by W H Lock
"There you are, sweetie," she said in her perfect Georgian accent. She pulled Gartrell along by the hand behind her. "Darling, you won't believe whom I have discovered here tonight!"
Quinn swallowed the panic and turned to look at Del and Gartrell. He gave Gartrell his 10,000 mega-watt smile and said, "I do believe we are already acquainted, my dear. This is the very gentleman I was discussing on our trip to Austin!"
Quinn turned back to look at Gwen, but she was gone. She had disappeared by whatever means she had used to arrive here at the club. Quinn turned back around to Gartrell and Del.
Del was subtly different than when they had parted at the elevator. Instead of her normal dirty blonde, her hair had changed to a brassy blonde. Her body had subtly shifted as well, her hips and breasts taking on more pronounced and fuller curves from her normal athletic look. Del was part Kitsune and could change her shape. Most Kitsune switched between fox and human. Del, however, had taken her natural shifting ability to the next level. Quinn had often thought that Del’s real gift wasn’t her ability to minutely control her body but her ability to read what someone looking at her wanted. And then making that happen.
"Quinn, wasn’t it?" Gartrell said as he looked at Del. Del returned Gartrell’s interest and ran her hand along his arm up to his shoulder.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Quinn stood for a moment in the airlessness of his realization. Whatever this was, Gwen believed. He had seen the fire of truth burning in her eyes. Oscar might be shining her along, but Gwen truly believed she was tasked with destroying and then saving the world. She was going to do it.
Gartrell cleared his throat and said again, "Quinn, wasn't it?"
Quinn thrust his hand out to shake Gartrell's waiting hand. He grinned like he was glad to see an old friend and said, "Gartrell, my old man, I am so glad you just happened to be here tonight. You, sir, are a gift from God."
Gartrell raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I have been called a thing or two in my life, sir, but a blessing from God is something generally reserved for my mother. To what do I owe this boon?"
Quinn looked around the terrace as if he were about to take Gartrell into some great confidence that required extraordinary discretion.
"I've just gotten back from Austin," Quinn said. He squinted and nodded knowingly to Gartrell.
"Austin," Gartrell said with the interest.
"Yes," Quinn said taking Gartrell by the elbow and pulling him away from the open door. Quinn took a moment to look over Gartrell's shoulder one more time. "You see, I have come into possession of a certain book I think you will find most interesting."
Gartrell nodded. It was the vague nod of someone who was very confused about what was going on but wanted to look like they knew what was going on.
"Surely you've heard of the recent theft in Austin?"
"I must admit that I have been rather busy of late..." Gartrell absently patted his pockets and looked at his wrist where a wristwatch would go.
"The Oera Linda," Quinn said with significance.
Gartrell looked at Quinn in deeper confusion and said, "But the book was recovered. I heard that someone had written a small note of apology…." Gartrell trailed off into silence at Quinn's confident grin.
"Did you ever hear how the Mona Lisa was stolen?"
Gartrell shook his head no. "I have to confess, sir I have never heard of such a thing."
"It's probably an urban legend. But as I heard the telling, in 1911 the painting was stolen one evening. Someone reported the theft the next morning. Of course, the guard on duty that night was under immediate suspicion. How had he not noticed the missing painting? His apartment was searched, but they found nothing. A few days later the famed painting was discovered on the doorstep of the very museum from which it had been stolen! Someone had wrapped it in plain brown paper, the sort you use to wrap packages in before shipping. They had scribbled a brief note of apology on the wrapping."
"And what of the guard," Gartrell asked, entranced by Quinn's storytelling.
Quinn grinned and set the hook even deeper. "Can you imagine what it must have been like at the Louvre? Quite possibly the world's most famous painting had been stolen right out from under your nose. And then, by some miracle, it appears overnight on the steps of the same institution from which it was stolen?"
"I find it most fascinating, to be honest," Gartrell said, stepping away from the club doors and closer to Quinn. "But what of the guard? Surely they arrested him?"
