Betrayal Read online

  “That’s understandable,” I said calmly. Andy took a breath, and I rushed to continue before he could give away more premature information. “Do either of you know what piece would complete the set? As my partner said, a bowl was stolen, and you have the cup. Do you know what the third piece is?”

  I already knew it was a knife, since Flint had included that information in the file, but it wouldn’t hurt to find out how much Vazkasi knew. Racial profiling aside, the stories about dragons’ love for gold were true. And they were very passionate about complete collections.

  “Sets like these varied quite a bit,” Morgan said thoughtfully. “But it is reasonable to assume the third piece is a utensil, a fork or knife, maybe a spoon.”

  “A knife is more ritualistic,” Vazkasi argued. “No one makes a ritual spoon.”

  I relaxed a fraction as I noticed the hiss in Vazkasi’s voice had disappeared. “You’re probably right.”

  “I think I might know someone who can say with more certainty,” Morgan said slowly. “Do you know the wizard Jim Givens?”

  “Name doesn’t ring a bell,” I lied. Jim Givens. The same person Mr. Masters had taken the bowl to. “Do you have his contact information?”

  Morgan opened her jacket and slipped a card and a pen out of her inner pocket. “Yes, I’ll give you his address. He handles analysis and evaluations for Marilyn, and he’s the best researcher I know. If anyone can tell you more about the set, it’s him. And he’s already performed the analysis of the cup, so he should be familiar with the set in part.”

  She handed me the card with the address on it.

  We thanked Morgan and Vazkasi, then said our goodbyes. I breathed easier after I was past the “Employees Only” door, but I couldn’t really relax until we left the museum. I could feel Morgan’s gaze following us as we left. And part of me was positive if I turned around, I’d find her watching Scath. The sidhe had been waiting outside the door to the restricted area. Since we both knew no mere door would stop her, I had to believe she’d chosen to stay out of sight for a reason.

  “I don’t suppose you’d tell me if you recognized Morgan?” I asked Scath as we climbed into the SUV.

  Scath said—nothing. Of course.

  Suddenly I froze, then immediately scrambled to unzip the pouch. “Oh, blessed Goddess, Majesty,” I muttered, only just remembering the kitten I’d stashed there earlier.

  An eruption of brightly colored paper shot out of the pouch like a firework, and Majesty chased the bits of large confetti with the fierce single-mindedness only kittens showed. I froze, my hands hovering outside the pouch as the kitten landed in my lap, then bounded onto the floor of the SUV after the paper.

  Bizbee’s face peered at me from inside the pouch, his tiny features contorted with rage, antennae swaying madly in the air above him. It was only then that I realized what the bits of colored paper were, and what must have happened.

  “You,” Bizbee snarled. “You owe me more Post-its!” He grabbed the flap of the pouch and jerked it closed.

  “Fantastic.” I glared at Majesty. “You turned Morgan blue. You attacked her. If she hadn’t been so distracted by Scath, she could have—”

  Black fur filled my peripheral vision as Scath rose from her reclining position in the backseat. I had a brief glimpse of glittering green eyes. Then they were squeezed shut as her body shuddered, bones sliding beneath her skin, the air filling with sickening, muffled pops, and soft pained whines deep in the sidhe’s throat.

  My stomach rolled, and my own muscles ached in sympathy at the violence of the change. This was nothing like Liam’s smooth shift from beast to man. This was a battle, a human form inside a beast forced to fight its way out. I turned up the AC, hoping the cool air would ease the flush I could feel heating my face, the vague nausea rising inside me. If I felt ill watching her, I could only imagine what she felt. Scath’s shift from human to cat was almost liquid in its ease. Her transition from cat to human was a nightmare.

  “You’ve…been fighting him.” Scath cleared her throat, trying to remove some of the rasp from her voice. “If you would stop trying to…dispel his magic, and start trying to use it…it would be better. For you both.”

  The change had left her winded, but it didn’t dull the glare she leveled on me, the complete and utter disdain that radiated from her. I gritted my teeth.

