by Rachel Aaron
“He is your father!” my mother cried.
“He’s not my father,” I snapped. “And he’s not your husband, either. He’s our owner. We’re his mortals, his stupid little pets! If he’s in a bind because I’m yanking the leash he put on me, then maybe he should do the decent thing and let me go.”
“I don’t know why I thought I could come to you!” my mother cried. “You are an ignorant, selfish child who would rather pull the most beautiful creature in the world down with her than admit she’s wrong!”
“I’m not wrong!” I yelled back. “I’m the victim! He’s the one doing this to me!”
“We’ll see how far that pity takes you,” my mother snarled, baring her teeth as if she was the dragon. “I’m going home now, Opal. You may have abandoned him, but the rest of us have not forgotten what we owe our dragon. We will keep his home safe at any cost. I just hope you realize how hard your father is fighting for you before it’s too late.”
“Oh my god, Mom!” I cried. “This is not my fault!”
But my mother was already storming out, tears streaming down her face as she marched into the hallway, slamming the bathroom door in my face. I’d already bashed it open again to chase after her when my phone buzzed.
Auction’s starting, Nik texted me. You coming?
I took one last look at my mom’s back as she stomped down the hall, high heels clicking like knives on the tile floor, and then I sighed.
Be right there.
Chapter 8
The second week was even more insane than the first. Now that Nik and I had worked out the kinks, it wasn’t uncommon for us to push ten units a day. Other Cleaners were starting to notice, and the grumbling was getting fierce. DeSantos actually got in Nik’s face at one point, which was a bad decision on his part. Nik did better on five hours of sleep a night than I did, but he was starting to fray at the edges too now, and he damn near took the older man’s head off.
I’m pretty sure people were trying to start shit with me as well. I know I got cornered on more than one occasion, but I was honestly too tired to be intimidated. I just wanted this to be over. We were so close now, just a few days away. But even though I woke up already counting the hours until I could go back to bed, I dreaded the passing of time, because now that we’d entered the third week, I was no longer able to deny that we were falling farther and farther behind.
I couldn’t have told you why. When I looked back at everything we’d done, all the stuff we’d sold, there were no obvious failures. Overall we’d done well, sometimes very well, but while the graph of our income was a line going straight up, the arc still wasn’t high enough to hit my target. Unless we got lucky, we were going to fall short, and the more days passed, the luckier we had to get.
“Just one chance,” I muttered to Sibyl as I flopped down on the dog-chewed couch in the latest apartment we’d picked up in downtown. Or maybe we were in the Financial District? I didn’t even know anymore. “Just one lucky break, that’s all we need.”
“You’ve had plenty of lucky breaks,” my AI reminded me. “Statistically speaking, you’re still doing better than the average.”
“Not good enough,” I said, burying my face in my hands. “My dad doesn’t care about ‘almost.’ If I don’t have that money, I lose.”
“You haven’t lost yet.”
That was sweet of her, but I wasn’t in the mood for affirmations. I was exhausted and hungry and so beaten down I wanted to cry. If Nik hadn’t been in the next room over, I probably would have, but I still had my pride. I’d chosen this death march, dammit. I was going to see it through to the end. I was telling myself this over and over when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
“Ooooh,” Sibyl said. “Opal, look at this!”
“You look at it,” I grumbled, rubbing my tired eyes. “That’s why I have you.”
“Listen then,” she said. “You just got an email on your old college account.”
“So? I get emails there all the time. That’s why I don’t check it.”
“This one isn’t spam, though,” Sibyl said. “It’s a request for a consultation. Some guy wants you to have a look at his dragon statue.”
I sighed. I’d done jobs like that all the time back in college. It was a good way to find hidden gems before they went to auction, but mostly I’d just liked showing off my vast and esoteric knowledge of weird historic trivia, which was why I usually hadn’t charged. I still liked showing off, but I didn’t do that “work for free” thing anymore. I also had no time.