"He quit his job under suspicion. Shortly thereafter his wife received an inheritance from some distant and heretofore unknown relative. They retired to the West Indies to live in splendor for the rest of their lives."
Gartrell nodded and said, "I don't understand. How did he get the money if he returned the painting?"
"Imagine you have recovered that singularly famous painting? What would you do?"
Gartrell shrugged and said, "I would inspect it for damage."
"But would you think to check to see if it was a forgery?"
Gartrell shook his head, still lost at sea.
"You see, in their joy at recovering the painting, they forgot to do a thorough inspection of the painting. They didn't know if they had the original or a forgery."
Sudden understanding dawned on Gartrell.
"They accepted the easy explanation. A guard failed to notice the world’s most famous painting had been stolen. He quits and leaves with inexplicable and sudden wealth. Then the panting reappears with a small note expressing regret. Surely it must have been him. Or was he an innocent man who received a sudden windfall at an unlucky time of his life?"
Gartrell nodded.
“OF course, it's just an urban legend. Because the famous painting is viewed by thousands every day,” Quinn said. “It’s right there. For anyone who wants to see it. Surely, by now, someone would have noticed a forgery?” Quinn smiled. It was a knowing and inclusive smile that acknowledged the secret truth of the world.
There was a long quiet moment while Gartrell worked through the story of the Mona Lisa and Quinn's recent trip to Austin. When the realization struck him, it was as if a thunderbolt had shot out of the top of his head into the heavens. He staggered for a moment under the sudden epiphany.
"Imagine the prestige of owning a book like that," Del said. "A treasure that the older generations lacked the strength to make their own."
"It is the voice of our ancestors speaking only to those worthy of hearing it," Quinn said. "I hesitate to imagine what secrets lay inside its covers."
"It would be the jewel of any collection," Gartrell said. His eyes misted over as he dreamed. He blinked and turned to look at Del with his greed and avarice clear on his face. "I think I would pay just about anything to have such a work in my collection."
Quinn grinned. The tale had been told, the hook was set, now it was time to make the play.
"I am sure that if someone were to come over to your house say...," Quinn paused long enough to be interrupted by Del.
"In an hour," she said hungrily as she pressed herself against Gartrell. "I am sure you can find something else to do in that time?"
Gartrell leaned in to kiss her with his open mouth, Quinn said, "Normally, I'd love to, but I do require your help in retrieving the item." Quinn looked at Gartrell. "We take security very seriously, and it requires the both of us to unlock."
Del pouted and pressed herself hard against Gartrell, who responded by wrapping his arms around her. "If you insist, but we'll have to make up for lost time, won't we?" She tweaked Gartrell’s ear.
He laughed and licked his lips. After a long possessive moment, Gartrell let go. Del smoothed the wrinkles out of her evening dress. With a look that promised much, she turned and walked away. Quinn followed her. Gartrell never took his eyes off her backside.
As they entered the elevator, Del turned to him and said, "What the fuck was that?"
"What?"
"You were gonna plant the hook. Put the
idea in his damn head. That was a sight more than that, don'tcha think?" Del’s posh British accent slipping to her natural guttural British accent.
"We have to move fast on this," Quinn said.
"Cut the shite! If you can't get your head in this damn thing, we need to call it off!"
The doors opened as the elevator reached the lower level. Without missing a beat, Del flipped her golden hair back over her shoulder and coolly walked out of the elevator. She sniffed at the host waiting at the podium by the front door.
"Be a dear, and tell my driver I am ready." She breezed past the host and out the front door with Quinn following along in her wake. She glared at Quinn and said, “I seem to have lost my appetite.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
"I am sorry, Mr. Quin, but I am sure that I am not understanding you. Did you say you promised the mark the book in the next hour?” The shake of Max’s hand betrayed the only sign of emotion in the older man other than a polite interest. A visor with magnifying lenses was pulled over Max’s face, outsizing his eyes.
