Page 2 of Monsters in the Museum (Defenders of the Light #1)

Chapter two

N ora marched down the hallway at work an hour later than she normally liked to arrive at the office. She clutched a full cup of black coffee in one hand. While her eyelids drooped with exhaustion, she was buoyed by vindication of her normal insistence on not going out on a work night.

When she reached the door to the basement office, she paused with her hand on the knob, looking down the hall to where she’d spotted the strange man the night before. In the bright, florescent lights and the hustle and bustle of her coworkers arriving, it was easy to believe she had imagined him. Still, the image of him frozen in the alley stuck in her mind.

Shaking her head, she pushed into her office to face her workday.

Nora’s morning kept her busy enough that she didn’t have time to ponder the incident beyond a cursory assurance to her officemates that the security breach had been dealt with. Despite feeling exhausted after an eventful night, Nora threw herself into finishing the projects still on her workbench and completing her inventory of all the weapons and artifacts being worked on by her team. She needed to prioritize the restoration of the classical Greek sword and spear due to arrive the following week.

She was torn away from the task of cleaning a twelfth-century longsword by a friendly voice.

“Nora, are you going to take a lunch break, or are you just going to keep plowing through like there is no tomorrow?”

Nora’s coworker, Mandy, stood propped against the edge of her workbench. She folded her arms across her chest, but her thin, dark eyes were full of kindness.

“You should definitely take a lunch break,” Mandy continued. “You look like you’ve been run over by a dump truck.”

“Thank you, Mandy,” Nora said drily. “But haven’t you heard? It’s all the rage. Everybody is trying to look like they just crawled out of a sewer.” She began pulling off the gloves she’d donned to clean the sword and shoved some escaped curls from her face.

Mandy let out a chuckle. “No, I just meant that you seem like you could use a break. Seriously, you were looking really glazed over. You feeling all right?”

Nora shrugged. “I’m fine, just had to come in late last night to deal with that security alert. Didn’t end up getting very much sleep.”

Mandy frowned. “I was hoping you were going to tell me that you had a wild night on the town—or maybe that you went on a date last night.”

“Well, I was actually out celebrating with my sister before work interrupted.”

“Odelle finally manages to drag you out for some laughs, and the first chance you get, you run back to the office.” Mandy pursed her lips in disapproval. “Do you even know how to take a break?”

“I was enjoying myself, but I’ll never pass up an opportunity to get ahead and make a good impression.”

“Get ahead? Nora, you have the department head position in the bag. You don’t have to solve every single problem for everybody.”

Nora shrugged and tugged at the hem of her chunky sweater. It had been knit by her mother, Irina, but despite the exquisite craftsmanship, threads were starting to come loose from years of wear. “I’ve been passed up for opportunities for stupid political reasons before.”

Mandy gave a long-suffering sigh. “Well, they aren’t going to pass you up for a promotion for taking a lunch break. Now go and take your time. I’ll hold down the fort around here.”

Nora gave Mandy a mock salute before pushing her way out of the cramped basement office. She made her way down the narrow hallway to the stairs and climbed up into the museum proper, considering making her way to the cafeteria. It was Tuesday, which meant they’d be serving tacos, and melty queso sounded fantastic to Nora in her exhausted and irritable state.

As she wove through the crowds of visitors milling about, it struck Nora that she hadn’t spent any time in the exhibits while they were open to the public in weeks. She momentarily let herself drift with the crowd toward the section under the banner reading Ancient Arms and Armaments . She made her way past the familiar cases filled with all manner of arrowheads, daggers, and antique revolvers—many of which had been restored by her own careful hands—until she found herself propped in a doorway across from the case containing artifacts originating from Greek and Roman empires.

Nora observed the people milling through the exhibit, and her attention caught on a tall man paused in front of the case containing the hoplite armor. He had been standing there for longer than was typical for the casual museum patron, and the crowds were forced to part and flow around him as if he were a boulder in a stream. Nora pushed off the doorway she had been leaning on and took a step closer to the man. She told herself she was doing her job as a museum worker by answering patron’s questions about artifacts, but something in the set of the man’s shoulders drew her in.

