Private Demon (Darkyn #2)

Then, too, there was the matter of his appearance. He was not in any state to walk openly among humans, not with his stained, tattered garments and unkempt hair. They would think him one of the unfortunates who haunted their roadways and parks, and hurry away or summon their police.

He could not risk being challenged. Not when his shame over what he had done to Jema might send him into another bout of thoughtless, uncontrollable rage.

Thierry knew where the museum was, thanks to a folded paper he had found in one of the tourist kiosks located around the city. Even in France, he hadn't approved of the modern "information age." In his view, it was too much. One did not build a castle only to hand out plans of how to breach its walls. Yet the paper offered many details, including a simple street map, which guided him from Michigan Avenue through the side streets up to the very steps of the place itself. He parked in an alley a block away and walked down to it.

With each step, he looked for his little cat of a woman, praying she would not be Jema Shaw.

If one did not have the paper or know that the Shaw Museum housed Greek and Roman antiquities, one only had to. look at the outside of the place. It was miniature replica of the Parthenon in Athens.

While he had been waiting in the alley, Thierry had taken time to read the entire pamphlet, grateful that he had been taught to speak, read, and write English during his years in the Temple. From the information offered, it appeared that the Shaw Museum had been created to house the artifacts recovered by James Shaw during his many archaeological digs in the Mediterranean.

Jema's father had done almost exactly as Lord Elgin, who had brought back statuary that eventually became known as his "marbles" from Greece. Indeed, Shaw had made more than two hundred forty trips to Greece and the surrounding Mediterranean to explore obscure sites and retrieve what the paper named "time-lost treasures." After shipping the artifacts back to America, he had commissioned a team of experts to restore and preserve what he had recovered. The museum had been built to display the fruit of the combined efforts.

Thierry, who had spent centuries admiring the vast collections in his native Louvre, found Shaw's efforts rather odd. Americans were endlessly fascinated with themselves, and took far more interest in their own rebellious, pithy history than that of the rest of the world. Why had Shaw gone to Greece and Italy to dig through theirs?

The museum offered three collections of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art, whose ages spanned six thousand years of the respective civilizations' histories. Much of the artifacts apparently were unusual statuary, temple and ritual pottery, and other religious and iconic objects. The paper assured him that all of James Shaw's findings had been analyzed with more care than any that had ever been recovered in the history of his field, and that the museum was now regarded as one of the finest privately owned collections of Mediterranean antiquities in the Western world.

Perhaps the man had been seeking some proof of God, Thierry thought as he reconnoitered the building. Whatever James Shaw had been pursuing, he had left no ancient stone unturned in looking for it.

His sharp eyes caught the sight of a petite, dark-haired woman walking to the front of the museum. It was her, the little cat from last night. She went past two men in uniforms standing by an open door. Neither man glanced at her.

Jema Shaw.

Thierry paralleled her movements as she went from one side of the lobby to the other, retrieving papers from different offices. She passed directly in front of a woman vacuuming the carpets, and stepped around a young man emptying the trash cans. Like the guards, they gave her no notice.

Thierry frowned. These people were not ignoring her. They were behaving as if they didn't see her at all. Yet it was natural, even for humans, to look at anyone who came within a certain proximity. Jema was Shaw's daughter; she owned this property, and employed all these people. Where was their deference?

He could not enter the museum to speak to her; according to the paper it had closed twenty minutes before his arrival. There were phone numbers printed for museum admission and administration, and although Jema's name was not listed beside them, he decided to try calling the one for administration. The phone would enable him to make contact with her without inflicting l'attrait on her again.

Seeing the grandeur of the Shaw Museum also helped Thierry understand the notation in the file a little better. Jema Shaw was a woman of wealth and consequence. The Kyn were always careful to avoid such people. Fame and fortune drew too much attention to those who possessed them, and by extension, anyone around them.

The Darkyn could not afford to stand in the spotlight.

In America a pay phone waited on virtually every corner, and Thierry found one in a shadowy spot across from the museum. He was not familiar with American coins, so he fed a handful of them into the slot provided for payment before he dialed the main administration number. It rang four times, and then a male voice answered, "Shaw Museum security."

"I would speak with Jema Shaw," Thierry said quickly. "This is Henri Dubeck from France." The Dubecks had been in service to the Durands; Henri had been the cousin of the Durand family's tresora. He had first introduced Thierry to the Louvre, where he had worked as an assistant curator.

