i 13e44e81ff362920 (7 page)

“Sure. Of course.”

She was already walking in the opposite direction before I could ask her who the visitors were.

Derrick emerged from the interrogation chamber. “Any idea what that was about? I’ve never seen her that spooked before.”

“I’ve never seen her spooked at all.”

He shrugged. “Everyone’s entitled to their secrets. At least I got a high score on the precog cards.”

“Yeah, you did really well.”

He smiled. “Your eavesdropping sucks, by the way. I could sense you coming a mile away. Nice trick with the two-way glass, though.”

“Next time I’ll tiptoe.” I put an arm around him. “Want to escort some visitors into the lab? Maybe they’ll faint, or cry.”

“Here’s hoping.”

We headed down the hallway, turned right, and came to the reception area.

Noel, the secretary for this floor, had managed to keep her job for almost three years without going crazy, demanding mental-health leave, or contracting a paranormal illness. She smiled and waved when she saw me, her pony-tail bobbing slightly.

“Hey, Tess. There are two guests who need to be signed in.” She glanced at her computer. “Mr. Lucian Agrado, and Mrs. . . . um . . . Is it Duessa?”

Those names stopped me in my tracks.

I hadn’t seen the Lady Duessa since last year, when she agreed to meet with me to talk about the Iblis. Now she was wearing what looked suspiciously like a black silk kimono, and she stood well over six feet in her apple red Manolos.

She smiled at Noel. “Duessa’s fine, honey.”

Lucian leaned against the counter. He caught my eyes and smiled.

“Miss Corday. Pleasure to see you.” Fuck fuck fuck fuck infinite fuck.

Lucian was here. In my workplace. My place of work, which was entirely separate from my place of play. And we weren’t supposed to be playing at all.

“Well,” Derrick said, eyeing Lucian and Duessa together. “I have to be somewhere a little less dangerous. Let me know how the visit turns out.”

“Thanks,” I said flatly.

He winked at me, then escaped down the hallway. “I’ve brought in the Lady Duessa as an outside expert,”

Lucian said, giving me a serene smile that made me want to hit him. “She has a vast knowledge of antiquities.”

“You bet your hot little culo I do, sweetheart.” Duessa beamed at me. “He does have a pretty fine culo, doesn’t he?”

I swallowed. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Me neither. Shame.” She shrugged. “But that’s life.

Now. Where’s this gorgeous suit of armor I’ve heard so much about?”

5

Cindée, our head of trace, seemed more than a little surprised at the menagerie of people suddenly occupying her lab. Lucian had agreed to put on a lab coat, but Duessa’s cool look told me that her sense of haute couture simply wouldn’t allow it. Consequently, she was the sole person in the room wearing black silk and heels.

“Tess.” Cindée gave me a bemused look. “You’ve got quite the following today. How can I help y’all?”

“We’re here to look at the armor.” I gestured to Lucian, who, I had to admit, looked good in a white lab coat.

“This is Lucian Agrado, who’s consulting with us on the Ordeño case. Lucian, this is Cindée Desroliers, the head of our trace division.”

Lucian leaned in and kissed her on both cheeks. “Enchantée. Mércis pour ta aide, et pour ta indul-gence.”

“De rien.” She beamed at him. “It’s a treat to finally meet you, Mr. Agrado. I’ve heard so much about you. In a professional capacity, of course.”

He returned her smile. “Of course.”

“And this is Lady Duessa. I doubt she requires any further introduction.”

Cindée extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you. We really appreciate the support you offered us last year, with the Kynan case.”

Duessa took her hand. “It was nothing. But thanks.”

Something subtle but detectable passed between them, and Duessa held on to Cindée’s hand for just a few seconds more. She wasn’t testing her, exactly, but sort of nudging her. As far as I knew, Cindée didn’t have any specific materia proficiency. But she knew how to handle mages. She didn’t break eye contact with Duessa, and kept smiling, but I could tell that she was shielding slightly.

Duessa simply inclined her head, relinquishing her hold on Cindée’s hand. She seemed to have passed the test. I looked at Lucian, but he merely shrugged.

“Okay,” Cindée said. “If y’all just want to follow me—we’re keeping the breastplate in a locked facility.”

