Page 52 of Sacrifice
Twenty-Eight
Sittingin the exhibition space alone after lunch was nothing short of surreal.
Eve sat at the little desk in the corner, supposedly checking through that day’s delivery notes. Very little information was going in. Her eyes skated over the words and slid out of focus.
What the actual fuck, Eve?
For some time now, she’d been trying to deny the connection she shared with Lucien. He always seemed to know the right thing to say and what she was thinking. She, in turn, had instinctively known what he’d wanted too.
Instinct. It wasn’t instinct. There was no denying the silent communication that had gone between them earlier.
So, what? You’re a mind reader now?
She snorted out a laugh at the ridiculousness of it but then scrubbed at her temples with stiff fingers. The sapphire ring spun on her finger, ill-fitting and ill-got.
If not that, then what?
This whole Ishtar’s descendant story was insane; the experience in Tiffany was like a hallucination. She dragged the ring from her finger and tossed it into a drawer.
Paperwork.
She’d concentrate on that instead and then, maybe, at some point, this would all make sense. She determinedly focused her mind.
The Egyptology department had sent up a couple of pieces from the vaults, which were still packaged in crates.
“Thanks for nothing boys,” she grumbled. Someone was going to have to get them out again, and those crates had broken fingernails and splinters written all over them. She picked up her phone and put in a call to the porters.
The phone answered on the seventh ring.
“Hi, this is Eve Areli. I’m up in the fourth-floor exhibition space. I have some new pieces up here that need careful unpacking.”
“Uh-huh.” The voice on the other end didn’t sound especially interested. Eve suspected this might be the very same person who’d been responsible for dumping them there and disappearing before anyone could say anything about it.
Eve considered her options and came to the conclusion that getting shitty about it was unlikely to get her anywhere. She remembered Saleh and how she’d seen inside his mind to find his motivations and tried to get some feeling about the man she was speaking to. The line crackled, but there was nothing.
Pity. That would actually have been useful.
Eve sighed. She couldn’t feel anything about them down the phone line, but she did have some insider knowledge about this department and the people that worked there. Mostly they felt put upon and pissed off, undervalued by the academic staff.
“I don’t think I’ve got the right skills to dismantle the crates—it’s so specialized,” she said, wondering if she was laying it on a bit thick, “and I just don’t think I'm strong enough to get them out of their cases, even if I could get them undone. Am I speaking to Tim?” Eve hazarded a guess, and it paid off.
“Yeah, it’s Tim.”
“Perfect! I’m so pleased that it’s you.” Tim was one of the shift supervisors. He was around Eve’s age and had the aggravated aura of a man who’d been passed over for a promotion one time too many. She’d recognized it from herself. “Could you help me out? I’d ask Wesley, but that guy hacks me off.” Eve knew Wesley had got the job Tim had been angling for a couple of months back.
Tim snorted. “Give me five.” He hung up.
Eve allowed herself a little smile. She’d never realized she was sensitive to auras, but now it had been so succinctly demonstrated by her experience in Tiffany, she’d couldn’t believe she’d not realized before. The shop assistant’s mind had been a freakishly open book.
She looked at the next delivery note. It was the second shipment by the French courier she’d used to pick up the artefacts from Lucien’s chateau.
She snatched up her scissors and sliced through the packaging to pull out the small box she’d protected so carefully with bubble wrap and packing peanuts.
Residing among the golden treasures of Lucien’s collection, the clay bowl had stood out to her for its simplicity. Eve had assumed it was an artefact dating back to the correct time period and an enrichment piece, but as she unwrapped it suddenly, it occurred to her that this was something way more significant. She snapped open her laptop and tapped in a search. A Wikipedia entry came up immediately and she scrolled through its images and text.
‘An incantation bowl, also known as a demon bowl, devil-trap bowl, or magic bowl, is a form of early protective magic found in what is now Iraq and Iran. Produced in the Middle East during late antiquity from the sixth to eighth centuries, particularly in Upper Mesopotamia and Syria, the bowlswere usually inscribed in a spiral, beginning from the rim and moving toward the center. Most are inscribed in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Thebowls were buried face down and were meant to capture demons. They were commonly placed under the threshold, courtyards, in the corner of the homes of the recently deceased and in cemeteries.’
Eve pulled her eyes from the screen and back to the bowl.
