The Nimble Man

CHAPTER ONE

Within the silent halls of the Boston Antiquities Museum the shadows were in motion. Red alarm sensors shone brightly but recorded nothing out of the ordinary. Only the nearly somnambulant passing of security guards disturbed the dust that eddied up on currents of air. Hidden cameras revealed only exhibits and artifacts in otherwise empty rooms.

Yet there was one room that was not empty.

The exhibit was Egyptian, devoted almost wholly to the Twelfth Dynasty. Though its collection of stone fragments, papyrus, masks, and sarcophagi might impress schoolchildren, to those educated in the area of antiquities the exhibit would have been wholly unremarkable. Or nearly so. Those who noticed anything at all out of place would likely have attributed it to simple human error, a curator who had made an honest mistake.

In one corner of the room Mr. Doyle thoughtfully stroked his thick mustache and admired a small sphinx. The piece had been unearthed at Katna millennia before and bore the name of a daughter of Ammenemes II, but the curators of the museum had badly mislabeled it. He shook his head and his heavy gray brows knitted with disapproval. If he had them there he would have given them a tongue-lashing for being so careless. Of course, on this night their carelessness had worked in his favor.

The moment he tore his attention away from the priceless sphinx, Doyle caught sight of the object that had drawn him here. With a grunt of satisfaction he crossed the room to a marble pedestal and peered through the thick glass enclosure atop it at the artifact inside. It was a crystal spider set inside a gold frame, perhaps five inches in length and four at the widest legspan. A small placard rested atop the enclosure.

Crystal Spider, circa 1995 B.C., discovered at Lisht, believed to have been a gift to the illegitimate pharaoh Nebtawyre Menthotope III during the "seven kingless years" preceding the Twelfth Dynasty.

"Well, well. Hello my little friend," Mr. Doyle rasped, standing a bit straighter and smoothing his greatcoat as though he was in the presence of respectable company. Which was not at all the case.

"So?" came a voice from a shadowy corner of the exhibit. "How did I do?"

He glanced in the direction of that voice. There was a large, ornate sarcophagus on display, and beside it several lighted glass enclosures that contained burial jars apparently associated with whomever had been put to rest within the sarcophagus. Eve stepped from amidst this tableau of death with grace and nonchalance, the same way she would walk into a bar or step onto a subway train. She wore crisply new blue jeans and a tight green turtleneck beneath a stylishly long brown suede coat. With her silken black hair and exotic features she was beautiful in a way only cruel things are. A tragedy, to be sure, for though Eve could be cruel she had so many other facets, so many better qualities.

They were old friends, these two, but it had been quite some time since they had seen one another. Doyle understood. He was just as guilty as Eve of letting their acquaintance grow fallow. With lives as busy — and as long — as they both led, the years could go by with the deceptive speed of clouds in the sky. When each one was so much like the last, it was easy to lose count.

As always, they were becoming reacquainted in a time of crisis. It was the nature of their friendship. He had contacted Eve for assistance and her efforts had produced results in less than a day. He had located her on the island of Mykonos. Fourteen hours later she had knocked on the door of his sprawling townhouse on Beacon Hill with the news that led them here.

Doyle smiled indulgently at her, as he would have at a daughter of whom he was particularly proud. "How did you do? Remarkably well, Eve. I've inquired all over the world in search of a Lemurian Spider." He turned his focus back upon his prize. "Bangladesh, Cyprus, Istanbul, Minsk. I confess to feeling more than a little foolish that you located one right here beneath my nose. And so quickly. How did you manage it?"

Eve strode across the room to join him, leather heels scuffing the floor. "We all have our specialties, Doyle. For instance, how did you get us in here without setting off any alarms? Without the guards noticing?"

A rare tremor of amusement passed through him. There had been so little humor or camaraderie in his life of late. Too many times in the past he had been betrayed by colleagues and friends, so that he had come to count on his enemies as far more reliable. Eve was one exception. There were others, but he had not seen most of them for a very, very long time.

With a mischievous smile he touched the enclosure around the spider and whispered a minor incantation. The glass turned to damp mist that fogged the air around their heads and warped the thin beam of red light that should have triggered an alarm the moment the enclosure had been removed. It did not. When the mist had dissipated, Mr. Doyle picked up the crystal spider and examined it more closely.

