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I picked up the leather satchel that the thief had failed to abscond with, meeting the stiletto lady halfway as she click-clacked towards me, her hands clasped together in gratitude.
“Thank you so much,” she breathed, one hand squeezing my forearm, the other already wrenching the satchel out of my clutches. I didn’t put up a fight. Her fingers ended in some very sturdy-looking nails, painted to disguise the fact that they held their own special enchantments. I knew ensorcelled press-on nails when I saw them. I’ve met my share of magical drag queens. Cool people, hella strong.
But this wasn’t one of them. The woman must have been in her early twenties, her bangs cut straight across her forehead in a lush fringe that framed a deceptively innocent face. Her eyes studied me with quiet intelligence, sweeping across my body, as if gathering information. She wore a severe, high-collared white blouse and an equally severe pair of high-waisted gray trousers. Her outfit was fashionable, in short, but, if the stilettos were any indication, not exactly very functional. And I won’t even get into the assortment of jewelry festooning her fingers, wrists, and throat.
“You’re a lifesaver,” the woman breathed again. She seemed like the type who would breathe all her words, which I didn’t very much mind. But I could tell that this damsel bit was all an act. Here was a woman who was only playing the role and going through the motions. I was going to have to play right back, I realized, when she turned right around and started clicking her heels in the opposite direction.
“Hey,” I called out, as the crowd gathered around us started to thin. “That’s it? No kiss on the cheek, no big reward?”
She turned over her shoulder to answer, but never stopped walking. “The kiss I can afford, but no rewards. Sorry. No dice.” Her voice was normal now, clear, confident, resolute. Those words hadn’t been breathed that time, that was for sure.
Now, I promise I’m not that kind of douche, but the way stiletto lady had just dumped me on the street without so much as a “Here’s five dollars, thanks for caving that guy’s chest in” was bugging me. Call me desperate, but I knew that whatever she had in that satchel was precious, and that she was more than capable of offering me a tidy reward. I knew that because her face was splashed right onto a massive billboard above her own shop. Beatrice Rex, the sign read, next to a magically animated winking portrait of her face. My hunch was right. She was an enchantress.
I wasn’t just going to let her off easy. She threw evil glances over her shoulder as I followed her, my hands still turned up in a questioning shrug. She huffed as she swept through the open French doors of her atelier, making a beeline for her counter, then placing the satchel gingerly on its surface. I stepped in, giving the shop a casual glance, whistling as I took in the sights.
Rows and rows of mannequins of all shapes and sizes shifted positions as they posed like models on a runway, Beatrice’s creations pinned lovingly to their bodies. More garments hung from racks or sat idle on neatly stacked shelves, waiting for the right owner to come along and pick up, say, a flameproof caftan, made for the fashion-conscious dragon slayer, or a shawl magically enchanted to warm up in the winter and keep you cool in the summer. There was just one other shopper in the store, a man checking out a rack of coats towards the back. Beatrice seemed to pay him no mind.
“This is a fancy place you’ve got here,” I
said.
Beatrice cocked an eyebrow at me, shooting me another of her patented dirty glares. “It really is,” she said, giving me a sticky smile. “And I’m really so, sooo grateful that you helped with my little predicament, but I’m just sooo busy. I need to get back to my work.”
I shook my head. “Look, normally I wouldn’t be so pressed about this, but I’m pretty certain I did you a solid by retrieving your satchel for you. Whatever’s in it is clearly valuable and probably costs a bomb. And pro tip, maybe invest in sneakers for the next time something like this happens.”
Her nose wrinkled. “This never happens here. Not in all the months I’ve run this store, okay? Nobody just waltzes in and snatches raw materials right off the counter. It’s so barbaric.”
“I agree. Which is why I think you’ll agree that I deserve a nice, handsome little reward for my trouble.”
Her face scrunched up a little more, the peaks of her cheeks going red.
“What’s in the bag, Beatrice?”
She went just a little bit redder.
I nodded at the satchel. “What’s in the bag?” Still no answer. I sauntered up to the counter, placed my hands to either side of the satchel, and gave her my smarmiest smirk. “Riddle me this, Beatrice. You’re a pretty established enchantress. I can tell. Some of those rings you’re wearing probably have dangerous spells chambered in them. Why didn’t you just blast the guy who stole from you if the stuff in the satchel wasn’t so important?”
She rolled her eyes, then stamped her foot. “Ooh, you’re so annoying. I almost wish that stupid burglar had gotten away with it. Fine! Here. You can look, but don’t touch.”
With all the reverence of a holy man handling the relics of a saint, Beatrice unclasped the satchel and lifted out a wooden box. Nothing about the box itself was spectacular, because it was all about the contents. She lifted the lid, and I had to stop myself from gasping.
Whatever the box held was made out of the finest material I’d ever laid eyes on, so delicate and sheer that it was almost totally transparent. It had the shimmer of silk, but seemed even lighter than that. I expected it to tear in half as Beatrice lifted the sheet of fabric to the light, but the cloth was clearly very sturdy – almost supernaturally so.
“This is woven out of spider silk. It’s extremely valuable. Not just any spider, either. Comes from an extremely rare source.” She set the silk down again, shutting the box, slipping it back into the satchel, then depositing it somewhere under her counter. “It cost me – let’s just say that it cost me a lot to acquire.”
“Right,” I said, finding my breath again. “And why did the thief want the stuff?”
She shrugged. “Beats me. But let’s be real. You could walk into any shop on this block and find something worth stealing. Enchanting is a very, very expensive business.” She gave me another one of her grins, cocking her shoulders at an angle as she planted her own hands opposite mine on the counter. “And I’m a very, very busy woman. So, you know, scoot. Git. Out of here.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line and gave her a disapproving look. Beatrice stamped her foot.
“Fine,” she spat, folding her arms, her eyes flashing with menace. “Fine. What do you want?”
“I’m actually in the market for a very special kind of enchantment myself.” I leaned into the counter and cocked my own shoulder, mirroring her posture, then grinned as bright as the sun. “Let’s talk business, shall we?”
8
Beatrice Rex solemnly poured tea into two of the prettiest cups I’d ever seen in my life. She offered one to me, sliding it across the counter. Her atelier was clearly the type of swanky place where they liked to butter you up a little before they gutted you for everything you were worth, like a car dealership that serves free coffee and cookies, or one of those crazy designer boutiques where they pop a bottle of bubbly.
