When she closed her hand around the sword, she felt as if she was connected to it, as if it was part of her, as if she could pull it out of the case again.

She played the memory slowly, feeling the solid weight of the sword. Slowly, unable to stop herself from attempting the task even though she knew it was going to disrupt the memory, she withdrew the sword from the case.

It came, perfectly balanced for her grip.

"What the hell are you doing, lady?"

Annja's eyes snapped open. In disbelief, she saw the sword in her hand, stretched across the back of the taxi. It obstructed the driver's view through the back window. He looked terrified.

She was holding the sword!

Chapter 19

CURSING LOUDLY, THE taxi driver cut across two lanes on Broadway. Thankfully traffic was light at the early-morning hour, but horns still blared in protest. His tires hit the curb in front of a closed electronics store.

Still under full steam, the driver leaped out of the taxi. He reached under the seat for an L-shaped tire tool that looked as if it could have been used on the kill floor in a slaughterhouse.

He jerked Annja's door open. "You!" he snarled, gesturing with the tire tool. "You get outta my cab!"

He was thin and anemic looking, with wild red hair tied back in a bun, wearing an ill-fitting green bowling shirt and khaki pants. He waved the tire tool menacingly.

For the moment, though, Annja ignored him. Somewhere during the confusion, the sword had disappeared. But it was here, she thought. I saw it. I felt it. It was here.

"C'mon!" the driver yelled. "Get outta there! What the hell do you think you were doin' waving that sword around like that? Like I wasn't gonna notice a sword!"

Dazed, Annja got out of the taxi. "You saw the sword?"

"Sure, I did!" the driver shouted. "Six feet long if it was an inch! And it – " He stopped suddenly. In disbelief, he stared at Annja, who stood there with her backpack slung over her shoulder. Then he motioned her away from the taxi. "Back up. Get outta there already."

Annja complied.

The driver's antics had drawn a small crowd.

The cabbie looked all over the back seat of the taxi. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and peered under the car. He even dragged his hands through the shadows as if doubting what his eyes revealed.

He clambered back to his feet. "All right," he demanded, "what did you do with it?"

"Nothing," Annja replied.

"You had a sword back there, lady. Biggest pig sticker I ever seen outside of Braveheart." The taxi driver glared at her.

"I don't have a sword," Annja said.

"I saw what I saw, lady."

Realizing the futility of the argument, Annja dropped twenty dollars on the seat, then turned and left, walking out into the street and hailing another cab immediately. She rode home quietly, trying not to think of anything, but wondering about everything.

To the casual observer, Annja's neighborhood was rundown. She liked to think of it as lived-in, a piece of Brooklyn history.

Sandwiched amid the tall apartment buildings, the delis, the shops, the pizza parlors and the small grocery stores, her building was one of the oldest. Only four floors high, the top two floors were divided into lofts instead of apartments. An artist, a photographer, a sculptor and a yoga instructor lived there.

The ground floor was occupied by shops, including a small gallery that showcased local artists. A violin maker, a dentist, a private investigator, a fortune-teller and music teachers occupied offices on the second floor.

A freight elevator ran up all four stories, but Annja didn't take it. The residents had a tacit understanding that no one used the elevator at night because of the terrible noise it made. Annja had also found that she could generally just about pace the elevator as it rose.

She took the stairs in the dimly lit stairwell. In the years that she'd lived there, she'd never had any trouble. Vagrants and thieves tended to stay away from the building because so many people lived above the shops and kept watch.

Her door was plain, scarred wood under a thick varnish coat, marked only by the designation 4A. She liked to think of it as 4-Annja, and that was how she'd felt when she'd first seen the loft space.

She worked through the five locks securing the door, then went inside.

A feeling of safety like she'd never known descended upon her as soon as she closed the door. For a moment, she stood with her back to the door, as if she could hold out the rest of the world.

As far back as she could remember, she had shared her space. Though she'd been so young when her parents were killed that she couldn't really remember living with them. In the orphanage, there had been bunk beds stacked everywhere, and nuns constantly moving among them. Privacy had been nonexistent. As she'd grown older, her roommates had dropped down to four, but there was still no privacy.

In college, she'd shared a dorm room the first year, then settled into an apartment off campus with a revolving cast of roommates until graduation because none of them could afford to live on their own. The first few years after she'd graduated had been much the same. Only she'd been on digs – sharing campsites – ten months out of the year.

But then she'd sold her first book, a personal narrative detailing her experiences excavating a battlefield north of Hadrian's Wall in Britain. The rumor was that the legendary King Arthur had fought there. At least, the man the stories had been built on was believed to have fought there.

Professor Heinlein hadn't found any trace of King Arthur or his Knights of the Round Table, but he had discovered the murders of a band of Roman soldiers. In the official records, the unit had been lost while on maneuvers. From the evidence Annja had helped to unearth, the commander of the Roman centurions had killed them because they'd discovered his dealings with the Picts.

It appeared that the Roman commander had managed quite a thriving business in black market goods. Most wars inevitably produced such a trade, and there were always men ready to make a profit from it.

During the dig, though, Annja and the others reconstructed what had happened. The intrigue – digging for bones, then going through fragments of old Roman documents to re-create the circumstances – had captured her attention. Everyone on the dig team had been excited by what they were finding and by the murders.

She'd kept a journal simply to keep track of everything they were figuring out, detailing the dig with interconnected pieces on what must have happened during that action all those years ago, interspersing colorful bits of history and infusing the story with life. A British journalist had taken an interest in her writing, and read everything she'd written. He'd made a lot of suggestions and pointed out the possibility of a book.

Annja had worked on the journal, with an eye toward possible publication, at the site and when she'd returned to New York. Two years later, after the manuscript had found a publisher and come out as a book, it was enough of a success to allow Annja to make the down payment on the loft. Reviewers had said she'd made archaeology appealing for the masses and kicked in a bit of a murder mystery on the side.

After that, she'd continued getting dig site offers because the book served as a great introductory letter and résumé. She'd also made some appearances on the late-night talk-show circuit and had a chance to show that she was good in front of a camera.

She became a favorite of David Letterman, who worked hard to keep her off balance and flirt with her at the same time. Her minor celebrity status eventually landed her on Chasing History's Monsters.