7. Calliope
Calliope
“You sure?” Calypso asks, for what has to be the hundredth time tonight.
“I’m good.” I am so deeply not good.
She hums. She doesn’t believe me, and I don’t blame her. I mean I’m lying to her and I’m bad at it with her specifically.
“I’m fine,” I add, and I shove the word fine toward her through that weird twin frequency we’ve supposedly always shared.
Or that she’s always shared. I’m the one who shut mine off.
“I can literally hear your face doing the squish,” she says. “The one that makes your nose look bigger than it is.” Heels clack on tile somewhere behind her voice, some floor in some building with a life attached to it.
“Where are you?” I ask, because deflection is a sport and I’m a regional champion. Also because I’ve made everything about me for months. And I’m trying, in my own clumsy way, to be less of a black hole. “What have you even been doing the last three years? I don’t actually know.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Her sigh crackles down the line. “And I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t.”
I stop walking. My flashlight halts on the sphinx, which doesn’t move. That is the bare minimum I expect of it. One day it could move, I have to be prepared. “Calypso.”
That’s when I realize I don’t know my sister. Not really. Not in all the ways that matter and not in that twin telepath cadence. We are just two women who happen to share a womb.
“Don’t worry about it, Callie.” The sound over the line goes flat and far, like all the air got vacuumed off the call. “Nothing I can’t get out of.”
“I don’t believe you.” It falls out faster than I mean it to. Then for the first time in years that frequency lights up. Just a flicker. Just enough to tell me she’s into something. Something deep. And God help me, I want more of it.
“You still got it,” she whispers. “Love ya.”
The line clicks dead before I can answer. For a long moment I stand there, phone in my hand as I stare at that black screen. She cut me off.
She never told me what her job is.
Annoyed, unsettled, and three snacks past my emotional limit, I head back toward the security desk. My flashlight does its lazy sweep. When the beam crosses the basement door, a shiver walks down my spine and refuses to leave.
“Ms. Cantemir.”
I scream. Loudly. Years of training and a taser on my hip, and I scream like a hot kettle. And even as my voice echoes around me I know who it is. Maybe I felt him before he even said anything.
I spin, flashlight clutched to my chest, and there he is.
Lazarus Dagon.
He stands in front of the security door as though he condensed out of the shadows.
He’s tall in a way that’s frankly rude about it, the kind of tall that makes the doorframe behind him look like a polite suggestion.
He doesn’t lean on anything. He doesn’t have his hands in his pockets. Lazarus just stands tall and imposing.
“Why,” I say, dragging the word out. Which is the most dignity I can scrape together with my heart still in my throat.
“It wasn’t my intention to frighten you.” Pale hair he clearly never touches wisps across his forehead.
He’s got this sculpted face with a perfect symmetry and eyes so gray and light they barely commit to a color. He’s beautiful.
I hate him for it.
I wasted three years collecting reasons to hate him, and not one of them sticks to that face. Which is its own reason. So, five hundred and one.
“Well, ya did,” I tell him.
“Noted.”
“What do you want?” It comes out sharper than I mean it to, almost a bark. But we don’t do this. We don’t casually run into each other, and he hasn’t bothered to speak to me in a year.
A year.
Oh, no.
The annual review.
My stomach drops straight through the floor.
What is it with these men and suddenly wanting to have a conversation? Can’t we just yell at each other like normal people?
“No one’s manning the desk,” I try.
It’s a terrible excuse. It’s the middle of the night, and the chances of someone pulling a smash-and-grab in the next twenty minutes are basically zero.
Probably.
Mostly.
“To my office.” He gestures toward the basement door like he has all night.
I aim my flashlight at it. I do not want to go down there. I’d like that officially noted.
“Do you have an objection, Ms. Cantemir?”
I could swear there’s amusement beneath all that ice.
“No.” I shoulder past him and punch in the code. “After you.”
Then I mutter, because I enjoy making my own life difficult, “Your Highness.”
He stumbles.
Barely. Half a step and a tiny hitch in his stride. I only notice because I’m watching him far too closely.
Lazarus Dagon doesn’t trip.
So either I imagined it, or one cheap joke actually threw him off.
Honestly, I’m delighted by both possibilities.
He takes the stairs first.
The steps don’t creak beneath him. Just me.
I can’t help but notice. He’s easily two hundred pounds, dressed in a three-piece suit. Yet the same stairs that complain under every step I take stay completely silent under his.
