“You aren’t supposed to know any of that, by the way,” Artemis added as he reached for another glass of champagne off a passing silver tray. “Probably be in quite a bit of trouble if the dragon and Naga ever find out.”
Oh for— I spun on Artemis. “Then why the hell are you telling me?”
He shrugged and swirled the second flute; he had one in each hand now. “Easy. You don’t think very well of me, and unless I start dressing and behaving like my cousin—which isn’t going to happen—that is unlikely to change. I do, however, have information, and that is something you like very much.”
The way he watched me and swirled the two drinks sent a chill down my spine. “Besides, Charity, it’s more interesting this way. Especially when I hand you back off to my cousin. I’m sure he’ll be in for an earful after this. I can feel the curiosity pouring off you—oh don’t give me that look. Your poker face needs a shocking amount of work.” After a pause, he added, “I’m also curious just how far I can push the rules right now. Consider it a thought experiment, so to speak.”
“Stop the incubus bullshit,” I said.
“Now why on earth would I do that when it’s so much fun?”
“Look, don’t you have anything better to do than heckle me? Don’t you have pretty young starlets and groupies to go chase?”
“So cynical for one so young. And as a matter of fact, I need a stronger drink. Wait here,” he said before disappearing into the crowd.
Finally. As soon as I was certain Artemis was out of sight, I beelined for the hall beneath the tapestry.
Shit. I stopped short of stumbling into a group of admirers surrounding none other than Daphne Sylph. Tonight her hair was a mix of bright red and blond dreadlocks that hung down to the middle of her back. A little alternative, but she managed to make it look high fashion. She was also dressed in a floor-length white silk dress—not that I’m a fan of white, but with that hair?
She stopped laughing and scanned the crowd, as if looking for someone. I ducked behind a taller couple before she saw me, but not before I got a good look at her face. Not a day over twenty.
“Do you want me to introduce you?” Artemis whispered in my ear.
I swore and jumped back out of reflex. “Could you not sneak up on me like that? And no, I don’t want to meet her. I like my body parts attached, thank you very much.”
Some thieves like to toss in a personal touch, like introducing themselves to their victims beforehand or leaving a note—something like that. Just to let people know they really cared who they were robbing. Not me. All the personal touch does is make it that much more personal for them to hunt you down.
I nodded towards Daphne. “In her case, the camera really doesn’t lie.”
Artemis shrugged. “I suppose, though it depends what you’re looking for. Trust me, she had her heyday a long time ago. Try Rome. I think Caligula’s court was her last big coup—”
“You just said you weren’t supposed to be telling me this!”
Artemis had replaced his champagne flutes with a tumbler of clear liquor, which he sipped. “No, but I’m bored. And that’s where her feud with Rynn came in, in case you were wondering. Something about Daphne changing the course of civilization, being found out—”
Caligula? That was two thousand years ago. I’d figured Rynn had been around for a couple hundred years on account of the incubus thing, but two thousand years?
Artemis swished his glass so the ice clinked the sides. “Think it was a colossal waste of his effort, to be honest.”
I pushed thoughts of Rynn’s age aside. Even if Artemis was telling the truth I could worry about how old Rynn was later. “Why? Because we’re too stupid to figure out a bunch of supernaturals are rounding us up like cattle?”
“Nice analogy, but for your information, no. Because you all would have been dead from lead poisoning long before we ever got around to altering history.”
I looked away. Artemis was an unsettling mix. Unlike most supernaturals I run into, he wasn’t trying to kill me, but that was more a circumstance of boredom and his deal with Rynn. Out of those two, I put boredom higher up on the list. Artemis was more likely to grab a good seat while Rome burned than he was to try and stop it. Come to think of it, if he was telling the truth about Caligula, he might have done exactly that.
Oh you got to be kidding me . . . The crowd had migrated away from us, removing my cover. Daphne was looking straight at me. I swore and as discreetly as possible turned my face away and ducked behind Artemis. “Not that it hasn’t been a slice, but I need an opening out of this ballroom now,” I whispered to him.
He was fixated on the other side of the room. “I figured Rynn didn’t send you to celebrity watch,” he whispered back. “Don’t worry, I’ve handled it about . . .” He trailed off as he glanced down at his phone.
A commotion spilled through the glass doors that led to the garden.
“. . . now. Wonderful, they’re on time,” he said, nodding at the commotion.
Three guards, two of which had been manning the hallway, raced past us as flashes of light hit the crowd and guests yelled. Daphne strode behind them.
Paparazzi.
Bingo . . . got to love it when opportunity screams rather than knocks. Might even make it easier to sneak out of here if they lasted that long.
I spotted a pile of tablecloths by the ice sculptures—call it a thief’s instinct.
I couldn’t touch the cursed artifacts, but those should do the trick.
Oh screw it, this was my heist. If—scratch that, when—this went sideways, the less Artemis knew about the pieces, the better.
I glanced over at my drunken incubus escort. “You ready for me to reveal the great task we need you for tonight?” I said.
Artemis leaned in. “Dying to know.”
