The Librarians and the Lost Lamp (28 page)

“Remind me why we're doing this again?”

Ezekiel waited for the elevator doors to close before replying. “It only figures that Dunphy would want to keep the Lamp close at hand, so his sweet new digs are the obvious place to look, especially since Stone says that Dunphy isn't about to turn it over to us willingly.” He grinned impishly. “I can live with that. Stealing things is always more fun than asking for them.”

Unlike Cassandra, he looked perfectly relaxed, as though breaking into a luxury hotel suite was no big deal. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself a little too much.

Stands to reason,
she thought. “So I guess casino heists are your happy place?”

“That and priceless museum exhibits,” he replied. “Those are a treat, too.”

Cassandra envied his confidence. “I suppose this
is
kind of exciting,” she said, trying to borrow some of his dashing, devil-may-care attitude. “It's like we're in one of those Ocean's Eleven movies.”

“Please!” Ezekiel rolled his eyes. “That's the Hollywood version of a heist. If they really wanted to get it right, they should have consulted an actual master thief, such as yours truly.” He gave her a devilish wink. “You want to see a true professional at work, get a load of this.”

The button panel inside the express elevator featured only two destinations: the lobby and the top floor. Ezekiel produced a blank key card that he slid into a slot in the panel before pushing the upper button, which lit up at his touch. The elevator immediately commenced a smooth ascent.

“See,” he bragged, “real thieving requires research and technical expertise, not to mention a huge amount of sheer natural talent.” He retrieved the key card and returned it to his pocket. “I spoofed my first electronic skeleton key before I was old enough to boost a car for a joy ride.”

Cassandra had to admit that Ezekiel knew what he was doing when it came to hacking into locks and security systems. She made a mental note to thoroughly erase her web history as soon as they got back to the Annex, even as the elevator shot straight to the top of the hotel. A bell chimed to announce their arrival. The elevator doors slid open.

“Voilà!” Ezekiel crowed. “Do I know my way around a security system or not?”

“I never doubted it,” she said.

They stepped out of the elevator into a circular waiting area directly beneath the Palace's gilded dome. Radiating from the circle were the penthouse suites themselves, four in all. Ornate Arabic numerals marked the doors to each suite. Cassandra automatically calculated the dimensions of the accommodations, deducting the space occupied by the elevator shaft, and concluded that each suite was approximately 15.3 percent larger than her modest apartment back in Portland. She could only imagine what the nightly room rate was, including taxes.

“This way,” Ezekiel said. “Trust me, I'm just getting warmed up.”

He headed straight to the door of Dunphy's suite. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung from the doorknob, despite the fact that Stone was currently keeping Gus under wraps in the Fine Arts district across town, where the Forty would (hopefully) never think to look for him. Cassandra wondered if maybe Dunphy had hung the sign to keep the housekeeping staff from poking around in the suite when he wasn't around—or had the Forty hung the sign to keep from being interrupted while they searched the place?

“Careful,” she warned Ezekiel. “Remember, we're not the only ones looking for the Lamp.”

“Yeah, but they're not Ezekiel Jones.” He rapped on the door. “Hello? Room service.”

No one answered, which eased Cassandra's concerns somewhat. Still, she remained on guard as Ezekiel tried the knob and chuckled in amusement.

“Got to love these state-of-the-art electronic locks. The older, mechanical ones were a bit trickier to pick. Not impossible, mind you, just trickier.”

He slid his counterfeit key card into the lock, which clicked from red to green.

“Open sesame,” he said with a smirk.

“A literary reference?” Cassandra remarked. “From you?”

Despite being a Librarian, Ezekiel wasn't much of a reader, aside from take-out menus and technical manuals.

“Hey, I've seen the movies, too.” He shrugged. “Well, at least the ones that weren't made before I was born.”

Moving quickly, so as not to be observed, they slipped quietly into the suite and shut the door behind them.

“Oh, dear,” Cassandra said. “Are we too late?”