As she stepped up next to the man, she commented, “It’s a fascinating collection, isn’t it?”

Apparently, her attempt at a casual conversation starter was off base because the man started violently. He jumped backward, and his hands flew to his bag as if prepared to draw a weapon of his own. Before Nora could apologize for startling him, however, his wide, russet eyes softened, and the tension in his stance faded.

“I was not expecting you,” the man said, as he smoothed the lapels of his tweed blazer.

“I’m sorry for startling you,” Nora apologized, tilting her head up to meet his eyes, something she wasn’t accustomed to given her stature. “I promise I don’t make a habit of sneaking up on unsuspecting museum patrons. This is a one-time thing.”

The man’s eyes narrowed behind his round glasses, “Museum patrons? Do you work here?”

“I’m one of the weapons experts.”

“Do you happen to be Nora?”

It was Nora’s turn to be startled, and she shifted from foot to foot. “Have we met?”

Perhaps he was a benefactor she had spoken to at a museum fundraiser, but it seemed unlikely. Nora would remember somebody with a jawline as sharp as his.

He shook his head, making the curls on his forehead flop back and forth.

“No, but I can’t believe my luck in running into you.”

Nora was saved from struggling to form an adequate response when the man barreled on to explain himself.

“You see, I’ve been doing some extensive research on weaponry from this era, and I kept coming across your name. I came here today to continue my research, but I never considered I might get lucky enough to actually meet you.”

Nora’s mind warred with itself on whether she should be flattered or unsettled, so the only thing she could think to say was, “Well, here I am.”

“Here you are indeed.”

In the silence following his odd statement, the battle between unease and flattery intensified until her stomach fluttered. The warm color of his eyes was pushing her toward flattered, but Nora reminded herself that she was at work. Distracting herself, she asked, “So, what exactly did you come here to study?”

The man tore his gaze away from her and turned back to the case of hoplite armor.

“Well, you see, I’m a literature professor at Northwestern University here in the city. I focus on classics with a particular emphasis on the works of ancient Greece. I had read in the paper about the new weapons that would be arriving here, and I was curious if your team would be interested in a sort of… professional collaboration?”

Nora chewed at her perpetually chapped bottom lip as she considered. A partnership in academia could be valuable to her research, but it hadn’t been remotely what she’d expected when she’d decided to approach a museum visitor on a whim.

“Do you have a business card?” she hedged.

The man rifled in his weathered leather messenger bag and surfaced with a card, which he offered to Nora.

“Dr. Adam Scott,” she read aloud.

“At your service,” he responded with an inclination of his head. For all his forwardness, he was decidedly charming.

Nora dug into her own crammed purse. It took her a few moments, but she located one of her own business cards, only slightly rumpled, and offered it to Adam.

He peered down at it and commented, “Zvezda. That’s an interesting last name.”

“It’s Russian. Constantly getting mispronounced.”

“Well, Nora, I’d love to grab some tea together and discuss how we might be able to assist one another with our research.” He nodded toward a small café at the end of the gallery.

Nora shook her head, “I only came up here to grab some lunch, and I have to be getting back down to the office soon. You can email me, though.”

“In that case, I look forward to seeing you soon.” He offered her his hand to shake and Nora took it after the slightest of hesitations, finding his palm warm and rough under her own. Her skin tingled.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Adam,” she responded, releasing his hand and taking a step back.

“The pleasure was all mine, Nora.”

Nora turned to walk away, but as she retreated, she felt his gaze trained on her for an inordinately long time. When she reached the bottom of the stairs that headed up toward the cafeteria, she glanced behind her, only to find that he had turned back to the case of armor. He looked at the Corinthian helmet topped with bold red plumage with rapt attention, just as he had when she’d first approached him. She shook her head at the oddity of it all before marching up the stairs in pursuit of some tacos.

