The Art of Possession

by Cari Z

  Mal was quiet and distracted on the flight from Accra to London, compulsively looking up at the overhead compartment where the scepter was stowed, then down at his clenching hands. He hadn’t spoken much to me all day, which kind of hurt, but… on the other hand, it made sense. He was finally heading back to the world he knew, back to safety. This assignment had put him through hell for the past week, and it was only natural that he’d want some distance from it, and from me.

  Hopefully not too much distance, though.

  Instead of heading from Heathrow straight into London proper, we took a cab out to Royal Holloway, a research university a little ways west where, Mal explained, he could get a few more tests done on the scepter to add more layers of authenticity before handing it over. “I don’t want Gerard to say that I haven’t done my due diligence,” Mal said, and it made me want to punch Gerard in the face. “But you don’t have to come with me. You could head back into London and we could meet up there. Or—”

  “I’d rather stay with you,” I said, and I didn’t imagine the way he seemed to relax upon hearing it. “I’ll just hang out in a café while you get some work done, no problem.” I had work of my own to review, after all.

  Once Mal was safely ensconced in a lab, I sat down with my tablet and started going over the files Robert had sent me days ago on Lord Thorburn’s financials. It was some interesting reading. I called Robert halfway through. “If this guy isn’t running some kind of scam, I’ll cut off my trigger finger,” I said as soon as he picked up.

  “You caught the timing issue, huh?”

  “It’s hard to miss.” There was a clear pattern of behavior—spend liquid capital, spend on credit, and then receive an infusion of cash from unknown “investment” accounts. “He runs himself dry and then he does something to make a bundle of money quick. That one account in particular—”

  “The one operating through the Caymans that we can’t touch,” Robert clarified dryly.

  “Yeah, that one. It’s only used a few times a year, and only for these big transactions. Where’s he getting the money from, and why is it so important to hide the source?”

  “More to the point, what is he getting the money for?” Robert mused. “And I think I might know the answer to that.”

  “Which is?”

  “Black market luxury goods.”

  My blood went cold. “You mean he’s selling his artifacts. The things his family has collected.” That didn’t make sense, though. “But there’s no record of that. The Thorburns have one of the best-documented private collections in the country and have made a huge number of donations to museums over the years. There are no signs that pieces are being liquidated to fund his lifestyle.”

  “Oh, there are plenty of signs,” Robert argued. “There’s just no proof. No one’s discovered him passing off a forgery yet. Given his connections, it’s possible he’s accessing artifacts that he doesn’t even own and peddling those, leaving his own collection intact.”

  “That’s….” That would be very clever, actually. And something about the idea resonated…. “Mal lost his job with the British Museum because he called into question the validity of a piece of Chinese pottery. When it was tested, it was proven to be genuine, but there was time between the accusation and the resolution. That’s time for someone as connected as Gerard to switch out the forgery he’d had made with the real piece again, if he was smart enough not to sell it right away.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Damn.” That was a hell of a racket. “He must know a fucking good forger.”

  “The Thorburns have been patrons of the art scene in London for the past hundred years. If they don’t know half a dozen world-class forgers by this point, then they’re just being lazy.”

  Gerard had planted a fake bowl in the exhibit, with plans to sell the real one, before Mal had unwittingly found him out. He’d gotten rid of Mal, but someone must have suspected that he wasn’t as clean as he tried to appear—I knew that Gerard was on the outs with the current museum director. It was one of the reasons we had to do all this testing—the more verification, the better.

  Gerard had ruined Mal’s reputation to cover up his own double-dealing, and the scepter was just the latest move in a scam that could cover decades, and potentially hundreds of artifacts. What was his plan with this one? Was it what Mal thought, a showy display of Gerard’s notability and influence designed to elevate his status with the current head administrator, or was it something darker? What was he going for?

