The God Collector Page 10

  “Why did he want them?” he said. He was trying to be patient, but Theo could see that he was tugging at the leash to get information. To do something. The police would be here any minute, but only minutes after the crime had been committed, Zimmer needed all the details he could get. Theo did her best to focus.

  “He wouldn’t tell me. He just said it was a matter of life and death.” Zimmer’s expression was skeptical, so she jerked her head towards the door. “Check the lab. He must have left fingerprints. Or blood. I might’ve bit him a little.”

  The hard look on Zimmer’s face softened at Theo’s strained sarcasm. “Just stay there,” he said before thumbing the radio again. “Kennedy! Are the cops here yet?”

  A crackling voice answered in the affirmative.

  “Tell them to break out the biohazard gear if they have it. The perp dropped some kind of powdery substance all over the place, and it’s making a hell of a lot of people cough.”

  “Hey, boss!” one of the guards shouted. He was kneeling next to one of the tables, sifting through the dust that Seth had left behind. Fabric came to light: pants and a shirt, pockets still filled with tools. Latex gloves were laying where they’d fallen, filled with more gray-brown powder. The guard’s face was a picture as he gingerly lifted one of the discarded socks.

  “Put that down!” Zimmer snapped. “Nobody touch anything, understand? If there’s a speck of DNA, I want the lab guys to be able to find it.”

  Theo wondered vaguely if Adler had mad cow. Any prion disease, really. Something that would cause people to catch it if they breathed in his dusty remains. She remembered breathing in smoke, smoke and ash, the one time her parents grilled outside. Dad had almost set the house on fire.

  “C’mon.” Zimmer put a hand on her arm. “As soon as the cops take your statement, I’ll have someone get you home. You’re going to be okay.”

  His hand rested on one of the bruises Adler had left on her arms, and the dull ache wiped out the sensation of touch. She had to have been drugged, she knew, because nothing was feeling real anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I don’t think I’m gonna be real helpful.”

  “That’s all right.” He squeezed her arm, five points of harsher pain breaking through the throb of the bruising, and the room seemed to come into sharper focus. “He’ll burn for this. I promise.”

  “I don’t want…” What did she want? She didn’t know. She left the sentence unfinished and muffled another cough.

  Chapter Six

  The fire raged up the hill, untamable. So much old wood in the city—we knew we couldn’t stop it, but the gods knew we had to try. And where was the emperor? I don’t know. These things should not happen when rulers are just.

  ~Excerpt from unknown work, .vellum sheet, circa 1200 ACE

  The squad car dropped her off at the door of her building. Officer Hunt put a hand out, offering quietly to escort Theo up, but she shook her head and clutched her bag. She had to get home, now, and get out of her dusty clothes and pretend that the evening had never happened. She ignored the officer’s well-meant reassurances and bolted for the door.

  The apartment was a standard, white-walled bachelorette pad, distinguished only by its location on the edge of the South Loop and the astronomical rent that went with it. In the three years she’d lived there, though, she had managed to stamp some of her personality onto it. One wall of the living room had recently been turned into a landscape scene (still unfinished—she hadn’t taken the protective plastic off the furniture in eight months) and the others had had reproductions of famous artworks painted straight onto them, complete with trompe l’oeil frames. It was one more area of her life where Theo spent her time up to her elbows in varnish, but she enjoyed it all the same; for work or for pleasure, she loved painting. Being home, surrounded by the comfort of her own work and the images of the Masters’ greatest pieces, cast a momentary sense of calm over her.

  Her cell phone rang, shattering the peace. Theo fumbled reluctantly to answer it. The caller ID blinked at her. Aki.

  Answer? Ignore?

  Ignore. Aki was one of her best friends, but she couldn’t handle talking to anyone right now, let alone anyone who was a habitual bundle of energy and sarcasm. Her hands trembled slightly as she turned off the phone and dropped it onto the bookshelf.