Despite Mandy having encouraged her to take her time during lunch, Nora found herself back at her desk with her meal. After her unusual interaction in the museum, she had opted to eat in the far less populated office, taking the opportunity to catch up on some related research.

She browsed through articles pulled up on her phone and tried but failed not to get sour cream on the screen as she scrolled. She had just started in on an article detailing the use of DNA sequencing from animal hides to determine the geographical origins of shields in Africa when the phone vibrated in her hand with an incoming call.

Her heart stuttered in her chest at the name on the caller ID before her brows knit together in confusion. Drew Coleman .

Her thumb hovered over the ignore button, but she didn’t press it. They hadn’t spoken since breaking things off months ago; it seemed odd that he would call her in the middle of the workday—unless it was something urgent.

She answered the call and pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Nora?” came the gruff response.

“What’s wrong, Drew?” she asked, anxiety making her lunch sit uneasily in her belly.

Drew’s puzzled voice came through the receiver, “Wrong? How do you mean?”

“Well, you’re calling me in the middle of the day after we haven’t spoken in months. I figure something has happened.” Nora leaned back in her desk chair and began picking at her sweater as she spoke.

“Oh, no. Nothing has happened. Nothing bad, at least.”

Drew paused, and his breath crackled through the receiver as he sighed.

“I just saw the article in the newspaper about the project you’re going to be spearheading and I wanted to call and congratulate you. I know that must mean that the promotion you wanted isn’t far behind.”

“Oh, right. Thanks. It was nice of you to call,” Nora hedged.

The line went quiet, and Nora swiveled back and forth in her desk chair, unsure where to go from here. It seemed the world had conspired to fire awkward conversations at her when she was already tired and just trying to survive her day at the office. She was on the verge of telling him she had to get back to work when his soft voice interrupted her train of thought.

“Nora? I miss you.”

It was Nora’s turn to sigh and close her eyes.

“I miss you too, Drew. But it doesn’t change anything.”

“Not like that. I want kids, you don’t. Breaking up was for the best,” Drew stumbled on the words falling out of his mouth, “But you’re my best friend.”

Nora squeezed her eyes shut even more tightly and pinched the bridge of her nose.

There was a pause, followed by a soft whump that sounded like Drew falling back onto a bed. “I just—I had to call. Last night at the hospital was rough. A bus wrecked, and we had to treat half a dozen critical injuries. It left me so… drained. I needed a friend, and you know me better than anyone. I don’t want to lose that just because we aren’t dating anymore.”

Nora chewed her bottom lip. “Well, I can still be your friend.”

“I’d like that.” Nora heard the relief in Drew’s tone. “Do you think you might come back to the pool league again? I promise not to make it awkward for you. I’d like to be able to talk to you again.”

“Are you sure you’re ready to have me kick your ass at pool again? Haven’t you been enjoying winning for the past few months?” Nora teased to lighten the mood.

Drew scoffed on the other end, “I think you’ll find I’ve learned some new tricks in the past few months. Might be able to give you a run for your money now.”

Nora chuckled before silence fell again.

“In all seriousness, though,” Drew continued. “It would be great to see you. I’m determined to make this breakup less awkward than my breakup with Jason. I had to run out of the library whenever he entered for a straight year.”

“I don’t think it will be hard for me to behave better than Jason when we see each other.”

“Good, then I’ll see you there soon. Tell Odelle and Irina I say hello, okay?”

“Of course. It was good to hear from you, Drew,” Nora said before hanging up the phone.

She turned back to her half-eaten plate of tacos. She was glad that she had indulged and gotten queso. Even though that conversation had gone better than she could have hoped, she deserved a treat for all the curve balls life had been throwing at her in the past twenty-four hours.

