Chapter 19
The next day, the first thing Frederica registered was that she had slept through the night.
Not in the shallow, surface-level way she usually managed in unfamiliar beds, one ear always open, one hand always near whatever weapon she had put on the nightstand.
She had slept deeply and without interruption for six solid hours, which only happened at home in Rhodes with the sound of the sea through the shutters, and almost nowhere else.
The second thing she registered was the heat source at her back.
Dario was still asleep, his breathing slow and even, his body radiating enough warmth to make the cool morning air from the rattling AC unit bearable.
He was behind her, but not touching her, a few inches of space between them, as if they had both, even in sleep, maintained a buffer.
His arm was on top of the duvet rather than around her.
She didn't know whether that was deliberate.
She looked at the second, untouched bed on the other side of the room.
Right. So that happened.
She sat up. Dario didn't stir, which was ideal, because she could make a clean exit and be showered and armored back in her own clothes before she had the opportunity to do anything regrettable.
She moved carefully, planted her feet on the carpet, and stood. Her body had the pleasant ache of muscles worked hard. She grabbed her bag, crept to the bathroom, and closed the door behind her.
In the mirror, she stared at the marks on her wrists, hips, and throat. She gave herself exactly thirty seconds and shut the door on the feelings that seemed to be fighting to be heard.
Fuck feelings. It was a hookup. The itch was officially scratched, and she could get on with the job at hand.
Frederica ran the shower hot and stood under it until the water pressure, already unimpressive, gave out entirely. She braided her hair back when it was still damp, found clean clothes in her bag, and applied concealer to her throat with more thoroughness than usual.
When she finally came out of the bathroom, Dario was sitting up on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, and his hair everywhere. He looked at her, fully dressed and professional.
He was bedraggled and sleepy and so sexy her tender pussy clenched in longing. Fuck.
"Morning," he said huskily.
"Morning," she replied.
A pause of exactly the right length to establish that neither of them was going to be dramatic about it.
"Good sleep?" he asked.
"Fine." She crossed to the desk where the reliquary was still sitting in its velvet bag. "You?"
"Fine." He picked up his shirt from the floor and pulled it on. "We should debrief the rest of the crew."
"Good idea," she agreed.
Frederica ordered coffee and breakfast from room service while Dario showered, set up her laptop on the small table by the window, and made herself look at her emails with actual attention rather than using them as a prop.
By the time Dario came out of the bathroom in jeans and a fresh shirt, breakfast had arrived, and Frederica had organized her notes on the heist extraction into something legible.
She had also taken stock of the decorative prints that had bounced off the wall the previous night and rehung them.
She would leave the hotel with extra money to cover the cost of the broken frames.
She didn't bother to make the bed, just collected the scattered pillows and linen from around the room and dropped them in a heap on top.
They sat across from each other and ate breakfast in silence.
Frederica drank more coffee and finally said, "The reliquary gets couriered to Serapis today. We should get it out of Ephesus before anyone thinks to wander down to the archives for anything."
Dario nodded. He was back to the easy, unbothered version of himself, the one she could read and predict and hold at a comfortable distance. The other version, the one that had fucked her senseless and pressed his mouth to her shoulder in the dark, had vanished.
"About last night," she began and shifted in her seat.
He raised his eyebrows. "What about it?"
"Just making sure we are on the same page." She kept her voice flat and factual. "It was a one-time thing, and it doesn't change the working dynamic."
"Completely agree," he replied with a firm nod.
"It won't happen again."
"Absolutely not. You have been very clear about that."
She nodded. He nodded. They both drank their coffee.
The laptop chimed with an incoming call from Kon, and she opened it before the second ring.
Kon appeared on screen looking like he hadn't slept much. Athena was visible over his shoulder, sitting on the edge of a bed in a hotel room in Thessaloniki, doing some complicated one-handed juggling with a knife.