She led us past the various machines in the trace lab, pausing to check a readout from the mass spectrometer. We came to what looked like a closet in the back of the laboratory with a steel door, except that it had a card reader and a thumbprint panel. Cindée swiped her ID, then placed her thumb lightly on the glass panel. The red light next to it turned green, and I heard the sound of heavy tumblers turning on the other side of the door. Then it opened, and I felt a rush of cold air.

“Wee bit chilly in here, I’m afraid,” she said. “But come on in. You’ll get used to it in a bit.”

The closet was actually a temperature-controlled chamber, large enough for all of us to fit in. There were several pieces on display in Plexiglas holding units—a book that appeared to be made of smoke, a blue glass orb, and a serrated knife—but the armor was the central and most prominent item.

The breastplate was made of steel with a black sheen, probably achieved by heating the iron. That was pretty much the extent of what I knew about metallurgy. It looked slender but heavy, almost like a vest, with two solid plates connected by intricate leather straps. The plate had been fashioned into the likeness of two wings, both covered in scales. Each wing had six eyes, half open, half closed. The open eyes reminded me of Ordeño’s. I couldn’t tell what animal the wings were supposed to belong to: a bat, maybe, or a dragon? Vancouver had both, frankly, although dragons were difficult to find within the city limits.

Duessa stared at the armor. “Rayos. Are you seeing this, Lucito?”

He smiled at the diminutive version of his name. “I actually saw it at the crime scene. But it looks even more impressive under these conditions.”

“As far as we can tell,” Cindée said, “the steel’s been reinforced, or braided, with a kind of materia that we can’t identify. Our equipment picks up vestigial traces, but there’s no process like carbon dating for materia, so we can’t determine exactly what kind of energy was used to forge the breastplate.”

I thought of the rumor that Tasha had heard about Miles developing an alternative light source for detecting materia. It would have been pretty useful right about now. Maybe Selena had planned this all along.

Duessa walked in a slow circle around the holding unit, examining the breastplate from every angle.

Then she turned to Cindée. “Okay. First, tell me what you think.”

Cindée opened up a red folder that she’d been carrying, glancing at her notes. “Well, I’m no expert.

But the design resembles a number of types of armor, forged between 1550 and 1590, roughly during the beginning of Spain’s Golden Age. It could have come from Milan, which had an active arms industry at that time.”

“It reminds me of something I’ve seen before,” Lucian said, absently scratching at the day’s worth of stubble on his cheek. The gesture was unconsciously sexy, and drove me mad. I had to look away.

“In Florence?” Duessa asked.

“Yeah. At the Museo Nazionale. I remember the wings and the eyes. Spooky.”

I looked at him. “You’ve been to Florence?”

“You haven’t?” His expression was playful.

“It does resemble an Italian piece—” Cindée continued, flipping through her notes. “A breastplate made for the Duke of Urbino in 1546—”

“By Bartolomeo Campi,” Duessa finished for her. “Actually, that piece was made closer to 1549.

And this isn’t Campi. It’s much too fine.”

Cindée blinked. “Do you specialize in Renaissance armaments, Lady Duessa?”

She smiled slightly. “I specialize in lots of old things, sweetheart. And I know that what we’re looking at is beyond the skill of a natural armorer.”

“It looks a lot like Campi’s piece, though,” Lucian said. “Isn’t that strange?”

“Maybe Campi’s breastplate was a copy, and this is the real thing.”

“Who else could have forged it, then?” I asked. “I mean, if it wasn’t this Campi guy. Were there blacksmiths in the Renaissance who had access to materia?”

Duessa turned to me. “Some. Filippo Negroli was the greatest armorer in Milan, and some say that he was a mage. Or maybe he stole dark secrets from someone else in order to create what he did.”

Her eyes went slightly distant for a moment. “Such beautiful pieces. He made a pageant shield with a gorgon’s head on it, and I swear, those eyes could turn you to stone. The gold damascene alone must have taken months. And all so some princely fucking ass-hat could march in a parade, looking fine.”

“You think it should have been used in battle instead?” Lucian asked. “A piece so beautiful?”

“Sometimes beautiful things are killers.” She stared at the breastplate. “They have to shed blood like anything else. That shield, and this breastplate, are those kinds of things. They were meant to see blood, death, and carnage. Meant for the field.”

Cindée frowned at the armor. “It seems a bit fancy for battle, doesn’t it? All those eyes and wings?”

