The Immortal Emperor Returns to Work the Museum Night Shift novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: The Roof
The Society's president wore a velvet jacket the color of old wine, and she bowed to Sam over the bread basket.
The dinner was Thursday at eight, in a private room above a steakhouse on Federal Hill.
There were eleven of them around the table, all in dark red or gold, with small crown pins on their lapels.
Every one of them looked at Sam.
He sat in his one good suit, which was the security blazer with the clip-on tie taken off, and he ate his fish.
"Your Majesty," said the president, "we have kept your robes."
"I am a night guard," Sam said.
"We have kept your seat."
"I start my shift at ten."
A man two chairs down put down his fork and bowed from the neck, and then the woman beside him did it too.
Sam looked at the tablecloth.
Under it, I put my hand on his knee, and I felt the muscle there turn to wire.
"Saturday the fourteenth," the president said warmly. "You will not need to say a word. Only receive it."
"Excuse us," I said.
I stood up and took Sam by the sleeve.
I walked him out past eleven bowing heads and down the back stairs into the cold.
We did not speak in the car.
We did not speak in the staff lot, or in the service corridor, or on the ladder.
I went up the iron rungs first, with my work shoes slipping, and he came up behind me and shut the roof hatch.
The loading dock roof is flat tar paper with a low brick wall around it and a rusted vent housing in the middle.
Past the wall the whole of downtown was lit, the towers and the bridges and the black river between.
It was thirty-eight degrees and the wind had teeth.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Immortal Emperor Returns to Work the Museum Night Shift are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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