Rise of Sirius: V: Incendiary
The Reina sat silent and dark, lurking among the lingering parked automobiles lining the corner of 37th and Broadway.
The streets and sidewalks were fairly empty, as they ought to be at such an hour – nearly two in the morning, and most windows were dark, also as they should be. Most, the remainder including the dimly lit Obelisk. Most floors were darkened, save one or two hallway lights, but the first floor lobby was still visible through the prismed windows.
Curiouser still was the limo parked behind the sloping gates leading to the storage entrance of the basement.
“And what are you doing here at this hour, Cleopatra?” Sirius questioned the empty air as he weighed his options for entry.
Hardly had he framed the thought when the headlights of a delivery truck blinded him as it turned onto the street, and Sirius ducked his head behind the steering wheel, but not without raising an eyebrow as the truck pulled through the gates.
“And who, may I ask, gets deliveries at two in the morning? Odd time, if you ask me, but then perhaps I’m the only one who has any sense. Well, then again, I’m out here, aren’t I?”
He slipped out of the Reina, locking it, and made a mad but low-profile dash across the street, ducking behind another vehicle as a guard came out to swing open the gate; Sirius caught a hold on the truck’s back fender as it drove through, the guard pivoting to close the gate and missing the intruder.
Nice try at security, Sirius smirked to himself, but it may well turn out to be worse on the inside. He hopped off the truck and ducked behind a great statue of a lion, one kin to a giant black jackal which flanked the garage entry. He watched as the doors were rolled open, the truck backing into a halo of white light that illuminated boxes and crates, as well as a dozen figures moving through them in unison.
And the truck was empty? Sirius’ brow furrowed as he stole closer through the shadows.
A midnight delivery, maybe, but shipping out at 2 am? That seemed an odd time to choose. The service door was unlocked – he cracked it open and waited until the men had their backs turned before diving into the shadows of bolts of fabric and crates that were unlabeled. It was an odd arrangement, the way some were stacked, half-hidden by a blue tarp, and they were all barrels.
Odd choice, even for storing buttons, or we both being too obvious?
“Jarvis! I wanted those things out of here an hour ago,” a woman, unmistakably Cleopatra, cried sharply.
Maneuvering behind the crates, Sirius still couldn’t see her. He suspected she was in the open doorway leading to the elevator, just out of his line of sight. He could see a fantastic shadow cut-cast on the wall, but her head seemed strikingly bird-like, as though winged by a vulture.
“What’m I sposed to do if Neb-Seth’s drivers run late?” Jarvis complained.
“Tell his ‘lordship’ to hire competent lackeys. I want everything out of here in ten minutes. I’m expecting an uninvited guest. . . Oh, get that powder out of here! Horus knows what he’ll do if he finds that here. We wouldn’t want to leave anything for him, would we?”
She purred at the last and the door clanged shut behind her.
“Ah, you are hiding something from me! Pray tell, what powder?” Sirius muttered, inching forward.
Where he was, there was no action, and clearly nothing anyone was concerned about; all the commotion centered around a set of six crates, four square, and two oblong and upright. He climbed up a storage rack and lightly crossed the room unseen, dropping stealthily behind a pair of delivery men who were slamming a lid on one of the crates and wheeling it up into the truck.
The other three square crates were likewise open, and one of them was barely screened from the men’s view by a stout pillar. Sirius popped up to glance at the contents, plunging one hand into the packing straw when he saw a gleam of misty blue. It wasn’t the powder, but something else.
It was a stone bowl, nestled beside matching companion vessels.
“Why would you need this, Cleo?” he puzzled, turning it over.
It was with only little surprise that he discovered a worn label on the underside:
The Metropolitan Museum – 1904 – Anhydrite Cosmetic Vessels, 12th-13th Dynasty
He didn’t say anything to that, only ducked back as the men returned. It would have been nice to be able to signal Virgil. He’d have to find a phone inside and use it. Why he hadn’t heard of the Museum missing further objects was curious – or were there only a handful of things missing, and the rest were from elsewhere?
It was something he would have to find the answer to when his raid was corroborated by one from the police.
There was only one thing stopping him – three men gathered around the barrels in the far corner, around the barrels which supposedly were filled with ‘powder.’
A tell-tale, loose white powder, nearly mistaken for flour, save for its acrid scent.
Heroin. Something Bruno would happily have intercepted a shipment of, something he was hiding here -
Who, then, was in control of who?