"As you say," he mused, "we all have our specialties."

Eve allowed herself an appreciative nod and then began to stride impatiently around the exhibit hall. It was typical of her.

"Relax, Eve. We're not leaving just yet." He shot her an admonishing glance. "If the whispers Dr. Graves has been hearing are correct, we don't have time for certain niceties. I'm not going to be able to take my new toy home to play with it."

He began to pry the crystal spider out of its golden frame.

"Hold on," Eve protested, hurrying to his side with a rasp of suede and denim. "Do you have to do that? You know how much I love the sparkly things. The spider would look nice on my mantel next to that Buddha with the clock in his belly."

He ignored her. It had grown warm in the museum in spite of the cool air blowing out of the vents, but Mr. Doyle had been a magician long enough to know the heat had nothing to do with the actual temperature. His face felt flush and the gold softened in his fingers, peeling away like hot wax.

"Fine," Eve sighed. "This thing wasn't easy to find. Just doesn't seem right to ruin it. How many bits and pieces of flea market junk do you think survived from Lemuria?"

Doyle sniffed in contempt. "More than you realize. I doubt there's a major museum in the world that doesn't have at least one Lemurian piece misclassified as Egyptian or Greek or Etruscan, even Japanese. It's one of the great failings of the human mind. One of our primary irrationalities. We see the improbable and call it impossible, and would rather accept convenient untruths than seek out unpopular solutions."

"Do you have to be such an elitist asshole about everything?"

The man flinched and, crystal spider in his hands, turned to glare at her. They were allies and sometimes friends and he was fond of Eve, but there were times when her behavior puzzled him. Other times it reminded him that though he had put a great deal of distance between himself and the odd primness of the era of his birth, he had not entirely escaped it.

"No," he replied at last, "just about some things. And most certainly about history and archaeology. I would think you of all people would understand."

Her eyes narrowed and a hint of fury glimmered in them a moment, and then passed. She sighed. "You are the most aggravating man."

Mr. Doyle cleared his throat, back rigid, and nodded once. "Yes. I believe I am." Then he bent to his task once more. The job was nearly done and it took him only another minute or so before he had removed the gold entirely from the elegantly designed crystal spider. It was a marvel from an age far more distant than anyone would have guessed.

"So are you going to tell me how this is going to help us find your dead sorcerer friend?"

The edges of Doyle's mouth tugged upward, his mustache twitching in the smallest of smiles. He stared at the Lemurian Spider in his hand, felt its edges sharp against the callused flesh of his palm.

"Our quarry is not precisely dead, lovely Eve. And this? With the proper incantations, it will weave us an answer."

Eve arched an eyebrow. "What the hell does that mean?"

He felt the words rising from deep within his chest, as though they had been born not of his mind but of his heart. When he spoke them his voice was higher and lilting, the way he had sung the melodies his mother had taught him as a boy in Edinburgh.

"Atti mannu kashshaptu sha tuyub ta enni."

Mr. Doyle turned from her, raised the spider, and hurled it with all his might at the wall. Eve shouted and lunged to stop him but for all her uncanny speed she was too late. Her eyes were wide and her gaze ticked toward the wall. It was clear she expected the spider to shatter.

Instead, it stuck to the wall.

For several long moments nothing happened. The only sounds in the room was the hum of electricity in the walls and the shush of the air filtration system, and Doyle's own breathing. The illumination cast by the display lighting in the otherwise darkened room only lent to the gathering and shifting of shadows in every corner and they seemed to darken, to cluster more closely, as Doyle and Eve stared at the crystal spider.

"All right," Eve said, "what the hell is — "

She never finished the sentence.

With a grating, clicking sound, the spider began to move. Its legs scratched at the wall as it crept upward and Mr. Doyle narrowed his gaze, peering more closely until he could make out the thin strand of crystalline webbing it was leaving behind.

Eve slid her hands into her pockets and gave her hair an insouciant toss. "You know, with all I've seen — which is pretty much everything — you'd think I couldn't be surprised any more. What is it doing?"

"Watch," he chided her.

And so they stood in silence in the midst of the Egyptian exhibit and watched as the spider spun its crystal web, clicking up the wall and then to the left, moving back down to diagonally cross its original line. Soon enough a pattern began to take form.