In front of him, held up under an intense spotlight was a copy of the Oera Linda. It was a perfect-looking copy except for one detail. Except for the first fifteen pages, every page in the book was blank.
"I don't know what the fuck he was thinking, Max," Del said with her arms crossed her chest. "He was blathering on about how someone stole the Mona Lisa and replaced it with a fake! He may as well have told the blighter we were selling him a fake. You daft fool!"
"You did what?" Karen said.
Eno and Rube stopped cleaning brushes for Max and looked up.
After a moment, Quinn said, "It's not exactly like that."
"What was it like then, mate? Huh?"
"Look. You have to trust me on this. It will never occur to him that the book is a fake."
Del waved her hand angrily at Quinn and said, "You practically told him it was with that story about how a guard stole a painting."
"Right. But he'll think I've returned the forgery and kept the real one for him," Quinn said.
"What did you tell him," Eno asked.
Quinn looked at Eno and took a step back to cross his arms across his chest. "There's this old story about how back in the day a man named Vincenzo Peruggia sold seven copies of the Mona Lisa."
"That sounds pretty cool,” Rube said. "But how did he sell seven of them? Seems like, after the first one everyone would have caught on."
"He set the buyers up ahead of time, promising each one he would steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and replace it with a fake. Then give them the original. Vincenzo gets a job as a guard at the museum. Then one night he steals the painting. He waits a few days. He quits his job. He drops the real painting off at the front door of the museum. Then sells the seven copies to the men he'd set up ahead of time. Each one convinced that he had the original and the one in the Louvre was the fake."
“Mother and I thought we were doing a fiddle game, Mr. Quinn. I didn’t know we would be stealing paintings. You should have told me.”
“No, Max. We’re still doing the fiddle game. The book is the fiddle.”
"There's only a few pages done, Quinn, you daft idiot," Del shouted. "It doesn't matter if you had him on the line three weeks ago. We can't deliver this. We should just walk away. Like now."
There were murmurs of agreement. Quinn looked at the faces of his team and saw that everyone seemed on board with the idea of walking away from it all.
"We can't," Quinn said.
Everyone looked at Quinn. The why not question unspoken but heavy in the room.
"Because there's someone else after the dagger and we have to get it before they do," Quinn said.
"What?" everyone yelled in unison. They all yelled at Quinn, each of them demanding to know the answers to the same question.
Quinn raised his hand, and his magical circle flared to live and let loose a massive horn blast to drown everyone out.
Once everyone had stopped yelling, Quinn said, "I didn't want to say anything because I thought it would distract from the mission. We need to get that dagger. It's important. What matters is that someone else is moving on it, and we need to move faster."
"Who cares?" Eno and Karen said at the same time.
"Yeah," Eno said. "This has gotten Freddy killed. This Renard must work with that other team. We find Renard. Kill him. Then pick up and go."
Quinn waved his hand at the circle. It faded into to just on the edge of visibility. It played the soft sounds of a classical string quartet.
"Look," he said after a moment. "I get it. This is hard. This whole job has been upside down since the beginning. Every time it seems like it's going the way it's supposed to go, that we're in control, it flies off again. Nothing seems to make sense. I get it. This is supposed to be fun while we run a slick game on someone and walk away with a fat stack of gold."
The music from the circle changed from a calming string quartet to stirring call to action. The urgency of the tempo increased. Eno, Rube, Karen, Max, and Del sat up a little straighter.
"But somehow it's all gone sideways. It stopped being fun. It got serious. It doesn't make sense anymore. There's a whole other team out there. They're after the dagger too. One that maybe took one of ours down. It seems like there's no reason to keep doing this. Why not pull up stakes and get out before anyone else gets hurt, right?"
The team was dialed in on Quinn.
