Blood From Stone by Laura Anne Gilman

Author:Laura Anne Gilman [Laura Anne Gilman]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Romance, Contemporary, Fiction, General, Magic, Epic, Paranormal, Demonology
ISBN: 9781426847776
Publisher: Luna
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Museums at night were always, by their nature, a little spooky. During the day, the past was just another artifact, something gone and dead, by its nature an object lesson rather than promise or threat. At night, however… Hallways that during the day were filled with hundreds of thousands of soles tapping on the tile fell silent, save for the sound of the occasional night guard walking his route or talking on the phone while monitoring a bank of remote cameras. Artworks normally lit for ideal viewing now lurked in half-power shadows, and red lights came on in the place of incandescent white, giving structures an unearthly glow. Worse than all of that, though, was when the normal hum of conversation was replaced by the inaudible whispers of history.

In some museums, the whispers are genteel, civilized, the passions of their creation now aged into a more mellow and fond remembrance. The two renovated mansions that housed the Museum held more immediate energies; mankind forgot, Nature did not. Old ills, slights, and catastrophes still lingered, hot and raw as the instant of occurrence, until the floors and walls and windows were saturated.

Most humans never noticed. The Fatae had no use for museums, carrying their past with them unforgotten, so they never visited, and if they felt it outside those thick walls, they never told anyone.

The exhibits on display at least had the chance to be seen and admired. It mitigated the worst of the ills, softened the pain of misfortunes, and brought more positive energies to the front. For every child who smeared the glass, or every teenager who lost their poise or cool, the saturation came down a notch. Below, in the basements and storerooms, where every major and most minor museums locked away the items they were not using, had no space to show or had not yet identified the provenances of, there was less room for positive energy flow.

Some items moved in and out of storage. Some spent weeks, months, occasionally years being examined and studied, placated.

The rest sat in the dark, numbered, cataloged, and all too often forgotten. Large or small, all things became dangerous when ignored.

A figure slid through the door from the upper floors of the museum just as the final closing bell was rung. He paused to wave a thin electronic wand over the nearest camera, freezing it in place, and then casual street clothing was shed, revealing a thin, black nylon catsuit underneath covering the lithe body of a tumbler—or a thief. Now that he was dressed head to toe in dark clothing, exposed skin was powdered with a dark substance out of a palm-sized vial, in order to reduce any unfortunate reflection of light. Hands were gloved, head covered with a surgeon’s cap under a black silk hood. The street clothing was folded into a small plastic bag that, at the touch of a button, squeezed itself into an impossibly small package that was placed carefully into a half-filled trash can by the doorway.

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