Chapter 5 #2
Bradley held up one hand. “Hold on. Before we go any further—look.”
Up in the corners, their lenses glinting like glass eyes. Security cameras. There weren’t too many out on the dance floor, but it was fair to expect that surveillance was only going to get tighter and tighter the closer we got to the private areas of the club.
“One sec,” I said, sifting through my pockets, triumphantly pulling out something resembling an extremely ornate paper doll.
“Wait a minute.” Bradley narrowed his eyes, peering closer. “Is that what I think it is? One of those Balinese shadow puppets?”
I held back my smile, pleased that he’d recognized it for what it was. I’d picked it up on a job in Bali, an incredibly useful acquisition from an Indonesian mystic. Wayang kulit was a beautiful art form, stories played out by intricate leather puppets lamplit against white screens.
I was always convinced that there was a delicate magic to shadow puppetry. This little guy held a different sort of magic, this flattened warrior with his ferocious sneer. I held him up against the light, handling the sticks that manipulated his multi-jointed limbs.
A copy of the puppet appeared on the far wall, a shadow in deepest midnight, followed by another, then another. One by one, they flitted toward the security cameras, covering the lenses with their ink-black bodies.
“That should buy us some time,” I said, again restraining a smirk when I saw the awestruck expression on Bradley’s face.
We headed past the bathrooms, no kitchen here, no food to serve apart from the bowls of candy at the bar. There it stood at the very end of the corridor, a door that suggested in bold, bright letters that it was, in fact, for employees only.
“There, Bradley. Behind that door. Grimm’s Scary Tales, probably.”
He wrinkled his nose. “A thousand dollars a day, Griffin Gallows. You’d better be right about this.”
I turned the knob, cold under my hand, defying the warning on the door, pushing it open to reveal a crappy back room, bare cement, exposed pipe, and all. But at the end of that room? Another door. Older. Varnished. A brass knob. A tingle of excitement went up my spine.
But first… the back room. I should have known.
What a cliché. A bunch of dudes playing cards around a folding table, cheap beers warming, staining the surface.
You knew they were criminals because they weren’t using any damn coasters.
Five heads turned toward us, their beady eyes dark and unfriendly.
“Can we help you, gentlemen?” asked the biggest one, in a tone that suggested he didn’t think we were gentlemen at all. “Off limits. Employees only.”
“Oh dear, absolutely our mistake,” Bradley said, rubbing the back of his neck, playing up the oblivious starving academic act. “I’m sorry, I got caught up with the decor—the pages from the Abdulov Grimoire? And tried to follow the rest of it back here.”
Very cute. Not the greatest performance, but almost convincing.
The man at the table scowled. “And you didn’t see the most important piece of ‘decor’ right outside the door? The one that said to stay the fuck out?”
I jabbed my finger at the air, possessive, defensive over my starving academic. “Hey, buddy. Relax. Innocent mistake. No need to get all worked up.”
Somehow he scowled even deeper, jowls like a bulldog. “Why don’t you just take your boyfriend and get the fuck out of here?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
The same words had spilled out of both of our mouths. I couldn’t tell if Mr. Card Table over here was being a bigot or trying to hint at something that wasn’t there. Either way, I was getting pretty pissed off. I reached into my pocket, slipping my fingers through the hoops of my brass knuckles.
A gift from a Filipino healer, disproportionately valuable for the small favor I did for her.
All I did was help Mama Isabella carry a bushel of vegetables home from the market.
Blistering hot day in the province, more a test of stamina than strength.
Definitely taxing for a woman in her seventies.
I couldn’t stand by and watch her lug all that stuff on her own.
The knuckles were smithed, so she explained, from a broken cannon, back in the times of the revolution against the Spanish occupation.
The metal was laced with an enchantment that gave the knuckles a little extra oomph.
An appropriately explosive punch, some might say.
I tried to pay for them when I realized their value, but Mama Isabella had gasped in offense, then handed me a bonus basket of veggies. What an angel.