  She half sat, half fell onto her plastic-covered couch, and a small cloud of dust arose. Dust, dust, Seth Adler turning into dust, Seth Adler practically kidnapping her, Seth Adler holding her and asking her to forgive him… Oh hell, everything hurt. She buried her head in her hands, and her shoulders shook as she tried not to cry.

  With the horrible dust clinging to her clothes and the bandaged places on her wrists where the zip ties had drawn blood, Theo shuddered and failed to force down another sob.

  The smell was everywhere. That dry, earthy smell on her clothes and hair and the fresh gauze on her wrists, tickling her throat and turning her next sob into a cough. Staggering to her feet, she stumbled over to the bathroom and yanked the door open. Her torn nails caught on the fabric before she managed to drag her shirt over her head.

  No point in waiting for the water to heat up. It streamed down over her, turning dust into thin clay liquid that stained her bra and glued her soft slacks to her legs. She squeezed her eyes shut and faced into the spray, letting the freezing liquid soak into her hair and skin and remaining clothes. The tape holding her bandages in place flapped loose under the spray, and the gauze slithered to the ground in a sodden heap. In seconds, half her body was numb.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed there, only that the water finally began to turn warm. With shaking hands, she mopped the remaining grime off her face and dumped shampoo into her tangled hair. Her scraped fingertips stung, and the water that ran over them turned pinkish as the crusted blood began to dissolve. She was grateful for the ache; it gave her something to focus on. The smell of apple shampoo began to overwhelm the smell of the dust.

  Finally, Theo turned the water off and crawled out of the shower. The bra and slacks went straight into the trash. Too stained to wear again, she told herself. Wrapping herself in her fluffy bathrobe, she wandered into the living room.

  Something itched in her hands, under her skin. Her fingers twitched. She hunched her shoulders as she sat down on the edge of the couch, flexing the fingers and trying to make the sensation go away.

  She needed to do something.

  What did people do in this situation? Theo didn’t know. Only minutes ago she’d been almost crying, but now it all felt dim and unreal, as if she were sensing everything through a thick layer of gauze. It must be trauma, right? People got traumatized. She leaned forward, knitting her fingers together, and rocked back and forth as she tried to think.

  Sleep would be good, but she was too wired. She stood and took three steps, her wet hair scattering droplets of water on the carpet as she walked. Vaguely, she thought about the scenes she’d painted. History had plenty of war and horror, after all; wailing women at the Crucifixion were only the tip of the iceberg. She should be crying, shouldn’t she? She should be devastated, wallowing in the depths of emotion, tearing out her hair. She should be sad. But she felt…nothing.

  Her motions were on automatic. Open the door to the spare bedroom, which served as her home studio these days. Slide a smock on over the good bathrobe. Pull a canvas from the rack. Paints, paints, paints. She reached for gold without quite knowing why. Not enough sleep, maybe.

  No point in sketching. This wasn’t going to be good, or even kept. She prepared her palette in a haze, stared at the unprimed canvas for a moment, and then drew a single streak of eggshell white down the center.

  The colors flowed in a ribbon through her mind. Eggshell. Titanium white. Dove gray. Antique gold. Alizarin crimson. Purple ochre…

  Hours had passed. Her head sagged, and the end of her messy bra
id dipped into the paint tray. The sharp smell of yellow ochre filled her nostrils, jerking her awake again.

  Light seeped in through the frosted windows of the workroom. Paint was drying on the tip of her brush; she’d fallen asleep standing up, and she hadn’t even realized it. On the easel, a mess of colors and shapes resolved itself into something strange.

  If Theo wanted to be exact, it was Klimt’s The Kiss. Everybody had a favorite painting, and that was Theo’s; the lush gold and the cascading shapes created a sense of movement that she ached to capture. But standing back from her easel, she knew that Klimt had definitely not intended it to be seen in this way.

