Silver and Gold (Sanctuary Book 1)

by Lilith Sinclair

  Alex tucked herself along the opposite wall, getting out of the elbow-shoving matches of the congregation. She retrieved her iPad to check the pictures and text against the plaque on the pedestal. Confirming the mark, she stowed her tablet and closed her eyes. Working around groups was always a pain. Something always rattled or shifted, and something always made a noise. People just couldn’t be still. Methodically, she pushed all the mundane noises from her mind, pretending she was in a soundproof box.

  On the secondary plane, auras lingered like dye drops in water, some bigger than others but every living thing firmly pulsating with it, and in the museum, many of the displays glowed in various degrees as well.

  Alex shifted the magics in her meta-shields, turning them into a focus and reducing the various magical components while exaggerating those that gleamed on the hazy white of the pedestal.

  There. Nestled within the micro ridges, the faintest traces of something lingered. It shimmered between a reflective gold and dead black. Not all magic left physical residues, but whatever was stealing things had, considerably reducing the number of suspects but giving no other clue as to what it could be.

  Taking a gamble, she locked in on the magic’s signature and opened her eyes. The colors of the room were muted, and auras burned like fireworks as they approached her. Ignoring them as best as she could, she weaved a silver and purple thread of magic from her fingertips and whispered the invocation, adhering her magic to the black and gold dusting like Velcro. The two magics flared, and the magic dust diffused into the room like a sneeze.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen. She shook the strands of magic clinging like a spider’s silk from her mind. She huffed, unsure of why it happened and fed up with herself, and pushed through the crowd toward the offices again.

  The offices were quiet aside from the occasional chug of the printer or the ringing of a phone.

  The office personnel gave Alex a wide berth, yet when they thought she wasn’t looking, gawked like schoolgirls.

  Like the buzzing of gnats, the clacking of heels at the end of the hallway herald the arrival of an older woman dressed in a bold-colored skirt and jacket. Each step came down harsh, and it matched the permanent scowl that kept her eyes slanted.

  Alex checked her watch before extending her hand in greeting. “Mrs. Reynolds?”

  She scrutinized Alex, from the black jeans and black boots to the green blouse, all of which clashed with the silver dagger and the 9mm resting on her hip she didn’t hide this morning. “Yes? May I help you?” She hesitated a second.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m Alex. I was wondering if you could spare a moment to discuss the theft a few nights ago.”

  “I’ve already reviewed this with every acronym agency there is.” She seemed exasperated as she huffed and rolled her eyes. She gave a dismissive wave to the thoughts in her mind and motioned for Alex to follow her into the office.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sure you have, but we think this may be connected to other thefts. Could you tell me about the pieces?” Alex perched on the edge of a plastic chair.

  Mrs. Reynolds smoothed her skirt before sitting. “Both were mid-sixteenth-century pieces. One was a vase with a story painted upon the outside. Some of it is faded, of course.” The information she gave was rote and nothing more. She rifled through some papers on her desk. “The other was a dagger found at the site of the Alamo. It was being evaluated and was locked in the safe. It might have been worth something, but more valuable things were right next to it that would have been easier to sell.” She twirled her glasses as she thought about something; the ends looked like a puppy’s chew toy. “Do you want the recent hires and termination files and such, like the FBI did? All signs, of course, point to an inside job, and when we find out who—”

  “Could you show me where the knife was taken from?” Alex knew this wasn’t an inside job, and the humans weren’t worth her time or effort to investigate. She spun a little magic in her palm, letting the delicate intent flow among her fingers and drop across her hand.

  “Oh, sorry.” She grinned, being anything but sorry. “If you don’t have clearance—”

  Alex grinned too. Her badge may have been equal to the FBI, like any tier-one operative, but her clearance was higher than that, and, in four phone calls, she could prove it. She sent the little magic she had conjured along the curator’s mind, changing her attitude to a more helpful and warm disposition.

  Mrs. Reynolds’s face went slack, her stare blank. “Follow me. I’ll show you myself.” She set her glasses on top of a stack of folders and stood.