Sirius’ vision crossed. There was only one thing he wanted to do with that stash; those barrels and crates of the drug -
He pulled the matchbook from his pocket.
“Well if this is your idea of fun, Cleo…why don’t we just have a party?”
Mirthlessly, he struck the match and dropped it onto the wood of one of the barrels. In moments it was crackling up, throwing red light over his face as he stood back against the pillar and waited -
“Fire!” One of the men shouted.
Sirius kicked the barrel over, letting the flame leap to the adjacent containers, and didn’t wait to see the flame engulf the eastern side of the basement, nor the pandemonium that broke out, as the men shouted for the trucks to move the artifacts out -
Sirius slipped on by, into the private elevator with its elegantly scrolled ironwork, which he could only assume that Cleopatra had taken - it had her head on it, of course. Of course he had a key; Sirius always had a key for everything.
He punched the button to the lobby, curiously looking over the odd triangular symbol attached to the highest floor of the Obelisk, ignoring the fire that was now rampaging through the basement. Of course Virgil would see it in a minute, and there were probably firefighters being scrounged up somewhere.
The doors slid open almost silently into a darkened lobby. Only two of the eight chandeliers shone dimly, as Sirius prowled through the grandly painted columns, and found, to his satisfaction, a map of the Obelisk for visitors.
The building was a proud 35 stories to match the height of the Great Pyramid: two floors, 3 and 14, were for offices, including Cleopatra’s, and the remaining floors were set aside for various sewing aspects – a storeroom for fabric, a design studio, sewing, tailoring, showrooms, fitting rooms – but the 34th and 35th floors were off-limits.
Cleopatra’s office would be an excellent place to peruse. If there was anything she didn’t want found - he cocked his head, gazing at the two top floors.
Cleo’s office wasn’t on either of the top floors.
So what was?
He tapped his fingers against the map’s frame, half listening to the sound of chaos echoing through the floors as racks crashed and folded under the heat. One of the trucks screeched its way out and down the street before him. Virgil would catch it. Sirius had a job to do, but if he needed to track down those stolen goods later, he could. If he needed to.
He only had one chance - he ignored Cleo’s office and dashed to the elevators. They weren’t working. Even Cleo’s private elevator has been shut down.
“Cat and mouse, is it?” He ducked up the stairwell and listened. Below was noise, and somewhere up above he could hear footsteps chartering up and down, diving in and out on fours, probably searching for him.
There were thirty floors between the lobby and the out of bounds, and twenty between him and the searchers. There were also plenty of windows.
He ran up eleven floors as the men ran down towards him and pried open one of the windows, balancing on the slender sloping ledge that barely slicked off the rainwater it caught. He shrugged the strap off his shoulder.
One of the “tools” that made Aphrodite feel so much safer with Sirius was his grapple hook, and not just any grapple hook– he’d modified a crossbow mount, which he could lock in place on his arm. He couldn’t scale endless heights, but it helped. He pulled the trigger, and fired the grapple to bypass the next four floors, catching on the 34th floor balustrade of mini columns and papyrus flowers that braced against a gallery lined with brightly painted gods and goddesses, some with the heads of lions or of eagles, others clad in gold and terracotta, with great headdresses and wings of scarab blue.
He pulled the rope tight, locked the crossbow in place on his arm, and used his hands to pull himself up, slipping out of sight ere the men inside came down past the window, and climbing against the now slippery air of rain and mist, dangling almost four hundred feet above ground.
He could smell the smoke that climbed, saw the angry red, same as had gotten in his eyes when he saw the heroin. Perhaps Cleo had time to escape before the police arrived. Then again, perhaps not. The smile quirked over his lips and he turned back to the rope.
The water beaded between the edge of the mask on his forehead in an irritating way, and slicking the palms of his gloves, but he only looped the rope over his wrists and kept climbing, until he clambered up among the statues and stole through their shadows. This was the second landing, the first of the two unknown floors; just above the gallery, the paint striped gold, silver, and faintly turquoise too, blending into the stone save when sun or moon chanced to shine upon it just so. Sirius slipped through the statues to one of the spacious windows backing them, and jimmied it open.
It was quiet, churchyard quiet, on this 34th floor. Only a handful of amber-shelled sconces were dimly glowing, barely bringing separation between the heavy carpet on the floor and the stoic walls.
