The God Collector Read online

  Theo leaned back and gently began to knock her head against the window.

  She’d never been susceptible to cabin fever before. Her parents learned early on that forcing her to stay in her room was a punishment with no teeth in it—alone, with some paper or a book or even just her own thoughts, she could concentrate on the worlds and images swirling in her head.

  This time, though, those images weren’t ones she wanted to spend time with. And even her parents had never left her in her room for three days straight.

  Three. Nice, round mythic number. Three days for Jesus to rise from the dead, three sons setting off to seek their fortune, three seasons in the Egyptian calendar. After three days in the apartment, three days since the robbery, someone should have arrived bearing answers. That’s the way it should go, right?

  With a sigh, she rested her forehead against the cold glass. It’d be nice if things worked like that. Her breath was fogging against the window, and on impulse she pressed a quick kiss to the patch of condensation. She liked it—the lip prints, see-through and surrounded by opaqueness that faded at the edges to… Oh hell, she was doing it again.

  She was going insane. With boredom. The bruises and scrapes from the night of the theft hadn’t even faded yet, and she was losing her mind from having nothing to do.

  Well, if the universe wasn’t going to provide her a miracle, she would have to make her own. Theo clambered down off the window seat and grabbed her phone from its place on the bookshelf. The very first name in her contacts list: Aki Lee. Four missed calls.

  The phone rang just once and picked up. “What the fuck?” Aki demanded bluntly, his voice crackling a little over the bad connection. “Seriously, Theo, what the flipping fuck? Why haven’t you been calling me back? Are you all right?”

  Sighing, she sat down and leaned her back against the bookcase. “I’m fine, Aki,” she said, relief welling up in her chest. “I’m sorry I haven’t been answering your calls. It’s… I’ve been busy. Do you have time to talk?”

  “You think you’ve been busy? I’m trying to do two big redesigns at once, and my inbox is full of emails from the art squad pestering me for details of whatever the hell went down in the loft.” Computer keys rattled in the background. “Jared North is driving me insane, by the way. He’s convinced you killed a guy. You didn’t, did you? Because I owe him fifty dineros if you did.”

  “Redesigns? Aki, are you back in the loft?”

  “Nope. The whole department’s been closed since whatever-it-was happened. The loft is taped off, and everyone’s security clearance has been revoked while they check our logs. I’m waiting to hear if I’m gonna get fired or not. Seriously, Theo, what the fuck?”

  “You’re gonna have to be more specific, Aki.”

  “You know what? Fuck this. I’m not having this conversation over the phone. Are you home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Coffee. Your place. Half an hour, and you’d better give me something to tell North or he’s gonna claim he won. That fifty is going into my vacation fund, goddammit.”

  When he was worked up, Aki used profanity like punctuation, and Theo smiled just a little at it. “Okay, but all I’ve got is instant. I’ve been stuck waiting for a verdict myself, and I’m pretty much out of…everything, really.”

  “I’ll bring it. My mom sent me a bag of that coffee they fish out of cat shit, and I’m not drinking that by myself.” There was a rattling sound as Aki grabbed his car keys. “Hang tight, I’ll be there in thirty.”

  “Wait, Aki—”

  The phone cut off, and Theo set it down, sighing a little. Okay then.

  In fact, it took only twenty-seven minutes before her doorbell buzzed. Theo opened the door and Aki stalked in, looking as frustrated as she’d ever seen him. His hair was ruffled, instead of stylishly disheveled, and he was wearing an olive-green T-shirt and cargo pants. He dropped a fancy bag of coffee beans into Theo’s hands and flopped down on the couch, looking like he wanted to break something.

  She carefully sniffed the coffee before putting it in the grinder. “All right,” she said as she hit Blend, “talk. What’s going on at work?”

