Even the strangest of those excursions were nothing compared to what she saw in the tunnels beneath the Silver Twilight Lodge itself, after Carl Sanford decided she could be trusted with–

  Diana jumped at the sound of shattering glass. She looked down through the window but didn’t see anything in the alley behind the shop. Except… was that a flicker of movement?

  If there was someone down there breaking things, they were too close to the wall for her to see them, given the angle of her vantage. What if someone was breaking in to the shop? She could call the police… but her telephone was downstairs, because she used it for business. She couldn’t count on neighbors to notice a disturbance and call the authorities for her, either. This part of Arkham kept firmly to business hours, and she was the only shopkeeper who lived on the premises, at least on this block.

  The sensible choice would be to lock and secure the door at the top of the stairs and wait things out. Confronting a potential burglar was a dangerous proposition. But after the horrors Diana had witnessed – the things she’d had a hand in bringing into this world, unwittingly or not – she was no longer inclined to be sensible. She felt helpless in the matter of the Silver Twilight Lodge, and would not accept helplessness in her shop as well.

  Diana went to the corner and picked up an ebony walking stick, topped with a tarnished silver sphere. She’d found the stick among the jumble of items the former owner of Emmie’s Boutique had left behind when they fled town ahead of foreclosure. The heavy cane felt good in her hand, and she gave it a couple of experimental swings, satisfied that it would give any housebreaker pause. Then Diana opened the door and listened from the top of the stairs. She didn’t hear more breakage, but was that… someone singing?

  She moved down the stairs, which led to the back room of the shop, where her supplies and extra inventory were stored neatly on racks and shelves. A curtained archway separated this area from the front of the shop, but she didn’t need to go out there. The noise had come from the alleyway out back.

  There were two windows in the back wall, far smaller than the great plate glass display windows out front, but still large enough for an intruder to crawl through. They were curtained for privacy, and quite dirty on the outside too… and neither window was broken. Not a burglary, then. She listened at the window and heard a hoarse voice crooning: “…we will steer. We’ll make them valleys ring, my boys, a-drinking of strong beer…” Then a sort of coughing sob.

  Diana sighed. Not a burglar at all. Just some drunk, maybe a fisherman, since he was singing an old whaling song. She turned on the lights, then unbolted the back door and eased it open so she could tell him to move along. The moon shone down, bright and nearly full, illuminating the alley and turning the shattered whiskey bottle on the pavement into a glittering strew of diamonds. That explained the noise she’d heard. There was no reek of whiskey, which meant the bottle had been empty when her unwelcome visitor broke it. That was probably why he’d broken it.

  The man sat with his back to the wall of her shop and his legs extended straight out before him. He wore stained trousers with ragged hems at the ankles, a shirt with missing buttons, and a brown jacket with one sleeve dangling by threads. His left hand was wrapped in a handkerchief like it was injured. He looked up at her, face ragged with stubble, eyes squinting, and she was surprised to see that he was relatively young, probably just in his thirties.

  “An angel,” he said. “You’re radiant.”

  Diana frowned, then realized the light from inside the shop must have surrounded her with a backlit glow. “You’re drunk, and you’re breaking things outside my shop. You should leave.”

  “I have nowhere to go.” He looked down at his bandaged hand.

  She felt sympathy for the poor man, but she had problems of her own. “Nowhere is a big place, and you can choose to occupy some part of it that isn’t right next to my back door.”

  “If they find me… I made them, but they hate me…” He struggled to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. “I think… they can sense me… but when I drink it makes me blurry, changes the shape of me, so maybe they can’t…” Diana started to go inside, content that he was about to move on, until she heard him say, “But I can’t risk going to the Lodge, not if they can find me.”

  “What Lodge?” Diana said. He couldn’t possibly mean her Lodge, could he? Sanford would never give the time of day to a man like this. But maybe he hadn’t always been like this. Maybe he’d seen things that had reduced him to this. She shivered at the thought.

  He looked at her, blinking, then shrugged. “Silver. Silver Twilight Lodge. It’s… they have… it’s there. What’s left of it. All that’s left. And if my comets find it…” He shook his head. “That which when divided multiplies.”

  His words were all but incomprehensible… but tantalizing. What did this ruined man know about the Silver Twilight Lodge? Could it be something of use to her? She wanted to stop Sanford from performing his horrible rituals, from using the vulnerable for his own ends, but she had no idea how to go about that. Might this man know something to break the logjam in her mind, and show her a path to action?

  “Who are you?” Diana said.

  “Who am I?” He chuckled, a sound that was all fishhooks and bilge pumps. “Abel. Davenport. High priest. Laid low.” He shook his head, blinked at her, and frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Diana Stanley. This is my shop.”

  “Diana,” Abel said, and his smile was radiant. “The goddess of the hunt.” Then he closed his eyes and swayed, and only the fact that he swayed into the wall instead of away from it kept him upright.

  “Perhaps you’d better come inside,” Diana decided.

  Chapter Three

  The Thief

  Ruby Standish was in a place she wasn’t supposed to be, and she was about to take something that didn’t belong to her. There was nowhere else she’d rather be, and nothing else she’d rather be doing.

