28

Something clunked dully like pottery hitting stone. Annja woke from a sound sleep. Was someone digging nearby? She couldn’t recall getting to the dig—

Her body slid down the vinyl booth. She slapped her palms on the Formica diner table and dragged herself upright.

No dig. Just a weird dream.

Head woozy with sleep, she yawned and winced at the pull in her back.

“Rise and shine, sweetie.”

The waitress who’d served her coffee earlier loitered by the table, hand to one very generous hip. Her pink polyester uniform advertised a dribble of ketchup on the skirt, a splotch of grease at the hip and possibly gravy on the hem.

“I fell asleep? Sorry.” Not really. She’d intended to catch a few winks. Heck, what was a twenty-four-hour diner good for, if not that? Rest and…gravy.

“No problem, sweetie.”

“What time is it?”

“Four forty-five. My shift ends in fifteen minutes, so I wanted to give you a heads-up. The next gal on duty isn’t so kind to let her tables be used as bedrooms.”

Annja dug in her pocket, mining for a generous tip.

“One more coffee to wake you up,” the waitress suggested in a kindly, mothering tone.

Or what Annja suspected was a mothering tone. She’d never had one of those—a mother. But if given opportunity to design her own, this woman’s voice would qualify.

“Maybe I can get some breakfast while you’re at it,” Annja said. “I promise I won’t go back to sleep.”

“Eggs over easy and a side of bacon?”

“And pancakes.”

“With a dollop of whip cream on top for you, sweetie. Sit tight. I’ll be back with coffee.”

Dragging a folded wad of bills from her pocket, Annja sorted through the cash. She had enough for breakfast and a great tip. If she intended to play it on the down low she needed more cash. She wasn’t sure how safe home would be now that Serge had a death wish for her.

Did he know someone else was after the skull? That some stranger had killed the professor to get his hands on it? He couldn’t possibly know Garin had it. So that made her the bone conjurer’s only target.

She wondered if he still had pieces of her bone. The notion sent a shiver up her spine.

Rubbing a palm over her forehead to ease out the lingering sleep, she shook her head over her moping. “Way to go, Creed. Feel sorry for yourself much?”

She’d literally curled up in this booth like a scared little girl. Alone? No one to care for her?

“Man, I must have been tired. Time to think through this rationally before the necromancer sends ghosts or demons or whatever it is he conjures after me. What is going on with the Skull of Sidon?”

Dragging a foot across the opposite booth seat, she snagged her backpack and dug out the laptop. She scanned for a wireless network, and waited while it searched the area. It nabbed a connection in twenty seconds.

The waitress dropped off a pot of coffee and promised her breakfast would be out in “two licks.”

Annja sipped the hot brew and made the guttural sound men do when they’ve just been java-slapped awake. Now that was some black coffee.

She glanced around the dining room. One patron leaned over the counter at the front. He didn’t seem concerned by her sudden vocalization.

After spiking the black brew with four creams from the melamine dish sitting by the condiments rack, Annja started making notes.

Serge wanted the skull. For some sort of bone-conjuring hullabaloo she probably didn’t want too many details on. It would be nasty. Nasty didn’t require details. But said nasty would have to wait, because he currently did not have the skull.

On the other hand, Serge’s last words to her promised he’d track her down.

That meant big-time nasty.

“Bet I could fend him off with this coffee.” She stared into the brew, lightened to a rusty shade by the cream. “This stuff could blind a man after a few cups.”

After another sip, she typed Garin Braden’s name on the facsimile of a yellow sticky note displayed on the monitor.

Garin has the skull. That’s the second time in his five hundred years he’s held it. He knows it’s bad news. And it did some kind of mojo on me and the bad guy while he held it, she thought.

So was that the proof? The skull really was the legendary Skull of Sidon? Capable of providing the holder with all good things?

What exactly did all good things imply?

Heck, winning the lottery sounded good to most people. Annja glanced out the window. It was snowing again. A nice warm bed and no bruises sounded like a good thing to her right now.

