by Kris Tualla
“I’ll sleep in my car.” Hollis swung her feet down from her desktop. “I won’t be able to sleep at home anyway, just thinking about it.”
She reached for her purse. “I’ll go home now and get a pillow and blankets. And I’ll tell everybody that I’m coming back after I get something to eat and staying late to finish some paperwork.”
Hollis followed through with that plan, returning to the office just after six o’clock. Stevie had tried to talk her out of working late, and Miranda insisted that any paperwork could wait until after the gala. But Hollis stood firm.
“I’ll be out of here by eight. Nine at the latest.” She held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
She sat at her desk, looking busy as she typed a chatty email to her parents, and waited until everyone had left the property except her. Tom the intern was the last to leave.
“I just wanted to say, before tomorrow night and everything, that I have really been honored to work with you.” Tom’s cheeks reddened. “I have learned so much about handling pieces, and how objects are researched, and how displays are chosen…”
Hollis smiled at the twenty-something young man. “Your help has been amazing, Tom. Thank you.”
“I wish…” He paused as if deciding to choose different words. “Well, I wish everything goes perfect tomorrow.”
Hollis couldn’t help herself. “Perfectly.”
Tom grinned. “Yeah.”
Now that the intern was gone, Hollis sent the email and finally relaxed. “I’ll wait about half an hour before I go out to my car. Just in case anyone checks the log.”
Sveyn nodded. “That is a good plan.”
“Meanwhile—” Hollis stood. “—I’ll wash my face, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and get ready for bed.”
Sveyn followed her to the ladies room and inside. “What do you expect to discover?”
“That someone, maybe even Benton, is moving the pieces.” She looked at Sveyn in the mirror while she brushed her hair. “What about you?”
The Viking appeared honestly confused. “I do not know what to expect. I do believe the legend, and I know that thing is evil, but…” He shrugged. “Can it connect itself? Or must the owner of the halves do so? This I do not know.”
Hollis tied her hair into a ponytail and washed her face. Sveyn’s unshakeable stance on the Blessing seemed foolish to her, yet she had grown to know the Viking well over the last three months. He was intelligent and logical, even while his belief was not.
Not in the modern world, anyway.
And yet, in this modern world, I’m talking to a man caught between.
This was going to be a very interesting experiment, of that she was certain.
Chapter Eleven
Tuesday
December 1
“Hollis! Wake up!”
Startled, Hollis opened her eyes. The top half of Sveyn’s body was sticking through her car door. “What?”
“Get up! Tom just went into the museum. You have to hurry!”
Right. I’m in my car. At the museum.
Tom?
Hollis threw her blanket aside and opened the back door of her car. A blast of forty-degree air rudely woke her the rest of the way up. She slid out the door, reclaimed the blanket because it was freaking freezing outside, and slammed the car door shut.
“Let’s go.” She ran around the corner of the construction trailer—which she hid her car behind, just in case—and toward the employee entrance, trying not to trip on the blanket. “What time is it?”
“It is just after six o’clock.”
And dark this time of year.
Hollis swiped her employee key card and opened the back door. “Where is he?”
“He was heading toward the new wing.” Sveyn ran ahead of her. “Let me see if I can find him.”
Hollis re-wrapped the blanket around her as she walked down the office hallway. The only lights in this part of the museum were the security lights in the corners of the ceilings, and they were only on because she swiped her card and opened the door. She was on video and she knew it.
Hopefully that would not come back and bite her.
“In here, Hollis!” Sveyn’s muffled shout came from the Kensington wing.
The translucent plastic veil still covering the wing’s entrance was abruptly thrown back and Tom stepped into the dimly-lit lobby. He jumped back with a little grunt, startled to see Hollis where he certainly expected to see no one at all.
“Hollis? What are you doing here?” he demanded.
She walked up to him. “I might ask the same, Tom.”
He frowned. “Why are you wrapped in a blanket? Are those pajamas?”
“Yoga pants.”
“What—”
“Just turn around and head back where you came from.” She gave him a little shove. “We need to talk.”
Tom hesitated as if debating his options.
“I know you’ve been moving the pieces, Tom,” Hollis offered. “Let’s go talk about why.”
He didn’t move. “Were you spying on me?”
Hollis tightened the blanket. “Yep.”
“How? You weren’t in your office…” Poor Tom was clearly confused, and rightly so, but Hollis certainly wasn’t going to enlighten him.
“That’s for me to know.” She pushed him again. “Let’s go talk, Tom. I’m sure you don’t want the police involved with this.”
That seemed to sink in. “No. I’m sorry. Okay.”
Hollis followed Tom around the curve of the wing to the Blessing’s case in the back. Sveyn was pacing nervously in front of the display.
“Calm down,” Hollis said to both men. “Give me the key, Tom.”
A sheepish Tom placed the key to the case in her palm.
“Did Benton give you this?” she asked.
“I guess so, but I don’t know for sure. It was in my employee mailbox with instructions to move the pieces closer together.” Tom’s expression sank; he looked worse by the minute. “And every day that I did, there would be an envelope with a fifty-dollar-bill in my box.”