Maybe he knows how to carry his weight.
Sure. Let’s go with that.
The stairwell feels narrower with him in it. I keep to one side, but there’s still barely enough room. He smells cold and clean and expensive. Somehow cutting through the formaldehyde soaked walls.
And he says nothing.
Lazarus is good at that. He can leave a silence hanging until everyone else becomes desperate to fill it. Most people rush to smooth over an awkward pause.
He just waits to see what you’ll do.
Apparently, what I do is talk.
“Smells like a tomb down here,” I announce.
Nothing.
“That’s a museum joke. Tomb. We have those.”
His head turns slightly, his profile catching the stairwell light. He doesn’t smile, but something shifts in his expression. Like he heard the joke and plans to remember it forever. At least that’s what I tell myself.
Cool. Great talk, Callie.
At the bottom of the stairs, he starts down the corridor. He moves quietly with a confidence I’m mildly envious of.
It should not be attractive.
It is, unfortunately, very attractive, and I resent him for it.
Then I realize where we’re going.
This isn’t his usual office. Lazarus has one upstairs overlooking the gallery floor, all glass walls and a perfect view of the courtyard. That’s where someone like him belongs. Somewhere high enough to watch everyone else.
This room sits buried off the collections corridor, and I’ve never been invited inside. Not even for my last review.
So why now?
The office is almost painfully bare. One desk, too large for the room. A single lamp. Two chairs in front and one behind it that probably heats, reclines, and massages, because of course it does.
Lazarus takes that one and settles into it like he has nowhere else to be.
I stay in the doorway with my arms crossed. The door swings shut behind me with a soft click.
Excellent. Not ominous at all.
“Sit.”
I sit, mostly because telling my boss to choke would probably hurt my performance review. I balance on the edge of the chair, back straight, ready to leave the second this gets weird.
“You let Calypso into the building.”
So much for the review.
Right. I did do that. Somehow I’d forgotten between the screaming and the takeout.
“You gave me an access pass for her,” I say, though even I can hear the problem with that defense.
The pass was for a daytime tour. With other people. Not a two-in-the-morning trip through restricted storage.
“Your sister entered restricted areas without authorization.” His voice gets quieter, and somehow that’s worse. “Areas containing artifacts that have not been catalogued or secured.”
I swallow. “I didn’t know she’d—”
“You both came down here.”
I did. I definitely did that. With my sister. And then we both screamed, because there was a—
“There was a naked man,” I say, mostly to myself.
I hadn’t meant to admit that.
I checked the footage the next morning. Every camera, every angle. He wasn’t there. So I did what I always do when something doesn’t make sense.
I decided I’d imagined it.
Lazarus says nothing. He only watches me, perfectly still, waiting.
And because he refuses to rescue me from the silence, I start talking again.
“Okay, here’s the thing. George is on vacation.
Usually there are two of us down here, but you’ve got me working alone, and this place is legitimately terrifying at night.
Calypso was backup. Sort of. We could make it official.
Call her a subcontractor. That sounds reasonable, right? Does that sound reasonable to you?”
“Calliope.”
He says it gently.
Not Callie. Not Ms. Cantemir. My whole name. And my name has a certain pronunciation to it. Ca-lli-ope. And he whispers it so softly so perfectly him.
His eyes lower briefly, settling on the side of my neck. On the small half-moon freckle that’s been there since I was born.
Something in his expression tightens.
Then he looks away, and whatever I saw disappears with it.
Just like that, he’s my insufferable boss again.
He was looking at my neck.
I decide it’s because he’s a predator in a tailored suit and has already figured out I’m small, breakable, and completely out of my depth.
As it turns out, I’m exactly half right.
“This meeting isn’t only about your review,” he says. “Or your sister. Your work is exemplary.”
“Because no one else wants to work security.” I aim for bored. I fail spectacularly.
He doesn’t react, which somehow makes me fidget more than if he had. If I could only just sit still.
“George has decided to retire.”
“No,” I whine before I can stop myself. I love George. He is the only sane person in this whole museum. Including me.
I shove the reaction into the same mental pile as everything else I plan to deal with never.
“His replacement starts tomorrow night. I’ll need you to train them. Both of them.”
“Both?”
There have only ever been two of us on nights. Ever. Three security guards means one of us is leaving, and apparently I’m supposed to believe it isn’t me. Oh it’s totally me, isn’t it?
“Are you firing me?”
I’m on my feet in the next moment, the chair clattering backward onto the floor.
