Ilona Andrews - Fate's Edge

They started down the corridor. The vault lay at the very end, a huge round door, thick and heavy. Audrey knelt by it. “Five locks. This is the most I’ve ever seen. This will take time.”

He sat by her. “Anything I can do to help?”

“No. The more I can do by hand, the easier it is. Lifting a two-inch tumbler by magic is like trying to carry a hundred-pound rock.” Audrey extracted a leather bundle from her pack and opened it. Thin metal lock-picking tools lay inside. The tools and the bundle looked suspiciously familiar.

Kaldar peered at the tools. “Where did you get this?”

“In your bags. You’ve been holding out.”

Heh.

“They are mine now.” She stuck the tip of her tongue out at him. “Stealers, keepers.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out her hair band with a pale metal flower on it.

“Kaldar! I’ve been looking for it everywhere.”

She reached for it, and he yanked it back. “Stealers, keepers.”

Audrey shook her head and probed the first lock with a narrow picklock. “There is a lock-picking competition in St. Louis. No electronics, no magnifying glasses, nothing but your fingers. I always wanted to enter. My dad never let me.” She slid the second picklock into the lock next to the first.

“You’d kill it,” he told her.

She grinned.

“So why not enter after you left the family?”

“I don’t know. I guess subconsciously I always knew I’d go back to the life of crime. I didn’t need that kind of visibility.” Audrey frowned. “Now that’s interesting. De Braose is left-handed, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

She held her hand to the keyhole. A thin tendril of magic slipped from it, licked the inside of the keyhole, and vanished. “Hey, baby, can you move a bit?”

He rose and backed away.

“More. More. Keep going. Okay, that’s probably good.” Audrey stepped close to the door, standing on the right of the lock. Her long elegant fingers clasped the picklocks and twisted.

Razor-thin blades shot out of the floor and the wall, slicing the space where he’d stood a moment ago. On the left, a wide circular blade severed the air less than six inches from Audrey before vanishing into the wall. If she had stood on the left of the keyhole, as a right-handed person would, he would be cradling the bloody pieces of her body.

“Morell is a fun guy,” Audrey said. “One down, four to go.

TWENTY minutes later, the fourth lock was down. Audrey stretched on the floor. The cold stones felt good under her back. The previous lock resisted the pick. She had to use her magic, and the five minutes of straining and gritting her teeth against the pain it took to open it had sapped her dry. The pain receded now, slowly. It was so nice not to hurt anymore.

“Are you okay?” Kaldar asked.

“Mhhm. I just need a small break. Do we have time?”

“Thirty minutes.”

Audrey sighed.

“I can take the last one,” Kaldar said.

“No, let me do it. Equal division of labor: you pickpocket, I open locks.” She closed her eyes. “What will happen once we get out of here? Out of the castle, I mean?”

“Well, we’ll take the boys back. Hopefully, Declan will be understanding. Then I will take you to meet my family. You will be expected to eat too much and carry on conversations with people whose names you probably won’t remember right away.”

His lips touched hers. He kissed her, and she smiled into the kiss.

“My grandmother will want to pry your entire story out of you. You have to be careful with Memaw. She is very good with sharp objects. Like swords.”

“Is there anyone in your family who isn’t a deadly swordsman?”

“My stepsister Catherine. She knits with superhuman speed and poisons people.”

Audrey laughed. “The Mar family: everyone you see can kill you.”

“Something like that. Then we’ll go to my house.”

Her eyes snapped open. “You have a house?”

He nodded. “You’ll like it.”

Audrey rolled to her feet. “Well, I better get on with opening the lock then.”

“What is it with you and houses?” Kaldar asked.

“We moved a lot when I was little,” she said, examining the last lock. “I lost count of how many places we lived. We never owned any of them. I want a place of our own. Okay, you might have to help me with this. I need an extra hand.”

They fiddled with the lock for almost ten minutes. Finally, it clicked. The vault door swung open with a whisper. Lights flared inside one by one, weak but revealing enough to illuminate a long, rectangular room. Gold coins lay here and there, piled in casual heaps. Priceless art hung on the walls, under thick glass. Gadgets and statues from both worlds stood, each on its own pedestal, backlit by colored lamps. To the right, a huge ruby sat under glass, like a drop of blood-colored ice.

“Best date ever,” Audrey whispered.

Kaldar clicked a small wheel on his spyglass and surveyed the room through it. No additional defenses. He clicked the wheel again.

“Nothing. Either Morell is using something the Mirror had no knowledge of, or he didn’t bother putting heavy internal alarm systems inside the vault. Shall we take a chance?”

Audrey nodded. “You take me to such interesting places, Master Mar.”

“I strive to please.”

Audrey held her breath. They stepped forward in unison.

Nothing.

She exhaled.

“Twelve minutes,” Kaldar said, checking his watch. “We need to move.”

It took them almost ten minutes to find the diffusers. They waited in the same wooden box Audrey had originally stolen. She opened it and stared at the twin bracelets. The source of all her problems. Dread washed over her in a cold wave.

Kaldar pulled out the fakes from his backpack.

“This is it,” she said. “This is what my brother and Gnome died for.”

He crouched by her.

“I wish I could rewind time and go back to when my father asked me to take this job. I wish I had told him no.”

“Then we would have never met.” He pulled her to him and kissed her.

“I wish it was done,” Audrey said softly. “I wish we were free and clear. I have this awful feeling that something will go wrong.” Apprehension had churned in her stomach ever since Helena d’Amry walked into that ballroom. Her instincts warned Audrey that things wouldn’t go as planned, and she’d learned long ago to trust her intuition. It had saved her more than once from being caught, and now it was screaming at her to get out. But they were in, and until the auction concluded tomorrow, they couldn’t leave.

“I know,” Kaldar told her. “I have it, too. We’ll be fine.” Audrey looked at the diffusers. An irrational urge to smash them swelled in her.

“Come on,” Kaldar said. “Let’s replace them and be done. We have ten minutes till the spider makes the guards run around again.”

They swapped the bracelets, put the box back on its pedestal, and left the vault.

MORNING came far too quickly for Audrey’s taste. Last night, after Kaldar kissed her, both of them hanging on the sheer wall, she climbed back to her room, changed her clothes, and got into bed.

And then she stayed awake. She rolled on her side, on her stomach, on her side again. She flipped the pillow until both sides of it were too hot to sleep on.

She finally fell asleep and woke up at the first light, tired and groggy. Cerise had lent her a gown, a complicated twisted affair of blue that took forever to put on, but at least the skirt was wide enough that she could run in it, and the pleats hid the dagger Gaston had given her.

They just had to get through today. Just get through.

A servant brought a breakfast tray. She forced herself to eat some of the fruit and a small piece of some sweet pastry. Low blood sugar was bad in their business.