There were no rooms; only a corridor that turned the four corners twixt windows and a windowless block, like a walled-off ballroom or conference hall in a hotel. There were only two doors in; one, cracked open, let out the scent of cigar smoke to offend him, and the sound of men’s voices, two, he thought. He stole back to the East side and found the other door, one that was securely bolted: from the outside.
So what was being kept in? Who, or what, was being guarded?
Sirius frowned, finding the skeleton key that fit the padlock. He never went anywhere without those keys. It was amazing, the way that people tried to keep him out of things; shocking, the things they thought needed to be locked up.
After all, he was just the friendly neighborhood inspector, ready to set fire to anything he deemed necessary.
“How rude. It just goes to show how little they can trust me, these days,” he sighed, popping the lock open. The door opened without complaint, into a room even gloomier than the hall. He carefully clicked the door shut behind him, the sound quickly muffled by bolts of velvet.
The room was massive, though the ceiling was lower here than on the other floors; steel supports were blatantly concealed by bland false stone casings of pink plaster. Through the shadows, his eyes began to pick out mannequins, dozens of them, draped in heavy robes and elegant gowns of stunning handiwork: a museistic parade, each turned away from him towards the room’s heart.
He began to see the distant yellow light that was catching on fibers of silk and gold, the paste gems sewn with a free hand.
Sirius picked his way through the maze, letting his footfalls disappear into the muffled air, between mannequins garbed as Egyptian queens in scarlet and gold, and Greek maidens with metallic snakes that wound around arm and throat, bowing off-handedly as he moved among them, the figures parting as so many trees in a forest that thinned towards a plain.
There, surrounded by shelves of dripping lace and gauze, haloed by the tired light of a rosy lamp, sat a lone seamstress, picking loose basting threads from a seafoam and sapphire concoction, something that was strangely familiar.
There was no doubting that he had found the sender of the SOS. Sirius stepped from behind the gilded queen and dropped his stealth, letting the seamstress hear his movement.
He didn’t know which was the more shocked of the two, when the girl whirled to face him, the crepe and embroidery scissors sliding to the floor with a slithering rustle. She gave a muffled cry, clapping her hand over her mouth just as quickly as she had jumped.
He had been wrong.
“Chione!” he whispered, catching himself, not certain if she had heard his startled breath. He crossed to her and placed the crepe and scissors back on the table.
“Why in heaven’s name are you working here at this hour?”
Chione gestured frantically to him to not speak, glancing nervously at a door opposite them.
As if on cue, a heavy footstep sounded behind the door, and Chione pushed Sirius back into the shadows, the door flying open as he ducked behind the folds of a bronze and ermine mantle.
“Chione! Are ya talking to someone?” the man’s voice came, thickly laced by tobacco and suspicion.
“No, no, I did not say anything, I am just almost finished,” Chione answered quickly, hands shakily smoothing the crepe before her.
“Almost?” the man snorted. “I know ya want to go home as much as we do, but ya got another three hours. Just don’t talk ta yourself, or the Lady will come for a visit.”
He slammed the door shut, and the spools and bobbins of thread on the table wobbled dizzily as Chione dropped her head in her tired hands.
Sirius moved to her side, dropping beside her chair with silent gaze, finding the trembling whiteness in the girl’s wrists. He gently pulled her hands from her face.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” he whispered.
A wan smile slipped into Chione’s eyes as she bent her head closer. “You – found my SOS?” she whispered back, playing noisily with scissors and thread with her other hand.
“I got it. Come.”
“They will hear, they will know I’m not working! They listen through the walls.”
“Call them.” He squeezed her hands and stood against the hinged side of the doorframe, gesturing encouragingly to Chione when she hesitated.
“. . . Jackson? Tom?” she asked finally, raising her voice, the thread she’d wrapped around her fingers nearly cutting the skin.
Jackson popped the door open, but didn’t come in.
“Yeah?”
“I am. . . too tired to lift anything. I need a dress form.”
“Agh, I’m not made for a wax museum,” Jackson growled. “Eh, wha’ size this time?”
“Um, 36, please. It’s in one of the corners.”
“Ugh, Tom, help me find one.”
Tom finally slouched his way in, carelessly kicking the door shut behind him.
Sirius courteously tapped him on the shoulder, smiling politely, and gave him a fist in his jaw, sending Tom crashing over the desk as Chione dropped beneath it in panic.
