Oliver shivered as a gust of cold air blew down the mountainside, carrying with it the chill of the snowcapped peaks far above. He pulled the gray cloak more tightly around himself and cursed his foolishness for not dressing more warmly. He glanced about him, checking his progress up the mountainside as best he could through the smattering of thickly branched pine trees that grew up the mountainside. Down below, the lights of the farms and villages glinted against the dark plane of the river valley, while the rippling ribbon of the Lech River glowed a pale white with reflected moonlight as it wound through the fields and poured out its brightness into the black expanse of Lake Forggensee. Up above, the stars were blacked out by the ridge of the mountain, but their absence only highlighted the gleaming lights of Neuschwanstein castle, sparking against the black shadow of the mountainside. 

“I hope this is worth it,” Oliver muttered, tucking his gloved hands under the folds of the cloak as he continued to climb upward through the band of trees that lined the side of the road leading to the castle gates.

After agreeing to help Odin, the old man had pulled off his cloak, revealing a thick layer of padded and cross-stitched leather armor beneath it, and handed it to Oliver. “This will hide you from all but the most prying eyes,” he had said.

“A magic cloak?” Oliver asked, eyebrows arching skeptically.

“After a fashion. It won’t hide you completely, and cameras will still capture your image, but the gaze of most observers will slip past you. So, cover up that red hair of yours, make sure the cowl keeps your face in shadow, and move quickly. ”

“What do I need this for anyway?”

Odin gave Oliver an exasperated look and shook his head, as if Oliver alone were responsible for his lack of faith in the entire human race. “You need to steal something, don’t you?”

“No,” Oliver said, automatically. 

Odin glared at him.

“How did you know?”

Up in the rafters the raven named Munin squawked angrily and dropped a chicken bone, picked bare and pocked with beak marks, to clatter across the table between the two men. 

“You were on the right path, Oliver. That’s precisely why I have chosen you to aid me. Go back to the castle and use my cloak to help you secure the Wagner folio. I’ll need it back though, so don’t get too used to having it.”

After accepting the cloak from Odin, Oliver had blinked and found himself seated at the table in his hotel room, still holding the gray cloak. The scent of unwashed bodies, smoke, and spilled mead lingered in his senses for a moment, before dissipating into the familiar hotel odor of industrial cleaning fluids and air freshener.

He spent the next twenty four hours desperately trying to gather information and, later, supplies. He had called the historical institute at Neuschwanstein a dozen times, using four different anonymous SIM chips to mask his identity, only to be rebuffed each time by the iron walls of bureaucracy. He had tried to contact Evelyn Marby to see if her lawyer could arrange a more legal method of examining the portfolio, but the one time his calls were actually answered her brother firmly instructed Oliver to never contact her again. His frustrations were compounded by Amber continuing to ignore his messages. Not that any of these problems surprised him. None of the fake names he gave to the operators at Neuschwanstein carried any weight in academia, he was indirectly responsible for Evelyn’s severe injury, and it wasn’t uncommon for Amber and him to go days without speaking, though she usually monitored their private Twitter link carefully for any sign of trouble. Finally, he did catch a break in the form of a talkative personal assistant, who mistook Oliver for the secretary of a particularly insistent donor. Through that conversation, Oliver learned that there would be a costume party the next night for donors who had funded the rental, purchase, and transport of various artifacts. 

The perfect opportunity for an unscheduled visit, Oliver thought.

And that was how Oliver found himself on this mountainside, wrapped in an old grey cloak, hoping that he was not mad for attempting such an audacious raid. It wasn’t the first time Oliver had attempted to sneak into a site to gain access to documents or steal a relic, but it was certainly the first time that his plan had hinged on the efficacy of an ancient magical cloak, rather than a carefully forged identity or an unsecured entrance.

He continued to hike up the steep mountainside, moving slowly so that he did not trip over any unseen obstacles in his path. He had a flashlight in his coat pocket, but he left it there, not wanting to attract any attention from guards at the castle. As he approached the point where the trees thinned out around the castle foundations, Oliver heard the sound of an approaching car and ducked deeper into the woods to watch as a large black sedan eased by, headlights cutting through the darkness to reveal the ascending curve of the road leading up to the castle gates. He followed the car with his eyes, watching as it paused outside the high oak gate of the castle to disgorge a man and a women dressed in expensively impractical evening attire, then continued on to disappear around the rear of the castle. 

“That might do it,” he muttered. If there was a service door around the back of the castle, he might be able to slip in and make his way into the administrative wing unobserved. From there he hoped to find evidence of where the folio was kept.

