Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [97]
But the lights were automatic, brass-plated sconces recessed into satin-hung walls. Seamus had a taste I would classify as Early Caesar’s Palace. Doric columns and opulently stuffed sofas overwhelmed the compact space, which was tall and narrow and could have been a utility room in its past.
And at the end of the room, staring at me with twin dead sockets, was the Skull of Mathias. It was set behind glass, mounted on yet another fake plaster column.
I walked slowly toward it, scarcely able to believe I was setting eyes on something so ancient. I felt almost humbled, like I was in the presence of an offering to a dead god.
Closer, I saw that the safe was just behind the Skull, the three-sided glass case built as an extension of the vault. It spoke to Seamus’s ego that he kept the thing in the open, for anyone to gawk at.
I stopped, a few feet from the case. From here I could see the carvings, the tiny runic letters that marched across every facet of the Skull. They appeared to move and whorl before my eyes, not in the sickening fashion of daemon magick but the sensuous movement of an object so imbued with power that it was nearly alive. It radiated from the Skull, from the grinning tattooed teeth and pockmarked cheekbones to the bottomless empty eyes.
A card table had been set up along one side of the case, and yellow pads were scattered across it, along with an old clothbound ledger that was as out of place in the tacky room as I’d be at a podiatrist’s convention.
Trying to ignore the palpable magick that radiated from the Skull, I glanced at the papers and saw they held repeated lines of cipher, many translated to English. The ledger was more of the same, in handwriting that changed every few dozen pages. The latest was dated and signed. Victor Blackburn, 1946.
Seamus’s words echoed: You don’t realize that a junkie will do anything—take dirty pictures, and strike a deal when he’s caught.
Vincent had given the meager translations of the Skull’s workings to Seamus. In exchange for his life? Drugs? Did it matter?
But Seamus wouldn’t just need the ledger, he’d need Vincent to decrypt the key for him. And when Vincent finally drew the line, he died.
I located a small bifold door at floor level marked TRASH, gathered up the ledger and the notes Valerie had made, and dumped them down the chute. They wouldn’t make any sense to me. And no one else needed to unlock the writing on the Skull of Mathias in my lifetime. Not Seamus, and not Victor Blackburn. Sunny would hate me for destroying something of such magickal significance, but she’d get over it.
The Skull stared ahead, seeing into nothingness, while I stared back. Something so small—it really was small, almost child-sized. No one can predict where power will lie, I guess.
The glass case was solid when I pressed on it experimentally, three-quarter-inch bulletproof Plexiglas, resistant to everything short of a cutting laser. A switch was set into the wall just to my right, and I reached for it.
Seamus was arrogant and vain. He’d want to touch the Skull, show it off, reassure himself. I flicked the switch and the top of the case receded with a whir, exposing the Skull to the open air.
“You bastard,” I said, but in a triumphant tone. I took out the cloth tote tucked inside my back pocket and slipped it open, wrapping it upside down around the Skull, which felt hard and preserved, like knotty wood.
I held my breath as I lifted the Skull out of the case. This wouldn’t end well. It couldn’t.
Nothing. No alarm klaxons or spinning red lights or boulders falling on my head. Seamus O’Halloran’s ego had done him in. Well, he wasn’t the first person to make that mistake around me, although truthfully it stung a little to be so underestimated. At least Alistair Duncan had made a reasonable effort to kill me.
Now there was just the sticky problem of getting back out of the