Chapter Twenty-Five. Back into the Arms of Chance
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Back into the Arms of Chance
ANNABELLE had not awoken by the time I took my leave of her that afternoon.
Ruan assured me that her pulse was steadier than he’d expected and that she should pull through the ordeal unscathed, but his cold comfort about Annabelle did nothing to ease my worries for Leona.
My greatest hope now was that Annabelle would regain consciousness soon, and identify her attacker.
Of course, if she could identify her attacker, it put all of us in even graver danger, for as soon as the killer realized that he had not succeeded, he would be back.
And I was most certain that he would try to finish the job.
I quickly washed up, putting on a fresh frock and leaving my bloodied clothes in a pile on the floor in the corner before setting off—yet again—to find Professor Reaver in hopes he could shed some light on Leona’s current location.
The man had been an enigma. At first, he had been friendly, but lately his mood had turned and he watched me with a suspicion that made no sense.
Reaver’s office was tucked deep in the back of the museum, past the marbles and sculptures.
Past the sarcophagi and the Roman antiquities, nestled into a spartan hallway.
Inside, the room was bright and airy, with everything neatly ordered and placed away.
His desk sat in front of a large window overlooking the city’s rooftops and chimneys.
He had it cracked open, allowing in the cool winter air.
The familiar hint of smoke was in the air, or perhaps it was only in my imagination.
Reaver sat behind the desk wearing an untucked shirt and suspenders, having shed his coat sometime earlier in the day.
His fair hair was tousled from where he’d been driving his hands through it as he studied whatever it was before him. Lines of worry creased his face.
I started into the room, tripping over a book lying splayed open on the threshold where it had landed after apparently being thrown. The cover was tattered and unfamiliar. A greenish gold binding. I picked it up, turning it over in my hand. A Treatise on Ethical Excavations by Julius A. Harker.
I looked from the book in my hand to Professor Reaver.
“Set it down, if you would. It must have fallen from my shelf.”
I held the book to my chest, curious how it could have fallen when the nearest shelf was a good ten feet across the room. “Have you heard from Leona? Do you know where she is?”
His pale eyes raked over me, settling uncomfortably at the bruises and scab marring my temple. “In her reading room as she always is.” Stark smudges of blue ink marred the fingertips of his left hand.
“She’s not. I went to meet her this morning at the club.
She never arrived. When I went to her home, I found it ransacked.
There was blood on her dresser, and more of it on the floor of the sitting room.
” I omitted the fact there was also a body on said floor.
“Do you have any idea what she’s gotten herself into? Professor Reaver … please help me.”
“Is that so?” His voice was calm. Too calm.
I struggled to make sense of his nonchalance. I’d just told him Leona was likely dead, for goodness’ sake. “Is that all you have to say? I tell you that Leona is missing, she very well could be dead—and you respond as if I told you it was raining outside.”
He folded his hands on the desk. His face weary, but emotionless. “What do you want me to say that would change anything about the situation?”
I clutched the book tight to my belly. “Do you know where she is? Where she might have gone?”
He raised a brow, rested his chin on his ink-stained fist, and studied me, his pale blue eyes taking in each flaw I possessed.
“I could ask you the same. She had been spending more and more time with you. Behaving peculiarly. Late for work, not even coming some days, and sending the strangest excuses.”
“Me? I have been trying to help her. You know as well as I do that she was involved with Julius Harker. I think … I think she must have discovered who his killer was.”
Reaver stared at me as if I was another antiquity. Something to be decoded. “What makes you believe she figured it out?”
I opened my mouth, half-tempted to tell him about the Radix Maleficarum.
But something stilled my tongue. Frederick Reaver hated Julius Harker.
Hated that Leona was spending more and more time with him.
He had a history with Harker, having been rivals for the better part of a decade.
Truthfully, he was the obvious villain in this story.
So obvious that I’d discounted him out of hand.
“You hated him…” I whispered half to myself as I took a step backward out the door.
He raised a brow. “Harker? Of course I didn’t hate him.
I hated the way he threw away his potential, wasted that brilliant mind of his.
