features smoothed away like death had taken a belt sander to reality. The kind of thing she'd authenticate for obscene amounts of money if it crossed her desk. Theatre prop, circa 1920s, excellent condition, museum quality.

She opened her mouth to scream, to bargain, to offer whatever price this collector wanted to name, but something thin and cold wrapped around her throat. Piano wire, her mind helpfully supplied. Probably vintage. It would fetch a fortune at auction if properly authenticated.

The wire bit deeper. The mask watched with the impassive interest of a curator examining a new acquisition. Darkness crept in from the edges, but somewhere in that gathering void, a spark of professional pride refused to gutter out.

Make it look good , she thought as consciousness began to slip. I've got a reputation to maintain .

The woods kept their secrets, and winter swallowed what remained of the light.