I’ve been called many things—monster, abomination, and thief—but
I prefer the Japanese term Oni. Like them, I could reshape my face to look like
anyone I want. However, instead of working to punish of the wicked, I became
the wicked.
On Memorial Day, I wore the face of
Solomon Bourne, a fortyish mouse of a man who dressed like a bank clerk from Mary Poppins. Because my parents never
gave me a name, I could choose any I liked. This identity came from the
children’s nursery rhyme, “Solomon Grundy, born
on a Monday.”
I climbed the stately stone steps
of the Maryland Smithsonian office and tugged on the door. I feigned surprise
when it was locked. Then, I held up my ID from the Knox Vault Company toward
the security camera.
A hefty guard limped over from his
desk, powdered sugar from a donut staining his solid-blue tie. Donut-stain was
an ex-football player from New Jersey
with a bad knee. I knew his name, everything about him down to how much he owed
on his Suburban, but I couldn’t think of the guards as people today if I was
going to do my job.
He recognized me the way people did
the moving boxes in their basement that they never opened. “Why are you here? Don’t
you know what today is?”
My
big score. I tapped the tickets in my left vest pocket. “The comic-book
convention?” I asked with a faint British accent. The success of any magic
trick is based on staying in character and selling the lie.
“It’s a federal holiday. The place
is closed. You don’t need to be here to open the vault.”
He was referring to Dangerous Religious
Artifacts department, so named because the US government could never admit
that magic exists. Built in the Lincoln
era, the DRA was the most secure facility in the country. I’d been here as
Bourne every time they opened or closed the vault for the weekend. But on a
holiday, there were only four guards in the entire building instead of the normal
ten. I had arranged the perfect way past the defenses. My client would be
pleased.
I pulled an authorization form out
of my doctor’s bag. “That’s why the company wants me to drain the tanks today.
With all the arrests and artifact seizures this year, you have record levels of
dark Kirilian radiation.” That was the polite 1970s term for black magic that
would melt your eyes out for even looking at it. “Wouldn’t want any of that
stuff leaking out, would we?”
With a sigh, he let me in. Officially,
this facility was storage for overflow Smithsonian exhibits, and the workers
rotated the items in the lobby to keep up appearances. The current display had
to do with Watusi ceremonial dress, but the wooden staff in the mannequin’s
hands wasn’t Watusi; it was Northern Chinese. I couldn’t read the runes to be
more precise. Not my circus, not my
monkeys. Bourne wouldn’t know the difference, so I can’t say anything.
While Donut-stain radioed his boss
in the control room, I signed the logbook in front of a surly African-American woman.
She must have started her civil service career in the TSA because she had me take
off my leather sandals first. Then she patted me down thoroughly. In the
process, she failed to notice that I had removed the prints from the pads of my
fingers.
“Pass your bag through the scanner.”
I had latex gloves, tools, Chiclets
gum, and a dozen other suspicious devices in my kit, but the only thing that
raised an eyebrow was the plastic box of medicated wipes in my jacket. “It’s
for hemorrhoids.” I didn’t say mine.
The container had a gel-filled false bottom the exact size and shape of the
gemstone I was here to liberate. I used a gel because I didn’t want anyone to
rattle the container and find the cubic-zirconium replica.
“It’s okay. He always carries
them,” said Donut-stain.
I’d included them in my identity
since the beginning, making the prop invisible.
She grimaced. “Proceed to the elevator
on the left. You must be escorted at all times.”
Yeah,
but they never follow me into the bathroom. I had tested the switch
technique on a smaller item. I could toss the container out the narrow bathroom
window and walk out scot-free. Within a minute of the drop, my associate Elaine
would pass by walking her dog and scoop it up in a plastic baggie.
Another side of beef in uniform
stood at attention beside the elevator. They both had six inches on me, but with
my superhuman strength, I could knock them out if I had to. The trick was to
get away with the crime without leaving evidence that anything supernatural had
been involved.
Bored by the holiday closure, guard
two did something unheard-of. He asked me a social question. “How about that
Polish soccer game last night?”
He meant the FIFA tournament, but I
didn’t own a TV. However, I didn’t want to reveal a personal fact that they
might use to track me later. So I touched the hearing aid in my right ear.
“Pardon?”