  The secret panel was just where her client had promised, hidden in the back of a walk-in closet behind a row of hanging suits. Her client didn’t know the trick to opening the hidden door, so Ruby slipped a narrow-bladed knife from the sheath at her belt and slid it into the crack beside the panel, moving it slowly up and down until she hit an obstruction. There was the latch… She grinned as she wiggled the blade, applying pressure, until there was a soft click, and the wall panel swung inward.

  She pushed it open all the way, half-wincing in fear of an alarm. The old-timer she’d learned her craft from, Thorley, complained bitterly about the emergence of such devices in recent decades, especially the hidden switches that set off clanging bells. When Ruby set out to become a thief, she made a point of only learning from the successful ones. Thorley had never seen the inside of a jail cell, and that was one of Ruby’s principal ambitions. Of course, one of Thorley’s secrets was he stole mainly from people who wouldn’t bother calling the law on you; they’d try to find you themselves instead. Dangerous people were, well, dangerous, but they also tended to get killed themselves, and then they’d stop looking, while the law was relentless.

  Ruby still exchanged the odd letter with Thorley, full of empty chatter and coded queries – one such letter had allowed him to connect Ruby with her current client. Thorley knew a lot of people who dabbled in the occult, and Ruby had gradually and almost accidentally eased into that realm as her area of expertise.

  There were a shocking number of rich collectors obsessed with paraphernalia from ancient civilizations, often rumored to possess impossible properties. Ruby thought most of the artifacts in circulation were fakes… but she knew some were real, or at least, really strange. She still had the twisted scar around her left ankle to remind her there were things in the world she never particularly wanted to understand.

  No bells clanged, which meant her target trusted the building’s security and the secrecy of his hiding space to protect his treasures. To be fair, most of the time they would have been ample defense. Getting in through the lobby of an exclusive building like this, let alone up to the private penthouse that sprawled over the whole top floor, would have been tricky, though with the right outfit and attitude, Ruby might have managed it. She’d smiled and charmed and batted her eyelashes into even better defended locations.

  The problem with that kind of approach, though, was that she’d be remembered by the doorman and security people, and with a target like this, you didn’t want to give them any leads to pursue. Sometimes Ruby could be very memorable; sometimes she could be a ghost. This was a ghost job.

  So she hadn’t entered through the lobby. She’d come up the side of the building, dressed in black, a shadow on the wall, using pipes, ledges, crenellations, and all the other ornamental foofaraw the architects had kindly provided for her use. She had a slim metal tool for unfastening latches, but few people bothered to lock their windows when they were six stories high. Her target didn’t even lock the French doors leading to his private terrace. A swift climb and an easy entry, just the way she liked it.

  The space beyond the secret panel was dark, and the beam from her small flashlight was just bright enough to fill the space with tantalizing glitters. Her client said there were lights in the hidden room, and with the closet door shut she could turn those on safely without illuminating the apartment windows. She felt around on the wall beyond the panel until she found the button and pushed it in.

  A chandelier dripping crystal teardrops began to glow in the ceiling overhead, illuminating the prettiest little secret showroom Ruby had ever seen. The space was small, only about six feet square, with a plush armchair in the center, arranged to offer a perfect view of the treasures arrayed on tables and shelves on the opposite wall.

  There were a couple of grotesque little statues carved of ebony and onyx, and she shuddered just glimpsing them. Things like that could be valuable to the right collector, but she’d cut her hand on a similar statue last year. It bit you, a stubborn voice whispered in the back of her mind. Her hand had swelled up like a hot water bottle, and she’d had a fever for two days afterward, full of nasty visions. She didn’t like those little idols, and the pickings here were rich enough that she could afford to be superstitious.

  She passed over a gold scroll-case that was too big to fit in the bag slung over her shoulder, but there was a necklace of black pearls that would fit easily, and she also took a crude flute made from a length of scrimshawed bone, and a stone jar made of lapis lazuli, smaller than her dainty fist. Her client hadn’t mentioned those items, but he might want them anyway, and if not, there were always other interested parties.

  The last thing she picked up was the object of her commission, and the centerpiece of the collection, standing on its own custom stand of dark wood: a red jewel almost big enough to cover her palm. The tiny, intricate facets cut across its face reminded her of the scales of a snake or a fish. The gem was nestled in a dark metal setting shaped a bit like a medieval shield. There was a loop to hang the jewel from, but no chain; too bad. Gold necklaces were easily negotiable.

  “The Ruby of R’lyeh,” she murmured, and then smirked. “A ruby for Ruby.” Her client might have been amused by that coincidence – he was a former professor of ancient literature and languages at Miskatonic University, now an antiquities dealer – but, of course, he didn’t know her real name. It was better not to use that name when she was doing business with someone in Arkham. Not since everything that happened with the Silver Twilight Lodge. She tried to avoid Arkham entirely, but he was paying her well enough to overcome her hesitancy.

  Ruby tucked the jewel away with the rest of her spoils, made sure the bag was closed, then adjusted the strap until everything hung comfortably on her back. The things she’d stolen didn’t weigh much, so she wasn’t worried about her balance being thrown off on the descent. Going down was easier in some respects than going up, and harder in others. You couldn’t see your path as well, but gravity did some of the work for you. You had to be careful, though, because if you weren’t, gravity would do all the work for you, and offer you a far speedier descent than you’d prefer.

  She turned off the light, slipped out of the vault, closed the panel, adjusted the suits until they appeared undisturbed, and went to the door of the closet, already planning her next moves. She’d slip out of the bedroom, down the hall, into the living room, through the French doors to the terrace, over the railing on the right, onto the ledge, shimmy over to the gargoyle, clamber down to that nice fat drain pipe–

  She heard a metallic rattle and froze. The private elevator was arriving! The doors would open right in the living room: the privileges of wealth. She flattened herself against the wall next to the bedroom door and swore under her breath. Her client had assured her the ruby’s owner was going to be at the symphony, and then out getting drinks, until at least one in the morning – that he never came home earlier than that on a Saturday night – but it wasn’t even midnight yet. That’s what she got for trusting someone else’s intel instead of doing her own. She sidled closer to the door and peered through the crack, down the hallway, which afforded her a glimpse of the living room.

  There was the owner of the gem, dressed in black tie, all broad shoulders and silver hair and the kind of jaw you could hang a campaign poster on. He wasn’t a politician, though. He was a prominent attorney here in Boston, and rumored to have close ties to organized crime. He wasn’t alone, either: he had two men with him, and they didn’t look like symphony lovers.

  One was big, maybe six-four, with a face like a side of beef somebody had used for a punching bag, and the other was lean as a knife, and dressed more elegantly than the lawyer. A bruno and a button-man, if she had to guess: fists and a pistol. She wondered if they were the lawyer’s bodyguards… or his minders. Being the attorney for a gangster had to be a delicate position, and fraught with danger, though maybe not quite as fraught as Ruby’s current situation.

  She went to the windows in the bedroom. They were big, and would swing wide enough for her to get out, if there was anyplace to get to. There was a ledge under the windows, narrower than she liked, but she’d dealt with worse. All those years of ballet practice Mummy had insisted on were still paying dividends in terms of gracefulness and balance. She stuck her head out the window and looked both ways. The closest corner of the building was off to the left, and it was encrusted with ornamental handholds. She was pretty sure she could make her way to the ground that way, though it was more exposed than the drainpipe, which was hidden in shadow. That was why she’d picked that route in the first place. The streets of Boston’s Back Bay weren’t bustling at the moment, though, so it would probably be safe enough–

  “What in heaven’s name?” a voice made for the courtroom boomed at her.

  Ruby didn’t bother to look back: she knew what she would see. The lawyer, probably tugging his bow tie off and kicking loose his shoes. Seventeen rooms in this penthouse, and he had to come in here? He couldn’t pour himself a brandy or go to the bathroom first? She scrambled out the window, ignoring his startled yelp and cry of “Stop, thief!” Speed was the whole thing now.

  The higher up Ruby climbed, the windier it got. She wondered why. Maybe when she was at the university she’d ask a scientist. She pressed herself to the wall, cheek on stone, and shuffle-stepped along the ledge toward the corner of the building. She was looking back at the window, so she had a nice clear view when the lawyer and the goon and the button-man all stuck their heads out, one after another, and looked at her, identically wide-eyed and gaping. She almost giggled: they reminded her of a vaudeville act she’d seen on a date, Ted Healy and His Stooges, where the performers had stuck their heads out of the curtain like that, one on top of the other.

  Then the button-man reached out an arm and pointed a pistol at her, and it wasn’t so funny anymore.

  “Don’t shoot her!” the lawyer boomed.

  Ruby winced. She was dressed in black trousers, loose enough for easy movement and cinched at the ankles so she wouldn’t trip over the hems, and a black tunic, with a scarf tied over her blonde hair. She was rather hoping they’d assume she was a man, as most thieves were, but the lawyer had gotten too good a look at her. Well, if he was reluctant to kill a woman, she wouldn’t complain–

  “The ruby might survive the fall, but she got the urn, too, and my flute,” he boomed. “They’ll shatter!”

  Ah. Yes. That explained his reluctance better.

  The button-man glared at her, but she didn’t care: her reaching hand touched the building’s corner. There were clamshells and seahorses and such carved all over it, providing a dozen places for her to grab and step, and she swung out. The wind blew sharply around the corner, and yanked the scarf right off her head, sending the scrap of silk billowing into the night. Her hair whipped into her eyes, because of course it did. She’d noticed that when your luck turned, it tended to turn all at once, and hard.

  She made it around the corner to the other side of the building, though, out of sight of the lawyer and his friends, and protected a little from the wind. She looked down. No sign of the goon and the shooter down on the sidewalk yet… but they’d be in the elevator right now, ready to take her when she hit the pavement. She didn’t highly rate her chances of seeing the sunrise. Even seeing midnight was looking unlikely.