Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

are more exhibits in this room: books and gleaming instruments sitting on wooden and acrylic pedestals. None are covered and several pedestals are empty. Timmi guides me to the far end of the room, where there’s a long table and several wing-backed chairs. Two of the chairs are at a slight angle to the table, tilted toward an intricately carved column behind the table. A small mirror set into a pewter stand rests on the table between the chairs.

As we approach the chairs, I realize that there aren’t any other columns in this room, although there are others scattered around the museum, some finely carved like this one and others simply fluted. This one looks out of place, standing alone at one end of the room, but maybe it’s structural. There’s a lot of museum above us that needs holding up.

“Here we are, my dear.” Timmi hands me into one chair and seats herself across from me. “Close your eyes and take a deep breath. What do you smell?”

I take several, determined to do better than my last attempt. I sift through the institutional scents. Paper. Ammonia. A faint metallic edge. I focus on that, take a few more deep breaths, drawing the scent deep, exploring it with my magic as well as my lungs. “You’re going to laugh at me,” I tell Timmi. “It smells like a Bic pen.”

She does laugh, but it’s her kind laugh, as infectious as her smile. I open my eyes and find her grinning at me. “That’s exactly right. When he was younger, Professor Parklyn’s magic smelled like iron gall ink, but as he got older, it changed to the smell of a ballpoint. Very good, my dear.”

I shrug, but I feel myself smiling. I passed this time.

“And here’s his diary.” Timmi lifts one of her small hands to the twisted column.

I raise my eyes to it. “Uh.”

Timmi laughs. “You see why it can’t leave the Museum?”

“Geez, yeah.”

“It would have been difficult to fit in my bag. Although my bag is much bigger than it looks.”

I stare at the pillar silently. It’s hard to take in all at once. The carving is so fine, so detailed. Underneath all the carving, there’s a fluted column, like many throughout the Museum. Wrapped all around the flutes, there are wide ribbons of carved figures. I follow the ribbons as they spiral around the pillar from bottom to top. “There are eight,” I say, tracing the ribbons.

“One for each score of Professor Parklyn’s years.”

I do a little mental math. Frown. “You mean decade.”

“No, I mean score. Professor Parklyn was a very wise man.”

He would be if he lived a hundred and sixty years. I focus on the ribbons closest to me. They’re each about four inches wide. They’re bordered by a line of figures no larger than my fingernail. Flowers. Waves. Celtic knots. Tiny animals. Between the miniscule borders are larger figures, mostly human. I focus on one set, three panels each no wider than my palm, bordered above and below with pentagrams. In the first panel, there’s a seated man, holding what looks like a scroll above his head. His other hand is outstretched, his finger pointing downward. I recognize the position from my Dala’s cards. The Magician.

“These are tarot figures,” I say.

“Look closer,” Timmi whispers.

I lean closer to the pillar. She’s right, it’s not really a tarot figure, at least not a Ryder-Waite figure. He should be standing, holding a wand, with the sword, cup and pentacle at hand. Instead, he sits, turned slightly away from me, holding up a scroll, and as I watch, the scroll unfurls and I hear a man’s deep whisper in my ear, ‘Because they lead my people astray, saying ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace . . .”

I jerk back in my chair and the whisper drifts off into the quiet hum of the Museum’s heating. “What is that?”

Timmi brushes her fingertips over the little figure I was examining. “Professor Parklyn was a student of the King James bible, among other things. He read it every year. Genesis to Revelation. I think we’ll be somewhere in Ezekiel now.” She smiles and it’s a less infectious, more knowing smile. “Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

“Amazing,” I say, leaning forward to peer at the figure again. “Did he enchant all this?”

“Yes. One of his sons, Luther, I think, carved most of it. When Luther died, one of the grandsons finished it off. Park had so many, I forget which one it was. As the boys carved, Park Worked. I don’t think anyone will ever fully understand it, no more than anyone can fully understand the mind of another human being. But he left us a great legacy.”

“It’s amazing,” I repeat. My eyes skip up the ribbon, over dozens of figures, each clearly with their own story to tell. Catch on a very plain panel, another tarot-like figure: a hand emerging from a cloud, grasping what at first glance I take to be a sword. But it’s not.

I touch the image tentatively. It’s not a sword. It’s a key. A familiar key. In fact, a key that’s sitting right on the floor in my handbag.

“You don’t disappoint, my dear. That’s the beginning. Park had just had his hundredth birthday when the key came to us. He studied it for five years before he opened the first door. Hopefully you won’t need as long. Although I’m content to wait if you do, of course. Rushed research begets shoddy scholarship.”

I hope not, too, and somehow I don’t think the demon’s going to give me that much time anyway. “It’s not speaking.”

“No, not all of them do. And not all of them speak to everyone. I can hear the ones with figures in them, but none of the others. Jackie, Park’s fourth wife, can only hear the ones that contain a wave or a cup. Her Element is water, so I suppose that’s natural. Go up two. I wonder if that one might work for you.”

I trace the ribbon as it twists,