by Logan Jacobs
“Thank you all for coming so quickly,” she said graciously once she reached us. Her hands were clasped in front of her tightly, and she gave a little half bow as she spoke. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Kalista’s eyebrows raise as she bit back a smirk.
“Of course,” Ariette said as she stepped forward and extended her hand. “I’m Ariette, and this is my team, Kalista, Milton, and Maaren.”
“It is lovely to meet you all,” the blonde said as she shook each of our hands vigorously. Her palms were warm but tough like leather, and I pulled out of her grasp as quickly as I could without being impolite.
“I’m Joan Archer,” she continued once she worn our arms out. “I am a curator of many of the artifacts here at the museum as well as the head of the Board of Directors. We have all had such a harrowing night, and I was just afraid our darling police wouldn’t be able to handle such a difficult, dirty task.”
“Catching a burglar is ‘dirty work’ now?” Kalista chuckled, but Joan, for her part, didn’t look at all amused.
“Well, when it’s as heinous of a crime as this one, I should think so!” she exclaimed in response and looked as if Kalista’s comment had physically hurt her.
“Right, of course,” I interjected as I shot the dwarf a look to tell her to cut the attitude. “Can you tell us what happened?”
“Well, I wasn’t actually here, of course,” she replied with a dramatic wave of her hand, “but when Dave Yang, our second shift night guard, came around to check on the egg, it was just gone. Poof!” Joan threw her hands up to indicate the egg’s disappearance, and then she let loose a quick, high-pitched laugh.
“Poof,” Ariette repeated slowly. “We might be Fae, but ‘poof’ is not really something we can work with. Anything else?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so,” Joan responded with a vapid smile.
“Okay then, thank you, Joan,” the elf continued, “for being so helpful with that information--”
“Do you think I’ve cracked the case?” Joan interrupted Ariette eagerly. “I’ve always dreamt of being a detective. If my anthropological career didn’t work out that is.”
“Uh, yep, totally,” the elf responded quickly. “And to crack it even further, we’re going to have to take a look at your security cameras and poke around the crime scene, okay?”
“Oh, of course, of course!” Joan exclaimed gleefully. “Nigel here will take you right to our guard station so you can have a look!”
She waved at the guard who had greeted us, and he stumped over slowly. Without a word, he flicked his chin at the four of us as a silent order to follow him, and then he walked out of the room. Joan stayed behind, and I could feel her eyes on us as we left. I turned around when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and she instantly smiled and waved.
I hesitantly waved back, but just before that smile had appeared, I swore her eyes were cold and narrowed.
Chapter 3
Nigel led us through a maze of halls, archways, and giant rooms filled with art and artifacts. One room made me stop almost completely, and I had nearly lost my breath as I marveled at its wonders.
The space was circular, and the top was shaped like a dome. The entire exhibit hall was lit by sunshine that streamed through the stained glass ceiling, and everything was tinted red and blue from the illumination of the mosaic shards. But it was the ceiling itself that was completely breathtaking. Scenes and people were carved into the glass, and they were all so intricately made that in the sunlight they seemed to move.
“It’s the final battle of the Great War,” Kalista said to me as I craned my neck to take in the full view. “The one on the bear is Kohr, legendary leader of the Fae and close friend of Arion. This was not long after he took over as king and commander of the army. After Arion fell.”
She shook her head sadly, and it almost looked like Kal was fighting back tears. It was hard to blame her. As much as human schools lacked in history lessons, this was one thing that had been driven into our skulls.
Kohr, the current king of the Seelie, was the reason we were all still around today. He watched his best friend die in battle and allowed his grief to fuel him. Almost single-handedly, the great elven warrior felled half the Unseelie army with his Hand of Fire, and then he forced the Unseelie into signing the treaty that now kept them far, far away from all of us. That day, his Hand had been stronger than he even knew was possible.
As I gazed at the stained glass depiction of Kohr astride his bear, the ceiling actually began to move. The bear bucked up and then fell back to the ground on all fours, and Kohr let loose a stream of red glass that snaked over to the opposite side of the dome. There, the glass was stained yellow and green and blown into the shapes of orcs, goblins, and trolls. The colored figures attempted to run, but they were quickly swallowed by the red glass. And then, just as quickly as it started, the glass illustrations reverted back to their original positions, froze for a moment, and then the battle started all over again.
I bit back a yelp of surprise as I watched the figures battle it out. A strange mix of awe and anticipation rose in my stomach, and I had to laugh. There would never be a day where magic wasn’t infinitely cool.
“This might be a stupid question, Kal,” I uttered in awe, “but how do I get one of these in my--”
“Guys, come on!” Ariette called back to Kalista and me. “You want your share of the bounty, don’t you?”
Kal and I looked at each other and then hurried out of the domed room to follow Nigel.
We journeyed up three flights of polished wooden stairs to the fourth floor, and then we walked through two display rooms full of old human art that looked like they were from the Renaissance before we finally made it to our destination.
There it was, the room where the phoenix egg had been kept.
