BROKEN BLADE

by J. C. Daniels

  Her accent was strange. Okay, everything about her was strange. My gut was twitchy, tight. It wasn’t exactly screaming, Don’t do this job, but I was definitely getting the proceed with all caution flag.

  “Well, Isidore,” I said slowly, keeping my eyes on her. “If you want to talk business, I guess you’d do better coming inside.”

  The smile on her face widened and she slipped inside, closing the door at her back.

  Her gaze moved to Justin.

  I could see him from the corner of my eye. He was sitting on the couch, that worn-out deck of cards in his hands. Never play cards with a witch. Especially Justin. The card tricks are just the least of it. He flipped one into the air and it spun around, hovering lazily in the air for a good twenty seconds before drifting down and settling into place. Solitaire. His version of it. I’d seen him use similar tricks to cheat at poker and any other game. Nobody ever beat Justin.

  He looked over at me, his gaze bouncing off Isidore as if she wasn’t there. With a sly wink, he nodded and then went back to his game.

  “Is this a…business associate?” she asked, looking at me and canting her head to the side.

  “Of a sort.” I pushed my chair back from the desk a little more and slouched a bit, lacing my hands over my belly. The pose might have looked lazy and careless, but it put my hands in very close proximity to the gun and K-bar I’d strapped into place earlier. I liked having them in very close proximity. Especially when she sauntered closer, her movements just a little too graceful to be human. The typical human didn’t move like that. They just weren’t that comfortable in their skin.

  I wondered if the silver-charged ammo in the Eagle would be enough to hurt her. Silver wouldn’t kill a witch, but since I didn’t know what this woman was…

  “Do you always study those who wish to hire you like that?”

  I blinked. “Like what?”

  “As though you’re trying to decide if you can kill them or not?” An amused smile curved her lips.

  Surprised, and unsettled, I straightened in my chair, taking her in with even more caution. I was good at summing people up without them realizing it. I’d been doing it for years, but she’d just made me in two seconds flat. Was I that much off my game? Or was she just that good?

  I managed a casual shrug. “Considering the kind of work I do, and the kind of clients I’ve had to handle sometimes, it’s a good idea to know whether or not I can kill them.”

  “Hmmm.” She settled in the chair across from my desk and crossed her legs. She wore a long, brightly colored skirt—it made me think of gypsies and fires and dancing in the night. As she laced her fingers over her knee, she continued to study me. “I am not immortal.”

  Why offer that piece of information up? Unless she was just trying to keep me off-balance. Not that it took much these days.

  “Very few creatures are,” I said after a few seconds. I gave her a lazy smile. “Some are just a hell of a lot harder to kill than others.”

  She laughed. It was a warm sound, the kind that invited you to laugh with her, share in her humor. I didn’t feel inclined to do that. She was creeping me out. “Oh, I think I like you, Kit.” She leaned forward and winked at me. “I’m a lot harder to kill than others.”

  “Yeah?”

  My palm itched. It was reflex. Knowing I couldn’t call my blade made it that much worse.

  She reached down and pulled something from the intricate leather belt she wore.

  I held myself ready and didn’t even breathe as she moved.

  A heavy thud echoed through my office as she dropped a pouch on my desk. “A deposit on the job,” she said.

  I eyed it narrowly and didn’t move. “Perhaps we should discuss the job before any sort of payment.”

  “Don’t you want to see what it is?” Her eyes were wide, avidly locked on my face. She had a way of looking at me, talking to me like my every word mattered so very much.

  “Considering the noise it made as you dumped it on the desk, I’m going to guess it’s money…in coin. I got to say, I haven’t ever had somebody try to pay me in coins before. Wouldn’t bills be easier to carry around?”

  Justin came off the couch.

  She looked at him.

  I didn’t.

  When he reached out and grabbed the bag, she said, “I’m not hiring you, boy.”

  “Boy?” I grinned.