“No one else has a reason to do this,” Sveyn muttered.
“No one else has the finances to do this,” Hollis countered.
Tom nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
Hollis laid the blanket over another display case and went around to the back of the bullet proof display. She punched in her code first and then unlocked the top.
As she lifted it, she looked at the intern. “Why did you do it, Tom? Was it just the money?”
“No…” He shrugged, guilt plastered all over his face. “If it was Benton, I wanted to stay on his good side, you know?”
“Move them and close the top, Hollis,” Sveyn said. “Then we can be rid of this business.”
Hollis looked down at the two halves of the Blessing, and something inside her snapped. This icon was being given way too much attention. Enough was enough.
She grabbed one half in each hand and lifted them from the case.
“Put those back!” Sveyn barked.
“These are just wood and metal!” Hollis walked around the case to face Tom, though her words were meant for both of the men. “They aren’t magic. They have no power. They’re not alive—they’re dead.”
Sveyn stepped closer. “Put them down. Now.”
“The myth is just that. A myth. Made up by a superstitious culture that existed hundreds—”
“Thousands!” Sveyn interrupted.
“—of years ago. Long before science and technology explained the things that they were terrified of. Like the Northern Lights, for example.” Hollis looked at the carved and pierced pieces in her hands. “How could any modern person with a functioning brain cell believe otherwise?”
Put us together. The words were whispered into her right ear.
You know that you want to. Those words were in her left ear.
Hollis’s hands began to shake. She lifted her gaze. “Which one of you said that?”
Tom frowned. “Which one of who? It’s only you and me here.”
“Hollis,” Sveyn pleaded. “Put them down.”
You see how we fit. That whisper was in stereo.
Her right ear: Go on.
Her left ear: You are so close.
Hollis felt the pieces begin to vibrate in her hands. They grew warm. The urge to connect them overwhelmed her. “How do they go together, do you think?”
Tom gave her an odd look. “I don’t know.”
“Stop!” Sveyn shouted.
“Like this?” Hollis touched the pieces together.
Images flooded her mind, swirling with increasing speed and separated by blinding flashes of light. Past. Present. Future.
A roar of thunder rumbled her frame.
Her breath came in sudden staccato gasps.
“Hollis, let go! Hollis, let go! HOLLIS! LET GO!” Sveyn bellowed. He stood close in front of her, futilely batting at the icon, his hands passing through the object with no effect.
Tom launched himself at her, knocking her against the acrylic case. It slammed shut as the force of his weight bent her backwards over it. The ancient pieces of the Blessing clattered angrily to the floor. She swore she heard them scream.
“Hollis? Are you all right?” Tom’s worried face hovered over hers.
Her mind cleared slowly. “What?”
“Can you breathe? Are you hurt?”
Her core was still trembling. “Let me up,” she croaked.
Tom retreated and offered his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tackle you.”
Hollis unsteadily regained her feet. “Why did you?”
Tom’s expression looked like he didn’t believe his own words. “Something was attacking you.”
She squinted at him in the dim light. “Attacking me? Was it the Blessing?”
He shook his head. “No. It looked like a man. Seven feet tall. All in brown.” Tom swallowed and glanced to the side where Sveyn stood glaring at her. “But he wasn’t really there, was he.”
Hollis wouldn’t say one way or the other on that. “Did it look like the smudge on the security video?”
“No. That image looked like the whatever-it-was had wings. But this thing didn’t have wings. And it was clawing at you.” Tom shuddered. “Couldn’t you see it?”
In truth, she couldn’t see much past the explosion of visuals in her head. “No. I just felt a surge of energy when the pieces touched. It dazed me, like an electric shock.”
“I told you, woman,” Sveyn scolded, scowling at her. “But you were too damned stubborn to pay heed.”
Hollis couldn’t face him; the Viking was right about one thing—those two halves created some sort of energy force when they touched.
Tom took another step back and looked at the pieces on the floor. “What now?”
Hollis rubbed her face with both hands as she formed a plan. “First, we put them back in the case and at least a foot apart,” she said from behind her palms. “You can go ahead and do that now.”
Hollis moved out of the way while Tom picked up one piece at a time and laid them in place. Then she came around to the back of the case and locked it.
“Next, I’m going home to wash up and change clothes.” She collected her blanket from atop the other case. “You are going to start making a rustic looking barricade to lay between those pieces in the case.”
“Rustic looking?” Tom asked. “Like what?”
“Like out of old wood and tin, or whatever you can find.” She waved toward the outside wall. “Maybe there’s construction trash out there you can use.”
“Okay.” Tom’s brow furrowed. “But why, exactly?”
Hollis faced the intern. “We are going to support Benton’s contention that the pieces move by preventing them from ever touching.”
“Oh-kaaay…” It was another question.
“Then third, we are going to speak with Mr. Benton and tell him that we know all about his little scheme.” Hollis was mad enough about the whole situation that she didn’t care if he fired her.
