Ice rolled down my spine.
The guard, a middle-aged blond woman, saw us, rose, and bowed her head. “Greetings, Prime Baylor and Significant Harrison. Please deposit your weapons on the counter. Your party is waiting in the Keeper’s office, fifth floor.”
She’d made it. Phew.
Why hadn’t she stayed in the lobby?
Cornelius and I put our firearms on the counter. Cornelius nodded at Gus. “Wait.”
The Doberman lay down on the floor and watched us board the elevator.
The lights above the door flickered, counting off the floors. My heart was beating too hard.
The doors slid open, and we walked into a long hallway with rows of doors branching off to both sides. At the very end, the heavy black double doors stood wide open. I made a beeline for that doorway as fast as I could without breaking into a run.
We walked into a massive round room lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves that were crammed to capacity. A round counter guarded the entrance. A small lamp glowed on it with a warm yellow light. Behind the counter several comfortable leather couches occupied the center of the room, illuminated by a chandelier. The Keeper of Records sat on the couch to the left. Across from him, sipping tea from a small blue cup, sat my mother.
A crushing weight dropped off my shoulders and hit the floor. If it had mass, it would have broken through the wood and kept falling until it landed in the lobby.
The Keeper of Records turned to me. He was of average height, slim, and old. Time had wrinkled his brown skin, carving a road map of years around his eyes and mouth, and turned his hair white. He wore a brown three-piece suit with a copper-and-black bow tie. His expression was always welcoming, but his eyes, guarded by large glasses, stopped you in your tracks. So dark, they appeared black, they sparkled like two pieces of polished black jade.
“Prime Baylor,” the Keeper said, “it’s been so long. What a pleasure to see you again.”
Mom looked at me. Her eyes were wide.
“Good afternoon, Keeper. Thank you for keeping my mother company. We are so sorry to trouble you.”
The Keeper smiled. His teeth were white and sharp. “It’s not a bother. We’re always happy to visit with House Baylor, aren’t we, Michael?”
Michael emerged from the shadows. He didn’t stride out, he congealed, like some mythical wraith coalescing from darkness. It was probably my imagination, and he must have walked out of some niche between the bookshelves, but one moment it was just the four of us, and then suddenly there were five.
Michael nodded. In his mid-twenties, he wore a black suit with a white shirt that set off his bronze skin. His hair was black and cut short with just enough length on top to keep it from being a buzz cut. Black and grey tribal tattoos swirled over the exposed skin of his hands and neck. His face was handsome, with what people called “good bones,” and his eyes were an odd color, almost yellow when the light caught his irises like the old scotch Linus liked to drink.
The Keeper turned to Cornelius. “It is wonderful to see you again, Significant Harrison.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” Cornelius said. “It’s been a long time since my trials.”
“Fifteen years, three months, and fourteen days. Should you wish to revisit your certification, our doors are always open.”
Cornelius drew back slightly. “That won’t be necessary.”
“As you prefer.”
Nobody “revisited” certification unless they thought they would test higher and up their rank. I would have to tell Nevada. Like me, she’d been convinced for years that Cornelius deliberately held back at his trials.
The Keeper steepled his fingers on his bended knee. “Now, what can the Office of Records do for House Baylor?”
Going to the Keeper of Records for information hadn’t been the plan. The plan had been to grab Mom from the lobby and get the hell out of here, hoping to make it home before we got attacked. But now we were here, and he’d served Mom tea. He’d made an event out of it, and I couldn’t just say, “Thanks, got to run.”
Perhaps this was an opportunity. The Keeper was the expert on magic bloodlines. I could get a lot of my questions answered. But what would it cost me?
The Office of Records was one of two magic-related institutions that did not fall under my jurisdiction, the Assembly Tribunal being the other. I couldn’t compel the Keeper to comply. Anything he told me was strictly voluntary and the more I asked, the higher the cost would be.
Years ago, Nevada had promised the Keeper that she would fulfill an unspecified favor in return for sparing our evil grandmother Victoria. Since I had started my apprenticeship with Evil Grandmother, she’d mentioned this favor at least ten times. Not many things kept Victoria Tremaine up at night, but this one sure did. She stressed again and again that the Office of Records balanced the favor owed by the favor given and sparing her had been a significant favor.