He hurriedly crossed the road and darted up the rocky incline, pulling himself up by tree branches where he was able, scrabbling on hands and knees across the bare rock when necessary, until he reached the wall of white stone rimming the castle parking lot. Peeking over the top of the wall, he saw twenty or more cars, mostly expensive sedans in stark shades of polished black and pearly white. Chauffeurs, some dressed simply in warm woolen coats, others decked out in ornate costumes complete with gold braid and peaked caps, congregated under a buzzing halogen lamp, smoking cigarettes and carrying on an animated conversation in German. Beneath the light a small iron door was set into the white stone of the castle wall. 

Oliver checked that the cloak was pulled over his shoulder and that the hood was drooping low around his face, then pulled himself over the wall. He paused then, waiting for any of the chauffeurs to notice him and call out or raise an alarm, but they continued their conversation uninterrupted. Oliver waited for a few moments, listening as they debated the performance of several footballers in last weekend’s game, until one of the chauffeurs stubbed out his cigarette against the wall beside the door and said, “Screw this cold. I’m going to the kitchen for a coffee. Anyone else?”

All but two of the other nodded, dropped their cigarettes to the tar, and ground them out under their boots. The one who had suggested the drink pulled at the handle of the iron door, opening it to reveal a dimly lit corridor that tunneled into the foundations of the castle. He slipped through the doorway, followed by most of the other chauffeurs. Two of them, a short man in a grey coat and a tall woman in padded brown leather, remained outside. As the door closed behind the others the man muttered something to the woman, who laughed and nodded before pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket and offering him one. 

Oliver smiled to himself. That was his way in. He skirted around the pool of light cast by the halogen lamp, staying in the shadows behind the cars whenever he could so that his cloaked form would not be silhouetted against the moonlit valley below. He crouched beside the wheel well of a pearl white Mercedes and listened as the pair by the door continued to smoke and chat, their conversation turning from footballers to speculation as to whether their respective employers were carrying on an affair, or simply putting together a covert business merger. 

Finally, just as Oliver’s legs began to protest from squatting in one position for so long, the woman sent her cigarette spiraling off into the night and announced that she was ready for something warm herself. The man nodded agreement and they both turned to enter the castle. 

As soon as they both disappeared through the doorway, Oliver sprinted out from behind the car to catch the door handle before it swung shut. He levered the door slowly open and saw the backs of the chauffeurs retreating down the hallway. He pulled the door open and slipped inside, allowing the heavy iron door shut to ease shut behind him on its pneumatic hinge.

It was at that exact moment that his phone pinged with the sound of an incoming message.

“What was that?” the woman demanded, spinning around and peering back down the hall. 

Oliver froze. Every instinct screamed at him to run back out the door and lose them in the forest, but he forced himself to remain still, half pressed against the wall of the hallway. He moved his left hand slowly towards the pocket containing his phone, hoping that it would not ping again, while silently cursing himself for not setting the phone to vibrate. Silencing his phone was not generally a priority when sneaking into ancient temples, where caution was more a matter of avoiding traps and spotting the occasional supernatural guards before they noticed you, rather than avoiding the notice of other people. Clearly, though, the cloak was having some effect.

“What?” the man asked, pausing and glancing back at the woman.

“I thought I heard a phone.”

“You sure it wasn’t your own?”

The woman shot him a withering look. “I’m not an idiot, Karl. I know what my own phone sounds like.”

“The hall is empty, Bridgett,” Karl said, waving back towards where Oliver stood. 

Oliver snapped the silence switch on his phone just in time, as he felt the phone buzz four times in quick succession.

“No. I think I see...” Bridget began.

Karl interrupted her, “Maybe it’s like when you feel your phone vibrate, but when you pull it out of your pocket it was just a muscle spasm. You told me about that happening just last month.”

Bridget shook her head and blinked as if to clear her eyes, then turned back and continued striding down the hallway, shoving Karl out of her way and spitting an indistinct insult at him as she moved past. 

Oliver waited until they turned a corner in the hallway, then hurried forward, pausing at the corner. To the left he heard the sound of loud voices and smelled fresh coffee. To the right he saw a series of narrow doorways, labeled with black and gold tags indicating changing rooms for men and women. He strode to the door of the men’s changing room, pushed it open, and found himself in a long, narrow room lined with battered red lockers. A bulletin board hung on the wall beside the door, filled with birthday cards, sale fliers, and reminders from castle management. A second door stood half open at the far end, revealing the dark interior of an unoccupied bathroom.

