Page 4 of All Out of Flux (Stolen Hearts #3)

4

MAX

T hey say that white lies aren’t supposed to hurt anybody. Then how come they hurt so much to tell?

I’d told Leon that I was off to run some errands after dropping him off at his place. I needed to pick up more of that peanut butter and chocolate ice cream he loved so much, stash it in the freezer to make sure he had an ample supply. Witch Boy had a sweet tooth and a bottomless pit for a stomach.

But I didn’t tell him that I was also going to spend some time trying to scope out what Tío Gustavo was up to. Lying to his stupid, earnest face with those big brown eyes and that brilliant smile? God, it wrecked me. This was really all Leon’s fault, actually. His fault for being too cute to lie to.

It’d be easier this way, going on my own. Tío Gustavo wouldn’t try to hurt me upfront, but I didn’t need him knowing that Leon existed, either. The things I’d do if the Brillantes ever laid a finger on him. The faces I’d break. The blood I would shed.

I parked across the street from the shop, face partially hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses, and then again by ducking a little behind the steering wheel.

Leon once tried to explain to me that the aviators only drew more attention to me, but what did he know? I had to cover my eyes, which were among the most stunning of my features. I couldn’t walk in there being too handsome and radiant.

“But maybe he has a point,” I muttered, reaching over to the glovebox, pulling out a baseball cap. Someone would have to hold me at gunpoint to get me to wear a cap on regular days, but this wasn’t a regular day. This was me trying to be something of a snoop.

I held the cap over my head, hesitating. If only I could get my Dissipate spell to last a little longer, turn myself into an invisible hunk of diamond for more than a minute. If only I wasn’t such a visible hunk instead.

Something high-pitched squeaked and twittered in the back of my head. I couldn’t make out the words, but I recognized it as my brain’s interpretation of how Leon might sound when he was nagging me.

That’s a terrible disguise , the voice said. Didn’t I tell you to keep a change of clothes in the trunk?

I scoffed, dismissing the Leon-voice. Was he nuts? The only change of clothes back there was just as stylish as everything else I owned.

But maybe he had a point. Maybe I needed to dress down sometimes, especially if I was trying to do something a little stealthier. What kind of a finder would I be if I wasn’t open to adapting, to finding more ways to become more efficient with my work?

This wasn’t the day for that, though. I wrinkled my nose at the ball cap, flinging it into the backseat. Fuck it. If Tío Gustavo happened to be in there, he’d sniff me out in an instant, anyway. Didn’t matter if I walked in wearing full drag, tits and all.

I stepped out of the car, chest thrust out, rolling my shoulders to make sure that my leather jacket fell over my body in just the right way. I nudged the aviators up my face with the tip of my finger. In the back of my head, the vague, twittering Leon-voice whistled and catcalled.

“Yeah,” I muttered to myself. “I know, right?”

And so I strode toward the shop. The place? Hermanas Arcanas, loosely but not quite translated as “magical sisters.”

It was, in fact, owned by a pair of magical sisters, who in turn were owned by Tío Gustavo Brillante himself. He had his fingers in many of the pawnshops and curiosities shops sprinkled throughout the city, whether they were mundane or magical. Tío Gustavo wasn’t picky like that. In his opinion, everybody was worth scamming.

Hermanas Arcanas, however, was most definitely a magical establishment. No one who wasn’t supposed to know could tell from the outside, of course, the same way it worked for Unholy Grounds. Only those in the know could really know, whether from the buzz of ambient magic that hung in the air, or from the quiet power held by the sisters themselves.

I couldn’t spot either of them as I approached the front door, but Teresita and Luisita Mendez were accomplished mages in their own right. You’d have to be to work around enchanted objects. It took a certain amount of arcane awareness to correctly identify the business end of a magic wand, for example, or to know whether that cursed ring would fuse to its wearer’s finger.

Little chimes above the door rang as I entered. Tiny brass bells. No magic within them, but the ringing lingered throughout the interior of the shop.

A labyrinth of vintage furniture and décor covered so much of the shop that I could hardly make out the walls and the floor. It almost seemed deliberate, how a path had been defined for traveling through this maze of antiques. Would I find a minotaur at the end? Not if it found me first.

