Calliope #2
“Yes.” I draw the word out because there are so many caveats with it.
“It’s okay, what you’ll be assisting me with is adjacent.”
“Adjacent?” Now I’m itching to get in there.
“Come on.” He unlocks the door and it feels like a god releasing Pandora. When I follow him in there a part of me heals.
The part that worked so goddamn hard to get here.
The part that thought I could learn a new language to cover my grief.
The part that worked harder than anyone else in my class just because I felt like I had something to prove.
But there is nothing here to prove. Just us and some old artifacts that could make or break the world.
Yeah, it heals a little fracture inside my soul.
“This is insane.” I look around trying not to get all doe-eyed because I do have a job to do. And there’s no window in here and it’s just us. But still. This is it.
“In here are the artifacts reclaimed by the acquisition division of the Sanguine Foundation.”
“What?” My stomach drops. “That’s… that’s who Hadley works for.” I watch his back as he walks toward a wall trying to see if it’ll tell me what I need to know. But it doesn’t. So I have to ask. “Do you know where she is?”
“On-site,” he says not looking over his shoulder.
“Do you work with the Foundation a lot.”
“Almost exclusively.” He opens a locker and much like a morgue he pulls out a drawer and on it is an artifact.
A war brews inside my soul. He knows more about Hadley’s current assignment than I do. I want to beg for answers, but I know I need to put that on the back burner. Shove it down inside me where no one can access it, not even me.
For now.
“The Sanguine Foundation holds the ability to work outside the constraints of the government.” He glances up at me for a moment before focusing on the artifact again.
I let my curiosity drive me over to him and to the slab on the drawer.
“This is…” I look at him then back at the drawings on the slab. “Not Akkadian.”
“I know.”
“This isn’t, I don’t know what language this is.” Excitement hums through me. A new challenge? Yes please. “I don’t know what language this is.”
“And yet I need to figure out how to read it.” He pushes this one away and opens another. “That’s why you’re here.”
“Because it looks like Akkadian.”
“Because it looks like Akkadian,” Lazarus confirms, pulling out a second drawer. “But it’s not. That’s what makes this discovery so intriguing.”
I lean closer, my professional curiosity taking over. The symbols dance across the ancient stone. Familiar yet just different enough to frustrate me.
I can’t honestly remember the last time I felt this invigorated.
“It’s like trying to read English when someone’s changed every third letter,” I murmur, reaching instinctively for the artifact before remembering protocol. “May I?”
“With gloves.” He produces a pair from his pocket.
As I slip them on, I catch him watching me with that unreadable expression. The silence stretches between us, filled only with the hum of climate control systems.
“These artifacts were recovered from a site,” he pauses and looks up at me as though he isn’t ready to give the location away just yet, “undisturbed since the Bronze Age collapse.”
My fingers hover over the stone tablet. “And the Foundation just... acquired them?”
“As I said, they hold the ability to work outside some laws.” There’s something in his tone I can’t quite identify. But it sure as fuck sounds like evasion.
Either way I pocket the information for now.
I trace one of the symbols with my gloved fingertip. “This one here, it’s almost the same as the Akkadian symbol for water, but the stroke order is wrong.”
“Not wrong,” Lazarus corrects, “different. This language predates Akkadian by at least two thousand years.”
My head snaps up. “That’s impossible. The oldest known writing system is—”
“Known being the operative word.” He leans against the drawer, his arms crossed. “The Foundation specializes in the unknown.”
“I have questions.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“How? Where?” I can feel my eyes bugging out. “Really where because this is… do you have any idea what you’re sitting on.”
“Yes, and it is exactly why we started here.” Those gray eyes hold mine for much longer than feels necessary. Here it is here is the caveat. “There are things in this museum no one knows exists. Things that would tilt the world on its axis. I need to know what kind of professional you are.”
“Excuse me?” I am a professional, Sir. And discoveries like this? The world needs to know. This isn’t the kind of thing you hide in a drawer. This is the kind of thing you shout from a rooftop.
“Are you the kind to take this to the world? Are you the kind to sit with me for hours trying to uncover its secrets?” He says this all without blinking. “What kind of professional are you.”
“I have never been asked that question.” Nerves tickle my stomach as I look at the room under a new lens. “These weren’t recovered legally, were they.” I’m not really asking.
“No.”
I need to sit down. “But.” I sit before I faint onto a chair. “What does that mean?”
“It means the NDA you signed earlier went into effect the moment the pen hit the paper.” He pauses, I swallow because what the fuck? “It means I need you to assist me with these translations.”
“I thought I was Soren’s assistant.”
“You are.” He pauses. “And mine.”
Yeah, I’m going to be sick.
“So I just float between the two of you?”
He gives me a very naughty little smirk that I’m sure isn’t actually naughty and I’m absolutely reading it wrong. Except they’re going to share me and that immediately gives me naughty thoughts.
“Where?” I breathe through the insanity of this. “Where did this come from?”
“I cannot say,” he evades.
“That’s what Hadley is doing.” I realize. “She’s doing something very illegal.”
“Yes.” He pauses. “And I need you to translate this before she returns.”
“And you think I can help?” I can’t keep the skepticism from my voice. “I’m good, but I’m not magical.”
“Your publication on early Semitic language evolution caught my attention years ago.” His voice is matter of fact. “You identified patterns others missed.”
I blink, surprised. “You read that?”
“Of course.” He says it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I’ve been following your work for some time.”
Something warm unfurls in my chest, but I tamp it down. Don’t get distracted. This is work. Important work. He also made you a security guard.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Where do I start?”
“In the other room with that stack of papers.”
“Are you kidding me?” I deflate. “All this just to send me to do paperwork.”
“Yes.” He shuts the drawer. “Go, join me when you’re finished.”
“That could take hours.” Am I always this whiny?
“And I’ll still be here when you’ve finished.”
It isn’t worth arguing, so I get up to leave but pause before I open the door into the other room. “Why me? Why now?”
Those gray eyes look up at me again from beneath thick lashes. “Because I believe you can translate this.”
“You haven’t?”
“No.” Also the simple answers. “But I know you can.”
“You’re so confident.”
“In this? Yes.” It’s in the way he says that that has me walking away. In the confidence in my abilities to translate something I’ve never even seen before.
Almost as though he knows something about me I don’t. Yet.