Chapter Fifteen. Old Habits Die Hard
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Old Habits Die Hard
“STUPID. Stupid girl…” I muttered, fiddling with my lockpicks.
The street behind me was mostly empty, with only the occasional passerby to break the silence.
I crouched outside the back entrance of Julius Harker’s museum, hidden in the shadows.
The sky overhead was clear and bright—illuminated by pinprick stars.
You’re no better than Fiachna after a field mouse, Ruby Vaughn. Unable to let it rest until you come back bloodied, missing tufts of fur, your tail between your legs.
I ought to have waited on Ruan before returning to the museum.
After all, I had promised him I would do that very thing.
Yet when the clock chimed midnight and he still hadn’t returned from that infernal lecture with Professor Laurent, I had no alternative.
If I was to sort through Harker’s collection to figure out what happened to him, I needed time—and I was quickly running out of the stuff.
Ruan would be furious when he found out—which was why he mustn’t ever learn of it.
I readjusted my scarf as a lonely nightingale trilled out from somewhere behind me.
My eyes stung as I continued to struggle with the lock.
The bitter wind caught the back of my pleated cobalt skirt, threatening to expose my practical woolen drawers to all and sundry.
Then again, neither all nor sundry were in this frigid alley at quarter to one in the morning.
I finally managed to spring the stubborn lock and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.
It was far darker than it had been the first time I’d come to the museum, or perhaps it was only my imagination.
The shadows of the tall cases were longer, the silence more ominous.
The wooden floorboards creaked as I took a step, and I spun on my heels, heart hammering in my chest. But there was nothing there.
Outside, the muffled sound of dogs barking gave me pause. Had I locked the door behind me? Surely I had.
Foolish girl, giving in to imagination.
Taking my flashlight in hand, I headed for the front entrance and quickly found a wooden panel concealing the narrow curving stairs to the basement.
Once I closed the panel behind me and was safely hidden in the stairwell, I flicked on my flashlight and descended the curving stair.
I had to be careful. If I fell, I’d be trapped here in Harker’s collection until someone eventually came and discovered me.
If they ever found me.
The air in the storeroom was stale. Faint streaks of light filtered in through the small windows nearly twelve feet above my head.
Where to begin … where to begin …
I bit the edge of my thumb, scanning through the dusty, overcrowded shelves before settling upon the nearest rack.
The storage apparatus was a beast of a construction, purpose-built a century or more ago.
It stood a good five feet taller than me, reaching nearly to the ceiling.
Its shelving extended the width of the room with a rolling ladder affixed to it, allowing access to the upper shelves.
I ran my flashlight across the crates, peeking into the lid of the closest one.
A collection of Roman coins. The hasty words painted on the side indicated they’d been excavated somewhere in Northumbria.
Not that different from those I’d admired in Professor Laurent’s own collection a few days before.
I closed the rough-hewn lid and moved on to the next, which contained similarly useless shards of Etruscan pottery.
Intriguing, yes—but not what I was after.
The provenance and date of acquisition were painted clearly on the outside of each crate.
The storeroom was vastly different from Harker’s cluttered office upstairs, and had I not known they both were owned by the same man, I would not believe it. Down here everything was neat as a pin, albeit dusty, with each artifact meticulously labelled, sorted, and stored away.
I moved from box to box, rack to rack, losing track of time in my search for …
something … anything to explain those transactions in the ledger, and yet there was nothing to my eye out of the ordinary.
Nor was there any sign of the missing artifacts.
By my loose recollections there were at least a hundred items unaccounted for that Harker mentioned in his letter to his colleague, and yet the most intriguing discovery I’d made had been an unusual shade of dust mite I’d not before encountered.
None of it made any sense. Perhaps he wasn’t storing the objects here at all or had an accomplice?
Perhaps the objects weren’t objects at all, and simply code for something else?
The minutes ticked by, and I had another half dozen shelves to go through.
