Storm of Visions (37 page)

It was Dr. Hall that Aaron was on his way to see now. When it came to ancient languages, the old guy was a genius, and his specialty was prophecies, religious and otherwise. Which was exactly what Aaron needed right now.

The elevator door opened, and he strode along another short, industrial gray corridor that led to a metal door at the end. He rang the doorbell at the side. The lock clicked, he turned the handle, and he walked in.

Nobody was there. Whoever had let him in had done so remotely.

The place smelled like a library: dust, old paper, cracking glue, broken linoleum, and more dust. Rows and rows of gray metal shelving extended from one end of the basement to the other, clustered in rows, lined with books.

No one was in sight.

“Hello?” he called. “Dr. Hall? It’s Aaron Eagle.”

“Back here!” A voice floated over and through the shelves. A woman’s voice.

They must have finally dug up the funding to get Dr. Hall another assistant. Good thing. The old guy could croak down here and no one would notice for days.

Aaron headed back between a shelf marked
Medieval Studies
and one marked
Babylonian Gods
. He broke out from among the shelves into the work area where wide library tables were covered with manuscripts, scrolls, and a stone tablet.

A girl leaned over the stone tablets, mink brush in hand, studying them. “Put it on the table over there.” She waved the brush vaguely toward the corner.

Aaron glanced over at the table piled with Styrofoam containers and fast-food bags wadded up into little balls. He looked back at the girl.

Her skin was creamy, fine-grained and perfect, and that was a good thing, since she did not wear a single drop of makeup. No foundation, no blush, no powder, no lipstick. She was of medium height, perhaps a little skinny, but with what she was wearing, who could tell? Her blue dress drooped where it should fit and hung unevenly at the hem. He supposed she wore it for comfort. He didn’t know any other reason any woman would be caught dead in it. The neckline hung off one shoulder; the bra strap on her shoulder was dingy, the elastic stretched and frayed. She had thin latex gloves stretched over her hands—nothing killed a man’s amorous intentions like latex gloves—and she wore brown leather clogs. Birkenstocks. Antiques. As the crowning touch, she wore plastic-rimmed tor toiseshell glasses that looked like an extension of the frizzy carrot red hair trapped at the back of her neck by a scrunchie that had seen better days . . . about five years ago.

Yet for all that she was not in any way attractive, she paid him no heed, and he wasn’t used to that treatment from a woman. “Who do you think I am?”

“Lunch. Or”—her glasses had slid down her nose—“did I miss lunch? Is it time for dinner already? What time is it?”

“It’s three.”

“Rats. I did miss lunch.” Lifting her head, she looked at him.

He did a double take violent enough to give him whiplash.

Beneath the glasses, dense, dark lashes surrounded the biggest, most emphatically violet eyes he’d ever seen.

Like a newly wakened owl, she blinked at him. “Who are you?”

“I’m. Aaron. Eagle.” He emphasized each word, giving time between for the village idiot to absorb the name. “Who are
you
?”

“I’m Dr. Hall.”

Aaron was immediately pissed. “I’ve met Dr. Hall. You are most definitely not Dr. Hall.”

“Oh.” A silly smile curved her pale pink lips. “You knew Daddy.”

“Daddy?”

“Dr. Earl Hall. He retired two years ago.” Her smile died. “He, um, died last year.”

“Dr. Earl Hall was your father?” Aaron didn’t believe that for a minute. Her “mentor” maybe, but Dr. Hall was way too old to have a daughter this girl’s age.

Aaron frowned. Of course, Dr. Hall was way too old to be a “mentor,” too.

Meanwhile, the girl babbled on. “I know what you’re thinking. Nepotism. It’s true. It’s also true no one is as qualified for the job as I am. Daddy saw to that. He tried to teach me everything he knew, but really, with a brain like his, how is that even possible? What cinched it for the library, of course, is that I’m cheap.”

“Yes. I see that.” He also saw she wasn’t as unattractive as he’d first thought. Hidden under that dress, she had boobs—B-, maybe C-cups—some kind of waist, and curvy hips. She had good bones, like a racehorse, and of course those amazing eyes. But her lips were good, too, lush and sensual, the kind a man would like to have wrapped around his—“So let me get this straight. You are Dr. Earl Hall’s granddaughter?”

“No. I’m. His. Daughter.” Now she spoke like
he
was the village idiot. “He married late in life.”

“To somebody much younger.”

“Not
much
younger. Ten years isn’t much younger, would you say? Mama was forty-two when she had me.”

“And you’re twenty now?”

“I’m twenty-seven. I’ve got a BS in archeology from Oxford and a graduate degree in linguistics from Stan ford, not to mention some more stuff like a stint teaching vanished languages at MIT.” She waved at a desk overflowing with papers, artifacts, and atop it all, a new Apple laptop. Her voice got louder and more aggravated as she spoke. “I’ve got all the papers in there if you need to see them. I’ve had to keep track of all that stuff because everyone thinks I’m twenty!”

“Obviously, we’re all dolts.”

“Yes.”

He could tell it never occurred to her to deny it, or flatter him in any way. The girl was clueless about the most basic social niceties, and worse, she didn’t seem to notice he was a man.

Why did he care?

“When I was five, my mother died in a cenote in Central America retrieving this stone tablet.” The girl waved her hand at the table.

He glanced at the tablets, then did his second double take of the day. He leaned over it, studied it with intense interest. “Central American. Logosyllabic. Epi-Olmec script. Perhaps a Rosetta stone for the transition between the Olmec and Mayan languages . . .”

“Very good.” For the first time, she looked at him, noticed him, and viewed him with respect. Not interest, but respect.

“I had no idea these existed.” His fingers itched to touch them, and he carefully tucked his hands into his pockets.

“No one did. After Mommy died, Daddy brought them here and shut them in the vault. He blamed himself, you see, for sending her down there.” The girl was blinking at Aaron again.

He couldn’t keep calling her “the girl,” not even in his mind. “What’s your name?”

“Dr. Hall . . . Oh, you mean my first name.” She smiled at him, those amazing eyes lavishing him with happiness. “I’m Rosamund.”

Didn’t that just figure?

“My parents named me after Rosamund Clifford—”

“The Fair Rosamund, King Henry the Second’s mistress, reputedly the most beautiful woman in the world.” Could this Rosamund be any more unlike her? “Henry built Rosamund a bower and surrounded it by a maze to protect and keep her, yet somehow the wildly jealous Eleanor of Aquitaine poisoned her and she died for love.”

“Most of that is romantic fantasy, of course, but you do know your history. And your linguistics.” This Rosamund, plain, unkempt, and appallingly dressed, viewed him with approval.

“History. Yes. That’s actually why I’m here.” He might as well give her a shot at his question. “I wanted to talk to Dr. Hall about a prophecy—”

“My goodness.” Rosamund blinked at him again. “You’re the second one today to ask about a prophecy.”