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Calliope—”
“No. You listen.” I plant both hands on his desk and lean into his space.
Up close, his eyes are even paler, gray all the way to the edges.
“I clawed my way through grad school. I have the debt to prove it, a thesis nobody will ever read, three languages I speak fluently, and I have spent three years walking circles in the dark with a flashlight and a salt shaker. Security work is beneath me—”
“I know.”
Two words, and my entire spiral shuts off.
I drop back into the chair. “What?”
“You heard me.” He leans forward, taking his time because apparently even his hands refuse to hurry for me. “Your work is beneath you. That is why I have been considering how to tell you…”
He opens a drawer, removes a slim file, and slides it across the desk.
It stops between us.
“Take it.”
I reach for the folder, but his fingers are still resting on one corner. He doesn’t move them.
For one long second, we’re both holding it.
Then I pull it free.
My hand is shaking. It’s cold down here. It’s always cold down here.
I open the file.
Assistant Curator.
My eyes catch on the words.
I thought getting it back would feel like relief.
It doesn’t. Not at first.
First comes everything I buried when I lost it. The digs I’ll never go on. The papers I stopped reading. The version of me who used to wake up hungry for the work. The part of me that went dark three years ago, and never came back no matter how hard I tried to pretend I didn’t miss it.
It all hits at once.
I breathe through my teeth and stare at the page so none of it reaches my face.
So he doesn’t see.
“Is this real?” My voice cracks on the second word.
“Your degree in museum studies,” he says quietly, without looking at the file. “Your thesis on Egyptian funerary practice. Three languages. I have used precisely none of it. That was a waste, and I am the one who wasted it.”
I look up. “Then why now?”
He doesn’t answer.
I notice.
I add it to the growing list of questions he refuses to answer. Why this office. Why down here. Why he keeps saying my name like that.
I flip the page instead.
And there it is.
Reports to: Dr. S. Marquis.
The whole offer turns sour in my mouth.
“Are you kidding me?” I drop the file onto the desk. “Soren. You want me to be assistant to Soren Marquis.”
“Don’t you think your anger is misdirected?” Lazarus asks mildly.
He waits just long enough to make me hate him more.
“I hired him. If you want to blame someone for that, blame me. You already do. It’s tidy.”
I open my mouth and discover I have no argument.
That only makes it worse.
“Marquis is insufferable.”
“Your opinion of your colleague is noted.” The corner of his mouth twitches. Barely. “His command of ancient texts is unmatched. You’ll learn from him. And, I suspect, he from you. You will also report to me on the days I require it of you.”
I want so badly to mock him.
“The position pays triple your current salary,” he adds when I say nothing. “And the remaining balance of your loans will be cleared. Not in installments. At once.”
Sold.
The word appears before my pride can stop it.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
We both know I won’t.
He lets me pretend anyway, which somehow feels worse than being called on the lie.
“Of course.” He stands and buttons his jacket with two fingers. “The offer holds until tomorrow evening. You start Monday. The weekend is yours to train the new hires on the night rotation.”
Monday.
Three days from now.
My dream is sitting in my lap inside a manila folder, handed back to me by the man who took it away. There’s a catch. Of course there is.
And I already know I’m going to accept it.
I stand and press the file to my chest, half convinced it will disappear if I let go.
“Thank you,” I say. The words feel strange coming from me. “For the opportunity.”
I make it to the door. My hand is on the knob when he speaks.
“Calliope.”
I stop.
I don’t turn around.
My heart is doing something frankly medical against my ribs.
“About the other night.” His voice is barely louder than the hum of the lamp. “What did you see, exactly?”
The naked man.
The figure missing from every frame of security footage.
The thing I’ve spent days taking apart and explaining away until I almost believed myself.
I turn.
“There was someone down there,” I say. “I told myself I imagined it.”
Something shifts behind his eyes, but I can’t tell what.
I’ve never been able to read Lazarus. That’s half the reason I hate him.
The other half is why I can’t stop looking.
“Describe him.”
“Tall. Too tall. Naked. Just standing in the dark.” I swallow. “I couldn’t see much. I didn’t want to.”
Lazarus goes quiet.
Then he gives one small nod.
“I appreciate your honesty.”
I leave him there and climb the stairs alone, clutching the file to my chest.
My dream in one hand. Whatever comes with it in the other.
And I can’t shake the feeling that I just answered a question on a test I didn’t know I was taking.
One I was never supposed to pass.