"The Waller Codex is secured," Kon said without preamble. "Transport arranged. No casualties, but we had one broken window, and a museum security guard who is going to have a very interesting insurance claim."
"Athena?" Frederica guessed, her smile starting.
"The window was giving way already," Athena said, without looking up from the knife. "We did them a favor by taking it out."
From behind Frederica, Dario leaned into the camera's line of sight and said, "The Theotokos relic is secure on our end."
Kon's eyes went to Dario, back to Frederica, took in the hotel room, complete with broken pictures on the walls and the bedding heaped into a pile. His expression didn't change, other than a flare of recognition that she only saw because she had been his friend for so long. He wisely said nothing.
"I'll pass confirmation to Serapis and call you back," Kon said, not missing a beat. "Altun is going to get in on that call, too. There is something you both need to hear."
He hung up on them, and ten minutes passed in silence. Frederica tried really hard not to stare at Dario, and he seemed oblivious as he killed time with a game on his phone.
The laptop rang again, and Kon, Athena, and Serapis appeared.
Altun's connection popped up, and her face came into sharp focus: dark eyes, the ivory and gold earrings, and dark red lips.
Frederica was always impressed by how Altun always looked put together, no matter the time or situation. It had to be magic.
"Good morning, you two. My contacts in Lucerne have flagged an item moving through a private channel," Altun said with a tap of her polished nails on the table she was sitting at.
"It's an obsidian scrying mirror, sixteenth century.
The provenance is being described as 'Rudolf II collection, dispersal.
' The piece has been off the market for four hundred years.
I know the mirror because it's the original that John Dee used as a copy to make his own while he was in Rudolf's court. "
"Show me," Serapis said, leaning closer to the screen.
Altun shared a photograph of an obsidian mirror approximately thirty centimeters in diameter, framed in worked silver and blackened with age. The surface was a flawless dark oval that swallowed the light.
Serapis's eyes went wide, and color drained from his cheeks. "That is Agrippa's mirror."
The room went quiet, or what passed for quiet across four different connections and two countries.
"Are you sure? There were a lot of obsidian mirrors made in that time by two-bit alchemists," Athena pointed out.
"No, I'm definite. It was his personal scrying mirror," Serapis replied and stroked his beard.
"He had it made in Cologne in 1516. It was his primary working tool for forty years.
When we bound him, the mirror vanished from his workroom.
I always assumed that one of Rudolf's men acquired it along with the rest of the collection when Agrippa disappeared.
I searched for it for years, but came to the conclusion that it had been buried or broken.
This is the first time it's resurfaced."
"Why does it matter?" Dario asked. He had moved to stand behind Frederica's chair, close enough for her to feel his warmth.
Don't lean back, she threatened herself.
Serapis stared into the camera directly.
"It matters because before Agrippa went into the binding, he split a portion of his necromantic power and sealed it within the mirror as a safety measure.
He believed that as long as the mirror existed and he could access it, he couldn't be permanently destroyed or defeated.
" Serapis paused, his frown deepening. "He wasn't wrong about that either. "
"Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me this asshole went full Sauron and locked part of his soul into it?" Athena demanded, finally putting down her knife.
"What's a Sauron?" Serapis asked.
"I'll tell you later, Zio," Dario replied, leaning over Frederica's shoulder. She tried and failed not to breathe in his smoky, spicy aftershave. "So what you are saying is that Agrippa needs this mirror back and will come out of hiding for it?"
Serapis nodded. "Without it, his apotheosis can't be completed because he isn't whole.
With it, the power he has been rebuilding since he woke now has a foundation it lacked.
The mirror is the difference between a man playing at old magic and something genuinely dangerous.
I thought he must already have it, so this is good news for us. "
"Okay, we find it and steal it before he can," Frederica said with a shrug. "Easy."
"There's a complication." Altun's voice had a touch of irritation. "The seller appears to have acquired it through my sister. She didn't tell me she had it, and it wasn't in her house when we took her out. She must have sold it on before we killed her."