A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(31)

Nina’s eyes flicked behind my shoulder, and I jumped when Glenn touched me, asking, “Rachel? Which way?”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. Oh yeah. Fumbling for the amulet, I held it even with my chest and walked in a circle. There was only one direction where the glow strengthened, and I stopped, staring at a service-oriented area with no displays. An oversize door with no window and painted the same color as the walls was obvious, and I pointed. “There.”
Mr. Calaway bustled past me looking positively relieved. “That leads to the research area,” he said as he fumbled with the keys, finally bringing one up to his face and peering at it. “This one, I think.” He slid it into the lock and opened the door, flicking the lights on as he held it for us. It looked like your average hallway, with white tile and boring painted walls. A little wider than most, perhaps, but bland. “Sue!” he shouted, his voice echoing. “We’re going downstairs. I’ll be back in a moment! Lock the doors and let the place empty naturally.”
The woman from the front desk peeked around a wall. “Yes, sir.”
“What about Ivy and Jenks?” I asked, not wanting to leave them out, but wanting to see what the amulet had pinged on. What was taking them so long anyway?
Glenn turned to Mr. Calaway, looking as anxious as I was to get moving. “Two more people are coming. A Ms. Tamwood and a pixy named Jenks. Could someone bring them down when they arrive?”
Sue smiled. “Yes, sir. I’ll let them in and send them down.”
Wayde shifted from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable. “I’ll stay here,” he said, and I gave him a questioning look. “Technically, I’m not allowed to be at a crime scene without prior arrangements.” He turned to me, his gaze intent as he touched my elbow. “I think you should stay with me. This isn’t a secure site. Someone else can work the charm.” 
My breath came in slowly, and I forced my jaw not to clench. He was just doing his job. “I have my splat gun,” I said patiently. “I’ll be careful. Besides, there’s no one here.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, and in my peripheral vision, I saw Glenn chafing at the delay. Yeah. Me, too.
“Cautious?” Nina mocked in her expensive pantsuit, crisp and pressed, her voice like silk. “That’s not like you, Ms. Morgan.”
“Maybe I’m getting smarter,” I said dryly. “I’m working the amulet until there’s reason to believe they’re still here,” I added, wedging Wayde’s fingers off me. “I’ll be smart about it.”
“Smart is staying here until you know for sure,” Wayde said.
“My job puts me at risk. I said I’ll be careful, and I will,” I said loudly, then locked my knees as the heady scent of excited vampire cascaded over me like water. It was Nina, and I sidestepped her so she wouldn’t link her arm in mine.
“I’ll see to Rachel’s safety personally,” the woman said gracefully, not at all upset that I’d avoided her. “I can smell them, you see,” Nina said, and she touched her nose as she smiled coyly. “Nasty little humans with mischief on their brains. I’m sure Ms. Morgan will be most careful, but I will restrain her from entering any room that’s unsafe. Physically . . . if necessary.”
“There, you see?” I said brusquely, my heart pounding as I made a mental promise that Nina wasn’t ever going to lay a hand on me. “You should stay here, though. You’re right about the legal thing. You might get hurt and sue the city.”
“I would not,” Wayde said with a scowl, but Glenn was pointing at one of his men to stay behind with him. “Fine. I’ll stay,” he said with bad grace, arms over his chest and his feet spread wide. “I’m starting to see why you don’t have many friends.”
I probably deserved that, but with only the faintest tug of guilt, I followed the curator into the wide hallway, the rest of the men behind me, and Nina behind them. The wide door shut behind us with a solid thump, and I stifled my shiver. Almost immediately we found a set of stairs, and Mr. Calaway started down, turning on big industrial lights as he went. It was cold, and the air smelled stale. My feet in my soggy garden shoes didn’t make a sound. Neither did Nina’s, and it was giving me the creeps. I could feel her behind me, lurking. Maybe leaving Wayde behind hadn’t been such a good idea, but I was surrounded by men with guns looking for an empty room. What did he think was going to happen?
I checked my cell phone when we reached the bottom of the stairs, not liking that there was no signal. The amulet still worked, meaning we weren’t too deep to reach a ley line. Small comfort, since I wasn’t going to.
