Owl and the Japanese Circus (38 page)

I turned the earpiece over. Secure frequency, decent range. High-tech. “Where did you get these?”

“Rynn gave them to me before we left Tokyo. He thought you might do something stupid. Don’t frown, he thought you’d forget them in a drawer.”

I kept frowning. Figured.

We split up; me around the back with my hoodie pulled up over my head, and Nadya towards the front entrance, looking every bit the grad student with her long brown hair tied in a ponytail and her thick, black-rimmed glasses. I stalled at the corner of the building, pretending to tie my nonexistent shoelaces. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t shake the feeling things were going to go to hell in a handbasket, which made no sense. On a bad day I wouldn’t recognize Nadya.

She paid for her ticket and entered the museum with no hassle.

OK, my turn. I turned onto the nature path that wound around
back. The brush on either side quickly thickened. I found a spot where it was dense enough to cover me, then ducked off the trail. As I approached the museum, I felt in my pocket for my UV flashlight and garlic water, just in case.

I hugged the wall until I found the heavy metal door all university buildings have. Bingo. The great thing about grad students is that they’re lazy as hell, even the archaeologists. Someone had wedged a stick into the door so it wouldn’t close completely, probably so they could go on a coffee break and get back in without having to go around to the front. I used the wedge to open it farther and peeked around the corner into a narrow hallway lit with blue floor LEDs. There was no one there, so I slipped through and eased the door shut.

The hallway ended in a pair of doors. The one to the right was ajar, fluorescent light ebbing out and a Top 40 music station playing in the background. I peeked in. A coffeepot burning coffee was housed in the corner of the closet-sized room, and two computer towers jerry-rigged together beside a thirty-two-inch monitor hummed away against the not-so-far wall, a plastic Guitar Hero guitar discarded on the desk under paperwork.

I’d stumbled into the grad student office.

There was no one around, so I slipped in to take a peek at what they were last working on. I slid a pair of gloves on first—I’m not stupid about my fingerprints.

It was the inventory list for the East India Company exhibit. I read through for the scrolls—they were on the second floor, cabinet five. I opened the file to see what kind of security they’d outfitted and breathed a sigh of relief. Level one glass cases with basic system rigged alarms. Nowhere near the security measures they’d normally put in place for supernatural or magic items. They had no idea what was sitting under their noses. Good—made my job a lot easier . . . There was a set of notes entered by the grad student in charge of the display, Mike Krascheck . . . now, why did that sound familiar?

“Who the hell are you?”

I recognized that voice. That’s why the name sounded familiar. I spun around to find Mike standing in the doorway. He was wearing a yellow biohazard T-shirt covered in coffee stains and a pair of worn brown cords that sat just below a developing beer gut—think Shaggy from
Scooby-Doo
ten years after the Scooby snacks catch up.

Mike’s angry indignation at finding someone snooping on his computer morphed into shock, then more anger as he recognized me. Mike and I had met a few times at conferences a few years back. He was one of Benji’s buddies.

His face went bright red. I think there were more broken blood vessels along his nose than there had been a few years back. “I don’t know what you want, Hiboux, but you can get the fuck right out of my office.
Now,
” he said.

I crossed my arms and slid my left hand inside my jacket, where I kept the bottle of chloroform and cotton. “Hi Mike, nice to see you too. What have I been up to, you ask? Not much since the department threw me under the bus, you know, just trying to make ends meet, keep myself out of trouble. What about you? I see you’re working hard on the beer gut.”

He sniffed. “Don’t throw your sob story at me. You knew what would happen, same thing that happens to all of us when we don’t stick with the program.”

“You think that’s what happened? I told them to fuck off three months before my defense?”

He slid his hand behind the coffeemaker stand and removed an aluminum baseball bat. “I’m giving you one more chance. Get the hell out of my office, or I’ll use this—”

My foot connected hard with Mike’s balls. Fair is great in video games and dojos, but not when I’m about to get my head split open like a watermelon at a frat party.

Mike crumpled to the floor, clutching his jewels. “Jesus fucking Christ—” His watering eyes went wide as I pinned him down and pushed a wad of chloroform-soaked cotton into his mouth.