  There was only one person in the painting, and that was Seth Adler. Instead of a woman, his head was bowed over the gnarled figure of THS203. But his grip was already failing, because he was falling apart: the skin peeling away, the bones crumbling to powder, his form disintegrating. His head was whole, his neck was rotting, his chest was withered scraps over yellowed bone. From head to toe ran thousands of years of age, beginning with simple decay and ending in dust immeasurably older than the ancient corpse he was clutching.

  The brush fell from her hand and bounced, leaving crusts of dried paint on the carpet.

  Later, after a few hours of sleep, she would probably look at it and recognize it for the amateurish crap it was. She hadn’t even sketched, had just splashed paint right onto a raw canvas like a freshman. Half of it was just blobs of color. But faced with the image in the early morning light leaking through the gaps in the curtains, she sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands.

  It wasn’t fair. The thought whined in her head, the least attractive aspect of one’s inner child, but she couldn’t repress it. It wasn’t fair. Why was this happening? What the hell had he been thinking?

  Her eyes burned. Tears squeezed out from between her lashes. Ordinarily, she would have forced them down, wiped them away, told the world she had allergies—anything to keep from being seen as just another flaky, immature artist. Anything to prove she was serious, dammit. But alone in her own home—frustrated and confused and angry and in pain—Theo succumbed to a little bit of humanity and let herself cry.

  Safe. For what felt like the first time in a century, Seth took a deep breath and let himself relax. There it was, the monstrosity, nicely trussed up in the coffin he’d prepared for it. It seemed to leer at him, its teeth speckled black with the ritual powder he’d sprinkled over it for good measure.

  It had been a simple recipe, but one of the only ones he knew. If he’d made it right, the stuff would keep the mummy isolated from the world; there was no way its spirit would be reentering its body anytime soon. He hadn’t expected that body to be much of a threat in the first place, but he believed in being prepared.

  Seth stepped back from the coffin and strained a little, heaving the huge lead-lined lid into place. The coffin itself was concealed inside the shell of a plain couch, with a multicolored blanket thrown carelessly over it. There were other spots prepared—hideaways where he could stash that damn corpse where it would never be found. For now, though, he had to stick with the couch.

  He couldn’t leave immediately. The police visit had made that clear enough—Theo Speer had obviously told them everything. The fact that he wasn’t in custody right that second meant they hadn’t taken some parts of her story too seriously. Such as his death. (He shivered a little and shoved the thought away.) They must have thought she was unhinged with shock, so they’d only questioned him.

  But while he probably wasn’t in trouble now, he would be if he vanished so soon after the theft. He’d have to behave as if nothing were wrong. Except, of course, that he was alarmed and unhappy, thanks to the completely unfounded and distressing accusations leveled at him by a woman he’d thought was friendly. Maybe his lawyer could hint that she might be some kind of stalker.

  No, that was him, wasn’t it? After all, he was the one who’d been silently watching her. He hadn’t had a choice about it, with a gaze locked in place and body paralyzed behind the thick glass, but he could have chosen not to go any farther with it. Could’ve talked to some other member of the staff, or withdrawn himself from museum business altogether now that the items he needed had finally been collected. But the urge to see in the flesh what he’d only glimpsed through false eyes had been difficult to resist.

  Now he was in the position of actually knowing the person he’d had to use.

  Theodora Speer was a fascinating one. At the party, and at lunch too, she’d been reserved and a little wary. But in the labs? She loved the shabtis, there was no way to get around it. A little of it had crept through when she’d talked to him, telling him about their plans for the exhibition.

  Bored. That was it. Bored to death. Her focus on color, her need to record and remember everything—the way she grinned when she talked about Aztec warriors or dumbwaiters… She struck him as someone who wanted to explore a world beyond paint and public relations.

  He felt like a bastard, but he couldn’t let that make a difference. Protecting himself and the mummy had always been his first priority. If the Columbian’s people pressed him he could threaten to defund the trust, and that would keep him safe enough.

  The goddess might disapprove, though. He silently prayed that Neith wouldn’t hold it against him.

