Gunmetal Magic(48)

How do you go from Baby Rory to Ascanio? To think that one day I might have kids, and given that I was half-bouda they would probably turn out just like him. The mind boggled.

“It says here Jamar bought a toilet seat for fifty thousand dollars,” Ascanio said.

I looked on the screen. “It says it’s from Amarna, from the eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt.”

“It’s a toilet seat,” Ascanio said.

“It’s four thousand years old.”

He looked at me, incredulous. “Some ancient Egyptians sat on it and took a dump.”

“I assume so.”

“He paid fifty thousand dollars for a used toilet seat.”

“Maybe it was gold-plated,” I told him.

“No, it says here it’s made of limestone, so if you were to use it, you’d freeze your ass off when you sat on it.”

“It’s not cold in Egypt. It’s hot. Your grasp of geography is shaky, my friend.” I sat down at a terminal next to him and typed “Jamar Groves” into the search window.

“You could buy a car for fifty thousand dollars. A really nice car.” Ascanio’s eyes lit up. “A Hummer. You could buy a converted Hummer.”

“You don’t need a Hummer,” I said.

“Chicks dig the Hummer.”

“You don’t need any chicks either.”

He gave me an injured look. “I have needs.”

“I have needs too and right now I need you to concentrate on tracking down Jamar’s antique collection. Get to it.”



We’d been in the library for three hours when the magic hit, cutting our research short. We’d identified thirty-seven items. Considering that my list of the vault’s contents included only twenty-nine, that gave us at least eight artifacts for which we couldn’t account. A knife from Crete; two necklaces from the Etruscan civilization, which was apparently some sort of pre-Roman culture in Italy; a cat-headed statue from the Kingdom of Kush; a bronze head of Sargon the Great, who was some sort of king in Akkadia; a spear from the same country; and two stone tablets with ancient Hebrew writings. None of those lit up with Christmas lights and sirens when we found them. Whether I liked it or not, it was time to quit and head home.

“That mechanic said he’d found the check from the woman he towed,” Ascanio said.

“Yes?” He was going to be my next stop.

“I can pick up that check for you,” Ascanio offered.

I eyed him. “Promise not to get yourself killed.”

“I promise.”

“And if there is any threat, you will run like a scared bunny.”

He nodded.

“Okay.” I gave him the money. “Do not kill, do not get killed, do not mess up. Go, faithful apprentice!”

He flashed me a grin and took off. Well, it would keep him out of trouble for a little while. Hopefully.

I stared at the now-dead computer terminal. Tonight Raphael and I would go to Anapa’s house.

If all went well, we wouldn’t kill each other.





CHAPTER 8




Raphael was on time. He was always on time. At seven, a small rock hit my bedroom window and bounced off the bars with a loud clink. I glanced through the glass. Raphael stood below, wearing a tuxedo.

Like we were kids going to the prom.

I swiped my oversized clutch off the bed and checked myself for the last time in the mirror. The evil dress was still stunning and badass. My blond hair floated around my head in a beautifully disarrayed cloud that had taken half an hour to arrange and coax into place. I’d tweezed my eyebrows into a perfect shape, applied a narrow line of eyeliner around my eyes to make them stand out, brushed a light dusting of bronze onto my eyelids, and finished off with a double coat of mascara. My lips were a shimmering, intense red, matching the ruby of the dragon’s eye.

I slipped a bracelet on my wrist: red garnets mixed with white sapphires. It was the only noncostume piece of jewelry I owned. My mother bought it for me when I graduated from the Order’s Academy. I always thought it brought me luck.

I checked my clutch to see if the outline of my Ruger SP101 showed through the black leather. Nope. All good. With the magic up it wouldn’t even fire, but it comforted me to have it with me. I didn’t bring a knife. I could count on Raphael having several.

For some reason, when a typical weresomething got into a fight, nature flipped a switch in its head that dictated it grow claws and fangs and rip things apart instead of shooting them from a distance or cutting them with knives like smart people do. I always thought it was to Raphael’s credit that he was the exception to this rule.

He was waiting. No more stalling. I was as hot as I was going to get.

I shrugged my shoulders and walked out of the apartment in my four-inch black heels. Click-click-click down the stairs and out the door.