At first glance, it appeared that the luxurious suite, which, like the rest of Ali Baba's Palace, was decked out in ersatz Arabian Nights splendor, had already been looted. The place was a mess, with discarded clothes strewn across the carpeted floor, closet doors hanging open, empty champagne bottles cluttering coffee tables and counters, dirty glasses piled high in the sink of a built-in bar, rumpled bathroom towels draped over the back of a plush divan, and other evidence of disorder. Something squished beneath Cassandra's feet, and she looked down to see that she had stepped on a cold, greasy pizza crust.

Ick.

“Nah,” Ezekiel said, looking around. “I think Dunphy's just a slob.” He made a face as he delicately picked a rumpled sock from the floor and gave it a sniff before dropping it in disgust. “I swear, some blokes have no class at all.”

Looking closer, Cassandra realized Ezekiel was probably right. Aside from the dirty laundry and other refuse scattered everywhere, the suite had not actually been trashed the way Dunphy's trailer had been. Nobody had sliced open any cushions or emptied the drawers and closets onto the floor, which Cassandra chose to take as a sign that they were one step ahead of the Forty for once.

Taking out her phone, she rang Baird, who was maintaining a lookout downstairs in the lobby. “We're in,” she reported. “Are we still clear?”

“So far,”
Baird replied.
“Nobody matching Stone's description of his assailants has gone anywhere near the penthouse elevator, so you shouldn't be interrupted. I'll let you know if it ever looks like you're expecting company. Any sign of the Lamp yet?”

Cassandra swept her gaze over the messy suite. “I'll have to get back to you on that.”

Wrapping up the call, she saw that Ezekiel was already casing the scene. A loose pile of chips, in high denominations, was gathering dust on an end table. He casually pocketed them on his way to a Persian carpet hanging like a tapestry on a wall.

“They're making this way too bloody easy,” he sighed. “I'm almost insulted.”

He swept aside the tapestry to expose a concealed wall safe, no doubt provided as a convenience for the big-time gamblers and A-list guests who usually occupied the penthouse. Of course, they probably just stowed cash and jewelry for safekeeping, not a magic lamp.

“Can you open it?” Cassandra asked.

He shot her an incredulous look. “Okay, now I
am
insulted.”

“Sorry.” She was starting to wonder why she had even bothered joining Ezekiel on this operation. “Never mind. Do your thing.”

“Don't get too comfortable,” he said, confidently working the keypad on the safe. “The day I can't crack a Model Nine Glen Reader commercial wall safe is the day I go straight for good … so, in other words, never.”

The safe chirped cooperatively.

“I rest my case.” He tugged open the safe, then blinked in surprise. “Okay, that I was not expecting.”

Instead of Aladdin's Lamp, as described by Jenkins, they found only a cheap resin trophy cup of the sort awarded at high school assemblies. Ezekiel squinted at the inscription on the base, reading it aloud.

“Augustus Dunphy. Voted Mostly Likely to Hit the Jackpot. Class of 1998.”
Ezekiel stared at the trophy in disbelief. “You've got to be kidding me!”

Cassandra groped for an explanation. “Maybe it has … sentimental value?”

“But this doesn't make any sense,” Ezekiel griped. “Who doesn't store their valuables in a safe if there's one available?”

“Someone who is worried about people like you?” Cassandra suggested. “Or who maybe doesn't trust the casino they're taking to the cleaners?”

“Good point,” Ezekiel said. “I know I'd be worried about me, if I wasn't me.” He shuddered. “There's a scary thought,
not
being Ezekiel Jones.”

Funny,
Cassandra thought.
Up until recently, I would have given anything to be someone else.

But that was before she became a Librarian.

“You might as well tell Baird that we struck out.” Ezekiel closed the safe with a little more force than was strictly necessary. He trudged toward the door. “Talk about a waste of time.”

“Hang on,” she said. “Give me a chance here.”

Throwing open her hands to unlock her synesthetic senses, so that hallucinatory diagrams and formulae floated before her eyes, she made a sweep of the suite, going from room to room, calculating the volume of every object that might contain an antique Chinese lamp: vases, cushions, cabinets, ice buckets, and overflowing waste baskets. Spatial geometries spun luminously, accompanied by the taste of raspberry jam and a melodic ringing in her ears, as she worked her way through the living room, dining area, and bar, before entering a mock Arabian bedchamber, complete with an elaborate canopy bed that looked as though it hadn't been made for days. Something about the bed captured her attention, although she couldn't quite place it right away. She paused to examine it more closely.

