The amulets arrive.

“So this is the big gift?” Rebecca bent over the table, eying the cart as a guard wheeled it into the preservation room. “I was hoping it was something bigger.”

“Historical impact isn’t always determined by size.” Angela directed the cart toward the table. “Not every critical anthropological discovery is a sarcophagus or statue.”

Michelle sighed. “Just as well. We don’t need some dead Pharaoh or angry golem running around campus.”

“A…what?”

Michelle gave her a smirk, but a wry one, without malice. “Right, you’re still new in town. Let’s just say you get used to a little weirdness around Gotham.”

“Thanks, Carl,” Rebecca nodded at the guard, who left the women alone with the cart. “Still, something big really gets the donors worked up. We get a statue or a bejeweled necklace, do all the research, present it as the showpiece of an exhibit in the Gotham Museum of Antiquities, and boom! Woodside College is back on the map.”

“We are on the map, Rebecca.”

“Sure, as a footnote. Hard for any women’s college to get press in this old boys’ club of a town.”

Angela cleared her throat. “Let’s get started, shall we? Mister Luthor has generously let us borrow these from his private collection, and I’d like to at least give him a preliminary assessment by morning.”

The other women nodded, and Angela lifted her sheet with perhaps more pomp than was strictly necessary. She opened the simple wooden box and revealed two bronze amulets, each about the size of her palm. Matching bronze chains lay against the black velvet interior, and dull amber gemstones glittered in the preservation room’s fluorescent light.

“Wow, I take it back. Pawn-store jewelry is definitely worth spending a weekend at work,” Rebecca deadpanned as she draped her coat over a chair.

“Hush,” Angela spat, letting a snippet of irritation slip out. “How about a professional opinion before any unnecessary commentary?”

“Fine, fine.” She peered at the amulets, careful to keep her breath far from the delicate artifacts. “Hmm…they look Greek.”

Angela’s fingers worked their way down her shirt buttons. “That checks out. Mister Luthor said they might have once been in the private collection of Markos Stratallis.”

“I have no idea who that is.”

“I do.” Michelle’s skirt hit the floor, and she stepped away from it to approach the table. With only her bra covering her from the waist up, bending over to get a closer look made her generous cleavage even more apparent. “Greek general, post-Caesar. Wealthy. Misogynist. Usually generous with gifts to his favorite peons. Ardent believer in the mystical.”

Angela stepped back, leaving her shoes behind. “Mystical? So this might be…”

“He certainly might have thought it had a magical effect.”

Rebecca shimmied her panties down her legs, gradually leaving herself totally naked. “So what kind of magic would be on something he wanted to keep in his private collection?”

Angela’s underwear dropped as well, and she stood in the preservation room, her place of work, without a stitch of clothing, much less safety equipment. “Perhaps he thought it would give him power over women, if he was as misogynistic as you say.”

Michelle’s breasts pressed against the cold metal table as she leaned on it. Her eyes never left the amulets, not even to notice her equally-nude coworkers, both of whom were just as intent as she on the box and its contents. “I have heard some rumors of magical tools in his possession that could work their way into the minds of women. Make them do things they didn’t want to do, or things they didn’t even know about. Some insidious spells that **** them to obey all sorts of depraved commands without even letting them know they were under control.”

“Ha! Good one!” Rebecca stretched, showing off her firm, smooth body to her fellow researchers. “I think we’d know if we were being controlled. But that’s a heck of a story for the exhibit. ‘Come see the mighty accessories of mind-slaving!’ If this doesn’t get those rich old men worked up, I don’t—”

An explosion drowned out her plot, blasting through one of the walls and knocking the women to their feet. In the dust and confusion, three pairs of boots tromped toward the table. Muffled voices said something alongside the ringing in Rebecca’s ears, and through hazy eyes she saw a strange woman in a mask grabbing the box. The attackers nodded at each other, and as they made their escape, one of them shrugged off a leather jacket and left it in the doorway behind her.

Rebecca coughed and groped around until she felt a chair, using it to hoist herself up. “Everybody okay?”

“Y-yeah.” Angela peeked over the table, and Michelle’s hand popped into view to give her a thumbs-up. “But the amulets! They stole them! What do we do?”

Rebecca sat in the chair and leaned back, still trying to clear out the cobwebs between her ears. “What everybody does in Gotham. Call the police, then wait for Batwoman and her crew to actually solve the problem.” Something hard pushed into her back, and she turned around to look at her discarded outfit, neatly laid right where she had left it. “Hey…whose clothes are these?”