"But here's the deal. That dagger? We have to steal it first. Because if we don't?" Quinn looked at the ground again. He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned away. When he turned back to them he said, "The world just might be over."
The team looked at him in surprise.
Quinn nodded. "I thought it was just a bunch of nonsense. An old con that had stuck around in urban legends. But..." he shook his head and looked up at the sky. He looked back at the team and continued, "I think it's real. That dagger can let the Unnamed Old Ones back into the world. The dagger cuts the world open. I think that skull we stole in LA can summon them."
The team looked at each other in surprise.
"Yeah. That bankroll? They wanted the skull, as it turns out, to start the end of the world. When they get the dagger, they'll make it happen. We have to move faster. We have to be smarter. We can't let this happen."
Rube said, "You buy this is the end of the world?"
Quinn looked Rube in the eye for a long hard time. "Yeah," he said. "I didn't at first. But. Yeah."
"But what," Del asked from the back of the group.
"The woman who hired us for the skull," Quinn said. He chewed his lip for a moment. "She was at the club."
"What woman," Del asked, her voice intense with focus.
Quinn looked past the team at Del and said, "She hired me to put together a team." He looked at Karen, Eno, and Rube. "This team. We stole the skull of a saint. She didn't say why she wanted it."
"And you didn't think to ask," Del said with disdain.
"When have any of us ever asked why, Del? What does it matter more than the money? Right, Max?"
"Mother always says the money is the most important thing."
"Now, I've got about an hour before I have to get that book," Quinn pointed at the nearly blank Oera Linda. "Before I have to get that book in Gartrell's hands and convince him it's the real deal. Then I can get the dagger."
"Are you sure?"
"If you can make that book happen, I can make the rest happen." Quinn looked at the team. "Are you with me?"
“There’s only a few pages done on the book. I don’t think much more than ten. We don’t have time to do much more than three or four.”
“We’ve got ten pages of original work on the book?”
Max nodded.
“Okay. I can work with that. I’ll duplicate the completed pages with a circle. It won’t last more than a few hours once it’s out of my hands. So, we’ll have to move fast. Off-set the complete pages by a little bit. Make them stick out so I can feel the
difference with my thumb.”
They nodded.
Del said, "I need to get ready. I will be back when it's time." She walked out of the meeting room. The doors of the front entrance closed behind her without a sound.
Quinn clapped his hands and said, “All right, team, let’s make this happen.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Rube pulled out into traffic. Quinn and Del settled in the back seat of the car. Rube had tinted the windows, so it was impossible to see in from the outside.
"Hey, Quinn," Rube said as he came to a stop at the light.
"What's up, Rube?"
"What is the difference between a sorcerer, magician, and a witch?"
"Nothing," Del said. "They're all a bunch of pompous assholes that delight in showing off how clever they are."
"That kind of sums it all up nicely," Quinn said.
"No, but seriously, what's the difference? I asked Karen, and she said magicians understand the underpinnings of the orderly world and exploit methodologies to impart a desired outcome that may seem to contravene established consensual reality. Elly said that was a bunch of hogwash. She said witches work with the animating spirits of the natural world to come to a mutually beneficial relationship while magicians impose their will on those spirits to exploit their natural abilities with no regard for the costs. Then I asked Max about sorcerers, and he told me a story about how he used to work for a preacher that would go around preaching to people wanting the world to end but not for them."
The light turned green. After a moment of getting in sync with traffic, Rube continued. "But I figured I'd ask you since we're in the car now. What's the difference between all that?"
Quinn thought about it for a moment and said, "I guess you could say that magicians are more like the guys in the fantasy books. We give them nicknames like Longbeard, Gandolfs, or Archies. They have endless lists of weird names for things. Witches and warlocks are well…they’re witches. They have wands. They do a lot of work with potions. Some have brooms that they use to fly around with. But I think that’s more like taking that image back than anything historical. Brooms aren’t a very comfortable or practical way to fly. That's about it, I think."