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Mrs. Adamson navigated the steep stairs while clutching the railing as tightly as she could. She held the note, a fine linen stock inscribed with delicate spidery calligraphy, in her free hand and that was pressed to the swollen roundness of her belly. Underneath her fingers the baby kicked. Mrs. Adamson had to stop twice to let the baby and her nerves settle down.

She'd come to the museum against her better judgment. It was close to closing time and the entry fee took everything left in her wallet. This week, the loss of her husband and the constable's multiple inquiries, had left her befuddled and turned around. Seeing the note lent her a wisp of hope. Maybe it was the fine paper or the writing that gently reminded her of her mother's hand-penned notes often left in odd places that bolstered her spirits. The note soothed Mrs. Adamson's soul even as it called her to action. But for whatever reason it was the excuse she needed to escape the four walls of her home. And once outside she felt as she had a few days prior: as if the Ancient Kings had a purpose for her.

The holding basement was as she expected it: paintbrush and craft littered tables, scrubbed bare floors, and the various components of three large displays in the process of assembly. Because the note warned her not to, Mrs. Adamson did not call out. She stood beside the second set of stairs leading from the holding basement to the storage basement and waited. Quiet descended. Faint was the tick-tick of her wind up wristwatch. But in the silence she grew to lean on the sound, to accept it as a signal that all was

"Come." The one word, breathed across the back of her neck!

Mrs. Adamson jumped and spun around; tottering in her newly shaped unbalanced form. She fell against the wall and steadied herself in this position, breath bellowing her sides in and out. This time she didn't have to follow the warning of the note. She couldn't speak if she'd wanted to! She watched the man with her big startled eyes and waited for him to say more.

But he spoke not and they stared at each other for the longest of times. Mrs. Adamson noted his features as specifically as possible. She first took his hair to be silver from age, and then realized it wasn't silver or white but colorless. It simply didn't catch the light, but swallowed it in the same manner of onion-skin paper with hundreds of sheets stacked on-top of one another. Then there was the strange matter of the man's eyebrows: he had none! Nor did he have the pores

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