Page 31 of Ravenous Prophecy
Kane raised one eyebrow. “All five of you?” He slowly peeled off his work gloves, revealing strong, veiny hands.
Brigette finally finished scribbling in her notebook. She slammed it shut and waved one hand. “Introductions should hardly be necessary, but if you insist, we cater to clientele with very discerning tastes. My name is?—”
I could have sworn that Brigette’s mouth formed the correct names—Elaine and Bradley Brooks, Griffin Gallows, and all the rest—but the names that left her lips were ones I’d never heard in my entire life.
That spell in her notebook was automatically filling all the blanks, overwriting our identities in real time. Very clever. Brigette was going straight to the top of my list of thieves, provided she didn’t steal my shoes or anything.
“So how did you end up in this business?” Bradley asked, still maintaining the charade. “You’ve made quite the name for yourself.”
I clamped my mouth shut to hold in the laughter. Julian stomped on my foot, sensing my reaction.
“It was on my third trip to Nepal,” Kane said, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. “Up in the mountains, on thesteps of a monastery, up among the clouds, that was where I had my epiphany.”
“Big deal,” I grumbled under my breath. “Everybody’s been to Nepal. Call me when you’ve had tea with the Dalai Lama.”
Julian kicked me in the heel, somehow pulling it off stealthily. He really knew me too well. Everything about this Kane character annoyed me, but it annoyed me even more that I was letting him get to me.
Then I had my own tiny epiphany. Was this how I sounded to everyone else whenever I talked about my missions and experiences? Did I sound exactly this pretentious and insufferable?
“And that was that,” Kane said. “After learning more about the five elements—they believe in five of them over there, you see—I knew that working with metal was my calling.”
“Oh, of course. Water, fire, earth, metal, wood.” Bradley laughed nervously, just barely keeping his eyes off Kane’s inappropriately exposed skin. “How interesting that you didn’t end up with wood instead.”
The ladies turned to him with a matching set of cocked eyebrows. Bradley blushed.
“Working with wood, I mean,” he blurted out.
Kane smiled out of the corner of his mouth, something lopsided and practiced, designed to make onlookers feel fuzzy and gooey on the inside.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m very good with wood. I just wanted to challenge myself with something harder.”
Bradley gulped. The ladies gulped. I clenched my fists.Maybe I even imagined my fingers closing around Kane’s throat.
“I really admire how dedicated you are to your craft,” Julian said. “You really do challenge yourself, don’t you? Working for high-caliber clients like JA Williams, all those commissions you’ve done for him.”
Kane swept his hair back, smiling proudly. “Ah, yes. The helmets with the custom engraving? Some of my best work. It took some practice getting the symbols just right, but I think Mr. Williams was very pleased with the results. Couldn’t imagine what he wanted them for. Props in some independent production he’s funding? None of my business.”
“As long as the check clears, right?” Julian said, teeth sharp in his Cheshire smile. “Another day, another dollar.”
The blacksmith stiffened. “I’m not sure I like what you’re implying.”
“Indeed,” Elaine said. “It’s all about the implications. The name of your showroom, for example. Even today, even now, people believe in magic. JA Williams is one of them. What do you know about magic, Mr. Smith?”
Kane chuckled. “I mean, to some people, art itself is a form of magic.”
“That’s not what this is about.” Bradley pressed his hands together, clasping them in front of his chest, carefully considering his words. “Mr. Smith, armed men wearing your helmets—the ones you made for Williams—they attacked a group of people in the city just yesterday. A group of?—”
“Artists,” I blurted out. “It was an artists’ commune.Something like that. Point being that the things you made were found at the scene.”
He took a step back, glancing uncertainly between our faces, his hammer, the anvil. Kane was several things I didn’t especially like, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew he wasn’t going to fight his way out of this one.
“You mean—you mean to say that the authorities have my pieces? My beautiful helmets are evidence?”
Somehow he seemed more repulsed by the idea that his beautiful helmets—his words, not mine—had been lowered in status and value than terrified of consequences from the authorities. We didn’t have to specify which authorities, of course. MEA wouldn’t just swoop in and kill the guy on the spot. They’d probably erase choice bits of his memory, and Nicoletta might slap him around a little for fun. But savoring the mental image of her hitting him, that was when it hit me.
This guy was just a chump. The name of his business—ArKane, as silly as it was—that was only a coincidence. Julian was right. No real magic went into forging those helmets, at least not when Kane was involved.
He started it out with engraving, putting the grooves and channels into the metal. Williams then passed the helmets to proper enchanters to finish the job. They’d inlay the hollows with the right reagents to activate the magic. That was how he got so many of his presumably mundane goons to drive the oracles berserk. The helmets were the catalysts for their frenzies, forcing the oracles to become vessels for the Hive.