Brass knuckles were totally illegal in California, of course, but I was generally more concerned with what MEA had to say about the regulation of weapons, not mundane law enforcement.
Nicoletta must have known that these were part of my regular arsenal, that they held plenty of sentimental value.
Would’ve really chapped my ass if those MEA suits hadn’t returned them.
And here was a goon of a different stripe, one of JA Williams’s people. He laughed derisively, folding his arms as I slipped the knuckles on, as if to say that he was allowing me a head start. Two things I knew about scum like him who worked for scum like Williams.
First? Overconfident, generally. Not the best trait for someone working a job that involved assessing threats and protecting your employer from said threats.
Me. I’m the threats.
Second? Second was that they all folded like card tables when you punched them hard enough. Preferably in the gut.
“Real cute,” the goon said, cracking his knuckles. “Bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
He reached under the table, producing an aluminum bat that gleamed dully in the light of the exposed bulb overhead. I frowned.
“Knife to a—that doesn’t even work right now. Fuck this.”
I stalked toward him. He sprang to his feet, shoved the table out of the way, as if the rattle and bang of furniture was somehow supposed to intimidate me.
No worries. It only shortened the distance between my fist and his torso.
I reared back, fingers clenched tight, the metal blazing hot against my knuckles as the enchantment awakened.
That stuff I said to Bradley about depending on magic? Forget I said anything. I took a swing, drove my fist into the goon’s stomach. Arcane energy exploded from my knuckles.
The bat clattered to the ground. The goon flew off his feet, propelled by the spell work sealed into the cannon knuckles.
And then he kept flying until his back slammed against the wall with a sickening crunch.
He collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
The others stood by, jaws hanging loose.
Performing a threat assessment, if they were smart.
I kissed my knuckles, raised my fist to the ceiling. That one was for Mama Isabella. Absolute angel.
“Oh my God.” Bradley’s hands flew to his head. “You killed him!”
I wagged my hand at the wrist, shaking the ache in my bones away. “Nuh-uh. He’s fine. Look at him. Bleeding internally, maybe, but that’s what you get.”
Two of the goons backed up. They were the smarter ones.
The other two rushed us down. I drove my fist into one man’s chest, sending him flying off his feet.
Bradley greeted the other one with a folded chair to the face.
Both collapsed into agonized heaps, groaning on the ground.
Bradley dropped his chair in horror. I pursed my lips and gave him a grin of approval.
The remaining men scattered, slamming their way through the ‘Employees Only’ door. Again, very smart.
At last, the final door, its shiny brass knob gleaming like a trophy.
If it was locked? No sweat. A quick strike from my cannon knuckles would do the trick.
But I reached out, felt its metal cold under my hand, then wondered at its looseness.
Without turning it, I could already tell it was unlocked.
I pushed the door open, some small part of me expecting to find JA Williams himself on the other side. But the little office, dusty and sparsely appointed, was empty. Well—apart from the open manuscript sitting on the desk, smack in the center of the room.
Bradley licked his lips. “This feels too easy.”
“And?” I said. “Maybe it is. Maybe Williams was in the middle of reading this stuff and had to go attend to some billionaire emergency. Maybe he doesn’t bother locking up because he only hires dimwits who don’t care or know about the value of rare manuscripts.”
Despite his hesitation, I could tell that Bradley was dying to get a good, long look at the manuscript. His fingers dug into the doorframe, but his torso angled forward, a hound that had found its quarry, a boy unsure of whether it was safe to sprint onto the playground. It was kind of cute.
I understood well enough. He was an academic, a man used to asking for permission before he could find whatever it was he wanted, whether it was an old relic or an ancient, crumbling book.
There had always been locked doors, sealed cabinets, stern docents and archivists and librarians standing in the way.
To Bradley, this was too good to be true. My chest inflated with pride. We’d barely gotten started, but I already knew this was a job well done. I’d given him the gift of access, solved his problem. Seeing him smile was just a bonus.
Voices came from somewhere behind us, out in the surrounding rooms and corridor. Reinforcements? More goons? No point staying to find out. We grabbed the goods and ran like hell.