24. Sharks
Sharks
The damn locator spell wasn’t working right.
Luna stood in an East Village alley that reeked of garbage and pricey coffee.
But the air flickered like a buffering GPS.
The locator spell should’ve glowed steadily, offering a floating map to its target.
It was a simple charm she’d used a hundred times.
Instead, her magic sputtered and dimmed, then flared brightly, only to dim again.
“Come on,” she muttered, turning in a slow circle. “Don’t do this to me now.”
The map flared—pointing north, maybe?—then died completely, replaced by a flashing error message: MAGIC ANOMALY DETECTED—PLEASE STAND BY
Luna wanted to scream. CastR again. The app was disrupting natural magic like a chorus of cell phones making a speaker shriek with feedback.
She closed her eyes, focused harder, and poured more energy into the spell. The map flared hot all around her. There.
Following the map, Luna began walking north, then west. The streets blurred past. Tourists with shopping bags, finance bros in expensive suits, some poor soul walking five dogs at once.
Luna stopped in front of a decrepit-looking brownstone.
Made absolutely sure she had the address right.
Then she visualized the space. Two-bedroom apartment, third floor, street-side.
She let the portal spell build in her chest, in her fingertips, in the air that bent around her intentions.
After a deep breath, she materialized in a cozy living room.
A family sat on the couch: mom, dad, two kids. They ate pizza from the box and watched something animated on TV. A dog sprawled on the rug. Domestic contentment radiated—until Luna appeared like a cockroach in a punch bowl.
“Where’s Elias Shaw?” she demanded.
The dad, holding a slice in mid-bite, blinked at her. He was maybe forty, soft around the middle, with the resigned expression of a man whose Monday had just gotten significantly weirder. “Uh . . . right here? I usually go by Eli, though.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Wrong Shaw. Goddamn CastR.
“Who are you?!” The mom had found her voice, rising from the couch with the air of someone prepared to defend her pizza with violence. “What are you doing in our apartment?”
The kids screamed. The dog started barking. The dad just sat there with his slice, looking bewildered.
“Sorry!” Luna backed up, hands raised. “Wrong Shaw. I’m looking for a different. . . um . . . this is a locator spell malfunction. It shouldn’t have . . . I’m so sorry . . .”
She turned to leave—gracefully, she hoped, like someone who had her life together and hadn’t just invaded a stranger’s home—and immediately knocked over a two-liter bottle of Sprite.
Luna lunged for the bottle as it toppled off the coffee table but missed, and it hit the hardwood floor, exploding in a sticky fountain.
“Get out!”
“So sorry!” Luna tried to vanish, couldn’t get the portal open fast enough, and ended up tripping over the coffee table instead. She went down hard, caught herself on the arm of the couch, finally got the portal open, and tumbled through it like she was fleeing a crime scene.
Behind her, she heard the mom’s voice: “That settles it. I don’t care how great everyone says that magic app is going to be. We’re staying analog.”
The portal snapped shut. Luna landed in an alley, cursing.
* * *
She recalibrated the locator spell. Poured more energy into it. Whispered a prayer to any gods who might be listening that CastR’s interference wouldn’t destroy her ability to find one very stupid magician.
Luna followed the spell northward this time.
Toward Central Park. Toward the kind of real estate that required either inherited wealth or a deal with something decidedly non-human.
She was halfway up Central Park West when something silver crashed onto the sidewalk three feet in front of her.
An antique chalice, probably worth more than an average car.
Suddenly, a variety of coins rained down across the concrete: old coins, gold coins, coins that belonged in museums.
Luna looked up.
Another object came sailing out of a penthouse window twelve stories above. A jeweled scarab, Egyptian, gleaming in the streetlights. It hit the sidewalk and skittered into the gutter.
Down came a glowing crystal orb. A carved jade dragon. A bronze mask. They rained down like the world’s most expensive hailstorm.
Pedestrians scattered. Someone shouted. A taxi swerved.
“Some people leave breadcrumbs,” she muttered as a golden statue of Bastet bounced off a parked Mercedes. “Shaw leaves felonies.”
She looked up at the penthouse. More artifacts flew out—a steady stream of stolen history being hurled into the New York night.
There.
She headed for the building’s entrance.
* * *
The doorman tried to stop her. “Miss, you can’t just—”
Luna waved a hand. His eyes glazed, and he stepped aside.
She took the elevator to the twelfth floor. The doors opened onto a marble foyer, lit by a crystal chandelier. This was wealth that whispered, not shouted. The penthouse door stood ajar. She pushed it open.