It would be a very good thing, from Garin’s perspective, to have me out of the picture so he could walk away with the skull.

That was what had happened last night.

“But then what would he use it for?”

To take the sword from her? He said he didn’t want it. This time. That meant he either wanted something greater only the skull could give him or…he intended to sell it.

From what she knew of Garin the latter was the likeliest. The man did like to make a buck. And not from selling office products or Boy Scout Christmas wreaths. He dealt in arms, art and other things she didn’t want to know about. When opportunity knocked, Garin Braden answered—with pistol in hand and a devious grin.

But seriously? The five-hundred-year-old immortal guy just wanted the skull to make a buck?

“I’m missing something. Some integral piece to this baffling puzzle.”

She tapped the tracking pad with a forefinger. She eyed the coffee. A few more sips were needed to clear her fuzzy brain.

Where had the skull come from? The thief, Marcus Cooke, had gotten it somewhere. And when she’d scanned the Internet she hadn’t found reference to the skull being found on a recent dig.

The last place Garin admitted to seeing it had been in a fifteenth-century alchemist’s lab in Granada, Spain. And then it was supposedly dropped down a well in a small village on the outskirts of Granada.

It could have been unearthed centuries ago, or been found in an old chest. Heck, it could have been sitting on some librarian’s dusty old shelf for a century, the owner completely unaware of what they held.

It could have turned up at a rummage sale as a decorative item. It sounded absurd, but Annja knew that kind of thing happened all the time. It sent her colleagues over the moon to find out a priceless artifact had been purchased for a dollar fifty at a junk sale on the soccer coach’s front lawn.

It had no provenance.

That’s not true, she told herself.

Annja typed in the few details she had. She knew it was all conjecture, but it was all she had to go on. Sidon. And after that Maraclea. And also necrophilia.

“Some days, I just don’t know. I mean, really? Sex with a dead chick? And the Holy Grail?”

There were so many means to twist the origins of an artifact and its history to resemble the grail legend. Garin’s story had been one of many Annja had heard.

It was very easy for an ancient rumor to get attached to an artifact that seemed to fit the bill. If she was going to get behind a grail legend, she preferred the one that indicated the platter bearing John the Baptist’s head to Salome. It had a macabre romantic twist she enjoyed.

Annja was more prone to believe that theory than to take the leap into the supernatural.

Not that you haven’t had brushes with the supernatural, right? she thought.

She smirked and tapped the tracking pad.

But seriously. A skull born in such a manner?

This would make a great episode of Chasing History’s Monsters. Too bad Doug is busy thinking of more humiliating assignments for me, like chasing fairies in Ireland. Or posting computer-enhanced pictures of me online. Nope, I think I’ll keep this one to myself.

Not that she had anything to herself at the moment. The skull was blatantly missing from her grasp.

Who was the mysterious party who had hired the thief to get the skull? Could it be Benjamin Ravenscroft? Cooke must have feared him enough to want to hand it over to Annja. Not that he’d intended to give it to her. He’d merely wanted her to check it out, see if she could identify it. Likely, if she’d decided it was valuable, he may have turned around and raised his price on the buyer.

Might that buyer have been Garin Braden?

It was all conjecture, but it worked for her.

Could it have been Serge who’d hired Cooke? He was the likeliest buyer. But it didn’t explain the sniper, whom Serge had no information about.

A sniper Garin had killed to protect her.

“Looking out for me even as he’s pulling the rug out from under me. Such a swell guy,” she muttered.

That meant Garin knew about the skull well before she’d laid eyes on it. Had he been tracking Cooke or her?

That so many people knew her whereabouts at any given time disturbed her.

“Time to start looking for new digs. Either that or put a welcome mat with a detonating device at the front door.”

She eyed the waitress, who headed toward her table with a plate.

If the sniper was working for the same man who hired Cooke, then why shoot the man who held the skull? Resulting in him possibly losing the skull somewhere in the Gowanus Canal?

