1

“Not bad for a newbie.” By the sound of her voice, Veruca was clearly entertained. “The way you’re spending money, a girl would think you had been rich forever.”

“It’s not my money,” I said, defensively. “Besides, Lucien had most of this stuff lying around already.”

She slid up beside me. Her long, lone bang was carnation pink today, a color that I’d come to associate with her being more playful than normal. “Relax, tiger. I think it’s nice. I bet you could sling some serious magic in here.”

I hoped she was right. Lucien Valente has opened up his checkbook to help me open up shop. Valente International Headquarters already had a ritual magic room, but it was located a floor below the company’s servers and firewalls. To date, the National Enquirer had run three different stories about the specters Valente web surfers ran into the one and only day I was in said ritual room. After that, Lucien and I both agreed it would be best if I spent most of my time off-site.

Fortunately, Valente owned an abandoned motel through one of his subsidiaries. The first floor was being renovated for use as halfway house apartments for sex offenders, which had more to do with tax write-offs than charitable interests on Valente’s part. They weren’t exactly my first choice of neighbors, but their parole stipulated that they couldn’t own or operate computers, much less have Internet access. I suspected the other reason Lucien picked this spot for me was that no one would miss my new neighbors if a ritual ever called for a human sacrifice or two.

“I knew I liked the guy for some reason. He’s practical.”

I ignored him. If that was on Lucien’s mind, I didn’t want to know. I was finding that applied to a lot of things when it came to my new boss: I didn’t want to know.

“Because if you knew, you would have to do something about it. Damn hero complex.”

“You said it.”

“Ever thought about applying that principle to Sarai?”

“Shut up.”

“Colin?” Veruca’s tone was puzzled, suddenly cautious and curious. “Are you okay?”

I shook the cobwebs out of my brain and let my fingers wrap around her delicate hand. “I’m getting there. Just an old ghost in the machine.”

“Really?” She perked up.

“No.” I hoped. Surely it was just me in here, right? I looked her in the eyes. They were currently mint green, but slowly fading towards tan. They were easy eyes to get lost in.

“Liar.” She pecked me on the cheek with her lips, then wrapped one leg around mine. We had enough sparring matches that I recognized my growing peril and shifted my weight to brace against the coming leg sweep.

Of course, we’d also sparred enough that I knew my preparations were utterly hopeless. “I yield, milady. I was just thinking that there are some things in life that I’m better off not knowing.”

“I’m not sure which statement is smarter. I think you are better off knowing when I’m about to kick your ass.” She kissed me again, this time on the lips.

I relaxed. I wasn’t eager to crash down on the stone-tiled floor of my arcane laboratory. I was still sore from our morning workout and that was entirely done on padded surfaces.

The second floor of the motel was entirely de-walled, save where they were a structural necessity, making one big room out of what used to be twenty-four rooms. The shag carpeting and picture windows went out along with the interior walls. It still looked like there were windows from the outside, but they had all been plastered over, save for one on the western side and one on the eastern side. In the center of my roughly 7,200 square foot apartment, a flawlessly round silver circle had been embedded in the floor. I could have parked Dorothy inside the circle’s nine-foot radius. I could probably squeeze two Doras in there, without either touching.

All that had been more or less to my specification, once Valente had asked me what kind of setup I needed. As soon as the remodeling was finished (I won’t say how quickly he got it done; no one would believe me), the special deliveries began to arrive. Lucien had a rabid hunger for the supernatural and had accumulated thousands of relics and artifacts over the years. Those of known power and property were employed elsewhere throughout the company or were in Lucien’s personal possession, but that left a large number of items that were suspected of being magical, but with propertus arcanus unknown.

Veruca and I were standing five feet from a prime example. The workers had constructed a display case to house two crossed identical spears. Supposedly, they were exact replicas of the Spear of Destiny, made by Hitler’s henchmen after the original escaped their custody. The lives of their past owners were interesting to say the least, but whether it was because they owned the spears, or because they were weirdo freaks, remained to be seen. When I asked Lucien why he sent them to me, he said he thought they might be of more use to a Catholic wizard than to a Taoist CEO. I thought they were creepy, but I was learning to pick my fights. If I was going to object every time Lucien Valente did something that bothered, frightened, or annoyed me, I might as well resign.

“So what’s on the agenda for today?” Veruca queried.

“I’m not sure. There’s a representative from the Unseelie court coming here to meet me tonight. The meeting’s set for sundown, but I’m afraid I haven’t checked the paper yet. Somewhere between six and seven. I should probably have some token of hospitality ready: a bottle of red wine, maybe. Lucien is sending me another batch of Jane Doe reports to sort through that loosely match Sarai’s description. Other than that, not much. Anything you want to do?”

“Actually, I’ve got a job to take care of.” She kissed me on the forehead. “It’s been a fun month, Colin, but Mr. Valente still needs new art for his office.”

