Broken (Otherworld 6)

"Hooker with syphilis. Remember what Jeremy said?" He looked around, scouting the territory. "Change of plans. I'll be the bait. She's seen me with you enough to know I'd be just as good a source for that letter. If I'm easier to nab than you--"

I shook my head. "Unless her brain's rotting with the rest of her, she's never going to think you'd be easier to nab than me. I'll be careful. You know I will. I'll avoid her mouth and scrub up afterward. Better yet, I'll knock her down and wait for you. Minimal contact."

After a moment, he nodded and we headed for the stairs.

We bypassed the busier second floor--home of the kid-friendly dinosaur and natural history displays. In the third-floor Islam gallery, we settled in for some museum browsing, which was one act I didn't need to fake. Fifteen years with an anthropologist has made me a bit of a museum geek.

Clay always finds an artifact that catches his eye, usually with a great story attached. When we visit a city, Clay will snore through opera and jazz concerts, stake out a bench in the art gallery, even fall asleep during eardrum-shattering Broadway musicals...but don't ask him to leave town before he's visited every museum.

I used to wonder how a guy who wants little to do with humans can be so fascinated by their history. I understand now that the two attitudes aren't mutually exclusive. Human society is foreign to Clay and, therefore, all the more fascinating, if only from a scientific point of view. Like an anthropologist studying apes, he finds the structure intriguing, but he has no desire to join it.

We wove through the Islam gallery, through Rome, and back to the Greek areas in the southwest corner. There, we split up a few times, one of us wandering off to look at something, conveniently rounding a corner and getting out of the other's sight. Yet Rose didn't strike. Nor did Nick phone to say she'd backed off. Every once in a while, I detected a whiff of rot on the air-conditioning, confirming she was nearby. There was no sign of the bowler-hatted man, though.

We wove through a forest of armless, legless, emasculated marble male torsos. I stopped in the corner, behind a raised scale model display of the acropolis of Athens.

"Either she's waiting for her partner or she's waiting for us to give her a better shot," I said. "You know the place as well as I do. Where's a safe place to take someone down?"

As his eyes half-closed, I could almost see the floor plan of the museum flipping past them, his brain ticking off every place he could kill someone or hide a body. A discomfiting skill, but I knew it came from that part of his brain that instinctively assessed danger and mapped out escape routes in any new environment. When it came to randomly killing strangers and stashing the bodies, there were few werewolves less likely to do it than Clay.

"That's the public areas," he said after he'd recited the list. "You want the labs and stuff too?"

"Uh, no, that's okay. Just don't ever invite me to the museum after we've had a fight, okay?"

He snorted. "I think I'd be the one more likely to be knocked over the head and stuffed in a sarcophagus."

"Never," I said. "They're all behind glass. Lousy place to hide a body. But there's a really big vase over there that might work."

He growled and swung to grab me. I sidestepped just as a mother and two kids walked in.

"Speaking of sarcophagi," I whispered. "I think it's time to move on to the Nile."

Clay nodded and followed me out.

Pursuits

WE CHECKED OUT THE EGYPTIAN WING, BUT DECIDED IT was too busy for Rose, so we crossed the floor to the Samuel European Gallery, and walked through the rotunda, then turned right.

The south wing was semidark, with tasteful spot lighting illuminating decorated rooms from various periods. A corridor about ten feet wide wended through the gallery, with lots of twists and curves, so you couldn't see more than two or three glassed-in rooms at a time. Alcoves and doors were everywhere. Even on the busiest days, the wing was quiet. Today, it was empty. Perfect.

We stopped by a well-marked emergency exit near what looked like a large storage closet. Even a zombie had to recognize an ideal kidnapping opportunity when she saw it. Then it came time to separate. If Rose was looking for that ideal opportunity, we were going to give it to her, making sure she knew Clay was leaving, and might be gone for a few minutes.

Clay asked for my cell phone.

"Gotta call work," he said, speaking just above a normal conversational tone. "See how that department meeting went."

I handed him my phone. He didn't have one--a cell phone presupposes a desire to communicate with the outside world.

He hit the buttons, pretended to listen, then grunted, looked at the display and said, "No signal."

"It's these old buildings," I said. "The walls are too thick. Try moving closer to the stairwell."

Before he left, he circled his lips with his finger, then pointed the finger at me, reminding me to stay away from Rose's mouth. I nodded. He walked away, head down as he redialed. I turned to examine a room done in French Regency, all gilt and ornate tapestry. On a pedestal stood a bust of a toga-wearing man who, judging by his expression, had lived in a time that predated laxatives.

Behind me, Clay circled the first corner. "Yeah, it's me. How--?" He muttered a curse. "Hold on." His voice drifted farther. "There? Can you hear me now? Christ, the echo in this place. How did the meeting go?"

A split-second pause. "Hold on. I've lost you. I'll move..."

As his footsteps headed in the direction of the rotunda, his voice faded under the soft strains of piped-in classical music. Okay, Rose, it's not going to get any better than this. Here, I'll even bend over to read this placard, so you can--