Magic Shifts (Kate Daniels 8)

Nitish flipped the page again. Another dagger, straight edge this time. Same plain, workmanlike aesthetic. Same killer blade.

The smith closed the book.

“Any swords?” I asked.

He shook his head.

That meant either the buyer didn’t use a sword, which was unlikely considering all the magic crap Atlanta threw at us on regular basis, or he had a favorite blade and he was good enough not to break it.

“Can you describe him?”

“Dark hair. Beard. Large.” Nitish raised his hands. “Tall. Wears glasses. Soft voice. Calm. He doesn’t look like a man who would buy this.” He indicated the blade.

“What does he look like?”

Nitish sighed. “Like a man of peace.”

“When is he coming for the pesh kabz?”

“I don’t know,” Nitish said. “Sometimes he comes the day after I tell him it’s done. Sometimes a month. He never calls ahead. He pays up front and then shows up without warning.”

“Will you call me after he comes to pick it up?”

“He might not pick it up at all,” Nitish said. “A year ago he spoke with my father and had him work on this.”

He flipped the book to the last page, where half a page was glued down to form a paper pocket, and pulled a photograph out of it. A round box of blackened steel a little smaller than a soccer ball with a circular lid. At first glance, it looked like a random decorative koftgari pattern had been worked into the dark surface of the steel, but the close-up of the lid made it clear: the pattern wasn’t random. Spider-thin Arabic script decorated the steel.

Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim . . .

In the name of God, most Gracious, most Merciful,

I seek refuge in the Lord of the dawn,

From the evil of that which He has created,

And from the evil of intense darkness, when it comes,

And from the evil of those who cast (evil suggestions) in firm resolutions,

And from the evil of the envier when he envies . . .

Surat al-Falaq, one hundred and thirteenth chapter of the Qur’an. The entire box was covered in protective verses.

“He already had the box,” Nitish said. “He needed us for the koftgari.”

Islam protected its followers against the supernatural. Whatever the stranger was going to put into that box, he counted on divine assistance to keep it in there.

“I looked inside the box,” Nitish said. “The inside of it was smooth and looked like bone.”

“Ivory?”

“No. Bone. Like the inside of a skull.”

Better and better.

“Can I see it?”

“He picked it up two days ago. He didn’t even ask about the knife. I don’t think he remembered that he had ordered it.”

•   •   •

I STARED THROUGH the windshield at a chain barring Cutting Edge’s parking lot. The chain secured the parking lot at night. It was almost eleven a.m. It should be lying by one of the posts. Instead here it was, keeping me from driving in.

Derek usually came to Cutting Edge by eight in the morning. Failing that, Curran should have been back from his trip to the Mercenary Guild. He might have gotten held up at the Guild, but it was unlikely. After his response to Bob’s tirade, none of the mercs would screw with him. That errand should’ve taken fifteen minutes. Did he get himself into some sort of trouble at the Guild? My imagination painted the Guild in ruins and my honey-bunny emerging from the wreckage roaring and swinging around the limp bodies of the Four Horsemen.

That would be hilarious.

Okay, this wasn’t the most productive line of thinking.

Talking to Saiman had clearly put me into a foul mood. In my head, my dead aunt murmured, People are fish. They die. You remain. Saiman was right, in a sense. I was tainted, but not because I was doomed. I was tainted because I had power, the kind of power that corrupted and turned people into warped versions of themselves. I was warped enough as it was.

I parked in front of the building and tried the door. It was predictably locked. I unlocked it and walked inside, into a large main room. The shades were still down. I pulled them up, letting the light illuminate the wide room with four desks. There used to be only two desks, one for me and one for Andrea Nash, but now Andrea was busy running Clan Bouda. She was also pregnant. We tried to have lunch every Friday, and the last time we went, she ate four pounds of barbecued ribs by herself. She wanted to eat the rib bones too, but I talked her out of it. Then she pouted and called me a downer.

Now her desk stood empty, as she had left it. She claimed she would come back to it, but I doubted it. My desk was to the right of hers, Derek’s directly behind mine and Curran’s behind Andrea’s. None of the desks had any notes on them. Great.