“Foolish girl.”
I grabbed the sword, but with only me touching it there was no reaction this time. “What happens to it now that it’s touched undead blood?” Hugging the weapon to my chest, I watched his reaction and didn’t like the darkness that bloomed across his features. “Is it bad?” Judging by how the two fae at the bar had reacted, and the look the ogre was giving me now, I was willing to bed bad didn’t start to cover it.
“You have taken something light and fed it with darkness.”
“And?”
“Very unpredictable.”
“Dangerous unpredictable?”
The ogre took a step back from the counter and turned away. “Always danger in darkness, girl.”
Between the white-haired fae at the club, and the ogre’s dark pronouncement, I didn’t exactly feel like hauling the katana around the city with me for the rest of the night. If the fae of New York were all up in arms over my favorite weapon, it was probably for the best I just let the sword sit this one out.
After dropping the sword at home, I still wasn’t ready to face Calliope. The excitement of the evening was thrumming through me, and I needed to clear my head before I let the Oracle bombard me with any dark visions she might have had of my future with the vampires.
I found myself well out of my way for the second time that evening, wandering into Central Park, which was a favorite place for me to clear my mind. If I happened to stumble across a wayward creepy-crawly while I was here, well…Sig couldn’t really get mad at me if trouble found me, could he? I wasn’t exactly going looking for it if I was just taking a nighttime stroll. Holden thought I was spending the evening working with Keaty, so I was free to wander without my vampire shadow. Truthfully, my former warden was a little slack on his bodyguard duties. He knew I could take care of myself.
It was only nine o’clock, but the park was empty and deathly still in the frigid February air. We’d finally gotten snow on Christmas Day, and now a crystalline fog of ice clung to everything that held still too long. The towering giant of the Museum of Natural History looked like it had been dusted with sugar, glittering benignly in the light of the half moon.
The sound of shattering glass, however, was not part of the winter ambiance I’d set out to find.
I stopped walking and looked around. Considering I’d just been thinking about trouble finding me, it felt like Sig might pop out at any second and shout A-ha! I knew you were up to no good. It was hard not to feel like this was some kind of test.
There was more glass breaking, but no alarms sounded. I didn’t think that was possible in a museum as highly protected as the AMNH. Where were the guards? The alarm bells? I surveyed the back entrance of the museum like an invitation I was afraid to accept.
If the entire night staff of a museum were murdered by monsters, it probably wouldn’t bode too well for the reputation of paranormal creatures everywhere. Really, I was doing the council a giant favor by preemptively putting a stopper on what might be a huge scandal.
At least that was what I told myself as I traipsed down the steps to the recessed doors most commonly used for school field trips and tour groups. I pressed my face to the glass, my breath fogging up the space closest to my mouth. Inside, the giant Native American canoe loomed overhead, but the heavy wooden doors leading into the hall of the Pacific Coast Peoples were closed.
All the glass doors at this entrance were still locked, and none were shattered, so the breaking glass had either come from inside the museum—as I suspected—or overhead. Jogging back up the stairs, I surveyed the rows of windows on the upper floors of the museum.
Decades earlier, a pretty-boy con artist named Jack Murphy, or Murph the Surf, had used those windows as an access point to the museum and managed to steal the priceless Star of India sapphire. I had no interest in fencing precious gems, but if someone had broken into the museum tonight, those windows were their most likely point of entrance.
Doing a visual assessment of each window, I was about ready to admit I was wrong when I no
ticed one on the third floor open a tiny crack more than the others. Being that it was February, I somehow doubted a curator had left it ajar for the fresh air.
So now came the fun part—I got to scale a fucking building.
Call it dumb luck—my favorite kind—but I’d had the inadvertent foresight to wear boots without a heel tonight. They also had a sturdy grip, because the city streets were remarkably icy of late, and I wasn’t immune to wipeouts no matter how good my reflexes were. A slick sidewalk had a way of making anybody its bitch.
With my bag slung across my chest, I marched up the outer stairwell and looked for the path of least resistance. Ten minutes later I was precariously balanced on a teensy stone outcropping under the open window. My jeans were torn at the knee, and I’d invented a fun new string of profanities I hoped I’d be able to recall later.
Let me be the first to say, I will never make a good cat burglar.
The window squealed at me with exaggerated protest as I pushed it open. Inside, I found myself in someone’s cluttered office. Judging by the skeletons behind glass and all the books jammed haphazardly on the shelves, this particular curator studied reptiles. Or tiny dragons. It was hard to tell. The room smelled of Old Spice and leather.
I’d expected to hear more commotion from the inside of the museum, but the silence was so complete it felt thick and suffocating. In the hallway outside the office it was more of the same, just a quietness so complete it made my ears ring. That was more worrisome than the crashing glass, because it meant there were no usual human night watch noises. I didn’t spend much time breaking and entering in city landmarks, but I was a night person, and I knew the way places like this operated.
To minimize the sound of my footfalls on the slick stairs, I did something school children everywhere would have killed to do and slid down the marble banister from the third floor to the second. I had to do it in two parts thanks to the midlevel landing, and it wasn’t nearly as fun as I’d hoped. The thrill was ruined by the expectation I might find a dead body any second.
On the second floor I paused and listened. I was braced for more silence, but instead I was rewarded with a muffled creaking, then a loud crash. Someone swore, and for once it wasn’t me.
Entering the Hall of Marine Life from the second-floor doors, I caught my breath when I saw the massive blue whale suspended from the ceiling grinning at me with its huge, passive mouth. For a moment I forgot my purpose in being here and was struck dumb by the giant creature that appeared to be floating in the dimmed light of the hall. My life was so clouded with ugly, evil, unpleasant things it was easy to forget what real beauty looked like.
A sigh eased from my lips.