reminded me of the dwarves’ usual attire, brilliant and perfectly tailored. The suit was a bold blue, the waistcoat neon green silk embroidered with tiny snakes. “What are you doing here?”
From the accusation in his tone, he wasn’t going to buy that we’d come to peruse the collection. That kind of ruse wouldn’t get us what we wanted, anyway.
“I saw a man run out of here very early this morning,” I said. “We’re looking for him.”
Aeneas scoffed. “So are we, the bloody thief.”
“What did he take?” Lachlan asked.
“Are you his friends?” Aeneas’s gaze skipped over me and landed on Lachlan. “Are you related? You share similar features.”
“Distantly,” Lachlan lied. “But we seek him for the same reasons you do. He’s wronged us. If you can help us find him, we’ll return whatever he’s taken from you.”
“Can I trust you?” He searched our faces.
“We don’t want the artifact, just the person who took it,” Lachlan said. “We’ve been hunting him for a long time.”
The desire in his voice was palpable, and Aeneas could clearly hear it. He nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Fine. Come with me.”
He turned and hurried down the hall.
We followed. As we walked, I peeked into the rooms that split off the main hall. They were stuffed to the gills with ancient artifacts, so full that they almost made me itchy to look into them. So much dusting. How had they acquired all of these objects?
In a room at the back, Aeneas stopped in front of a broken display case. He looked at us, his gaze heavy. “Ours is the foremost collection of artifacts related to the supernatural world. Highly valuable.”
“But not well secured?” I asked, looking at the broken glass.
Anger flashed in Aeneas’s eyes. “Very well secured. In all two hundred fifty-six years of our history, we have never suffered a theft.” He tapped the iron edge of the display case. “This has been enchanted to repel the attacks of all living things. And yet, the thief still managed to break in.”
“How?” Lachlan asked.
“That, I do not know. A spell that shouldn’t exist, perhaps. Or he’s more powerful than any species we’ve ever seen, able to resist the magic that bound this case.”
“He’s not,” Lachlan said. “He’s very powerful, but he’s not capable of something that unusual.”
“Magic, then.”
“It makes sense,” I said, and looked at Lachlan. “Garreth might not be that powerful, but the Maker could be.”
I could feel Aeneas’s attention sharpen. “Garreth is his name?”
“One of them,” Lachlan said. “An alias.”
He was protecting his brother, even though he knew he’d done wrong. I couldn’t blame him.
“Can you tell us what you saw? What you heard?” I asked Aeneas, and looked at the case. An empty patch of navy velvet revealed the imprint of the missing object. “What was taken?”
“I saw nothing.” Aeneas frowned, clearly bitter. “But I did hear a commotion. Two, actually. One after the other.”
“Two people?” I asked. Did Lachlan have a partner that I hadn’t seen?
“I do not know. By the time I came downstairs, it was over. The artifact was gone, and the museum was empty.”
“What did he take?” Lachlan asked.
“An artifact called the Moon Stone. It has been in our collection since the founding of the museum.”
The Moon Stone? I shivered. Could there be a connection between that and the crescent moon mark on my palm?
After what the seer had told Lachlan, this couldn’t be a coincidence.
I was connected to whatever Garreth was doing, and I wanted to find out what the hell that was.
“Where did it come from?” I asked. “What is it?”
“Wait here, and I will bring you what information we have. You’ll need to know what it looks like if you’re to return it to me.”
The old man disappeared, and I whispered to Lachlan, “He trusted us quite quickly.”
It’s me. Ralph’s voice sounded from the ground. I’m very trustworthy.
I looked down at him and grinned. “Thank God you’re here.” Actually, I mused, I shouldn’t joke. My familiar could be useful. “Why don’t you go sneak around and see if anything else has been disturbed?” I knelt and picked up a piece of broken glass, then handed it to him. “Careful with this. Take it to Carrow when you’re finished here.”
Ralph gently gripped the glass and nodded, then scampered off, clearly enjoying having a task.
“Carrow?” Lachlan asked.
“She can read information from objects. Perhaps if she touches the glass, she’ll get an idea of what happened here. Maybe see if Garreth had a partner that I didn’t see.” He could have been