Soccer guard averted his eyes. It’s
a trick I learned. People avoid looking at what they perceive as disabilities.
It makes them uncomfortable and leaves fewer witnesses for me. I can lip-read
for other reasons.
The guards put their keys in on
either side of the ancient elevator and turned them simultaneously. Donut said
to Soccer, “The people downstairs like that he can’t listen in on secrets about
m-a-g-i-c.”
“How did it happen?”
“Testing one of their vaults with
dynamite. Long story. His family has been in this business for generations. His
grandfather met Jesse James.” A good legend grows with each telling.
The doors opened, and I stepped
inside. The elevator had two buttons. I hit B. In twenty minutes, I would be holding
the thing I’d worked for two months to steal.
As the doors began to close, a
woman’s voice called from the lobby, “Hold the lift!”
When I saw her long, white hair, I
pushed the Close button frantically. It didn’t help.
Soccer guard put his foot in the
gap.
I froze in terror. What is she doing here? She’s supposed to be
attending law school.
Delilah could expose everything. Her
undergraduate degree in history made her an outstanding researcher and
archivist, and her minor in psychology had sharpened her ability to unearth the
truth from obscure clues. If I weren’t working for a god, I would’ve run away
then and there. However, the Drinking God always enforces oaths; he’s touchy
about that. She won’t recognize me if I
don’t speak. This can still work.
Slightly out of breath from the run,
the gorgeous blue-eyed Nordic woman passed over credentials from the pocket of
her business jacket. “Delilah Theowin, Salem
security.” Most witches lived in Salem,
the private dimension that Lilith got in the settlement for divorcing Adam.
“I’m here to suspend the wards for the special opening today.”
Donut-stain frowned. “Why not
Agnes?”
My
sentiments exactly. Agnes was a half-blind bureaucrat and let me get away
with anything. If the heist went south, I couldn’t choke Delilah unconscious
and look myself in the mirror again.
“The theonic radiation in the DRA
is a concern, so they brought me in as a specialist. I’m skilled in handling
sacred items.” Witches referred to lethal levels of raw, undirected magic from
another realm as “theonic,” leaving the nature of the god unspecified. She didn’t
use judgmental terms like dark or evil, even though her last scrape with the
supernatural had permanently bleached her hair corn-silk white.
“Yeah,” said Donut, glancing at me.
“I heard something about that.”
I’d brought this on myself by spreading
the backstory too far.
From a long line of witch priestesses,
Delilah had a rare resistance that had been strengthened by the tattoos all
over her body. With their aid, she could pick up cursed items, absorb, and
redirect the harmful energy. Instinctively, my eyes went to the ward spiral
visible through her white nylons. Don’t
stare! With great effort, I raised my chin to be a gentleman.
Stay
in character, and this will all work. I stepped to the back of the elevator
car to hide as Donut-stain escorted her in. Why
is he starting to take an interest in his job now?
Her hair smelled of lavender, just
like it had ten years ago. With her heels, she was an inch taller than me. She
said one word, and I knew I was doomed. “Morgan!”
The ten-year-old girl came galloping
through the lobby like a wild horse, her wavy black mane flowing unbound. Small
for her age, she made up for it with attitude. She wore a private-school
uniform with a pleated skirt but no shoes. She’d removed them for the security
search but never bothered to put them back on.
Her mother growled, but the infraction
didn’t merit an argument in front of people she worked with.
Donut-stain frowned. “Hey, this is
no place for kids.”
Delilah pushed the down button.
“Yeah? Well, nobody told me her new school would be closed today, and she’s
been banned from the only suitable day care. Anger issues.”
“Mr. Mask?” said the girl, gazing at
me with her chocolate eyes.
How
did she recognize me with implants and surgical alteration? Despite having
a mouth like a truck driver, this child was the most dangerously smart person I
had ever met. I tried to reason with her, putting a finger to my lips.
The doors closed with glacial
slowness again.
Donut-stain said, “He can’t hear
you, kid. He’s deaf.”
“She’s talking to her imaginary
friend,” explained Delilah.
Morgan opened her mouth to
contradict them both, but I took a chance and signed, “Play along. I can’t
talk, or your mother will know my secret.”
Her eyes grew huge. “I understand,”
she said aloud. Then slowly, she signed back. “How am I understanding?”
