by Dan Willis
“That’s the feathered serpent,” he said. “It’s a Mayan symbol, but as far as I know it isn’t used in glyphs.”
“So I’ve got magic being made from two different schools, but with elements that neither school uses,” Alex summarized.
“I’m serious, Alex,” Jimmy said, leaning in again. “You’re a decent guy. Let this one go.”
Alex stared at him for a long moment before nodding.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Jimmy sat back and shrugged.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya,” he said.
Alex tucked his notebook into his pocket, but then paused as a thought stuck him.
“Did your grandmother say what happened to that house? The one where the dead women were found?”
Jimmy looked shocked but then he laughed.
“She said that spirits came and took the bodies,” he said. “That’s how they knew the stranger was really El Diablo. Why did you ask that?”
“Because,” Alex said, picking up his hat. “The apartment where I drew this,” he held up the notebook. “It dissolved. Melted right out of the building it was in. Collapsed part of the roof and everything.”
“Like I said, Alex,” Jimmy said as Alex banged the door for the guard. “Let it go. You’ll live longer.”
Alex closed the heavy steel door to his vault and it melted away into the wall of gray stone leaving no sign that it had ever existed. The sight always gave him a chill, but he watched it anyway. The thought that if his other doors weren’t open his vault would be his tomb was both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.
This time, however, Alex didn’t give it a moment’s thought. Resisting the urge to run, he forced himself to walk around his library, then turn down the hall toward the office door. It had taken half an hour for the authorities at Sing-Sing to process him out of the visitors area. He’d been so tempted to just open his vault in one of the many corridors, but that would have caused a lockdown, and led to the inevitable questions about how he’d managed it. He wished he’d brought Sorsha to explain him vanishing, but she had other problems. So he’d been forced to wait until he could get back to the train station and open his vault in a broom closet.
Taking out his pocketwatch, Alex opened the cover door leading to his office, revealing the back hallway. Passing by the door to his private office, Alex made his way to the end of the corridor and entered the waiting area.
“Afternoon boss,” Sherry said. She wore her usual smile, but there was something about it that gave Alex pause, like she was privy to a joke Alex hadn’t yet heard. A stack of paperwork was arranged in front of her with several folders stacked to the side, cases she thought Alex should take.
“No time,” he said as she reached for one of the folders. “I’m on my way to see Dr. Bell, then I’ll be out for an hour or so. Is there anything critical I need to know?”
“Mike is out of finding runes,” she said.
Alex suppressed a curse, pulling out his red backed book. He only had two finding runes left, so he tore one out and put it on Sherry’s desk.
“I’ll try to write some more tonight,” he said. “In the meantime, have him slow down.”
She nodded, picking up the rune and dropping it into the center drawer of her desk. Before shutting the drawer, Sherry withdrew a thick envelope made of heavy paper.
“In case you were wondering, Miss Kincaid got off okay,” she said, holding the envelope out to Alex. “She told me to give you this.”
Alex was torn between his need to talk to Iggy and the desire to open the envelope, but he tucked the latter into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
Business before pleasure.
It was one of Iggy’s favorite maxims.
“Anything else?”
Sherry’s subtle smirk returned, and she reached under one of her stacks and withdrew a folded newspaper, holding it out for Alex to take. It was a copy of The Midnight Sun and on the front page was a picture taken at The Rainbow Room. Alex could clearly see himself, striding along the back wall, dragging Sorsha behind him. The caption read, Runewright PI Chaperons Drunk Sorceress.
Alex closed his eyes and sighed. Sorsha would not be happy when she saw this.
He experienced a moment of panic as he checked the headline, but the story wasn’t by Billy.
Thank God for small favors.
“Thanks,” Alex said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “I’ll call in when I’m done with Dr. Bell.”
With that, he turned and headed back toward the cover door to his vault. This time he walked across the great room that contained his work area and library, heading down the opposite hallway toward the brownstone door. Using his pocketwatch, he released the protection runes, passed into his bedroom, then headed downstairs.
“Iggy?” he called when he reached the ground floor.
“You’re home early,” Iggy said, opening the door to the vestibule. He wore his tweed suit and flat cap, taking the latter off as he came in. “I was just out at Linda’s, helping with her brewing. She’s got most of the recipes in her mother’s book down pretty well, but I was able to show her a few refinements to her apparatus.”
Linda Kellen was Andrea Kellen’s daughter. Andrea had spent her life trying to find a cure for her daughter’s polio. She’d succeeded, but at the literal cost of her own life. Linda had inherited her mother’s shop, following in her footsteps.
“Helping?” Alex asked. Iggy was a runewright, not an alchemist, after all.
“You forget that I was trained to work closely with alchemists,” he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. “I was around them most of my youth. I know a thing or two about the mechanics of the art.”
“How’s she doing?”
Iggy gave him a penetrating look.
“She’s doing well. I daresay she’s stepped into her mother’s shoes quite well. You should go by and see her.”
Alex nodded, but without much enthusiasm. Going by Andrea’s shop always brought back memories, the kind Alex didn’t want to deal with.