  Alex closed her notebook. “No, that’s okay. I’m sure you have a lot of work to attend to. I’d like to speak with the appraiser of the blade, if they’re in today.” She stood and smiled softly at the woman.

  “Yes. Not a problem.” Mrs. Reynolds buzzed for her secretary to escort Alex to the vault.

  The vault was larger than Alex had expected. Even the museum conservators conducted the work on restoration and research inside the vault itself. A large door and mechanical locks were combined with the latest technology for the utmost security. Anything able to bypass all of this was either incredibly lucky or very smart. Even porters couldn’t pop forty feet below the surface and through foot-thick steel.

  “Were there any electrical problems the night of the robbery?” Alex lightly touched the keypad outside a set of sliding doors, and it beeped before flashing red. The doors swooshed closed behind them as they walked through, and a blast of air blew over them, ruffling Alex’s hair before the next set of doors opened.

  “Not as far as the system shows. None of the employees have mentioned anything either.” Her heels echoed along the tiled floor, and her cheap perfume lingered like a cloud behind her.

  The rooms they passed were filled with iconic artifacts from throughout American history. A technician tended to the Stars and Bars in one room. In another, George Washington’s uniform, one of many kept there, sat on a mannequin.

  “Monique will help you.” The assistant turned on her heels and marched down the hallway.

  Alex swatted at the air, clearing the lingering perfume from around her face, and knocked on the glass pane. “Ms. Monique?”

  The woman raised her head from behind a giant magnifying glass. Her hair was a striking fiery-orange, and it matched her lipstick, pairing nicely with her rich skin tone. “Yes?”

  “I’m Alex. If you’re not too busy, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the dagger you were recently working on.” She entered the room, and the ceiling seemed to drop afoot, making the room feel smaller.

  “Yes. Please, come in.” Monique motioned to a bench seat against the window. She came around the table and leaned against the heavy-carpeted top. She reached behind her, grabbing a convertible laptop and flipping it into tablet mode.

  “Thank you. Mrs. Reynolds said you were researching the item.”

  “Yes. The dagger came in for an appraisal. The museum does appraisals for items all over the world but mostly those with ties to American culture. It was discovered at a dig outside the Alamo. It couldn’t have been here two days, but weapons are a specialty of mine.” She handed Alex the tablet showing some of the photos she had taken of the dagger. “It was in remarkable shape, despite the floods and mudslides that have plagued that site throughout the last thousand years. The scabbard—the sheath—had a decorated strip at the top, a metal band filled with stones. I was still cleaning it to determine exactly which stones. I found six stones in total. The decorations suggested Central to South American designs far older than anything North Americans would have been in contact with at the time of the actual Alamo. But, without more time to study it, I couldn’t say for sure. The blade had runes on it, but the discoloration made it hard to photograph.” The more she talked, the heavier her accent twisted her words.

  “It had only been here a couple of days?” Alex handed the iPad back.

  “Yes. It arrived on Wednesday by messenger. Would yo
u like me to email you the files and images?”

  Alex nodded, giving the woman her business card containing her work email address. “Did you get a chance to run any lab work on it?”

  Most places wanted to identify the components to determine worth on top of the historical value, but Alex was doubtful that two days would have been long enough to even start.

  “Let me check.” Her attention became glued on the iPad as she searched. “The lab processed it last night. The usual. Gold. Iron. Copper. Trace elements that they’re still processing.” She waved her thoughts away. “I’ll send you the report.”

  “Do you know anything about the vase? Or maybe, who I could talk to?”

  Ms. Monique shrugged. “It was on loan from Mexico City.” She typed on the screen. “I went ahead and sent the report to your email.”

  “Thank you for your time. If I have any more questions, can I contact you?” Alex rose from the chair.

  Ms. Monique nodded, handing Alex a business card, and walked her to the elevators.