  “It’s chaos magic. It’s unpredictable. Using it would be like firing a gun that’s just as likely to explode as to shoot my enemy. Why on earth would I risk something like that?”

  The kitten in question abandoned the bits of confetti he’d been chasing, and used me as a springboard to launch himself into Scath’s naked lap. She petted him without breaking eye contact with me.

  “His magic will boil over whether you like it or not,” she said. “You may not be able to control what it does. But you could control when. If you tried.”

  I unzipped my pouch again, easing back the flap to peer inside. “Bizbee, could you make me a list of all the different colors and sizes of Post-its you’d like?” I cleared my throat. “And could I have a change of clothes for Scath, please?”

  “Ye’ll have that list,” Bizbee promised in a scathing tone. “Oh, aye, ye’ll have it.”

  My shoulders dipped in relief when he passed up an extra pair of leggings and a black T-shirt. After a second, he followed them up with a sports bra and an opened pack of underwear with two untouched pairs still neatly folded around cardboard.

  “If you’re going to continue to honor us with your human form, you should get dressed,” I said dryly, handing the clothes to Scath. “We’re roughly the same size, so they should fit—”

  “We are not the same size,” Scath interrupted, giving me a dismissive once over. “Not even close.”

  “But they’re stretchy leggings,” I said, wiggling the pile of clothes. “So they’ll fit anyway.”

  Scath narrowed her eyes. A second later, glamour shivered into place, dressing her in plain black pants and a matching tunic-style shirt that bared her muscular biceps. She gave me a defiant look, and I frowned down at the leather seat.

  “It’s not just about appearances, you know,” I told her. “It’s about hygiene. Common courtesy.” I handed the clothes back into the pouch. “Apologies, Bizbee, but could I have a blanket?”

  This time the grig crawled out of the pouch enough to prop his elbows on the edge of the zipper. Bizbee was only about three quarters of Peasblossom’s height, but he was twice her width. His stocky build, square jaw, and gruff demeanor stood in stark contrast to the fuzzy-tipped antennae that swayed over his head like dandelion seeds.

  “Clothes are the mark of the civilized,” Bizbee informed Scath. He eyed the glamour with a level of disapproval that made me think he saw past it. “It’s rude to put yer bare arse on someone else’s—”

  “Yes, thank you, Bizbee,” I interrupted, “now if I could have something for her to sit on?”

  Bizbee pressed his lips together, but after a disparaging final glance at Scath, disappeared into the pouch to retrieve the requested blanket.

  Scath’s jaw tightened, but she grabbed the offering and spread it over the backseat. Before I could think of anything else to say, Andy spoke up.

  “We’re here.”

  If he had any thoughts about me trying to use Majesty’s magic, or about Scath being in human form, I couldn’t tell. He sat there for a moment with his keys still in the ignition, then looked at me.

  “Why are we going to see this wizard?” Andy asked. “We already know the third part of the set is a knife.”

  “Flint was scant with the details about what these items do.” I shifted uneasily in my seat. “I don’t like the fact that he specified I had to let the thief use the artifacts before I take them back. What if they’re dangerous? He could be asking me to let someone come to harm.”

  Andy continued to stare out the windshield. “You can’t do anything about it anyway, so does it matter?”

  I zip
ped my pouch closed, taking a minute to compose myself. Andy wasn’t wrong. I didn’t have any choice in whether or not I followed Flint’s orders. But I had to live with anything I did. If the consequences of following Flint’s orders turned out to be unacceptable, I’d find a way around them. Or try. “It matters to me.”

  It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw Andy’s shoulders relax. “Something tells me Jim Givens is going to be a character,” he observed.

  I frowned, then followed Andy’s nod to the house in front of us. It was only then that I realized the house was a painted lady, a Victorian style home repainted in the 1960’s with three colors designed to accent its architecture. Tremont was one of Cleveland’s oldest neighborhoods and the Queen Anne rising in front of us was at least a century old.

  “Are those stained glass windows?” Andy asked.

  I squinted. “Yes.”

  Peasblossom hopped onto the armrest to get a better look at the house. “If this Givens is such an expert, and people rely on him to evaluate their artifacts, then what’s to stop him from replacing a real artifact with a fake, then telling them they brought him a fake?”

