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Dragon's Tooth

Written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The last place Tara expected to find magical items was in a tourist shop on the rue de Rivoli. The shop was tiny, perhaps twenty-five square feet, with glass shelves recessed into the wall and a one-person counter made of brick. Most of the touristy merchandise—the usual postcards, canvas bags with pictures of the Eiffel Tower, and Toulouse-Latrec mugs—were on rack displays on the sidewalk outside.

Inside, though, she found a treasure trove. Mingled among the delicate Limoges china and the petite Lalique glass sculptures were unique items: cloisonné that looked authentically medieval, perfume bottles made from glass so old it was cloudy, and little crosses that appeared to be made of hammered, stamped gold.

She was the only customer inside, but outside tourists gathered around the postcards, discussing the choices in loud voices. A few of the tourists spoke English; the rest were speaking Japanese or German.

It was her personal curse that she understood banal conversation in all three languages.

Horns honked and someone shouted an expletive in French. She made herself focus on the items on the backlit shelf before her, trying not to feel overwhelmed.

It had been eight months since she had been to Paris. Eight quiet months in which she revamped the store she’d taken over in the Loire Valley. It had taken two months to cleanse the stench of the dark arts from the place, and two more to find the right merchandise. Then she had to suffer the ridicule of the locals who did not believe an American—no matter what her experience—should run a magic shop that had been in their fair city for hundreds of years.

She wasn’t making a profit yet. She doubted that would happen for another two years or more. But she was finally making enough to hire an assistant, and the assistant’s presence enabled her to come to Paris on a buying trip.

And to get away.

Most of the items on the backlit shelf were small—ruby-encrusted thimbles and china tea cups so tiny that no doll could hold them. But in the middle of the shelf, someone had laid a fringed bit of tapestry. Its ragged edges suggested that it had been torn off a larger piece.

Above the tapestry, someone had taped a small sign. In black India ink, someone had calligraphed a single word. Relique. Relic, in English. Or, more properly, relics.

Bits and pieces of a past that probably had not existed: a splinter of wood from the True Cross; shards from a Roman burial urn; and a lock of dusty-looking hair shaped like a broach, purported to be taken from St. Peter’s body shortly after he died.

Next to the hair was a long bone-colored piece in the shape of a dagger. At first, Tara peered at it, thinking it to be ivory. Then she noted the yellowish stains at the base, and the hollowed remains of something else, something—

“May I help you?” the voice, not friendly, spoke English instead of French.

Tara turned. A man stood behind the tiny glass counter, his hands resting on it, but leaving no marks. His black hair was cut short, accenting his hawklike nose and sharp eyes. He wore a perfectly pressed white linen shirt, open at the collar, revealing a tuft of dark hair that disappeared down the button line.

She had no idea what tipped him to her nationality. She was not wearing the American uniform of jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. Instead, she wore black pants and a mohair sweater purchased here in Paris. As an indulgence, she had wrapped a silk scarf—the only Hermes she owned—around the sweater’s turtleneck.

“Oui,” she said in French, a language she had been fluent in since she was three. “I am curious about the relics.”

His face did not soften as she had expected it to. Usually French shopkeepers loved to discuss their wares. Perhaps the attitude was different here on the Right Bank, near the Louvre, the Tuileries, and the Seine, one of the greatest tourist areas of Paris.

“I cannot vouch for the True Cross,” he said, still speaking to her in English. “They did not give certificates of authenticity at the Crucifixion.”

Tara didn’t smile because he hadn’t meant that as humor. He’d been completely serious. It seemed everyone she met lately had no sense of humor, and she missed it.

She was afraid she was losing hers as well.

She frowned at the man. She did not know him; she was certain of that. She hadn’t seen him when she was Abracadabra Incorporated’s most successful troubleshooter. Nor had she run into him during her corporate climb. And she was certain he had not come to her new shop, Enchanté.

Instead of answering him, she turned back to the relics, and continued studying the ivory dagger. Its surface was uneven, chipped slightly, and lined. Most ivory was smooth, even after hundreds of years, and it had not turned yellow at the base.

She peered into the hollow end and started. No one had removed a hilt. Instead, there appeared to be organic material inside, dried and molded to a hollow center that went halfway down the ivory itself. Not a dagger then.

A tooth.

Her stomach tightened. The tooth wasn’t round enough to be a whale’s tooth, nor was it long enough to be an elephant’s tusk. The tooth was flat on both sides, and sharp on the edges, coming down to a perfect point at the tip, almost like an arrowhead, only without the groves so often found in anything manmade.

“May I?” she asked in French, her hand hovering over the tooth.

“The sign says not to touch.” His tone was as surly as he was, and his English was formal enough to let her know that he didn’t practice it much.

“That’s why I’m asking,” she said, giving up and switching to English. Let him be surly, and let him know he was right. She didn’t care now. She wanted to see the tooth.

He left the brick counter. She could see him reflected in the glass shelves. His black pants were as neatly pressed as his linen shirt was. He wore a pair of shiny black boots that clicked on the ancient enamel floor.

He stopped beside her, and brushed her hand away, as if he were afraid she was going to get something noxious on his precious relics. “What is it you want to see?”

“The tooth,” she said.

A slight tension seemed to run through his body, then he nodded once. He opened a small cupboard beneath the shelves and removed a single leather glove.

As he slipped it on, Tara realized how quiet the shop had grown. She could no longer hear the constant shush-shush of traffic or the conversations of passing tourists. Instead, all she heard was her own breathing, short and raspy, and the rustle of the shopkeeper’s expensive clothing.