It didn’t make sense. The missing piece…it had slipped under the rug somewhere.

Annja typed thief and employer, and highlighted both words.

“Thanksgiving breakfast,” the waitress announced as she set down the plate. “You spending the day with family, sweetie?”

“Thanks, yes,” Annja said, only to avoid the pitiful head shake she’d get if she’d answered truthfully.

Thanksgiving Day? She’d planned to have turkey TV dinners with Professor Danzinger.

“Anything else I can get you?”

Pulled from a momentary sadness over the professor, Annja shook her head. “No, thank you.”

The steam rising from the eggs tempted like no gold-decorated skull could. Annja forked up bacon and eggs. The waitress looked over her shoulder at her vigorous enjoyment, and winked.

While munching toast, Annja decided to check her e-mail. A few more from the archaeology list sent ideas to what the skull was. Only one suggested a Templar artifact, but did not link it to the Skull of Sidon as had the previous e-mail.

“PinkRibbonGirl,” Annja said. “The kid had been right. Who’d’ a thought?”

She knew Sidon was somewhere in Jerusalem. A quick Google search brought up a map.

“Forty kilometers south of Beirut, the third largest city in Lebanon. Its name means fishery. The city suffered a succession of conquerors,” she read aloud.

It listed many, including Alexander the Great. After the Romans, the city was sacked by the Saracens, the Mongols and the Turks, successively. The French and the Brits took a stab at it, as well.

“Hmm, the biblical Jezebel was a Sidonian princess. Interesting.”

But none of it helped her quest. “Same as Garin told me. This still means little.” A final e-mail made her pause over her toast.

 

That picture is so sexy, Annja. But I know it’s not you. I mean, come on, I’ve seen the show. And I’ve seen you in a sweaty T-shirt on that dig in Africa. Not the same size. Heh.

 

What was better? Having a man drool or say it’s not you because your breasts aren’t the right size?

“Mercy, why won’t this go away?”

Because someone would have to remove the picture for that to happen. And despite her ability to navigate the Internet and put up Web pages and her own JPEGs, Annja had no idea how to remove something another person had placed online.

Would Doug really have done this? she wondered again.

No.

Maybe. Her producer did have a juvenile sense of humor. And he was known to use deviant means to promote the show.

No.

Annja fired off an e-mail to Doug.

 

Cannot work under these conditions. Please make the naughty picture go away.

 

He’d likely laugh, then wonder if it really was her body, but knowing she would never pose nude. Either way, he’d take his time considering the picture, Annja knew that much.

“I may have to suck it up and live with it. I refuse to. I will get it removed. Somehow.”

The last e-mail in the queue was from Maxfield Wisdom. The e-mail had come from Europe.

“I don’t know you, Mr. Wisdom, but let’s see what you have to say.”

The man introduced himself by stating he lived in Venice and had inherited many artifacts of great archaeological value from his great-grandfather who was a questing adventurer much like he imagined Annja to be.

Annja smirked. “‘Questing adventurer.’ Okay, I like that title. Sounds a lot better than ‘that other chick who hosts the show.’” She heard that all too often when in the presence of Kristie’s beaming smile and fake assets.

She read on.

 

You posted pictures of my skull! It has been in the family for generations. It was stolen from my home five days ago. I’m sure it is the one, for the pictures of the gold sutures and the cross detail, and those interior carvings. Are they not unique? I have not seen them clearly but have spent hours tracing my finger along the inside. Fascinating. Do you think they mean anything?

 

She hadn’t opportunity to check the interior map Professor Danzinger had managed to get before his death. Annja dug in her pocket. The flash drive was safe.

She’d finish reading the e-mail before uploading the map.

 

The skull has been sitting in a dusty box for decades. On occasion, I take it out and detail its crazy legend to visitors. How it is believed to be giver of all good things. I don’t believe it myself, Miss Creed. It’s never done anything but sit and stare blindly at me. Perhaps it is that I believe I have all good things already?

