Page 34 of Elixir of Strife
“You really picked the wrong house to burgle, boys. Unless this was a targeted effort. You’re here for something specific.”
She clicked her fingers. The second floor lit up, revealing a tastefully decorated room, very minimalist to go with her house’s modern architecture. But two things stood out to me, highlighted by the sudden brightness, their intricate glass sparkling like gemstones.
First was the egg-shaped bottle of something in the woman’s hand. Second was the very thing we’d come for: the Aqueous Elixir.
There it sat on a shelf, the glass crystal clear, the essence of water swirling within. Turbulent, constantly in motion. It gleamed from the lights meticulously installed under, over, hell, all around the shelf, as if on display. And around it was a veritable army of smaller bottles.
Perfume bottles.
Oh, shit. My jaw dropped. “You’re Flora DeVere. The owner of Atomica.”
Leon gasped. “The perfume store. Oh, snap.”
She rolled her eyes, but the very slight shimmy of her shoulders, the faintest shadow of a smile told us she was perfectly happy to be recognized, even in the middle of being robbed.
“Perfumery,” Flora corrected. “Get it right. And if you think that the two of you can just sashay in here and take the Aqueous Elixir, then you can forget about it. I need it for my research, maybe for future formulations, too.”
“Wait a minute.” I pointed at the elixir. “If you know what that thing is, then you’re clearly magical, too. You’re part of the arcane underground.”
Flora shrugged with just one shoulder. Fair play to her, it was a very lovely shoulder. “Surprise. Why? Is it a crime to infuse my fragrances with just a touch of magic? This, though?” She circled her finger around the both of us. “This right here? Definitely a crime.”
I studied the perfume bottle that she held in loose fingers, clutching it as delicately as a grenade. It was sort of shaped like one, too, or maybe a pineapple. This explained so much. Atomica was so successful because it was run by an actual alchemist. Now that we knew she was as magical as any of us, I dreaded to think what was inside that bottle.
Poison? Acid? Something that could turn us into rats? I watched as her finger rested gently on the atomizer, prepared to push. To a casual shopper in a department store, Flora was just a menace, waiting to forcibly spritz the latest fragrance in your face. But an alchemist? That finger might as well have been lingering on the trigger of a gun.
“We’re just finders, lady,” Leon said. “We’re not looking for any trouble. We’re just filling an order.”
“I can’t believe it,” I grumbled. “The one time I didn’t fully research a target and it turns out like shit.”
“Yeah,” Leon squawked. “Whydidn’tyou fully research the target?”
I could have wrung his neck. It was a matter of time. We didn’t have any choice. I could have drawn on any of a number of reasonable explanations. But it was far more important for us to distract Flora, make sure she didn’t call the cops. Or worse, the Masques.
“So, about Diablo 69.” I raised my chin at her. “I was on the waiting list, you know? Never got a chance to snag one of the limited editions, even though you sold a thousand bottles.”
Flora stopped breathing for the briefest moment. “We sold a hundred bottles. That was the first run. Limited edition.”
“Aha!” Leon snapped his fingers. “Caught you, lady. We knew there were a thousand bottles. You totally lied. That’s illegal. Probably.”
The look of frosty uncertainty on Flora’s lips slowly turned into a predatory leer. Honestly, I really could have wrung Leon’s neck.
“Aha!” she said, pointing in his face triumphantly. “And you couldn’t have known that if you didn’t go snooping around my office. How did that even happen? Fucking Bettina, never paying attention, always with her stupid podcasts. I should have fired her ass a long time ago.”
I jabbed an accusing finger back. “But you claimed up and down and everywhere that there were only a hundred bottles in the first run. False advertising.”
Flora adjusted her bandanna. “It was a typo. Honest. Bettina’s fault, I bet.”
Leon took half a step forward, emboldened. “That wasn’t a typo and you know it.”
“Prove it.” Flora lifted her nose and smirked. “Here’s something I can prove, though. That you two unwashed idiots broke into my perfumery like a pair of common thugs. I don’t care if you do have your bullshit armistice with the Masques. I’m filing a complaint. Get your asses ready for magic jail.”
“We are not smelly,” I barked. Wow, I was getting super heated over missing out on this stupid perfume. Even Guillotina got one, and she made sure I knew it, too. “And you can’t prove shit.”
“You’ve got nothing on us, lady. We scrambled your cameras. Like we were never there.” Leon stood on the balls of his feet and stabbed his finger at the air with every sentence, a kid trying to make himself look bigger, less afraid. He leaned toward me, voice dropping to a whisper. “It did work, didn’t it?”
“Oh, you won’t have problems with nonmagical law enforcement. I have nothing that proves your presence in my shop, after all. Nothing that regular police would take as evidence, anyway. But the Masques, on the other hand? Maybe I had detection wards and glyphs all over the shop. Did you stop to think about that?”
My stomach turned in knots, cold sweat breaking out across my forehead. I turned to Leon, leaning in to whisper. “She’s bluffing. My Obfuscate spell should have taken care of magical detection, too.”