He slipped his gloved fingers beneath the tooth, moving gingerly. The tooth hung off both ends of his hand, looking impossibly large as he lifted it away from the light.

“You may not touch,” he said. “It is too sharp and you might get the cut.”

His voice had lost some of its surliness now that she had responded in her native language, so she did not think to correct his English nor did she give any indication that he had misspoken.

Instead she studied the tooth, itching to touch it, to see if the lines in the surface ran deep or were a result of use, like the chips seemed to be.

“What kind of tooth is it?” she asked.

“A tooth of the dragon,” he said.

Even though a part of her had expected that answer, a chill ran down her spine. All of her desire to touch it vanished. She had to resist the urge to clasp her hands behind her back.

“If that’s true,” she said, “it’s a dangerous item to have lying around.”

His gaze met hers. Obviously, most tourists did not have that response.

“It guards my treasures as it was meant to,” he said, finally reverting to French. “And my signs do warn you not to touch.”

Not to touch. Such a simple command for such a complex action. She had never seen a dragon’s tooth outside of the Academy, and that tooth had been defanged, so to speak. It had had centuries of white magic practiced over it and in later years, it had been bleached to remove the poisons.

Still, that tooth had throbbed with an energy that she hadn’t encountered anywhere else, an energy that could easily become addictive if she wasn’t careful.

And the memory of that energy left her struggling to keep her hands clasped in front of her, to play the part of a curious tourist instead of a former employee of Abracadabra Inc.

“Are you sure it’s authentic?” she asked.

His gaze met hers. He recognized the game she was playing.

“It is not for sale,” he said.

They were speaking French and his surliness was gone. In fact, he seemed a little frightened, as if he did not want to think about the liability he held.

“Then why is it on the shelf?” she asked.

“I have told you. To protect my merchandise.”

“So you have something even more valuable than a dragon’s tooth?”

That would be hard—and rare. Pure dragon’s teeth were priceless, as difficult to find as the creatures that they came from. She had never met a dragon. She’d heard that a few still survived, but then she’d also heard that dragons were the comedians of the magical set, which she didn’t believe.

A funny dragon couldn’t be scary, and a scary dragon couldn’t be funny. She knew that much.

She also knew that modified dragon’s teeth were somewhat common. In the Middle Ages, wealthy mages drilled holes in the poisonless back teeth, and inserted precious gems. Those teeth could still be found in most of the real magic shops throughout Europe, although they too commanded a hefty price.

“I have items,” the shopkeeper said, sotto voce, “if you are certified.”

He almost made it sound like he kept pornography in the back. She half expected him to show her a dirty picture.

But she knew what he meant. He wanted to know if she had a magic certification, a convenience certain areas had adopted to make the sale of magical items easier. Shops that required certification from strangers were more common in places with a heavy tourist trade.

She supposed she should not be surprised that she encountered one on the Right Bank.

But she was surprised. Paris had been her home base, more or less, for the decade she ran around the world like an insane person, trying to make sure that all the little magic shops franchised by Abracadabra Inc. followed corporate policy. Eventually, she gave up trying to find an apartment—it was difficult for the French to get an apartment in Paris; an oft-traveling American had an even tougher time—and got a permanent suite at the Hotel Intercontinental.

She was staying at that hotel this time. They had missed her, called her by name, told her that they had been quite reluctant to give up her suite.

She hadn’t really missed them. She had spent most of her time in that suite asleep on the decadently thick mattress of the queen-sized bed. Asleep or being awakened by yet another urgent phone call.

Initially she had liked the hotel because it was close to La Place de l’Opera and the Vendôme and some of the best shopping in a city that was made for shopping. But in those days, she never had time to go on anything except on an emergency spree when she needed new clothing for yet another country in yet another climate.

So when she came back to Paris, she promised herself that she would spend three whole days shopping, sightseeing, and partaking of the heady nightlife. Then she would get down to business, visiting the dusty shops behind twisty stairwells in Le Marais and the less-traveled areas of the Left Bank as well as the arrondissements where the tourists never went.

A buying trip, she had told her new employee—but she had never said all that she would buy. Yes, things for the shop, but also a few things for her like an extraordinarily expensive pair of shoes that she would probably never wear at home, a skimpy little designer dress that would sit in the back of her closet waiting for a special occasion, and the most perfect scarf she could find—one that cost more than the shoes, one that was made of the finest silk and yet was casual enough to wear in Enchanté every day of the year.

“Mademoiselle,” the shopkeeper said, and Tara blinked at him, looking up slowly.

She had been staring at the relic and thinking about her trip. Imagine if something else had been on her mind—the amount of money in her pockets, for example, or the safety of her jewelry in the hotel safe.

She had heard about magics that pulled surface details from the mind. She had never so easily succumbed before.

“You are certified?” he asked, only this time he was speaking English.

And he had called her Mademoiselle, which was accurate. She was thirty-five, and she’d had surprisingly few relationships—certainly none strong enough to turn her into a Madame.

She smiled at the thought. It didn’t play in English. The shopkeeper looked at her strangely.

“Yes,” she said. “I am certified.”

Then she dug into her bag—a terrible Gucci knock-off that she’d brought along precisely because she was going into a touristy area. She had wanted the pickpockets to think she was a poor tourist, not worth their time, rather than a woman whose decade of overwork had left her moderately wealthy.

She showed the shopkeeper the ridiculous piece of parchment that the Society of French Mages had given her gratis for all the work she had done, controlling and destroying the dark arts throughout France. Normally, certification through the Society cost several thousand dollars and included a long (exceedingly dull) course on the history of magic, as well as a test for the most basic skills. She’d been able to skip all of that. First, because it was more than clear she had the skills, secondly because in her position as Chief Troubleshooter for Abracadabra Inc, she probably knew more magical history than most mages, and thirdly because they wanted her on their side.