My nose tickled, likely due to said dust mites.
Rubbing it with my sleeve, I spotted a brief flash of gold on the far side of the room.
I hurried over, shining my light upon what appeared to be a sort of chariot that was partially obscured by a large crate, and a half dozen canopic jars sitting loose on the shelf.
Finally.
Giddy with the thrill of discovery, I hiked my skirt up over the tops of my warm woolen stockings and climbed upon the old table.
Balanced on my knees, I leaned over to better inspect the shelf behind.
I wedged the flashlight between my jaw and shoulder.
One by one, I pulled the jars from the higher shelf and placed them onto the rickety surface beside me until the golden object came into full view.
It was most certainly a chariot. I reached down and pulled a stubby pencil from my satchel and placed my worn notebook on the shelf to take inventory of what I’d found, lips moving slightly as I counted the canopic jars alongside me on the table.
Two. Four. Six. Seven. Eight. I craned my neck, careful to keep the flashlight steady beneath my chin.
Three more on the far side, that made what?
Eleven? Then the chariot—which was blocked in by a long, low crate.
Unlike the others, this crate bore no paint.
At least none where I could see. No provenance. No dates.
I set my flashlight down and grabbed on to both ends to better access it, but the thing was far too heavy to move on my own.
I continued my hasty inventory, sorting through the smaller pieces.
This had to be part of the cache. It simply had to be.
With the jars and smaller artifacts moved out of the way, I carefully stood on the table and lifted the lid to reveal a mummified cat lying atop the straw.
Fiachna would have definite thoughts about that one.
I shifted the packing material on the other side to reveal smaller alabaster figures alongside a handful of intricately carved vessels.
My nose stung from the dust I’d stirred up. Yes. Most certainly the cache.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will the sneeze away, but failed.
A second threatened and I sniffled, grasping my flashlight in my left hand.
“I cannot decide whether I should bless you or accept the fact you’ve the devil’s own mulishness…” Ruan grumbled from somewhere behind me in the darkness.
I turned, whacking my hip on the crate and letting out a pained yelp. A nearby canopic jar rattled in protest.
“You promised me, Ruby Vaughn,” he murmured, stepping closer. I could scarcely make out more than the shape of him as he reached up, taking me roughly by the waist and setting me on the ground beside him.
It was the first time he’d touched me willingly—excepting when he woke me from my nightmare—and there was no tenderness at all in the gesture.
As soon as my feet hit the floor, he removed his hands from my person, thrusting them into his pockets and turning away from me.
“You promised me that you would not come without me.” His voice sounded oddly strained.
“Then … then I find the bloody door unlocked where anyone could have come upon you. You’re lucky I’m the one who’s found you and not the murderer—you know that, don’t you? ”
I placed my hands on my hips. “You were late. We were running out of ti—” I gestured with my flashlight toward the stairs, partially illuminating the side of his face, and my pulse stilled.
Blood.
There was blood on his face. A brownish smudge marred his forehead, along with the sleeve of his now-ripped oatmeal sweater. What had happened?
“What happened to me is not the point.”
It was to me, but instead of arguing with him I reached up, untied the kerchief I’d used to hold back my hair, and began to wipe at the stubborn spot on his temple. It didn’t seem to be his, or if it was, it had dried long ago.
Ruan inhaled sharply and, for half a second, I thought he would retreat, brush my hand away, and tend to his own filth—but instead he stepped closer with a weary sigh. “The blood isn’t mine. Some lads got heated about the lecture. There was some pushing. Fighting. Someone rang for the police.”
I raised my brows in challenge. “What on earth were they debating to cause a fistfight?”
“Does it matter? I stayed behind to help clean up the wounded.” His voice was rough as I dabbed futilely at the dried blood. Needing to be useful. To fix the awkwardness between us.
He reached up, taking my hand from his temple and folding his rough palm over mine, pulling it away from his face.
I furrowed my brow, not understanding.