When she handed her bag over to the security guard, she felt as if the fake citrine was flashing red, making its presence known through the lining of her purse, where Winthrop had carefully sewn it with neat stitches. She had to stifle a tell-tale sigh of relief when the guard gestured her through to a small room behind a door marked “private”.
The archivist of the museum’s geology collection, which included its gems and semi-precious stones, was a middle-aged man with a lined face. “It’s such a shame to have taken it off display,” he said, “but we can’t take any chances until the security system’s been updated.”
“Can’t be too careful,” Teresa agreed solemnly. “There are some very untrustworthy people in the world.”
Teresa had shamelessly exploited her position as a gem empath for Allied to get access to the citrine. After Emerson’s attempt to steal the jewel, the museum had decided to install a new security system. Teresa’s story was that Allied would need to update their insurance policy to reflect that, and that meant she needed to re-authenticate the citrine.
The gem was stunning. It lay on the table on a velvet cloth, glowing with soft golden light. To Teresa’s eyes, the fake in her purse looked like cheap costume jewelry in comparison, even though she knew it was a valuable gemstone in its own right. Maybe it was because of the way the Sunrise Citrinefelt. Even though her gem empath powers were weak in comparison to her sister’s, she could feel a warm glow of soothing energy rolling from the stone. Deep inside it, sparks of sunlight seemed to sparkle and fade.
She couldn’t believe she was going to steal it. She’d spent her whole life fretting about doing the right thing, trying to please her mother by making up for her father’s moral failings. But she realized now that sometimes it wasn’t that black and white. All she’d managed to do was make herself and everyone around her miserable. Now she could do the right thing by breaking the rules.
She took a deep breath and willed the wobble out of her voice. It didn’t completely work, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter.
“Mr. Blake,” she said, “forgive me – I wasn’t expecting the gem to be quite so powerful. Do you have a pair of gloves I could use to handle it?”
She wasn’t powerful enough for a gemstone to hurt her just by touching her skin, and anyway the citrine’s energy was all warmth and light. But Allied made a point of talking up its very powerful empath employee, and was reticent on the point ofwhichemployee. It was just good business practice to let every client think they were getting the best.
“Oh, of course.” Mr. Blake turned away to grab a pair of the white cotton gloves the museum kept on hand for handling fragile exhibits. He had to pull open three or four drawers before he found the right one.
Heart beating so fiercely she was surprised the guards didn’t hear it and come running in, Teresa quickly ripped open the stitches in the lining of her purse, tucked the Sunrise Citrine inside and replaced it with the very pretty but completely powerless stone Gabriel had given her.
Then she smiled politely as Mr. Blake turned back and she accepted a pair of gloves from him.
The ten or fifteen minutes filling out meaningless paperwork were excruciating. At every moment she expected Mr. Blake to extract the Sunrise Citrine from her purse with a flourish, and call the police, and then she’d be marched out of the museum in shame, and the judge would call her a menace to society, and she’d go to prison… Would Winthrop visit her? She didn’t have the nerve to be a jewel thief…
But a few minutes after Mr. Blake had conscientiously double-checked and signed the forms, written in fake legalese that would have given Allied’s lawyers a nervous breakdown, she was being ushered out of the museum.
