"Damn. Meryl, what are these?"
Annoyance crossed her face. "If you had occasionally done your own research instead of sending one of your minions down here, you'd know."
I smiled playfully at her. "I have a knife, remember."
She smiled right back. "And there's a stick of dynamite taped under your chair and my body shields work."
"That's a low blow," I said. It was such a bad pun, I could taste it.
She laughed. "It's my filing system. The Dewey Decimal system doesn't quite work in a place where putting the wrong things next to each other can cause hair to grow in unsightly places. You have to balance the energies to keep everything flowing peacefully. I've tried to get the other Houses to adopt it, but they're waiting for a full chthonic breakdown before they'll admit it works."
I grabbed a pen and drew the ogham script from the flyer in Murdoch's car. "Does this mean anything?"
She looked at the paper, then back at me. "What? Are you becoming a mineralogist in your old age? Those stones went missing last winter."
"What stones?"
She tossed the paper on her desk and gestured at the glyph. "Those stones. Five of them. High-quality selenite. Pre-Convergence. Seized in an illegal container shipment a few years back."
"You know that just by looking at the glyph?"
She nodded. "That's where they were filed. I found them missing. I was using them to anchor a couple of wards. When I walked in the room, there was a hum that told me the wards weren't working anymore. I checked. They were gone. I had to file a cartload of forms over it. You think you found them and lost them again?"
"I didn't lose them," I said.
"Whatever."
"Can you show me?"
We left the office. Meryl led me farther down the hall to a spiral staircase. We went down another level to a hallway identical to the one upstairs and walked deeper into the building. All kinds of resonant essences bounced through the air. My head began to buzz.
"Man, what the hell do you have down here?"
"Just about everything: weapons, armor, crystals, books. You name it, we got it. Some of it's evidence for ongoing investigations; some of it's archives for research. A lot of it's crap. Did I mention you'd know that if you bothered to do your own research occasionally?"
"Not that you're bitter about it or anything," I said.
She held up her hands in a warding gesture. "Touchy-touchy. I'm sorry I mentioned it."
We stopped in front of a door. Meryl positioned her palm outward on the wall near the lock. She muttered something in what sounded like Middle English. A momentary shimmer of light bounced from her hand to the wall, and a keypad appeared. I turned my back and out of habit automatically memorized the sound of the tones. "Don't waste the brain cells. I'm changing the code after you leave," she said.
We entered a high, dimly lit storeroom. I whistled in appreciation. Rack upon rack of steel shelving marched to the right and left and up twenty feet. The lower levels held cabinets and drawers. Judging from the length of the aisles branching out to either side and in front of me, the room had to cover an acre. It had to be deep under the subway system even to exist in that much space.
My head still buzzed, but I had a cottony feeling as well, which told me dampening wards were in place. "Now I know why you like your job," I said.
She grinned. "I don't like my job. I just like where it is."
Weaving our way around boxes on the floor, we walked down an aisle of meticulously labeled drawers. My foot connected with something, and it skittered across the floor with a clunking sound.
I leaned down and picked up a small bowl. It was carved from a single piece of wood and fit perfectly cupped in my hands. "This is nice. Olive wood, isn't it?"
Meryl sighed loudly. "That damned Parker. He's a new temp who can't file his own fingernails. You'd think he'd be a little more careful, considering."
"Considering?"
She pointed at the bowl. "That's the Holy Grail."
Shocked, I held it away from me as though it were ready to bite. "The Holy Grail!"
Laughing, she plucked it out of my hands. She pulled open a drawer, revealing several more bowls, and dropped it inside. "And so are these. Can you believe some dope managed to sell a few of them? I mean, really, anyone can see the wood's not even two hundred years old. If we ever have another clearance auction, I might take them home for salad bowls." She hip-checked the drawer closed and walked away humming. I have to admit her attitude was growing on me.
I joined her at a bank of drawers. She pulled open a small one and hopped back, looking at me in surprise. "Did you feel that? Something just went off."
I shook my head. "My abilities aren't great under the best of circumstances, and you've got this place heavily warded."
We peered into the drawer. An inset of black velvet filled the entire space with five cupped indentations. Two of them were occupied. A white stone and a black one. I recognized both. "Are these the same stones that went missing last year?"
She nodded. "I've stared at their photos enough."
"Mine, too."
"But why put them back?" said Meryl.
I smiled. "The best place to hide something is where they're missing from. No one looks once they're gone."
"So where are the rest of them, smart guy?"
"A gray one's upstairs with macDuin in the case file for the bogus killer; another gray one's at Boston P.D., probably on its way to macDuin as we speak. And the last one's with the killer."
"It's black," Meryl said.
"I know. I thought the killings were a weekly cycle until I realized that they're keyed to the phases of the moon. White for the full, gray for the quarters, and black for the new."
"We just had a quarter moon two nights ago."
"And I found a gray stone in a dead fairy's chest."
Meryl shook her head. "Damn! Who'd've thought my stones would turn up this way."
As she finished speaking, I heard the distinctive sound of a door closing. Judging from Meryl's reaction, she heard it, too. I held my finger to my lips.
She frowned at me. "Bob? Parker, is that you?" she called out.
"Shhh!" I hissed.
"You shhh. I'm supposed to be here," she said. "Don't move." She went quickly back down the aisle and out of sight. Moments later, I heard her call Parker's name again, but no one answered. I could hear her footsteps fading away and a door latch opening. She called out a few more times, her voice becoming more and more faint. After a long stretch, I realized I didn't hear anything anymore.
It occurred to me that Meryl might have set off an alarm spell when she opened the drawer. Whoever had cast it would eventually make their way to the aisle I was standing in. I looked around, but that end of the room was too neat, and there was nothing to hide behind. Quietly, I closed the drawer that contained the stones and opened another one enough to get my foot on the edge. As silently as possible, I boosted myself up to the first set of shelves. From there I climbed the remaining shelves like a ladder until I reached the top. I lay flat in the thick dust and peered over.
Seconds stretched into minutes which stretched into eons. I could almost hear my own heartbeat without trying. A cool waft of air washed over me. With all the wardings in the room, I couldn't tell if it had essence tangled in it or if it was just the ventilation system. Moments later I could hear footsteps coming down the aisle, and I slid back. They came closer, a steady gait with a firm destination. They stopped right below me.
I startled as a voice whispered in my ear. "Do you want to come down from there?"