The rest of the week at work left Nora with very little time to worry about her personal life. On Thursday, the crates arrived from the excavation in Greece and it was as if somebody had thrown a hornet’s nest into the basement workspace. Nora and her team were in a state of constant motion, cracking open crates, tagging and identifying pieces, and chipping away layers of protective plaster. The carefully climate-controlled air was filled with dust and the buzz of conversation as the team devised a plan for organizing and processing all the pieces in the large shipment.

On Friday morning, Nora finally had time to unearth the two weapons that she had left for last—like a prime bit of steak left to be the perfect final bite of a meal. Sitting on a shelf in a corner, Nora found herself glancing at the unassuming crate often throughout the week, as if the artifacts she knew laid within were calling her name. An unprecedented excitement ran up her spine as Nora finally set the package on her workstation. Perhaps it was just the significance of these artifacts to her career, but goosebumps broke across her skin as she cracked open the seal on the crate.

Within, she found a heavy bundle, meticulously wrapped in layers of cotton, and Mandy helped her move it to the workbench. Nora slipped on her mask to guard the artifact from the humidity of her breath and began unwrapping the bundle. It was a surprise to find the sword packaged like this. She was used to having discoveries arrive on her bench still entrenched in a block of earth, which she would have to spend hours chipping away at, bit by bit. Instead, as she continued to unwrap the sword, she caught glimpses of pure metal.

Nora stifled a gasp as the last of the wrappings fell away. On her workbench lay a flawless bronze blade, looking as if it had been made a few years prior instead of over two millennia ago. Mandy peered over her shoulder and let out a low whistle.

The sword was just under two feet long, a type known as a Xiphos , with two curved edges that made it ideal for slashing in close-range combat. This Xiphos was of exquisite craftmanship and, by Nora’s observation, still sharp. Running down the length of the blade was an inscription in a language she did not recognize. She would make a copy of it after she got the blade cleaned off. Not that there was much to clean.

There appeared to be very little corrosion on the leaf-shaped blade, probably due to its construction from bronze instead of iron. Still, even for a sword made of an enduring material, its preservation was remarkable. Nora peered at it, snatching up her magnifier to get a closer look at the inscription. While she could make out the elegant shapes of the etchings, she could not decipher them at all. Even the alphabet used was one Nora didn’t recognize.

Nora straightened from her inspection to find Mandy with one hip propped on the workbench, still watching her work.

“Any idea on this inscription?” Nora asked, “I don’t have a clue what language this might be.”

Mandy shook her head, a few loose pieces of sleek hair falling across her face. “If you can’t figure it out, then nobody in this office is going to have a clue. The report from the field said that nobody on the dig recognized it either.”

Nora hummed in response and glanced back at the blade, itching to uncover its secrets and already mentally running through professionals in her contact list who might be familiar with the ancient language.

A drawl behind her snapped her from her reverie.

“I wonder what the board will think when you have to admit you can’t translate that inscription.”

Nora turned on her heel to find Leo looking down his nose at her with the same expression she pictured pinned to the dart board when she was persuaded to play a few rounds at pool night. Mandy rolled her eyes over his shoulder, and Nora folded her arms.

“I’m too busy wondering if I’ll get an office all to myself when I do translate it,” Nora retorted.

Leo’s face purpled, and Nora resisted the urge to punctuate her statement with a rude hand gesture, remembering they were in a shared workspace. Still, all the workers around her kept their heads dutifully down, nobody willing to insert themselves into the workplace’s most notorious rivalry.

“People whose dissertations were published in the last decade don’t get private offices,” Leo sneered.

“We’ll see. Why don’t you just run along and play with your arrowheads and leave the translating to me?”

Leo scowled but turned and headed back to his own workbench.

“Ugh,” Nora groaned to Mandy once he was gone. “Why does he have to be such an insufferable fungus waffle, even in my moment of victory?”

Mandy waved her hand dismissively.

“He’s just jealous, and he can’t accept that you were clever enough to beat him out for the promotion when he thought he was sure to get it on pure seniority. Don’t let him distract you.”