  “Well,” he began, slumping farther down on the couch, “I got an email from Zimmer on Tuesday night that you might ‘need a friend’. You didn’t call me back, so I guessed you were sulking or something. Then when I came in to work on Wednesday morning my card wouldn’t swipe through. I talked Security into letting me in, but the loft was taped off and one of Zimmer’s little buddies was standing there telling me to go home. Nobody was giving us any answers. Stiegler got into an argument with the guards and almost slugged a guy. He needs to lay off the caffeine. Some people just left ’cause, hey, free day off, right? But you hadn’t turned up yet.”

  He shook his head as Theo poured the fresh grounds into the coffeemaker.

  “Finally, Van Allen turns up and tells us there was a robbery, and the art department was implicated. Mummy’s gone, shabtis’re gone. Or some of ’em, anyway. We all had to go home and wait while there was a security check. I got Yuri to talk to me, but all he could say was it was somebody you know, and he just disappeared into thin air.” Aki eyed her. “So, yeah…it was Adler, right?”

  She sighed. “I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may be incriminated.”

  “So it was him.”

  “Pretty much.” Theo poured two cups of coffee and brought them over to the couch. “He…he drank paint thinner and turned into dust. Or that’s what I saw, anyway.” She paused, waiting for the sarcasm, but Aki just shook his head and took one of the cups. After taking a sip of her own, she told him the whole story.

  Most of it. He didn’t need to know about that strange little moment.

  “Maybe he wanted to ruin the exhibit,” she finished, shaking her head. “But I think it’s more than that. He had some kind of fixation—kept talking about life-or-death situations.”

  Aki snorted. “If he wanted to ruin the exhibit, he fucked up. We’re actually supposed to keep working in our downtime, prepping new stuff focused on spooky crap. Publicity sent over a whole text package for a new brochure about curses.”

  “That’s crazy,” Theo said, cradling her coffee cup. “They don’t have the mummy anymore. They lost a lot of the shabtis. What are they going to do?”

  “Capitalize on a big story, obviously,” Aki pointed out. “C’mon, you know what the publicity game is like. The weird burial already fits the whole ‘woo-woo Egyptian curses’ deal, and now someone manages to steal the mummy and just vanish?” Theo didn’t say anything, but Aki winced a little. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make a big deal out of it. Look, the point is, people love a car crash. Everyone wants to know why that mummy was stolen. They’re going to go ahead with the exhibition. The display’s gonna be called The Tomb of the Lost Mummy.”

  “People love a car crash,” Theo repeated with a sigh. “Is that why I still have a job?”

  Aki sipped his own coffee, grimaced and stood up to get another packet of sugar. “No, you still have a job because it wasn’t your fault. That guy would’ve gotten into the lab no matter what, and probably would have gotten more if you hadn’t been there.”

  Her friend was carefully avoiding using the name of the thief. She wasn’t sure if she was angry or not, but some part of her was relieved that he wasn’t pressing the issue.

  “Plus, you would have serious grounds for a wrongful-termination suit,” he added, effectively spoiling the moment. “They don’t want to get sued ’cause of you.”

  “Nice one,” Theo grumbled into her coffee. “I was feeling encouraged for a couple of seconds there.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that and you know it.” Aki finished emptying his third packet of sugar into his cup. “There’re a few armchair Rambos who swear they would never ever, ever have let this happen, they’d have broken the thief’s neck with the
ir bare hands, but nobody believes ’em.”

  Theo snorted at that image. “Sandusky?”

  “And Meyers. The John McClanes of the Tech department.”

  “Believe me, if I could have nominated one of them to take my place, I would’ve.” Theo sighed and leaned sideways, resting her head against the cool glass of the window. Far below, a car horn honked and someone yelled about blind drivers—just another morning in the Loop. “Aki, please, be honest with me. How screwed am I?”

  Aki frowned. “I’d say…forty percent. Like I said, they don’t want to give you grounds for wrongful termination, but there are already some rumors that you had more to do with it than you’re letting on. Tread carefully.”

  Aki left the apartment feeling a little bigger and a little colder for Theo. The museum thinking that allowing her to continue doing her job, the only thing she wanted, might somehow endanger it—that was a nasty thought.

