EXCERPT FROM STORM OF SHADOWS |
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"I'm looking for the antiquities librarian. I have an appointment. I'm Aaron Eagle." "Yes, Mr. Eagle, I've got you on the schedule." The library's administrative assistant was gorgeous, lush, and smiled into his eyes as she pushed the book toward him. "If you would sign in here, and here. Then if you don't mind, we'd like your fingerprint. Just your left thumb." "I'm amazed at the security to visit antiquities." Aaron pressed his thumb onto the glass set into the desk. A light from beneath scanned his thumb. "The Arthur W. Nelson Fine Arts Library antiquities department contains rare manuscripts and scrolls, and we take security seriously because of it." "So if I made my living stealing antiquities, you'd know." "Exactly." "If I'd been caught." "Thieves always eventually get caught. But you seem to be exactly who you say you are." "I do seem to be, don't I?" He headed down the corridor, and as he walked, he peeled off his thumbprint and slipped the micromillimeter-thin plastic into his pocket. The elevator was stainless steel on the outside and pure mid–twentieth century technology on the inside, and the mechanism creaked as it descended at a stately rate. But the funding for Arthur W. Nelson Fine Arts Library didn't include upkeep on non-essentials like a new elevator for the antiquities department. They were lucky to have updated security, and that occurred only when it was discovered one of the librarians had been systematically removing pages from medieval manuscripts and selling them to collectors. He might still be in business, but Dr. Hall had been the antiquities librarian for about a hundred and fifty years and he caught on right away. It was Dr. Hall Aaron was on his way to see now. When it came to ancient languages, the old guy was a genius, and he knew a hell of a lot about prophecies, religious and otherwise. Which was exactly what Aaron needed right now. The elevator door opened, and he strode toward the metal door. He rang the doorbell at the side. The lock clicked, he turned the handle, and walked in. Nobody was there. Whoever had let him in had done so remotely. The place smelled like a library: dust, old paper, cracking glue, broken linoleum, and more dust. Gray metal shelving extended from one end of the basement to the other, clustered in rows, filled to capacity with books. No one was in sight. "Hello?" he called. "Dr. Hall? It's Aaron Eagle." "Back here!" A voice floated over and through the shelves. A woman's voice. They must have finally dug up the funding to get Dr. Hall another assistant. Good thing. The old guy could croak down here and no one would notice for days. Aaron headed back through the shelves, and arrived in a work area where wide library tables were covered with manuscripts, scrolls and a stone tablet. A girl leaned over the tablet, mink brush in hand, studying them. "Put it on the table over there." She waved the brush vaguely toward the corner. Aaron glanced over at the table piled with Styrofoam containers and fast food bags wadded up into little balls. He looked back at the girl. Her skin was cream, fine-grained and perfect, and that was a good thing, since she did not wear a single drop of make-up. She was of medium height, perhaps a little skinny, but with what she was wearing, who could tell? Her dress drooped where it should fit and hung unevenly at the hem. He supposed she wore it for comfort. He didn't know any other reason any woman would be caught dead in it. She had latex gloves over her hands -- nothing killed a man's amorous intentions like latex gloves -- and she wore brown leather clogs. Birkenstocks. Antiques. As the crowning touch, she wore plastic rimmed tortoise shell glasses that looked like an extension of the frizzy carrot red hair trapped at the back of her neck. Yet for all that she was not in any way attractive, she paid him no heed. "Who do you think I am?" "Lunch. Or" -- her glasses had slid down her nose -- "did I miss lunch? Is it time for dinner already? What time is it?" "It's three." "Rats. I did miss lunch." Lifting her head, she looked at him. He did a double take violent enough to give him whiplash. Beneath the glasses, dense, dark lashes surrounded the biggest, most emphatically violet eyes he'd ever seen. Like a newly wakened owl, she blinked at him. "Who are you?" "I'm. Aaron. Eagle." He emphasized each word, giving time between for the village idiot to absorb the name. "Who are you?" "I'm Dr. Hall." "I've met Dr. Hall. You are most definitely not Dr. Hall." "Oh." A smile curved her pale pink lips. "You knew Daddy. Dr. Elijah Hall. He retired." Her smile faded. "I'm sorry to tell you, but he died a few months ago." "Dr. Elijah Hall was your father?" Aaron didn't believe her. Her "mentor," maybe, but Dr. Hall was way too old to have a daughter this girl's age. Aaron frowned. Of course, Dr. Hall was way too old to be a "mentor," too. "Where did he die? How?" "On the Yucatan Peninsula. Of a heart attack. After he settled me into this job, he went off adventuring. Alone." The girl was grieved. Aaron could see that. She was also irked at being left behind. The cynical part of him observed, "He left you in a good job." "Nepotism. It's true." She lifted her chin. "I'm qualified for the job, but what cinched it for the library, of course, is that I'm cheap." "Yes. I see that." He also saw she wasn't as unattractive as he'd first thought. Hidden under that dress, she had boobs, B, maybe C cups, some kind of waist, and curvy hips. She had good bones, like a race horse, and of course those amazing eyes. But her lips were good, too, lush and sensual, the kind a man would like to have wrapped around his -- "So let me get this straight. You are Dr. Elijah Hall's granddaughter?" "No. I'm. His. Daughter." Now she spoke like he was the village idiot. "He married late in life." "To somebody much younger." "Not much younger. Ten years isn't much younger, would you say? Mama was forty-two when she had me." "And you're twenty now?" "I'm twenty-five. I've got a BS in archeology from Oxford and a graduate degree linguistics from Stanford." She waved at a desk overflowing with papers, artifacts and atop it all, a new Apple laptop. Her voice got louder and more aggravated as she spoke. "I've got all the papers in there if you need to see them. I've had to keep track of all that stuff because everyone thinks I'm twenty!" "Obviously, we're all dolts." "Yes." He could tell it never occurred to her to deny it, or flatter him in any way. The girl was clueless about the most basic social niceties. "When I was seven, my mother died in a cenote in Guatemala retrieving this stela." The girl waved her hand at the table. He glanced at the stone tablet engraved with hiroglyphic-like characters, then leaned over it, studied it with intense interest. "Central American. Pre-Columbian. Logosyllabic. Epi-Olmec script. Perhaps a Rosetta stone for the transition between the Olmec and Mayan languages …" "Very good." For the first time, she looked at him, noticed him, and viewed him with respect. Not interest, but respect. "I had no idea this existed." His fingers itched to touch it, and he carefully tucked them into his pockets. "No one did. After Mama died, Daddy brought it here and shut it in the vault. I think he blamed himself for letting her go down there." The girl was blinking at Aaron again. He couldn't keep calling her "the girl," not even in his mind. "What's your name?" "Dr. Hall … oh, you mean my first name." She smiled at him, those amazing eyes lavishing him with happiness. "I'm Rosamund. My parents named me after Rosamund Clifford." "The Fair Rosamund, King Henry the second's mistress, reputedly the most beautiful woman in the world." Could this Rosamund be any more unlike her? "Henry built Rosamund a bower and surrounded it by a maze to protect and keep her, yet somehow the wildly jealous Eleanor of Aquitaine poisoned her and she died for love." "Most of that is romantic fantasy, of course, but you do know your history. And your linguistics." This Rosamund, plain, unkempt, and appallingly dressed, viewed him with approval. "History. Yes. That's actually why I'm here." He might as well give her a shot at his question. "I wanted to talk to Dr. Hall about a prophecy --" Buy this book at: Amazon | BarnesandNoble.com | Borders |
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