 

As did she, really. So if the holder did not want for anything—felt they had good in their life—then the skull remained quiescent? Interesting idea.

 

Anyway, the last time I had it out was to show it to a visiting friend, Benjamin Ravenscroft.

 

Annja leaned forward; her toast went untouched.

 

He was fascinated with the legend. I felt a little odd watching him turn the skull over, tracing his fingers along the gold sutures. He’s quite the prominent businessman over in your country, or so he told me.

But you have the skull now, Miss Creed, and I would be grateful for its return. Of course, I’d graciously allow you to keep it for study as long as you wish. I believe, after noting your vigilant efforts to track its owner online, I can trust you with it.

Please instruct me what your plans are for the skull, and we can make arrangements.

 

“Huh.” Annja settled in the booth, the last pancake on her plate drowning in a pool of syrup. “Mystery solved. It belongs to some dude in Venice.”

She clicked open the photos he had attached. Three of them, featuring anterior, lateral and inferior view. “That’s the same skull, all right.”

A skull Mr. Wisdom did not name the Skull of Sidon, yet had detailed the same magical powers the legend spoke of. But if it belonged to his family, then she had every intent of returning it to its rightful owner.

“If I had the thing.”

Scanning through the e-mail again, her eyes stopped at the friend’s name. “Benjamin Ravenscroft. Why does your name keep coming up in association with this skull?”

It was about time she searched his name.

Forbes was the first site to bring up his name. It had just published its famous lists. Benjamin Ravenscroft was number twenty on the Top-Earning CEOs list. His company, Ravens Tech, auctioned intangibles and had a huge hand in the burgeoning enterprises in Dubai.

“Intangibles?” Annja was completely out of her element with anything white collar, Wall Street or high-tech.

A click on the CNN site brought up an article published a month earlier about Ravens Tech’s surprising rise to profitability. Who was Benjamin Ravenscroft, it posited? Where had he come from, and why was the world just hearing about him now? The man sold nothing. Or rather, things that could not be held, but only made, designed or promised for some future creation.

Like patents, air and domain names. Air? She read further. The guy started out in college selling air space to cell phone companies. Well, I’ll be. I bet he’s even sold the Brooklyn Bridge a time or two.

And yet each article about Benjamin and Ravens Tech also expounded on his charitable contributions. He’d established a foundation for children with bone cancer after his own daughter had been diagnosed. The most recent charity event had been held a month earlier, and had raised 3.2 million dollars. Unfortunately, the disease was a nasty one, and doctors forecast many decades before a cure is in sight.

“Sounds like a likable enough guy. Bummer about his kid.”

Annja scrolled through the search engine listing. They were all the same, listing Ravenscroft as the CEO to watch and extolling his charity work.

“And yet he’s had his hands on the skull once, when in Venice. Could he be the one who hired Marcus Cooke? Because I don’t think Serge did. Although Serge has had his eye on the skull ever since it arrived here, I’m sure. Are Serge and Ravenscroft connected?”

To think on it a few seconds tweaked a muscle at the corner of her eye. Really? Could he possibly? Annja reasoned the mystery behind Ravenscroft’s rise could be attributed to one certain bone conjurer.

Why not? He can summon the dead. Why not help a man make millions? Roux had said something about manipulating people and seeing the future. What a dream to see the future stock market.

The article had conjectured about his sudden rise over the past year.

She could go there with the theory. Hell, she was starting to believe a necrophilic liaison produced a skull.

Wonder how long Serge’s been in town? I’ll have to ask next time we chat. Because she knew she hadn’t seen the last of the necromancer, by any means.

Neither Serge nor Benjamin Ravenscroft holds the skull right now. And I think I’d like to keep it that way.

But the option of Garin Braden holding the skull wasn’t desirable, either. It belonged to Maxfield Wisdom, and Annja would see it returned to him.

Five minutes later her plate was clean, and she’d downed another cup of coffee. Annja had a plan. “Manhattan, here I come.”