“What is it?” Ezekiel tagged along behind her. “Are you onto something?”

“Shh,” she hushed him. “Let me concentrate.”

She paced the room, computing its angles and comparing the height of the room to the height of the bed. By her estimation, there was at least an eight-inch gap between the top of the canopy and the ceiling, which might be large enough to hide the Lamp.

“Up there,” she said, pointing. “There's a space above the bed that could hold the Lamp, at least if the canopy isn't stretched too taut.” Collapsing her private blackboard, she hopped onto the messy bed, cringing at the sloppy sheets, and laid down on her back, peering up at the stretched fabric overhead. Was it just her imagination, or was the canopy sagging in the middle more than it ought?

No,
she decided,
something's up there, weighing it down.

Her heart racing in excitement, she rolled out of the bed onto her feet and stood on tippy-toes to try to peer into the gap, only to find that she was still too short to see over the top of the canopy without a boost.

“Find me something to stand on!”

A brass tea table rested on the carpet a few feet away from the bed. As Ezekiel shoved it toward her, pushing aside scattered items of clothing, Cassandra spotted another clue: four deep indentations in the carpet, as though a heavyish piece of furniture had once resided there—before Dunphy moved it to use as a stepstool and then tried to put it back where it belonged? The indentations perfectly matched the feet of the tray table.

“This is it!” she exclaimed. “We've found it! Almost.”

“You've got to be kidding me,” Ezekiel said, sounding positively offended. “He hid a priceless magical relic on top of the bed? Who does that?”

“Got by you, didn't it?” Cassandra couldn't resist puncturing his supercharged ego just a bit. “And I'll bet not even the maids look up there very often.”

Scrambling atop the table so that she could just reach the gap, she groped for the Lamp, straining and stretching until she was rewarded by the feel of something hard and polished atop the canopy. Her extended fingertips grazed the surface of the object, which felt oddly warm to the touch.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed. “There's something here, but I can't quite get hold of it.”

“Don't worry about that.” Ezekiel clambered onto the bed and sliced the canopy open with an icepick, so that the unseen object tumbled into his grasp. “Sorry, mate, looks like you're not getting your damage deposit back.”

“Is that it?” Cassandra hopped down onto the floor. “The Lamp?”

“None other.” He handed it over to her. “Take a gander.”

Eagerly accepting the artifact, she saw at once that the jade lamp fit the description of the Lamp that Flynn had discovered a decade ago. Standing less than foot tall, it resembled a traditional Chinese lantern, but was made of polished jade rather than paper. Stone could surely pin the lamp to a specific dynasty or era, but Cassandra didn't care about that.

“Oh my goodness,” she said in awe. “This is really it. Aladdin's Lamp.”

“And we're the ones who found it.” Ezekiel seemed more enthused about outsmarting Dunphy than recovering a legendary relic from the pages of
The Arabian Nights.
“Who needs magic luck when you can make your own?”

By contrast, Cassandra gazed at the Lamp in wonder, thunderstruck to realize that she was actually holding a genuine piece of history, or mythology, or some combination thereof. On closer inspection, however, she was alarmed to see that the Lamp had seen better days. Hairline cracks and fractures threatened the Lamp's structural integrity, so that even one more wish might allow the Djinn to shatter his prison completely. She noted again, more anxiously than before, how warm the jade lamp felt, as though the caged Djinn was seething impatiently, ready for the day he was finally set loose upon the world.…

“This is not good.” She cradled the Lamp against her chest, terrified of breaking it. “Not good at all.”

“Not to worry,” Ezekiel said. “Everything's aces now … unless you feel like treating yourself to a wish or two?”

“Don't tempt me!”

Despite her apprehensions regarding the time-worn Lamp, she'd be lying if she didn't admit that she was indeed tempted to command the Djinn to magic away her brain tumor, so that she could live a long and productive life, free of the grape-sized time bomb ticking away in her head. But, no, she had learned the hard way that being a Librarian was not about using magic for personal gain. She had no intention of ever making that mistake again, even though she suspected this was going to be an ongoing struggle for her—until her inevitable rendezvous with the Grim Reaper.