Certification lasted a lifetime. They couldn’t revoke it.

The shopkeeper’s bushy dark eyebrow raised. “Your certification is French.”

His voice held surprise. She was getting irritated enough at his attitude that she almost added she had been certified in each country that had joined the program, but she didn’t. The French Society had the strictest regulations, the toughest test, and the most prestige.

So far as she knew, she was the only American to have their blessing.

“I wouldn’t have thought French certification a problem,” she said.

“No, no, it is not,” he said. “It is simply—unusual.”

She smiled at him. “Then we are both full of surprises.”

“Oui.” He set the dragon’s tooth back on its shelf. The ivory glistened in the light. Then he pressed a button on the side of the counter. “One moment.”

She crossed her arms and resisted the urge to tap her toe. She didn’t like being this close to the tooth. The longing to touch it had returned. Just one finger along its edge, to see if the ridges were scaly like she remembered…

A poster moved toward her, startling her. Then she realized she was looking at a door as it opened. The door obviously led to the supply room. A delicate woman came out, her black hair cut in a perfect wedge, her make-up—in varying shades of red—dramatic against her pale skin.

She was yelling at the proprietor even before she stepped into the shop—something about interrupting her valuable work.

He snorted. “Watching soap operas is not valuable, except to the television, nor is it work, not even for you.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. Her black turtleneck and tight black Capri pants showed off a perfect Cyd Charisse figure.

It wasn’t until she turned to toward Tara that Tara realized the woman wasn’t beautiful at all. Her nose was too big, her eyes too small, but with that alchemy that all French women seemed to know, she had transformed those features into something more than beauty, something arresting.

That aspect of French femininity, or more precisely, Parisian femininity, had always unsettled Tara, and made her feel like the hayseed American no matter how trim her figure or how perfect her clothes.

Perhaps that was how the shopkeeper had recognized her nationality—it was innate, revealed in each movement, each gesture.

“You do not look magical,” the woman said with all the spite she had shown the shopkeeper.

Tara shrugged. “That’s probably a good thing.”

The woman made a dismissive noise and moved to the back of the counter. There she picked up a fistful of postcards and shook them at the man.

“They do not sell if they are not on display,” she said as she stomped toward the spinning racks in the front.

The man turned to Tara. His movements were slightly courtly now, as if she were the one he wanted to charm. Perhaps he wanted her to forget the other woman’s rudeness.

“The items are in the back,” he said, as if the interruption had not happened.

Tara got that vague sense of the pornographic again, as if he were leading her to something unbelievably dirty.

But she also knew that was her innate Americanness coming out. The things American thought were pornographic, the French often called art.

The man looked over his shoulder. “Come with me.”

He took a key from the counter, and walked to a gap in the shelves. The gap was covered with a floor-to-ceiling poster of the Eiffel Tower in various stages of completion. All of the images were black and white photographs, clearly taken by the same photographer nearly 120 years before.

He stuck the key into what appeared to be a girder on the side of the half-finished tower. The tumblers clicked audibly, and a door opened.

With his left hand, he flicked on a light, and beckoned Tara to follow him.

Tara walked around the counter and to the door. The air here smelled faintly of vanilla candlewax and Chanel perfume—probably from the woman outside. The light coming from that back room was thin and narrow.

Tara went through the door.

And stopped so suddenly that it felt like a hand had shoved her backwards. The shopkeeper frowned at her from across the space.

“I thought you were certified,” he said.

She was. But she also had long-established protections against dark magic. They would not let her go any further.

“How long has this room been here?” she asked.

He shrugged. “As long as the building has, I suppose.”

Clearly he had no idea how long that was. But she did. At least a hundred years. This close to the Louvre, probably more like two hundred years.

The room, and its terrible secrets, had been here just as long.

If she squinted, she could see potions foaming in the distance, sending noxious fumes into the air, a thin shade of a former resident working on even more nostrums, and an entire cabinet—built into the wall and invisible to the untrained eye—filled with body parts from someone’s former enemies.

Tara shuddered. She couldn’t hide her reaction, but she doubted the shopkeeper noticed.

“You did not build this then,” she said. “And you are not certified.”

He smiled at her. “You are smarter than you seem. I can’t go all the way back, not yet. There are spells in place that are older than I am.”

She could see through most of them. He had no idea what he had here. “Yet you managed to collect these things.”

She was playing dumb, hoping he would talk. Pride. Pride often worked, no matter who the person was, no matter how guarded he seemed.

“I wish I could claim that,” he said. “But it is a treasury, that much I know.”

And his wife—or whomever that woman was—did not agree.

Tara didn’t want to seem too inquisitive. Now her main goal was to leave without disturbing too many of the old spells.

“Did you discover this when you bought the shop?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve known about it for years. Is there anything you would like to see?”

All the dragon’s teeth he had would be a nice start. The box of spell recipes in the very back—something on the edge of it looked like Rasputin’s mark. If something of his was here, she wondered if she might find something from Robespierre or even Charlemagne.

And she shivered again.

“Do you have an inventory?” she asked.

The shopkeeper looked at her oddly.

She shrugged, making the movement as Gallic as possible. “I did not get into the French Society by being incautious.”

His eyes narrowed, just like his wife’s had. He was probably trying to figure out if the American was being naturally rude or if she was trying to tell him that he had been careless, coming into this place without the proper training.

“I have no listing. I suppose I could make one.”