  “It’s worth noting that Mr. Ashad was over a million dollars underwater thanks to gambling debts until less than a month ago,” Robert added. “I don’t think it was his idea to bring the scepter into the public sphere.”

  “Gerard paid off his debt in exchange for Mr. Ashad organizing the donation,” I said.

  “Most likely.”

  “Hmm.” He really was just a middleman, then, a patsy sitting on an epic piece of history that Gerard had the know-how to turn into notoriety. “Anything else on him?”

  “Turns out, he bought a plane ticket to Morocco yesterday. He’s already left the country.”

  “Short notice for a trip.” And to a country with no formal extradition process with the UK.

  “Very short notice.”

  God, it all made my head swim. “You run this by Patricia?” I asked.

  “Nah, she’s sticking to administrative tasks now that you’re not in imminent danger of death.”

  I grinned. “She’s obsessing over Corday, isn’t she?”

  “Hard-core. She dubbed it an independent research project, and I’m letting her have it because I’d like to know more about Corday as well.”

  Wouldn’t we all. “Get her to look into Fawkes too, and any other regulars in Corday’s sphere. If we’re going to do more work in the art world, it would be good to get a handle on one of its greatest thieves.”

  Robert was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to do more work in the art world, Alex? Because there’s a huge art scene in New York, you know. Plenty of people would pay to have a guy with a gun who isn’t a member of a three-letter agency run down their stolen masterpieces, and we could get you another expert to work with over here.” He paused again. “Or is it more than you don’t want to leave London?”

  Trust Robert to get right to the heart of the matter. “I’m conflicted,” I finally replied. “I’d like to stay for a while, yeah. I’m due some vacation time, and unless Mal is ready to kick me to the curb, I’d….” Like to stay in his bed for the next two weeks. Like to cook him breakfast and dinner and serve him tea. Like to show him that I’m not always this fucked-up, I’m really not. I can be better.

  “Time we can do,” Robert said briskly. “You’ve got over a month of paid leave stored up. HR is making noises about cashing it out if you’re not going to use it, and I’d really prefer that you use it. If you need more time once that’s done, well… I might have a few options available to you.”

  “What, work out of London?” I was surprised. “I thought you had given some sort of weird blood oath to Jack that forbids KIS setting up shop here.”

  “Let me worry about Jack.” Robert’s voice brooked no argument. “And let me know about the vacation in the next day or so, all right? I’ve got some jobs on the hook that need to be filled by the right person, and if you’re out then I’ll have to do some digging.”

  “Don’t dig yourself into a hole,” I warned him. Just because he wasn’t out in the field anymore didn’t mean Robert wasn’t as much of a workaholic as I was.

  He ended the call without a response. Typical. He’d given me plenty to think about, though. A lot of stuff I honestly never thought I’d have to think about, because I had never given serious consideration to a long-term relationship before, not even with Carter. Carter and I had been too alike—Mal and I really couldn’t be more different, except for his utterly reckless bravery and inability to appropriately gauge a threat level.

  And maybe that was
giving me too much credit.

  I heard him coming up from behind me, the sound of his hard-soled shoes distinctive against the ground, especially with the little hitch in his gait that came from carrying the scepter. He tended to cradle it on the left-hand side, like it was a fussy infant who could only be soothed in a particular way. I stood up, put my phone in my pocket, and turned to face him. The scepter, wrapped up in a special carrying case, was indeed braced against his left shoulder. “How’d it go?”

  “There was weeping,” he said, his expression somewhere between smug and horrified. “Actual weeping, in addition to the denials that it was what I said it was even if it was that old, and could he hold it, and was it possible that he might take it to show his director before I left, and… quite a lot of that, actually.”

  “He had no chill, in other words.”

  “No chill at all, I was embarrassed for him. When confronted by a former colleague whom you heartily abused to all your peers who returns bearing a sacred piece of history, cutting witticisms are the only appropriate form of retaliation. Tears are for children, not professionals.” Mal seemed pleased, but there was something downcast in his demeanor, something that was clearly preying on his mind. I hoped he wasn’t trying to figure out a nice way to tell me that he’d reconsidered, and we really should have separate rooms once we got back to the hotel—not the Strand, I’d never be able to stay there again.

