“Then that’s all you need to be concerned about. She’s going to be fine.” I turned to leave. It was getting too stuffy all of a sudden and I needed air.
“It isn’t only her physical state I’m worried about,” Jason said. “I know you’ve been filling her head with crazy nonsense.”
“What?” I turned to face him.
“You know what I’m talking about. Every time I called her she was like a giddy schoolgirl, telling me how she loved her job and that little nowhere town. She told me you were helping her put in the time she needed to be an investigator herself. I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but Felicity doesn’t belong over there. You’re making things worse by telling her she could be an investigator, too, filling her head with crazy ideas.”
“She could be an investigator,” I said evenly. I wasn’t going to let this guy rile me. “That isn’t crazy.”
“Of course it is. She belongs here with me.”
“Maybe she can decide that for herself.”
He snorted. “She doesn’t know what she wants most of the time.”
“We’re done here,” I said, turning toward the door.
He grabbed my arm. “Listen,” he said. “Tell her you can’t take her back. Make her stay here and put all these silly notions of being an investigator out of her head.” He reached inside his trouser pocket and pulled out a black leather wallet. “If it’s money you need….”
I swatted the wallet out of his hand. It went flying across the room and slapped against the wall. Then I shook him off me a little more vigorously than necessary and he stumbled backward, landing on his ass.
“Don’t ever speak to me again,” I told him before walking out into the corridor.
When I got outside, I took in a lungful of the night air and let it out slowly, trying to stay calm. Felicity was going to be okay, that was what mattered. I just had to hold onto that thought and not give in to the urge to go back up there and throw Jason out of the window.
I wasn’t ready to go to the hotel yet; I needed to move, to let off the pent-up anger I felt building inside me. Instead of going to the parking lot, I headed for the wide path that followed the bank of the Thames.
As I walked beneath the dull glow of the streetlights, the river dark and mysterious beside me, I pulled up the collar of my jacket and stuffed my hands into my pockets.
The night had become suddenly cold.
Chapter 11
The following morning, I woke up in my hotel room to the sound of rain drumming on the windows. Sliding out of bed and pulling back the curtains, I looked out over the gray city. It was a good day to visit the museum. I had nothing else to do until tonight, when I was going on a hunting trip in the cemetery with my dad, so I might as well touch the ancient statue and recite the formula Felicity had given me.
I took the scrap of paper out of my jeans pocket and looked at the hieroglyphs she had written down in five neat rows. These simple characters could be the key to unlocking the memories the satori had put behind a door in my mind. Speaking the sounds that each hieroglyph represented softly, I was satisfied I could do what was required to work the magic of the statue.
After calling the hospital and being told by a nurse that Felicity was in the same condition as last night, I showered and dressed and went down to the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast.
Two hours later, I decided to leave the Land Rover in the hotel parking lot and hail a cab. It was easier to get around London in a cab or on the London Underground and many people who lived here didn’t even own cars. However, the Land Rover would be useful later tonight. I didn’t want to take a cab to Highgate Cemetery, loaded down with stakes and magical artifacts. It might just raise suspicion.
The busy streets meant that my journey to the museum was a long one and I sat in the back of the cab, learning the magical formula so that by the time I was dropped off outside the museum, I knew the sound combination without having to refer to the slip of paper.
It was still raining when I got out of the cab. I rushed across the forecourt between huddles of tourists in plastic ponchos toward the museum entrance, an imposing example of Greek revival architecture with high columns fashioned after the style of ancient Greek temples. When I got inside, out of the rain, I went to the ticket desk and bought a ticket to the Sunken Cities exhibition.
The museum was busy, buzzing with life and sound as visitors marveled at the high glass ceiling of the Great Court, the main entrance area of the museum. I’d been here before many times yet the grandeur of the building never failed to awe me. Unlike the tourists talking excitedly to each other, I had no one to speak to, and I felt alone in the vast architectural space. I wished Felicity could be here.
I was confident that I could tap into the statue’s magic and open the locked door in my mind, but I had no idea what effect that would have on me. Would my memories return slowly in fragments or would they come flooding into my head like an unstoppable tidal wave? Tapping into powerful magic could be dangerous and I’d rather not do it alone.
But I had no choice. I strode purposefully across the Great Court to the Sunken Cities entrance and showed my ticket to the attendant there. Once inside, I pushed my way through the crowd in search of the statue of Hapi, God of the Nile Flood.
It wasn’t too difficult to find a eighteen-foot-tall statue and when I reached it, I stood admiring it for a moment. This magical artifact had been buried in the silt at the bottom of the Nile for over a thousand years, and now I stood before it as the ancient Egyptians had once done when it stood in the temple at Heracleion.
The statue of Hapi had obviously been built to inspire awe, standing so high that my head was at the level of its knees. It depicted the god stepping forward with one great stone foot, holding a bowl in his arms, the bowl that symbolically contained the nourishment that the Nile floods brought to the land. Hapi wore a stone headdress that reached almost to the ceiling.