Duessa drew closer to the Plexiglas cube that housed the armor. She approached it as one would inch toward a sleeping lynx in a cage. “These things have a memory. If you want to know more, I’ll have to touch her.”

Cindée shook her head. “I’m not authorized to let anyone handle the piece. It has to be kept under controlled conditions.”

Duessa shrugged. “That’s fine. But if you want to know more about where she came from, I’ll need to lay my hands on her.”

“I didn’t know armor had a gender,” I said.

Duessa smiled. “There’s a lot you don’t know, querida. There’s no real craftsmanship anymore. All the stuff you’ve got in this lab, it’s shiny and it works great, but inside it’s just wires and chips. No blood.” She returned her attention to the breastplate. “She’s got a pulse. She was forged in el siglo del oro by a master smith. It’s a crime to have something like this under Plexiglas.”

Cindée gave her a look. “Is this like an art appreciation thing?”

Lucian interposed himself between Duessa and the armor. “I think what she means is that the breastplate is a sacred artifact. Something that required great skill and intensity to create. That kind of psychic effort leaves a trace, and someone with Duessa’s particular skill set can read that kind of trace far more effectively than your mass spectrometer. But only if you let her touch it.”

“Her,” Duessa corrected him.

He blinked. “Yes. Her.”

Cindée looked at me uncertainly.

I shrugged. “Call Selena.”

Cindée sighed and picked up her phone. She dialed an extension. “Selena? Hey, this might be a silly question. But I was just—” Her eyes widened. “Really? Are you sure? Well, you can’t blame me for wondering. Fine. I will.”

She closed her phone.

“She told you to do anything Duessa asks. Right?”

Cindée frowned at me, then nodded. “Basically, yes.”

Duessa merely winked at her. “Don’t feel bad, sweetheart. It’s just one of the privileges of being a senior citizen in this community. Deference is a perk.”

I looked at her curiously. “Care to define ‘senior citizen’? ”

“Don’t even try it, Tess.” Lucian put his hands in the pockets of the lab coat. “If she won’t tell me her age, she’s certainly not going to tell you.”

Duessa shook her head. “Una mujer necesita sus secretos.”

He chuckled. “Tiene secretos peor que este, amiga.”

“And that’s how they’re going to stay. Secret.” Duessa returned her gaze to the armor. “Now. Let’s pop this top.”

Cindée entered a code into the keypad next to the display case. Then she swung the front open gently. “Please put on a pair of gloves, at least. The amino acids from your hands could do irreparable damage.”

I started to hand Duessa a pair of latex gloves, but she shook her head, reaching into her purse. “No worries. I have my own.”

She pulled on a pair of gloves and approached the case. We all fell silent. It was like waiting for the armorwhisperer to do something miraculous.

Duessa laid her hand gently on the front of the armor. Her eyes went distant. “Dímelo tu,” she murmured.

An arc of white light passed between her fingers and the metal. She leaned in closer. I felt something sharp in the pit of my stomach. Then I heard a strange buzzing in my ears. I turned to Lucian, but his expression was unreadable. If this was a technique for utilizing materia, it was older than anything I knew about. Something close to the way that Miles could “profile” a spatial scene, only deeper and more intuitive.

Curiosity got the better of me. I reached out just for a moment with my senses, trying to brush against whatever power Duessa was channeling. It hit me in the face like a blow, stinging, making my eyes water and my lips ache. There was earth materia bound up in there somewhere, but that was just the surface. Beneath that, there was a layer of roiling dark energies, hungry and incandescent. It took all of my strength not to make a sound.

If Lucian noticed, he said nothing.

Duessa took her hand away. The white light cooled to a glow, then dissipated slowly. Thin vapors curled around her fingers, and I smelled burning plastic. The latex glove was gone.

“You’re lucky you didn’t set off the sprinklers,” Cindée said. “What was that? Some kind of energy-based microscopy?”

“It would take too long to explain.” Duessa reached into her purse and withdrew a bottle of hand sanitizer. She sprayed both hands, rubbed them vigorously, then replaced the bottle. “Major magic like that can really dry out your skin.”

“Did the armor tell you anything useful?” I asked. “Like where it was made, or born, or whatever?”

She fixed me with a critical look. “Sweetheart, don’t take this too personally. But you need to have a little more respect for the powers that you tap into every day. What you call ‘materia’ is just one property among many that drives the occult universe, and it wasn’t put here to make your life easier.