Bitten in Two

With nothing spectacular to report in my section, I wandered over to Cole’s, where I found him admiring a drum. Shaped like a wine goblet, it came almost to his thigh. “Check this out.” He rubbed the head, which, according to the tag, was covered in goatskin. “It’s an antique.”

“You should come back and buy it,” Kyphas said as she joined us. Cole, looking over her shoulder, gave a short laugh.

“Not on my salary.”

Sterling cal ed to us from a back corner of the store,

“We need to have a family meeting!”

Vayl joined the three of us, and together we found Sterling and Ahmed standing beside a concrete pedestal.

Instead of a statue, it held a wide china bowl painted with blue flowers and green vining leaves. The mage had fil ed it with blue-stained water. And in the middle of the bowl, floating on a spun-glass rose, was the round, marblelike bal from an Enkyklios.

Cole reached for it. “Don’t!” I said. “What, did you total y ditch the class on germ warfare?”

“I might’ve been surfing that day,” he admitted. “Aw, come on, Madame B., don’t rake your fingers into your hair like that. You’l give yourself curly red horns and then I’l be forced to go buy a matador costume.”

I pul ed my hands free, clenching my jaws together as I said, “Wel , you’re not playing in the ocean today. So assume anything you haven’t identified is laced with smal pox until proven otherwise.”

“Okay.” He looked around until he found a couple of mal ets. “Can I pick it up with these?”

“Maybe,” I al owed, “but I don’t want to take the chance of a booby trap blowing us al to smithereens. Sterling?” I pointed to the Enkyklios bal . “Is this rigged?” He shoved Ahmed back to Vayl. From the look on his face, the mage didn’t appreciate being handled like a basketbal , but with his wrists firmly bound al he could do was scowl as Sterling muttered some words over what should be a smal treasure trove of information. He got no response. “It’s clear. And by that I mean it’s not trapped.

And it’s empty. Whatever was recorded on here is long gone.”

I watched Vayl study it, hoping it might trigger a memory as I said to him, “Okay, so we’re in Ahmed’s shop, and we know he’s the mage Roldan hired to mess you up.

But we’ve just found an Enkyklios bal . And we also know that Sister Yalida had an Enkyklios with her before she and the Rocenz disappeared over eighty years ago.

Coincidence?”

Vayl said, “I have very little idea what you are talking about. However I do not believe in coincidences.” I nodded. “I guess some things never change. So we have to ask, why is it here?”

“Symbol?” Cole guessed. “Maybe Ahmed is part of some guild and this is where they meet. But to keep it secret from everybody else they use the Enkyklios bal .” Now he was real y warming up to the idea. “Maybe the bal s are in shops al over the city, you know, to mark where their hidden tunnels come out.”

“Mages are the most solitary of al the Wielders,” Sterling said. “No way is Ahmed part of a guild. Right, buddy?” He shook the mage’s arm, but the only response was a dark red flush that rushed up Ahmed’s neck and didn’t stop until it reached his forehead. My stomach twisted at the thought of how much we were pissing this guy off. The same guy who’d managed to wipe centuries out of Vayl’s mind. And who’d attracted the notice of the most powerful werewolf in Europe. I decided then and there that he could never go free. Not if any one of us wanted to survive to see the fol owing dawn.

“Maybe you want to take him to the office,” I suggested.

“You know, so we can talk a little more freely?” Sterling nodded and jerked the mage back toward the front of the store.

Kyphas said, “I think Sterling’s right. Wouldn’t displaying the Enkyklios bal defeat the purpose of keeping whatever it’s hiding secret?”

Cole’s shoulders dropped. I smacked him on the back.

“It’s okay. You’re stil a badass sniper and one hel of a linguist.”

“What do you think it is?” he asked me.

Before I could answer, Kyphas said, “Maybe it’s a trophy.”

trophy.”

“That sounds plausible,” said Cole, gaining a look of adoration that explained just how far she’d fal en for him.

I glared at her, demanding that my inner crowd think up something cutting to say about what was probably hanging on the wal s at her place. But they seemed to be off their game, because none of them came up with a great retort before the perfect moment had passed. Instead Vayl said,

“I believe Miss Kendrick may be right. However, if Ahmed does take trophies, I have seen several items in this shop that lead me to believe he has a practical purpose for them.

And that he puts them to that use before he displays them.”

“What do you mean?” Cole asked.

He pointed to a wooden instrument hanging on the wal .

Shaped like a viper’s head that’s been smashed by a passing truck, its “fangs” were stretched so far to the front that they had to be connected at the tips by a wooden peg.

Ten ivory strings ran from the peg, over the hole between the “fangs,” back to the head of the instrument.

Vayl took care not to touch the strings as he said, “The vampire who ripped me had spent his humanity as a pirate.