Sparks flew through her body as every nerve fell into utter disarray. She’d forgotten she was also a Pettifer. Suddenly she thought of her mother urging her to have a “conversation” with this man, and her nerves sizzled again. Furious with herself, she glared at Alex.
His smile widened.
“All right,” he said. “I suppose I won’t make you walk the plank. Yet.”
In the British Museum’s Grenville Library, silence crouched like an anxious curator who had been through too many fire alarms that week. It flashed here and there as light caught on shards of glass from the shattered display case. It wavered at its edges as museum patrons talked in the foyer beyond. If the silence had fingernails, it would be biting them about now.
The actual curator did not feel much better. Some fool in administration had thought calling the police about the stolen amulet would be a good idea, and now the curator had to stand smiling in the worried silence while Detective Inspector Creeve examined the crime scene.
“I fear we are wasting important police resources,” he said finally, the words bursting out in near desperation for noise. “This is really not anything for you to be concerned with.”
DI Creeve glanced up from beneath a pale, sparse eyebrow. His hair was so light and thin it seemed like cobwebs. His mouth was spectral. The look he gave the curator did not only pierce but twisted on its way through.
The curator laughed shakily. “Well, yes, I know there was a theft. And destruction of museum property. And Eustace did get his nose broken when that old lady hit him with her crutch. But for the publicity officer to have called the amulet ‘gold’ may be considered a liberal interpretation of the... well, to put it exactly... truth.”
DI Creeve just went on wordlessly staring.Those eyes,thought the curator while his breath cowered and his instincts ran screaming for an emergency exit. It wasn’t just that they were the color of bone. It was the way they assessed a man as if they saw... indeed, bone. And secrets, old, terrible secrets a man barely even knew he had. Shuffling back, he knocked into a bust of Thalia, which resulted in a moment ofchaotic fumbling that would have been amusing to relate had not the policeman watched it impassively, casting a chill over the scene.
“Black’s amulet was, of course, an important historical artifact,” the curator said once he had the statue and his wits straight again. “We are upset at its loss. But what can you do when pirates want to take something?”
“It was not pirates,” DI Creeve said.
“But they were everywhere! With their swords and guns and oh my God their hats, not to mention the smiles...” The curator shuddered.
“This is the work of someone even more nefarious.” Creeve spoke the word as if it were a rich chocolate with raspberry at its heart, and he licked his thin white lips afterward.
“I assure you, Detective, that we have entertained no lawyers here.”
Creeve did not respond to this hilarious joke. He just stood, staring. The curator had never seen skin splayed so awkwardly across facial bones before, nor been so doubtful of the life force behind it. One does not like to believe in ghosts when one is a historian, but this man menaced his imagination with the possibility. Many seconds later, there was a knock at the door, and the curator wrenched his eyes toward it. “That will be the cleaners.”
“Let them in,” Creeve said. “I have finished my inspection and know who committed this crime.”
“You do? Goodness, how remarkably clever.”Please go away now and arrest them and never come back.“Who was it?”
“Can you not smell her?” Creeve asked, and began to sniff the air.
“Um.” The curator attempted a sniff, although it was a pathetic affair, tempered by embarrassment. He could smell old wood, older books, and blood from the pirates’ melee. But he did not think Creeve would be interested in his olfactory report. The policeman was nosing the dusty light as if hungered by it.
“Bitterness,” Creeve said, licking the word out of the air. “Heat.From anger or perhaps passion; red heat, burning away all good sense. And—hm, lilac. Awitchwas here.”
Laughter shot from the curator’s throat. Creeve went still, and the curator hastily turned the laugh into a cough. “A witch,” he sputtered. “Goodness, how dreadful!”
“More dreadful than you can imagine.” Creeve moved his stare to a briefcase lying amongst the shattered ruins of a marble bust, and for a moment teeth appeared between his lips, small, sharp, and hungry. “A witch born of sin, raised in wickedness. An abomination.”
“Oh dear,” the curator murmured, tugging at his shirt collar, which suddenly seemed too tight.
“They areeverywhere,” Creeve hissed. “Fingering the secrets of our society, plucking, stealing, stirring things up. But this one in particular—” He sniffed the air again. “This one is their heart. Their promise for the future. Could they have been more stupid—and more helpful—marking it out with a prophecy so it’s easier to hunt down? Fear not, however. I have beenwatching. Soon I will bring it in. And then I will destroy it.”
“But we still want it for our exhib—” The curator blanched as Creeve looked back at him. “Oh, of course. You don’t mean the amulet, but the—the witch.”
Creeve’s mouth sagged with disdain. “I see you don’t understand the seriousness of this. Never mind. I plan to light a bonfire which will illuminate you. Which. Witch. Ha ha.”
“Ha ha,” said the curator.
Creeve sniffed at him. Then walking over the shattered glass, grinding it into smaller pieces beneath his boot heel, he departed the room.
“Upon my word,” the curator muttered shakily, and had to spend the rest of the morning sitting down with several nice cups of tea.
8