I tore my eyes away from the impressive piece of stonework and looked at the crowd around me. Dozens of people stood staring at the statue, some taking photos of it on their phones. I was obviously not going to get a quiet moment alone with the artifact. I was just going to have to go up to it and perform the ancient while tourists from all over the world watched me. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any pyrotechnics or glowing sparks of magic because that would be tough to explain.
Taking a deep breath, I prepared myself to step up to the statue and lay my hands on it. Hopefully, I could speak the magical formula before I got thrown out by a security guard.
As I made my move, I felt a hand grab my arm and a woman’s voice said, “Wait.” This was ridiculous; I’d barely moved an inch before I’d been stopped. I turned around expecting to see one of the museum’s guards.
Instead, I looked into the dark brown eyes of a woman I’d met once before. It took a moment for my brain to attach a name to the pretty Japanese woman who had grabbed me.
Then it came to me. I was standing face to face with Sumiko.
The satori who had stolen my memories.
Chapter 12
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “How did you find me?”
“I knew that you would be at this place at this moment. I also know why you are here.”
“Yeah, to get back the memories you stole from me.”
She shook her head. “No. Please, come with me and I will explain it to you.” Stepping away from the statue she gestured for me to follow her.
I hesitated. This was the woman who had caused me so much trouble in Paris and then thrown a memory wipe into my head. Why should I trust her, or even listen to her? But looking at her pleading expression made me decide to follow her. Hell, she owed me an explanation, and the statue wasn’t going anywhere.
She led me out of the Sunken Cities exhibition and back to the Great Court. I followed her to an area where the tourist traffic was relatively light. We could hear each other talk here but not be overheard becaus
e of the general background hum of voices.
“I came here to warn you,” Sumiko said. “You helped me in Paris, so I feel I should repay the favor.”
“You’ve already helped me more than enough. Your version of helping someone is to make them forget everything.”
“No, you are wrong, Alec Harbinger. I am not guilty of what you are accusing me of.”
“Then why can’t I remember clearly what happened in Paris? Why can’t I remember mailing an ancient Egyptian box to myself? And why did a witch tell me there’s a magical locked door in my head?”
She nodded. “I altered your memory of Paris. I admit that. But I did so for your own good. I was trying to keep you out of trouble because you had been kind to me.”
“Trouble is my business,” I said. “I don’t need you to decide what I can or can’t remember about the events in my own life.”
She lowered her eyes. “I thought I was doing you a kindness. I see now that I may have been wrong in that regard.” She looked genuinely upset.
“Look,” I said gently, “I know that you probably thought you were doing the right thing, but it isn’t right to go messing with people’s heads like that.”
“Even if I did it to protect you?”
I frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“What you remember of the events in Paris is a memory that I placed in your mind to protect not only you but the entire world. Your recollection is that after you found Pierre Louvain’s body in his apartment, you went to the catacombs and fought some vampires before finding me with my dead captors. You then believe that you told me to flee the country because the Society of Shadows wanted me to join them, but you knew there were unknown members of the Society who could not be trusted. You did not want my power to fall into the wrong hands.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I remember.”
“None of these things are true.”
“Oh, great. So where does reality end and the false memory begin?”
“After you found Pierre Louvain’s body. You did not go to the catacombs and you did not fight vampires there. When I created the false memory, it had to be something that you would believe, that was consistent with your character, otherwise your mind would reject it eventually. Rescuing me from vampires was entirely consistent with who you are, so your mind readily accepted that memory as real.”
“I didn’t go to the catacombs that night?” My head was beginning to hurt.
“No, you did not.”
“But Pierre Louvain left a message for my father. L’empire de la mort. Empire of the dead. I connected it to the inscription over the entrance to the catacombs. You may have wiped my memory, but my father got that message from Pierre.”
“That was a coincidence that worked in my favor. Your father did receive the message and he told you about it. I made it seem to you that it referred to the Paris catacombs. That fitted neatly into the false memory. But Pierre was not speaking of the catacombs at all. He was referring to an actual empire of the dead. A world ruled by an army of the dead.”
I was beginning to understand. “So the message gave you the idea for the catacomb story.” When Devon Blackwell had touched me in the bookshop and whispered, “Empire of the dead,” I’d thought she meant the catacombs. I had no ideas it was something much worse.
“So Pierre was referring to the Staff and Box of Midnight?” I asked Sumiko.
“Yes. He was not giving a location in that message, he was giving a warning.”
I went over it in my mind, trying to take it all in. I’d always known my memory of Paris was false, but to learn that I hadn’t gone to the catacombs that night and rescued Sumiko from vampires and rogue investigators was confusing.
“So what really happened that night?”
“I owe you an answer to that question,” she said. “I was kidnapped, just as Pierre had reported. I allowed myself to be taken because I wished to learn who the kidnappers were and whether or not they knew the location of the Box of Midnight. My reason for being in Paris was to recover the Box of Midnight and take it somewhere safe where it could not be used by anyone.”