The apartment was in chaos. No, not chaos, a dismantling. Every surface had been stripped bare. Paintings lay stacked face-down on the marble floor. Sculptures had been dragged from their pedestals. Ancient weapons—swords, daggers, spears—were arranged near the open window with deliberate neatness.
Burke stood several feet back from the glass, shirt sleeves rolled, hair plastered to his forehead. He clutched an ornate chalice to his chest, knuckles white.
Elias Shaw stood opposite him.
He’d helped himself to one of Burke’s cigars and looked perfectly at home. Jacket off, sleeves loose, one hand in his pocket, the other lifting the cigar to his lips with lazy familiarity. Smoke curled through the air, calm and unhurried.
“Again,” Elias said mildly. “Tell me what you knew.”
Burke’s jaw worked. His lips began to move—not answering, but reciting.
Luna felt it immediately: the low hum of spellcraft. Burke’s voice dropped into a chant, syllables scraping against each other like broken glass.
Elias sighed. “No.” He snapped his fingers and the chalice tore free of Burke’s hands, rocketing backward through the open window. The sound of metal striking stone echoed faintly from the street below.
Burke screamed, not in rage, but in pain. He staggered, clutching his head as if something inside it were being wrenched sideways.
“That was Mesopotamian,” Elias said casually. “Third dynasty, probably impossible to put a price tag on it. Answer the question.”
Burke sucked in a ragged breath and tried again, forcing out another incantation. The words tangled in his mouth, half formed. A counterspell, Luna realized. He’s trying to fight back against the mind-control token. Crude, desperate, but the best he could manage.
Elias flicked ash onto the marble.
A jade figurine leaped off the credenza and sailed past Burke’s ear, smashing through the window in a spray of green shards.
“One object,” Elias said, smoke drifting from his lips, “for every evasion.”
Burke dropped to one knee. Blood trickled from his nose.
“I didn’t intend—”
A carved ivory tusk flew.
“I didn’t mean for—”
A bronze mask followed it, spinning end over end into the night.
Burke sobbed now, the chant collapsing into incoherent syllables. “You can’t . . . Shaw, please . . . ”
Elias took a step closer, his voice eerily calm. “For the twentieth time. Did you know that stealing Tut’s linen would kill my brother?”
Burke’s body locked up. Every muscle went rigid, like he was being pulled apart from the inside. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Luna took a step forward. This was wrong. This wasn’t justice or strategy or even revenge. This was just a shakedown. Just slow, methodical destruction until a desirable answer had been purchased.
When she’d first met Elias Shaw, he’d bristled at the suggestion he was a thug. He’d had the nerve to seem affronted.
But look at him now.
Burke choked. “I knew,” he gasped. “Of course I knew the curse would kill him.”
Elias exhaled slowly, deeply. Satisfaction flickered across his face. “There it is.” He turned to Luna. “You hear that?”
Burke collapsed, retching. “He was expendable,” he sobbed. “It was necessary. I needed the artifact—”
“Enough.” Luna thrust out her arm, causing the air to crystalize with a sharp crack. The token—burning in Elias’s jacket pocket like a tiny furious sun—froze.
Burke went slack, confusion washing over his face as the compulsion vanished. He looked around at the ruined penthouse, blinking. “What on earth—” he began. Then his eyes rolled back and he pitched forward, unconscious, landing face-first among a scatter of Babylonian tablets.
Elias straightened his cuffs and took another draw from the cigar. “Well,” he said lightly. “That clears that up.”
Luna stared at him. “You stole a token.”
He raised a brow. “Borrowed.”
“You stole,” she repeated, “my token.”
His jaw tightened. “I got the truth.”
“No. You forced a confession. That’s not honesty, that’s ventriloquism.” She gestured at Burke’s unconscious body. “You didn’t give him a choice. You just kept at him until you liked his answer.”
“He deserved it.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Isn’t it?” His eyes burned. “He killed my brother. He sent me to the Void. He lived forever while Frankie died. You want to tell me he didn’t deserve to say it out loud?”
“You should be better than him.”
He visibly flinched at that comment, which she found satisfying although she knew deep down, she’d regret it later.
“We need to go,” Luna said. “Before he wakes up.”
She held out her hand. After a beat, Elias surrendered the dead token. She tucked it back into the satchel and began tracing a portal between them.
“I’m sorry, doll,” he said softly. “That’s not happening. I’ve got unfinished business.” Elias looked down as a portal shimmered open at his feet. “Really? How stupid do you think I am?”