  How could empty space feel so stifling?

  The museum was teeming. Normally on a weekday morning in December, there would be a few dozen visitors scattered around the great hall in tour and school groups. Now there were hundreds lining up for tickets and pestering the harassed-looking docents about the antiquities on display. Somebody had put an oversized hockey jersey on Strewth, the leader of the Struthiomimus pack, and a group of Canadian tourists were taking pictures in front of him and his packmates Wilbur and Lenin. The café under the Pangaea display was doing brisk business, and their jacked-up prices were being willingly paid by visitors chilled by the walk along the windswept lakefront. With the running and shrieking children, the cheerful babble, the smell of hot coffee and even a local news outlet doing a puff piece on curses, the solemn halls of academe had taken on the air of a street fair.

  “Holy cow,” Theo managed to say. Museums had been losing attendance for years now, to the point where her parents fussed about whether she would still be employed in five years’ time. But now it seemed that a whiff of curses, a touch of crime, were all that was needed to draw the public back. That’s entertainment, chum.

  She undid her scarf and fumbled for her ID card before remembering that it had been taken away as evidence. Sighing a little, she joined the line at the security desk, falling in behind a couple of women who had apparently misplaced a purse in one of the galleries. They were chatting easily—one describing a good trade she had made in some online game, the other making appreciative noises—and with the comfort of longtime friends.

  For a moment, Theo just blanked out and let the noise wash over her. It had only been a few days, but she desperately missed the camaraderie and comfort of the loft; she needed that moment, even if the chatting friends weren’t hers. She needed to enjoy a few seconds of normalcy.

  As the line shuffled forward, a shout broke Theo’s concentration. “Hey, Speer!” the voice called, and Theo looked up, startled back into the real world. Yuri Vladashvili was hurrying towards her. The two women stopped their conversation and glanced at Theo, clearly wondering if she were being caught by Security for something nefarious.

  So much for the moment. Theo hitched a smile into place and turned to face Yuri. “Morning,” she said. “I heard things were going well here and I wanted to have a look…”

  “I’m sorry, but Dr. Van Allen doesn’t want you back upstairs yet,” Yuri said with a sympathetic grimace. Theo’s heart sank. “The loft is still taped off, and everyone’s been told to go home until further notice.”

  “But what about the exhibit?” she insisted. “If we’re still going forward with it, I need to prepare that mural.”

  Yuri glanced around, clearly spotting the eavesdropping women. He shook his head and took Theo by the arm, towing her away from any curious onlookers and towards the gate into the big hall. The guard on duty spared a curious look for Theo, but he waved them through without comment.

  “Graphics really aren’t a priority right now,” he confided quietly. “This is all rumor, okay? But somebody up top is getting pissed off about the new visitors being interested in the crime. We’ve been told not to give them any details or even admit that anything happened. Basically, they’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  Theo wilted a little. She understood it—intellectually, anyway—but viscerally, it felt like a punch in the gut. When it came down to brass tacks, the whole thing was still an embarrassment, no matter how much they were insured or how many new visitors the controversy attracted. Fear gripped her—fear not of death but of irrelevancy, of being discarded because she had been part of something that made the museum look bad. She shook it off with an effort, or thought she had, but her hands trembled a little as she forced herself to focus on Yuri.

  “Forty percent screwed,” she muttered, remembering Aki’s words. “It figures. But isn’t there someone I can talk to? Some way I can get into the loft for just a little bit? If the exhibit is going forward, then we’ve still got to figure out what to do with that wall. I can design it at home if need be, but it has to get done, and I need to get some things from upstairs.”

  Yuri frowned, clearly torn. “What would you need to get?” he said.

  “References. Mainly the facial reconstruction that Egyptology commissioned and some of the stuff from the exhibition bible. I know, I know, it’s not supposed to be let out of the museum before the opening, but I’ll need it.” She sighed, tugging on the end of her braid as she thought. “And the sketchbooks I had stored in the loft. They have all my work on the coffin and the shabtis.”