It had been four hundred years ago, so Thierry felt safe using Henri's name.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dubeck, but Miss Shaw has just left for the evening," the man told him at the exact moment Thierry saw Jema exit the building through a side door. "May I take a message?"

He had to speak with her.

"Non, merci." Thierry hung up the phone and trotted down the block after Jema Shaw. He would have caught up, but an odd feeling made his steps slow. Watching her from behind gave him a strange, uncomfortable sense that he had done so in the past.

It was not possible. He knew he had never seen her before last night.

The fenced parking lot behind the museum had a gated entrance and exit with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign posted between them. Jema walked into the lot and took one of the three vehicles left in it, an all-too-familiar Mercedes convertible. His final doubts vanished as she drove up to the gate and he saw the vanity plate on the front bumper.

JEMA'S BENZ.

Thierry went around the corner to retrieve his stolen vehicle, and used it to catch up with the Mercedes as it turned toward the immense lake just to the east of the city. Naturally that was where Jema would live; where there was water, there were the wealthy, with their large private houses and secured estates. Her father was dead, but there was no mention of her mother. Perhaps Jema lived with her. His little cat might even have a husband.

A husband who should be whipped for permitting her to wander through the city alone at night. Perhaps before he spoke to Jema, Thierry would speak to her husband.

Thierry was not surprised when the Mercedes drove up to one of the largest and most affluent-looking homes, or that high brick walls and electronic gates prevented him from following her onto the property. He drove past and took a short tour of Jema Shaw's neighbors. Nearly all of the homes showed signs of occupancy except the one bordering the north side of the Shaws' property. That house, a smaller but opulent contemporary mansion, had all of its windows shuttered. The wealthy often possessed more than one home; even during his human lifetime Thierry's parents had rarely spent more than a few months at Chateau Durand before retreating to their estate in Marseilles or the great house in Paris. There was a very good chance that no one presently resided in this one, and would not for some time.

Mansions had many rooms and furnishings; a thousand places where Thierry could conceal himself and no one would be the wiser. As shelter, it would serve him far better than an alley or a Dumpster.

The other bonus was that this house had not been gated or fenced in. The only thing that divided the two properties was the six-foot brick wall surrounding Jema Shaw's home. He could jump the wall with little effort, and find his way into Jema Shaw's bedchamber.

Once there, Thierry could find out everything Jema Shaw remembered about Luisa Lopez and him. She would never be the wiser, because he would do it all in her dreams.

August Hightower did not like surprises, but when Cardinal Stoss's replacement showed up at the diocese, he had no choice but to welcome him. One did not refuse to see the Lightkeeper, a man who held absolute power over Hightower and four thousand other Guardians of the Faith.

Cardinal Francis D'Orio had left the Vatican after the recent death of the pope. Like all Brethren, he was not a member of the Catholic Church or the priesthood, but like August Hightower, he pretended to be both in order to collect information and influence Rome to better serve the order. D'Orio had been so adept at his role-playing that he had quickly risen through the ranks of the church. Had Stoss not died in New Orleans, he and D'Orio might have given the new pope more competition during the selection for his office.

No Brethren had ever yet been elected pope, but there were many men like D'Orio and Hightower. Then, too, the Catholic Church had been plunged into its darkest era since World War II, and the new pope was a very old man.

Sometimes August liked to imagine himself on the throne in Vatican City. He felt sure that he would make an impressive Vicar of Christ. D'Orio, on the other hand, had taken over active leadership of the Brethren as their Lightkeeper and was now out of the running.

"Your Grace," Cabreri called him from the reception office the morning after he had seen John Keller. "Cardinal D'Orio is here."

Hightower almost choked on the raspberry bear claw he was nibbling. Quickly he brushed at the crumbs that had fallen on his chest. "I'll see him in five minutes."

"He cannot wait, Your Grace," Cabreri said. "I am escorting him back to your office now."

The Lightkeeper arrived with an entourage of priests, monks, and bodyguards in discreet businessmen's attire. D'Orio entered Hightower's office with the silent confidence of one to whom doors were never closed, and after his men scouted the room, came out of the cluster of cassocks. He did not wear the traditional red of a cardinal, but affected plain Benedictine black. Only his black skullcap and his weathered, swarthy features, the latter of which Hightower had seen in photographs, identified him as the most important man in the room.