Page 10 of The Devouring Time

“No, thank you,” Evans says, and they bow slightly and depart. “Are you all right, Mr. Caine?”

“No. I’m not.” I gesture to my drink, since that seems the smallest and most manageable of my current problems. “What is this?”

“A Widdershins Special.” He picks his up and gestures to me. “Cheers.”

I return the gesture, brace myself, and down the drink.

It tastes of charred fish and brine, combined with the burn of alcohol. It’s everything I can do not to spit it back out. “Why?” I gasp, when I can speak again. “Why would anyone do this?”

“I assume it’s a local delicacy. You can eat the fin if you want.”

“I absolutely do not.” I shove the tumbler away. “Who are you? What do you want with me? Do you know why I can’t remember anything after Hart drugged me?”

“I can’t answer your last question, I’m afraid. It doesn’t seem likely whatever they injected you with would last for almost a year and a half, though.”

“No.” I bite my lip. “It could be…I suffered from shell shock.”

“I know. I was able to get a look at your service records.”

“You what? How dare you!”

“Oh, I dare quite a bit.” His smile is far too charming to be trusted. “Allow me to clarify—I’m an investigator for the Grayson and Bell Insurance Company.”

I might have forgotten the last sixteen months, but I remember our first meeting clearly. “You told Hart you wanted to purchase a painting for a client.”

“I usually pose as a buyer when trying to locate stolen artwork.”

“Oh.” So Hart wasn’t just a maniac who had his butler sedate unsuspecting booksellers, but a thief as well. “And you thought he had it?”

“I’m sure of it.” He neatly sucks down an oyster. “These are excellent, by the way. Try one.”

After the drink, I don’t want to touch anything that’s been in seawater ever again. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Didn’t mean to.”

“So if you’re sure, why aren’t the police involved?”

“Because I don’t have hard proof.” Evans sits back in his chair, watching me almost curiously. “The painting in question is of a lesser-known Roman god, from an even lesser-known painter who completed only a few works in her lifetime. There were more valuable paintings in the collection, but this was the only item the thief or thieves took. The entire collection is insured with Grayson and Bell, and since insurers hate to actually pay claims, they put me on the trail. I was to first make certain it wasn’t a case of fraud, then to see if I could recover the painting for our client.”

“And your investigation took you to Hart’s Leap.”

“Indeed. I hoped to convince Mr. Hart to let me look at it, or at least to admit he had it in his possession so my employers could set the police on him. When you showed up, I wasn’t certain if you were a part of his ring of thieves, handling stolen books.”

I sit upright, bristling. “I would never!”

“That would be a lot easier to believe if the man who outbid you for the Key of Mithras hadn’t ended up dead and the book missing.”

“Dead? No. I wouldn’t…” Exhaustion hits me in a wave, and I put my head in my hands. “This all seems like a bad dream. I want to wake up now.”

Evans remains silent for a long moment, then sighs. “Listen…I’m a pretty good judge of people. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I think you’re telling the truth about the amnesia. So how about I help you and you help me?”

I let my hands fall. “What do you mean?”

“The company sent another investigator around to Hart’s Leap a few months after I was there. He found the place abandoned, then got attacked by some lunatic wandering around the marsh. Ended up in the hospital, and his attacker in the asylum in Danvers.”

Evans leans across the table and fixes me with his gaze. “I propose we go to Hart’s Leap and see if we can find anything to help my investigation and jostle your memory.” He pauses, considers, then adds, “Unless it would be better to go somewhere you’ve been more recently, in hopes those memories will be easier to recover. You were in New York City last week, at your apartment—as I said, you’ve led me on a merry chase. Returning there, making the rounds of the dealers you know on Book Row, might jog your memory as to what you’ve done with the Key of Mithras. Your choice.”

A part of me longs to return to my apartment and my familiar haunts in New York. But the last place I definitely remember being is Hart’s Leap, and I can’t shake the feeling I might find answers there.