“Yeah, about following the IAA program? Turns out you do what they say and they go ahead and fuck you over anyways. And tell Benji I’ll be seeing him soon.”

Mike passed out and I dragged his unconscious body into the closet.

My Bluetooth buzzed as I stepped out into the hall. “Alix? Where are you?”

I tapped the receiver. “I’m inside. Remember Mike Krascheck, Benji’s friend?”

“The one who looked like Scooby-Doo?”

“Shaggy, actually—Scooby-Doo was the dog. Just put him out with chloroform after perusing through the exhibit files. The scroll is on the second floor, level one security.”

“That’s good. I’ll head up and meet you there. Can you get to the second floor through the back?”

“Just a sec,” I said, and cracked open the other door in the hallway, adjacent to the office. Behind it there was a storage room–sized alcove and a set of stairs leading up. Beside the stairs was a stage door with
MUSEUM, EXHIBIT FLOOR ONE
written across it.

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Any sign of Bindi and Red?”

“Not since we saw them walk in. I’m going to pull the fire alarm in two minutes. Head upstairs and bolt the back door until people give up on that exit. We need it to get by the fire trucks and any IAA that show up. Whatever you do, don’t come out until after I’ve set off the alarm, otherwise the cameras will catch you.”

I cringed. Turning the cameras off was a fail-safe in case something supernatural caused the fire. I’d spent a lot of time—and money—wiping my picture off the university databases. I was in no hurry to stick myself back on their radar, especially after Mike woke up and told them I’d passed through. “Be careful on your end,” I said.

“You too. I’ll meet you at the case,” Nadya said before my earpiece clicked off.

I took the stairs to the second floor, dead-bolted the door, and
waited. I noted the red fire alarm bell above the door right before it went off.

“Son of a—” I dropped to my knees. Goddamn it, why are fire alarms always louder than I remember? I cupped both ears with my cargo jacket sleeves. It didn’t help, especially the ear that held the Bluetooth.

The door rattled as people tried to get into the stairwell, followed by a lot of swearing when it wouldn’t open . . . then the kicking started. Jesus Christ, how long does it take for someone to figure,
Gee, the fire escape won’t open, maybe I should find another way out
?

My ears were ringing now—as in painfully. I needed to drown out the alarm, and fast. I fished around in my bag for my earplugs—thank God some grad school habits die hard—and clicked the earpiece on. “Nadya, the fire alarm is killing me out here—see you inside,” I yelled into what I hoped was the mic. Before she could say anything—not that I would have heard—I pulled the earpiece out, shoved it in my pocket, and pushed in my grubby earplugs as fast as I could.

The idiots on the other side had stopped trying to kick the door down. I cracked the door open, easing the handle so as not to make a sound.

There was no sign of Bindi and Red. Maybe they’d thought the fire alarm was real and evacuated with everyone else . . . or maybe they were waiting around the corner with a baseball bat.

Damn it, I should have grabbed Mike’s bat when I’d had the chance.

The exhibit room was dark, punctuated by strobing red lights along the floor and crown molding. I stepped out and tried to get my bearings. Now where the hell was the glass case with my scroll?

The first display I passed by was the front half of a clipper hull dredged off the bottom of the Caribbean, along with the water-soaked logbook . . . an interesting set of chests . . . I shook my head and pulled my eyes off the displays. Not shopping for inventory.

Two glass cases and another shipwreck later, I found the Bali items. They occupied a small room off from the main exhibit, the kind
they stick the filler in so people can peruse something in between the big-ticket items.

The first and biggest case held ceramic pots and pans collected during the Dutch occupation. Trinkets really, and not worth much. The second and third cases held period clothing worn by the Dutch and the Balinese. From the smell of mothballs as I passed by, they were real. I swear mothballs have a supernatural origin—how the hell else can you smell them through an inch of sealed and climate-controlled glass?

And there were the scrolls. I put Captain’s carrier down so I could get a closer look.