Nora tried to take her advice. She and Mandy spent the rest of the morning trying to copy down the engraving as best they could while searching for a linguist who might be able to translate it for them. They didn’t make much progress. Nora found herself ready to bang her head on her bench in frustration at the apparent dead end by lunch.

“Let’s take a look at the other artifact.” Nora jerked her chin at the bundle still buried in the shipping crate. “Maybe it will give us more ideas.”

Nora went through a similar process as with the sword, unpackaging it from the box. However, when she and Mandy went to move the long, slim bundle to the table, they almost dropped the weapon in surprise. It was heavy—far heavier than a spear this size should be.

“What the heck?” Mandy said once they had hefted the bundle onto the workbench. “Have I been skipping too many Pilates classes, or is that thing mammoth?”

“It’s definitely not just you.”

Nora hurried to put on her gloves and mask, wondering what could be making this spear so substantial. The heaviest weapons of these dimensions were usually only four pounds, but this had to be at least three times that weight.

As she pulled back the protective wrappings, it became apparent why they had been surprised by the weight. Traditional spears from this age, called a dory , were composed of a long ash handle, with an iron blade at one end and a counterbalancing spike at the other. All six feet of the weapon, from its leaf-shaped blade to the sauroter on the butt, reflected the buzzing florescent lights of the office with the soft glow of burnished bronze. Nora’s heart pounded in her chest as she leaned in to examine the lethal-looking blade the size of her hand.

Mandy’s voice came from over her shoulder. “Why would somebody make a spear completely out of bronze? Maybe it was for ceremonial purposes?”

Nora scrunched up her face. “You know I hate saying things were used for ceremonial purposes. It’s like admitting we don’t really know what they were for.”

“What about that artifact that was brought over a few months ago? You said it was used for ceremonial purposes in an ancient fertility ritual.”

Nora snorted. “That was just because I couldn’t say the words ancient dildo to my boss with a straight face.”

“Can’t fault you there,” Mandy commented drily as Nora snatched up her magnifier to take a closer look.

“I don’t think this was ceremonial anyway. There are distinctive scratch marks up here by the blade. This thing has seen combat.”

Mandy swore under her breath. “What kind of animal would have fought with a weapon like that? Can you imagine carrying that behemoth into battle? A dory is supposed to be a one-handed weapon, but that thing would be too heavy to use alongside a shield.”

Nora pondered the question, even though Mandy meant it to be rhetorical. She raked her gaze down the weapon and discovered slight wear marks on the handle. They must have been the points where the wielder put their hands when fighting. Gingerly, Nora lay one of her gloved hands on the thick shaft over one of the indentations. Her hand fit perfectly in the wear mark, and a shiver ran up her spine. She instantly envisioned somebody carrying this weapon into battle—a Greek hoplite in traditional armor, standing tall and sporting a helmet topped with a dramatic red plume. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up at the beauty of the sight—laced with an odd sensation that she couldn’t place.

Mandy’s cheery voice interrupted her vision. “Well, at least crafting it completely of bronze made it resistant to corrosion. Wood decomposes so quickly and all that. We should be able to learn a lot from this.”

Nora nodded her agreement as she opened her toolkit to get to work.

Nora looked up as the door slammed, finding that she was alone—the last one at the office again. She looked back down at her untidy desk and considered shoving all the papers in her battered bag and heading home.

The clock indicated that it was well past rush hour, and the next bus home wouldn’t be arriving for another forty minutes. Nora sighed and crossed her legs on her desk chair, not bothering to sit normally now that she was alone. Absentmindedly, she tapped on her laptop until the screen brightened, pulling up her inbox.

Her eyebrows shot up when she looked at the first email. The subject line read, Meet me for coffee? and the sender was [email protected]. She squinted at the address for a long second before her mind conjured the image of a business card shoved into the bottom of her purse: Dr. Adam Scott from Northwestern.

