Page 25 of The Devil in Oxford
“Ruan… what… what was that?”
He frowned, slowly moving farther from the comb toward another alcove stacked nearly to the ceiling with natural curiosities. “I’m sure it is nothing to worry about.” He cleared his throat, growing grim. “Go on and find your clues, Ruby. I’ll be here.” I watched his darkened form disappear amongst the towering wall of ammonites and whalebones. The comb and its odd effect upon Ruan had nothing to do with the problem at hand—at least I hoped not. In my experience, murder tended to be a straightforward affair, and the occult rarely had much to do with it. Mr. Owen’sotherworldtended to mind its business while ours remained hell-bent on tearing itself apart at the seams.
I rubbed my icy gloved hands over my face, trying to summon my conversation with Mr. Mueller from earlier in the day. With all that had come between then and now, I scarcely recalled the details.
Dangerous people.That’s what both he and Professor Reaver had implied.
Dangerous people and fraudulent artifacts.
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a place to start. Mr. Mueller had believed that Julius Harker was going to come into money, likely from selling something valuable. But selling artifacts—even those obtained legitimately—was not a quick and easy process. And if the item was stolen, it was even more difficult. This whole endeavor was a herculean task to say the least.
Mr. Mueller and Julius Harker’s offices sat side by side within eyeshot of the front entrance to the museum. The badly worn floorboards indicated that, despite his status ofpersona non gratawithin the academy, Harker’s Curiosity Museum remained a wildly popular attraction amongst locals and tourists alike. I tried the first door—the one with Harker’s name engraved on a metal placard—but it was locked tight. Mueller’s, however, lay wide open. Likely not having been closed at all since the exhibition last night.
Clawing dread made its way up my spine. There was no time for nerves. We had at most an hour here before we ran the risk of discovery. I crept inside and pulled the curtains tight before turning my attention to the desk. Bracing my flashlight between my jaw and my shoulder I began to rummage through the papers, careful not to disturb anything more than necessary. If Mr. Mueller kept the books for the museum, then any financial transactions would be sitting in his records—not Julius Harker’s—and hidden in plain sight. Mueller might not have even realized what he had.
Unless there were two sets of books.
A worry for another day. The papers on his abandoned desk were a crisp yellow from long-dried spilled tea. I carefully flipped through them one by one, mindful to neither rip them nor get them out of order lest someone realize I’d been here. Bills mostly, underscoring what Professor Reaver had already told me—Julius Harker and his museum were in dire financial shape.
An odd bit of correspondence. Receipts. The leather-bound accounting ledger was similarly discolored, its pages sticking together. The quiet rustle of Ruan’s jacket outside told me he was nearby. His discomfort with this museum and the unease between us only exacerbated my nerves. We could not stay long.
Hoping it would not be missed, I slipped the ledger into my satchel. I needed time to examine it—and we were short on the stuff. The city would wake soon. I made quick work of the drawers and bookshelves, running my hand beneath the bottom edge in search of secret compartments, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. At least, nothing I could find. At last, I gave up and moved on to Julius Harker’s office.
It took me several minutes in the darkness to finally pick the lock—far longer than an interior door ought to have taken. The locking mechanism finally gave up its secrets with a satisfying click and I entered. The air in here smelled of tobacco with the strangest hint of petrol. The combination tugged at a memory of mine that did not quite want to come, a glimmer of a thread to my past. One I did not like. Not at all.
The walls of Harker’s office were hung floor to ceiling with shadowboxes full of artifacts. His desk was no better, cluttered with this and that. The man hadn’t found a piece of paper, pamphlet, train ticket stub, or market list he hadn’t preserved for posterity. It would take years to get through the stacks of ephemera sitting before me, and even if I managed the task, it would only give me the vaguest glimpse of Harker’s life. How was I to determine what was important in this sea of miscellany?
Grumbling, I sank down into Harker’s stiff leather desk chair to begin digging through his mountain of refuse. I tugged on the center desk drawer.
Locked.
Of course.
I reached into my roll again and made quick work of the drawerlock before sliding it open to reveal crumpled paper,moreammonites, strange rocks. And a peculiar smooth roundish stone, about the size of a duck’s egg. I lifted it up, turning it over in my hand. A strange hole had been bored through the center with such precision it might have been made by a machine. I placed my finger inside, running it along the roughened edge.
“What have you found?”
I dropped the stone to the desk with a startlingly loud thunk. A metallic taste flooded my mouth from where I’d bit my tongue. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to sneak up on people when burgling?”
“I’ll take that omission up with my tutor.” Ruan glanced down, furrowing his brow, and lifted the stone from the table, turning it over in his own hand. “Where on earth did you find a milpreve?”
“In a drawer, isn’t that where they come from?” I replied dryly. “What is a milpreve?”
“An adder stone—Glain Neidr. They’re all the same thing. Different words amongst different peoples.” He sighed, pressing it into my palm and resting his own hand over it lightly, careful not to touch my skin in the doing. “It’s said to protect against evil magic. You should keep it on you.”
“I’m not going to steal from a museum.” I bristled at the mere notion, yet I wrapped my fingers around it all the same.
“It’s not stealing when the man is dead. He hasn’t any use for it now.”
“Have I become such a bad influence on you? Weren’t you recently lecturing me on my extra-legal activities?”
He gave me a half smile, glancing back to the main hall with the rows of exhibit cases back to me. His expression fell. “Milpreve or no, I don’t like this place. Find what you need, and we should go.”
I didn’t disagree with him at all. I’d been ill at ease ever since the first time I stepped into the museum and couldn’t place my finger on it. I glanced to my watch. We had only minutes left before we needed to return home lest we be discovered. “I’ll be quick.”
Ruan nodded, disappearing back into the museum, and I feared he was returning to that worrisome comb. I did not like the longing on his face when it came to that object. There was a determination there, a recklessness that did not suit my pellar at all.
He’s not yours, Ruby—you made quite certain of that in Scotland.