“No,” she said. “That’s all right. I am on a buying trip for my own shop—a little magical place in the Loire Valley. That shop’s been there since the 12^th century, and I must call my assistant before I explore too deeply in a treasure trove like this. I didn’t expect to find something this untouched on the rue de Rivoli.”

“No one does,” he said, coming back out. He didn’t seem to notice the green cobwebby film that encased him. Tara backed away. When she reached the door, she paused, waiting for him. He stepped out, then stopped to turn the key in the lock.

As he did, she ran her fingers together in a remove and dissolve spell. The web disappeared in a cloud of green smoke.

He saw the smoke. “Did you do that?”

She shook her head, and told him only half a lie. “It came from inside your room.”

“The room unsettled you, no?”

“Yes,” she said. “I thought I knew all the magical places in this part of Paris.”

“I am gathering it was a secret for a long time. Even I did not know for ten years, and I worked here for nearly fifteen years before buying the place.”

Now she was getting somewhere. “When did you buy it?”

“Just last year. The previous owner—he —” and again, the shrug “— did not come to work one day. And then the next, and the next, until I finally called the family. They never found him, but he never came back.”

Maybe the previous owner was the shade she had seen inside the room.

“Eventually, they had him declared dead or unfit or something like that. Anyway, they received the ability to dispose of his things. His family sold me the shop and its wares at a bargain price.”

“And that’s when you found the dragon’s tooth,” she said.

The shopkeeper shook his head. “I had always known of that. Only he had it on a different shelf, closer to this door. I was not to touch it except like I showed you.”

Even then, that was dangerous. But she didn’t tell him.

“Nor was I supposed to sell it. I suppose I could now, but it seems—I don’t know—disrespectful, somehow.”

“I would be most interested in it if we can come to a price,” she said.

“Let me consult my books,” he said. “How long are you in Paris?”

“Only a few days,” she said.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said. “Come back and we’ll see if we can reach an agreement.”

****

She escaped the shop, careful not to make grimace of disgust as she stepped out the door. The wife/girlfriend watched her with undisguised hostility, and Tara made certain to smile at her.

The woman did not smile back.

Then Tara meandered down the sidewalk, pretending to look in the windows of the other shops, when really she was checking her reflection for any other spell that might have been placed on her.

She had suffered two that she knew of: the superficial scan of her mind, started by the dragon’s tooth, and the wall of dark magic that her own protections had stopped her from going through. She had no idea how many others lurked in that place, taking unsuspecting innocents by surprise.

Fortunately, the man who owned the shop now had so little magical ability that he couldn’t go through that dark wall—not because he wasn’t certified, as he believed, but because the darkness didn’t want him.

The dark arts, particularly the old and subtle kind practiced in that hidden room, required a certain level of innate ability. Obviously the man didn’t have it. Tara doubted his wife did either.

As she stepped past Angélina’s, her gaze caught the pastries in displayed in the window. She loved this restaurant, often having breakfast here on the days when she had time. She resisted the urge to turn inside now, recognizing the urge for what it was: a need for comfort.

She glanced over her shoulder, but could no longer see the magic shop and the grumpy woman manning the sidewalk displays. So Tara picked up her pace.

Some of the spells in that store could have been repeaters: the scan most likely was, one that triggered whenever anyone stared at the dragon’s tooth too long. The spell would happen whether anyone was nearby to receive the information or not. And the scan spell had been powerful to get through her defenses.

Tara shuddered, and nearly ran the last few blocks to the hotel. A row of cabs was parked haphazardly outside the doors, disgorging that day’s round of new guests. Tara didn’t want to get near any of them.

If the spells she’d been contaminated with rubbed off, then she was sending unfiltered magic throughout Paris. She wondered how many visitors to that shop stared at the tooth, and how many carried that magic throughout the city.

Fewer now that the tooth had been moved to the back of the main room. Quite a few when the previous owner had been around.

The low-ceilinged lobby was filled with tourists, dropping their bags, talking, looking around. The bellman were scurrying from one set of dropped luggage to another, handing out claim checks so that the luggage would get delivered to the correct room.

Check-in was one of the few times she saw the leisurely French move with any sense of purpose. She always thought that was because they hated the foreign clutter in the lobby, preferring its usual pristine state to the chaos that currently reigned.

Another cluster of people waited in front of the elevators. She avoided them, and headed for the stairs, careful not to touch anything. Fortunately, she was in good shape—her room was on a upper floor. She got there, opened the door with her keycard, stepped inside, and heard the door latch closed.

Then she slapped the magic off her as if it were a cluster of nasty spiders. She brushed and recited neutralizing spells, and actually dug into her herb bag for secondary remedies.

Each remedy she tried took another layer of magic off her. That place had been poisonous, and her defenses hadn’t caught it.

Either the mage who had set up the spells was extremely powerful, or the magic was really old.

Or, most terrifyingly, both.

She showered, washed her hair with a special shampoo Abracadabra had designed for its troubleshooters, something she hadn’t had to use in months (and she hadn’t missed it—the stuff smelled like sulfur), and when she got down, she used a spell to gather her clothes, bind them, and stuff them in a laundry bag. The bag would go into a garbage bag she got from the maid, and then they would go off to the one professional cleaner in Paris who could handle magically contaminated items.

She hoped her scarf would survive. She loved that thing, and like most Hermes, it was old enough to be irreplaceable.

When she was dry, dressed, and calmer, she sat on the edge of the bed, and contemplated her options.

If she were still a troubleshooter, she would contact the home office, send the specs about the store, and ask for back-up. But she wasn’t a troubleshooter any more. Her status with Abracadabra Inc was as an affiliate now, an owner of a magic shop who, if she followed the corporation’s rules, would hear from them only through the monthly letter and at dues time.