  4

  The Old Grill was beyond crowded with a mix of political players in their fancy suits and shiny shoes to ragged errand assistances. Everywhere Alex looked, people would stop midsentence and stride to strike up a conversation with someone else, clogging the aisles and making it nearly impossible for people to leave.

  Trying not to shove people, Alex squeezed her way to a back booth whose pendant light provided as much illumination as a Zippo would.

  “Excuse me.” She tried to catch the waiter’s attention, hoping one of them could wipe down the tacky tabletop. “Seriously,” she muttered when two other waiters passed by, ignoring her. She stretched across the aisle and snatched a menu off the table. Where is Mira? She resisted the urge to check her phone.

  Mira was the one who had recommended the place, boasting about their food.

  Alex rolled her eyes as she set the menu on the only clean spot on the table. She forgot, packed like sardines. Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the seat, watching the throng of people swell like waves as they came and went.

  Like the bow waves before a boat, the crowd parted, letting Mira bound in. She’d pinned her hair with a crystal barrette paired with a black dress that clung to her. Lustful desires scented the air as heads turned, following her.

  “Sorry. Hailing a taxi is one burden no sane person should have to bear,” Mira yammered as she tossed her bags onto the seat and slid in. “Oh, this table … Eww.”

  Immediately, the waiter appeared, eagerly gazing at Mira and waiting on her every whim. A round of fish and chips sent the lad scurrying from the table, but he returned moments later, lingering just out of side of personal comfort.

  Alex tried to ignore him. “Learn anything?”

  Mira went to take a sip of her water but set it down.

  The waiter topped off the barely touched water and rushed to bring napkins. Another waiter brought a bowl of sliced lemons and smiled at Mira.

  “Not really.”

  Alex tapped her foot, staring daggers at the growing pile of waiters that multiplied from one to two to five. Please don’t be like this for the entire meal. “What time did you get there?”

  “After nine. I should have just made an appointment through the front desk.” She sighed, and the waiter stepped forward to inquire how everything was, despite nothing changing in the few minutes since they had placed their order.

  Alex set the files from Mira’s bag onto the table and glared at the waiters. “Go away.” Her voice was stern, and her fox silent.

  They fidgeted and eyed each other.

  Mira laid her hand on Alex’s arm and shook her head. I’ll deal with it, she mouthed. She laid her napkin on the table and slid from the booth.

  Alex grabbed the files and flipped through the pages. The reports were … lacking.

  The guard’s toxicology screen came back clean except an OTC pain medication. The biopsy results were pending. The inventory of items collected from him was nothing worth noting, not even a lucky rabbit’s foot, except he’d been found wearing a shoe.

  Bypassing the medical and end of life stats, she turned to personal information. The police didn’t dig too deep. He was single with two kids from a previous marriage.

  Alex fished around in Mira’s bag for a sticky note and a pen. She scribbled, Look deeper? on the pastel paper and slapped it on the file. In her experience, even suicidal people didn’t just walk off the rooftop; they had rituals, like removing their glasses and shoes.

  Mira slipped back into the booth. “Settled.”

  The manager arrived with red and blue baskets filled with food and left. Dark grease stains stood out against the white parchment.

  Alex flicked the hushpuppies to Mira’s basket, having a hard time believing this place was where congressman and senators ate.

  “What’s next?” Mira asked as she dipped a piece of fish into a ketchup-mayo mixture.

  “We get to do some wall climbing later, and, after that, we’re flying out on the red eye tonight. Why didn’t you pull a necromancer to see what the guard remembered?” She shut the files and put a forkful of lunch into her mouth.

  “I tried. The necro couldn’t get a line on him. The animated corpse only remembered something pretty and bright. He repeated it like a baby.” Mira retrieved a crumpled piece of paper from her pockets. She smoothed it out and slid it into the file. “The necro pushed, but nothing else was there.”

  Alex felt a tinge of remorse and shook her head.

  The guard’s soul had fragmented, stuck on an ever-lasting loop until he hopefully faded—a fate worse than death, she thought.