Upon a quick skim through the email, she found it was indeed from the man she had encountered on Tuesday, and he was asking her if she would like to meet to discuss their possible collaboration further. He named a café not far from the lakefront as well as a time—tomorrow afternoon. Nora’s eyebrows crept higher at his suggestion of a work meeting over the weekend. He must be desperate for her expertise on whatever his project was.

She was about to type out a reply, putting him off, and even considered just shutting her laptop and ignoring him altogether when the email signature below his name caught her eye.

Professor of Literature and Ancient Languages

A professor of ancient languages sounded like just what Nora needed to help decipher the inscription on the sword, and if he couldn’t do the job himself, then he might know somebody who could.

She tapped a response, agreeing to the meeting before moving on to the rest of her inbox. She hadn’t finished reading the departmental memo that was next in her queue before Adam’s reply popped into her inbox, telling her he was eager for their meeting.

She paused in surprise for a moment at his quick reply at this time on a Friday night, but she pushed the thought from her head in favor of considering what she should pick up for dinner from the Indian deli down the street on her way home.

Nora found the French café that Adam directed her to and pushed open the door. She found the corner of her lips pulling up at the sight that greeted her.

This was her type of place.

Small circular tables filled the cozy space, and the lamps lit the room with a warm glow that contrasted nicely with the muted gray colors of the fall day outside. The air was filled with the warm aromas of baking pastry and—thank goodness—coffee.

Her eyes roved over the tables, searching for an empty place to sit, and found that Adam had already arrived, catching sight of his dark curls as he leaned over the table before him. Papers scattered every available inch of the surface, and steam from a mug fogged his glasses as he took a sip. Nora momentarily watched his lips caress the edge of his large earthenware mug before shaking herself and picking her way across the room. Something odd had come over her recently. As she approached, he had to take off his glasses to wipe them clean of condensation.

When Nora’s shadow fell over his papers, he looked up and beamed, revealing a striking set of dimples.

“You came!” he said, jumping to his feet to shake Nora’s hand before shuffling his papers into a neat stack to make room for her to sit.

As Nora slid into her seat, she watched Adam perch himself on the low bistro-style chair once more, being forced to fold up his long legs in a way that brought to mind vague images of a baby giraffe.

“What were you working on?” Nora inclined her head towards the stack of papers that Adam was now pushing into a beat-up leather bag.

“These? Oh, just grading some papers,” Adam said as he snapped his bag shut. “One of the less fun parts of being a professor.”

“At Northwestern, right? My sister went there, graduated five years ago. Majored in broadcasting.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t have had her in my classes then,” responded Adam with a shake of his head. “I only started teaching there a few years ago.”

“That’s probably for the best. She is a superbly disruptive student.”

“It’s ok,” Adam chuckled, the sound musical. “I’m used to disruptive students in my class. I’ve been told I’m rather… long-winded in my discussions of the classic works. My students don’t always appreciate it. I doubt a broadcasting major would be very interested in my class anyway. Is she a reporter?”

Nora’s chest swelled with pride, as it always did when she got to brag about her sister’s career. “Yeah, on weekends, on one of the local channels. She just got the job last year, and she’s still excited about it. People tried to tell her she wouldn’t be able to make it on TV because she has prosthetic legs, but I’m pretty sure that just made her want to do it more.”

“She sounds charming.”

Nora snorted. “She’s a handful is what she is. I have vivid memories of Irina chasing her around the house, telling stories of Russian witches that would come out and eat her in the night if she didn’t hold still.”

Adam chuckled. “And Irina is?”

“Our foster mother.”

Adam’s face took on a look that Nora had become familiar with throughout her life, and she automatically moved to wave it away.

“Oh no, don’t give me that sorry look. We lived with Irina for almost as long as I can remember, and she spent the entire time stuffing me full of borscht and driving me to marching band practice.”

“So, do you speak any Russian?”

Nora shrugged. “I understand it better than I speak it.”

At that moment, a cheerful-looking plump lady approached the table and greeted Adam in what sounded like French. Adam chatted with her animatedly for a moment, gesturing to Nora a few times before turning back to her and asking, “Would you like anything to drink?”