One of the rules for affiliates was no interference in other businesses. She couldn’t even act as a concerned citizen. Instead, she had to go through the baroque reporting procedure, which had only been slightly updated since the baroque era, and the update was not an improvement.

It was a phone number—a phone number connected to a phone tree.

She hated phone trees. She often thought of zapping them out of existence, but that would be an inappropriate use of magic.

Although she had always felt there couldn’t be a use more approriate than zapping the annoyances of the world into oblivion.

Fifteen minutes of answering questions and pushing buttons on her cell phone later, she finally got a person, who rudely told her that there was no magic shop at that address on the rue de Rivoli, and hung up.

Tara stared at her phone for a long moment, and resisted the urge to fry its internal components and send the entire thing to gadget hell. She shrugged mentally, gave up, and dialed a number she was supposed to have forgotten when she quit her troubleshooting job.

She called Quinn.

****

Quinn was the coordinator, a man she had never met, one who sent the troubleshooters to their newest jobs. He had held the position since Abracadabra Inc opened in the 19^th century, or so the joke went, although Tara didn’t believe it was a joke.

She had never met him. The entire time she’d worked for Abracadabra Inc, she had only communicated with him via e-mail, fax and phone.

For the first time ever, she counted six rings before someone picked up. Quinn, who said gruffly, “This line’s now forbidden to you.”

“Well, I’ve come across a serious problem, and the voice at the end of your reporting line wasn’t that cooperative. What’re you doing, hiring college students these days?”

“Of course not,” he said, but the gruffness had left his tone. He knew Tara well enough to know that when she said “serious problem,” she wasn’t bluffing. “Is there a problem at Enchanté?”

“No,” she said. “In fact, business is so good, I decided to splurge and treat myself to a Paris buying trip. I’m calling from the Hotel Intercontinental now.”

He didn’t chit-chat. “Then what’s the issue?”

“I walked into one of those little tourist shops near the Louvre, and found a dragon’s tooth.”

“Along with a piece of the True Cross, I’m sure.”

She could almost imagine him rolling his eyes. Almost, because she wasn’t really sure what he looked like.

“As a matter of fact, there was a splinter of wood next to it, and if that’s the True Cross, I’ll give you a box of La Maison chocolates. But the dragon’s tooth is real.”

“Real?” That caught his attention, just like she knew it would. She recounted everything that had happened to her in the store as well as her suppositions and her fears.

Then she ended with, “If this is an Abracadabra Inc. store, you need to shut it down. This owner isn’t powerful enough to maintain what he has. But I don’t remember anything on our listing about a rue de Rivoli store, and this was my territory.”

“We don’t have anything there,” Quinn said, and she could tell from his tone, he was about to end the call and take care of the matter.

“I want to help your troubleshooter,” Tara said.

“It’s not your job any more,” Quinn said.

“I know.” She wiped a hand over her face. The skin was smooth—no green cobwebs covering it. She would be checking that for days. “But almost no one has the skill to deal with this kind of magic, especially alone. It might take months to get two of your best operatives together, right?”

Quinn sighed. “It feels like you never left.”

That wasn’t a yes or a no, so she continued. “I think this is too much of a threat to leave on its own while your people gather, particularly with that undetectable magic being spread around. Pull your best troubleshooter from whatever she’s doing—”

“He,” Quinn said.

“—and I’ll help him.”

“You haven’t done the updated training work,” Quinn said, which was required of all troubleshooters.

“And I won’t, since you’re not hiring me,” Tara said. “You’re bringing me out of retirement for one last shot.”

“I worry that you’re not current with the spells,” Quinn said.

“Neither is the mage running the place. He’s pretty clueless. We should be able to neutralize the shop until you decide what to do with it.”

“Why are you arguing so hard to be involved?” Quinn asked. “I thought you had burned out of this work.”

Good question. It was Tara’s turn to sigh. She had learned over the years that the only way to deal with Quinn was to tell him the truth.

“This place scares me,” she said.

“You’re never scared,” Quinn said.

“I used to be,” she said, “when I started.”

“And then you learned how powerful you are,” Quinn said.

“Which is something I still know.” Tara’s voice was soft. “I certainly wouldn’t go after this place alone, not even if my training was up-to-date.”

He whistled softly. She moved her ear away from the phone until the sound ended.

She had finally impressed him.

“I must warn you,” he said softly, “that our best, while excellent, is not quite as good as you.”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure if Quinn was flattering her now that she was on the team or if he actually meant it, and she didn’t care. She wanted to get rid of this place, finish her shopping (that as-yet unknown pair of shoes called to her), and go home.

She missed home.

Then she smiled. It was actually nice to have one.

“His name is Alistair Grint. I’ll have him contact you.”

“Grint,” she muttered. Had she heard of him? The name sounded vaguely familiar. “You know I have an appointment to go back there tomorrow.”

“If Grint hasn’t reached you by then, keep the appointment, but don’t do anything,” Quinn said. “He’s on some remote island in the Pacific. Getting him to France is going to take some time.”

Since the corporation didn’t allow its employees to travel via magic, claiming such travel sapped them of the magical reserves and drew attention to their strangeness, it would take at least a full day.

“In the meantime,” Quinn said, “I’ll contact a few others. They’re all on major cases, but they should be able to free themselves in a week or so. You’ll have back-up. I just don’t know when.”

“Thanks, Quinn.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Have I ever?” she asked.

“Not until today.”

She couldn’t tell if he was serious or teasing her. Probably serious. Who would jump back into the fray after declaring herself free of all that? Especially on a project like this one?

“I’ll let you know when we have this thing under control.”