“Hey, how’d ya – Never mind, lemme rewrite your invitation,” Jackson growled, spinning back from the ranks of mannequins and forms.
“Too bad you can’t reach the telephone now, isn’t it?” Sirius murmured insolently, stepping aside as Jackson lunged and collided with the door.
As a rule, he never really let his enemies hear his voice, and certainly not clearly. He was no actor, and though a British accent might have done him good, Tony always told him to knock it off, because it was an obvious knock-off. Silence was golden, or in this case, silver. It was also terribly irritating and insulting to most of the goons he’d run into, and Jackson was no exception.
“Wha- Wha’s tha’ bout a - Tom! Gi’ up and call the Lady – never mind, jus’ help me get him-”
Sirius let them snatch his arms and run hom towards the wall, painfully hung with rainbow spools of thread, but kicked off as it he met it and flipped easily over his attackers’ shoulders, dragging them to the floor with a painful wrench of their arm sockets.
“If ya want to play rough, I’ll oblige,” Jackson panted, swaying to his feet, rubbing his shoulder. He snatched the nearest dress form and smashed it against the floor, freeing the heavy wooden rod from its base, taunting the weaponless Sirius.
Ah, the underestimation given by his enemies. It never failed to amuse. There were many things Sirius didn’t leave without: a kiss from his mother, a healthy dose of reckless sarcasm foreign to Reid, and a weapon with a sharper edge than that.
With one hand as he ducked back, he unlatched the double discs that lay holstered against his back beneath his coat. Razor-edged war-quoits, as those from India, stamped with a star and bound by raw leather on one side, they could be deadly in defense. Of any weapon he had tested, these were the most inconspicuous and versatile.
He waited for Jackson to strike out again – Tom was still on the floor, out cold after slamming his head on the clawed foot of the table – Sirius captured the stave’s end as it rushed out to meet him, looping the discs about it, and twisted, pulling Jackson forward, snapping the wood, and spun away, leaving the fabric racks to impart a headache to his adversary.
He needed to get Chione away, before anyone else came and made sure the locks held her. They hadn’t much time before the men woke up, or others came and found them. He just had to get her below, among the firefighters and policemen, and surely she would be safe. He could find the rest of what he needed later.
“Chione, come!” he snapped, locking the discs away and reaching his hand out to the girl, still huddling beneath the table.
“No, no, my box! I need it,” she gasped, and scrambling, dove under the little iron-framed bed in the corner, snatching up a carved jewelry case to her chest.
“Quickly!” Sirius said impatiently, grabbing her hand. They ran through the door he had broken open. The elevators were still locked down, he couldn’t take Chione down the outside of the building, could he? And he didn’t trust the stairs.
He held his breath for a moment, watching the sheets of rain.
It would have to be raining.
“Are you afraid of heights?”
Chione tugged on his sleeve and pointed towards the elevators.
“There is a little stairway behind the statue of Tayet between the elevators. It is the Lady’s private stair, from her office on the fourth floor and the floor above us. She should be up there now, so we have to be careful!”
Sirius halted, giving the ceiling a side-eye. “Unless she’s downstairs, watching the fire. I do wonder what’s on the 35th.”
“You don’t want to know,” Chione pleaded.
“What does she do up there?”
Chione exhaled, blowing a loose strand of black and auburn out of her eyes.
“. . .Rituals. Um, Egyptian.”
“You’re right, I don’t want to. Come!”
He let her show him how to twist the spindle in Tayet’s hand, wheeling the seated image away from the wall, so that it swung outward, letting them steal through and find the narrow staircase behind.
No sound came from the landing just above them at the 35th, and the echoes that drifted upwards were empty, only the hollow ring of a weighty building settling into the night.
Not daring to tarry, lest that situation abruptly change, Sirius nearly dragged Chione down each flight.
The 4th floor was still, as he popped the door open. It was still, because it was shut off by Cleo’s office door, a stained-glass affair featuring the azure of a river, presumably the Nile, beneath an angrily burning sun and mantle of stars and lotuses.
Chione dragged him back before he could instinctively turn to the florally structured cabinets lining the back wall.
“No, please, do not touch, she’ll find us!” she begged.
He weighed her fears a moment against the door. If Chione was, and surely she was, enough to put Cleo behind bars tonight, he needed nothing more right now. Chione was his duty and evidence, and whatever else might be happening beneath the Ever-Ruby label, he could find in the morning light.