There is a difference, I assure you—and before you go concocting wild stories in your head about me, I would point out that you yourself were on the dais when Julius Harker was discovered.
You snuck into Mr. Mueller’s cell before he was killed.
You were the very last person to see him before his untimely death—then breaking into his very museum afterward and stealing something very valuable.
” He wet his lips, his gaze drifting to my brow.
“See how very easy it is to play this game?”
The air left my lungs at his accusation, made even more cutting by the dispassionate expression on his face. “How did you…?”
“How did I know? I know a great many things. I told you before, it’s my business to know.”
My fingers tightened into a fist as the ground moved beneath my feet. “Then do you know where Leona is?”
“That … I do not. Not yet. But I intend to find out.” Again his expression remained blank.
I might have asked him whether he preferred cake or tarts, for all the feeling he showed.
“I will say it begs the question: If you are concerned for her well-being, why have you not taken this to the police before coming to me hurling baseless accusations?”
“The same police that allowed Mr. Mueller to die in their holding cells? Leona is in danger, and I need to know from whom. I thought perhaps she’d have confided in you. But it’s evident she didn’t trust you either.”
Something flickered in his expression, the first show of anything other than boredom since I entered his office. “Lamentably, she did not.”
I prowled closer to the table, laying a hand on his desk, clutching Harker’s treatise against my chest with the other. My voice broke. “Do you not even care?”
“Julius Harker was a careless fool and got himself killed because of it. It was only a matter of time. I had told Leona this time and again. Warned her to stay clear of him and her foolish attempt to avenge him.”
So Leona had confided in him, at least about her investigations. “And Leona? Do you not have a single care for her fate?”
Again, there was something there. The slightest twitch of a muscle at the edge of his mouth that betrayed him.
I was close. Mention of Leona affected him.
He must care. There must be more there. “She is worth dozens of him, but my hands are bound. I cannot help her.” The words meant something.
They had to. “But as I cautioned her, I shall caution you—stay clear of the Julius Harker matter. It will bring nothing but trouble upon us all.” He looked up at me with his unnervingly blue eyes.
The muscles in my jaw worked. “And Leona, shall I leave her alone to her fate too?”
Again, that twitch. Not even enough of a movement to be called a twitch. Was it fear? No. Never that. Not from one like him. The man may as well be carved from granite, but even granite can crack. “I doubt even God can help her now.”
IT WASN’T UNTIL after I left Professor Reaver’s office that the peculiar words he spoke at the beginning of our conversation struck me.
He accused me of stealing something from Harker’s museum.
Something of value. And while I freely admitted that I had picked up a few things—namely that silly milpreve and the records—none of it was of any true consequence.
I glanced over my shoulder toward his office, of half a mind to march straight back there and make him explain his baseless accusation, when I saw Leona’s colleague, Mary, standing at the far end of the hall.
Her strained expression told me she’d overhead the conversation inside his office.
She held my gaze for several seconds before tilting her chin in the direction of the stairs and then disappearing down them.
She wanted me to follow.
Putting Reaver aside, I hurried after her, down the stairs and straight into the musty reading room that she shared with Leona.
I closed the door behind me to find her waiting, arms folded, and her spectacles hanging from her fingertips, the gold rims glinting bright against her dark blue shirt. “Did anyone follow you?”
I shook my head as she looked at the book still clutched in my arms.
“What’s that?”
I’d forgotten all about the book I’d scooped off Reaver’s floor.
The one that had mysteriously flown from the shelf all on its own, though seeing as the author of said book was none other than Julius Harker himself, I suspected the book had been tossed in a fit of pique.
Heat rose to my cheeks—I suppose I’d stolen something now.
“It’s Reaver’s … I … I hadn’t meant to take it. ”
She leaned forward and took the book from my arms, opening the front cover. “That’s curious…”
I leaned closer to her, reading the inscription over her shoulder.
TO MY DEAREST LEONA. J. H.
My blood ran cold in my veins.
She handed the book to me. “As you are her friend, I doubt she’d mind you keeping it safe for her.”
I wet my lips, nodding. “Have you heard from Leona since yesterday?”
