Page 173 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

23

QUINN

THE RELIC WAS ON REALITY TV

By the second day of my chest cold, I had entered the dangerous stage of recovery where my body still wanted rest and my brain wanted a hobby to occupy it.

Unfortunately, my new hobby was antiquities.

It was Rafe’s fault. Technically, many things were Rafe’s fault at this point, including my compromised feelings, the excellent leftover ramen in my fridge, and the fact that Max now watched every meal preparation like fine dining might happen again if he believed hard enough.

He had texted me twice that day, to make sure I was still well stocked and resting.

I was propped against my pillows in a hoodie, pajama shorts, and three-year-old socks I should have thrown away because they were full of holes. Max lay beside the bed, one ear tipped toward me, lifting his head every time I coughed.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

He didn’t look convinced.

I had taken my medicine, drunk water, answered exactly two work emails before Moira texted and threatened to tell Helena, and eaten the last of the ramen Rafe had left me. It was still better than anything that had ever come out of my kitchen. I had warmed it carefully on the stove because I refused to microwave noodles that probably had a pedigree.

Now I was watching a documentary series called Private Rooms, which sounded elegant until I realized it was basically MTV Cribs for people who collected cursed chalices and pretended lighting design was a moral philosophy.

The host, a woman in an ivory suit, walked through private galleries around the world while billionaires said things like, “I’ve always felt drawn to objects with history,” which usually meant, “I bought this from a dealer who used the word provenance in a soothing tone.”

Still, it was interesting.

That was the problem with Rafe’s case. The more I learned, the more the objects stopped feeling like things. They were witnesses. Survivors. Little stubborn pieces of lives that had been packed, stolen, hidden, sold, mislabeled, and displayed under the wrong names. A necklace. A sword. A mirror. A comb. All of that was part of the history of a family trying to put itself back together through whatever pieces had made it through the fire.

I slurped another bite of noodles and clicked to the next episode.

The screen opened on a mansion somewhere in the Mediterranean, all white stone, blue water, and gates tall enough to suggest the owner had enemies or taste issues. A young man stood at the top of a sunlit staircase in a peach linen suit, smiling like he had invented leisure.

I frowned.

He looked vaguely familiar, but in the way all rich men in documentaries looked familiar. Confident and deeply convinced rules existed for other people.

The host said his name, but Max chose that exact moment to stand and shake himself, collar jingling.

“What?” I asked him. “Do you disapprove of linen?”

Max walked to his water bowl.

On screen, the young man led the host through room after room of private exhibits. Glass cases. Bronze masks. Painted screens. Ceremonial blades. Jewelry arranged on dark velvet. He spoke beautifully and smugly about beauty outlasting heritage, which made me dislike him on principle even before he gestured toward a display of “minor devotional objects from transitional Olden Folk households.”

I paused with noodles halfway to my mouth.

Behind his left shoulder, half-hidden on a low plinth near a lacquered cabinet, sat an incense burner.

Small. Dark. Easy to miss if you weren’t currently obsessed with one very specific missing object.

The bowl was bronze, squat and rounded, with three short feet and a lid shaped like overlapping scales. One handle had been repaired badly, the metal slightly mismatched. Along the rim, almost swallowed by shadow, was a pattern I had seen in Rafe’s records: the repeated wave-and-claw motif from his mother’s side of the family.

The spoon slipped out of my hand and clattered against the side of the bowl.

I sat forward too fast, inhaled wrong, and immediately began choking.

Max was up before I could make a sound.