Page 64 of Sigils & Spells

“Do you want to come in?” I asked.

He leaned against my open door frame in the yummiest way possible. He was all tall and lean and I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to kiss me.

“Yeah, I do. And that’s why I’m not. This was a proper first date. Hopefully, that means I get to kiss you good night at your door.”

Merle could kiss me good morning in my bed if he wanted. Instead, he was being mister proper. Kudos and brownie points. He behaved on the first date, hopefully on the second one he would not.

I stepped in close and grabbed the front of his coat and tipped my face up to his.

“I would very much like for you to kiss me.” I was done leaving my wants and needs from this man to chance.

His lips were warm. His fingers were a bit chilly as he cupped my face and continued to work his lips over mine. My lips parted, and I darted my tongue out for a taste of him. He responded in kind, and our tongues teased each other, but never fully committed to twining and dancing together.

He sighed when he eased away from me, letting his hands drop to my arms. I still clenched his coat in my fists.

“Good night, Pandora.”

Reluctantly, I let him go. “Good night, Merle. I had a nice time with you this evening. Would you be interested in coming over for dinner tomorrow?”

A slow smile spread across his face. “I would be delighted. I’ll bring the wine.”

“Great. It’s a date.”

“It’s a date.”

And like our earlier phone call, I wasn’t ready for it to end. I waited at my door as he strutted down the walkway. He pulled his collar close around his neck and hunkered into his coat as he walked off into the weather.

CHAPTER8

Pandora

“Pandora, would you mind?” Dr. Bronson always asked would I mind when it meant something was tedious, and he probably should be the one to be doing it.

“What do you need, Dr. Bronson?”

“Dr. Armitage requested a certain passage. It’s a bit of a poem.” He unrolled a very old piece of vellum. The scroll wasn’t particularly long, but he still didn’t unfurl it to its full length. Using the tip of a retracted mechanical pencil, he drew a circle in the air above a collection of markings that to the untrained eye might look like chicken scratches.

“This section, if you please. It is an incantation.”

“Are there any other sections of the scroll he might need?”

Merle had been collecting bits of poetry, and incantations, for a very long time. They all centered on casting away something. If this ancient document had another piece to whatever puzzle he was working on, maybe it had something else as well?

“No,” Dr. Bronson answered. “Just the section I showed.”

I nodded.

He carefully recoiled the scroll and slid it into a leather case. “I had to pull some strings for the archivist at—” he stopped, cutting himself off. “Well, I had to make promises that I would keep this under my guardianship, so I’m sure you understand why we need to have it copied. Can’t be handing out other’s valuables all willy-nilly.”

“No, we can’t,” I said as I gingerly took the scroll.

For the most part, I enjoyed working at the Archive. Dr. Bronson was innocuous enough, but there were times he tested my patience. If he promised to oversee the handling of the scroll, then he should be the one to make the copy, not me. Better yet, he should invite Merle into the office and allow him to examine it himself. There might be nuances in the ancient markings I might miss with my copy.

And another thing, the secret archives of the Smithsonian were not exactly a secret to those of us in the field.

I bit my lip and thought about Merle’s kiss last night as I headed back to my desk. If I copied this, I could get it over to him this afternoon and see him before tonight’s dinner date. I unrolled the scroll and pulled out a piece of craft parchment.

The chicken scratch was ancient, Sumerian or older, cuneiform. If Merle was tapping into Sumerian texts, whatever it was he wanted separated was holding fast.

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