Rube nodded at the security guard, Jim, as he headed into the elevator to the underground area. It still surprised him that something as simple as finding a discarded but colorful box led him to work at a museum, much less the Metropolitan. Not only did he not have a doctorate, he hadn’t even finished his Bachelor’s; worse, his degree plan wasn’t art or archaeology or anything like that. He’d moved over to a business degree; nothing else seemed to fit what he wanted.
The pay was decent, at least. It was far better than what the graduate students working with him got; he was pretty certain it was better than some of the more recent graduates, if he counted “recent” as “within the last decade.” It really was pretty good. His pay probably wouldn’t go up when he graduated, but when you got right down to it, a doctorate just meant you were eligible for full time; the hourly wage wasn’t much higher.
Getting a job wasn’t that direct, or course; it took several things coming together to make it happen. His find triggered it all, since it led to both the discovery of a major theft and the discovery that a lot of ancient artifacts were actually magical. That led to a huge surge in museum attendance and funding for archaeology. Of course, it took a while for museums to start figuring out which parts of their collections were actually magical.
That all took place while Rube’s attention was elsewhere, dealing with an eldritch entity trying to take over his body. These days, his arms looked a little odd but they were fully functional; that hadn’t always been the case. School was a real struggle when you could barely use your hands.
The pagan ritual made things worse for a while, but Rube knew they would have been even worse if he hadn’t accepted the offer. Serenity had come through in the end, when Blaze arrived. It made sense that Serenity would know one of the Tutorial’s instructors. It even made sense that the healer he’d send would be the hard-ass. Rube was fine with that, really. The important thing was that his hands worked again.
Luckily for Rube, his discovery also led to the Director of the Metropolitan finding out that he could see magic. He still wasn’t certain how that had happened, but his best guess was that Russ Latimer was responsible, just like he was responsible for pulling in Serenity. Rube still didn’t know exactly who the detective worked for, but his guess was FBI; they worked art theft cases, didn’t they? He was pretty sure it wasn’t left to the city police, but he could be wrong about that. Detective Latimer knew everyone and was able to get their help; beyond that, Rube didn’t really care who he worked for.
It was only a few weeks after Blaze showed up that Museum Director Collins called Rube with a job offer. At first, it was supposed to be a quick look through the museum’s displays and storage to find anything that was magically active, but it quickly turned into more than that. A surprising number of things were magically active, and there was a level of interest in finding out how it all worked that shocked the Director; Rube had expected it. He hadn’t expected the way it would change his job, however. Much of his time was spent assisting the people as they looked at the artifacts (and paid a pretty penny for access, he was certain).
Rube wasn’t certain which task he’d be at today; he knew that there was a group from one of the universities nearby - not the one he attended - visiting that morning and there were a couple of people who’d been trying to get onto his schedule for consultations about magic flow; he thought they were enchanters. Today might be a good day if nothing else came up.
The elevator dinged softly as he arrived at the basement. When he stepped out, a pile of boxes on the table he usually worked at met his eye. They were labeled “Solomon Vase” and several had tape stuck to them that said Evidence.
Rube grinned. They’d finally arrived! He’d been waiting on the last set of vases to show up after they were found in some enchanter’s shop for what seemed like months. He didn’t have to think about what to do today; he was going to catalog the rest of the vases.
They already knew that they varied; if anything, there seemed to be some sort of progression in the outer work. Unfortunately, there was no way to tell which way the progression went: did they get more complex with time or were unnecessary embellishments left off the later ones? Rube didn’t think this last set would answer that question, but this ought to be the rest of them and it would at least lay to rest the original reason all of this started for Rube.
Six hours later, Rube stared at the two sets of vases. They looked almost indistinguishable to the normal eye; in fact, Rube had identified several pairs that he thought were exact copies, split between the two groups.
They didn’t look the same to him at all. Yes, they were all enchanted, but the enchantments were completely different. He’d almost missed it since he wasn’t looking for it, but now that he knew to look it was obvious. He’d gone back and checked the vases that they had previously, even the ones on display up in the museum, and what he found confirmed his darkest suspicions: all of the existing vases’ enchantments were similar to only one of the two sets of vases he had in those boxes. In fact, all of the vases that were different came from one specific box.
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Rube checked the numbers again; he was confident but it was better to be certain.
