Page 5

“Have you ever been in love?”

The warmth drained out of Tristan's expression instantly. “Hasn't everyone?” He strode past me and out the door.

Baffled at myself and Tristan Bane, I watched him stride away, his back rigid. Sure, the question had been too personal, but did it deserve an abrasive response? Annoyed, I returned to my lab.

As soon as I walked in, Sabrina spun around to face me. “Is he an eccentric billionaire, a young Indiana Jones, your future husband, or all of the above?”

“You know, I'm not sure what he is,” I whispered.

“Oh, I man of mystery. I love it! Let's guess. Me first!Going by his suit, which I'm betting cost a cool six grand, I'd say he's a vigilante vampire, searching for clues his enemies may have left behind in religious artifacts.”

“A vigilante vampire? How does an expensive suit equate to that?”

“Living forever makes it easier to accumulate a fortune, and he's a vigilante because of his brooding, Batman vibe. Come on, you guess!”

“I don't even want to know.” I went to sit down at my worktable.

“Oh, you do. You really, really want to know.” She pointed her brush at me. “Don't think I missed the I-want-to-have-your-babies looks you were giving him.”

I snorted a laugh. “I did not look at him like that.”

“Girl, even from over here, I could see the drool.”

“I'm probably never seeing him again. So, you can reel in your excitement.”

“Pfft. That guy will be back. He was giving you I-want-you-to-have-my-babies looks in return. You're practically a couple.” She glanced at the clock. “Oh, shit!” She jumped up and pulled off her gloves. “I've got to pick up the pigment delivery for the Painting Lab. They called while you were out.” Sabrina rushed out the door.

It was a relief to be alone. I needed time to process Tristan, and I did my processing best while working. So I returned to the reliquary. I had finished cleaning the front panel the day before, and normally, I would have moved on to clean the rest of the piece, but I was anxious to clean out that awful repair job. It made me wince every time I looked at it.

It was a long process. First, I had to consolidate the fractured repair glass with resin. Then, using a microscope and a miniature diamond-tipped dental burr, I carefully ground away the glass. When it was finally removed, I cleaned the area and sat back to stretch. It had taken hours. Sabrina had returned, finished her work, and gone home. I should have gone home too, but I'd uncovered a crack in the gold foil beneath and I wanted to document it before I left.

When it was clean, I moved my magnifying glass over on its swiveling arm, positioning it over the crack, and turned on its light. The crack wasn't my doing, thank goodness. The repair work had included a new section of gold foil, and it was lifting. Yet more evidence of the artist's lack of skill.

Sighing, I picked up a pair of tweezers and picked at the gold until I was able to peel the repair piece away. “What the fuck?”

Laying within the foundation was a piece of blackened silver, about the size of a quarter. Like a game of Operation, I used my tweezers to remove the object and set it on the cleansing pad. The space beneath was full of dust. I assumed it had once been fabric or padding. I brushed the dust away and cleaned the area. It wasn't a smooth, purposeful recess, but a jagged gouge. The damage to the face had gone deeper than I'd thought. But why would someone hide a silver piece in it? Was it just filler?

I moved the magnifying glass over the piece. Its surface was tarnished, but its edges were eerily smooth. It could be a coin, but not from the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine silver miliaresion was thinner. Using a brush, I cleaned it of dust. It definitely wasn't a coin. Even coins from later periods were made with striking, creating raised designs on them. But this piece was etched—a more laborious process.

I took the coin to the ultrasonic cleaner and put it in a gentle cleaning solution. As I waited, I cleaned up my worktable. Once the cycle finished, I dried the piece and brought it back to the table. One side was blank, but the etching on the other side had been revealed. It was intricate and felt familiar.

My pulse sped up as I realized where I'd seen the symbol before. Not on another artifact or in any book, but on the chest of a man who guessed the origin of the reliquary, knew the difference between Classic and Attic Greek, and prized love while simultaneously fearing it. Instead of one question, I now had two,

What was the meaning of this ancient symbol? And why was it tattooed on Tristan Bane's chest?

Chapter Three

The next day, I started researching the symbol. I began with the easiest route—an image search on Google. It brought up jewelry, t-shirts, and a Hungarian family crest, none with the correct design. A key element of the symbol was its unevenness. Two lines spun off the spiral in the second portion, as if it were spinning.

I had to move on to the Smithsonian's database. I searched Byzantine iconography for obvious reasons, but nothing I found matched the symbol. After that, I moved into occult territory, searching photographs of arcane symbols taken from grimoires most people didn't know the Smithsonian possessed. An hour passed with no matches. Finally, I brought up the reliquary's file.

“Whatcha doin'?” Sabrina leaned her hip against my worktable and peered at the laptop screen.

I don't know why, but I hadn't told Sabrina about the silver piece. Every time I tried, my mouth wouldn't form the words. Even now, my hand moved toward the reliquary. The silver piece was inside it, nestled within a foam casing I'd cut to its dimensions.

“I'm trying to find more information on the reliquary.”

She scrunched up her face and straightened. “So you're not watching porn? Damn it. I had such high hopes for you.”