The room was fairly small and square, only about ten feet wide and ten feet long, and it was completely bare except for a carved golden pedestal. The pedestal was surrounded by blue velvet ropes that ensured people didn’t come too close. On top of the pedestal sat a fancy red pillow with an egg-shaped dent in the center. The sunlight that came in through the skylight in the ceiling fell in a perfect golden square around the pillow, and I could just imagine how angelic the egg had looked when it was there.
“Alright, guys,” Ariette spoke as she took in the empty pedestal. “Let’s fan out. Everybody cover a corner of the room and work from there to the center. I want to see if we find anything. Hairs, ripped fabric fibers, hell, if you find a toenail, I want to see it.”
“Got it,” I replied, and then the four of us retreated to our separate corners. Nigel stood in the entryway and watched the three women with wide eyes, and I thought I caught a bit of drool slip from the corner of his mouth as he gawked.
Unfortunately, my search was unfruitful. Other than an old fry container that held the rotten core of a green apple, which I seriously doubted was left behind by our seasoned thief, there was nothing. The place was totally clean.
“I got nothing.” I sighed when we met back in the center of the room. We stood on each side of the pedestal and stared at the dent in the pillow. Maaren had her arms crossed over her chest, and a look of serious aggravation twisted on her face. Kalista was thoughtful as she surveyed the room, and I was sure she was thinking about what she would do if she were the thief. And Ariette looked… well, perplexed.
“Hey, Nigel, what security measures do you have here?” I called out to the chubby guard.
He straightened up and looked at me.
“We got lasers and cameras,” he grunted, “but the guy took out the cameras. The lasers trip our security system and throw the whole room into lockdown.”
“Lasers,” I repeated, “can we see those?”
“Yeah, hold on.” He turned his fat chin downward so he could talk into the little black walkie-talkie strapped on his chest. Moments later, a thick black shade slid over the sunroof and made the room almost completely dark. Then, a high pitc
hed whir sounded, but there was nothing else to be seen in the room.
“How did they get out without tripping the system?” Kalista wondered aloud.
“They couldn’t unless they knew what to avoid,” Maaren said slowly. Abruptly, she spun on her heel and strode toward the wall. She only got about two steps in that direction before there was a loud clang. We all turned to look at the entrance, which was now covered in an iron security gate that had fallen from the ceiling. I looked up to see the skylight was covered in one too.
The moment someone tripped one of those lasers, there was no way out.
“They didn’t trip the laser,” Nigel called out obviously from the other side of the gate.
“Thank you for that information,” Ariette replied sarcastically. “Can you turn off the lockdown protocol now?”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” he replied and muttered into his walkie talkie again. Within seconds, the iron gates lifted, and the skylight appeared once more.
“You know, if you want to see where the lasers are, I have some baby powder,” Nigel said suddenly as if that would solve all of our problems. “I saw some people do it in an old movie once…”
“That would be nice,” I responded, and then I choked back a laugh as the security guard actually dug around in his pocket. His expression was deadly serious as he tossed a small plastic container toward me and then spoke into his walkie talkie. Once more, the skylight was blacked out.
I grabbed a pinch of the soft powder and blew it into the air in front of me before I passed it to Maaren. Each of us did the same thing and watched as the powder revealed the entire room was covered in criss-crossed bright red lasers. I could tell it was possible to create a path over and under them to get in and out of the room, but whoever did that must have known exactly where they were before they stepped into the fray of neon red beams.
“Alright, Nigel, you can turn it off.” Ariette waved her hand in the guard’s direction, but her eyes were fixated on the red laser beams until they flickered out.
“You said they blacked out the security cameras?” Kalista wandered over to Nigel as her bright violet eyes surveyed the nearly invisible cameras hidden in the corner of the room.
“Yes,” Nigel replied.
“Like, in the whole museum?” the dwarf prompted.
“Well, no,” the guard said through a chuckle. “That’d be almost impossible.”
“We live in a world where people ride bears into battle and kill fairies by shooting fire out of their hands,” she explained. “Nothing is impossible.”
Kalista then paused and stared at the guard. At first he didn’t seem to get the hint, but then his face lit up when the lightbulb finally went off in his head.
“Oh, you want to see the feeds?” he realized.
“That would be nice, yeah,” Kalista snorted back.
“Right this way.” The guard stumbled backward before he righted himself and led us to a small, dark room thrust into a corner of the hallway, just a little ways down from where the egg was kept.
“You mean to tell me the guard room is basically right next to the room the thief was in?” Ariette asked in an accusatory tone as Nigel swung open a small door to reveal a desk with four computers on it.
“Hey, I didn’t design this place,” he said defensively, “and besides, we’re taught to do rounds every half an hour. When this guy came in, Valerie Burke was on her rounds. She was three floors away.”
“Some security you humans have,” Kalista snorted as she planted herself in front of the computers. “Not even an enchantment or a protective hex or anything.”
Maaren and I shared a look at the hostile tones of the two full Fae beside us. Every once in a while, something they would say or do would remind me that even though I was human, and we all got along amazingly, it wasn’t quite like that for the rest of the population.
“Kal, you’re our techie,” Ariette questioned. “What are you thinking?”