He wouldn’t. But Tom didn’t know that. “No, Ms. McKenna, please don’t. I really need this referral.”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry. We have the upper hand. First, we’ll tell him about the barrier you will have made by then which proves his story.”
Tom nodded. “I get it now.”
“Then we tell him that if the security video from this morning is not deleted while we watch, then you and I will go public to expose that scheme, and claim that both security videos are frauds.”
He still looked unsure. “But they aren’t frauds. Right?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s our word against his.”
Sveyn leaned toward her. “He wants to know for certain that he did not imagine me.”
“I know.”
“Well, if you know…” Tom rested his hands on his hips and his head dropped. “I’m really sorry, ma’am.”
Hollis didn’t want to let the intern off too easily, lest he be tempted to falsify museum happenings again sometime. “This was a very unwise choice, Tom. It would be a career-killer under different circumstances. Do you realize that?”
He looked like he was going to cry. “Yes, ma’am.”
“We can’t mess around with the truth,” she pressed. “We have a responsibility. People trust us.”
Tom nodded and wiped an eye. “I’m going to get started on that barrier.”
“I’ll see you in a while.” Hollis threw her blanket over her shoulder. “Be ready.”
*****
Once back inside her car, Hollis finally let her tears loose. “What the hell was that?”
Sveyn was clearly still angry with her. “Do you believe me at last that the thing is evil?”
“I do. I think. I don’t know what to believe, to be honest with you.” Hollis wiped her eyes with a shaking hand and started her car.
“What did you experience?” Sveyn demanded. “Tell me everything.”
Speaking past the irritating constriction of her voice caused by her uncontrolled crying, Hollis described her experience as best she could while she drove to her condo. First she told Sveyn about the directional whispers, the pieces’ vibrations, and the way the icon literally warmed up in her hands.
At a stoplight she pulled a paper napkin from the stack in her glovebox and blew her nose. Then she described her sudden difficulty breathing, the flashes of light, and the feeling of thunder causing her chest and gut to tremble.
Last were the images—past, present, and what had to be the future—cycling rapidly through her mind.
“I can’t say that the Blessing makes a person immortal. That seems too far-fetched,” she stated, still wiping her nose. “But there is something eternal embedded in it, I think.”
Sveyn nodded. “The sons of God who made it were eternal.”
“Were?” Hollis glanced at her passenger. “How does that stop? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“What is an oxymoron?”
“The idea that something that was temporarily eternal,” she repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Sveyn waved one hand. “No, what does the word oxymoron mean?”
Hollis coughed a laugh, the first lift of her spirits on this fraught morning. “Sorry. It means two words which describe one thing, only that one thing can’t embody both words used to describe it.”
He still looked confused. “Give me an example.”
“Plastic glass. Paid volunteer. Bitter sweet.” Hollis smiled. “Alive ghost.”
Sveyn smiled a little at that. “I understand. So temporarily eternal seems to be an oxymoron.”
Hollis turned into her condo complex’s parking lot. “Seems to be? How is it not?”
“I tell you again, Hollis, read your Bible. The sons of God are mentioned in Genesis, and their demise is foretold in the Psalms.”
She sighed. “Fine. I’ll give you that one.”
When she pa
rked her car and turned off the engine, Sveyn held out a hand to stop her from getting out. “Hollis, it is important to me that you admit you were wrong about the Blessing. It is not a blessing in any way. Instead, it holds a curse.”
For the first time in her three-month relationship with the Viking apparition, Hollis realized she was not the dominant one. Sure, she had the physical body and that gave her an upper hand at times. But Sveyn possessed both greater general knowledge and a stronger personal will than she did.
Well, he is nearly a thousand years old.
When she bent her will to Matt’s, she always felt he respected her less for it.
She felt nothing like that now. She knew without a doubt that Sveyn would respect her more.
“You were right, Viking. I was wrong. This blessing-curse thing is so far outside of my modern existence that I dismissed it as impossible.” She heaved a shuddering sigh. “I should not have done that. I’m sorry.”
A slow smile spread across his handsome scruff-bearded face and his eyes glowed purple in the pink light from the rising sun. “I love and respect you, Hollis. I fervently wish that I could kiss you right now.”
Me, too.
“Let me get through today and tonight,” she said, opening her car door. “And then, when I go to bed at last, you can have your way with me.”
Chapter Twelve
Mr. Benton was watching the early morning security video when Hollis and Tom walked into his office unannounced. The look on his face when he saw them hovered somewhere between excitement and apprehension.
“Good morning. What can I do for you two?” he asked, flashing a grin that was not at all convincing.
Hollis squared her shoulders and pointed at the computer screen. “We need to talk about that, sir.”
He leaned back in his custom chair. “What about it?”
Hollis stood in front of the director’s desk, foregoing a chair of her own. She needed to take the dominant stance in this exchange if she and Tom were to achieve what they hoped.
“First of all, I am asking that the security video from this morning be permanently deleted.”
The grin faded. “First of all?”