"The thief escaped? After all our preparations?" At last, Mick looked up from the typewriter. "I… forgive me, your ladyship, how on earth did you allow that to happen?"

Color rose to Toni's cheeks and her voice came out fierce. "I 'allowed' nothing! The thief was more resourceful than we had anticipated and the preparations were woefully inadequate in containing her!" she defended herself, perhaps a touch more heatedly than she might have if her hands were entirely clean in the matter.

Perhaps Mick thought the same, because he did not sound entirely sincere when he said, "My apologies. I did not mean to accuse you of incompetence."

That was well enough. It was not precisely a measure of incompetence that had permitted the damn thief, the infamous Bela Talbot, to make off with artifacts from the Men of Letter's well-guarded (supposed to be well-guarded) treasury.

Mick frowned. His eyes had dropped from Toni's face.

"What is it?" she asked. She had a bad feeling about this.

Agonizingly slowly, he looked back up at her. "Pardon me, your ladyship, but is that… lipstick on your collar?"

Toni froze. Her heart stopped as she finally noticed the thief's mark on her collar, written in red too deep to be Toni's own.

Ciao, darling! Kisses! Bela had called back to her, waving just the manicured tips of her fingers and grinning as Toni finally came to her senses and made her last-ditch, futile chase after her.

Oh goddamn that little thief. She was laughing somewhere, Toni knew it.

This is not over. Not by a long shot.

Yes, but in the meantime, how the hell was she going to explain this to Mick?