The hacker’s face was hard as she pulled up the feeds from last night and pointed at the center screen. A figure in dark clothes, complete with a bank robber style ski mask, appeared around the corner of the dome-shaped room with the depiction of Kohr on the ceiling. Kalista switched through the cameras to track his progress as he crept through the museum and easily avoided the guard, Burke, who could be seen doing her rounds on some of the feeds.
“This person knew exactly where she’d be,” Kalista mused, and her voice bordered on annoyance and awe. “It makes me wonder if they have some sort of foresight powers. Even though we haven’t seen one of those in years.”
The video feed tracked the thief until just before the landing on the fourth floor. Then whoever was under that ski mask pulled out a tiny, pen-like object, and flashed a small red beam straight into the eye of the camera. It went dead immediately. Then, the same thing was repeated in the room with the Phoenix egg, but this time, the thief made sure not to be caught on camera.
“They knew this Burke wouldn’t be watching the cameras,” Kalista explained, “and they knew exactly when to start taking the cameras out. Don’t draw attention like that until the last minute, but make sure no one can see what you do in the room.”
We all watched as the camera in the egg room showed the brilliant purple egg as it lay on its pedestal. And then, suddenly, the feed was dead, and the screen went black. Two computers over, Burke looked in on a room full of ancient human artifacts and was none the wiser to the theft going on two floors above her head.
“Are we all thinking the same thing?” I asked as I surveyed the faces of my female partners. The expression on each of their faces was nearly identical. Their lips were drawn in thin lines, their eyebrows were knitted together, and their eyes were hard as glass.
“This person had someone on the inside to feed them information,” Ariette said quietly.
“Whoa, hold on there,” Nigel interrupted. “No way. No one here would do that. We’re a close-knit family around these parts.”
“Dude, we aren’t asking for your opinion on your coworkers,” Kalista responded sharply. “This was too perfect. Either they work here, or they know someone who does and used them for information. There’s no other way they would’ve known where Burke would be on her rounds, the placement of the lasers, and what cameras to take out to mask their actions but not draw too much suspicion.”
“We’re going to need a list of everyone who has access to the security plans,” I ordered the guard as his face began to turn pale.
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded breathlessly. “Someone on the inside, wow. You think you know people...”
He turned and plodded off to get us what we asked for, and Maaren let out a loud laugh.
“It’s like we just told him the earth is going to explode.” The blue-skinned Fae chuckled. “Man, we all came to that conclusion, like, an hour ago. How did he not think it through?”
“Faith in his team, I guess.” Ariette shrugged. “I mean, would you be so open to accept it if someone told you one of us was a turncoat?”
“No, I guess not,” Maaren relented.
Nigel returned with a manila folder in his hands, and he handed it to Ariette grimly.
“That’s the names of everyone who knows the security plan,” he grumbled. “There’s only four of us.”
“Out of these people, who’s here right now?” Ariette asked as she scanned down the paper.
“Just me, Stephens, and Joan,” he replied, but his eyes wouldn’t meet ours. “Burke asked to be sent home. Said she wasn’t feeling well.”
I glanced at Ariette and immediately knew she had the same idea I did. Burke was currently our prime suspect.
“Thank you, Nigel,” I said to the guard. “Just out of curiosity, do you have an alibi for last night?”
“Yeah,” he grunted in response, almost angry I even asked. “I already told you I wasn’t here. My wife will tell you that, too. Probably mention I was laying in bed, snoring like a freight train as always. She loves to l
ead with that, for some reason.”
“Thank you, we’ll be sure to ask her,” Maaren said softly, and then she reached out and put her hand on Nigel’s arm. “Could you send Joan and Stephens to us, please? We’d like to speak with both of them.”
He nodded and nearly dashed off. I could see the tail end of a blush creep up his neck, but I couldn’t tell if it was anger or nervousness.
“Alright.” Ariette set the paper down so Kalista could have a look at it. “HC and I are going to talk to these two. Kal, could you and Maaren go back to the van and look up histories on this Valerie Burke lady?”
“Yeah, sure,” Kalista replied as she snatched up the paper. “It’s probably going to take a while, though. It’s not like I’m researching some sort of celebrity or famous CEO. This is a low-level employee at a museum. The poor woman probably barely makes enough to survive!”
“All the more reason to help steal a phoenix egg, no?” Ariette shrugged. “Let us know when you find anything.”
Kal and Maaren jogged out of the room and almost knocked Joan over on the way.
“Have you found our culprit yet?” Joan asked before she even stepped fully through the door.
Ariette’s head cocked unconsciously to the side at the question.
“Well, no,” the elf responded, and I heard anger creep into her voice. “It’s going to take much longer than that to--”
“We’re still figuring out just how they got past your vast security systems,” I interrupted Ariette. After hearing the snarkiness in the Fae’s voice, it was probably better for Joan’s survival that I did the talking.
Joan straightened her back like it was attached to a pole and donned an expression of perfect amazement.
“Yes, I am, too!” she exclaimed, her tone gratingly high-pitched. “Amazing what these thieves can do nowadays, isn’t it? Especially when you’ve got an idiot manning the computer system. Stephens fell asleep last night, he told me. Imagine if he’d managed to stay awake and do the job he’s paid for! Could’ve stopped this whole fiasco.”