  “That would be a very bad idea considering one of the museum guards is dragonkin,” I pointed out. “How many people do you know who would risk getting on their bad side?”

  “All their sides are bad sides. Which brings me to my next point.” Peasblossom crossed her arms. “Who in their right mind hires a dragonkin for a guard?”

  “Dragonkin make the best guards,” I argued. “No one guards treasure more ferociously than a dragon.”

  “Exactly, and once a dragon has been guarding treasure for so long, he starts to feel possessive. You saw how upset he got. That wasn’t professional, that was personal.”

  I had to stop and think about that. She wasn’t wrong. Dragons—and their kin—did tend to feel possessiveness stronger than most species.

  “Maybe they rotate them.” Andy unfastened his seatbelt. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “Rotate dragonkin guards?” I mused.

  “You think there’s a company of dragonkin who hire themselves out as guards?” Peasblossom scoffed.

  “You just said they make the best guards. If that’s their skill set, then why wouldn’t they use it?”

  “He has a point,” I agreed.

  Peasblossom threw her hands in the air. “No he doesn’t. Dragons hoard treasure, and dragonkin are no different. They don’t have jobs!”

  “How do they build up their treasure if they don’t have jobs to pay for it?” Andy asked.

  “They steal it,” Peasblossom said firmly. “Or demand it as tribute. Nasty thieves and bullies.”

  “Be that as it may,” I said. “We should look into Vazkasi and see if he is part of a bigger company. And we should talk to him again, see if anyone’s been hanging around the cup.”

  “We could have talked to him earlier, but you were in a hurry to leave and talk to the wizard,” Andy muttered.

  I pressed my lips into a thin line and counted to ten before speaking. “I’d rather talk to Vazkasi when Morgan isn’t hanging around.”

  Andy shook his head. “I don’t understand your problem with her. She’s done nothing but try to help, but you’re still convinced she’s a villain. Why? Because she hates Flint?”

  I scoffed. “I hate Flint too. Why would it bother me if she hated him?”

  “Why was it okay to accept help from Flint but not her?” Andy countered.

  “Because I was able to trade one service for another with Flint,” I said, trying to not let defensiveness creep into my voice. “It was an even trade. With Morgan, it would have been a favor. A favor I might have had to pay back.”

  “She didn’t ask for a favor from me,” Andy pointed out.

  “But when I was the one who wanted access, she offered to let me pose as a slave to a friend of hers,” I reminded him. “I had no guarantee that her ‘friend’ wouldn’t take full advantage of that masquerade. I could have ended up in very serious trouble.”

  “And instead you trusted Flint. How’s that working out for you?” He opened his car door and heaved himself out of his seat. “Come on, we need to talk to this guy so we can get back to the museum and ask the questions we didn’t bother to ask earlier.” He slammed the door behind him without waiting for an answer, leaving me and Peasblossom to stare after him.

  “You were right not to trust Morgan,” Scath spoke up.

  I twisted in my seat to look at her, blinking away my shock that she’d decided to contribute to the conversation. “You know Morgan?”

  “Yes. And you shouldn’t ever trust her.”

  My heart pounded so hard it was difficult to breathe. “Why not? What do you know about her?”

  Scath started to say something, but the words came out as a cough instead. She tried again with the same result, then snapped her mouth shut, exhaling sharply through her nose in a huff of frustration. “Just don’t trust her.”

  A sharp sound startled me, and I glanced through the windshield to find Andy standing there knocking on the hood of the SUV. He gestured to the front door, then waved his hand.

  I gritted my teeth and toyed with the idea of staying in the car longer just to annoy him, but then discarded the childish impulse. Pettiness, even deserved, wouldn’t help matters.

  Despite his obvious impatience, Andy didn’t approach the front door to the wizard’s house without me. As he had at the museum, he seemed to remember his manners at the last second, and let me go first.

  As I’d anticipated I could sense the potency of the wizard’s wards at the threshold of his home, like a buzzing electric current.