It smelled of incense, old books, ancient wood, the better to give the right impression to the impressionable. Much of it was smoke and mirrors. That was the entire point. Look, smell, and sound mystical enough, and it might just lead to a sale.

“Feel free to look around,” said a voice from behind an armoire to my left.

Was that Luisita or Teresita? I could never tell, anyway. They were twins, after all, the kind that enjoyed playing it up by dressing alike, talking alike, and finishing each other’s sentences.

A head poked out from behind a bookshelf on the other side of a store, the eyes only giving me a passing glance. “Yes, yes. Let us know if you need anything.”

The sister vanished again in a rustle of cloth and the faint tinkle of jewelry. I only caught a glimpse of black hair done up in an elaborate coif, then finished off with a single yellow rose.

I coughed and said something polite in answer, keeping my head down. Neither had found me very interesting. Good. They didn’t need eyes on their customers, given that they had multiple methods of security in place. The cameras, for one thing, because only the most foolish of mages would forego the benefits of modern technology entirely.

But they had wards, too. I was sure of it. Magical glyphs and traps, not unlike the ones that Roscoe liked to use to defend Unholy Grounds. This wasn’t the sort of place where you could stick something in your pocket and walk out. Setting off the alarm at the door wasn’t the big issue here.

It was whether or not the thing in your pocket was rigged to explode. A crude and violent way to deter theft in the arcane underground, but that was why finders had to be very careful about our work. That did add an extra layer of complexity to my problem, though. I had a second reason for coming to the shop that day.

The Jade Spider’s new assignment.

It was a simple statuette of indeterminate origin, made out of a mineral that had been smoothed out over the ages. A pale, almost tan sort of stone, carved centuries ago into the approximate shape of a human. Now the features had been worn away, whether from natural weathering or indelicate handling over time.

Which did strike me as odd, because Vera had explained that the statuette itself was hardly magical. Maybe its influence was stronger, once, but now it only held a remnant of its enchantment, described to me and Leon as a very primitive luck charm. That made it even more of a challenge to hunt down.

We had ways of finding enchanted objects in the arcane underground. But whereas a book of shadows that once belonged to a powerful witch might stand out as sharply as a blazing bonfire, a shabby old lucky charm might only burn as bright as a birthday candle.

Not that I could even detect artifacts on my own. Simply didn’t have the talent. Someone like Roscoe might manage, given plenty of time and concentration.

But the idea of going window shopping with Roscoe, of all people, made me glad enough to do things the old-fashioned way. Loved the boy to pieces, but hours upon hours of him talking my ear off about arcane minutiae and ancient history? The very thought of it made me shudder.

Still, it was surprising what you could find from casually browsing through old shops. I’d never actually completed a mission from stumbling upon a client’s artifact in a pawn shop — how convenient would that be, eh?

I ran my fingers along the top of an old writing desk, inspected an old, grubby inkwell. No statuettes in sight. I raised my head to scan the place, on the lookout for anything even vaguely shaped like a slightly deformed human. Instead I saw a pair of eyes staring right back into mine.

“Oh, fuck,” I sputtered. “Oh, God. Sorry, sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

The young man on the other side of the writing desk coughed quietly into his fist, flustering when he spoke. “No, no. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. I’m really new to this job and I’m still really bad about dealing with customers. It’s like, am I supposed to hover while you browse? What do I do with my hands?”

I chuckled. “I get what you mean. And it’s totally understandable, don’t worry about it.”

Two women’s voices chattered at each other from somewhere among all the furniture. Spanish, for sure. Mine was rusty, but I definitely picked up the word “ estúpido .”

“You’re the one who hired him,” one sister hissed, somehow unaware of how well her voice was carrying.

“And you said we should because he had a pretty face, but that pretty face still hasn’t sold a damn thing.”

The man who had startled me deflated the more the argument continued, his shoulders rounding, his fingers twiddling. He wore a waistcoat over his white collared shirt, looking very much the part of a librarian. I kept imagining him in glasses, which he did not wear. Some people just looked like they were meant to wear something on their face.