“We’ll go.”
He needed to focus on her, his reason for being there at all, the drama of lies that Cleo seemed to have woven regarding her.
He thought the door would be locked again from the outside, that he would have to cut the glass to make any semblance of a quiet escape, but it was locked from the inside.
“She was upstairs,” Chione reminded him, at his look when the bolt slipped easily. “She has not come back to her office, yet.”
“Then she’s still upstairs,” Sirius deduced. “She doesn’t care to watch the fire. Curious.” He stole a glance in either direction down the corridor, which overlooked the lobby three floors below.
“I’ve found front doors are the best way to exit,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s amazing how little they’re watched.”
He waved her along and they ran for the grand staircase.
Chione gasped and tripped to a halt, clinging to Sirius’ arm.
The shadow slunk from the ribs of the balustrade, teeth breaking free of the black as they were bared, the growl matched only by the feline creeping behind them.
“Mau, Anubis! Ssssh, please,” Chione breathed, but turned her eyes resignedly to the alcove set within the wall of the corridor behind them, and with a melodic shimmer of gilt spangles, Cleopatra stepped out from behind the Pharaoh’s fountain.
A flick of her scarlet nails brought five men out of the nearby doorways, circling in warily.
Sirius’ arm slipped around Chione’s shoulder and he drew her nearer.
“My dear Sirius,” Cleopatra sang lightly. “I’ve been waiting for your arrival, as has my Daughter of the Nile.” Cleopatra admitted it with a lilt of her eyebrows as she spread her arms in a graceful shrug, showing the crimson lining of her mantle.
Chione pulled back. Sirius braced her. When he drew his arm around her shoulders and felt her quivering, he knew she was frightened. His blood was already running hot as he tensed, searching for an escape route, and was all at once grateful that he’d left the crossbow on his arm. Chione had hope of escaping, and he wasn’t going to allow her to lose it.
“I am disappointed that you would set fire to my Obelisk, and I’m afraid we haven’t much time. I do hope you didn’t think you would take my daughter from me?”
Sirius didn’t deign to reply.
“Ah. . .the strong, silent type, I see. It’s a trait I appreciate in men.”
Sirius bowed with a flourish. Cleopatra shook her head and tucked her hands within her wide sleeves.
“Mau, Anubis, bring Chione to me.”
Anubis barked obediently and inched forward, eyes locked on Sirius’ face; the latter sensed the cheetah circling behind, ready to press its way between the two.
Sirius stooped, breathing a request in Chione’s ear, that she answered by tightening her hold on him and the box she clutched. As Anubis moved in, Sirius returned Cleopatra’s weary affectations with an insolent salute and threw himself and Chione over the balustrade.
Chione cried out as the brightly tiled floor and the grand pharaonic statues below rushed up to meet them face-to-plastered-face, but with only a second to risk, Sirius fired the crossbow into one unfortunate pharaoh’s Nemes, breaking their fall with only a snap of the cord before the pair collided with the ground.
“Close the doors!” Cleopatra was calling, but Sirius already had Chione on her feet and running before the men had a chance to slide down the banisters.
They could scarcely hear the pounding footsteps behind them over Anubis’ yowling. Sirius kicked the door open, letting the instant, desperate alarm bells collide with the chaos of shouting men outside as they slid straight into the conclave of police cars and officers who were milling about.
“Sirius!”
Sirius caught his breath against the frigid air, surprised to find that during his raid the rain had turned to snow, the flakes dampening the fire which was now merely smoke and steam, and collecting on the pavement.
“Sergeant, seal the exits and pull Cleopatra out of there!” Sirius replied, relieved to see that the Obelisk’s doors didn’t crash open before his pursuers. “Chione, does her ladyship have any hidden exits?”
“Th-there’s one that comes out under the statue of Anubis in the back lot,” Chione shivered.
Sirius put his hands on her face and let her lean closer to him as Biasi signaled the officers to check the lobby and the back of the Obelisk.
“Biasi? Get this girl a coat or a blanket, before she catches cold.”
Sergeant Biasi sized him up with a little displeasure, grabbing a discarded coat from the back of the nearest vehicle, draping it over Chione’s shoulders.
“We responded to a curious basement fire here,” Biasi said then, frowning at Sirius. “A basement in which we found drugs: heroin, for one. An unidentified drug, for the other. You wouldn’t have any knowledge of how the fire started, I expect.”