“Shit.” There had to be thirty scrolls crammed into the two cases, and the red strobe lights made it near impossible to make any of the writing out. I started to rummage through my bag for my UV flashlight when I heard the closet door jostle. I dove behind the ship hull with Captain. The door jostled again as someone—or something—on the other side wrestled with the handle. Where the hell was that flashlight? I dumped the contents of my pack on the floor until my two flashlights rolled out. I readied one, aiming it at the closet door, and shoved the other one into my pocket. The door creaked open, and I turned the flashlight on.

“Alix, what the hell? Get that light off me.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as Nadya stepped out. “Sorry, I thought it was Bindi or Red.”

She stepped out, a frown etched on her face. “If you hadn’t taken your earpiece out, you’d have known they left with everyone else. Apparently their madness and loyalty to Marie is still trumped by death by fire.”

“You’re sure? They’re gone?”

Nadya nodded. “They were looking at logbooks downstairs in the glass cases and left out the front doors when the fire alarm went off. I think they were only doing reconnaissance. I don’t think they even know it’s here.”

Well, thanks for small and infrequently spaced miracles.

Nadya did a quick scan of the room before glancing at her watch. “Not to nag, but have you found the scroll yet? A few minutes and this place will be crawling with firemen and IAA.”

“Here,” I said, and tossed her my extra UV flashlight. “Help me search through these. Look for the symbols.” I hated exposing any of the scrolls to UV, but there was no other way we’d find the supernatural needle in the haystack. Besides, we couldn’t take all of them and figure it out later—five maybe, not thirty.

Nadya caught my flashlight and started searching through the second case. “Rule out anything singed or damaged. The spell scroll is near indestructible,” she said.

The first four in my case were an easy rule out. Singed from too much sun exposure over the years, probably in someone’s private collection. The next four were covered in typical Balinese writing from the ninth century, also an easy rule out. Worth something, but not what I was looking for today.

I shook my head. “I think these are all a bust—”

“What about these two?” Nadya said.

I moved to the second case. Nadya had made it halfway through, and she shone her light on two scrolls near the center. My heart rate jumped; the writing was definitely not Balinese. I kept myself in check until I found something I recognized. I re-angled my flashlight to get a better look at three symbols in the bottom left-hand corner, like a signature. Both looked uncannily like the writing on the tablets. “Go figure, what are the chances two spell scrolls are sitting in the same place?” I stood on my toes and aimed the flashlight to get a better look . . . if I could just find a matching set of symbols, any matching set of symbols . . .

Sirens sounded in the distance and closed fast. Nadya ran to the window and peeked through the heavy blinds that protect the museum from sunlight.

“Hurry up. The fire department is here, along with an unmarked
SUV.” Unmarked SUVs—the favorite transportation of IAA officials everywhere. My heart rate spiked.

“I’m going as fast as I can.” But it was no use. I needed to take the scrolls out to figure which one was which. “Keep an eye on the firemen.” I went for my tool kit, then changed my mind as I caught sight of a silver trash can sitting in the corner of the room. I ran for it; I didn’t have time to be fancy and careful.

I hefted the trash can over my head and brought it down on the glass. It bounced off, sending a painful shock through my shoulder. Damned reinforced Plexiglas. I hit the cabinet again. This time it cracked.

“Alix, they’ve opened a metal box on the side of the building, and they’re arguing with someone, looks like faculty.”

“As long as they’re outside,” I said. I brought the trash can down for a third time and the Plexiglas broke. If breaking the display cabinet set off a second alarm, and I’d bet money it had, I didn’t hear it over the fire alarm. That wouldn’t last long though, with the firemen here now. I grabbed the two scrolls and unrolled them.
Come on, symbols, give me something I recognize . . .

There it was, in the middle of the page, a set of three symbols that matched the blood ones from the first Bali temple. I shoved the scroll in my bag and shoved the second one inside my jacket. Just in case.

“Come on, time to run for it,” I said, and bolted towards the exit I’d used to get in.

We’d reached the main exhibit display room when the fire alarm shut off. My ears were relieved, but my stomach turned as I heard the quieter, second alarm that said, “Intruders.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Alix! You set the alarm off.”

“Didn’t have time to disarm it.” I slid into the back door and tried the handle.