And we're back again for another chapter.
Bo's POV
I entered the living room to find Kenzi lounging on the couch, staring blankly at the television. I looked between the TV and Kenzi and back again, wondering why she was staring. "Um, Kenz?" I asked softly.
"Yeah Bo?" she mumbled, still staring.
"The TV is blank."
Kenzi's eyes fluttered and she sat up, actually looking at the TV. "Oh." I snickered, walking over and plopping next to her.
"Seems all those blonde wigs you've been wearing are having an effect on your brain."
"Shut up." Kenzi snorted, smacking my arm. I rolled my eyes and leaned back, remembering why I'd come in here in the first place.
"It seems we have a new case on our hands." Kenzi groaned and I shot her a reproachful look.
"Didn't we just get out of a case?" she huffed.
"Yes, but this one seems important. This curator guy of some ancient Fae warehouse slash museum thingamabob wants us to look into the robbery of the aforementioned warehouse place. He's paying good money, like seriously good, and our last case didn't exactly get us to the point of actually affording all those boots of yours."
I looked pointedly down at the high quality leather boots with three-inch heels and made of genuine crocodile hide, scales and all. Kenzi pulled her feet to herself, eyes narrowed. "Hey! I borrowed these from my great grandmother. These things didn't cost us a dime!"
I nodded, skeptical to say the least. "Uh-huh. And I suppose those bright, shiny, blue stingray boots you brought in last week, you borrowed from your aunt?"
Kenzi looked a little uneasy. "Well no, but they didn't cost me anything, if that's what you're getting at!"
I gave up and shook my head, giving her an exasperated look, "Never mind, let's just go already. Daylight's wasting and I have too many places to stop by today as it is."
"Yes ma'am, captain ma'am. One surly Sergeant Kenzi getting ready to stand at attention and charge off into battle."
Kenzi rolled her eyes, giving me a mock salute, even as she stretched herself out lazily like a cat just awakening from her nap.
I snorted. "Right, like you'd even make corporal with that attitude."
She gave a mock offended look, narrowing her eyes at me. "And just what's that supposed to mean? Just because I wouldn't sleep my way to the top to get myself where I need to be to order sexy ass grunts around like moi, you don't think I'd make it to sergeant?"
I shook my head, unable to help the smile that came to my face. "Kenzi, I know you wouldn't be able to. You wouldn't last two weeks in the army, of that, I am certain."
When she opened her mouth to protest further, I held up my hand. "People have to work out to be soldiers, Kenz." I told her. "They have to train really hard for it. They do hundreds of sit-ups, pushups, pull-ups and chin-ups a day. Can you do even ten chin-ups?"
Kenzi just stared at me blankly. "Can you even do one chin-up?"
She shifted uneasily and I had to grin. "Do you even know what a chin-up is?" I teased.
She scoffed, "Of course I do. And seeing as you're Miss Know-It-All Combat Girl, how many chin-ups can you do?"
I didn't have a response that wouldn't severely undermine my current position so I said nothing and left the room.
Kenzi cackled and booed at me, even as she watched me leave the room to get my jacket. As I was slipping into it, I felt a presence nearby and wasn't quick enough to stop Kenzi from jumping onto my back.
"Gotcha Bo!" she snickered. "Now, you have to give me a piggy back ride, Miss Army 'Silent-About-Chinups' Dennis."
I rolled my eyes and flipped her onto the bed. "Come on, Kenzi, now's not the time to be fooling around. We have work to do."
I heard Kenzi scoff and mutter 'Cyka' before she grabbed her jacket and one of her blonde wigs. I saw her look at it out of the corner of my eye. She surveyed the wig, glanced at me and put the blonde one back to be replaced with the red one. I chuckled and we headed out to the Museum.
…
When we got to the place that my contact directed me to, it was a lot less than I was expecting.
"Uh, Bobo, are you sure this is the place? Sure you maybe didn't take a wrong turn or something? Cause I don't see a warehouse. All I see is one nasty ass old sewage treatment center." Kenzi wrinkled her nose in disgust.
I threw a scowl her way. "Yeah, I'm positive this is the place. I followed all the directions exactly!"
I turned back, irritated to see that the place before us still looked exactly as Kenzi had described: one old, nasty ass sewage treatment plant.
"Maybe your guy got the directions mixed up." Kenzi ventured, "I mean minds can play tricks on us on even the best of days and from the sounds of It, this guy has a lot on his plate already, dealing with robbery and running an illegal warehouse full of ancient magicky faey artifact type things."
