11. The Party #4
Shit . The slight emphasis on the last word hung in the air. Vellast’s expression faltered, confusion flickering across his features. Miles hadn’t realized Gabriel would take this tack. Should he interfere?
No, this was Gabriel’s call. He firmly reminded himself of his promise to try to enjoy the chaos.
“Again, my lord?” Vellast asked, his confidence wavering for the first time.
“Oh dear,” Gabriel gasped, pressing his fingertips to his lips in mock embarrassment. “I suppose there must have been so many that you’ve forgotten. Although it does seem rather unprofessional to do quite so much sampling of the goods, doesn’t it?”
Vellast went very still. The oily indulgence evaporated from his expression, leaving something stark and fearful in its wake.
Gabriel leaned forward, still smiling brightly. “Perhaps if I tied myself up and bent over the desk, that would jog your memory? You did so prefer having me restrained, as I recall.”
Vellast’s glass nearly slipped from his grip. “I—I don’t know what you’re implying—”
“No need to be embarrassed,” Gabriel assured him, his tone impossibly cheerful while his eyes remained cold. “Business is business, after all. And I can assure you, my lord, business will continue to run smoothly.”
Vellast’s mind worked frantically behind his eyes, trying to determine if this was a threat or merely an uncomfortable gaffe.
Gabriel maintained that perfect ambiguity.
His words could have been those of a willing participant reminiscing about a shared…
social connection, or a victim promising retribution.
“I look forward to our continued partnership,” Gabriel concluded, rising gracefully to his feet. “I’m sure we understand each other perfectly.”
Miles followed Gabriel out of the study, maintaining his composed expression until they were safely in the corridor. As far as unexpected twists and turns, that hadn’t been as extreme as he had worried. But as soon as the door closed behind them, Gabriel tugged him into an alcove.
“Invisibility,” Gabriel whispered, his eyes gleaming with mischief.
“What? Why—”
“Miles, please ,” Gabriel hissed, pressing him deeper into the recess of the alcove behind a hideous marble bust of some long-dead Vellast ancestor. “He must not see us here. The spell. Now. ”
There was a manic, vibrating energy to Gabriel’s grip on his sleeve that cut through Miles’s confusion.
He didn’t ask again. His hand dipped into one of the modified pockets Gabriel had sewn into his waistcoat, fingertips brushing the rough texture of ground Arianelian quartz.
He rubbed the crystals between his thumb and forefinger, murmuring the words.
The air around them thickened, turning gelatinous and cool as the light bent to accommodate them. They vanished from sight just as the heavy oak door to the office clicked open.
Lord Vellast stepped into the corridor. He paused, one hand still on the brass handle, and casually scanned the hallway.
His gaze passed right over the alcove where Miles held his breath, seeing only the marble bust and the shadow of a curtain.
Vellast pulled a key from his waistcoat pocket, locked the door with a decisive thack , and turned to head back toward the gallery, humming a discordant tune under his breath.
Vellast left as Miles and Gabriel huddled, breathing as quietly as they could.
Well. So much for not as extreme as he had worried .
He had promised himself he would roll with Gabriel’s improvisation.
He had expected social engineering, planting of dramatic rumors, or even some light pickpocketing of any lord or lady who sneered at him.
He’d even half-expected Gabriel to lose his temper and come at Vellast, although Miles suspected that he had actually been far closer to losing his temper than Gabriel. He hadn’t expected… whatever this was.
Vellast disappeared around the corner, and Gabriel grabbed Miles’s hand and tugged him back toward the office. Gabriel evidently wasn’t done playing.
They moved while still invisible. Gabriel released his hand and became a shimmer in the air darting toward the office door. By the time Miles caught up, the faint scritch-click of lockpicks was already echoing in the quiet corridor.
“Gabriel,” Miles murmured, glancing nervously toward the gallery. “This is highly inadvisable.”
“Hah, got it!” Gabriel announced, the door swinging inward. He dragged Miles inside and shut it softly.
Only then did Miles drop the invisibility, the air rippling back to normal. He turned on his partner, hands raised in exasperation. “We escaped. We had the information. We made him look like a fool. Why are we back in the lion’s den? ”
Gabriel ignored him. He was already across the room, shoving the heavy tapestry aside. The scene of the stag being torn apart bunched up, revealing the cold iron face of a wall safe.
“Because this is bigger than we thought,” Gabriel said, pressing his ear against the metal door. “He must keep records. Ledgers. Names. Maybe ones we won’t find at Rookgate.” He began to spin the dial, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration.
“We can’t steal his ledgers, Gabriel. He’ll know it was us.”
“We can, and we will, if we’re lucky.” Gabriel spun the dial left.
Click. “Besides, be honest, Miles. Back there, when he started talking about ‘business arrangements’ and ‘inventory’...” Gabriel paused, opening one eye to fix Miles with a piercing look.
“Exactly how many seconds were we away from you using that sulfur sphere in your pocket and burning Vellast to ash in his fancy desk chair?”
Miles opened his mouth to deny it. He closed it.
His hand went involuntarily to the lump in his hidden pocket. The heat of his rage had been a physical thing at several points, a tremor in his hands that he had barely suppressed.
