“He stole from me first,” she proclaimed defensively. “He set me up with a client—some white-collar windbag who cheated his guild and needed to run. I wasn’t super hyped about helping a jackass like that, but he was gonna pay real well. Everything went smoothly. I dropped him off and he waved goodbye and we both sailed off into the sunset. Then a couple hours later, I’m looking for an enchanted watch I got as payment from another client and it’s gone—along with the rest of my stash. The bastard took it all.”

“And you think this artifact dealer put him up to it?” I asked.

“I know it.”

“How?”

“I’m in the smuggling business, Kit. Word gets around. He’s about to run a nice little auction, and half the items on the menu are my artifacts.”

“Are they valuable?”

“They’re my life savings.” She grimaced. “I need some air.”

Abandoning her seat, she climbed the narrow half-ladder, half-staircase beside the kitchenette and ducked through a short door. The cool night breeze slipped inside, bringing with it the quiet lapping of waves, then the door clacked shut.

Maybe fresh air would be good for me too. I grabbed my shoes and followed her up onto the deck.

The clouds had cleared, revealing a masterpiece of twinkling stars. The dark water was calm, and the unexpected beauty of a quiet night was a welcome change from the life or death pace of the past few days.

Vera’s boat was anchored to a short wooden dock in a small inlet around the curve of Deep Cove. The boat was, aside from a plentiful array of rust spots, mostly white and looked like it had seen a lot of time out on the open sea. Twenty feet long, it featured a covered platform that sat on top of the living quarters, which I assumed was where all the steering and captaining and serious boating took place.

A narrow set of stairs wound away from the dock, up the rocky cliff, and toward an excessively expensive home overlooking the water. I traced the pathway with my eyes, then glanced at Vera. “Is that your house too?”

“I just rent the dock from the homeowners. I think they own a bank or an investment firm or some shit like that.”

I pushed my feet into my shoes, not bothering with the laces. Hopefully I wouldn’t be running anytime soon. “How come you haven’t gone to get your stuff back from this dealer yourself?”

“Are you kidding?” She gave me a disbelieving side-eye. “Ever heard of Faustus Trivium?”

Faustus Trivium? That was an amazing name I would have absolutely remembered if I’d ever heard it before. “Nope. Who is he?”

She sat on the edge of the boat, facing me. “He has a gang of shady mythics who hang around him, and he deals a lot of illegal artifacts to a lot of illegal people.”

“And you want to send me in after him?”

“Oh, relax,” she scoffed. “I’d go with you. And with that magic of yours, I’m sure we’d be just fine.”

A sudden rock of the boat threw me off balance, and I damn near did the splits as my feet slid in opposite directions.

She snorted. “Watch your step, landlubber.”

“It’s slippery.”

“This sale Faustus is putting on, hocking my shit.” She tapped her fingers on her knee. “It’s Thursday evening.”

“What day is it today? Er, tonight?”

“Very early on Tuesday.”

I gave her a hard look. “In other words, we have approximately no time to get your stuff back.”

Shaking my head, I retreated below deck, my arms wrapped around my middle for warmth. I could hardly remember what dry clothes felt like.

She followed me inside. “There’s a shower if you want to use it, but the hot water heater busted.”

A hot shower would’ve been an absolute savior. I’d never hated anything as much as I hated that water heater right now.

While I debated the unpleasantness of icing my body in cold water all over again versus trying to sleep with that grimy saltwater feeling all over my skin, Vera opened a cupboard and dug around inside. She tossed me a towel, then threw an armful of clothing my way.

I frowned. There was an awful lot of pink in her selection of garments.

“Get clean,” she told me. “And throw your wet clothes on the stairs. I’ll hang them outside to dry. Shout if you need anything else.”

“I haven’t agreed to help steal your stuff,” I pointed out.

She raised a single blond eyebrow. “But you will.”

With that, she headed back to the deck, leaving me to face the tiny, icy shower alone. Not that I wanted company.

I got the shower going, washed off in record time, and exited in a state of violent shivers. Within five minutes, I was dry, dressed, and lounging on the small cot wedged between the sink and the stairs. My new outfit consisted of hot pink fuzzy socks, silky black pajama pants that fit too snugly in the vital areas, and a baggy rose sweatshirt emblazoned with a glittery skeleton giving the finger.

No way Vera didn’t have more gender-neutral clothes, but whatever. I was too tired to care. Though, thinking about it, I wouldn’t have cared even while wide awake.

I leaned back against the pillow and closed my eyes. The door rattled as Vera came in, and I cracked an eye open just long enough to watch her enter the bathroom. Water ran as she brushed her teeth or washed her face or whatever women did to get ready for bed.

The gentle rocking of the boat lured me toward sleep. It’d been a long, tiring, dramatic day—from meeting Maggie in the café, to the unexpected encounter with Quentin, to my exhausting, hypothermic escape, to winding up on a refurbished fishing boat with a mercurial smuggler.

And I could only guess what tomorrow would bring.

Chapter Sixteen

Faustus Trivium’s restaurant was a shithole.

Buried on the east end of town between an abandoned gas station and a pay-by-the-hour hotel with barred windows, Corky’s Cuisine was little more than a sign, a door, and a window so grimy you couldn’t see inside. And based on the odor of deep-fried trash that wafted out its back door, “cuisine” was a real stretch.

Vera and I spent Tuesday morning—the later part of the morning, after sleeping—scoping the place and debating a plan of attack. After far too much standing, pacing, and trying not to breathe the back-alley reek, we retreated to a better neighborhood and grabbed an outdoor table at an Indian restaurant.

As we waited for our food, our conversation drifted from infiltration strategies to how I’d ended up in my current fun situation. I ran through my unpleasantly immersive MPD experience, touching on Lienna, Captain Blythe, the lumberjack, and my cellmate Duncan. She’d heard of the latter—or at least, she’d heard of a hydromage murderer with a three-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on his head and a habit of shriveling up humans like raisins.

“And they put you in a cell with him?” Vera asked, waiting for the waitress to get out of earshot after delivering our meals. She dug her fork into her curry. “I thought you were a conman.”

“Barely even that. I just worked for conmen.”

She tore off a hunk of naan bread and stirred it around in her bowl, soaking up the hot and spicy juices. “That’s typical MPD bullshit right there.”