“Tell him to take it to one of the auction houses.”
“You sure?” Sybil asked. “He says he’ll pay you a thousand bucks.”
My eyes popped back open. “Really?” I said, sitting up. “A thousand bucks for one valuation?”
“That’s what the email says.”
I frowned, thinking it over. “Can he do a VR call?”
“Messaging him now…” Sibyl hummed to herself for a moment, and then my phone vibrated again. “He says that’s fine.”
“Great,” I said, sitting up. “I’ll do it now.”
While my AI dutifully carried the message, I got up and went in search of Nik. I found him in the bedroom emptying drawers of men’s clothing onto the floor for sorting. “Hey,” I said. “I’m going to take a phone call real quick. Some idiot’s offering me a thousand bucks to ID a statue.”
“Can you do that over the phone?” Nik asked without looking up.
“I can in VR.”
He nodded tiredly, kicking the piled clothes with a sneer. “An extra thousand would be good, because this place is looking like a whole lotta we got suckered. I don’t know how many dogs this dude had before he bailed, but they ruined everything.”
He held up a dress shirt that was stained and chewed at the sleeves, and I winced. “Living room furniture’s the same story,” I said. “Just save what you can, and we’ll move on when I’m done. I could use ten minutes on a couch anyway.”
Nik nodded, and I went back to the living room to put on my goggles. “Ready?” I asked when they were over my face.
“Got him on the line now,” Sibyl replied. “But I’m not connecting the call until you sit down.”
Using VR while standing was normally a bad idea. It was easy to break your toe or knock your shin when the world your eyes saw didn’t match the reality your legs were in. Not that I needed safety as an excuse to sit back down. I flopped before she could finish, resting my head on the sharp edge of the wooden frame the previous owner’s demon dogs had chewed bare in hopes the discomfort would keep me from falling asleep.
“Good to go.”
“Connecting you now,” Sibyl said, and then the view through my cameras fell away, replacing the world beyond my AR with a shot of a pretty cafe somewhere on the Lake St. Clair waterfront. From the tiny sliver of hotel balcony I could see at the shot’s edge, I was pretty sure it was the big pier at the New Regency, but I couldn’t say for certain. All the ritzy hotels looked the same, and it didn’t matter anyway. I was far more interested in the incredibly handsome dark-skinned man sitting at the wicker cafe table.
The moment I saw him, I knew he was rich. Not only was he lounging by one of the city’s nicest hotels in the middle of a work day, he was wearing a tan summer-weight suit I recognized from last year’s Paradise collection by Y23, a super-hot brand. His watch was similarly pricey, and he was wearing a set of AR sunglasses so thin and light they looked almost exactly like normal sunglasses, which meant they had to cost a fortune. Even his delicious-looking iced coffee drink was from a famously overpriced shop. Put it all together and you had the sort of travel magazine–worthy shot that simply couldn’t be accomplished by the non–jet set crowd without hours of preparation. For this guy, though, it looked like just another Tuesday, and that made me salivate. This was going to be money.
Thankfully, Sibyl had had the good foresight to use a recorded picture of me for his end rather than an actual camera shot. There’d been a t
ime when I could have matched his “I’m so rich I don’t even have to try” aesthetic, but those days were long gone. I didn’t know what fire was under this dude’s butt to make him offer a thousand dollars for an emergency antique consultation, but if he saw me the way I looked right now, he’d hang up before I could get a word in.
“Is this Opal Yong-ae?” he asked, flashing me—or, rather, the infinitely more-fashionable picture of me from my college profile three years ago—a perfect white-toothed smile. “Famous daughter of the Great Yong?”
“It is,” I said, silently signaling Sibyl to make sure this call wasn’t being traced. “Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
“You can call me Ainsley,” he replied with the pointed stress at the end that told me my next question better not be “Ainsley what?”
“What can I do for you, Ainsley?”