Gabriel returned to the lock. “I figured this gives us other options. Now hush and let me work. Listen at the door.”
Miles let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-growl, and pressed his ear against the wood of the door.
Gabriel was right. He had jumped ahead in the analysis while Miles had been biting his tongue and drowning in the red haze of his own anger.
Not only was there no way Vellast would let them walk away from the sordid business, but there was also no way they morally could, given what they knew.
Which meant direct conflict was unavoidable.
They may as well gather what ammunition they could while they were here.
But still. There was no going back for them, and there wasn’t time to think it through properly.
Behind him, the silence of the room was broken by a heavy, metallic clunk .
“Got you,” Gabriel whispered.
Miles’s earlier protests dissolved into reluctant admiration as Gabriel went to work. The safe door swung open, revealing neatly stacked contents that glinted in the dim light filtering through the heavy curtains .
“Well,” Miles murmured, abandoning his post at the door to peer over Gabriel’s shoulder, “if we’re committing grand larceny, we might as well be thorough about it.”
Gabriel shot him a grin—a wolfish thing full of teeth and delight—and began his ransacking. Two leather-bound ledgers emerged first, slim volumes that Gabriel tucked into his waistcoat. Miles blinked. The garments lay flat against Gabriel’s torso despite the added bulk.
“You modified your own clothes, too,” Miles realized.
“Darling, there were so many pockets left from your coat. I couldn’t let them go to waste, and I knew you’d be happy to share.
” Gabriel’s fingers closed around something else, a leather pouch, large enough to fill his palm generously.
He loosened the drawstring, peered inside, and let out a cackle of pure, vindictive glee.
Diamonds. Dozens of them, catching the light and fracturing it into cold fire.
“Oh, Miles . How thoughtful of Vellast to contribute toward resolving our tax difficulties.”
Miles stared at the fortune cupped in Gabriel’s hands. The weight of their debt—forty-seven thousand gold, a sum that had loomed over every calculation since Palthor’s office—suddenly seemed far less crushing.
“A most generous business partner,” Miles agreed, surprising himself with the lightness of his voice. “We should send a thank-you note.”
Gabriel tied the pouch shut and tucked it away with a pat. “Now Madaze’s stash, if it exists and if we find it, will just be a nice bonus.”
A minute later, the safe stood empty and closed, the tapestry smoothed back into place. Miles’s hands trembled, not with fear, but with a buzzing, electric energy that demanded release. He fumbled for the quartz again, mumbled the words, and the air bent around them once more.
They slipped into the corridor like ghosts, Gabriel’s hand finding Miles’s in the gelatinous shimmer of displaced light. The gallery loomed ahead, the murmur of conversation and orchestral strings growing louder with each step.
Just before they emerged onto the overlook above the ballroom, Miles dropped the spell. They materialized mid-stride, two well-dressed gentlemen simply returning from a constitutional around their host’s magnificent estate.
Gabriel immediately resumed his wide-eyed socialite persona, accepting a fresh glass of wine from a passing servant. Miles admired Gabriel as he waved cheerfully to Lord Vellast across the room, raising his glass in a mock toast that made the man visibly flinch.
The next hour passed in a blur of strategic mingling. When Gabriel finally declared himself “simply exhausted by all this excitement,” their excuses were accepted with indulgent smiles.
The coach was waiting for them outside. The moment the wheels began to turn, Gabriel dropped his mask.
“Did you see his face?” Gabriel crowed, bouncing on the squabs like a child. He yanked the pouch of diamonds from his waistcoat, letting them spill across his palm in a glittering cascade. “When he finally understood? When he realized the merchandise had come back to haunt him?”
Miles laughed despite himself, a startled, relieved sound. “I thought he might actually faint.”
“Worth more than all the gems in his safe.” Gabriel held up a particularly large stone, watching it catch the light from the passing streetlamps. “Although these are quite nice too.”
The manic energy in the coach was infectious, but Miles couldn’t quite surrender to it. His mind kept circling back to what Vellast might do when he discovered the theft.
“He’s going to try to kill you,” Miles said.
Gabriel tucked the diamonds away, unconcerned. “He can certainly try.”
“Gabriel—”
“You’re worried.”
Miles exhaled, slumping against the squabs. “I hadn’t planned to make an open enemy of him quite this soon. I thought we’d have more time to prepare, to gather allies, to—”
“To control the variables?” Gabriel’s voice was gentle, without mockery.
“Yes.”
“Do you wish we hadn’t done it? That I’d played the simpering fool all the way home and left his safe untouched?”
Miles considered the question. He thought of the ledgers pressed against Gabriel’s ribs.
Names, dates, transactions. Evidence. He thought of the diamonds that would free them from Palthor’s financial trap.
He thought of the look in Gabriel’s eyes when Vellast had failed to recognize the man he’d violated.
“No,” Miles admitted. “Let him come. I’ll have your back. ”
Gabriel’s hand found his in the darkness of the coach, squeezing tight, but Miles saw the fading high in Gabriel’s eyes. He already knew—tonight they would need the weighted blanket again. Perhaps for both of them.