The number of vases matched almost perfectly; if he included the different vases, he was only short by three, and Rube knew Detective Latimer was fairly confident some had broken at some point. He was unfortunately also confident that the detective didn’t think that many had broken, even if he hadn’t said why.
Rube was going to have to break the bad news and sooner was better than later. He pulled out his phone; she’d told him more than once that she’d take his calls as long as he didn’t abuse the privilege. “Director Collins? I’m afraid some of the Solomon vases that were recovered recently appear to be fakes…”
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Red hissed in frustration as her latest project decomposed itself into its component parts.
Rapidly.
One trip to the emergency room later, she combined swearing at healers who couldn’t finish healing her arm because “it will heal fine form here on its own” with swearing at whatever mistake she’d made that meant she had to clean up her workroom. How, exactly, had she flubbed a minor enchantment meant to chill drinks badly enough to make it shatter and put shards of ceramic into the ceiling?
Nothing went through the walls or ceiling, of course. They’d installed reinforcement after the first time she blew something up and it did send shards places it shouldn’t. The second explosion resulted in further protection, but none after that had done more than dig a little ways into the wood.
She knew how to do it in two enchanting systems, but somehow it simply wasn’t working for her in the new one those alien enchanters brought. She’d had similar trouble when she finally got into the Tutorial, too; the enchanting instructor had actually banned her from working in his classroom after the third time she blew something up. He was unable to tell her what she did wrong, but almost every enchantment she created using the new schema went boom right before it coalesced into a proper enchantment, ready to be used.
It was bad enough that she was actually offered a Path based on creating explosives. Every time she saw that Path option, Red wanted to punch something.
Somehow, she’d managed to get an Enchanter Path. Without ever actually succeeding at enchanting anything using the tools it offered, she’d finished it, too. She still had no idea how that worked; it wasn’t supposed to work like that. All she could think was that even failed enchantments must be worth something. It was either that or it gave her credit for the enchantments she completed without using the Path Skills; they still worked just as well as ever.
It drove Red nuts, nuts enough that she’d spent the last two years trying to figure out what the hell was wrong. She thought she’d finally figured it out, but clearly she hadn’t or this one wouldn’t have blown up. She’d really thought she was on the right track, too, finally.
She’d just gotten everything cleaned up and was settling in to work on the next version of her cooling enchantment when her doorbell rang. It was probably a good time for a break again, though if it was that guy who wanted to buy Rissa’s house again, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. He kept mistaking her for Rissa and didn’t seem to want to take no for an answer. He wouldn’t even accept “I’m not the homeowner.”
There was a cardboard box on the front porch. That was odd; she ordered a lot of stuff, but she definitely didn’t remember what this could be. Maybe it was something for Phoebe or Russ?
Red picked up the box and carried it inside then dumped it on the hall table. Now, who was it for?
Red checked all six sides of the box, but there weren’t any labels. It was very unlikely to be Phoebe’s; even with her foresight damaged, she’d have known the box was coming and probably when it would arrive. It must be Russ’s.
Okay, so now where did she leave her phone? She never took it into the work room; she didn’t want to risk it somehow interfering with the magic. Sure, it wasn’t supposed to work like that, but it was still an easy precaution to make.
Ah, there it was, on the end table next to the recliner.
When Russ answered, Red didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Hey, Russ, is the unmarked package yours?”
“The what?” Russ sounded surprised. “What are you talking about?”
Red frowned. “There was a box waiting outside. I assumed it was for you; I’m not expecting anything that would come without a shipping label and Phoebe isn’t home at the moment. She’d have mentioned if she expected anything.”
“Maybe to you,” Russ muttered.
Red knew that despite effort on the part of both her sister and her sister’s husband, there were still some cracks showing in the marriage. Red did what she could to smooth things over, since neither of the two seemed to want to let it die yet.
Russ continued louder. “No, nothing from me. Don’t open it; in fact, don’t touch it. Leave it where you found it.”
“I already brought it inside,” Red admitted. “Should I put it back outside?”
There was a short pause before Russ continued. “No, it’s better not to touch it again. Wash your hands, just in case, and stay away from it. Maybe spend some time in your workroom?”
The next several hours were a circus as far as Red was concerned, but at least she didn’t have to deal with everyone who came to deal with the unmarked package, including at least two different dogs and a bomb truck.