“I don’t want to know, do I?”

“Probably not. But I’ll tell you if you ask.”

I shook my head. “Not necessary, my love. When will I see you again?”

“Shouldn’t take more than three or four days.”

“Short job, huh?” I didn’t know much about the murder-for-hire business, but I assumed it usually took weeks to properly plan and execute a job.

She laughed. “Not really. Most stateside jobs only take five or six hours. This one’s international.”

A whistle, low and somber, escaped my lips. “This isn’t the first job since we’ve been back in Boston, is it?”

“Our boss has a lot of enemies, Colin. I figured you didn’t want to know.” She pulled a black velvet necklace box out of her back pocket. “I got you something to keep you company until I get back. A second bodyguard of sorts.”

“A going away present, huh?” I opened it up, looked at it, turned it, looked at it again, and still had to ask, “What is it?”

“A ’til-I-get-back-you’d-better-not-get-yourself-killed present. It’s a chaos blade.”

It looked like a letter opener made from soapstone. As I pulled it from its box, the crystal changed from off-white to limestone green. It didn’t look like much, but I could feel the vibrant hum of magical energy throbbing from within it. “What’s it do?”

“Like most weapons, the idea is to put the pointy end into the other guy.” She took a couple of strides backward. “A chaos blade just lets you bring a few unexpected surprises to the party. It’s like the AK-47 of the supernatural world: everybody’s got one.”

I raised an eyebrow. “This thing? Not much range to it, is there?”

Veruca brushed the carnation bang back out of her eye. “You’d be surprised. What’s the wooden katana we practice with feel like in your hand? Try to imagine it.”

I did. The letter opener, now a greenish-gold color, twisted in my hand until it was a sky blue duplicate of my three-foot long practice blade. Weight was no issue; it still felt as light as a nail file in my grip.

“Shrink it down to the size of a hairpin and you can walk it past any metal detector or full body scanner in the world. Some colors set off Geiger counters, but most don’t.”

“Some colors?” I mentally reshaped the blade to a large Scottish claymore. It stayed blue for half a second, then faded to muddy brown. Despite being six-feet long and three inches wide, it couldn’t have weighed more than a few ounces. “Any way to control the color?”

“Nope,” Veruca replied. “Or if there is, I’ve never heard of it. It’s materialized chaos; it’s not meant to be fully controlled. Color does matter, though: when you hit a target, it has extra effects based on the current manifested color.”

I tried to pretend we were talking about a new video game and found the conversation a little bit easier to process. “Effects? Like what?”

“Hard to tell ahead of time. If it’s bright red or reddish orange, it will probably catch stuff on fire. But I wouldn’t be surprised by anything that it does. The only firm rule is that when two of them go against each other, the first person to hit usually wins. For the size and price, there is nothing more deadly than a chaos blade in the hands of a creative user.”

I gave the sword a couple of hesitant practice swings, being careful to avoid my girlfriend or any of the display cases. I’d never used anything like it, but it did exactly what I wanted it to, more like an extension of my own arm and will then a held object. “So accidentally poking myself through my jeans pocket would be bad?”

Veruca was smiling as she watched me test out my gift. “Maybe, but most likely not. You hear horror stories sometimes, but the blades seem to have a good sense of who they work for, who they belong to. I’d say that one likes you; it fits well in your grip.”

I thought of something outside of the blade family, a spiked morningstar like something out of a cheesy B gladiator movie: overly large and visually menacing. The chaos blade went through something more like a baseball bat, before readjusting to fit my mental image, now a dazzling crimson. “I like it. Thank you, V.”

I shrank it back down to a letter opener, then thought better of it and imagined an old school fountain pen. My gift cooperated and I slid it into my shirt pocket. Veruca walked up and looked me over. “Well, that’s a new way to carry one. It suits you and your revamped wardrobe. Harvard dropouts just don’t look right in jeans and a t-shirt.”

“This from an assassin who never leaves home without something pink on?” Three weeks ago, I would’ve been too scared of her to use that particular barb, but I was evolving into my new life position. I had upgraded my clothing: a dark blue tailor-made long sleeved shirt and charcoal gray slacks. Only the leather jacket and steel-toed boots remained from my previous incarnation. I would be buried in both if I had any choice in the matter.

She planted a kiss on me. “I may wear pink, but at least I didn’t get my ass kicked by a girl this morning. Don’t skimp on the exercises: I expect you to be more of a challenge when I get back.”

“What about Thanksgiving? Are you going to be back in time for my first attempt at cooking a turkey?” It was the Friday before, but I knew she was less than eager for the event.

“That depends. Are you using an oven or magic? Your sorcery I trust, your kitchen skills not so much.”

Blow up one little microwave and no one lets you forget it.