From the direction of the stairs to the modern art wing came the rapid loud click of a woman in heels moving fast. Nor was high heel woman alone. Underscoring the fast clicking was the rumble of many heavy boot steps.
Hal glanced toward the footsteps and changed the direction of his monologue. “This wyvern was an unprecedented gift from Queen Soulful Ember because normally the scales of the creature are used to make the chest armor worn by the holy warriors and the ruling caste. It is, in essence, a completely organic bullet-proof vest. Now the word ‘bulletproof’ is misleading. The true term is ‘bullet-resistant.’ The material of the scale basically catches the bullet, causing it to deform. It mushrooms.” Hal spread his hands to illustrate the bullet increasing in surface area. “This spreads the energy of the bullet over a large area. It defuses the power which then allows the thick material to stop it. Earth has many creatures that have similar protective shells and scales. Clams. Snails. Armadillos, whose name means in Spanish, little armored one. It is the sheer strength of the wyvern armor that makes it remarkable….”
Jane shifted to intercept the incoming museum staff. She’d worn a jacket to cover her kidney holster. She shifted the fabric aside to make sure that she could draw quickly. Boo had said that the oni greater bloods could appear human. There was a chance that the museum staff had been infiltrated if Sparrow had orchestrated the movement of the box via them.
Nigel appeared beside Jane, crouching briefly to tug his pants cuffs into place. He stood, brushing hands over his shirt and slacks to neaten his appearance to pristine. Seriously, the man must have packed a travel iron and starch.
Jane would rather talk her way out of any situation. Nigel with his hosting superpowers would be better at it than her. Still, she hated to put the gentle man on the front line.
The woman was younger than Jane expected, with rich brown hair and smoke gray eyes. She wore an expensive gray business suit with a pencil skirt, a short sleeved jacket and accents of Wind Clan blue. Behind her were six burly guards. From her angry look to the muscle-bound men at her back, it was obvious that the woman was there to toss them out.
“Good day!” Nigel beamed at the woman as if her appearance made his afternoon complete. “I’m so sorry for dropping in unannounced but when I heard you had an actual wyvern on display, I simply had to see it for myself! I’m Dr. Nigel Reid. I’m a naturalist from Clare College. It’s a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. England, not Boston.”
“I recognize you. We do have televisions here in Pittsburgh,” the woman snapped. “You don’t have permission to film in the museum. I will not allow you to waltz in here and walk all over our protocols.”
“Oh, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have let my excitement over this simply wonderful exhibit carry me away. I didn’t mean to offend you!” Nigel extended his hand for a handshake. “Shall we back up and start over? Call me Nigel. You are…?”
It should have melted icebergs.
The woman flicked her gaze to Taggart’s camera. “I’m the director of the Carnegie Museum, Genevieve Lefèvre.” She had a faint accent as if she’d grown up somewhere outside of Pittsburgh and perhaps even the United States. The French name might mean something more than an ancient family tie to Europe. She held out her left hand to make it clear that she had no intention of shaking Nigel’s hand. Her fingers were manicured with long red nails. A blue bead bracelet looped about her elegant slim wrist. “You will turn over your camera’s memory card to me.”
Jane’s heart jumped in her chest as she realized that Taggart had been filming them since they arrived at the museum. What had they talked about? The box? The tengu? Her sister Boo? “No, that’s not possible. If we give you the card, we’ll lose a day’s worth of work,” Jane lied. “We’ve only been here for a few minutes and everything we’ve filmed is open to public viewing.”
“It’s fine.” Taggart said. “I put a new card in out in the truck. There’s only what we filmed here in the museum on it.”
Jane glanced at Taggart. Did he misunderstand the situation? No, he was trying for poker face but after a week of knowing him, it was clear that he was trying to hide something. What did he plan to do? Swap cards?
He made a production of taking the camera from his shoulder and removing the memory card. Jane knew he could do it on the fly; she’d seen him do it. This was so slow that it was easy to see that he didn’t swap the memory card unless he knew magic tricks. He held out the card to Lefèvre.
What was on it? Jane reached for it, not wanting it out of their control.
The museum director snatched the card out of Taggart’s fingers. “All the cards you have on you.”
“What?” Jane’s outstretched hand curled into a fist. “No way! Do you have any idea how rare they are?”
PB&G used decade-old cameras because Hal killed equipment nearly as often as he set himself on fire. They were generations behind the new ones in every regard. Replacement parts could be found only second hand, online, on Earth. If they lost all their memory cards, it effectively limited them to live streaming only for two months. The only good side of having old equipment was that no one could easily access their recording.
Lefèvre tucked away the stolen memory card. “You should have considered that before bringing your camera in here. For all I know, this is blank and what you recorded is in your pocket.”
Was that the reason Taggart so calmly handed over the card?
Hal decided to enter the fray. “Now, now, let’s not be hasty. I’m …”
“I know who you are, Mr. Rogers,” Lefèvre snapped.
Hal skipped over whatever he was going to say and continued mid-sentence much later in his scripted discussion. “…and Nigel here has been telling me about visiting the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They have a wonderful exhibit featuring things lost on Earth by elves. Have you heard about it?”
“Yes, of course.” She volunteered nothing else.
There was a pause as Hal waited for Nigel to jump in.
“It was a simply wonderful exhibit,” Nigel murmured. “What exactly do you need from us to allow us to film the wyvern? It’s an amazing, one of a kind specimen. The people on Earth have seen nothing like it. Please, email whatever forms you require to WQED. We can fill them out at your leisure and set up a time to come in and film later.”
Jane and Hal stared at Nigel in surprise. The man waved toward the exit, giving them a tight grin that didn’t reach his eyes. For the first time since the Chased by Monsters team arrived in Pittsburgh, she was seeing Nigel frightened.
“Yes, you’re closing, aren’t you?” Jane pointed Hal toward the exit. What did she miss? If Nigel was frightened, then the odds were good that the woman and perhaps all the men behind her were oni. The six guards were big muscle-bound brutes with pistols and nightsticks. They didn’t look like any of the fragile old men from Jane’s school field trip memories.
Hal either didn’t take the clue or decided to press forward anyhow. “According to a curator at the American Museum of Natural History — that is a mouthful — they sent you some of the items from exhibit. Is it possible we can film them?”
The director’s face went from angry to deadly calm. “They call it the AMNH, idiot. The items never arrived.”