Mary shook her head, worry lining her face.
“No, and I heard the two of you arguing. You must be careful around him. Reaver has a frightful temper. A colder, more changeable man I’ve never met.
I never understood why Leona was taken with him, though I think it was from their time together in Egypt. ”
I paused, eyes wide. “What do you mean their time in Egypt?”
She paused, glancing at the door then back to me. “They knew each other before. It’s why Reaver insisted she work with him upon his arrival here.”
That was new. “Do you know from where?”
“It was kept quiet. Everything is kept quiet when it comes to that one.” She tilted her head to the ceiling. She meant about Reaver. I’d noticed it too, the deference, the distance given to the man.
“Mary, Leona is missing. I worry it has something to do with Julius Harker’s death.”
Mary blanched, her hand rising to her chest in surprise.
“I told Reaver the same, but he was wholly unconcerned.”
“Unconcerned or overly concerned. The two sides of Frederick Reaver.” She swore softly before giving her head a shake.
“What has that foolish girl gotten herself into?” She drummed her fingers on her waist. “She’s been acting strangely, but I’d bet my life it’s got something to do with the book.
The one you asked her about. It has to be. ”
I raised a brow. “The Radix Maleficarum? The book that Julius Harker was interested in?”
Mary nodded. “She received a note about an hour after you left here.”
Fear pricked at my neck. “What sort of a note?”
She picked up a mostly burnt scrap of paper, handing it to me.
“I don’t know. She left as soon as it caught fire.
” Her chin tilted to a small silver bowl almost identical to the one I’d noticed in Treadway’s office.
“I admit I pulled it away from the flames as soon as she walked out the door. She’s been worrying me as well… ”
I drew in a sharp breath as I read the words: “‘wants the Radix…’”
“Who wants it?”
“I do not know. But she left like the hounds of hell were at her feet.”
I took a step closer and laid a palm on Mary’s slight shoulder. “Do you know who she’s been meeting lately?”
Mary brushed a loose graying strand of hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “She never shared that with me. All I know is what I’ve overheard. She was close with Reaver, I know that. I wondered for a time if there was something … else … between them.”
“Something romantic?”
Mary frowned. “Perhaps, but if there was, it’s likely been over for a while now.
Leona and Reaver have been quarrelling when they think no one is watching.
She would arrive some mornings looking as if she hadn’t slept all night, and stay well past closing.
Other days, she’d be here long before the museum opens, having spent the night in the collection with him.
I think she was trying to find something. ”
“Did their arguments begin about the time Julius Harker didn’t show up for that lecture?
” My mind tripped back to when I’d first heard of Julius Harker, of how he’d slighted both the museum and Frederick Reaver by not appearing at a lecture.
That had been a handful of days before the discovery of his body.
About the same time as Harker was murdered.
She paused, tapping her fingers again on her forearms. “About then.”
“Do you have any idea what she was looking for?”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t know, Miss Vaughn. All I know is that she’d been helping Reaver translate some discovery he’d made, some scrolls.… They were both very tight-lipped about it.”
I had overheard Leona mention something of the kind to Reaver when he pulled her away from the curiosity museum the night that Julius Harker’s body was discovered.
“Do you mean the Saqqara scrolls? Leona and Reaver had been discussing them the night of the exhibition. Reaver had come looking for her and I heard her tell him that she was having some kind of trouble with them. Reaver seemed surprised by it—I’d not paid much attention to it at the time.
Have you located them? Do you think those scrolls mean something? ”
Mary frowned deeply. “Perhaps, perhaps not. But I think we have a much larger problem here. I have searched all the accession records, all the papers to locate those scrolls. The museum doesn’t have any scrolls from Saqqara in the collection. There are no Saqqara scrolls. They simply don’t exist.”
My skin grew cold as I stared at her. “If there are no scrolls…”
Mary nodded with a deep frown. “Then what was Reaver doing with Leona at all hours that they didn’t want the rest of us to know about?”
I swallowed hard. That was indeed a very good question. And just like that, I had in my possession yet another clue that amounted to absolutely nothing.