“Magic.” I was vague on purpose. You
don’t tell a little girl about mommy’s nasty deal with an elder god.
Her mother smiled at the girl’s “pretend”
sign language and chatted with the guard.
“I suck at magic.” Morgan made a
gesture that she shouldn’t have known for several years. “I’ve been thrown out
of three schools. Can you help?”
I recognized the symptoms from
other crossbreeds. “Then those schools suck. They only know how to teach people
to do magic. You are magic. You have a rare and precious gift. You can speak any
language the person you’re with knows.” Other abilities should manifest as she matured.
“Some of your anger may be due to the disconnect between what people are saying
with their mouths and the truth that their body language is revealing.” My
mother had been an oracle, and personal information sometimes popped into my
head when I met people. The talent came in handy when planning a new job. Hacking
people is easier than cracking safes.
“I’m a bloody unicorn,” she
muttered aloud. Her face lit up like I’d given her the keys to her own life.
“Language!” her mother said sternly
without turning.
The elevator stopped, but our signing
conversation continued as Donut led us down the hall toward the head
archivist’s office. “Are you my guardian angel?” Morgan asked, pointing toward
my sandals.
They
don’t have a word for what I am. Not a nice one. “Not an angel, but I watch
over you whenever I can.”
Her mother pointed to a row of
chairs. “Sit!”
Both Morgan and I obeyed
reflexively.
Harrison Tweed stepped out of his
boss’s office, the holiday replacement. This buffoon was everything I hated in
an Ivy League bureaucrat—attractive, oily, and fond of claiming the
accomplishments of others. “Hello… I’m the security officer, the acting
supervisor at this site. Whom do we have the pleasure of meeting?”
Pompous
ass. I shouldn’t complain. His incompetence made my job easy.
Donut made introductions.
Harrison actually kissed Delilah’s
hand before he took her into the office to sign some forms.
I whispered, “Call me Pepe Lepew.
Mwah.” I kissed the little girl’s hand.
Morgan burst out in a fresh round
of giggles.
“You two know each other?” Donut
asked.
“What? You mean do I break into her
house once a year and leave her presents, while she puts cookies out for me?
That would be creepy.”
Covering her face, Morgan held in a
snicker. That’s exactly what we’d been doing. When she turned three, she’d left
her favorite platypus plush doll in a hotel. I had tracked it down with my divination
skills and returned it, but she caught me in the act. To buy her silence, I’d
taught her how to tie her shoes. Her mom was a righty while Morgan was a lefty
like her no-good absentee father.
The guard took out his phone and
pulled up a video of some sporting match. I used his moment of disinterest to
transfer the Chiclets into my jacket pocket.
She signed, “Why are you here?”
“To rescue someone.”
“Who?”
The
most powerful genie of his age, trapped in a vault. I made a locking
gesture over my lips.
“Angel stuff. Got it.”
I wanted to hug her, but that would
get me arrested for other reasons. Instead, I asked, “What happened at the day
care?”
“I don’t know what the big deal is.
I took a nap during some boring movie, and one of the other kids woke me up,
screaming that I was a freak. So I washed his mouth out with hand sanitizer.”
She’s
glowing in her sleep again. “You can’t do that.”
“They didn’t have any soap.”
“You can’t sleep anywhere but in
your own bed! I warned you.”
“Why not? Normal kids do.”
“I agree it’s not fair,” I replied.
“For now, you have to trust me.”
The manager’s door opened, and Harrison frowned at the guard. “Take the child to the
break room. Buy her something with sugar. Just keep her out of our hair.” Then
he gestured me inside.
Access to the vault area was
through the back of the manager’s office.
I glanced down the hall toward the exit.
Delilah could lose her job for what I was about to do. Watching her cry about
that would be hard, but facing a berserk god would be worse.
****
Harrison narrated the whole
experience as if he had designed it. “The DRA repository is surrounded by three
feet of reinforced concrete on every side, with alternating meshes of silver,
cold iron, and electrum to prevent access from supernatural forces. Recently,
Knox has installed blockers for cell phones and ground-penetrating radar.” To
be fair, the Knox Ultima mark 7 was an impressive piece of craftsmanship that
filled the entire wall. The brushed-titanium fittings and pearlescent
midnight-blue paint job wouldn’t be out of place on a Jaguar. Not many people
could see the faint wards woven beneath the lacquered surface. The US government
had spoiled the effect by installing fluorescent fixtures in the seventies. “The
glassy substance around the perimeter is eog, a living aetheric material that
absorbs any magical attack and transfers it to a storage array in the floor.
