Page 46 of Fastest Kill

"Completely agree," he replied with a firm nod.

"It won't happen again."

"Absolutely not. You have been very clear about that."

She nodded. He nodded. They both drank their coffee.

The laptop chimed with an incoming call from Kon, and she opened it before the second ring.

Kon appeared on screen looking like he hadn't slept much. Athena was visible over his shoulder, sitting on the edge of a bed in a hotel room in Thessaloniki, doing some complicated one-handed juggling with a knife.

"The Waller Codex is secured," Kon said without preamble. "Transport arranged. No casualties, but we had one broken window, and a museum security guard who is going to have a very interesting insurance claim."

"Athena?" Frederica guessed, her smile starting.

"The window was giving way already," Athena said, without looking up from the knife. "We did them a favor by taking it out."

From behind Frederica, Dario leaned into the camera's line of sight and said, "The Theotokos relic is secure on our end."

Kon's eyes went to Dario, back to Frederica, took in the hotel room, complete with broken pictures on the walls and the bedding heaped into a pile. His expression didn't change, other than a flare of recognition that she only saw because she had been his friend for so long. He wisely said nothing.

"I'll pass confirmation to Serapis and call you back," Kon said, not missing a beat. "Altun is going to get in on that call, too. There is something you both need to hear."

He hung up on them, and ten minutes passed in silence. Frederica tried really hard not to stare at Dario, and he seemed oblivious as he killed time with a game on his phone.

The laptop rang again, and Kon, Athena, and Serapis appeared. Altun's connection popped up, and her face came into sharp focus: dark eyes, the ivory and gold earrings, and dark red lips. Frederica was always impressed by how Altun always looked put together, no matter the time or situation. It had to be magic.

"Good morning, you two. My contacts in Lucerne have flagged an item moving through a private channel," Altun said with a tap of her polished nails on the table she was sitting at. "It's an obsidian scrying mirror, sixteenth century. The provenance is being described as 'Rudolf II collection, dispersal.' The piece has been off the market for four hundred years. I know the mirror because it's the original that John Dee used as a copy to make his own while he was in Rudolf's court."

"Show me," Serapis said, leaning closer to the screen.

Altun shared a photograph of an obsidian mirror approximately thirty centimeters in diameter, framed in worked silver and blackened with age. The surface was a flawless dark oval that swallowed the light.

Serapis's eyes went wide, and color drained from his cheeks. "That is Agrippa's mirror."

The room went quiet, or what passed for quiet across four different connections and two countries.

"Are you sure? There were a lot of obsidian mirrors made in that time by two-bit alchemists," Athena pointed out.

"No, I'm definite. It was his personal scrying mirror," Serapis replied and stroked his beard. "He had it made in Cologne in 1516. It was his primary working tool for forty years. When we bound him, the mirror vanished from his workroom. I always assumed that one of Rudolf's men acquired it along with the rest of the collection when Agrippa disappeared. I searched for it for years, but came to the conclusion that it had been buried or broken. This is the first time it's resurfaced."

"Why does it matter?" Dario asked. He had moved to stand behind Frederica's chair, close enough for her to feel his warmth.

Don't lean back, she threatened herself.

Serapis stared into the camera directly. "It matters because before Agrippa went into the binding, he split a portion of his necromantic power and sealed it within the mirror as a safety measure. He believed that as long as the mirror existed and he could access it, he couldn't be permanently destroyed or defeated." Serapis paused, his frown deepening. "He wasn't wrong about that either."

"Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me this asshole went full Sauron and locked part of his soul into it?" Athena demanded, finally putting down her knife.

"What's a Sauron?" Serapis asked.

"I'll tell you later, Zio," Dario replied, leaning over Frederica's shoulder. She tried and failed not to breathe in his smoky, spicy aftershave. "So what you are saying is that Agrippa needs this mirror back and will come out of hiding for it?"

Serapis nodded. "Without it, his apotheosis can't be completed because he isn't whole. With it, the power he has been rebuilding since he woke now has a foundation it lacked. The mirror is the difference between a man playing at old magic and something genuinely dangerous. I thought he must already have it, so this is good news for us."

"Okay, we find it and steal it before he can," Frederica said with a shrug. "Easy."

"There's a complication." Altun's voice had a touch of irritation. "The seller appears to have acquired it through my sister. She didn't tell me she had it, and it wasn't in her house when we took her out. She must have sold it on before we killed her."