Gunmetal Magic (Kate Daniels #5.5)

And he went there. The Old Andrea would have given him a look. I leaned over to him with a sweet smile. “I don’t need handcuffs to keep a man in my bed. I think we both know that. If I really wanted to take you away from your fiancée, I would. Lucky for her, I’m not a glutton for punishment.”

I put the glass cutter into my mouth, jumped up, and slid through the window, holding on to the bricks with my fingertips before he called my bluff. I heard Raphael unlock the bathroom. A moment later he pulled himself through the window with easy grace.

We climbed up like two lizards, hurrying up the wall. Raphael reached the second-floor window and ripped the grate off with a casual tug. I cut a semicircle of the window’s glass, popped it out, slid my hand through the opening and unhooked the latch. The second latch followed, and I slid the window up and dived in, legs first. Raphael followed, setting the grate back in place.

I looked around the dim room. The contours of a large canopy bed rose from the gloom to the right.

Raphael brushed against my back. My body stood at attention. Sex? Yes, please. My mind said, “Not until hell freezes over.”

“You’re touching me,” I chided him.

He caressed my back, sliding his hand down, hitting every sensitive point I hadn’t even known I had. “No, this is touching you. That was just accidental contact.”

“Oh? Good to know. If you touch me again and I break your arm off, you can be sure it will be completely accidental.”

He stepped close, his thigh brushing my butt. I elbowed him in the ribs. It was hardly a gentle nudge.

He laughed.

“I know it’s difficult, since I have a shapely butt and all, but try to focus on our illegal burglary.”

“As opposed to legal burglary?”

Argh.

I snuck to the door and edged it open. The hallway was empty. Ahhh. Finally things were looking up. I padded out of the door and down to the end of the hallway, where a massive wooden door loomed. Supposedly the office waited behind it. I left the bedroom and jogged to the door. Raphael followed me.

I tried the handle. Unlocked.

“Too easy,” Raphael murmured.

If we got caught, the Pack would have hell to pay.

“No choice now.” I stepped into the office.

The scent of myrrh spiced the air. Rows of brown shelves looked at me, filled with assorted volumes and objects. A brigantine cast in pewter with startling detail. An ancient vase, a statue of a muscular man kneeling. Next to the shelves, a heavy rectangular desk sat on a spare rug, its corners trimmed with golden accents. Three chairs waited for someone to sit down, one behind the desk and two in the corners of the room. Shimmering golden curtains framed the two windows. Decorations of twisted metal hung on the black walls, the most prominent being metal scales with a moon above them, on the wall directly opposite the desk. The moon’s stylized eyes were closed to mere slits and her mouth smiled.

The place was empty.

Raphael moved past me and checked the windows. I locked the door and slipped behind the desk. From this vantage point, the room took on a new light. Every object within the office had been placed into a precise position oriented with the person behind the desk in mind. The desk was the center of this little cosmos, and the moment I sat behind it, I became the focal point of the room, as if I had assumed a place in the center of some invisible convergence of power. If inanimate objects could worship, the trappings of Anapa’s office would have knelt before me, because I sat in the place of their god.

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Whatever intelligence was at work here, it couldn’t possibly be human. People did not think like this.

Raphael peeled himself from the window and stood by me. “What?”

I beckoned him with my hand. He approached and I took him by the shoulder and tugged him down to my level. “Look at the room.”

He surveyed the office. His eyes widened.

“It’s not just me, is it?” I whispered.

“No.” He bared his teeth. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

I tried the bottom drawer. It opened easily. I rummaged through it. Papers, monthly business statements from the bank…nothing interesting. I tried the top one. Locked.

Raphael pulled a pick from his pocket and threaded it into the lock. He twisted and the lock clicked. Raphael slid the drawer open. A brown leather folder. I plucked it out, put it on the desk and opened it. A clear plastic sleeve shielded a photograph: an ivory bowl carved with figures of people engaged in combat and long vessels with little cabins sailing over the sea of drowned men.

“What do you think the country of origin for this is?”

Raphael was watching the office. “Hell if I know.”

I wished I had Kate with me. She would’ve told me when and where it was made and for what god.

I turned to the next plastic page. This photograph showed an ancient jug made of brown clay with a long conical spout. The tip of the spout had broken off.

“What do you think this is?”

“A piss-pot.”

“That is not a piss-pot. Will you take this seriously?”

“I’m taking this very seriously,” he said under his breath.

I flipped the plastic. A beat up–looking dagger with an ivory handle…Wait a minute.

“I know this.” I tapped the plastic. “I saw it today in the library. Jamar had bought that knife. It’s from Crete and I didn’t see it in the vault.”

I stared at the knife. It was very plain, with a foot-long, curved blade and a simple ivory handle in surprisingly good condition.

Raphael focused on the blade. “It’s ceremonial.”

“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.”