  5

  “Clear?” Alex had been intently watching the sweeping cameras anchored on the side of the building.

  “Go.” Mira gave her a shove.

  Alex sprinted across the ground, keeping to the shadows. “The feds want to play, so can I,” she hissed, fed up with all the red tape they had encountered since lunch.

  It had become a pissing contest between the human hierarchy and the supes, a common occurrence when one side wasn’t invited to play in the other’s ball pit.

  Mira gave a thumbs up before refocusing on the laptop, directing the drone.

  Alex released a long, slow exhale, and let the shadows cloak her in their embrace. Using them to propel her jump, she slipped over the roof’s edge and paused on the loose gravel and tar-exposed roof.

  A few pigeons ruffled their feathers, but they didn’t move from their roost.

  She watched where she walked, noting the shuffling of officer boots and a few discarded gum wrappers. Kneeling, her hand hovered just above the roof, noticing nothing out of the ordinary. She tapped the Bluetooth and spoke. “I don’t see anything out of line. He literally walked straight off. No hesitant streaks, no gravel build up, nothing.”

  Mira lowered the drone, and Alex resisted shooing it away. “You going to do that fancy stuff?”

  Alex rolled her eyes but shrugged nonetheless. “Can you take that thing down now?” She nodded in the drone’s direction.

  “Umm. No.” Mira’s voice was filled with laughter.

  The drone pulled away but lingered close.

  Alex used second sight, and while the world glowed with magic, none of it touched the rooftop. “It’s rained since the accident. I’m getting nothing on sight or smell.”

  She dropped the magical plane, the world returning to the city-washed orange darkness. She whispered to the shadows, bringing clarity to the world she saw. The shadows whispered, pulling and tugging along her meta-shields like a gut feeling, and she followed. Nestled in the cracks, grey magic dust like the kind she had found on the pedestal lingered.

  She retrieved tweezers and a glass vial from her travel pack. Careful not to breathe on the dust, she collected as much as she could, but most turned to ash. These are much larger than those inside. Moving the vial into the faint light from the city, she noticed a faint iridescent sheen. “I’ve got large scale
magic dust.” She tucked away the sample.

  “Yeah? Can you narrow it down?”

  Yeah, I can narrow it down with just a glance in the middle of the night on a rooftop with a streetlight and theriomoprhic eyes. She wanted to say that but, instead, opted for the safer approach. “Something shedding this much magic is rare, but that doesn’t mean easy to ID.” She scooted to the roof’s edge. Surveying the roof once more, she hoped for a new clue that would give way to some great a-ha moment.

  “Hurry up. Flight’s soon, and we’ve had the same cop circle the block three times now.”

  Mira rocked back and forth as they waited their turn at the metal detectors.

  “I can always ask Rita for a port,” Alex whispered.

  The ocelot shook her head. “Do we have time to eat once we’re through?”

  Alex checked her watch then the giant board listed with flight plans. “We should.”

  “Good. Good.” Mira nodded repeatedly, stepping forward as the line shortened quicker than the pat-down line. She waited until they were next in line to fish her badge from her bag.

  Alex flashed her badge, laid everything on the conveyor, and stepped through the machine. As she turned to get her stuff, she didn’t miss the sneers from the people waiting. She knew what they thought, and it was anything but special treatment.

  The woman at the front of the adjacent line refused a pat down or wand search after purposefully getting in the x-ray line and balking at the last moment. She turned her vile words from the AFT agents to Mira.

  Mira didn’t hear her, but Alex had.

  Her easy-going smile turned into a smirk, and, as she waved on Mira, she turned and blew a kiss to the woman then added a little wave before walking farther into the terminal.

  Mira went one way and Alex another, less interested in food as just browsing to pass the time.

  Alex followed the heavy sandalwood incense and discovered a little shop full of dolls to prevent ghost possessions, charms to deny vampires access to home, and dozens other prevention spells promised to work. The shops were as frequent as Dunkin’ Donuts, and they made money hand over fist despite being nothing more than Hollywood myths.