“So why are you home at this hour?” Iggy persisted, passing Alex and heading into the library. “I’m parched,” he said, rolling up the cover to the liquor cabinet. “Care for a belt?”
“Sure,” he said, following Iggy into the library. “I think I need one.”
“I’d think you’d swear off after last night,” Iggy said in an unamused voice. “Linda pointed out the story on you in the tabloids.”
Alex quickly outlined the events of the previous evening while Iggy poured him some of his port.
“Sounds like Sorsha needs to be more careful,” he said, handing Alex a glass. “If you hadn’t been there, who knows what would have happened. I’m guessing, however,” he went on, taking his usual seat by the window, “that your misadventure last evening isn’t why you’re here now.”
“No,” Alex said, walking to the hearth and leaning against the heavy mantle. He took a sip of the port and started in on the story of the blood rune and its connection to the glyph runewrights.
“So you thought the killer was one of James Cortez’ friends, but he wants nothing to do with this,” Iggy summed up. “Assuming your killer is the same man as this El Diablo Jimmy’s grandmother knew.”
“You and I both know that it is possible,” Alex said. “And the details are almost exact. The question is, why is he here?”
Iggy nodded sagely, then drained his glass of port.
“I doubt he’s here for the glyph runewrights,” he said. “If this is the same man from before, he already has what he needs from them.”
Alex nodded.
“The way I see it, there are three possibilities,” Alex said. “One, it’s a coincidence. Whoever this guy is, he’s just passing through.”
“And you know how I love the idea of coincidence,” Iggy said.
“Possibility two, this is Jimmy’s El Diablo and he’s here for the same reason Jimmy and his pals came to town.”
“The so-called Entropy Stone.”
Alex nodded, holding up three fingers.
“And last,” he concluded. “Now that El Diablo has the knowledge of the glyph runewrights, he’s here for the Monograph.”
Iggy didn’t answer. He sat back in his chair and stoked his mustache.
“I don’t think your Devil could know about the Monograph,” he said at last. “We’ve been careful and Sorsha told the government that the New York lead was a dead end.”
“So that leaves coincidence or the Entropy Stone,” Alex said. “Did you ever find out anything about it?”
Iggy shook his head. Since they first heard of the stone, Iggy had been digging into history books and writings on magic, looking for any mention of it.
“Not that or anything even remotely like it,” he said. When Alex didn’t respond, he looked up with suspicion in his eyes. “What are you thinking?”
Alex finished his port, then set the glass down on the mantle.
“The only thing I can think of is to try to pick up the trail of the Entropy Stone,” he said.
“The museum,” Iggy nodded, understanding. “I’d say you’re setting yourself an impossible task. The last time we looked for it we came up empty. That said, when you’re out of hot leads, all you can do is pick up a cold one.”
Alex chuckled as he headed for the door.
“I have a feeling that, after all this, I’m going to need a cold one.”
16
Bread Crumbs
The American Museum of Natural History was on the West Side, just across the street from Central Park. A skycrawler station ran right in front of the building, so Alex went through his vault, back to his office, then down to Empire Station to catch one. At this time of day, a cab would have taken at least half an hour to get uptown from his office. Even with all the stops it made, the skycrawler beat that by ten minutes.
Alex found Weldon Swain in the Curator’s office in the museum’s basement. Despite being in the basement, Swain’s office looked like something out of a magazine. His desk wasn’t as large as Alex’s new one, but it was impressive. Made from mahogany, it glistened black like a patch of midnight. Along the walls were display cases with various little exhibits in them ranging from a display of Indian arrowheads to the skeleton of some aquatic animal. All were properly illuminated by overhead lights, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere.
“Alex,” Swain said, rising to greet him and extending a friendly hand. He was average height and thin with an immaculate gray suit and a pencil mustache.
The last time Alex had come, he’d received a very different greeting. Swain had associated the disappearance of one of his mummies with Alex’s search for the Entropy Stone. Alex had found the mummy, but when it turned out to be his secretary, literally returned from the dead, he couldn’t exactly return her. Still, Alex had mended fences, making sure that Billy Tasker’s story about the Dolly Anderson murder mentioned that the actual murder weapon was in the museum. The exhibit with the candlestick telephone had been a sensation ever since.
“You haven’t found another mystery in one of my displays, have you?” Swain wondered as Alex shook his hand.
“Sorry,” Alex said. “Actually, I wanted to ask about the Almiranta exhibit.”
A cloud of confusion washed over Swain’s face, then he chuckled.
“Oh, we haven’t had that for over a year,” he said. “It moved on to Chicago, then St. Louis, Salt Lake, Sacramento, and I believe it’s in San Francisco now.”
Alex frowned at that. He knew that Swain had struck a deal with Philip Leland, the man who’d found the treasure of the Almiranta, but he hadn’t heard that anyone else had. That pretty much shot his theory that El Diablo had come to New York looking for the Entropy Stone. Still, Alex wasn’t one to give up without a fight.
“Has anything unusual been happening around here in the last few weeks?”
Swain rolled his eyes.