“Espresso, please.”

Adam exchanged a few more lilting foreign words with the lady before she bustled off, presumably to fetch her coffee.

“So, you speak French?” Nora asked, tearing her mind away from the way Adam’s mouth shaped itself around rolling French syllables. Her thoughts seemed to derail so easily around him. It was disconcerting.

Adam shrugged one shoulder, and Nora spotted a slight flush darkening his bronze skin.

“Yeah, I like to learn languages. I started so I could read books in the language they were written in, and then it sort of became an area of expertise.”

“Well, that’s part of why I wanted to meet with you today.” Nora pushed on, determined to steer their conversation into professional territory. “I’m looking for an expert in languages. I—my team at the museum is looking for somebody who can help us translate an engraving on a weapon.”

Adam leaned forward in his seat, and his eyes sparkled behind his glasses. “What kind of weapon?”

Nora blinked at his enthusiasm. Too often, her long-winded explanations of the subtle differences in blade shapes on short swords were met with glazed eyes, but Adam’s gaze held an unusual amount of fervor. Perhaps he was just as much of a history nerd as her—likely if what he said about learning languages was true.

“There were a bunch of weapons and fragments discovered in a dig outside of Athens, but the specific piece I need assistance with is a short sword—a Xiphos . It was found right next to a spear. Remarkably, both are in near-perfect condition. They most likely belonged to the same person, the spear being the primary weapon of the Greek hoplite and the sword being carried as a backup. The sword is the weapon with the engravings on it, but it’s in a language that nobody in the field can recognize…”

Nora looked up to find Adam gripping the edge of the table with white knuckles as he listened. His fingers were very long. Nora swallowed and ripped her gaze up to his face.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Oh… yes.” Adam seemed to remember himself and leaned back in his chair as he smoothed down his tie with one hand. “I’ve always loved history, although usually in a more literary sense, I’ll admit. But I was so intrigued when I read about the Greek weapons in the newspaper—the prospect of getting to help with them is thrilling. I do happen to know some ancient Greek dialects.”

Nora rifled around in her bag to pull out the leather notebook in which she had attempted to copy the inscription on the sword, leafing through the ruffled pages until she found the appropriate page.

“Does this look like something you might recognize?” she asked, turning the paper around to show him.

His eyes widened. “It does look like an ancient language that I’ve been studying in my spare time, but it’s hard to decipher with so little of it left.” He squinted at the page and leaned in further. “I might be able to translate it, but some of the symbols here are a little different than what I’m familiar with.”

Adam smoothed his fingers over the paper, and Nora chewed her lip as she considered the odd reverence with which he traced the symbols. “I did my best to copy the inscription, but it was hard to replicate an alphabet I’m not familiar with. Do you think that you could translate it better if you looked at the original?”

“You would let me look at the sword?” Adam asked, his gaze snapping up from the words on the page to meet hers.

Nora shouldn’t be inviting someone who was basically a stranger into the lab to look at ancient artifacts—she wasn’t technically permitted to bring somebody into the office without a visitor’s badge—but this was the best lead she had. She wasn’t going to let it slip through her fingers. Besides, if she brought him in right now, nobody would even have to know. Nobody else ever went into the office on weekends.

Adam’s enthusiasm over the artifacts warmed something within her, too. While plenty of people she worked with gushed passionately about history, the spark in Adam’s eyes was something else. It imparted her with a strange boldness, as if she had known Dr. Adam Scott for weeks instead of days.

“Sure,” Nora agreed. “Maybe we could take the bus over from here?”

Adam nodded emphatically. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Okay,” Nora said as she spotted the cheery waitress weaving her way back through the tables with a steaming cup. “We’ll leave after I finish my coffee.”

Pushing through the side doors, Nora led Adam down the hallway to the offices and peered around. She had never encountered any of her coworkers here on a Saturday, but it would be just her luck to have somebody putting in extra hours when she brought in an unauthorized visitor. Finding the hallway empty, she unlocked the office and held the door open.