“That was too close,” Oliver breathed. He was still struggling to assimilate the fact that the chauffeurs had stared directly at him and not noticed that he was standing in the hall. He had seen a hundred truly amazing, seemingly impossible things in his lifetime, but this was a first.

He stepped into the small bathroom, flicked the light on, and pulled the door shut behind him, then leaned against the wall and pulled his phone from beneath his robes. A string of messages glowed across the lock screen.

Amber: Sorry I’ve been out of touch. Big news here.

Amber: You’re going to be an uncle.

Amber: So don’t do anything too stupid. 

“Oh, just perfect,” Oliver muttered, shaking his head in bemusement. He unlocked his phone and tapped out a quick reply.

Great timing cousin. Your warning almost got me killed. Congratulations on the kid. And thanks.

He pressed send and looked up from the phone to inspect himself in the round mirror over the grimy porcelain sink. There didn’t appear to be anything unusual about the grey cloak in which he was wrapped. No shimmering, magical auras. No oily blackness. No vaguely distorted vision of the wall behind him visible through the folds of the cloak. He was simply a thirty-eight year old man in a gray cloak, face silhouetted in the campfire horror story glow of a smartphone held at chest level. 

“How the hell did they not see me?” Oliver wondered aloud. 

He shook his head in wonderment and looked back down at his phone to pull up a floor plan of Neuschwanstein castle, which he had found on a website run by a fan of the Disneyland castle. Recognizing the link between the two palaces, the fan had pieced together extensive information about the history and design of Neuschwanstein. The simple vector illustrations revealed little detail beyond the publicly accessible rooms which Oliver had already visited on his tour the day before, but they were better than nothing, and certainly an improvement over the information available on the castle’s official website. He spent several minutes memorizing the layout of the galleries, courtyards, and connecting balconies, attempting to guess at the location of the director’s office from the blank places on the map. Unfortunately, neither the fan made maps nor the official maps of the castle revealed any information about the layout of the castle’s basement or first floor levels, as they were completely closed off to the public, and had been for decades. 

A message from Amber arrived while he was perusing the maps: How stupid?

He grinned, double checked that they were communicating via the encrypted Twitter link, and replied: Crashing a party of the German elite to steal an artifact for a defunct god.

He heard the outer doorway of the locker room open with a squeak and bang as Amber’s reply came: So, a normal day then. Be careful. Still waiting on Hank to get me his data.  

The doorknob rattled and Oliver heard a muttered German expletive, followed by a male voice saying, “Franz, if that’s you in there again, I’m going to tell Marta you’re slacking. We all know you dodge prep work by taking extra bathroom breaks just when...” 

Oliver didn’t let him finish. He twisted the handle and slammed the bathroom door into the face of the man outside. The man gave a brief cry of surprise, cut off with a painful exhalation as Oliver’s fist hammered into his belly, doubling him over. A second blow to the stomach, followed with a sharp twist to the nerves at the base of the man’s neck sent him to the floor, twitching and barely conscious. 

From his dress, Oliver guessed the man to be a waiter, which was exactly what he had been hoping for. He pulled the man’s limp body into the bathroom and quickly shut the door behind them. A quick check of the waiter’s pockets revealed a pack of cigarettes, a key, a cheap plastic lighter, a small smart phone, and a wallet with several credit cards, fifteen euros in cash, and several membership and identity cards.

Oliver pinned the man against the wall beside the toilet and pressed the thumb of his right hand into the hollow of his throat as he flipped through the wallet with his left hand. He held up the German driver’s license, glanced at the name, and looked the terrified man in the eye and spoke in his best German, “Good evening, Sylvester. I am going to assume that you are willing to answer a few questions for me. Am I correct?”

Oliver increased the pressure from his thumb ever so slightly and the waiter named Sylvester nodded frantically. 

“Good. Now, do you know where the director’s office is?”

Sylvester nodded.

“That is good for you, very good,” Oliver said. He lessened the pressure on Sylvester’s throat ever so slightly and continued, “Do you know anything about this new acquisition, the Wagner folio?”

The man named Sylvester swallowed, eyes darting around the cramped bathroom, then croaked out, “Just that the director is excited to have acquired it. She has been pushing all the curation staff work overtime so they can reorganize the new exhibit around it.”

“I see. And what about right now? Do you know where the folio is now?”

“In Singers’ Hall, on the fourth floor. That is where the exhibit will be when it opens next week.”

“Is it guarded?”

Sylvester’s eyes widened and he looked into the shadowy depth’s of Oliver’s cowl in visible surprise. He shook his head and said, “No way. You are not thinking of...”