His gaze darted away from mine, his eyes downcast, his lashes long and thick. I appreciated the softness in the swoop of his longish hair, falling down nearly to his ears, a curious contrast for the strength of his jawline. He did have a pretty face, and burning red ears. Cute guy, in all. Poor guy. Poor cute guy.

Hey, I was allowed to look, okay? And anyway, it was that one sister who started it, going on about his pretty face.

“Please don’t tell them I was bothering you,” he mumbled. “I really need this job.”

“You weren’t,” I said, shaking my hands in his face. “You so weren’t. I didn’t mean to yelp. Oh, God. Here they come.”

A pair of antiques came trotting out from behind a pair of antiques, the Mendez sisters appearing on either side of a two-piece changing screen. It was uncanny how they seemed like mirror images of each other. Both wore stylish black smocks, like curators in a ramshackle gallery.

Each sister wore a rose in her hair, placed on opposite sides. I saw the sister with the yellow rose earlier. The one with the red rose could have been her reflection. They’d even painted moles on opposite sides of their faces. Smoke and mirrors. Maintain the illusion of mystique. Look magical. Be magical. Nail the sale. It was all marketing.

From matching painted lips, the sisters broke into the same toothy grin. Even their body language was eerily similar, hands clasped together, as ingratiating as their smiles.

“We’re so very sorry,” one sister said. “He’s very new here. Why, it’s only his first week.”

“Yes, yes. Only his first week. Just is just adjusting.”

I did a double take. Was I having a stroke? Was she ? “Sorry? Just is what, now?”

“My name is Just,” the man answered meekly. “And I was just helping him, Ms. Mendez and Ms. Mendez.”

Short for Justin, maybe? I picked up the stained inkwell and placed it on the flat of my hand. “That’s right. Just over here has just convinced me to buy this — thing, in fact.”

He shot me a relieved smile, then turned his eyes away again.

“Ah, yes.” The sister with the yellow rose stepped forward, waggling her fingers. “This belonged to an unnamed Spanish conquistador, the ink providing the blood for his quill. He recorded his grand travels in a beautifully handwritten journal, meaning to bestow it upon his sweetheart on his triumphant return.” She held a hand to her forehead, clenched the other one around thin air. “All of it lost when his ship was dashed against the rocks in a thunderstorm. The inkwell, all that remains.”

Funny. It looked like a regular old inkwell with the wet stuff dumped out, purchased from a cheap stationer at best. But I didn’t want Just getting into trouble in his first week of work. Just was just adjusting, right?

“Incredible story,” I said, another white lie, except this one didn’t quite hurt to tell. “Could you keep this at the counter for me, ladies? I’d love to keep looking around.”

The sisters collected the empty inkwell, then tittered as they slunk off again, muttering to each other. I thought I heard the words “ muy guapo ” being breathlessly uttered. Amazing. Now I had two great stories I couldn’t tell Leon.

First was that I’d successfully disguised myself from the Mendez sisters with nothing but a pair of aviator sunglasses. To be fair, it’d been years since they’d last seen me. They probably wouldn’t have recognized me even if I took them off.

And second? That I’d saved poor Justerella here from his evil stepmothers. I’d potentially help someone keep his job for the low, low price of a mostly worthless paperweight.

“Thank you so much,” he breathed, reaching out, but not quite touching my arm. “That’s honestly the first thing I’ve ever sold. You didn’t have to do that, you know?”

I shrugged. “It seemed like you deserved a break. I don’t envy you, you know.” I leaned in, dropping my voice to a whisper. “The sisters are notoriously difficult to deal with.”

He nodded. “I kind of picked up on that. Real quick, like.”

And now that I’d done him a kindness, maybe he could help me in turn. I wondered what to question him about first. Should I ask to see where they kept the statuettes and figurines, or should I ask if he’d seen the disarmingly jovial Gustavo Brillante around the shop recently?

But before anything else, I needed to turn the charm up to eleven. Every finder had their favorite tools, and more the fool the finder who didn’t put them to full use. I took off my sunglasses and blasted the poor boy with my brightest, handsomest smile. Maximo Brillante to the maximum.

“Just? I’d love if you could do me a little favor.”