  I knocked at the door.

  “Who is it?” a cranky female voice demanded.

  “I’m Shade Renard. Mother Renard. I’m here with my partner, Agent Andrew Bradford of the FBI. I’d like to talk to Jim Givens about an evaluation he did for the Cleveland Museum of Art?”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.” I hesitated. “Could I make one?”

  “It’s all right, Agnes, I can talk.”

  I assumed the male voice was the wizard. The female voice muttered something I couldn’t make out over the sound of a lock disengaging. The door swung open.

  I fought to keep the shock off my face. Agnes was a goblin. Not a creature I would have pegged for a wizard’s companion.

  Agnes lifted her chin, and through some innate gift of confidence, managed to make it look like she was looking down her wrinkled yellow-skinned nose at me despite the two foot height difference in my favor. She spun neatly on one heel and marched into the house with a clipped “Follow me.”

  At least I don’t have to call the Vanguard now, I reminded myself. Talking to a wizard, even one with a disgruntled companion, was better than the Vanguard.

  Mother Hazel would have approved of the wizard’s house. There wasn’t a sliver of wall that wasn’t covered by a thick bookcase, not a speck of empty space on the ceiling or any of the four walls. Books and trinkets, drying herbs, bits of bric-a-brac, potions, precious stones, and bits of metal took up every available surface. The high vaulted ceilings presented a chance for higher bookcases, and each one had a ladder stretching up to the top. The whole house smelled of old paper and cloying herbs.

  “He’s gone into the study,” Agnes said. “He’s busy, so make your questions short and to the point. He doesn’t have time for meandering conversations and small talk.”

  “We’ll be concise,” Andy said seriously.

  “See that you are.”

  I was so busy looking around that I didn’t notice the next room was a step down from my current position. My foot hit empty air and I pitched forward. “Blood and—”

  Two things happened at once. Peasblossom fired her grappling gun, and an invisible force swept up to buffet my body before I could hit the floor. The spell lowered me gently to my feet even as a male voice let out a yelp of surprise.

 
“What the—”

  Heart still pounding, I looked toward the cry. A man stood in front of a desk, the chair pushed back as if he’d stood in a rush. Longish brown hair brushed his shoulders in a sort of haphazard manner that made me think he cut his own hair. His face bore five o’clock stubble that added more shadows to a face already dancing with them, given that the wizard stood with his back to an enormous fireplace.

  He wore a necklace with a skeleton key hanging from it. Right now, there was also a pixie hanging from it, via a grappling gun.

  The wizard blinked green eyes at Peasblossom, holding his hands out at his sides in the universal “Is it safe to move?” position that so many people assumed upon first meeting my familiar. The position raised the short brown poncho he wore enough for me to glimpse a small canister tucked into a belt at his waist. Fire-Ade.

  He carries a miniature fire extinguisher?

  I glanced around, noting that there was a fire extinguisher in every corner of the room, and one under the desk.

  Jim followed my gaze. “Fireplace. Lots of books.”

  “I see.” I looked at my familiar. “Peasblossom, are you okay?”

  I stepped forward, moving slowly so as not to startle the wizard, and held out my hand to Peasblossom. The pixie kicked at my hand.

  “I don’t need help, I can do it!”

  Jim let out a strangled sound as Peasblossom pressed the button on the grappling gun to retract the rope. The action jerked at his neck, and a pair of kicking pixie feet hurtled toward his face. His eyes met mine, and I winced.

  “Sorry. That’s my familiar, Peasblossom.”

  “I see.” He cleared his throat. “And how can I help you…?”

  His voice was gruff in a way that suggested he didn’t talk much. Or maybe he was being strangled by the pixie rappelling up his necklace.

  “We’re here to ask you about an artifact that you evaluated for the Cleveland Art Museum,” I said. “It was a chalice.” I unzipped my pouch. “Bizbee, could I have the file, please?”

  Bizbee’s hand stuck out of the pouch, but when I reached down, what I felt was too thin to be a file folder. I winced. It was a shredded green Post-it. “I’ll buy you new Post-its. Please may I have the file?”