"No. I suspect it was the Hand. Am I right?"
"Yes."
Oh, Seamus. You moron. "I told my dad it was a bad idea. But no, he had stars in his eyes. They'd promised him a small mountain of gold, and he figured if he flipped it into US currency, he'd get a little over fifty grand. I take it his buyer double-crossed him?"
Kaldar reached into his bag and pulled out a small contraption of pale bronze-colored metal. A bowl, formed by several circular bands sat on a narrow stem, which widened into a base resembling tree roots. She'd seen high-end gadgets from the Weird before, and it had that polished look: beautiful, with an attention to detail that was usually paid only to fine jewelry. You could sell it to some art gallery in the Broken. They'd auction it off and never know what it was.
Kaldar squeezed the stem. A whisper of magic shivered through the air. The metal panels of the stem rose, revealing the insides of tiny, fine gears in a dozen of shades. The circular bands rose, turning slowly. A faint glow coalesced above them. Kaldar leaned closer and said, pronouncing the words with crisp exactness, "Adriana. Fountain."
The glow snapped into a ghostly three-dimensional image of a cobbled square with some sort of ruin in the center that might have been a fountain at some point but now was mostly a heap of broken marble. Flesh-colored remains dotted the scene. Alex's handiwork. He must've teleported out, and someone held on to him half a second too long.
The Hand didn't get their goods, which meant they would be hunting both her father and Alex. And her. Her heart skipped a beat.
"Is my father dead?" Audrey asked. Her voice came out flat. She wished she would've felt worry or fear. Something. But she felt nothing at all. A better daughter should've wondered if she shouldn't have left them alone, but she wasn't that daughter. You reap what you sow, Dad.
"I don't know," Kaldar said. "If he is, he lived long enough to deliver your brother to the rehab center and pay for it, which means he found another buyer."
"I have no idea who that would be." Audrey shrugged. "My involvement ended in Jacksonville."
"He didn't contact you?" Kaldar peered at her face. "Shouldn't you get some reward for this venture?"
"Ha! My reward was that I would be left alone to live my nice life, which you've ruined."
"Oh no, darling," Kaldar shook his head. "You ruined your own life when you took that job. Every Edger knows to keep the hell away from the Hand. This was a high-risk/ low-reward heist. There are much easier ways of getting money. Were you born yesterday?"
Just who does he think he is? "I'm not your darling. It was a family matter."
"When family insists on being stupid, you steer them away from it. It's not that difficult."
"You don't know me." Audrey crossed her arms. "You don't know my father. Don't come here and tell me how to live my life. You can't steer Seamus Callahan. You can only bargain with him."
He leaned back. "So the two of you did strike a bargain. He got forty thousand dollars. What did you get?"
"I got to never see my family again."
Kaldar frowned. "Come again?"
"I got to be cut off. Left in peace. I want nothing to do with them or with their stupid schemes. I don't have parents, and they don't have a daughter. That was my condition."
Kaldar reeled back a little. She could almost feel gears turning behind that pretty face.
"I've met your brother. If anyone should be cast off, it should be him."
"That's not how it works in our family. He is the heir, the pride and joy, who carries on the family name. I'm his younger sister." And she wasn't bitter about it. Not at all. "Anyway, my life is none of your business. Did you have any more questions about the heist? If not, you should go now. My patience is all worn down."
The moment he was out the door, she'd grab Ling and bail.
"I need to find out who bought the box."
"No clue."
"Where can I find your father?"
"No clue, either."
"Audrey, I really need your help." Kaldar smiled at her. Now there was a work of art. If she were just a girl and he were just a man, and they met at a party, that smile would've guaranteed him a date. The man was hot. There was no doubt. But right now, all it would get him was a solid punch in those even teeth.
Audrey laughed. "Aren't you sweet? Tell me, do girls usually throw their panties at you when you do that?"
He grinned wider, and she glimpsed the funny evil spark in his eyes. "Do men throw money when you do your little Southern belle?"
Pot calling the kettle black. "Men enjoy my 'sweet tea' Southern. Nobody here is enjoying that stupid grin on your ugly mug."
"Ugly."
"Hideous."
The kids snickered.
"You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into." The Mirror agent sat straighter. "Do you know what you've stolen?"
"It wasn't my job, and I wasn't paid to know." She waited for a jab. No good thief ever did a heist without knowing every detail, especially what and why. "We were paid to obtain the box and deliver it to the buyer."
He didn't say anything.
"The box had four seals on it, anyway," she said.
"Did you look in the box, Audrey?"
"I said it had four seals on it."
He just waited. Oh, for Christ's sake. "Of course I looked in the box."
He leaned to his gadget, whispered something, and nodded. "Did it look something like this?"
A pair of ghostly metal bracelets appeared above the table. At first glance they looked silver, but where silver leaned toward a gray shade, this metal blushed with warm tones of peach and pale pink. The wider part of each bracelet bent and flowed, thin and wide, like a ribbon. A smooth border tipped the edges, which otherwise would've been too sharp. At the other end, tiny pebbles of metal encrusted the narrow edge of each bracelet, seeded so close together, sometimes on top of each other, almost like barnacles on the bottom of the ship. The two bracelets together were an elegant piece of jewelry, unique and beautiful. She would wear them in an instant, with a flowing gown of pure white. But it was just jewelry. A hunk of metal, yet the Hand, the Mirror, and the Claws were after it, and now, curiosity was killing her. She had to know why.
"Yes, that's what we stole," Audrey said. "I don't see what all the fuss is about."
"It's a portable Gorleanean diffuser," Kaldar said.
"What is that?"
The blond boy, George, stirred. The kids had been so quiet, she had almost forgotten he and his brother were there at all. "A Gorleanean diffuser functions like a magic battery," the boy said. "You can charge it with a blast of magic, like flash, for example. It holds the magic for a while, but it starts leaking the charge into the environment right away. Also, they're huge. The size of a house."