  “Come on,” I said, pushing my worries aside. “Let’s go get checked in and cleaned up for tonight.”

  “Yes, right. Dinner.”

  Mal’s mild smile quickly gave way to a frown once we were in the cab. He stared down at the case that held the scepter, pensive and silent. He didn’t touch me, and I didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to touch him, not when he seemed to be broadcasting so clearly that he wished he was alone.

  By the time we got up to our room, my own nerves had shot through the roof. I was obviously shit at this. I couldn’t be a… a boyfriend, because I wasn’t someone who knew how to respond to moods outside of “homicidal” and couldn’t sit in silence without listening for the sound of a gun cocking. I opened my mouth to say—something. I wasn’t even sure what, but it was going to be apologetic and pathetic and suck, but before I could speak, Mal’s quiet evaporated.

  “It’s just—it’s not right!” he exclaimed once he set the scepter down on the bed. “It’s not fucking right! We went through all the trouble, all the pain of getting this back to London in time for the exhibit, and it just feels like we did it all for nothing! Because the promise of entering into negotiations with Mali for its return isn’t enough! We risked our fucking lives for this… this treasure, and now it’s going to be used as a means for Gerard to gild his lily a bit more? It’s intolerable!”

  Oh. He’d been stewing over the job. Oh, good, I knew what to do with that. “This was the deal in the first place,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, but it wasn’t real back then, was it?” he demanded. “We weren’t even sure if the scepter was genuine, but now I know it is, and it abso-fucking-lutely galls me that I have to give it to that prick.”

  “The museum won’t take it from us directly?” I was sure he’d considered that, but it was worth checking all the same.

  “It’s written into our bloody contract that we have to return it to Mr. Ashad or, failing his presence, to Gerard.”

  “It’ll be Gerard.”

  Mal frowned. “How do you know?”

  I told him a little bit of my conversation with Robert earlier. I also went ahead and told him Robert and mine’s suspicions about how Gerard was subsidizing his lifestyle. I hadn’t lied to Mal yet, and I wasn’t about to start now, even if there was nothing we could do about it yet. He listened in silence, only speaking once I’d been quiet for a few seconds in a row.

  “It would make sense,” he said, a bit disconnectedly. “Money has always flowed through his fingers like water. His father was just as bad—I honestly didn’t think there would be anything left for Gerard to inherit in the year before his father passed away.” He nodded tightly. “It makes sense. I was never—to him, I was always just a… a patsy, someone to make his fall guy, not someone to care for. I can’t believe—I feel so stupid—”

  “You don’t need to feel stupid,” I told him, reaching out and catching his hand. “Really, you don’t. People all over the world get conned every day by the ones they love. It’s not your fault, and they don’t deserve to be absolved for what they did. Taking advantage of love is cruel. How could you ever see that coming?”

  Mal managed a slightly fragile smile. “How did you become so wise? I can’t believe that you were taken in in a similar manner.”

  “Not me. My mother.” By a smooth, handsome, fast-talking guy who had an account at the bank she worked at. She’d been a single mom, just promoted to manager at the bank where she worked. Her life had been frenetic, always based on what was best for me and my sister, and what she could do for us. “She met a guy when I was fifteen, and he was… well, he was charming. Handsome. A lot like Gerard, honestly. He dressed nice, had a good car, took her out a lot. A year after they met, she married him.” Over my little sister’s strong objections—I’d been spending more and more time with friends at that point, pushing the bounds of my curfew and missing family dinners. “A month after that, he emptied all her accounts, including her retirement, and disappeared in her car.”

  “Oh no.” Mal squeezed my hand. “How did your mother take it?”

