Chapter Nine
Kane Underwood’s office, located on the second floor of a dinky building in East Boston, was not what I expected.
There were no shelves stacked with leather-bound tomes in the room; no raven, cat, or lizard staring at me, eyes unblinking. The office was also lacking in ancient ceremonial daggers, weird mysterious masks, and arcane glowing glyphs.
It had a small wooden desk, littered with pages, some torn or crumpled. A brimming ashtray and a half-full whiskey bottle acted as paperweights. There was a tall metal filing cabinet in the corner of the room, and another ashtray, also full, sat on top of it. The office was dimly lit by one bare lightbulb, but even in this murky light I could see the fine layer of dust that settled in the corners of the room. The place smelled richly of clove and pine. And it was empty.
I took a step forward and glanced at the papers on the table. It was a bizarre mix of unpaid bills, yellow crumbling parchments scrawled with dark blotchy ink, diagrams of circles of power doodled on napkins, and various takeout menus. Mesmerized by this assortment, I leaned closer to inspect one of the scraps of paper, when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around, and was taken aback at the sight of the man standing in the doorway.
“I know you!” I said. It was the guy I’d met in the street two nights before. He was dressed in the same dark trench coat, and had the same smug face. The coat and the smugness were probably permanent fixtures.
He quirked his lips in a tiny smile, and stepped inside the room, brushing past me. He put a plastic cup of coffee on the desk, and then shrugged off his trench coat, hanging it on a nail in the wall. He sat on the chair behind the desk, and leaned back, folding his arms. “You’re the dream peddler,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming, or I’d have brought a cup for you too. What brings you to my office, Ms. Lou Vitalis?”
I was thrown off by the fact that he knew my name, and found myself opening and shutting my mouth like a goldfish. The fact that this guy managed to consistently throw me off my guard vexed me. Finally recovering, I blurted, “Are you Kane Underwood?”
“Yes, I am. Pleased to see you again, Lou.” He said my name strangely, as if tasting the way it felt on his tongue. His green eyes never strayed from mine. “How can I help you?”
“What were you doing that night, in the street?” I asked.
He took a sip from his cup and fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Placing one in his mouth, he motioned at the only other chair in the room. It was by the corner of the desk, and had a layer of dust on it. I brushed it lightly, and sat down. Kane lit his cigarette with a dented metal lighter. He inhaled, blew the smoke sideways, and looked at me thoughtfully. “Working,” he finally answered.
I let the word hang in the air. The smoke from his cigarette carried the same scent of clove and pine that lingered in the room. It was a rich fragrance, unlike any cigarette I had smelled before. “Working at what?” I finally asked.
“Something I was hired to do.”
“I need to know what it was, to know if I can trust you.”
“Well.” He sighed sadly. “I guess you won’t be able to trust me.”
That didn’t satisfy my curiosity, but it did satisfy my need to know he could keep a confidence. Most sorcerers could; you don’t get far in the sorcery world if you blab.
“I need a sorcerer,” I said.
“You found one.” His green eyes twinkled. “What for?”
“For a difficult, dangerous, confidential job.”
He took another puff from his cigarette. “People don’t come here when the jobs are easy, safe, and widely known. Before I take on a job, I need to know the details first.”
“I need to break into a vault. It’s very well protected. There are some wards, runes, probably a curse or two.”
“Where is this vault?”
“We can discuss that later.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Later.”
“What’s in it?”
“Later.”
“Then what can we talk about right now, Lou?”
“I want to know if you’re the man for the job.”
He smiled and stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “So this is a job interview? Okay. You want to ask if I’m the man who will break into a well-protected vault whose location, contents, and owner I don’t know? No. I’m not that guy. That guy sounds like a moron, and I’m not a moron.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I really feel shitty that I can’t offer you anything. Do you want to go downstairs? There’s a nice café there.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Look, what I want to know is if you’re good at what you do. If I can trust you. If—”
“Does this look like a face you can’t trust?” He gestured at his scruffy unshaven cheek. “What’s the job? And what are you paying?”
There was no way around it; I had known it when I came to his office. He was right, only a moron would agree to a job without hearing the basic details. “I want to break into the vault of Ddraig Goch.”
He put down the coffee cup and cleared his throat. “Well, you weren’t kidding about difficult and dangerous.”
“There’s a box in the safe my client wants,” I explained. “I only need the box. The rest of the safe’s contents can be split between the members of the crew. There should be six dragon scales inside.”
He digested this. The mention of dragon scales didn’t seem to have an impact on him. I was beginning to suspect I’d have to find someone else.
“How many members in the crew?” he asked.
“Five, including me and you.”
“Six dragon scales divided by five people? Who gets the extra scale?”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“Who are the members of this crew, aside from you?”
I shook my head. “That’s as far as we go. I’m not risking their lives, in case you decide to go snitching on us to Ddraig Goch.”
“You think I would snitch?”
“I don’t know you.”