“I heard you know your stuff when it comes to dragon art, and you’re a peach about doing quick evaluations,” he said, reaching under the table for his bag. “I’m a bit of an impulse buyer, and I just picked up a piece from a rather…unorthodox supplier. I really should have been more careful, but I’ve been after one of these for so long I’m afraid I got carried away. Naturally, I don’t want anyone to know I got suckered—a man has to maintain his reputation, after all—so I asked around for someone discreet, and your name came up. Thank you for responding so quickly.”
“I’ve been in your shoes before,” I said, which wasn’t technically true since I always made a point to look before I shelled out cash, but I understood the general sentiment. “My assistant mentioned a payment?”
The quick pivot to cash made him jerk a little, but I was too tired to be coy. I needed my money, dammit. “I’ll need fifteen hundred.”
“I thought we agreed on a thousand?”
“No, you offered a thousand,” I replied in my sweetest voice. “I’m asking for fifteen hundred. Up front.”
His brilliant smile faltered a little. “Up front?”
“Rush jobs cost more.”
Considering my curse was almost certainly going to take half of whatever he paid me, I really should have demanded double, but two thousand was too much even for my current gouging mood. Good for me, Ainsley must have been in one hell of a hurry, because he agreed.
“Sending it to you now.”
I waved my hand to bring up my digital wallet. Sure enough, a payment of fifteen hundred dollars from a private account popped up just a few seconds later, though it was now seven hundred and fifty thanks to transfer fees and a previously unmentioned fine. A month ago, that would have made me rage. Now I just rolled my eyes and added the loss to my mile-long list of grievances against my father.
“Payment received. Let’s see the statue.”
Ainsley grinned wide and pulled a wrapped object out of his tooled-leather bag. It was about the size of a football—an American football, not a real football—and heavily protected in bubble wrap. When all the wrapping finally came off, Ainsley leaned down to give me a full shot of a very old-looking dragon statue covered in what appeared to be gold but I knew was hammered bronze. It was so well-done that I could see every little scale. Just to be sure, though, I wanted to check one more thing.
“Turn it upside down?”
He dutifully flipped the statue over, giving me a view of the inscription underneath. The Korean was a much older form than I could read without a dictionary, but I knew what it said just fine because I’d seen hundreds of others just like it in my dad’s hoard.
“That’s one of the Thousand Dragons cast by the ancient Kingdom of Koguryo,” I said. “It dates from the Three Kingdoms period of Korea, most likely around the fifth century C.E.”
Ainsley let out a relieved breath. “So it’s real, then?”
“If it’s not, it’s the best forgery I’ve ever seen,” I told him honestly. “The dragons were cast to bribe the first Great Yong into not eating the peasants. He took the gift and ate them anyway, of course, because dragon, but it’s still a great historical piece and a fantastic example of metal-covered wooden sculpture from the time. Good condition, too, considering how old it is. Nice find.”
“Thank you,” he said with the warm appreciation of a true collector. “I don’t suppose you know where I could find more of these?”
“Not outside of the Korean peninsula.” My dad had all but forty of them. I dimly remembered his sister having the others, but I couldn’t recall for certain. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if White Snake had sold them. Clanless dragons who had no lands to milk for cash always needed money, and selling the treasures he needed to complete his set would spite my dad like nothing else.
“Such a shame,” Ainsley said with a sigh. “If you do see one, though, be sure to let me know. I pay top dollar, and I don’t ask questions, which I hear is important to you these days.”
I did not like that he’d heard that about me, but I supposed he must have heard something or this call wouldn’t be happening, so I let it go. “I’ll drop you a line,” I promised.
He gave me a final charming smile and hung up. I was taking the deep breath to prepare for the exit from VR when my bank account pinged again.
“What the—”
There was another transfer of seven hundred and fifty dollars in my account. I poked it to make sure I wasn’t seeing the same entry twice, but the total confirmed it. I’d lost half to fees again, but this Ainsley guy had just tipped me fifteen hundred bucks.