"It's a map," Eve said. She stepped closer and looked up, head tilted back as she studied the circumference of the web pattern and the shape it had taken, the grid that was forming along the length of it and the large open rectangle in the center.

Brows knitted, Eve turned to stare at Doyle. "It's a map of Manhattan."

The spider paused for several long seconds at a spot upon its web that corresponded to where Greenwich Village would have been on the map. When it at last moved on, it had left something behind. Amidst that crystalline web, at one particular junction of gleaming thread, a tiny crystal stood out from the pattern of the map.

A chill passed through Mr. Doyle like ice sliding down his back and he stared at the map. Slowly he nodded. He had wondered for so long what had happened to the Mage, what had become of Lorenzo Sanguedolce, that it seemed unreal to him, looking at that crystal and knowing that it symbolized an end to his search.

He nodded gruffly and glanced at Eve. "All right, then. To New York."

Shortly before dawn, with heavy storm clouds aiding the night in its quest to keep morning at bay, the limousine swept through midtown Manhattan. Its tires shushed through pools of rainwater and the windshield wipers hissed as they beat their hypnotic rhythm upon the glass. New York had its reputation as the city that never slept, but on that Sunday morning it seemed, at least, to be dozing. The limousine was not the only vehicle about — they passed several taxis and police cars and a handful of automobiles whose drivers were likely about on business of questionable intent — but the streets were lonely nevertheless. With the storm hanging so low over the city and the rain driving down upon the limousine, the city seemed very inhospitable indeed.

In the back of the limo, Eve rested her head against the tinted window and gazed up at the cityscape that unfolded with each block. Twenty-four hour neon storefronts, digital billboards, and the glass and steel faces of thousands of corporations. In her life she had seen the rise and fall of cities more glorious than this one, and yet there was something about New York — with its old-fashioned personality and its vast ambition for the future — that she admired.

Her long legs were stretched out and she had slid down in the seat. From time to time her mind drifted so that she was in a sort of trance state in which ghosts of the past haunted her memory, but she did not sleep. Eve never slept during the night.

In the driver's seat, Squire yawned, revealing teeth as jagged and numerous as a shark's. The gnarled, ugly little man glanced into the rearview mirror and saw her watching him. His grin was hideous.

"Hey, babe. Good morning. You were zoning out back there so I didn't want to interrupt."

Eve stretched languidly against the leather upholstery, aware of the goblin's hungry eyes but unconcerned. She twisted her neck, muscles popping. Across from her, behind the driver's seat, Doyle slept in a sitting position with his hands clasped, corpselike, over his chest. He snored lightly, head bobbing from time to time.

She glanced at the driver again. "Usually you can't keep your mouth shut, Squire. I appreciate it."

"My pleasure," he said.

The goblin returned his attention to the road. They had passed through Times Square and were now rolling south on Seventh Avenue. Squire was a cautious driver. Doyle had paid to have the limo customized so that Squire could see through the windshield and still reach the accelerator and brake, mainly because the goblin liked to drive. Of all the services the creature performed for his employer, chauffeuring was the one at which he had the least amount of skill. Eve would not deny that Squire had his uses, but there were times when they were outweighed by his more annoying attributes.

"So, what's this about, babe?" the goblin asked, casting a quick glance over his shoulder, his gnarled features silhouetted by the greenish light from the limo's dashboard. "I mean, I need my beauty sleep and the boss rousted me without telling me much. What's the hurry?"

Eve closed her eyes and sighed. "If I explain it to you, will you stop calling me 'babe?'"

"I can try."

She nodded, opening her eyes and sitting up straighter in her seat. Her black hair fell in a tumble across her face and she swept it back again. "That's good. Doyle would be unhappy if I ripped your throat out."

The rain pelted the limousine's roof and sluiced down the windows. The engine purred and Squire kept both hands on the wheel as they slid through another intersection. Once again he caught her eye in the rearview mirror.

"Don't be that way, darlin'. I don't mean anything by it. And I'd have to be blind not to notice what a looker you are."

Eve's upper lip curled back in a hiss that revealed her fangs. "That could be arranged."

"Okay, okay," Squire protested, shrugging. "Just making conversation. You don't wanna talk, we won't talk."