I nodded in agreement at first, but frowned as the rest of what she said struck her. "Who said anything about an illegal warehouse? The guy seems pretty legit and I even checked out with Trick to make sure. And he said the guy is a collector of rare items and stuff, none of which necessarily have to be magic."
Kenzi rolled her eyes, "Oh gimme a break, really Bobo? You don't see what's going on here?"
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at her irritably. "No, as a matter of fact I do not. Care to enlighten me as to what you think you know about this case, despite not knowing for sure a single thing beyond what I've already told you?"
Kenzi smiled and clapped her hands together. "Alrighty then, I shall. The way I see it, no truly legitimate business would hire you to look into a robbery of something super valuable—like old timey artifacts tend to be—without first talking to the police and you'd have told me if Dyson was involved. The only reason I can think of that a business run by Fae wouldn't go to someone a bit more in the loop than you, someone with actual resources, is that some of the items that they have squirreled away are powerful, sacred, occult items, which probably fetch prices of at least a few hundred grand, probably more."
Kenzi took in a quick breath before continuing. "Anyway the item that was stolen was probably acquired from some ancient busy-body's great grandmother's tomb or something. This would result in this guy or whoever getting the sharp end of the stick if whoever owned it caught wind of the missing item. Thus explaining the need to go through less, uh, official channels."
Kenzi had a serious expression on her face and she was pacing back and forth just like a detective from those old black and white movies. She wouldn't have looked all that out of place dressed in an old suit and hat, holding a pipe. Actually, if I thought about it, she'd actually look kind of charming, in a small girly Sherlock Holmes sort of way.
"Wolfman would pretty much have to report the case to his higher ups and this guy can't have info of the object getting out. Once word spreads beyond more than like five people not involved directly with the business, it's pretty much impossible to keep it secret. Someone talks, someone always talks, and he can't have that."
Annoyingly enough, in a certain light, Kenzi's words actually made sense in a weird Kenzi sorta way. But then I thought about it and saw a hole in her theory. "Ah, but Trick knows this guy. Trick vouched for him and said he was a real collector and everything. He runs an actual Museum, how do you explain that?"
Kenzi just shrugged, entirely unmoved by my statement. "Oh, I'm sure part of the business is legit; this guy probably does run an actual Museum with legitimate objects which he wouldn't get into any trouble for possessing, but the real profit's in trading things that others can't easily get at, things official people would disapprove of him or anyone else even breathing the air around, for fear of breathing in some magic dust off the object or some such thing."
She smiled brilliantly, showing off her very white teeth. "Now do us both a favor and call that asshole while it's still daylight out here. We're in a lousy neighborhood and, Succubus at my side or not, I really don't want to experience this place at night. All sorts of weirdos probably roam these streets."
As if reality itself were trying to prove her point, dirty-looking female figure with wild hair and very long, sharp-looking if broken nails ran across the road just in front of us to hop down into a nearby sewer.
"Point taken." I shook my head and dialed the number the client had given me. I swear to god if this guy doesn't pick up… I hit the call number and both Kenzi and I were shocked nearly out of our skin when a phone rang out, startlingly loud in the gray early day, just a couple yards behind us.
We spun around to find ourselves being eyed up but a long, thin man, with an oily, thin mop of dark hair sitting on his head, old dark eyes that looked like the abyss itself, dressed in varying shades of brown and a faint somewhat mischievous looking smile at the corner of his lips He was holding an old Egyptian looking cane made of black gold with an obsidian skull for a handle bulb.
"Ah, so you must be Bo. Trick told me quite a bit about you. I must admit, I didn't expect you to turn out to be so tall." He smirked. The man spoke with a cool, confident voice that held a clear aristocratic accent, perfectly enouncing every word.
Still stunned that I had been taken so entirely off guard with the strange man's sudden appearance, I drew a leaf bladed throwing knife from my sleeve and took a defensive position, glad for once that I'd actually taken Trick up on his offer to teach me this particular trick.
"Who the hell are you?" I demanded. "And how did you get so close to us without us noticing?"
The man drew himself up with the air of a casual business man just dropping in for a quick chat. "I, my dear, am Arval, owner of the fine establishment you see before you and, at present, your employer. So if you wish see any of the quite significantly large sum of money that I have offered you, I suggest that you lay down your arms." He didn't look the least bit shaken by the fact that I was holding a weapon, ready to toss into his vitals at any given moment, the bastard, I was still trying to get my heartbeat under control from him sneaking up on me!
As irritated I was with the man, I recognized the name and reluctantly put the knife away. I could always draw it or some other weapon about my person later if he annoyed me too much.
"Thank you. And as to your other question, it is no fault of mine if you were too unobservant to notice one creaky old man such as myself walking across this gravel road to speak with you."
