No worries there. I had no intention of opening the coffin.Anycoffin, no matter how old and valuable it was.
“Knowing what kind of box it is wouldn’t have helped you find it,” Devich continued, his tone entirely too reasonable.
“You can’t know that!” Angry now, I snatched four little bottles from the mini bar. “The nature of the missing object could lead directly to the thief’s motive for taking it. Which could lead directly to the thief himself. How many times have you done this?” I paused, but not long enough for him to actually answer. “Not many, I’m guessing, or you wouldn’t have needed to hire me. I’ve made more than a hundred retrievals, and the one thing they all had in common was thatI knew what I was looking for.”
On his bed, Orthus growled in his sleep, then went back to snoring.
I slammed the bottles down on the table and glanced around for a mini fridge. There was none, which meant there was no ice. “How the hell am I supposed to do my job if I don’t have all the pertinent facts?”
Devich sighed over the line, and metal hinges squealed. What was he doing at the office at seven in the morning, anyway? “Well, you know now.”
I viciously twisted the lid from the mini bottle of Jack Daniels.Fifty milliliters?Barely worth the effort of opening the bottle. I downed the whiskey in one swallow, then tossed the bottle into the plastic-lined trashcan, relishing the fire burning its way down my throat.
Fuming now, my vision edged in an angry red, I grabbed the next bottle. Johnnie Walker Black Label. Good thing it was a business expense. “I donotdo corpse retrieval. Ever.”
Goblins or imps causing trouble? I’ve got it covered. Incubus stalking your dreams? I’m your girl. Lost a valuable mystical relic? Give me a call. But I wasnotdisturbing some ancient soul’s final resting place—or even histemporaryresting place, for that matter. My sad little insurance policy wouldn’tbeginto cover the damage from that kind of metaphysical—not to mention karmic—fallout.
Too angry for speech, I opened and downed the second bottle, and that time I barely felt the burn. My thoughts flashed by too fast to capture, searching for the right words to make Devich understand what an absoluteasshe’d been to keep a secret like that.
My problem with coffins had nothing to do with fear. At least any fear a human would understand. I certainly wasn’t afraid of walking/waking corpses. Hell, I practicallywasone.
The problem had little to do with disgust, either. Rotting, stinking skeletons crawling with flies and assorted creepy-crawlies? Revolting, definitely. But not that big of a barrier to my professionalism. Though in theory, anything buried in that pit for two centuries should have long ago shriveled into a pile of dust.
But I didn’t believe for a second that whatshouldhave happenedhadhappened to Devich’s missing cadaver. Regular coffins containing normal mortal remains—rotting as they ought—did not compel people to dig them up. Nor did they feel “bad.” And they sure as hell didn’t need to be chained up and whisked away in a private helicopter before anyone could open them. That shit just wasn’t normal.
And while I was on the topic of things-that-creep-the-hell-out-of-Lex, the irresistible urge to open a casket—any casket—was just plain fucked up, no matter how I thought about it.
“Alexandra?” Devich asked, breaking into my contemplation of the problem at hand. “What are you doing?”
I ignored him, still thinking as I snatched a cellophane-wrapped plastic cup from a set on the table. If I was going to reap any benefit from my limited supply of alcohol, I’d have to make it last longer. Drink it slowly, from a cup, while I figured out how to deal with the fact that I’d been hired to find someone’s deadbody.
So, I was looking for a corpse—what was the big deal? The owner was dead, and thus likely unconcerned with what happened to his remains. Right?
Maybe not, andthatwas the problem. Humans aren’t the only species which buries its dead, and something told me that whatever was in Devich’s sarcophagus wasnothuman in origin.
The only thing worse than disturbing a human’s resting place—which in itself carried some serious karmic consequences—was disturbing anon-human resting place, the owner of which might still be capable of seeking revenge.
“Alexandra, I can hear you moving around,” Devich said, as I poured the tiny bottle of Cuervo Black Medallion into the clear plastic cup, the phone pinned between my shoulder and my ear.
I didn’t want to know. But I had to ask. “What’s in the box, Devich?”
He sighed into my ear, and in the background, something clattered against the desk. Maybe he’d dropped his pen. “It’s a body.”
I rolled my eyes, stomping past the still-snoring hellhound on the way to my duffle bag, which held my last can of Coke. “I assumed as much. Can you be more specific?”
Amazingly, he chuckled. “Okay, it’s a veryoldbody.”
Smartass. I grumbled beneath my breath as I jerked the zipper from one end of the duffle to the other. The broken chain link dangling from my left cuff scraped up the length of the zipper with a rapid metallic tapping sound. “Where did the body come from? Who is it? Orwasit? Give me something I can use, or you’re just wasting time. Both mine and yours.”
Devich sighed again, and more springs groaned. “What’s inside doesn’t matter. Ittrulydoesn’t, so long as the box isn’t opened. All you have to do is find it and bring it to me. Unopened. Can you do that, or should I start looking for your replacement?”
Coke in hand, I straightened in front of the bag, glaring in anger at nothing in particular. “Okay.” I breathed deeply into the silence over the line, trying to gain control of my temper. “Let’s get something straight right now, to avoid any more misunderstandings.”
“Fine,” he said, and I pictured him nodding, all composed and civilized. Not at all resisting the urge to set a building on fire.
“If there’s anything else I need to know about the sarcophagus or this job, tell me now. If I find out later that you’ve held out on me again, I’m done.”
“Done?” The question in his tone was practically tangible. “You’d walk away without knowing why you didn’t make it through the gate?” He clearly didn’t believe me. But that washisproblem.
