Page 20 of He’s A 10 But… He Bites

"Paris, then," Riley says, hauling herself up — bruised, stubborn, entirely unaware she's just become the most dangerous thing in the room. "Try to keep up."

13

RILEY

Thirty hours later, after a closed cargo route out of northern Italy, a dead-eyed border crossing, and a train compartment where none of us slept, we arrive in Paris where rain is filling the streets. I stand under the dripping awning of a closed tabac and watch the museum across the street do the thing expensive places do best—pretend it isn't a fortress.

"Two guards on the door, one I can't see," Nico says beside me, voice low under the hiss of traffic. "The one I can't see worries me."

"That's because you read places like a war. I read them like a party." I tip my chin at the brass plaque by the entrance. "Preview tonight. Champagne, soft shoes, everybody pretending they belong. That's our crowd."

"Your crowd."

"Our crowd. You're coming in as the man who makes women nervous in a good way." I glance up at him. Black coat, eyes catching the streetlight, stillness that reads as money to anyone who doesn't know better. "Try not to look like you're counting escapes."

"I'll try."

"Try harder."

The Galerie Pellisson swallows us politely. Marble underfoot, polished to a shine that throws our reflections back at us. Gilt frames, velvet strings, old perfume layered over climate-controlled air. A string quartet murders something gentle in the next room. I let my shoulders drop, lift a glass of champagne, and become exactly as bored as the heiresses drifting past the Flemish masters.

The obsidian sits zipped in my inner pocket, and it picks now to go cold.

I keep walking. "It's doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"You felt it in Venice. Don't pretend you didn't."

Nico's expression gives me nothing. "Where does it want you?"

Want me. I file that away to be irritated about later, because right now it drags my attention left, toward a small devotional panel hung apart from the crowd—a wooden saint, gold-leafed, a placard underneath listing a private acquisition. I drift over, sipping nothing.

"This is a copy," I murmur.

"You're certain."

"The dust." I tilt my head at the frame's lower edge. "Real piece this old, the conservators clean the face and leave the back corners. The grime builds in a pattern. This one's been wiped even all the way around—recent, careless. Somebody swapped the panel and didn't have time to age the mount." I smile at a passing waiter like I'm having a wonderful evening. "The real one's in conservation. They put the decoy out so people have something to coo at."

"Then the conservation wing."

"Yes," I agree. "Staff corridor, past the loading bay, second level. There's a card reader and a very tired man who's been on his feet since noon. I can work with that."

Getting through the door is the easy part. People want to believe a clipboard. I borrow one off an unattended cart, pin my hair up, drop my voice into flat fluency, and tell the tired man that the registrar sent me down for a condition report before the panel goes back on rotation. He waves us through, Nico follows, and I feel him resisting the urge to put himself ahead—I can practically hear the instinct grinding against the plan.

The corridor changes everything. The marble dies into concrete, the music vanishes, and the hush turns into the low electric drone of storage. Climate units exhale. Somewhere a freight lift settles.

"Guard," Nico says, so quietly it's almost inside my skull. "Fifty meters. Coming this way."

"Then we belong here." I don't slow. I lift the clipboard, frown at it, and gesture Nico toward a rack of canvases like I'm explaining something dull and important. The guard rounds the corner, sees two professionals mid-task, and keeps walking. I exhale only after his footsteps fade.

The conservation room is cool and bright. And there's our saint, face up on a padded table, back exposed to the lamps.

I crouch and read the back—every label, every stamp, every old habit of handling. A shipping seal, cracked. An estate mark burned into the cradle. Initials beneath a wax crest: C.A.

"Casimir Armand," I read aloud. "The collector from Prague. The one who watched the relic like he wanted to marry it."

Nico has gone very cold and very quiet, which on him means more than shouting. "His mark shouldn't be here."