“Great.” I grabbed myself a glass of champagne and downed it in one gulp—the first had been weak, and I needed steady hands. “Now see Daphne over there?” The siren had entered into the paparazzi fray and had the photographers eating out of her hands. No one protested as she and her guards led them out back—probably to drown them in the pool.
“Hard to miss with that hair, isn’t she?”
“Fantastic.” I slapped Artemis on the shoulder. “Go keep her distracted.”
Artemis narrowed his eyes at me. “Knowing my cousin, that’s not what I picture he had in mind.”
“Well, frankly, I feel better without you breathing over my shoulder,” I said, and headed towards the now unguarded hall.
Artemis grabbed my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks.
“Look, Artemis—” I started as he spun me around. His expression threw me off. There was a frown etched on his face . . . and sincerity.
“Just remember, I told Rynn I won’t save you. You’d do well to remember that, and it goes without saying whatever he has you doing here isn’t worth it.”
OK, Rynn’s evil—well, more like debauched—cousin warning me away from Rynn was one hell of a tangent.
“You know,” he said, “there’s one thing that hasn’t changed about Rynn over the years, and I have to admit I admire this about him.”
I frowned. “And what would that be?”
“He always did prefer the broken ones.”
With that, Artemis tipped his head back as he finished his drink and headed off for Daphne.
As strange as his warning was, Daphne would have the paparazzi cleared shortly. No time for pondering things I really didn’t care about right now.
I grabbed the tablecloths and slipped through the hallway where treasure awaited.
I balanced my cell phone under my ear as I stood in front of the plexiglass case that held the three artifacts. “So seriously, which vial do you want me to use here? Green one, right?” I wracked my memory, trying to remember if that one held the concentrated
hydrochloric acid.
“No, that’s for fiberglass,” Nadya answered. “This is bulletproof plexi, so you’ll need something stronger. Just go with the red one—and be careful. The weight sensors are still there.”
Captain was sitting on the sleeve of vials Nadya had made me take. I swore and pulled them out from under him—with minimal complaining. “Finesse is your department, not mine. Speaking of which, so is dressing up in heels and schmoozing with people. Care to explain why the hell you aren’t standing here instead of me?”
“Because I have a deep-rooted instinct to run away from trouble, not into it. Now move before the paparazzi are dealt with.” And with that she hung up the phone.
Retinal scanners, lasers, acid-proof plastics . . . In my mind, if it takes two separate PhDs to break into a box, go with the simplest method—just break the damn box and run.
Searching through the sleeve I found not one but two red vials: one with a red label on a white tube, the other with a white label on a red tube.
Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me . . .
Use the red vial, Owl. For all I knew, one of the red tubes held nitroglycerine, and I’d just blow myself up.
Nuts to this . . . Nadya could keep her chemistry kit.
“Stay there,” I whispered to Captain as I fished out a plug-in–like adaptor and headed for the nearest three-pronged socket.
The room wasn’t filled with lasers, or weight plates, or any of the stuff you hear about in the movies, but the box was sealed shut electronically to create a vacuum for the artifacts. Inside was a weight sensor.
There were two ways to handle this particular situation; the elegant way, which was dissolving part of the box with Nadya’s chemicals and taking the items, or my way. My way involved brute force and blowing the fuse box behind the vacuum. Elegance is for show-offs and thieves with way too much time on their hands—well, and Nadya, but she doesn’t count; she’s in a class all her own.
The prong in my bag would be certain to short out the fuse to the entire room—maybe even the entire building if the place was wired badly.
I plugged the adaptor into a socket near the door and turned the innocuous green light on. The entire room went dark. Including the green light in the artifact display case.
Flashlight in hand, I headed back to the case, where Captain was waiting on the pile of tablecloths.
Now all I needed to do was get the physical backup lock open. I put my flashlight between my teeth and started fitting my picks—flat, screwdriver-like tools I kept for wedging things open—into the lock.
Without any effort on my part, it opened.
Son of a bitch, it was already open—but the pieces were still in the case. Could Daphne have forgotten to lock it?
“I’m really starting to wonder what the hell my cousin is up to these days,” Artemis said.
I swore and fumbled my pick. Artemis was leaning against the doorway, holding his drink.
“I thought I told you to keep Daphne busy,” I said.
He shrugged. “It was a boring party.” He indicated the case with his drink. “And Rynn’s not one for petty thefts.”
I snorted and retrieved my pick. “Well, at least we’re agreed on one thing. This isn’t a petty theft—shit,” I said as the case hood slid back down. I didn’t want to wedge my fingers underneath with the artifacts so close.
“Are you all right?” Artemis asked.
“Yeah, everything is fine, no thanks to you sneaking up on me.” This time the glass case gave and I popped it open, being careful not to touch any of the items inside, not even the material they were laid out on. Now all I needed to do was wrap the three pieces up. What was the best angle to get them from?
“If I’d known you were here to steal something . . .” Artemis said, his brow furrowing. OK, that looked a bit like Rynn.
“You said it yourself—you’re just here to get me in. My neck is my own responsibility.”
“Again, let me point out you left out the thieving part. I just thought you were here as a spy or some other such of Rynn’s nonsense.”