It’s wand-proof. Inside, we maintain a self-contained environment so tight it could
be used to store smallpox. The only way in or out is through this seven-layer door.”
Just to throw him off his smug
stride, I pointed to the two-foot plus sphere in the left corner.
Harrison
rolled his eyes. “Oh. That’s the night depository. It’s how agents drop off
dangerous items after hours.” The top quarter of the ball had been cut out like
a Pac Man mouth with a pivot rod through the jaw. He demonstrated by lifting
the lever at the bottom to show how the contents could be dumped onto the other
side of the wall.
“Like a mailbox,” Delilah said.
“We catalog and shelve them the
next morning. To drain the energy sink, we’ll need to open that impenetrable
door.”
She smiled at the dramatic flair.
“I’ve read the specs, sir. It’s a simple three-person lock. Mr. Bourne turns
off the antimagic sponge. I suspend the wards, and you turn the combination. If
you don’t mind my asking, why is he here instead of a federal employee?”
“Ah, well… one of the Special Branch
geniuses invented a dimensional-gate detector last Halloween, and we’ve been
busy rounding up artifacts ever since. Unfortunately, this storage facility
isn’t rated for such a large influx, and our last two specialists passed out.
Mr. Bourne’s disability has reduced the effects of aetheric resonances.
Besides, losing a contractor doesn’t impact our safety reports or insurance.”
He said the word “contractor” with the same distaste as “cockroach.”
The first collapse had been a
fluke, but I’d arranged the second with chemicals. I relied on the collapse fallacy
for my plan B. If nobody gave me the time I needed to switch gems, the chewing
gum in my pocket contained blood caps. I could fake internal bleeding. While
they ran outside the cell-blocker radius to call an ambulance, I could do the
deed.
Delilah frowned at the idea that anyone
was disposable.
Tapping his watch, Harrison prodded me to do my part. The nondisclosure signing
and tour had put us behind schedule. The vault timer only had five-minutes
remaining in the window where the combination would work.
I opened the access panel and
worked the override levers and knobs like an eighties kid with a Rubix cube. I
wasn’t as dexterous as one of those teens, but I was a great deal stronger.
Mechanical devices respect that about me. I twisted the final valve into the
off position and nodded.
“That’s your cue, Miss Theowin,”
said Harrison.
Delilah pulled a delicate Sterling
silver rod from her purse, slashed downward, and uttered the release phrase.
When that didn’t work, she cleared her throat and repeated the incantation.
“We don’t have all day, miss. Are
you sure you’re qualified for this?”
Nope,
that was the spell to reveal asshats. Undoing wards required the precision
of an orchestra conductor and the brains of a calculus instructor. He had
neither. Delilah flipped through her manual, looking for the part of the
formula she might be missing. I had seen others perform this ceremony enough
times that I had spotted her mistake early on.
Mr. Sphincter tapped his right wingtip.
During the third try, her voice and
hand were shaking so much that she botched it worse than a first-year student. Three minutes. We didn’t have time to be
delicate, so I let go of the valve and cleared my throat. Using my hands, I
formed a hollow circle and moved it in an arc over my head.
She slapped her forehead. “You’re
right. I didn’t adjust the equation for the phase of the moon. Let’s see…that
results in a revised angle of—”
Harrison
snapped. “Just do it, you stupid woman!” Only he didn’t use the word “woman.” The
slur was hard to pretend not to hear.
Delilah’s eyes sparked with
dangerous fire. She wanted to spend the last few minutes of my window reaming
him out.
It might have been worth the loss
of the gem to watch this, but an explosion near the elevator knocked us off our
feet. White dust rained down from the acoustic tiles.
As I helped the witch to her feet,
I realized someone else had figured out that today would be ideal to rob the
vault, but Delilah had blown the timetable. Such precision meant an inside job.
I began to suspect Harrison of being more than
a jerk, though I couldn’t open my mouth to warn her. My best hope was that
these thieves were professionals. I could still rescue the gem and use their heist
to mask my own crime.
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