“You have no idea,” he said. “We got a new dinosaur skeleton from the dig site in Utah. People keep trying to sneak in to get a look while we’re building it. Some of them are quite persistent.”
As interesting as dinosaur skeletons were, Alex doubted they had anything to do with El Diablo, but he wasn’t ready to surrender yet.
“Is there anything strange about the fossils?”
“No,” Swain said. “But we’ve managed to find a complete Tyrannosaurus. When it’s unveiled, it will be a sensation.”
Alex had a vague memory of an enormous skull the museum had displayed for several years now, one with an impressive row of dagger-like teeth.
“Sounds like it,” he admitted, trying to sound enthusiastic.
Foiled at every turn, Alex thanked the Curator and made his way back up to the main floor of the museum. A large crowd had gathered at the entrance to one of the halls where a security guard was keeping them back. As he passed, Alex could see a large drape covering something over a story tall. If that represented the height of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton, he was very glad they were extinct.
Before reaching the door, Alex stopped at the row of phone booths and dialed his office.
“Where are you?” Sherry asked once the line connected.
“The Museum,” he said, “but it’s a bust here. Is there anything I need to do before heading back?”
“Danny called,” she said. “He wants an update on your trip to Sing-Sing, but he said to call when you get a chance.”
“Anything else?”
“A man named Theodore Bell called for you,” she reported. “He says he has some information for you and asked you to come by at your earliest convenience.”
Alex brightened up at that. Any information on El Diablo would be welcome after the day he was having.
“Is he a relative of Dr. Bell’s?” Sherry asked.
“No,” Alex said. “He’s an expert on magic and the occult, runs a shop on the East Side. I’ll go see him on my way back.”
Sherry wished him well and he hung up.
Since Theodore Bell’s shop was north of the museum and on the other side of the park, Alex caught a cab to get there. The skycrawler ran that way, but he’d have to change cars twice to do it and that would make for a long trip.
As the cab made its way around Central Park, Alex reached for his rune book. He was running low on his important runes again and he wanted to take a quick inventory. When he put his hand in his pocket, however, he found the heavy envelope Sherry had given him.
Pulling it out, he found it to be made of a heavy paper that was slate gray in color. His name had been written across the face in what could only be called an elegant hand. In keeping with Sorsha’s aesthetic, the ink was a deep, sapphire blue.
“She must have an entire stationary kit in that dimensional pocket of hers,” he murmured as he carefully tore open the end of the envelope. The letter inside was on the same heavy, gray paper as the envelope and contained a short message in her flowing hand. As Alex opened it up to read it, he caught the aroma of flowers. Sniffing the paper, he confirmed that Sorsha had dabbed some of the perfume he’d given her on the paper.
Alex,
Thank you for last night. If you hadn’t kept your head, that could have gotten bad. I’m sorry I dragged you into all this, though that’s hardly a new experience for either of us.
I do regret our evening being ruined; it was lovely right up until we were drugged. I promise as soon as this protection detail is over, I will make it up to you. In the meantime, I want you to stay clear. I don’t want to have to explain your presence to the government. The less they know about you the better.
Sincerely Yours,
Sorsha
“Sincerely yours,” Alex read aloud. “How romantic.”
He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. Sorsha had promised to make the evening up to him, so at least he was out of her doghouse. As nice as that was, it di
dn’t change the fact that someone had tried to kidnap her. She had an FBI detail and now they would be on the alert, but Alex felt like she would need his help too. Unfortunately Sorsha had thought of that, pointing out that the more he interacted with the FBI agents assigned to whatever security project she was working on, the more likely someone would mention him in an official report. That was something Alex simply didn’t need. Already people were noticing that his skills far outstripped other runewrights. If someone in the government took notice, he might have to fake his death just like Iggy and go into hiding. Which would likely put an end to any relationship with Sorsha.
Alex shivered at the thought and pushed the whole affair from his mind. Sorsha was a big girl with lots of armed feds at her disposal and the mystic power of a Greek god — she’d be fine.
“Here you go, pal,” the cabbie interrupted his thoughts as he came to a stop before the run-down bookshop.
Alex paid the man, along with a generous tip, and headed inside. It was just after five, but the shop showed no sign of closing. Alex reckoned that the kind of people who frequented occult bookstores were probably part of the after-hours crowd.
“Mr. Lockerby,” Theodore Bell said as Alex entered. He was sitting in a chair next to the counter reading a thick book. The rest of the store was empty of customers.
“Call me Alex. Do you have something for me?”
“I think so,” Theodore said, setting the book aside as he stood. “And if I’m to call you Alex, you must call me Theo.”
“All right, Theo,” Alex said with a smile.
Theo reached behind the counter and came out with a thin book with a dark cover.
“I thought I recognized some of the details of that crime,” he said, paging through the book. “This was written a few years ago by Patrick Bastian, he’s a dabbler in the weird and occult. Anyway, he chronicled the biggest stories at the time, and I think you’d do well to consider this one.”
Theo handed the book to Alex, open to the spot where a new chapter began. The words across the top of the page read, Terror in Paris.