  “Badly. Really badly. It was the start of a downward spiral that took a while to climb out of.” My sister and I had ended up in our aunt’s custody for a while, after our mom was sent to rehab, but Mal didn’t need all the gritty details. “But she did climb out. We all did. We moved on.”

  Mal sighed. “And he moved on to continue grifting. Just like Gerard will.”

  “He won’t. We can find something on him, I’m sure of it.”

  “We?” For the first time in a while, something other than quiet dismay illuminated Mal’s eyes. “Can I take that to mean that you’re going to be sticking around for a while?”

  “I’m taking some personal time,” I explained. “It’s been forever since I had a vacation, so I figured I’d hang out here for a bit. See the sights, maybe travel to the Cotswolds….” Hunt down dirt on your ex-boyfriend. Good times.

  “The Cotswolds, really?” Mal was smiling now, standing up and moving toward me without more than a gentle tug on his hand to prompt him. “That’s a bit far from the beaten path. Won’t you be bored?”

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him in tight. “I’m sure I can find something to entertain me.”

  “I’m sure you ca—” The rest was lost as I kissed him, desperate to taste his lips again even though I knew now that it wouldn’t be the last time. The fear, the tension, was still jangling in the back of my mind, making me antsy, a little reckless. The job was almost over, but the adrenaline hangover hadn’t even begun yet.

  Maybe it would be easier to bear this time around if I wasn’t alone.

  Mal worked his hands into my hair, gripping it almost painfully. I loved it—it was evidence that I wasn’t the only one who had been wanting a promise of more to come. I glanced at the digital clock beside the bed—we had a little over an hour before we were meant to meet Gerard, and we still had to change and travel. Not enough time for something elaborate, but….

  Mal let out a whoof as I dropped us back onto the bed, catching myself on my elbows so I didn’t crush him. “Do you… want to….” He managed a few words between kisses.

  “Yes.”

  Mal laughed. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask!”

  “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure the answer is going to be yes anyway.”

  “Well, do me the favor of letting me get it out. I—” He smirked and batted his lashes. “—want to give you a blowjob before dinner.”

  “You have the best ideas,” I told him, then rolled over onto
my back. My shoulder twinged, and I was reminded that it had been a while since I’d worked the kinks out, much less done the exercises to strengthen it the right way. I thought I did a pretty good job of hiding the pain, but Mal saw it in my face.

  “Why don’t we move the blowjob to the shower?” he offered, getting to his feet and holding out a hand to help me up. His trousers were tented in the front, and his face was flushed—it was ridiculous how much I liked seeing him like this. “The very hot, very therapeutic shower.”

  My first instinct was to say that here was good, that we didn’t have to change things up for me, but I quelled it. Mal wanted to do something nice for me—several very, very nice things, in fact. The best thing I could do for him in return was to let him. “Sounds good,” I said, and let him hoist me to my feet.

  Ten minutes later I was bracing myself on the tiles with my good arm, a spray of steaming water hitting my upper back while Mal rested on his knees below me, rolling my balls in one hand while he held my cock in the other, working his mouth up and down my cock, lingering at the head. I brushed my thumb over his jaw as he took me in, resisting the urge to move my hips, and just breathed, slack-jawed and soft, as he cranked my body up toward orgasm. When the pads of his fingers reached back and brushed against my hole, I almost choked on nothing.

  Mal pulled back. “Is that something you like?” he asked, husky-voiced.

  I nodded. “Yeah, but—it’s been a long time.”

  “We’ll work up to it, then.” He went back to blowing my mind, and not a minute later, I pressed his head away and let him finish me with his hand. Fuck, it felt good. Pleasure flowed like syrup through my veins, sweet and slow. I didn’t open my eyes until Mal pressed a kiss to my lips.

  “Mmm, my turn,” I mumbled.

  “Not yet, I’m afraid,” he said. “We’ve got to get ready to meet Gerard, or we’re going to be terribly late.”