A Brush With Death
Page 23
Part of me, the better part of me, wanted to turn back. Hurting Lara was the last thing I ever wanted. It felt like a cruel trick of fate that had brought the mask here. I needed the mask and there was no way Lara was going to let me borrow it, so I had no other choice. Asking would have only raised questions I wasn’t allowed to answer.
Letting out a long breath, I raised the security pass and swiped it. The doors clicked as the locking mechanism released.
“Sorry, Lara, I'll make it right, I swear.”
I’d chosen my words carefully. For a wizard, oaths and promises had power. I had no intention of neglecting mine.
The doors swung inward, revealing Lara’s office. The chamber had an expensive teak desk that occupied one end of the room. I remembered it well. One of my fondest memories had been made on that desk. Thoughts of that night came flooding back into my mind, and the scent of her lavender perfume that hovered in the air was not helping at all.
Reluctantly shooing the pleasant thoughts from my mind, I surveyed the office. A series of filing cabinets ran along the wall behind the desk. The tops of the cabinets had a series of replicas atop them, including a Trojan horse. The tale of Troy was one of Lara’s favorite tales.
The office also had a pair of tables, with cupboards built in underneath. Both were strewn with textbooks and dissertations. We had talked away many nights studying ancient cultures and theorizing how magic had influenced their existence. I’d been careful to couch my knowledge as hypotheses as I hadn’t had the courage to tell her the truth about my wizarding heritage. I began to straighten the texts, purely on impulse, and caught myself. There simply wasn’t time.
I tore my eyes off the clutter and settled on Lara’s desk. It was piled high with manila folders but there was no sign of the mask.
I opened the top drawer. Finding nothing but a handful of stationery, I slammed it shut and moved on to the second. Inside it there were several files but nothing else. Shutting the drawer, I leaned on the table and caught my breath.
“It has to be here,” I told myself, looking down at the stack of folders on the table.
One carried a familiar seal—that of the US government.
“Why, hello there,” I muttered as I pulled the stack of folders toward me, straightening them so that they formed a neat pile. Underneath the seal was the designation ‘Section 9’ over which the word classified had been stamped. In the bottom right-hand corner was a second logo, a compass on a shield, with an eagle head above it.
I knew that logo. Everyone knew that logo.
It belonged to the CIA.
As I searched the table, there were more than a dozen of them with titles including The Brujas de Sangre, The Inquisition, and Magic in the Central Americas.
Lifting the folder for the Blood Witches Coven, I flipped it open to find a picture of the mask and a report. The header of the report caught my eye: Central intelligence Agency Section 9 Classified Briefing 38462 Máscara de la Muerte.
As I started to read, the distinct metallic click of a gun being cocked drew my attention back from the case file.
“What do we have here?”