“Nice,” I said, breaking into a grin. I’d forgotten what life was like when you had money. I used to do stuff like that, too. It always made people so happy when you called back. It certainly encouraged me to save his number. It never hurt to know a buyer with deep pockets and tight lips. I was still smiling like an idiot when I pushed my headset up to see Nik standing over me.
“How did it go?”
“I just made fifteen hundred bucks!” I told him proudly.
“Great,” he said, reaching down to pull me up. “Because this place is a loss. And speaking of, when you come back to clean next month, make sure you save the bathroom for last.”
I blanched. “What’s in there?”
“We’re eating in the next few hours, so I’m not going to say,” Nik replied. “Let’s just say I see now why the previous tenant bailed on this apartment.”
I groaned at the thought. But that problem—like so many of my problems—was an issue for next month. Right now, we had to hit the evening auction and pick up the next round.
“Can we stop for coffee?” I asked Nik as we walked out the door.
“Isn’t your blood coffee by now?” he quipped. “And what did I tell you about coffee shops? There’s no point working this hard if you’re going to waste your money buying fancy hot water with bean dust in it for five bucks a cup.”
“Just leave me this one joy,” I begged him.
Nik sighed and started down the stairs. “Where do you want to go?”
“Tim Horton’s,” I said instantly, pulling out my phone to see where the closest source of life-giving sustenance was.
***
Thirty minutes later, I carried two giant paper cups of fresh coffee into the evening auction.
“You know,” Nik said as we snagged our usual front-row seats. “You should probably just switch to buying the gallon carafe box at this point. The price per ounce would be cheaper.”
“I don’t like drinking out of a box,” I said, taking a huge gulp off the cup in my left hand. “It makes me feel like I have a problem.”
“And double-fisting two twenty-four ounce cups doesn’t?”
I didn’t like his logic, so I took another sip and turned in my chair to study the room. I’d lost track of what day it was, but it must have been closing in on Saturday, because the place was dead. Like most of humanity, Cleaners were very diligent at the start of the week but tended to fall off as the days stacked up, which was fine with me. Fewer people meant less competition. I was looking
forward to scooping up some choice units when Broker came into the room.
“Blessed city, you two are persistent,” he said when he spotted Nik and me. “When do you sleep?”
I wiggled my coffees at him, and he shook his head. “It’s your adrenal failure, darling,” he said, hopping up on the stage. “Let’s get this started!”
I handed the cup in my right hand to Nik so I could pull down my goggles.
The first several units were worthless. There was a house that looked interesting. Actual, freestanding residential buildings were rare in the city and usually had good stuff, but this one had been inhabited by an elderly shut-in with dementia. Not only had the building been horribly neglected, but the furniture I could see in the interior pictures was so hideously ugly I would have paid not to look at it, so that was a pass. The rest of the stack were a bunch of samey cheap apartments that I already knew wouldn’t be worth the effort. I was starting to worry we wouldn’t find anything to buy tonight when a picture popped up on the screen that made my heart skip.
It was another apartment. A small, dirty two-bedroom that was virtually identical to the others we’d been plagued with all night. But on the ratty secondhand bookshelf in this unit was a statue of a dragon. Not one of the mass-produced factory-stamped ones that was riddled with production errors, either. This was a perfectly made, shiny bronze figure that looked identical to the one I’d just IDed less than an hour ago. It was even lying on its side so I could see the inscription on the bottom, almost like the universe wanted me to have it.
I grabbed Nik’s arm so hard he jumped. “Bid!” I hissed at him.
“On this one?”
I nodded frantically, drawing a square in the air with my fingers to zoom in on the picture in my AR. The closer I got, the more convinced I became that this was another of the thousand Koguryo dragons my stylish collector friend had just promised to pay through the nose for. It certainly looked absolutely identical. If it hadn’t been extremely unlikely, I’d have said it was the same statue, but the whole point of a matched set like this one was that you couldn’t tell them apart. It had to be a different statue, which meant we were about to make bank.