I didn’t have time or inclination to justify my actions to the debauched wonder. Someone might have noticed the fuse. “Look—just stand over there and keep quiet for a second, will you?”
All right, here we go . . . I grabbed the tablecloth and doubled it around my hand. Wrap up the artifacts, nice and easy, then into my bag . . . I felt a bead of sweat form on my forehead as I layered the tablecloth over my hand one more time—I didn’t want my skin coming into contact with the pieces through some kind of supernatural technicality . . . I thought about asking Artemis to do it, but that struck me as a worse-than-usual idea.
I took a quick breath and readied my hands, hidden well underneath the tablecloth.
“You know, you and I aren’t that unalike.”
I stopped before I could grab the flint. So much for shutting up. “How do you figure that?” I said, my eyes on the pieces, ready to grab again, even though I could feel Artemis staring at me.
“Neither of us likes to play by the rules. They aren’t particularly fun.”
There was something about the way he said it. “Somehow I don’t think our versions of fun are on the same page,” I said.
Artemis laughed.
I held my breath as I leveled the piece of flint off the pedestal, then exhaled only after the flint was wrapped in the tablecloth and lightning didn’t strike me down. I deposited it into an airtight bag and dropped that in the pocket of Captain’s carrier only after I’d made him crawl out. No sense risking my cat getting cursed.
OK, two more and I was home free . . . now for the stone bowl . . .
I frowned. The bowl was larger and would be trickier not to touch with my bare hands. “Look, Artemis, can’t you watch the hallway or something?” Or do something otherwise useful so I don’t accidently curse myself?
“I’ll whistle if someone is on their way,” he said.
“No! No whistling. If someone comes by, just try to buy me time.” All right, big breath, Owl . . . Gripping the edge, I tilted the bowl in beside the flint piece. Captain was eyeing his now half-filled carrier. He looked up and gave me a perturbed mew.
“You’re walking out of here,” I told him. He mewed again.
Now for the grand finale. I scooped the knife up with the tablecloth. For an early Bronze Age sword, the weight was well . . . off. Very carefully I undid the tablecloth.
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me . . .” Don’t get me wrong, it was a good replica, about as close to the one in photos as you could get, but checking the weight and getting a good look at it?
Close up, the etched symbols were too clean and the weight and sheen of the metal was off for the crude smelting characteristic of Copper Age transitions. If a real pro had been hired to make an authentic replica, I might not have known. Whoever had made this was almost good enough, but perhaps they hadn’t had enough time.
Well, now I knew why the case had been unlocked. Someone had beat me to the sword and, for some reason, had left the other artifacts.
No sense worrying about what I couldn’t do now. Not with a ballroom full of supernaturals. I’d take what I could get while the going was still good.
A long, drawn-out, shrill whistle echoed from the doorway.
“I thought I told you no—” I cut myself short.
It was Daphne standing in the doorway, in all her red-and-gold dreadlocked glory. She pursed her bright red lips and whistled again as she took in the surroundings—namely me, Captain, and the now empty case.
Artemis hadn’t even been able to watch the hall properly . . . and now he was nowhere to be seen.
“Wow, now look at you. I haven’t had a thief drop in on me in ages. Who sent you?” she said, her voice neither sweet nor beautiful, but carrying a deep, throaty texture you could
n’t help but pay attention to.
I swallowed. “Would you believe this is my off weekend and I just happened to crash?”
Daphne let out another sharp whistle as she considered what I’d said. “The dragon? No matter, you’ll tell me. Too bad they sent a girl though. Means I have to think out of the box, and that gets painful,” she said, and took a step forward. Behind her followed two dark-skinned supernaturals, the same kind I’d seen at Artemis’s. Together, the three of them fanned out around the room, closing me in. “Painful for you, that is. Not me.”
I had two choices: try to reason with her, or run like hell and hope the door on the other side of the room wasn’t a closet. I went with the latter. I grabbed my bag full of artifacts and bolted past the other display cases, Captain close on my heels.
Daphne let out a piercing shriek behind me, and I heard the bodyguards’ boots hitting the ground. I shunted my bag onto my shoulder and covered my ears as I ran. I thought sirens were supposed to lure you in with songs, not boil your eardrums.
I slammed into the door at a dead run, knocking it open and stumbling into another hallway. There was a staircase leading up on my right, and more hallway to my left. I went for the staircase. Most of the guards and supernaturals would be on the lower floors for the party, and I was more likely to slip out a window than bolt past a full ballroom.
That and no one ever expects thieves to go up . . . except in this case. I came to a halt on the third step as the sound of heavy footsteps hit the floor above. Big, bulky, armed footsteps. Captain hissed.
“Supernatural horde it is,” I told him.
We ran back down and turned left as the door to the exhibit room crashed open. The footsteps upstairs got louder and closer.
Captain and I both skidded to a halt.
The corner had looped us back around to the ballroom, and an entire room turned towards me.
Something told me we were past midnight. I got a good, long look in those few seconds of inaction. Goblins, trolls—recognized that one . . . I was pretty sure I saw a Naga in back. Teeth. There were a lot of serrated teeth. Black, green, white even. Not something I would have thought.
Owl and the City of Angels Page 19