  “Trust me…when you’ve seen as many years as I have? Everybody seems like a boy…or a silly girl.” Her gaze slid my way.

  Her meaning was clear.

  Lifting a brow, I shrugged. “If I’m a silly girl, why are you here in my office asking me to do a job? Wouldn’t it be more effective for you to do it?”

  “I…can’t. For complicated reasons.” She glanced at Justin again as he untied the pouch.

  He whistled out a breath. “Yow. Nice deposit.”

  Glancing over at him, I waited. When he showed me what was in the bag, I almost swallowed my tongue. Blinking, I leaned closer to study the coins and had to fight the urge to rub at my eyes. “Is that real?”

  “Of course it’s real,” Isidore said, her tone bored.

  I wasn’t about to take her word.

  Justin reached in and took out one of the coins, tossing it up and catching it in mid-air, studying it with a jaded eye. “It’s real,” he said, his voice tight. “And there’s easily fifty coins in here. Silver and gold. A fucking fortune. And this is just the deposit?”

  Easily fifty? I wondered how he’d eyeballed the coins and come out with that number, wondered how he was so certain it was real. But if Justin was certain, then I was good with that.

  Shifting my eyes to Isidore, I ran my tongue over my teeth. A fortune in silver and gold.

  There weren’t too many jobs that paid that well.

  “Just who do you want me to kill?”

  And she laughed. “Oh, darling Kit…if I just wanted somebody dead, I could do that myself.”

  * * * *

  Thirty minutes later, she left.

  I kind of wished she’d been there about a hit.

  Staring at the pouch full of silver and gold, all tucked away, I decided it might have been better if I hadn’t lowered my wards.

  Justin continued to play with the gold piece he’d pulled from the bag and even after her presence had faded, we remained silent.

  Finally, after nearly fifteen minutes, Justin blew out a breath. “I think the last time I felt that much magic off somebody, it was when I was sent with a team to take down a Druid over in Europe.”

  “A Druid?”

  He grunted. “Long story. His wife had finally died…which was the end of him. They need each other to survive, stay sane. He started going crazy.”

  “How old was he?”

  Justin shot me a look. “We found relics in his home dating back to the Iron Age.”

  I blinked. “Whoa.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at the bag of coins on my desk. “I think she’s older.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  He tossed the coin in the air and I watched as it did the same thing his cards had done, spinning lazily around in the air, powered by his magic. It was an old piece of gold, the edges worn and smooth, handled by so many hands.

  “When you say a fortune, just how much of a fortune are you talking about?” I asked.

  He shrugged and held out his hand. The bit of gold settled into his palm and he closed his fingers around it. “I’ve seen pieces like this selling for twelve grand, Kit. And it’s not in prime condition. Other pieces in the bag might be.”

  “Prime condition…meaning?”

  “If I’m right…” He uncurled his fingers and I leaned, eying the faded and worn image depicted on one side. “And I probably am, this is Alexander the Great—”

  I held up a hand. “Stop. Alexander the Great…as in the Alexander?” I might not know coins, but I knew fighters—even after more than two millennia, the name Alexander the Great was
still known to men.

  “Yeah.” Justin rubbed a thumb over the image and grinned at me. “That Alexander. Coins that old are pretty rare. It’s not the worth of the gold…it’s the collectable value of the coin. And Kit…it’s a pretty damn collectable coin.”

  I frowned and reached out, plucking the coin out of his hand. “You’re telling me this is over two thousand years old?”

  “Yep.”

  Not quite certain I bought it, I studied the coin. Yeah, it looked old, but that old? “I never knew you were that big into coins.”

  “Hey, it’s metal.” He shrugged. “A man’s got to have a hobby…metal is mine. And it’s possible I’m wrong about who is on the coin, but I’m not wrong about the age. That’s old, Kit. And it’s genuine. I can feel the age on it. That makes it pretty damn valuable.”