Eve turned her gaze out the window again as they passed closed shops and newsstands with their metal rolling doors locked down tight. A tall, thin man in a hooded rain slicker hunched over as he walked his dog, the little beast leading him along by its leash, creating confusion as to which of them was the pet. Given the hour, Eve was tempted to believe the dog was in charge.

"I know very little," she began, still peering out into the rain.

"That's more than I know," Squire noted. He fished around the front seat and then held up a pack of cigarettes in triumph. The limo slowed as he tapped one out and used his lips to draw it from the pack.

"I've forgotten more than you'll ever know," Eve said, and her voice sounded hollow even to her, tinged with a melancholy she rarely allowed in herself. It was the rain. The damned rain. For some reason it always put her in mind of a simpler time, long ago.

Squire either missed her tone or ignored it entirely. "All right, you know so much, then spill it." The goblin pushed in the dashboard lighter, the unlit cigarette rolling like a toothpick between his lips.

"You're not going to smoke in here," she said.

His wiry eyebrows went up and he glanced at her in the mirror. "I'm not? No, I guess I'm not."

Eve glanced over at Doyle. He grumbled in his sleep now, brow knitted in consternation. She was not surprised. He was not the sort of man she would ever expect to have sweet dreams.

"It's pretty simple, actually. You know the story of Lorenzo Sanguedolce?"

"Sure. Sweetblood. That's what all the arcane books call him. Sweetblood the Mage."

Eve nodded once. She had expected Squire to know the story. Anyone even tangentially involved with the magical community would have. Tales of Sanguedolce could be traced back as early as the eleventh century and though he seemed to have changed his name several times the stories about him cropped up in journals from a dozen countries over the course of hundreds of years. He was called Sweetblood, but it was unclear whether this was a literal translation of his Italian surname, or if the surname was simply another variation on that descriptive appellation.

By all accounts Sanguedolce had been the most powerful sorcerer who had ever lived. Yet early in the twentieth century, he had simply disappeared. None of the dark powers in the world had laid claim to having destroyed him and though there were rumors and whispers, no mage was ever proven to have knowledge of his whereabouts, or his possible demise.

"You know your boss has been looking for the mage for a very long time?" Eve asked.

Squire chuckled without humor. "That's an understatement. Never thought it was a great idea, myself. You know what they say about searching for Sweetblood."

"We may have found him."

The goblin jerked the steering wheel so hard to the right as he spun to stare at Eve that he nearly plowed the limousine into a squat blue mailbox on the sidewalk. In a panic, Squire hit the brakes and got the limo's nose headed in the right direction again.

Eve watched him in the mirror. Several times the annoying little creature opened his mouth and closed it again, as though for the first time in his life he had no clever or boorish remark to make. She knew it would pass, though. With Squire, it always did.

"Hell," the goblin said, the word coming out in a harsh grunt. "All the stories say… ah, hell, Eve, all the stories say that would be a bad idea."

Squire kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. A taxi cut in front of the limousine despite that there were only a handful of cars on Seventh Avenue. Ahead a light turned red and the goblin began to slow the limo.

"True."

The word came from Doyle. Eve glanced over at him and saw that his eyes were red and his face somewhat flushed. He had not slept nearly enough, but that was not unusual. Magic had suspended the aging process in him, had even partially reversed it, but there was no escaping that the man was still human. An alchemist and magician, a brilliant writer and scholar, a believer in both the goodness of the world and the darkness that tainted it, Mr. Doyle was among the most powerful magicians on Earth, but he was also just a man. Human.

Eve envied him that. She could not even remember what it meant to be human.

"Boss, you're awake," Squire said, turning to glance back at Doyle now that he was stopped at the red light.

Tiredly, Mr. Doyle smoothed his jacket and ran his fingers through his silver hair to straighten it. "And you, my small friend, have a gift for stating the obvious."

"What can I say?" Squire muttered happily. "I'm blessed."

The light turned green but Squire was careful to look in both directions before the limousine picked up speed again. Behind him, his employer tugged out a pocket watch and clicked it open. He checked the time and then slid the watch back into his vest pocket.

Doyle cleared his throat and glanced at Eve, then turned his attention to Squire again.