“Do that,” Quinn said. “I’ll be waiting.”

****

Quinn wasn’t the only one who waited. Tara had her cell set on its loudest ringtone. She avoided crowded places, getting herself a baguette at a boulangerie, some camembert and ham from a nearby grocer’s, and making do with a picnic supper in the Tuileries.

Making do was a little dramatic. The Tuileries were amazing at this time of year—the trees in full leaf, the flowers blooming. Children rode on the carousel, and half a dozen American tourists jogged along the paths, looking trim and important.

The French meandered, staring at the various statues or leaning against them while talking on the phone. The French were trim as well, but Tara blamed that on the prevalence of smoking.

She did get some shopping in, splurging on an Hermés bag to go with her favorite scarf, but left every store she was in the moment the voices of the other patrons grew too loud.

She no longer felt like she was on vacation. She felt like a woman who had managed to sneak an afternoon off work. And that brought back the raggedy panic of those last few years at Abracadabra Inc. Not panic that she was unable to do her job, or panic caused by fear of the black magics she saw, but panic that came from exhaustion, burn-out, and a sense of being trapped.

The sooner she was done with this project, the better.

And that made her wish for Grint’s call all the more.

So of course the call never came.

****

Tara dressed differently for her second visit to the shop. She wore a white blouse she had purchased the night before at one of the lesser fashion stores in the Galeries Lafayette, and a pair of all purpose black pants. Her shoes were reliable black walkers, and she carried that same Gucci knock-off purse she had during the first visit, only this time it had bags of herbs inside and half a dozen protection spells around its outside.

She figured she might be searched for the prevalence of white magic, but she knew her bag wouldn’t be.

It didn’t help that she was irritated. Grint could have called from anywhere, telling her when to expect him. But no. The man was inconsiderate enough to believe that the work would wait until he got there.

He probably didn’t care that she had an appointment at the store. It would have been nice to coordinate something with him in advance—maybe even a time to make another appointment—but of course, he wasn’t even that considerate.

Quinn knew that she liked planning and schedules and everything done to the letter, and he would have communicated that to Grint. Grint had clearly chosen to ignore it, which irritated her even more.

Her walk down the rue de Rivoli was reluctant. She pretended at window-shopping, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was thinking, as she had been all morning, about whether or not she really wanted to buy that dragon’s tooth. If she paid for it and removed it from the shop, would she really make the area safer? Or would she be making things worse by altering the magic that so clearly flowed from that secret room?

She had no real way of knowing, not without some study.

She had looked at her old databases, which she still kept on her handheld. Nothing Abracadabra Inc showed that a magic shop had ever stood on that site.

But that didn’t mean anything. The darkest magics could be hidden for generations, only to reappear with a viciousness if their flows were obstructed.

Caution told her to leave the tooth there. Which meant she was going to have to be a difficult negotiator, accepting no price except something so outrageously cheap that the owner would have to refuse.

The postcards rack and a stand of tiny Eiffel towers stood outside the door to the shop. That woman was nowhere to be seen. No tourists stopped either. They walked by, looking at the same postcards or perusing the t-shirts in another store along the way.

Tara paused as she reached the stand of Eiffel towers. Someone was inside the store. She could hear a booming male voice, followed by the owner’s sullen one. She peered in.

The owner stood behind his counter, arms crossed. He wasn’t quite leaning on the display behind him, but it seemed like he was. He was watching the man on the other side of the counter with a mixture of reserve and curiosity.

That man was taller than the owner, with blond-brown hair that brushed his collar. He wore cowboy boots, tight jeans, and a leather jacket that seemed too warm for the weather.

His attitude—and that booming voice—limited him to two groups: German or American. As she stepped inside, she realized she was hearing French spoken with a Texas twang—something as bad as hearing The Marriage of Figaro sung off-key.

American then.

Both men glanced at her. The owner looked relieved. “I have an appointment,” he said in English.

Tara recognized the game as the same one the owner had played with her the day before.

“Well, Tara can help us,” the customer said in French.

She had to hold herself rigid so that she didn’t start in surprise. This was Alistair Grint?

She’d expected a prissy British guy in a bespoke suit, maybe even carrying an umbrella. She hadn’t expected a cowboy with a broad Texas twang.

He was continuing in that twang: “Her store, Enchanté, in the Loire Valley, has been part of the corporation since—when, Tar?”

She hated being called Tar. She hated being surprised. And she hated losing control of her own investigation.

“It predates me,” she said with a smile, coming all the way inside. She spoke French as well. “I had no idea you were in Paris, Al.”

She couldn’t call someone from Texas Alistair. She just couldn’t.

“Doll,” he said—and that word was in English, although the rest of what he had to say wasn’t—“I live for this city, you know that. How come you didn’t look me up when you got here? There’s some new places in the 18^th Arrondissement that you gotta see.”

In spite of herself, she blushed. Many of the businesses there still provoked an American good-girl reaction out of her. The bisexual theaters, the gay lounge acts, the naked revues shocked her, even though she had seen all sorts of bizarre things in the magical community.

“Lookie there,” Grint said to the owner, and this was in English too, “I got her to blush. Works every time.”

Her blush deepened, and for a moment, she felt like she had as a new hire at Abracadabra Inc.

“Doll, tell him about our company. Seems he’s never heard of us.”

She hated the “our company” part. She hadn’t planned on identifying herself at all. She was going to let Grint be the bad cop. Maybe she still would.

“I’m not sure how much you’d call it mine,” she said, still speaking French. “I’m like you, Monsieur—? I never did catch your name.”

“du Vigneaud,” the owner said, his surly tone even worse.