  I tossed it back at him. He snagged it out of the air and as I settled back down at the desk, he went back to his little game of tossing it in the air and making it float.

  “Where did she get that kind of money?”

  He studied me. “Well, she is old.”

  “You really think she’s two thousand years old?”

  “Yeah.” He dropped down on the couch , balancing the coin on his fingertip. “Actually, I think it’s entirely possible she’s even older. You going to find this vase for her?”

  I looked down at the picture she’d drawn for me.

  She was going to pay me that money…a fortune in gold…to find a vase.

  Find my vase for me, Kit…return it to me.

  That was what she wanted me to do.

  I touched the sketch and pondered it. “There’s got to be more to it than this. Who would pay that much money for a vase?”

  “That’s a question I’d want an answer to…along with others.”

  I looked up at him, lifting a brow.

  “The name.”

  Reaching up, I ran my hand through my hair, groaning as I tried to work his meaning around in my head. It wasn’t happening. “Maybe I’ve been out of this too long, Justin. I’m not following.”

  “Give it time,” he said easily. “You had your mind on other things…like whether or not you just wanted to kick her out. But didn’t you notice? When you asked her name…how did she answer?”

  I blinked and then closed my eyes, replaying that bit through my mind.

  “You got a name…something other than I?”

  “I do. You can call me Isidore.”

  “You can call me Isidore,” I murmured. I looked over at Justin. “She never said that was her name.”

  “Which meant she never outright lied to you. You probably would have picked up on the lie. You usually do. If you hadn’t, I would have. She avoided that trap pretty neatly. So the question is…is her name really Isidore, and if it’s not, why did she lie about it?”

  “I’ve had plenty of people come to me and not give me their real name when I’m doing a job.”

  He shrugged. “True enough. But over something like this? If you’re really just locating a vase, what’s the big deal about her name?”

  “Hell, Justin. You’re a witch, you know that answer better than anybody. There’s power in a name. But…that’s not the answer, really.” I bent forward and studied the image Isidore had drawn. She had a talent for it. I rubbed my finger over the line of the vase as a knot of discomfort shifted and swelled inside me. “This is more than a vase…more than just some family heirloom. I think it would have to be, if she’s willing to pay that kind of money for it.”

  He shrugged. “You’re hung up on how much she’s paying. If she’s loaded, that may not even be that much money to her.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case.” I shook my head. “A lot of the older ones are stingy…they might spend it on something they want, but they aren’t going to throw it away so easily either.”

  I went back to studying the vase, the curves and lines of it, the images depicted on the side. There was a story in them; I just had to figure out what it was. “No, this thing is important to her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come to me.”

  “You’re taking the case, aren’t you?”

  I looked over at him. Unless something absolutely screamed for me not to…I blew out a breath. “I probably am.” Running my tongue over my teeth, I eyed the way he was running the coin back and forth across his fingers. “You seem pretty fond of that ol’ Alexander there. You want it?”

  “I thought you didn’t want a partner.”

  I curled my lip at him as I settled down behind my desk and booted up the computer. I needed to figure out the importance of this vase, first and foremost. “If I’m going to be dealing with high magic, makes sense to have somebody who knows high magic at my back. You in or not?”

  “Absolutely.” He grabbed the sack of coins and hefted it in his hand. “Fifty-fifty split?”

  “Seventy-thirty.”

  “Kit…come on, now.”

  I grabbed the drawing from the desk and put it face-down on the micro-scanner. “Hey, I’ve got business expenses. What do you need to take care of…buying yourself more sparkly jackets?”

  “I’ll be the one dealing with the rough shit if the high magic gets ugly,” he pointed out. “I’m also jobless and probably going to be that way for a while. I need the cash. Sixty-forty.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault you and discipline don’t see eye to eye. Take your joblessness up with Banner.” I shrugged and pretended to ponder the sixty-forty split, but since that was what I’d planned on offering, I didn’t ponder long. “Fine. Sixty-forty, but any expenses you rack up come out of your share of the money.”