As they made their way back to her workbench, she told him, “Just don’t touch anything, it’s all very old and fragile.”

Adam made a dramatic show of tucking his hands into the pockets of his tweed blazer, and Nora smiled despite herself.

She made her way to the crate where the sword was being kept and put on the clean gloves she had retrieved from a drawer in her workstation. Now appropriately attired, she lifted the bundle from the crate and began unwrapping the sword. As she worked, the warmth from Adam’s body behind her seeped through her clothes as he stepped closer. It seemed backward that warmth would make her shiver, but a pleasant tingle crept up her spine.

Maybe she really had been spending too much time holed up in here alone.

As the last of the protective wrappings fell away, Adam inhaled sharply, and she spared him a glance. His eyes were wide and shining as he beheld the blade.

Nora stepped to the side so he could slide up next to her and take a closer look. Putting some distance between them reduced the tingling in her spine as well, and Nora decided that was a good thing, as it had made it difficult to focus. Adam leaned in before asking, his tone bordering on reverent.

“Where was this found again?”

“On a dig just outside of Athens.” Nora watched as his eyes ran up and down the blade, taking in every lethal inch of it. “It was found buried far deeper than most of the other artifacts from its period, although we have carbon-dated it to about 400 BC. It was right next to the spear that was found, too.”

His voice was so soft when he responded that it almost felt as if he wasn’t talking to her. “It’s in such perfect condition; it looks just like it did when it was left there… so long ago.”

Nora raised her eyebrows at the odd phrasing of his comment, but then she remembered why she had brought him there in the first place.

“See these markings here on the blade?” she asked, gesturing to the delicate engravings down the top half of the flat side of the blade. They ran along the gentle fuller, expertly crafted to make the sword light and maneuverable. “Are these the same markings as that language you were studying?”

Adam squinted at the markings before answering, “They do look similar. I think I could make out what they say if I could get a clearer look at them.”

Nora pulled out her toolkit, rifling around for her magnifier in the bundle of tweezers and scalpels. He took it from her without taking his eyes off the blade and held it up.

“Fascinating,” he whispered, using the magnifier to look up and down the length of the blade several times. Nora resisted the urge to tap her foot, giving him time to inspect.

“As far as I can translate, the inscription on this blade says, Through the darkest night. ” Adam straightened and handed her the magnifier.

Nora pursed her lips and repeated the phrase, “ Through the darkest night . That’s not any sort of army or family motto we’ve seen before. It may have been some sort of personal inscription. I wonder what it meant.”

Adam’s eyes were filled with a far-off look as he responded, “It probably was something important to the person who owned the sword.” Nora pondered in the brief silence that followed before he asked, “Does the spear have any markings on it?”

“Not that we’ve observed.” Nora hesitated, contemplating the happiness bubbling in her chest at having somebody look at ancient artifacts with the same awe she felt every day. Adam might be odd, but he seemed to share her curiosity.

“Do you want to take a look at it anyway?” Nora offered, despite her better judgment. “It’s quite spectacular.”

Adam nodded, making his glasses slide down his nose. He pushed them back up as Nora turned to lift the spear onto the table. It went much better this time as she was prepared for its weight. She worked quickly to unwrap it, feeling Adam’s gaze heavy on her, although it was likely due to his excitement to see the artifact.

They stood in silence for a moment, staring at the fantastic weapon on the table before them before Nora sighed again, placing her hands on her hips in satisfaction. “I think this one is my favorite.”

“I can see why,” Adam murmured. His voice came from so close to her ear that Nora jumped, not realizing he had leaned in so close to get a better look. His breath stirred the hairs that had escaped from the messy bun at the top of her head, and she stole a glance at his chiseled profile. She stared for a moment longer than was strictly proper, momentarily lost in how mesmerized Adam was by the spear.

That was when the screaming started.