“That’s true, but you know what?” He took out his cigarettes again. “Snitches get stitches.”
“Is that some sort of ancient sorcerer rule?” I tried to catch a glance of the cigarette pack. It wasn’t a brand I recognized. There were Chinese letters on its face.
“More like an ancient public-school rule.”
“So? Can you do it?”
“I don’t know. I never broke into a dragon’s vault before.”
“No one has.”
He drummed on the table for a bit, thinking about it, occasionally taking a drag from his cigarette. Finally, he stubbed it out in the ashtray, adding to the quite impressive amount of cigarette butts and ash in it. “How do you intend to overcome the dragon’s senses?” he asked.
“We had a few ideas,” I answered slowly. “But they depend on your capabilities. How good are you?”
He leaned forward, a strange smile curving his lips. “Do you want me to demonstrate my powers now? Pull a rabbit out of my hat? Saw a lovely young woman in half?” The air crackled, making the hair on the back of my neck stand. His eyes flickered to black, their darkness mesmerizing.
“You don’t have a hat. And I’m not letting you near me with a saw.”
He snorted in amusement, and the strange tension in the air dissipated. His eyes morphed back to green. “What do you want me to say, Lou? That I’m the best sorcerer to walk the earth since Merlin? I’m better than most. But I can’t perform miracles.”
“Can you cloud the dragon’s senses?”
“No.”
I nodded, unperturbed. “Can you teleport us into the vault?”
“No…” He hesitated. “Teleportation spells are quite common, but they require immense power. You’d need a magical object that can focus that power. And those are very rare. Do you have something like that?”
“Probably not,” I admitted.
“Can you get one?”
“I’ll check, but I doubt it.”
“Then I can’t teleport us into the vault.”
“Okay… but suppose you had one, could you teleport us?”
He shrugged. “I’d have to do some research, but yeah, I think I could.”
“Can a dragon scale be your magical object?”
He blinked in surprise. “Yes. But the dragon scales are inside the vault.”
“Right.” I folded my arms. “So assuming we’re able to enter the vault, open the safe, and retrieve the dragon scales… you could teleport us away?”
“It would destroy one of the scales.”
“Luckily, we have one to spare.”
He grinned. “You’re full of surprises, Lou Vitalis. You already knew what I would say when you entered my office.”
“I had some assumptions.” I returned his smile. “So would you be able to do it? Teleport us out of the vault? Somewhere safe?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
I smiled in satisfaction. One of our two problems was solved. We had a way out.
“But that raises the question, are you capable of doing this?” Kane asked. “No offense, but last time we met, you didn’t exactly inspire trust in me. And you seem young.”
I bristled. “What does age have to do with it?”
“With age comes experience. You’re asking me to risk my life on this—quite frankly—almost suicidal job, and I would feel better if I knew you were an experienced hand.”
I was prepared for this. “Did you hear about the break-in into the cult of Dra’akthol’s inner sanctum eight years ago?”
He grinned. “Of course. It was hilarious.”
“It was.” I relaxed in my chair, feeling in control. “Their sacred blade was taken, along with several arcane items.”
“That’s right, and the burglar wrote Dra’akthol sucks donkey balls on the altar.”
“It was actually Dra’akthol sucks dirty donkey balls.”
“Are you going to tell me that was you?”
“One of the items stolen was a chain.”
He nodded. “The chain of Apollonius.”
I took the chain out of my handbag, and placed it carefully on the table. He stared at it, then leaned forward to touch it.
The chain coiled and lashed at his fingers. He pulled his hand back quickly.
“Careful, it bites,” I said, and touched it. It circled around my wrist, and I could almost hear it hissing in outrage.
“You have the chain?” I had the satisfaction of seeing him surprised for the first time.
“Yup.”
“Do you know what it can do?”
“It can thwart bicycle thieves really well.”
“You use the chain of Apollonius as a… bike lock?”
“I usually do. Though right now it’s locked with a regular lock, because I thought you might want to see some proof that I know what I’m doing.”
He considered this. His cigarette went out, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll do it.”
I tensed. He didn’t seem particularly interested in the dragon scales, so why would he agree to risk his life on this heist so quickly? I considered getting up, telling him I’d changed my mind, that he wasn’t what I was looking for.
But Kane was the best choice. The only choice.
“Good,” I said. “So… now we need to seal the deal.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Kane Underwood. When I work with sorcerers, I always seal the deal with blood. It’s the only way we can really trust each other,” I said. “We both cut our hands, and squeeze them together. We bind our hands with white silk. We swear an oath of loyalty as the silk slowly turns crimson. Then we untie the knot, and lick the mixed blood from each other’s fingers.”
I savored his stare of bafflement.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Lou… are you fucking with me?”
I grinned at him. “Maybe a little.”
“Okay then.” His lip quirked in amusement, his eyes twinkling. “That was fun. Now let’s talk some more about our dragon vault.”