Oliver tightened his grip on the waiter’s throat and leaned forward so Sylvester could see the glint of his eyes, then said, “I am asking the questions, Sylvester. Now tell me what you know about the security around here or I will crush your windpipe.”

He waited until Sylvester attempted to speak, and failed, before loosening his grip. The waiter coughed and dragged down a deep breath before saying, “I do not know anything about the security systems. I am just a waiter. I work in the café. I serve at special events.”

“And the folio?” Oliver demanded, determined to extract whatever information he could from this man.

“It is at the far end of the Singers’ hall from the staircase. I saw it while delivering food. They have it on a big table, with a preservationist standing by to turn pages so the donors can examine it through a big magnifying glass.”

“How many people are up there?”

“The chefs were told to prepare food for two hundred.”

Oliver muttered a curse and threw the waiter’s license into the sink. While it was an unexpected advantage that the folio was being kept out in the open, without even a glass case covering it, it was going to be next to impossible for him to steal it from a room filled with two hundred partygoers. The thought back to his encounter with the chauffeurs in the hallway. The man had not even noticed him, but the woman who had heard his phone had thought she saw something before she changed her mind and turned away. Whatever its powers, the robe that Odin had given to Oliver certainly did conceal him from view, but it seemed to grow ineffective under direct and intentional scrutiny. 

“What about guards? Are there any bodyguards or armed security up there?”

Sylvester nodded.

“How many?”

The waiter shrugged. “Many donors brought bodyguards. They patrol the perimeter of the party, keeping an eye on their bosses.”

Oliver nodded, the outlines of a plan beginning to come together in his mind. It would be dangerous, but he had to capture the folio soon, before Sylvester was found and raised the alarm or, God forbid, the cloaked man from the Marby home came here and stole the folio himself. 

He held up Sylvester’s phone and said, “Unlock this. Do not even think of calling for help.”

Sylvester hesitantly raised a hand and tapped out his unlock code. 

“Now set an alarm for nine in the morning.”

Eyes filled with uncertainty and fear, the man complied with Oliver’s instructions. 

“Good. Now here’s how this is going to work. I am going to tie you to this toilet. If you make a fuss, even after all your work friends come back in here, I promise that I will hunt you down and kill you.” He glanced down at the license again, then tightened his grip on the waiter’s throat before saying, “Do you understand what I am saying, Mister Sylvester Schuler of Ritterstraße in Füssen?”

The waiter’s eyes widened and he nodded as forcefully as he could with Oliver’s hand around his neck.

“Good. Your alarm will sound at nine in the morning. When it does, feel free to do whatever you want to escape, but until then I do not want to hear a word. Clear?

He nodded again. 

Oliver rammed a knee into Sylvester’s stomach and once again squeezed sharply at the pressure point in his neck. The man sagged against Oliver’s restraining hand, twitched twice, then went limp again. He pulled off the waiter’s shirts, then used his undershirt to gag him tightly. He propped Sylvester up against the toilet and used his outer shirt and belt to secure his hands and legs around behind the bowl. That completed, Oliver slipped out of the bathroom and locked the door shut behind him. He pulled black marker out of his jacket pocket, stole a flier from the board, and scrawled, “Bad geschlossen. Es ist Franz Schuld.” across the back of it, then stuck it into the door frame.

“That ought to keep him out of my way for a few hours,” Oliver mutter to himself. “Now to get up there without being spotted.”

Oliver pushed the locker room door open and peered down the corridor in both directions, then darted out into the hall and turned left, away from the enticing scents wafting down the passage from the kitchen and towards a doorway that he hoped would open onto a staircase leading up. The door opened to reveal a tight spiral staircase of rugged iron, illuminated in crisscrossing slats of bright light and deep shadows cast by red lamps bolted to the stone wall every two revolutions of the staircase. Oliver climbed the stairs quickly, knowing that if anyone entered the staircase he would certainly be found. The robe might hide him from view, but he was certain that anyone pushing past would still feel the rough woolen fibers and the bulk of his body. He passed the second floor landing, a tight closet space with no light shining from under the door, and continued upward, towards the third floor of the castle. As he approached the top of the staircase, Oliver began to hear a thumping beat resonating through the iron rails and echoing down the staircase.

The staircase twisted up through a passage cut into stone and Oliver stepped up into a small alcove with a white stone floor and walls paneled in rich, brown mahogany panels. An iron railing surrounded the hole from which Oliver had emerged and a line of multicolored light shone into the tight space from under a door. The music was louder here, but still muted from its passage through the heavy door of solid hardwood. Oliver stepped up to the door, twisted the handle, and pushed it forward just enough to peek out into the room.

Next Chapter: Life of the Party