  He grinned and tossed the coin into the air. “I can handle that. Just let me cash this baby in and do some restocking.”

  I rolled my eyes and focused my attention back on the computer. Isidore was going to be back this time tomorrow. I wanted to know more about the vase by then. Just in case.

  * * * *

  It was almost eight.

  I hadn’t unearthed anything.

  At least not anything useful.

  Tons of information about the name Isidore and vases, but most of it was all connected to France and museums and my client was not French, and I was absolutely positive the design on that vase wasn’t from the 1800s. I was no historian, but it looked a hell of a lot older.

  I ended up hitting a historical site, going back through the ages and studying various designs until I found something that might be the same basic design. Plus, it was also Greek. Since the coins she’d paid us in were Greek, maybe…

  I stopped and reached for the bag, pulling out a handful to study them. Were all of them Greek?

  It didn’t take me more than a few seconds to make that call—no. Maybe I didn’t have the hobby that Justin did, but the coin in my hand now definitely wasn’t Greek.

  It was in rough shape, too, but I could make out what looked to be a face, a crown…probably a king of some sort. On the back there was a cross. This wasn’t Greek. Something about the cross made me think of early England, although I didn’t know why. Quite a few of the coins in the bag looked like that, although there were a number of coins from Asia.

  One thing was clear—these were from different cultures, different periods. I couldn’t count on those to help me narrow my search down. Still, when I turned back to the computer, I focused on Greek vases.

  The search for famous Greek vases didn’t do much but confirm my hunch. The vase Isidore had sketched out definitely looked like one of these; the style of hers matched the Greek ones, right down the silhouette-like figures decorating the sides.

  While most of the ones I came across during my search featured battles, the one Isidore wanted me to find depicted a woman.

  I went back and studied that image, turning my head and studying it from every conceivable angle. I don’t know what I expected to find.

  The woman painted on the side held a vase in her hands and you could almost make out the echo of another woman on tha
t vase…

  She was surrounded by mountains, a streak of lightning coming down to shatter them. She’d drawn another angle of it and the view showed animals, lying down. Yet another view showed people—caught in embraces that weren’t exactly…appealing. It made the skin on my neck burn and the scars hidden by the tattoos started to ache with a deep, deep cold.

  Flames danced all around each of the pictures. Not a calming sort of image, really.

  No, the entire thing made me think of power. Death. Chaos. Destruction.

  I swallowed as something worked free in my memory. The very idea was enough to turn my gut to ice, but…come on. That was myth, right?

  But even as I tried to tell myself that, a cold sweat slicked my back as I bent over the keyboard.

  “It’s just a myth, Kit,” I told myself. But I had to be smart, and check.

  I clenched my jaw and then typed in another search.

  The search engine didn’t even waste time on that search. It immediately brought up the very last thing I wanted to see; in theory, it was supposed to be a box, right?

  I’d hoped I’d see a corrected search.

  But what I saw were images, artistic renderings…and many of them depicted a woman.

  The bottom of my stomach dropped out as I saw the heading of the very first text result, followed by the neat little summary underneath.

  Pandora’s Box wasn’t actually a box, but a vase…

  Chapter Fourteen

  Justin walked in the next morning and stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Wow. You look like shit. Did you sleep?”

  I shot him a dark, ugly look and flipped him off. “Did you sell that coin yet?”

  “Ah…I’ve got a couple of buyers lined up. Why?”

  “We may not be taking this job,” I said grimly.

  He didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Okay…” He drawled out the word slow and steady as he shut the door behind him. “You want to tell me why?”

  I crooked a finger at him and waited for him to come around and join me. I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t left my office. I’d ended up calling for Chinese to be delivered and I’d eaten maybe a quarter of the orange chicken before I dumped it. My shower lasted all of thirty seconds because I was terrified to be where I couldn’t see the front door.