23. Quinn
QUINN
THE RELIC WAS ON REALITY TV
By the second day of my chest cold, I had entered the dangerous stage of recovery where my body still wanted rest and my brain wanted a hobby to occupy it.
Unfortunately, my new hobby was antiquities.
It was Rafe’s fault. Technically, many things were Rafe’s fault at this point, including my compromised feelings, the excellent leftover ramen in my fridge, and the fact that Max now watched every meal preparation like fine dining might happen again if he believed hard enough.
He had texted me twice that day, to make sure I was still well stocked and resting.
I was propped against my pillows in a hoodie, pajama shorts, and three-year-old socks I should have thrown away because they were full of holes. Max lay beside the bed, one ear tipped toward me, lifting his head every time I coughed.
“I’m fine,” I told him.
He didn’t look convinced.
I had taken my medicine, drunk water, answered exactly two work emails before Moira texted and threatened to tell Helena, and eaten the last of the ramen Rafe had left me.
It was still better than anything that had ever come out of my kitchen.
I had warmed it carefully on the stove because I refused to microwave noodles that probably had a pedigree.
Now I was watching a documentary series called Private Rooms, which sounded elegant until I realized it was basically MTV Cribs for people who collected cursed chalices and pretended lighting design was a moral philosophy.
The host, a woman in an ivory suit, walked through private galleries around the world while billionaires said things like, “I’ve always felt drawn to objects with history,” which usually meant, “I bought this from a dealer who used the word provenance in a soothing tone.”
Still, it was interesting.
That was the problem with Rafe’s case. The more I learned, the more the objects stopped feeling like things.
They were witnesses. Survivors. Little stubborn pieces of lives that had been packed, stolen, hidden, sold, mislabeled, and displayed under the wrong names.
A necklace. A sword. A mirror. A comb. All of that was part of the history of a family trying to put itself back together through whatever pieces had made it through the fire.
I slurped another bite of noodles and clicked to the next episode.
The screen opened on a mansion somewhere in the Mediterranean, all white stone, blue water, and gates tall enough to suggest the owner had enemies or taste issues. A young man stood at the top of a sunlit staircase in a peach linen suit, smiling like he had invented leisure.
I frowned.
He looked vaguely familiar, but in the way all rich men in documentaries looked familiar. Confident and deeply convinced rules existed for other people.
The host said his name, but Max chose that exact moment to stand and shake himself, collar jingling.
“What?” I asked him. “Do you disapprove of linen?”
Max walked to his water bowl.
On screen, the young man led the host through room after room of private exhibits.
Glass cases. Bronze masks. Painted screens.
Ceremonial blades. Jewelry arranged on dark velvet.
He spoke beautifully and smugly about beauty outlasting heritage, which made me dislike him on principle even before he gestured toward a display of “minor devotional objects from transitional Olden Folk households.”
I paused with noodles halfway to my mouth.
Behind his left shoulder, half-hidden on a low plinth near a lacquered cabinet, sat an incense burner.
Small. Dark. Easy to miss if you weren’t currently obsessed with one very specific missing object.
The bowl was bronze, squat and rounded, with three short feet and a lid shaped like overlapping scales.
One handle had been repaired badly, the metal slightly mismatched.
Along the rim, almost swallowed by shadow, was a pattern I had seen in Rafe’s records: the repeated wave-and-claw motif from his mother’s side of the family.
The spoon slipped out of my hand and clattered against the side of the bowl.
I sat forward too fast, inhaled wrong, and immediately began choking.
Max was up before I could make a sound.
He bumped my knee once. Hard.
“I’m—” Cough. “I’m?—”
He bumped me again, then turned and grabbed the water bottle from the floor beside the bed with his mouth. It was too big for his mouth and already half-crushed, but he got it between his teeth and shoved it against my shin like he was delivering field medicine under fire.
I took it, coughing hard enough that my eyes watered.
“Thank you,” I wheezed.
Max stared at me until I drank. Only then did he sit.
I patted his head with a shaky hand.
He looked at the ramen.
“No. You may not confiscate the choking hazard.”
I rewound the episode, paused on the clearest shot, and took a picture with my phone. Then I zoomed in until the image blurred around the edges but the incense burner was still visible.
My heart had started doing that unhelpful pitter-patter.
Maybe I was wrong. Fever and fixation could create strange patterns in the human brain. But I had stared at enough scanned family records to know that shape. Those feet. That rim. The repaired handle.
I sent the photo to Rafe.
Me: Tell me I’m wrong.
Rafe: Why are you watching that phoenix?
I stared at the message, then studied the screen.
Me: What phoenix???
My phone rang, Rafe’s name on the screen.
I answered on speaker because my hands were busy zooming in again. “Do you mean linen staircase guy?”
“Dimitris Burelian,” Rafe said.
“That’s Dimitris?”
“Yes.”
I knew phoenix fire could return him to a younger body.
Knowing it and seeing him in his younger form were different experiences.
On my television, Dimitris smiled at the host beside a wall of artifacts, handsome in a lazy, golden way that made him look like he had never once carried groceries in the rain.
“That is profoundly unfair.” I looked at the screen again, then past him to the object on the display shelf. I tapped the screenshot. “But more importantly: is that the incense burner behind him?”