“Would I? Biasi, her ladyship Cleopatra had museum goods down there, which were taken off in a truck, like the one carrying heroin that I missed the other night.”
Biasi nodded curtly. “We saw that truck move out while we were. . . waiting for your signal. Two of our cars intercepted it before it got too far. So far, it’s sounding as though the artifacts have come from at least four museums, only two of which have reported thefts, and only minor ones at that. It would seem these goods may have come from storage.”
“And perhaps they have someone on the inside. Shopping, it seems. Biasi, make sure Cleopatra doesn’t get away. She has slave labor to answer for, more than the rest. Check the hidden staircase in her office, if you can’t find her.”
He needn’t have worried. It was only a few minutes before he saw the woman marched from around the back of the Obelisk, regal as ever, giving the men neither struggle nor the time of day. She gazed fixedly at Chione as she walked, the girl flinching in response, hiding guiltily behind Sirius.
“There we are, Chione,” Sirius smiled with satisfaction, laying his hand on her shoulder. “You won’t have to worry about going back, now.”
“I-I’m not really Chione,” the girl’s teeth chattered. “M-my name is Clarity.”
Sirius’ sigh crystallized on the air as Biasi shrugged, as though he’d expected it.
“Clarity. What else is Cleopatra hiding about you?”
“Can I take this off now? My wig?”
“The – oh yes, the wig. You can take it off.”
Clarity gladly shook the braided black wig from her head, letting it be ruined by the snow where it fell, as her tangled auburn curls bounced around her face.
“You’re pretty cute as yourself,” Sirius said abruptly, pushing the curls out of the girl’s eyes.
“It’s called ‘frizzy,’ and I don’t like it,” Clarity complained, but she was beginning to smile, even as she stuck close to his side and watched the working officers with wide eyes.
“This was almost too easy,” Sirius whistled between his teeth, taking the coffee the Sergeant offered, and giving a little to Clarity.
“Complaining?” Bisia smiled wryly, leaning against the hood of his car. “It’s always too easy for you. I, on the other hand, am usually the one who has to start cleaning up after you. I’ll take it easy. Although you don’t make it easy.”
“What will happen to my – mother?” Clarity asked, forcing the last word and surprising that knowledge back to Sirius’ memory.
“Mother?” Bisia repeated. “I thought-”
“Both are true. Chio- I mean, Clarity, Cleo will have a trial for all the bad things she has done, and I expect she’ll do some time.”
“What about – me?”
“Chione!”
Clarity jumped. Cleopatra stood before them now, flanked by officers on either side.
“I’ll be away for a while. You must look after Mau and Anubis.”
“Y-yes, my la- Mother.”
“Don’t stammer, child. They’re letting the cold get to you, and you’re not allowed to drink coffee. Remember that.”
One of the officers murmured, half in apology, and turned the woman towards the van waiting to seal her inside.
“You know, Sirius,” Cleopatra paused, causing the officers to halt with her. “Hope is said to shine brighter than stars, even the great Sirius. Though…I suppose even reeds break in a strong gale.”
Sirius’ fingers froze against the paper cup in his hand. A veiled chill riveted his spine as he stared back at the woman, barely holding the ripples back from crossing his face.
She couldn’t really know.
Or had it all been a ploy, all along?
Cleopatra’s lips twitched knowingly.
“Adieu, my dear Sirius, and Chione.”
Ducking into the van, she allowed the doors to be slammed shut. The van left half-framed tracks in the wet snow, the engine’s heat quickly leaving it to run invisibly, pooling across the pockmarked pavement.
Even Clarity stared, huddling beneath Sirius’ arm as the drifting flakes above them changed into a pattering of freezing rain.
“Sirius. . . I could take Clarity over to the foster care agency,” Bisia broke the silence slowly, eyes troubled.
“No, no, she can’t go through that right now,” Sirius objected, snapping back to life. “I’ll take her with me to see Virgil, who I expect is still waiting up.”
“You guessed it. He does want to see you at the office as immediately as you can manage.”
Bisia dumped his coffee and watched it run to melt the ice beneath his boots.
“But I don’t think now, somehow, that I want to be in your shoes.”
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I'm having trouble understanding Sirius. Why would he start a fire next to priceless artifacts in a building with many people, and further decide to ascend the very same building he just lit up?