Damn it. Sam turned to stare at the passing scenery without taking it in. “You were right, Alistair. I should never have gone to work for Sullivan.”
Wanda snorted. “And why should you have listened to a guy who’s running a speakeasy? Consorting with rumrunners and corrupt policemen, paying out bribes to everyone from building inspectors to the alderman? If you want to hand out blame, ladle the rest of us a portion, too.”
“We were in the middle of this long before you came along,” Alistair agreed.
“Regret won’t change anything.” Wanda’s gloved fingers tightened on the wheel. “Right now, we have to look to the future. Between Fabiano and Sullivan, we’re getting dragged into things whether we want to or not.”
“So what do we do?” Sam asked.
She glanced at him. “We prepare to go to war.”
Things seemed to go wrong from the moment Sam set foot in the hexworks the next morning.
First one of the guards showed up drunk, and since Sam was the one in charge, he had to send the man home and call in a replacement from the list Bellinowski had given him. Then he had to show a new hexwoman the scriptoriums and get her settled with a desk and the proper equipment. Well, technically he could have delegated that to the scriptorium overseer, but everyone else had enough work to do and he felt bad about adding more.
When he finally arrived at the lab, Luke and Glenda were waiting on him, though only Luke seemed annoyed at the delay. “Are you ready to get the disc out?” he demanded as Sam came in.
Sam shook his head. “There’s a man—I don’t know his real name—an expert in Ancient Egypt. He’s going to come look at it this evening.”
“I can’t stay late,” Luke said. “I have things to do.”
“I think he’d rather not have an audience, to be honest.” Sam scratched the back of his neck. “He didn’t seem happy to be involved in, uh, this. And I don’t blame him—I guess this discovery would have been the sort of thing that would have put him in the history books in other circumstances.”
Glenda winced. “Poor guy. I wouldn’t be happy in his shoes.”
Things didn’t improve after that. Luke sniped constantly, some of the other workers had questions that apparently only Sam could answer, and he owed Sullivan a report—written in code for security—on how things were going in the hexworks. Which in turn meant compiling reports from the overseers of the separate scriptoriums and adding his own thoughts.
Unfortunately, one of the reports was missing, so he had to visit the scriptorium and ask the overseer about it. The woman swore she’d given it to Paladino, who usually collected them. He tracked down Paladino, who in turn swore he’d left it with the others in the lab.
It wasn’t there now, so Sam asked the overseer to recompile it, which of course didn’t make her happy. Which made him feel guilty for having to ask.
Between one thing or another, the day ended without having a moment to himself. He’d brought dinner from home, nothing more than a ham sandwich and a bottle of Bevo, which he quickly gulped down. Almost as soon as he swallowed the last bite, Paladino knocked on the door with Doc standing behind him.
“Your visitor, boss,” Paladino said.
Sam hated being called boss, even if it was accurate in this case. It made him feel like he was playing a part he was in no way fit for. “Thank you, Mr. Paladino. I can take it from here.”
Paladino touched the brim of his hat. “Sure thing. Let me know if you need anything.”
Sam ushered Doc inside. “Wait here a minute,” he said outside the door to his office. He slipped inside, undid the various hexes on the safe, and removed the box and disc from within.
Doc stood where he’d left him, arms resolutely crossed over his chest and his eyes fixed on the floor, as if determined not to see more than he had to.
“Here it is,” Sam said, carefully placing it on a clear worktable.
Doc’s eyes lit up and he hurried over to it. “Ah—look at the artistic style. Definitely from the Amarna Period.”
“The disc is inside.”
“The container may be just as important.” Doc picked up one of the magnifying glasses used for delicate hexwork. “Let’s separate them for the moment, so I can get a better look at both.”
Sam gestured for him to do the honors. He opened the box and gently—no, reverently—removed the golden disc. “This is most certainly meant to represent the disc of Aten. I’ve never seen either hieroglyphs or hexes written in a spiral before, though. Perhaps another quirk of the Amarna Period, especially since Akhenaten changed the relationship to magic.”
A clue, perhaps? “What do you mean?”
Doc carefully set the disc aside. “The Egyptian gods were both familiar and witch in one—the source and executor of magic combined. Familiars became priests of whatever god their animal form was most aligned to. A crocodile would serve Sobek, a bovine Hathor, a cat Bast, and so on.”
“Was there a cheetah god?” Sam asked, curious.
