“Which also means others might appear at any moment.” Devon glanced over her shoulder as if expecting a sudden influx of ornithologists bearing lockpicks, pistols, and emergency marriage certificates for use upon discovering a bachelor and spinster alone together. Beth’s nerves ruffled all over again. Really, this encounter was going to drive her to drink, and she did not think there was enough tea in all of Paris for the purpose.
“I suggest a compromise,” she said. “I will search for the call, and you will stand guard, and once I’ve found it we will leave quietly so as to not draw attention to ourselves. What say you?”
“I say you need a better dictionary,” Devon replied, grinning. He looked over her shoulder again; glancing back, Beth thought she saw a darkness move between shelves, but she blinked and it was gone. “I’m being paranoid,” Devon murmured, shaking his head. “How about I look for the call, you do the same, and may the best birder win?”
“And when I win?” she asked cautiously.
“When I win, we’ll agree to disagree, and depart without further argument.”
“Very well.” She turned toward the cabinet—only to discover she and Devon were still holding hands. He realized at the same moment and released her just as she was pulling away. She rubbed her hand against her waist. Devon shoved his through his hair. Stepping apart, they set to opening cabinet drawers.
“I admit I’m a little daunted, competing with Britain’s youngest-ever professor,” Devon said as they worked.
Beth glanced at him sidelong. Was he mocking her? Or had that been a note of sincerity in his voice? If he’d whistled a birdsong, she’d have been able to interpret it at once, but her ability with human conversation was mediocre at best, and this one certainly had her floundering. She decided to retreat, as usual, behind niceness.
“I’m daunted myself,” she said, “competing with an academic wunderkind.”
“That’s merely a rumor started by my thesis examination panel because they wanted to get away early for a fishing trip.”
Beth stared at him with astonishment. “Really?”
He just grinned in reply, his dark eyes glimmering. Instantly, Beth’s aggravation discarded niceness and leaped once more into the breach, swinging its fists wildly and suggesting she close the wall up with a dead professor. Turning away, she rummaged through the birdcalls, not even seeing them.
For a while, Devon searched quietly alongside. But all too soon they were elbowing each other…leaning past each other to grab at something that looked like a possibility…humphing and tsking and smacking at hands…completely missing the caladrius call lying among several other antique whistles…then seeing it finally and both snatching at it with such urgency they knocked it clear off the tray. It flew past them, fell to the floor, and rolled through a gap between two shelving units.
“Now look what you’ve done!” they said simultaneously.
“It wasn’t my fault!” they replied in chorus.
And shoving at each other, they squeezed their way through the gap to crouch in the dark narrow space behind, groping around the floor for the little wooden call. Thighs pressed against each other; shoulders rubbed; etiquette rules exploded left, right, and center. Finally, Beth’s fingers stumbled upon the call, and she clutched it in triumph.
Unfortunately, Devon did the same.
“Let go!” she hissed at him.
“You first!” he hissed back.
“How dare—”
“Shut up.”
Beth gasped in genuine shock. “I beg your pardon!”
He relinquished the call, but only so as to slap his hand over her mouth. Beth’s heart leaped with what was almost certainly alarm and not delighted excitement.
“Shh!” he whispered. “I heard something.”
Beth nodded. Devon moved his hand away, and together they shifted apart two boxes on the shelf at eye level so they could peer through to the passageway beyond.
Tap-tap.
Beth slapped her own hand over her mouth. A bird was tiptoeing delicately over the dusty floor—a dull brown bird, not much bigger than a magpie, with dainty legs and a small black beak. Vanellus carnivorus, her brain automatically recited.
Rabid flesh-eating lapwing.
It was the most vicious, deadly little bird this side of the Mediterranean. With scant effort it could bring down a grown man and the horse beneath him, and the servants attending him, and their horses too. Almost its entire population had been exterminated, leaving only two specimens in the highest-security aviaries.
And one in this basement.
Suddenly, Beth could not breathe. This was not due to her hand over her mouth; rather, she simply could not remember the process of inhaling air. The lapwing’s claws tapped gently against the floorboards, providing an eerily calm counterpoint to her crashing heartbeat. She and Devon were sitting ducks, with no easy way of escape. As it passed where they crouched behind the shelf, there came a tiny click of fang against beak, and the warm vanilla scent the bird used to attract prey. Instinct urged Beth to follow that scent, to tuck herself into coziness beneath the lapwing’s soft wing. Intelligence managed to restrain her, however, and the lapwing continued farther down the passageway, its lure diminishing as it went. Beth and Devon glanced at each other, exhaling with relief—
The lapwing froze.
It cocked its head.
“Damn!” Devon swore. Grabbing Beth’s arm, he hauled her up with him and pushed her toward the gap in the shelving. “Run!”
Beth did not need telling, but this was probably not the time to complain about it. She squeezed through the narrow space, hoisted her skirts, and without daring to look back began to run. The lapwing clacked its fangs and beat its wings excitedly. Tap-tap-tap went its claws against the floor, just as they would against her bones.
“Faster!” Devon urged from behind her. Beth refrained from explaining that attempting to outrace certain death while dressed in four pounds of embroidered cotton and lace, a whalebone corset, a linen coat, and several layers of undergarments, not to mention her hat, was no easy task. She kicked aside document boxes that had been stored haphazardly on the floor. Devon pulled old field journals from shelves, flinging them over his shoulder as he ran. The lapwing chattered with delight.
Coming to the chamber door, Beth pushed it open and they rushed through, the lapwing nipping at their heels so closely, they could not shut the door on it. With the deadly scent of warm milk on a stormy night swirling around her, Beth lifted her skirts even higher, so that Devon might have seen the entirety of her calves had he been so inclined, and sprinted down a dim corridor. Ascending a flight of stairs that led to a chamber displaying various taxidermied land birds, they found a museum curator singing to himself about nocturnal city adventures as he dusted a Struthio disco, or flat-beaked ostrich.
“There’s a rabid lapwing in the building!” Devon shouted at him. “Evacuate everyone!”
Squeaking in alarm, the curator tossed his duster wildly and fled.
Snap! The lapwing caught the duster in its fanged beak. Feathers and wood splinters exploded everywhere. Devon knocked down the taxidermied ostrich, to little effect: the lapwing tunneled through it in seconds, emerging in a cloud of sawdust. It shook its head and chattered as if it was having marvelous fun and slaughtering them would be the icing on the cake.