“Monsieur du Vigneaud,” Tara said. “I’m Tara Miller.”

He nodded, clearly not pleased at the introduction.

Grint said, “Mademoiselle Miller has owned her shop for, what?, a year?”

“Two,” she said, her tone as sullen as du Vigneaud’s.

“And I’m sure she’s quite happy with us.”

Her gaze met du Vigneaud. He didn’t look happy. She wasn’t either, at least at the moment. She wasn’t even sure how to play along.

“I barely notice the corporation,” she said. “It’s really more of an affiliation. I can get supplies cheaper than anywhere else, and if I have magical troubles, I can send for one of their experts. Fortunately, I didn’t have to suffer a sales pitch though—”

And with that she glared at Grint.

“—since the previous owner had already joined the organization. It was a condition of sale that I stay in.” She made herself sound reluctant.

Grint’s blue eyes narrowed just a little, as if in annoyance. He had one of those angular American faces—the kind that suggested too many years outdoors, not enough vegetables, and a lot of hard living.

“Honestly,” she added, “you probably don’t need the corporation. You’re primarily a tourist shop with some magical wares. I’m mostly a specialty magic shop. I get almost all my supplies through them, but you have many other suppliers. I can’t see any great benefit.”

“Except the protection of more mages than you know what to do with,” said Grint, who had switched completely to English now. “This close to the Louvre, and all that nasty Paris history, God knows what could be around here. You could stumble into a pile of leftover spells and not even know what hit you.”

“I have an appointment,” du Vigneaud said. He hadn’t said anything else since Tara arrived.

“I assume that appointment’s with you?” Grint asked.

“We made it yesterday.”

“Can it wait? I’d love to buy you lunch, catch up on old times.”

“Perhaps dinner,” Tara said. “Perhaps tomorrow. Call my hotel. I’m at the usual place.”

“The usual place.” He nodded as if he knew where that was, then smiled winsomely at du Vigneaud. “She’s quite the catch, you know. Every time she comes to Paris, I try to convince her to stay, but she won’t. You know how women are.”

“Most certainly I do,” du Vigneaud said. “It is quite the coincidence that she is here and you are here. Odd that you would meet in a place with magical items.”

He didn’t say a magic shop. Tara found that interesting.

“Well, we initially met in one. I’m the one who told her that Enchanté was up for sale. I was just gossiping, I had no idea she was looking for a place of her own, or I wouldn’t’ve said anything. I really didn’t want her in the far reaches of the country, if you know what I mean.”

“One could always follow her. Salesmen seem—what is the expression?—footless?”

“Footloose,” Grint said. “Yeah, and that’s the problem. There’s more for us footloose types in Paris than in those tiny villages out there in wine country.”

“I do not live in a tiny village and we do not call the Loire valley wine country,” Tara said stiffly. She had decided. She hated Alistair Grint. “Listen, I’ll come back. It’s clear that you and Monsieur du Vigneaud have much to discuss.”

“No!” du Vigneaud sounded panicked. “My appointment is with you, Mademoiselle. He just came in, saw my shelf, and started telling me about this corporation of his. You do not think it worth my time?”

“Magic isn’t your focus,” Tara said. “Or at least it doesn’t seem that way.”

“But with my—” And he nodded toward that door. It would have looked to Grint like he had nodded at the dragon’s tooth. “—you do not think it would help with sales or perhaps my own training?”

“Your training’s another matter,” Tara said, but Grint spoke over her.

“We offer continuing ed classes all the time, and not all of them here. You and the wife—you’re married, right?”

du Vigneaud nodded, his expression tight.

“Well, you and the wife could go to New York or Saigon or Sydney all in the name of continuing ed. Sometimes, if your skill level requires it, you can get a grant that’ll pay your way. A few of these places take newer members for free, just to get them acquainted. Imagine a trip to the far reaches of the—”

“I’m leaving,” Tara said again, feeling irritated. She almost had him convinced to join, not that it mattered. She had no idea why Grint was pursuing this path.

“No!” du Vigneaud said. “Please, don’t leave.”

He turned to Grint. “Leave some literature. I will think of your proposition.”

Grint sighed. He took some brochures that had Abracadabra Inc. written across them in red out of his leather jacket and set them on the desk. Then he turned to Tara.

“The usual hotel?” he asked with a leer.

“The usual hotel.” She kept her voice cool. She decided it didn’t matter if she showed how annoyed she was. Her mood matched du Vigneaud’s.

Maybe she could use that to build commeraderie.

“I’ll call you later, then,” Grint said, saluting her with a single finger to the forehead. She hadn’t seen that move in years—it was very American, and very out of place here.

Then he sauntered out of the shop, whistling as if nothing had gone wrong.

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said to du Vigneaud.

“Why should you apologize?” he replied in French, which startled her. She had reverted to her Midwestern roots, apologizing as a way of opening a conversation. She hadn’t done that in a very long time.

“I feel embarrassed that I even know him.”

“You know him well, it seems.”

“I knew him well,” she lied. “Once. Suffice to say that I’m not at the usual hotel.”

It took du Vigneaud a moment to understand what she meant, but once he did, he grinned. “You are sly, Mademoiselle.”

“I’m tired of pushy American men,” she said.

“I can understand that.” du Vigneaud shoved the brochures aside. “May we talk about the tooth then?”

She smiled, even though she didn’t really want to do this negotiation now. She really wanted to chase after Grint, berate him for ruining the moment and not even setting up a plan.

Instead, she said, “I’ve been doing some research on pricing. Even then, I’m not quite done.”

“Research can take forever,” du Vigneaud said.

“It can, can’t it?” She had to pull herself together. She needed just a momentary diversion. “May I see the tooth again?”