“But it ended up in my possession,” I said. “How did that happen?” I held up my hand. “Before you answer that, why not just give me my memory back now, since you’re telling me what really happened anyway? You can return the memories to me, right?”
Sumiko nodded. “Yes, I could return the memories to you. But if I did so, it would endanger everything and everyone in this realm of existence.”
I sighed. She was every bit as cryptic as the Coven. Why couldn’t anyone speak plainly? “Endanger everyone in what way?” I asked, prompting her to explain further.
“While you were in Paris, you examined Pierre Louvain’s notes and discovered that he had been working on a personal investigation during his free time, trying to find the exact location of a powerful relic. It was his hobby, a private obsession. When you saw his notes on the subject, you realized that he had solved the clues to the relic’s whereabouts. But he knew that the relic was protected by a powerful guardian so he had not attempted to recover it. Also, the relic was so powerful that recovering it from its hiding place could mean the destruction of the world as we know it. After reading the notes, you asked me to erase the memory of the relic’s location from your mind.”
“I asked you to do this to me?”
Sumiko nodded. “And we destroyed the notebooks.”
I guessed it made sense. If I knew where something so powerful was hidden, there was a risk of that information falling into the hands of bad people. The Midnight Cabal might be able to extract the information from me magically, and even the Society I worked for was compromised and couldn’t be trusted. Luckily, Pierre had been killed because he had uncovered corruption within the Society, not because he was seeking an ultra-powerful artifact. His killers probably hadn’t even bothered examining his notebooks.
Asking Sumiko to erase the location of such a powerful artifact from my head sounded like something I would do. So that explained why she was telling me about the events in Paris, but not restoring my memory. If I got all of my memories back, I’d be the possessor of some extremely dangerous information.
“Do you know where the relic is located?” I asked her.
“No, you did not tell me that information and I did not seek it in your mind when I took away your memory.”
I ran over everything she had told me again. “Okay, so how did I get the Box of Midnight? How did I know to mail it to myself at Dearmont?”
“I told you to send it to yourself there. I have precognitive abilities. The future is not carved in stone and I see only possible outcomes, but the box must be in your possession for the most favorable outcomes to occur. There is a great evil roaming this world and for it to be destroyed, the Box of Midnight must be in Dearmont.”
I ran a hand through my hair and watched a crowd of people going into the Sunken Cities exhibit. “So you knew why I was here today and you came to so stop me because I’d regain a memory of where a deadly artifact is hidden?”
She nodded.
“So I’m supposed to just walk out of here and live with a magical locked door in my head forever?” I wasn’t sure I could do that, even if it was to protect some deadly secret. I may have asked Sumiko to erase the memory in the first place, but that was when I thought I’d be unaware of the memory wipe. Now that I knew about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was like a broken tooth that you have to keep poking at with your tongue.
“The locked door in your mind was not my doing, Alec Harbinger.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t your doing? Of course it was. It’s where you locked away the memories of what really happened in Paris, the location of the powerful relic.”
She shook her head emphatically. “No. When I entered your mind to take away the memory of the relic, the locked door was already there.”
I felt unstable suddenly, as if the floor of the m
useum might crack open at any time, plummeting me into a deep, dark hole. I felt cold, clammy. I leaned heavily against the wall.
Sumiko put her hands on my shoulders. “Alec Harbinger, are you all right?”
I breathed deeply in an attempt to clear my head, which felt as if someone had poured concrete into it through my ears. What did she mean the door was already there? How could that be possible? “I don’t understand,” I said.
She looked into my eyes earnestly. “When I met you in Paris, part of your memory was already locked behind a magical door.”
Chapter 13
“I have to touch the statue,” I told Sumiko. “I don’t have a choice now.” The shock of learning that my mind had already been tampered with before Paris was slowly fading. I was considering my options in a detached, calm manner. At least, I thought I was, and the only solution I could see was to touch the statue of Hapi, recite the magical formula, and break down the door in my mind.
“But then you will learn the location of the relic,” she said. “You asked me to remove that memory. The magical process you wish to undertake will reverse my work.”
“If I don’t do this, I’ll never know what has been taken from me and locked away.”
“Perhaps it has been locked away for good reason,” she said.
“I won’t know until I open the door.”
She nodded slowly, looking crestfallen.
“Maybe after I’ve touched the statue, you can take away the memory of the relic’s location again,” I said.
“No. Altering someone’s mind too many times is dangerous. You have had your memories altered by me and by someone before me. A third time could result in permanent damage.”
“Then the location of the relic is a secret I’m going to have to live with and protect. Did I tell you what the relic is?”
“No, you did not.” She looked over at the entrance to the Sunken Cities exhibit with a fearful gaze. “I have a bad feeling about this, Alec Harbinger.”
Buried Memory (Harbinger P.I. Book 2) Page 10