"The warnings about what would happen to anyone who searched for Sweetblood are dire," the magician absently admitted as he began searching the inner pockets of his jacket for something. "But I suspect they were spread by Lorenzo himself in an effort to dissuade the curious."

Eve stared at him. "And if you're wrong?"

Doyle raised an eyebrow and stared at her, his eyes as silver as his hair. "If I'm wrong, then we handle it."

"That's your plan?" Squire asked. "That's not much of a plan."

"There isn't time for subtlety," Doyle replied. "My search has always been a casual one, rarely the focus of my efforts. But Dr. Graves has word that someone — someone with malevolent intentions — has indeed located Sweetblood."

"And we need to get to him first," Squire said, nodding to himself as he turned the limousine down a side street, the rear tire bumping up over the curb.

"Precisely."

The goblin turned south again at the next corner and soon enough the city was changing around them. The skyscrapers had given way to brownstones and rowhouses and there were trees growing up out of the sidewalk. They passed a park that seemed remarkably free of litter and graffiti.

"All right," Squire said. "I get it. But I was still half-asleep when you got me out of bed to drive you, so there's still one thing I'm not understanding."

"Only one?" Eve taunted.

Doyle frowned at her. "What's that, Squire?"

"Where do the glass spiders come in? You said something about glass spiders, didn't you? Or was that in my dream?"

Before the dapper magician could answer, Eve spied their destination, the address plainly exhibited on the front door of the brownstone. The sky had begun to lighten but the drenching rain and the heavy cloud cover would shield her from the sun.

"Stop here. This is it."

The goblin pulled the limo to the curb. Doyle leaned across the back seat to peer through Eve's rain-streaked window, eyebrows raised. Then he popped his own door open and slipped out. Eve stripped off her suede coat, folded it and left it on the seat, then followed suit. The rain began to dampen her hair immediately, streaming like tears upon her cheeks. Thunder rolled across the sky, echoing off the faces of the buildings. Lightning blinked and flickered up inside the clouds as though behind that veil the gods were at war.

Doyle slammed his door without another word to Squire. His gaze was locked upon the brownstone and he stared up at its darkened windows as he strode around the limousine to join Eve on the sidewalk.

Her nostrils flared and she sniffed at the air. "Does this seem too easy to you?"?"I'm not certain that's a word I would choose," Doyle replied, wiping rain from his eyes.

Eve pushed her hair back from her face and rapped on the limo's passenger window. When Squire rolled it down she bent to peer in at him. The goblin's eyes went to her chest, where the tight cotton of her turtleneck stretched across her breasts.

"Up here, you little shit."

A dreamy smile spread across his features. "Sorry. What can I do for you?"

"Open the trunk."

He reached for the release and there was a small pop, then the trunk lid rose. The sound of the rain pelting the metal altered at this new angle. Eve went to the rear of the limo and reached into the trunk to retrieve a parcel wrapped in soft leather. She unfolded the leather and folded her fingers around the stock of the sawed-off shotgun, and she smiled as she dropped the leather wrap into the trunk and slammed it shut.

Turning to Doyle she cocked the shotgun. "Too easy."

"Perhaps," he replied. Then he nodded toward the brick steps in front of the brownstone. "Would you like to get the door?"

Eve strode purposefully up the short walkway, not even bothering to check the windows of the surrounding homes for prying eyes. That sort of thing was Doyle's problem, and he dealt with it often enough. She went up the four steps and paused on the landing, then shot a kick at the front door. The blow cracked it in half and tore it from its hinges. The bottom part of the door flew across the building's foyer and shattered the legs of a small table; the top half swung like a guillotine from the security chain that still connected it to the door frame.

With preternatural swiftness she darted inside the brownstone, swinging the gaping double barrels of the shotgun around as she scanned the parlor on her left, and then the formal living room on her right. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.

Doyle stepped in behind her. Eve glanced at him and saw the corona of pale blue light that encircled his eyes, the aura of that same glow surrounding his fingers. The illusion of the kindly, aging gentleman had disappeared. This was the magician. This was who Doyle was.

"Anything?" he asked.

Eve's eyelids fluttered as she inhaled. She glanced at the stairs that led up into darkness. "Nothing that way." Then she narrowed her eyes as she stared into the shadowed corridor that led toward the back of the brownstone. "But that way…"

"Magic. Yes. I feel it."