He walked over to the shelf, removed the tooth as he had done the day before, and draped it over his hand. It seemed even larger than she remembered.

She took her jeweler’s loupe from her purse, mostly as a pretense, yet another stall. The tooth didn’t intrigue her as much today. She didn’t feel her eye drawn to it, nor did she feel that sense of getting lost in her own thoughts.

Perhaps the spells on her purse were working. Or maybe something in those brochures blocked the magic. She wouldn’t put it past Grint.

She leaned over the tooth, put the loupe in place, and studied the tooth. It lacked the ridges that held the poison, and the ivory itself seemed too smooth.

“May I?” she asked, and without waiting for du Vigneaud’s permission, she ran a finger on the tooth.

No frisson of magic, no sense of panic. The tooth didn’t even feel odd. Instead it seemed like—

“Plastic,” she said.

“What?” du Vigneaud asked.

“This is plastic,” she said. “The one from yesterday, it was real. But this is not.”

He peered at the tooth as if he had never seen it before. “It’s…”

Then he ran his finger over it, closed his fist on it, and glanced at the shelf, as if he expected the real tooth to materialize.

“It’s not real,” he muttered, as if he hadn’t noticed before.

“Nice scam,” she said. “But if you wanted me to pay you for the tooth, you shouldn’t have let me touch it.”

He shot her a wild-eyed look. “We were going to negotiate. I wasn’t even sure I was going to sell it.”

“So take it out of that back room, and let me see it,” she said. “I’m glad you decided it was too dangerous to leave out front, but really, my magic is strong enough that I can tell a fake tooth from a real one with only a cursory glance. You shouldn’t have underestimated—”

“Mademoiselle,” he said with panic in his voice. “I did not take my tooth to the back room. It was here, where it always is, when I closed the shop last night. The only time someone touched it….”

And again, his voice trailed off.

Tara felt her back tense. “Yes? The only time you touched it?”

“Was to show it to your friend.” du Vigneaud looked at her as if Grint was all her fault. And actually, his presence was her fault. Kinda. She would never have brought him in here like this. She had had a completely different scheme in mind.

She would have told him that if he had bothered to consult her.

Which, of course, he hadn’t.

“You didn’t notice the tooth was different when you showed it to me just now,” she said. “How could you have noticed if it was different when you showed it to Al?”

“I didn’t,” du Vigneaud said. “But he was studying it like you had yesterday for some time. I left him there, praying he would leave, and when he did not, that was when I finally talked to him.”

Only the French. Tara resisted the urge to shake her head. Customers had to be worthy of a proprietor’s time here, and if they weren’t, they were welcome to leave. It seemed worse in Paris than anywhere else, but she had noticed it in Nantes and a few other cities as well.

“Did he touch it?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” du Vigneaud said. “But how am I to know?”

“A dragon’s tooth is a powerful thing to steal,” she said. “He would have had trouble conversing with us the way that he had. Did you have other customers today?”

“None that were near the tooth.”

“Were you here the entire time?”

His eyes narrowed. “My wife, she opened the shop.”

Tara shrugged, making sure the movement was smooth and Gallic. “Then perhaps she took it to the back and put the fake tooth out here. Why don’t you see if you can track it down, and I’ll be back tomorrow. We can have the discussion then.”

“What of your friend?” du Vigneaud asked.

“What about him?” Tara asked.

“What if he took it?”

Tara sighed. He probably had, the bastard. “I can’t imagine it. I’ve been assured that the employees of Abracadabra Inc are honest people.”

“Assured?” du Vigneaud asked.

“It is uncomfortable to give an organization so much control over your livelihood,” she said, lying again. She really liked the corporation. It had been good to her. “That’s why I wasn’t very enthusiastic when he tried to sell you on it. I can’t see any benefit for you.”

“What if he’s not honest?” du Vigneaud asked.

“I still can’t imagine him stealing something like that tooth,” she said, and this time she wasn’t lying. He would have had to use a powerful spell to overcome the tooth’s magic.

“He asked you to dinner. Perhaps you could call him? Perhaps you could find out for me?”

Tara frowned. He was trusting her. Had that been Grint’s plan? Did Grint even have a plan?

“I’ll find out,” she said, making herself shiver. “Even though that means dinner with him.”

“Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

“But,” Tara said, “I won’t take it from him. I’ll just tell you what I find out, if I find out anything. All right?”

“Yes, fine,” du Vigneaud said. “I will see you tomorrow, no?”

“Tomorrow, then,” she said, and walked out of the shop. As she turned toward her hotel, she noticed du Vigneaud through the window. He was staring at the fake tooth as if his heart had been broken.

She had made it to Angélina’s when someone grabbed her arm. Without turning around, she elbowed her assailant in the stomach, heard a satisfying “oof!” as he let go of her, and kept walking. She clutched her purse tightly to her chest, wondering what else could go wrong on this day.

Footsteps sounded behind her, determined footsteps, not the footsteps of some window-shopper. Heavy breathing, and a little bit of moaning.

She braced herself for another elbow defense, but this time as the assailant grabbed her arm, he said, “It’s Grint, you idiot.”

Only the words came out rather breathy. She had gotten him good. Amazing that he could follow her—usually someone who got her elbow in his stomach was down for the count, even if she didn’t use magic (which she hadn’t, this time).

“I’m the idiot?” she said, shaking him off. “You’re the one who decided to go the case alone. You’re the one who handled the entire thing like an ugly American, a move that guaranteed du Vigneaud would be angry at you. You’re the one—”

“Tara, please.” He still sounded winded.

She eyed him sideways. “I found this