  “I told you, we can’t let you up there.” He shook his head. “Look, though…maybe I can get you in to see Mr. Zimmer. He might be able to work something out. I mean, he was there when it all happened. Wait here, all right?”

  “Thanks, big guy.” She gave his arm a quick squeeze, drawing a smile from him. “It means a lot to me.”

  Yuri was gone for more than half an hour. Theo waited in the great hall, making herself as comfortable as possible on one of the benches and watching the crowds while she tried not to worry or fidget. The patrons moved on, oblivious to her, and she found herself oddly comforted by the sight; the museum was alive, it was relatively undamaged, and business continued despite the petty drama of the robbery and the violated aerie. The chattering of hundreds of voices blended together, echoing off the marble and reverberating in the higher reaches of the hall itself, creating a comforting background rumble that made it impossible to feel alone. She should spend more time down here, she told herself. Take some time to actually enjoy the place.

  She was so engrossed in the sight, watching the people all around her, that when Yuri abruptly reappeared at her elbow she jerked like she’d been electrified. “Jesus,” she breathed, trying to calm her racing heart. “Don’t do that!”

  “Sorry, Theo,” Yuri said, looking a little abashed. “I didn’t realize you were so zoned out. Look, I was able to get you a few minutes with Zimmer. Make it quick, okay? He’s really busy with the new security rules.”

  “I can imagine,” she said, keeping her tone neutral. Her heart was still pounding, and she cradled her right arm, phantom pain flickering through the bruises and scabbing there. Poor Yuri seemed to realize why she was so spooked, and his face fell. She sucked in another breath and offered him a smile; she hated to see him worry.

  Yuri swiped his card and held the door open, very gentlemanlike with an exaggerated bow, and Theo’s smile was genuine as she swished past him and curtseyed.

  The Security office was in a state of controlled chaos. Everyone seemed to be on the move, doing five things at once, and Zimmer’s door was locked. Yuri knocked and called out, “It’s Speer!”The door opened quickly.

  Zimmer looked like he hadn’t been getting enough sleep, but he still retained an air of professionalism. He ushered Theo into the office and, dismissing Yuri, closed the door behind both of them. Theo gingerly sat on the edge of the one visitor’s chair.

 
“Coffee?” he offered, but she shook her head. “More for me, then. It’s been an interesting week.”

  “Which is why I’m here,” Theo said. Zimmer raised an eyebrow as he went about refilling his mug. “I was wondering if there’s been any progress on finding the thief—or his body, anyway.”

  “If you mean the mummy, no,” Zimmer said. “If you mean Adler, he’s not dead. The cops found him at his townhouse an hour after the robbery. Security footage said he’d been there all night.”

  Theo’s stomach clenched and her expression must have shown it because Zimmer shook his head sympathetically.

  “He’s not dead?” she said carefully.

  “If he’s dead, he’s being unusually talkative.” No cream, but plenty of sugar for Mark Zimmer, she noticed. A man after her own heart, in that regard. “Our cameras had been fed a loop. Ever since Speed came out, that trick’s gotten harder to pull, but some professionals can still manage it. We didn’t get any actual footage from the lab or Restoration. And when the cops talked to Adler, they found a guy who’d been home all night. No witnesses but his security system, and there were no signs of tampering. At this point it’s your word against his.”

  “And his weighs more.”

  “You were scared. Disoriented.” Zimmer sipped his coffee as he settled back into his chair. “Nobody’s likely to press charges, but you have to understand that we’ve got no proof it was Adler in the loft.”

  “Do you think it was him?”

  He frowned and looked at the desk, avoiding her gaze. “I’m not paid to speculate. My job is to protect the antiquities, not figure out how donors think.”

  Some nasty thoughts flickered across Theo’s mind—and you’re doing such a great job of that, aren’t you?—but she did her best to squash them. Now was definitely not the time to let her petty frustrations out. “All right. If he isn’t involved, does that mean I can get back to work? There’s too much to do, especially with the star attraction missing.”