The line went quiet long enough that my chest tightened for a reason unrelated to illness.
“Rafe?”
“Send the timestamp.”
I did.
A moment later, I heard keys clicking. He didn’t seem frantic. Rafe didn’t do frantic. But the silence had weight now.
“It could be a replica,” he said.
“It could.”
“It could be a similar object.”
“Sure,” I agreed.
He stopped.
I swallowed. “It’s not, is it?”
Another pause.
“No,” he said softly. “I don’t think it is.”
There it was. The fifth relic.
The last missing piece, sitting in the background of a rich phoenix’s vanity documentary while I ate ramen in bed and almost died in a pajama hoodie.
Life had no respect for tonal consistency.
Rafe exhaled once. “You should be resting.”
“I am.”
“You’re conducting research while feverish.”
“I am watching television. The fact that television became evidence is not my fault.”
“This complicates things.”
“Because Dimitris has it?”
“Yes. And because if he wanted us to know, we would already know.”
I looked at the young version of Dimitris on the screen, his smile easy, his collection gleaming behind him. “What do we do?”
“I’ll look into it.”
“We’ll look into it.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re sick.”
I glanced down at Max. “Max says I’m fine.”
Max blinked.
“Quinn.” The concern in his voice made me briefly furious, which was easier than feeling what came underneath it.
“I can help. I want to help,” I said.
“I know.”
That shut me up.
“I know you can,” he said. “That’s not in question. But please, rest tonight.”
The please did more damage than the command would have.
I looked at the paused screen. The incense burner sat there as if it had waited generations and could wait one more evening.
“Fine,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“My fingers are not crossed.”
“Are they?”
I looked at my left hand, where two fingers were absolutely crossed beneath the blanket.
“No.”
He was silent.
“Don’t do the face over the phone,” I said.
“I am not doing the face.”
I snorted, then nearly started coughing again. “I can feel you doing the face.”
“Rest.”
“I hate when people I like are bossy.”
His breath shifted.
So did mine.
The words had slipped out casually, but they didn’t land that way.
People I like.
Rafe’s voice came back lower. “Then I’ll try to be less bossy until you’re well enough to argue properly.”
“That seems fair.”
“Sleep, Quinn.”
I closed my eyes for one second. “Goodnight, Rafe.”
“Goodnight.”
He ended the call.
I lay there staring at the phone while Max stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t need human speech to communicate disappointment.
“I said I’d rest.”
Max kept staring.
I threw my hands up. “I’m resting.”
He sighed and lowered his head onto his paws.
I lasted twelve minutes.
In my defense, my body needed rest, but my brain needed answers, and my brain had always been bad at staying in its assigned lane.
I told myself I would only confirm the episode details.
Then I told myself I would only look up Dimitris’s public collection records.
Then I found his foundation site, which had a contact page and a business email that looked too general to matter.
I wrote the message carefully.
Dear Mr. Burelian’s office,
My name is Quinn Bradley, and I am working with the legal team representing the Virelli family in matters relating to several family artifacts displaced during the Winged War.
I recently viewed an episode of Private Rooms featuring Mr. Burelian’s collection and noticed an incense burner that may correspond to one of the Virelli family’s missing heirlooms. I would be grateful for the opportunity to discuss the object’s provenance or direct this inquiry to the appropriate representative.
Sincerely,
Quinn Bradley
I hit send.
Nothing would come of it, obviously. Billionaire phoenix collectors didn’t answer general inbox messages from feverish interns who had eaten ramen in bed. His assistant would ignore it, delete it, or flag it for someone whose job title included words like acquisitions and no.
Max stood, stretched, and nosed my hand.
“Fine. Dinner.”
I fed him, measuring his supplement from the blue-lidded container and adding the meat from the silver one exactly the way Rafe had done, which made my chest feel stupid. Max ate with excellent focus, then followed me back to bed and allowed me to lean over the side to scratch behind his ears.
“You know this is becoming a problem,” I told him.
He licked my wrist once.
“I can’t fall for him.”
Max yawned. He settled on the rug beside the bed.
I checked my email before putting my phone down. Then I picked my phone up again and refreshed the app, because I had already ruined the moral high ground.
A new message appeared.
Subject: Re: Provenance Inquiry — Virelli Family Incense Burner
My fever vanished for approximately half a second.
I opened it.
Ms. Bradley,
Mr. Burelian would be delighted to receive you and Mr. Virelli to discuss the matter in person. Tomorrow afternoon, if convenient.
Please confirm.
I sat straight up.
Max lifted his head.
I read the email again. “Well,” I whispered.
Could it possibly be that easy?
Max stared at me.
I stared at the screen.
Somewhere in the sensible part of my mind, a tiny lawyer began screaming.
But the rest of me, the part still warmed by ramen and the possibility of finishing what Rafe had spent years trying to restore, smiled so hard my cheeks hurt.
I forwarded the email to Rafe.
Good news: I rested aggressively near my laptop and accidentally got us a meeting.
His response came thirty seconds later.
Rafe: Quinn.
I smiled at the phone.
“Yes,” I told Max. “He is absolutely doing the face.”