“The collections!” Alistair despaired, reaching back as if he could save his precious antiquities.
Halon gas nozzles switched on, dampening the fire. Alistair looked stricken, and I felt awful.
Sorren knelt down in front of Alistair. In the distance, we heard sirens. We had to get out of there, quick.
“You went into the archives to put back an artifact, and smelled gas leaking,” Sorren said in the same voice he used to glamor Baxter. Alistair stared at him, wide-eyed, utterly lost in Sorren’s gaze.
“You tried to escape, but the air was bad and you nearly passed out,” Sorren added. “Just as you reached the door, the blast came. It knocked you off your feet and tore the door off its hinges.”
“Yes. Yes, I remember.”
“You never saw us,” Sorren said with a sad half-smile. “You were alone at the time.”
“Yes,” Alistair replied. “I was alone.”
The shadow men and monsters were gone, and we’d just destroyed priceless artifacts. As happy as I was to be alive, I grieved for the irreplaceable history that had been lost.
Corban Moran was going to pay, big time.
Alistair was going to be all right, although the museum might not be. I really hoped Alistair wouldn’t lose his position over the damage. I was shaking with pent-up fear and anger. Sorren hustled us away from the building.
“Teag’s car –” I protested.
“It’s been moved, honey,” Lucinda said, resolutely striding away from the scene of the damage.
“The security cameras in the museum –” “Have been altered,” Sorren replied. “It will look like a power failure.”
“How –” Teag began.
“I sensed where you’d gone,” Sorren said. “And I feared that Moran would interfere. Lucinda and I came as quickly as we could.” He looked apologetic. “I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.”
“We learned a lot,” I said, still light-headed from our close brush with death. “Most of it can wait. But I think we’ve got what we were looking for,” I said. “Teag’s got the journal and papers from the salvage crew, and Alistair added the missing piece.”
I looked at Sorren and Lucinda. “Storage,” I said. “That’s what they’ve all got in common that we haven’t had time to investigate. Now we’ve just got to figure out why it matters.”
“I’ll see what I can find out through my channels,” Sorren said. “And I’ve requested a demon hunter’s assistance, but he hasn’t arrived yet. In the meantime, take advantage of the break to recuperate. Once we have more information and our demon hunter, we’ll be ready to move.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“YOU SAID THE last site we didn’t get to was a closed storage facility, right?”
Teag nodded. “Yep. The place was called Stor-Your-Own and it closed about six months ago.”
“What a coincidence,” I said drily. “Landrieu and his salvage team put their dive gear in storage when they were in town. And from the journals, it says the storage facility is in the old Navy yard, fairly close to the warehouse where Moran called the demon. The whole Navy yard is on land Jeremiah Abernathy used to own, back when he controlled the demon.”
“We also know the Foo dog was in storage, and if we can find out where, maybe that’s the connection with the suddenly-haunted antiques,” Teag replied. “Maybe storing something with bad resonance near a demon activates the juju.”
“That’s something we need to find out. And it wouldn’t hurt to see what you can dig up about Stor Your-Own’s history and owners. It’s convenient that it went belly up right at the time Moran surfaced.”
“Let’s do our digging from a safe distance this time,” Teag said. “After what happened in the warehouse and the museum, I’m not thrilled about just going into another haunted building to poke around.”
I held up both hands in surrender. “No arguments here. My bruises have bruises.”
“Now that you mention it, I remember a couple of the folks I called mentioning storage.”
I chewed my lip for a moment, thinking. “If we could prove that even some of the problem pieces were at one time stored at the facility in the Navy yard, then we would know it’s something about that particular site that activated them.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to do some digging into the business records, too,” Teag mused. “Why did it go out of business? Who owns it now? Did something happen to any of the previous owners? There’s a reason it’s just standing there empty.”
Teag grinned. “Sounds like we’ve got a full day in front of us tomorrow. Monday is usually one of our busy days.”
I sighed. “True. But Maggie said she’d come in to make up for the hours she missed. Part of me hopes we don’t get a lot of customers so we can work on this, and the other part of me really wants to pay the electric bill.”
“I agree,” Teag said with a laugh. “But I know you, Cassidy. And I know you won’t let this drop until you get to the bottom of it.”
I finished my drink, thinking about what Teag said. At least a dozen men were dead, including the salvage crew and Jimmy Redshoes. And if Moran had his way, that would be just the beginning.
MAGGIE WAS BACK, and seemed fully recovered. For someone who was semi-retired, her near-boundless energy made me feel like a slacker. Her gray hair was cut in a trendy, chin-length bob, and she confided that she liked the cut because it kept her hair out of her face when she was doing her daily yoga. She was slender and dressed in a style I thought of as ‘Woodstock-esque’.
“Good to have you back, Maggie!” I said with a grin. “Glad you’re feeling better.”
Maggie beamed. “Good to be back, Cassidy. I don’t get sick often, but it seems like when I do, it hits twice as hard. Believe me, I’m glad to be on my feet again!”
“Are you up to watching the front for a little bit?” I asked. “Teag and I are working on an acquisition.”
Maggie waved me off. “Happy to do it. It’s been too darn quiet all by myself at home. Take your time.
I’ve got it covered.”
While Maggie handled the customers, Teag took his laptop to the break room and I went into my office to make phone calls.
“We heard back from Debra and Rebecca and the lady with the funeral vase,” I reported after some time on the phone. “And you were right – all the pieces were stored at Stor-Your-Own at some time in the last year.”
“Mrs. Butler doesn’t remember the name of the storage unit, but she’s going to check her records,” I said. “And before you ask, Trinket Ellison said the same thing. She believes the opera glasses were in storage for a little while after her mother’s death while the family sorted things out, but she didn’t make the arrangements herself, so she has to check.”
“I suspect the Ellisons have people for that.”
I nodded. “Knowing the Ellisons, their people probably have people for that.”
“How about Rebecca? She said she bought the Foo dog statue at an estate sale,” Teag said.
I nodded. “Uh huh. And she also said that the sale was fun because there was so much to see, between what had been in the house and what had been tucked away in storage.”
Teag crossed his arms and his ankles and gave me a happily smug look.
“What?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s your ‘I-know-something-you-don’t-know’ pose. Spill.”
“From what I can find online, Stor-Your-Own, definitely has a checkered past,” he said. “And that’s just from what’s in the public record. I haven’t hacked anything yet.”