Page 5 of The Vampire's Guide to Wooing a Curator
She furrowed her brow. “Yes. If you wish to view it, return in two days.”
“That will not be necessary.” Properly fulfilling Marcus’s wishes meant convincing her to allow him access to her exhibit before the public. He walked to the nearest window and tugged at the bottom pane. “Quite loose. This could be opened from the outside with little difficulty.” He tapped a finger on the broken latch. “You should have this replaced.”
She joined him. “I will inform the curator. If that is all, Mr. Drake…”
The woman was stubborn. He continued down the hallway until he reached an unmarked locked door. Likely an access point for the cleaning staff. It would do nicely as a demonstration.
She followed. “Must I summon a watchman?”
He pulled a thin, white card from his pocket and slid it along the gap between the door and its frame. When he reached the latch, he jiggled the card. The lock was old, and the door poorly fitted, so the latch disengaged with ease. He swung open the door. “Yet another entry point.”
She huffed. “What is your point?”
She didn’t see it yet. He retrieved his pocket watch from his coat and flicked it open. When the minute hand reached the half-hour mark, he crossed the hall. She followed, while carrying on about how she couldn’t let him wander the museum unsupervised. When they reached the closed double doors at theend of the hallway, he tilted his thumb toward them. “Let me guess, the most valuable items in the building are in there?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes.”
“Would you say that even now there are guards patrolling inside?”
He didn’t need to ask because he’d done his research. There were a dozen watchmen on the museum’s payroll who followed a standard three-hour cyclical rotation except for two who kept stationary positions beside both exits to the main hall.
“Yes,” she said. “Why?”
“You will see.” He checked his watch again, then opened the doors with a flourish.
The room was completely empty.
She gasped, then trod inside, her heels clicking and echoing on the tile floor. “Where are the guards?”
He joined her and held out his watch so she could see. “There is a three-minute window of opportunity during shift change every two hours.” It was a common mistake, one that had allowed him to sneak into the museum undetected earlier that evening. He clicked the lid of the watch closed. “Perhaps now you’d like to hear what I have to say?”
Ten minutes later, he stood in a space hardly larger than his cook’s pantry, across from a much paler Miss Sorrow as she fidgeted with the obsidian buttons on her bodice. Despite accomplishing the first part of his plan, seeing the artifacts carelessly displayed behind her made his blood run cold. He’d watched her gather them for months but being up close was different. This woman was surrounded by items she had no business owning. He recognized a signet ring, a gold quill pen, and a delicately embroidered handkerchief that had belonged to vampires who had been slain by hunters. As if killing his kind hadn’t been enough, the Sorrow hunters had also robbed the corpses of their victims.
Murderous cads.
“I admit, you’ve raised some serious concerns, Mr. Drake,” Miss Sorrow said. “What I don’t understand is what you want. Have you come to warn me?”
“No. I want a job.”
She frowned. “I’m only the assistant curator. I have no ability to hire staff.”
He knew that, but he also had no desire to speak to the bumbling, paranoid Mr. Blackwood. Miss Sorrow—Felicity, in his mind at least, for a killer of his kind didn’t deserve the respect of their proper title—was his mission, and so she was the one he had approached. He could have simply continued watching her from afar, but the thrill of observation had long ago faded.
It would be more of a challenge to earn her trust then whisk the artifacts away, leaving her embarrassed and in ruins. He wanted her to know that she’d allowed a fox into her henhouse only to realize, too late, that she had been deceived.
It wouldn’t be enough, of course. To truly settle the score, he’d have to kill every member of her wretched family. Unfortunately, Marcus had been very explicit regarding Felicity. Jonathan could not hurt her or allow the Sorrow hunters to discover they were being watched.
A pity. Jonathan had always wanted to taste hunter blood.
“I thought perhaps you could speak with your employer on my behalf,” he said. “That old man would have had a fit if I’d shown him instead of you.”
She chuckled.
So, she did have a sense of humor.
“You are likely correct about that,” she said. “I once warned Mr. Blackwood about the dangers of allowing every member of our staff to have keys to the doors in the building, and the nextday, he hired locksmiths. It took me several days to convince him that replacing all the locks was out of our budget.”
“You will speak with him, then?”
