The Immortal Emperor Returns to Work the Museum Night Shift novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Night Guard
Lucy catches the new night guard wearing the museum's 1,700-year-old crown in the dark, takes his pulse at forty beats a minute, tells him to sit, and renames him Sam.
The new night guard was wearing our crown when I caught him.
It was ten past two in the morning on a Tuesday in October, and I should have been home.
I was still at my desk in the Harcourt Museum, behind Gallery Four, typing catalogue entries with a cold cup of tea.
Then I heard the case.
It is a particular sound, the small suck of a seal letting go, and I have heard it maybe four times in nine years.
I took off my glasses, put them back on, and walked out into the dark gallery in my socks.
The only light came from the red exit sign over the far door.
Under it, on the bench in front of the empty case, a man sat with the Crown of Tessar on his head.
It is a ring of dark gold the width of two fingers, set with one red stone, with a dent in the left side.
It is seventeen hundred years old.
It is the most valuable object in the building, and I wrote the label.
"Take that off," I said.
My voice came out calmer than I felt.
The man did not jump.
He turned his head slowly toward me, and the red light slid over a shaved scalp and a short black beard.
He was big, over six feet, in a navy security blazer that was too small across the shoulders.
A clip-on tie hung crooked on his chest.
"Good evening, curator," he said.
His voice was deep and unhurried, and he said curator as if it were a title he respected.
"It's morning," I said. "Take it off. Now. Please."
"I am sorry to frighten you."
"I'm not frightened. I'm furious. That is a late-antique state regalia object, and it is..."
I stopped, because I was babbling, and he was not moving.
He did not look guilty.
He looked tired.
"The dent on the left," he said. "I did that."
"Excuse me?"
"I threw it at a minister of grain. He ducked."
I stared at him.
He lifted the crown off his head with both hands, carefully, the way you lift a sleeping child, and held it in his lap.
"The label says it was made around the year 340," he said. "It was made in 341, in the spring. I was twenty."
"You work nights," I said, stupidly.
"For six weeks."
"You're on the guard roster as S. Tessar."
I knew that badge.
I had passed him twice on his rounds and said good night, and he had said good night back.
I had never really looked at his face.
"That is the name on my forms," he said. "My first name was too long for the box."
I walked toward him, because that is what I do when something does not make sense.
I pull on loose threads.
I stopped a step from the bench, close enough to read the badge on his chest.
It said S. TESSAR in block capitals.
"That's the family name of the last emperor on the king list," I said.
"Sarevan Tessar. Yes."
"The list was copied off a tomb wall in the fifth century. He's a historical figure."
"He was also a boy who liked boiled eggs," the man said. "But I take your point."
I should have called security.
I know that.
I was standing in my socks in the dark with a man who had taken the museum's greatest treasure out of its case.
I was thirty-three, with a doctorate and a pension plan, and I did not call anyone.
Instead I reached out and took hold of his wrist.
I do not know why.
It was a thick wrist, warm, with dark hair along the back of the hand, and my fingers were small against it.
I found the pulse with two fingers, the way I learned in a first aid class before a dig in Crete.
I counted against my watch for fifteen seconds.
Ten beats.
I counted again, because I was sure I had it wrong.
Ten beats.
"That's forty a minute," I said.
"Yes."
"That's an athlete. Or a coma."
"It has been forty for a very long time."
His skin was hot under my fingers, and I did not let go.
He did not pull away.
He looked down at my hand around his wrist.
Something moved in his face that I could not name yet.
It was the look of a man being touched on purpose for the first time in a long while.
"Lucy Vreeland," he said slowly. "Associate Curator of the Tessarine Collection. Your name is on the door."
"You've read my door."
"I have read your door every night for six weeks. You are the only one who still has her light on."
I let go of his wrist.
I wanted to say something sharp.
What came out of my mouth instead was, "You can't be called Sarevan. It won't fit on a coffee cup."
He blinked.
"What would you call me?"
"Sam."
I had not planned it.
It was the first thing that came into my head.
I watched it land.
He sat very still on the bench with the crown in his lap.
For a moment I thought I had insulted him.
"Sam," he repeated.
"It's a plain name. People will answer to it at a bus stop."
"No one has given me a name," he said, "since my mother."
I did not know what to say to that.
The building ticked and settled around us.
Somewhere deep in the floors, the heating came on with a sigh.
I looked at the crown in his hands, and at the open case with its lid propped, and at the one thing I could do.
I was the curator.
It was my case and my crown, and he was my problem.
"Put it back," I said.
He rose, obediently, and went to the case.
He set the crown on its velvet with a care that made my throat tight, and he lowered the lid himself.
The seal clicked shut.
He turned around.
He was very tall, and he waited.
I had not realized how much I wanted that, a large man standing there waiting for me to decide.
"Sit," I said, and pointed at the bench.
He sat.
He sat at once, with his hands on his knees and his eyes on my face.
No man had ever done anything I told him that fast.
Something went through me, low and hot and entirely unprofessional.
"Say it again," he said quietly.
I did not ask what.
I knew.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend