Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw

Author:Vivian Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2019-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

“I’m no good at this,” said Greta Helsing, passing a hand over her face. They were back in the conference room, with its flying-saucer phone squatting in the center of the table. The telltale light was dark.

Varney and Tefnakhte looked at one another—she could feel the glance, and resented it enormously—and Varney began to say something about how yes of course she was when the phone rang. Greta leaned over and pushed its little button.

“Grisaille?” she said.

“C’est moi. Has anything earth-shattering occurred on your end?”

“Not so far. There was one brief episode of the fainting, but only one. What happened with the woman?” She’d looked up Leonora Van Dorne on the Internet after Grisaille’s previous call, and hoped like hell that American aristocracy was vulnerable to vampire thrall.

“Funny you should ask. We trundled on over to her adorable little enormous fuckoff mansion with our metaphorical hats in hand and practically the first thing out of the Van Dorne’s rosy lips was, I know you’re thieves.”

“Fuck,” said Greta, but he cut her off.

“It gets better. So the kid and I look at one another in some considerable dismay and I get ready to drop a ton of thrall on her and leg it, when she comes out with, ‘And there’s something I want you to steal for me.’ My dears, you could have knocked me over with a feather.”

“Lots of stone feathers in her collection,” said Cranswell’s voice, and Greta could picture Grisaille’s eyeroll. “So it turns out that Van Dorne wants the stela thing, too,” Cranswell went on. “It’s the only one in the world, so she has to have it, apparently. I mean, I’m not surprised, she goes around wearing irreplaceable Middle Kingdom jewelry like it’s mass-produced Tiffany; she has a kind of cavalier relationship with the whole ‘this thing should be in a museum as opposed to in my living room’ concept.”

“What did you say to her?”

“What could we say?” Grisaille told her, and now she could picture his who, me? expression. “I believe the general thrust was something along the lines of, ‘Yes of course, ma’am, it’d be our pleasure to assist you in this matter, there’s just the little problem of how to winkle the thing out of its current setting without causing alarm and consternation on the part of the museum authorities,’ and get this, she was all, ‘Nonsense, don’t worry about that, I’ll make some phone calls and the item will be taken off display for safekeeping because as a prominent collector and personal friend of several auction house directors I’ve received credible threats that someone will try to steal it.’”

“Good heavens,” said Varney. “I don’t think I can remember ever encountering a more brazen bit of effrontery.”

“It rather took the breath away. So we, as in Cranswell and I, will make our way unto the museum’s loading dock tonight in the guise and seeming of armored-van personnel, complete with armored van accessory, and if we have even the slightest bit of luck, we’ll have the thing out of there and into our custody in no time at all.

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