  But no matter what she thought, Seth would have to carry on. He’d spent a long, long time hunting down the mummy and its tomb treasure, and now that he had them, he intended to keep them. it was, after all, a matter of life and death.

  The next move was obvious. He could wait quietly for a while and then move out of the city, taking his collections with him. The patron-of-the-arts character could quietly die off in Chicago where it belonged. He might even change his name again; after a long time as Seth Adler, it might be time for a switch.

  Then what? said a little voice in his head. Find the mummy, find the lost shabtis—that had been the plan for so long. The Trust, the identities, the details of lives lived. What came next?

  Maybe he should stay Adler for a little longer. He wasn’t a young man anymore, not by a long chalk, and he didn’t relish the idea of uprooting and starting again as someone new. He hated the cold, but he was used to the city. And in this global age, the world could come to him.

  He had the mummy now, didn’t he? Locked away where it couldn’t be found or used against him. Why not enjoy himself for once? A patron of the arts could get respect in certain circles, and he already had a life here. Perhaps he should stay and take another stab at a lasting relationship.

  And there came that thought again, and Seth squashed it firmly before it got too comfortable in his brain. He had to be desperate if he was still thinking about Theo as anything but a possible obstacle. After all, she’d likely named him to the police in a case of what was either grave robbing or grand larceny. Seth knew he’d bought a lot of trouble from that quarter.

  Was there such a thing as grand grave robbing? Grave larceny, maybe? There had to be a term for it. English was such a mutable language.

  It’s not just language, she’d said, her back to the glass. She’d been talking to one of the preservationists while the clay slept, but the fire in her words had jolted him out of his sleep. It’s never just about language or art or religion, it’s about magic. How all these elements blended together and created something new, right in the middle of the desert. That’s something we don’t really have, I think. Art is art and language is language, and magic, well, we’re a little too grown-up for it. Right?

  Hell. Hell. He growled and kicked at the base of the faux sofa. It was completely petty and did nothing but make his foot hurt, but the pain distracted him. He groaned again, hunching over a little and hopping in place, nursing his aching toes and cursing in three languages, two of them dead.

  Why was she haunting him? A few images and half-remembered words snatched unawares through glass—it
was too little for anyone to actually care about. It had been a long time since he was last with a woman—but long enough to make him lose his control and act as stupid as he had tonight? He didn’t know, and it gnawed at him.

  But there was the fire that had woken the clay. Language and art and religion and magic, she’d said, and perhaps had never quite understood what that implied for her.

  Theo’s eyes lit up when she painted. Theo hungered for knowledge. Theo had camped out in his brain and refused to leave. She shouldn’t even be an issue, but she’d made him laugh, and lived in a world that was a little too small for her vision of it. Seth had laid his plans, and now she’d stepped in and made him question them.

  He wasn’t going to sleep well tonight.

  Chapter Seven

  The priest was using a speaking tube to make the statue of the god give prophecies. I threatened him, telling him it was a sacrilege, but he wasn’t afraid. “The governor allows it,” he said.

  How am I supposed to make him believe the truth? I can’t say why I believe because it sounds mad, and I can’t show why I believe because I can’t afford it. Well, it’s his business, but I don’t think his god will be happy when they meet.

  ~Excerpt from the Jurisprudence of Diokles, circa 910 BCE (fragment)

  Simon and Garfunkel were singing “A Hazy Shade of Winter” from the iPod dock. Theo wasn’t sure why she’d picked it, or why it was even on her playlist in the first place, but it had an upbeat tempo and it almost fit what she could see.

  The scene outside her windows was picture-postcard perfect. Snow drifted down slowly in plump, fluffy flakes, and the sidewalks looked almost pretty with a fine layer of white over the ice and gray slush. A Salvation Army Santa Claus had installed his kettle outside the big bookstore, lending a distinctly Norman Rockwell quality to a scene already filled with holiday decorations and charming Americana. Perhaps the political poster in the Indian restaurant’s window was a touch discordant, but overall the scene would have fit a Metropolitan Museum print or a retro calendar.