“Which way?” Glenn asked when we came to an intersection. He was tense, and I could see Nina enjoying the mild temptation Glenn was making himself into. It probably didn’t help that he smelled like Ivy.
“Give me a moment,” I said. Head down over the amulet, I left them, half on the stairs, half in the lower hallway, and went a few paces to the left, watching the amulet’s color.
“That leads to storage,” Mr. Calaway offered. He was starting to fidget, and Nina smiled, basking in it.
“What do you store here?” Nina almost purred, clearly happy belowground. “Brochures?”I turned at Mr. Calaway’s scoff, but then he hesitated and backed up several steps when he saw her almost lascivious expression. “Mostly artifacts that we haven’t gotten prepped for display or those that we don’t want to make available to the general public.”
Glenn spun on a heel, his face creased in irritation. “Why wouldn’t you want them on display?” he asked belligerently.
The curator adopted a stiff posture, one step up from Nina. “Slavery was an ugly business, Officer Glenn. It became more so when given a high monetary value and people took inhuman steps to protect their investments.”
Clearly this was a sore subject for the man, but Glenn had turned to face him squarely, just as upset. “It’s Detective Glenn. And what right do you have to determine who gets to see it?”
Mr. Calaway squinted at the larger man, not backing down an inch. “I’ll arrange a private tour for you if you like, and if you still feel the same way, I’ll be very much surprised.”
Eyes down, I walked past them in the other direction. My pulse jumped when the amulet glowed a brighter green. Nina must have sensed it because she came down the last few steps, her eyes alight. “I think it’s this way,” I said, and Mr. Calaway waved his hands in protest.
“There’s nothing down there,” he claimed, but my amulet said differently, and we all strode forward to find it ended in . . . nothing. No stairway, no door. Nothing.
“I don’t understand,” I said, staring at the empty wall as I remembered doing almost the same thing in Trent’s labs a few months ago. There’d been a door that I had needed to use a ley line to walk through to the room beyond. I couldn’t do that now, and I looked from my band of charmed silver to Glenn, feeling ill.
“What’s behind this wall?” Glenn asked, his hand skating over the smooth paint.
Mr. Calaway thought for a moment. “That’s the storage area for the holding pen.”
Glenn stiffened. “The one upstairs is a fake?”
“Absolutely!” the man exclaimed.
“What are you afraid of?” Glenn pressed.
I looked down the hallway to Nina, leaning casually against the wall and wedging something from under her fingernails. It was a very masculine gesture that looked odd with her carefully manicured nails. This was not going well, and Mr. Calaway flushed.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said, flustered. “The holding pen is behind this wall, yes, but we have access to it through the elevator. If you had told me that’s where you wanted to go, I would have taken you there in the first place. Follow me.”
Glenn clenched his jaw, and Nina closed her eyes, soaking in his anger. I turned and trudged after Mr. Calaway as he backtracked to a set of huge silver doors. He keyed it to life with a flourish, glaring at us as the machinery rumbled and whined. I shivered as the doors opened to show a huge elevator that looked big enough to hold an elephant. 
“It’s not right that you’re hiding a piece of history down here where no one can see it,” Glenn grumbled as he filed in after me.
Mr. Calaway entered last, and he used a second key to light up the panel. “We don’t have the original holding pen up for display for several reasons, Detective Glenn,” he said stiffly as we waited for the lights to quit flashing and the panel to warm up. “Preserving the priceless art created by the people confined within it for one, maintaining people’s sanity for another.”
Sanity?
“The truth should never be hidden,” Glenn insisted.
Nina covered a smile as the smaller man fumed. “It’s not hidden,” Mr. Calaway barked. “It’s simply not on public display! The original inscriptions on the interior of the structure are as priceless as they are heartbreaking, but there are magics associated with the structure itself, and that’s what we are keeping from the public. Black magics.”
My gut tightened, and I exchanged a look with Nina, who was suddenly a lot more alert. Black magic under the museum? Maybe there was a method to the madness after all.