Gunmetal Magic(57)

“How do you know?”

“The blade has never been sharpened.” He drew his finger along the knife’s curved edge. “See? No marks on the metal. Also the profile is wrong. It’s too curved to stab in a forward motion, but if I slashed with this, I couldn’t draw it through the wound all the way. It almost looks like a tourné knife.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a cooking knife for peeling. You remember, we have the set in our butcher block.”

He would have to stop saying “our” sometime. Pointing it out to him now would stop the flow of knife information, though, and I needed his expertise. I knew guns, but Raphael knew knives.

He kept going. “If it was sharpened and shorter, it might be a variation of a karambit, a curved knife from the Philippines. Shaped like a tiger’s claw. I never really saw much use in it—too small and my own claws are bigger. Where was this found, did you say?”

“Crete.”

Raphael frowned. “Cretan knives and swords were typically narrow and tapered, like the Greek kopis.” He turned the picture. Turned it again. “Hmm.”

“What?”

He lifted the picture with the knife pointing down. “Pickaxe. That’s what it reminds me of. The only way to get the maximum effect of this blade is to stab someone with it straight down.” He raised her fist and made a hammering motion. “Like with an ice pick.”

“Like if someone was tied down and you stabbed them in the heart?”

“Possibly. And Anapa killed four people for that?” Raphael’s voice dripped with derision and rage.

“We don’t know that.” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice. “All we know is that Anapa knew about the knife and it’s important. We don’t know why.” And there was no convenient description of it either. A little card listing its name and special powers would’ve been nice. “It’s a place to start looking.”

I flipped to the end of the book. More artifacts. Nothing else I recognized. The knife had to be the key.

“You matter to me,” Raphael said. “You always did, and not because you were a knight or a shapeshifter.”

Suddenly the game wasn’t funny anymore. “I mattered so much that rather than waiting for me to get my shit together, you found another woman. Let’s be honest, Raphael, get a blowup doll, put a blond wig on her, and she and I would matter about the same to you. Hell, the blowup doll might be better. She won’t talk.” Christ, I sounded bitter.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” he said. “I love you.”

It hurt. You’d think I’d be numb by now.

“Too late. You are about to be engaged.”

“Rebecca doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Raphael, she’s a living, breathing woman. Someone you felt strongly about. Of course, she matters.”

“Rebecca isn’t my fiancée.”

I froze. “Come again?”

“I said, Rebecca is not my fiancée,” he repeated.

“What do you mean, she isn’t ‘my fiancée’? I mean, your fiancée.”

Raphael shrugged. “She’s some gold digger I picked up at a business engagement. Someone must’ve pointed me out to her as a good catch, so she attached herself to me. My mother has been getting on my last nerve with her machinations, and since I had to go to the Bouda House for a barbecue, I took Rebecca there. After she told Mom that it was very exciting that we all turned into wolves, I explained to my mother that if she didn’t lay off me, someone like Rebecca would be my next mate. Rebecca must’ve overheard me.”

This was not happening.

“You left me,” Raphael said. “No explanation. We had a fight, then we all went to battle Erra, and after she set all of us on fire you disappeared. I thought you were dead. I went to every hospital. I sat in waiting rooms. Every time they would bring in a new charred body, I’d stop breathing because I thought it might be you under all that crusted meat. And what do I get after all that? A note in the mail. Five days later. Five fucking days later, Andrea! ‘Don’t look for me, I have to do something for the Order, I will be back soon.’ A fucking note. No explanation, nothing. You dismissed me from your life and went on your crusade. Now, weeks later, you suddenly decide to call me, like I’m just some mutt who will always be waiting for you.”

I opened my mouth.

“I brought her because I wanted you to know what it felt like. You go through life so hung up on helping people you barely know that you hurt people who actually give a damn. You want the truth about Rebecca? Fine. I barely know her. She was a means to an end. I haven’t even slept with her. I thought about it.”