Page 50 of Fastest Kill

Dario moved his laptop toward her. She took the chair across from him without asking. She pulled the screen toward her and started working through the venue layout with the same attention she had given the museum in Ephesus, marking positions and running angles.

This was the version of her that few people got to see. It wasn't the sharp-tongued threat or the woman who had kissed him like an argument in the street outside the museum. Just the professional underneath, precise and serious, and completely at ease with her own competence. He could see both Tore and Despina's training hard at work, and despite what she thought about herself, Frederica was the best of both of them.

"The mirror will be in a secure viewing case," she said, breaking his train of thought. "They won't let it be handled until bids are placed. We need to see it before the room does."

"Altun's contact can get us in for the pre-auction viewing. Catalog access only, but it's enough."

"We'll need to know what's in the case with it. If the mirror is warded, Serapis, Kon, and Altun need to know before we move it."

"Already on the list." He flipped the notepad to the next page and showed her.

She read it. Her expression shifted, barely, in the way it did when something had not gone how she expected. "You had already thought of that?"

"I think of most things," he said with a smile. "I just don't always announce them. Sometimes it's easier to let people make assumptions about being a big himbo."

Frederica looked across the table in the low lamp light, and there was a moment he recognized: the same moment there had been in the car after Ephesus, and on the terrace in Rhodes, and in approximately twelve other instances he had stopped counting because counting them was not helping him maintain the 'just a hookup' position they had both agreed on.

He had always suspected that Frederica Alesci would be incredible in between the sheets. Now he knew that she was absolutely feral in the best possible way. He had the bruises and bite marks to prove it. He would never regret it even if it only ever happened once. It had been worth all the awkwardness and then some.

Frederica picked up her phone. "I'm going to call Altun about the pre-auction access."

"Tell her we need the full catalog," he replied. "It's better if⁠—"

"I know what to ask for, arkoúdos." She was already dialing as she walked away. She was back to calling him 'bear,' and he took that as a sign she was warming up again.

He looked at the notepad and the name he had written at the top of the page: Amelia Ferraro, married eleven years.

Wonder how that would look and feel, he thought, and Despina and Tore sprang into his mind. They had the kind of ease and love that was rarer than the whole contents of the auction they were about to crash.

Dario felt a pang of longing and shut it down just as quickly. This job was going to be a problem in ways that had nothing to do with Agrippa and his damn mirror. With a sigh of resignation, he picked up his pen and got back to work.

21

The pre-auction viewing ran from six to seven p.m, and Frederica spent most of it being Amelia Ferraro. She even wore a dress with caped sleeves that softened how strong her arms and shoulders were and highlighted her long legs. She left her hair out, taming the waves with a little oil and letting them fall naturally. It always softened her, and that was what she needed to look like tonight. Soft, rich, and entitled.

Amelia would be comfortable in rooms like this. She had spent twelve years handling objects of the kind on display. It was a converted upper floor of a townhouse in the First District, with pale walls, discreet lighting, and the kind of security that wore blazers instead of uniforms.

Amelia moved with the unhurried authority, like she knew what she was looking at and wasn't performing for anyone.

She made notes in the small leather-bound catalog Altun's contact had arranged. She asked one question of the viewing supervisor, something specific about the documented provenance of a Flemish grimoire in case two, and the supervisor's answer was detailed and slightly nervous, which was exactly the right dynamic for a woman of Amelia Ferraro's credentials.

Dario, for his part, was perfect. He stood at her shoulder when the moment called for a husband's presence, drifted away when the room gave him something useful to attend to, and made her laugh twice with his casual observances of other attending members.

The mirror was in case seven. The obsidian surface was behind a sheet of UV-filtered glass, mounted in its original silver frame on a velvet stand.

The photograph Altun had shared hadn't captured the darkness's quality. In person, the surface was not simply black obsidian. It was black, absorbing light rather than reflecting it, with a depth that suggested the glass went deeper than it should.

The silver frame was hand-worked, the scrolled designs worn smooth with handling, the metal darkened in the grooves.

Frederica stood in front of it for the regulated two minutes that was all the viewing supervisor allowed per piece. It was enough to give her an unwelcome sensation that something on the other side of the glass was looking back at her that wasn't a reflection.

Creepy fucking object, she thought and tried to hide the goose bumps that had risen on her skin.

She made a note in the catalog about conservation concerns, a hairline fracture along the lower left of the frame, the style consistent with the period, and moved on.

Dario appeared at her left shoulder as she moved to case eight. His fingers found the small of her back for a moment, guiding rather than directing. The warmth of his hand through the fabric of her dress lasted only a moment before he dropped it.

"It is in case seven," she said, very quietly. "Don't look into its surface."