I felt my hands twitch for the hidden pockets of my jacket which concealed my blades, but I resisted the temptation; the money really was very good and he wasn't the first asshole I'd had to deal with in my life. Unfortunately, I knew he wouldn't be the last.
"On the phone, you described yourself as an important curator, the owner of a big time Fae museum." I glanced pointedly back at the sewage treatment facility. "Doesn't really look like much of a museum to me, more like a shit processing facility." I smiled sweetly at him, and his smirk widened though it never reached his eyes. "Oh, you are one firecracker to be sure, just precisely as Trick described. Perfect, just the kind of person I suspect I am going to need, to get to the bottom of this."
He leaned forward on his cane and a slick serpentine tongue flicked out between his lips to taste the air. "Marvelous. Now to answer your question, yes I am, in fact, the curator of a quite fabulous museum. The curator of the one and only Fae museum as a matter of fact." he smiled and shrugged. "At least, the only one with any official sanction at any rate. There are a number of cheat castoffs who used to work for me and learned some of my trade secrets before I was forced to relinquish them of their positions by my side. They also claim to be as such. But in truth, I am the Megalodon of the Fae collector's world, I am the one who makes all the most extravagant finds and presents the most fabulous representations of Ancient Fae history. They are but minnows in comparison to myself."
He glanced over my shoulder to the facility and smiled. "And this is but an illusion, my dear." He waved his hand in the general direction of me and Kenzi. I braced myself for some kind of voodoo attack, but instead, I just felt a mild tingling sensation pass over my eyes, nose and ears and then nothing.
I heard a gasp beside me and I turned to see what Kenzi had discovered. My jaw dropped; seriously, it actually dropped. The scene before us had changed drastically from what it had been a few seconds ago.
Instead of a large, disgusting, smelly plant that filtered sewage and looked like Godzilla had vomited all over it before the Loch Ness Monster did the same, there was a completely different building awaiting me when I turned around. A large mahogany building with three or four floors and furnished in wooden carvings ranging from lilies and frogs to griffons and Pegasus stood in front of us. From inside the glass doors, I caught a glimpse of a hallway covered in light gold carpet and walls painted in bright red. From what I could see, the tables and exhibition podiums and shelves were in varying shades of red and gold as well.
"Not bad." I chuckled.
"Right this way, ladies. I shall show you the crime scene." Arval gestured for us to follow him and made his way into the extravagant building. Kenzi and I both shrugged before following after him. As we made our way throughout the large building, I noticed quite a few items on display, from ox heads to jewelry to weaponry and so on. Even certain bones, like the wishing bone of some animal were on display.
"I'm still bettin' the thing that was stolen was illegal." Kenzi muttered behind me.
I rolled my eyes and scoffed at her, sending a smirk her way. "Seeing all the pretty toys making you a bit edgy, Kenzi? Feeling that itch that you always enjoy scratching?"
She gave me a glare. "Hey, my 'itch' as you so happily call it, is not what's up. It's definitely illegal."
I snorted in contempt, but Kenzi crossed her eyes as our guide made his way further into the museum.
"Ask him!" she silently mouthed to me as we continued on through the warehouse.
I rolled my eyes but decided to indulge her. "Hey Arval."
He paused in his stride and turned to look at me, "Yes my dear, what is it?"
"I get why you would like to keep the fact that you were robbed quiet, but aren't there more qualified people for the job? I mean there have to be people with more resources to call on."
He nodded, for the first time looking a bit uncomfortable. "Yes, indeed there are and if this were a simple theft of one of the objects I keep on display in the common areas, then believe me I would have contacted them about it. However, the object that was stolen was not one of those."
He nodded up the path we were following. "The object is an item of great value. It is of very unique qualities and very old, older than just about every Fae who walks the planet today; its age and origin alone are enough to make it quite risky for it to be caught in my possession by either factions of fae. Its qualities magnify that risk tenfold and I would most likely be sentenced to a swift and painful execution if anyone were to find out I had it. It is not the only object in this compound which carries such a death sentence; I have many others very much like it, though relatively few of the same caliber, I must admit."
"As an unaligned Fae and as the granddaughter of one of my closest friends, I trust that you will get the job done properly and keep everything quiet while doing it, am I correct?"
Kenzi shot me an I-so-told-you-so look and I grimaced at her before turning back to Arval. "Yes, I will make certain that it is back in your possession as soon as possible."
He gave me a sharp-toothed smile and continued on his way. "Thank you." He stated graciously as we arrived in a large room stashed full of items. Kenzi grinned.