Doyle went past her, heedless of any danger. The blue light around his fingers and leaking from his eyes grew brighter and he was a beacon in the darkened corridor. Eve tried to make sense of the layout of the place in her head. Living room and parlor in front. Probably a back staircase somewhere, a pantry, big kitchen, and the sort of sprawling dining room that had been popular in the first half of the twentieth century.

There were framed photographs on the walls that had obviously hung there for decades and wallpaper that had gone out of style before John F. Kennedy was President. Yet there was no dust. No cobwebs. No sign that time had continued to pass within that home while it went by on the outside.

The corridor ended at a door that was likely either a closet or bathroom, but there were rooms to either side, elegant woodwork framing their entrances. Doyle did not even glance to his left, but turned into the room on the right. Eve was right behind him and nearly jammed the shotgun into his spine when he came to a sudden stop.

She moved up beside him, staring into the dining room.

Six figures sat in a circle around the elegant dining room table, all of them clasping hands as if joining in prayer — or a seance. There were candlesticks on the table and several on a sideboard; Doyle waved his hand and each of the wicks flickered to life, those tiny flames illuminating the room. Perhaps the old magician needed the light to see by, but Eve did not. She saw better in the dark.

Of the six, five were very clearly dead, and had been so for a very long time. Though their skeletal fingers were still clasped they were withered, eyes sunken to dark sockets, only wisps of hair left upon their heads. In many places all that remained of their flesh were tattered bits clinging to bone, like parchment paper. Eve peered more closely. She had not smelled death in this place and so she wondered if it was some sort of illusion. But no. There was an earthy, rot odor that lingered in the air. It was simply that, like dust and other sediment of time, the stink of putrefying flesh seemed to have been suspended somehow.

The five withered corpses were of indeterminate age and race but at least one of them had been female. And then there was the sixth member of this chain, a woman in a blue dress, her brown hair up in a tight bun, with small-framed glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were closed and her face peaceful, as though she might well have been in the midst of a natural slumber rather than eternal repose.

"Yvette Darnall," Doyle observed.

Eve glanced at him, saw the puzzlement on his face and knew that it matched her own. "You know her?"

"A mystic and psychic. She disappeared in 1943."

"Or maybe she didn't," Eve said, her gaze once more surveying the hideous gathering, the sunken faces waxy and yellow in the candlelight. "Maybe it was just that nobody knew where to look."

Doyle frowned thoughtfully and stepped further into the room. Eve followed but her nostrils flared and the hair rose on the back of her neck. Her fingers hooked into talons. She sensed something in the room and she knew that Doyle had felt it too.

Yvette Darnall opened her eyes.

Eve and Doyle froze. For just a moment there was a kind of terrible awareness in the psychic woman's gaze and then her eyes rolled upward so that they seemed completely white. Her head lolled back and her jaw went slack, mouth falling open.

One by one, the five cadavers did the same. Some of their jawbones cracked. When the most desiccated among them lay his head back it simply tore off above the jaw with a sound like snapping kindling. Upon hitting the hardwood floor his skull shattered into dust and bone fragments.

Yvette Darnall began to moan, and so did the chorus of the dead.

She choked as a stream of milky, opalescent mist issued from her throat, and a moment later thinner tendrils of the same substance flowed from the gaping mouths of the dead. Eve recognized the material. Ectoplasm. Malleable spirit-flesh. But she did not think it was the ghosts of these dead summoners or even of the medium herself who was manipulating the ectoplasm here.

It coalesced in the midst of the table and as it did, Eve saw that Yvette Darnall had begun to decay. Whatever this power was, it was drawing on whatever essence remained in her; it had kept her here for more than sixty years as a spiritual battery, and now it was using her up.

The ectoplasm churned like thick, heavy storm clouds and began to take shape. In a moment Eve could see human features forming there, a face, a man with a long, hawk nose and thin lips, with wild unkempt hair and a shaggy beard.

The face in the pooling ectoplasm narrowed its eyes as though it had seen them and it sneered imperiously, gaze rife with disapproval. When it spoke, its lips moved without sound, yet its voice issued from the wide, gaping mouth of Yvette Darnall.

"Doyle," the voice rasped scornfully. "You damned fool."