Chapter 1
I’d always wanted an office.
You know, a nice, quiet place with my name and profession splashed across the door—Quinn MacKenna: Black Magic Arms Dealer. Maybe a sweet logo, to boot. On the walls, I’d hang pictures of me shaking hands with sheiks and shamans and tribal chieftains. My desk would be sturdy enough to survive a shipwreck, my carpet thick enough to crash on. Naturally, I’d keep a decanter of whiskey within reach at all times—for emergencies.
Of course, all that was little more than a dream, a fantasy. My life wasn’t some glamorous, noir thriller; I wasn’t some hard-boiled Private Investigator who could be found in the yellow pages, and Boston sure as hell wasn’t Chinatown.
Here, doing business in an office meant your enemies wouldn’t even have to inconvenience themselves to kill you. Hell, you might as well put a sign around your neck that said, “I’ll be free to die between the hours of nine to noon, Monday through Thursday, at the corner of Kill and Me Street, apartment 2B.”
Or not 2B…
Fortunately, I’d given up on my office pipe dream years ago. Unfortunately, that meant I usually had to make shady deals in shady places—places other people avoided on principle. Like an abandoned warehouse along Boston’s Harbor, for example. Or a seedy motel room in Dorchester. Or a cozy little strip club like the Seven Deadly Inn, a swanky nudie bar located on the outskirts of Bay Village.
“Can I get you a drink, Miss MacKenna?” the waitress asked, sliding onto the arm of my chair, the bedazzled dragon on her ribcage—a combination of tattoos and dermal piercings that frankly hurt to look at—flashing beneath the strobe of the club’s neon lights. I remember she’d given the dragon a name once, but I couldn’t recall what it was. Yohan? Sven? Brad? I shook the thought away and slid an inch to my left, worried I might accidentally inhale one of those faux gemstones.
“No, that’s alright, Cadence,” I replied, my Irish brogue giving the girl’s name—Cadence, short for Decadence—a whole new layer of irony. She, like the rest of the girls here at the Seven Deadly Inn, had been given a stage name based on humanity’s vices. Ava, Jelly, and Luna—or Avarice, Jealousy, and Lunacy if you preferred—were on separate stages, grinding the day away. I knew most of the girls, by now; I’d become a frequent flyer ever since my local watering hole, a pop-up bar run by my friend Christoff, had shut down following his mysterious disappearance several weeks back. Naturally, no strip club—no matter how exceptionally enthusiastic their staff, how excellent their song selection, or how inventive their cocktails—could fill the void my friend’s absence had created.
But boy had they tried.
Sadly, I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy much of the establishment’s hospitality on this particular Tuesday afternoon—despite how delicious it sounded. I couldn’t afford to get sloppy on their Sinfully Yours chocolate vodka martini. Today’s visit was about business, not pleasure.
It wasn’t every day I exchanged goods with royalty, after all.
“My prince, I believe we have made a mistake in coming here,” Arjun—the non-royal sitting across from me—said, his Indian accent nearly as sibilant as mine. The ultra-conservative Indian man wrung his hands, refusing to look up, which is undoubtedly why he failed to notice my shit-eating grin.
Obviously, I didn’t routinely go out of my way to make my clients uncomfortable. No professional in her right mind would. But then no professional in her right mind would have been able to put up with Arjun for a week, either. As payback for his steady stream of passive-aggressive critiques of all things feminine, I’d decided to shove his chauvinistic, thou-shalt-not rhetoric up his ass by insisting we do business in a titty bar.
Because, one, I didn’t tolerate that shit.
And because, two, I liked to support local businesses, not to mention working moms; Cadence, like most of the girls, had at least one rugrat at home, tearing up shoes and pissing on the furniture…or whatever it was children did when unsupervised.
“Perhaps you are right, Arjun,” the prince replied, his attention drawn to Luna, who had contorted herself into a position that Picasso would have been proud to paint. “But then, such things must be done for the greater good.” Luna caught the prince staring from across the room and waved with her toes, curling them invitingly.
The prince waved back with one slender, effeminate hand.
“I’d watch out for that one, if I were ye,” I said, studying the prince’s soft, delicate features. He was a very pretty young man, with smooth, dark skin. He was also short and slight—a man trapped in a boy’s body.
“You will address the prince by his title,” Arjun warned.
“Now, now, Arjun. That is not necessary. I am not her prince, after all,” the young royal replied, good-naturedly. He shook himself, refocusing on the task at hand, though I could see Luna giving the dainty Indian man a solid once-over—which was impressive, considering she was hanging upside down. “So,” the prince continued, “Arjun tells me you have found the herb we sought. I will admit, I did not think it possible that such a plant existed. Otherwise we would have cultivated it, long ago.”
I shrugged, deciding it best not to get into how I’d managed to find the sanjeevani, a magical herb engineered to heal practically any disease or ailment—including death. Firstly, I preferred my hard-earned reputation as the woman who could find any magical artifact, no matter how rare or well-guarded, no questions asked, to remain intact. Explaining how I’d done so always felt like I was a magician describing the trick; it ruined the mystery, the magic, and made what I’d accomplished seem prosaic by comparison. And secondly, there was no way they’d ever believe me, anyway.
“It wasn’t exactly easy to find,” I replied, recalling how the Monkey God I’d contacted had lifted an entire mountain to pluck the sanjeevani from the earth like a man lifting one corner of the couch up to snatch a quarter off the ground. “Or get to,” I added.
I set the small box I’d brought with me on top of the table between us. Arjun stared at the gift-wrapped box in undisguised horror; the Christmas wrapping paper I’d used featured reindeer performing acts from the Kama Sutra. I’d had to express ship it from the online retailer. Totally worth it. “All I could find,” I said, ducking my head to hide my smirk.
Which was technically true.
The prince snorted. “I am sure,” he replied, snickering. He snapped his fingers. Arjun flashed me a hateful look, but hurriedly produced a thick scroll, tied with a silk ribbon. “As promised,” the prince said, urging Arjun to place the scroll on the table. “Though I cannot see what you hope to do with it. It is undoubtedly a hoax, despite its age.”
I nodded, fighting the urge to snatch the scroll up and make a break for it right then and there. “That’s alright,” I replied. “I’m just lookin’ to decorate me apartment.” I fetched the scroll off the table and untied the ribbon. The parchment was old and cracked, made from the skin of a gazelle—if it was authentic. I handled it carefully, scanned it, then folded it back up, masking my emotions.
I’d gotten my hands on it, finally.
The lost map of Piri Reis—the given name of a famed Ottoman admiral and cartographer who died in the middle of the 16th century for refusing to sanction a war against the Portuguese, leaving behind quite the reputation as both sailor and mapmaker.
“Well hey there, Miss MacKenna,” Luna said, sauntering up to us in nothing but a lacey thong. I frowned, sensing trouble. Unlike most of the girls—many of whom were lovely, albeit jaded, women—Luna exemplified her vice. She was blonde, beautiful, and batshit crazy; I saw her stab a guy once for touching her without permission, only to find her making out with him in the parking lot several hours later, prodding his wound every so often to make him moan harder.
“Is that for me?” Luna asked brightly, snatching up the prince’s box.
“Put that down!” Arjun commanded.
Luna pouted, slid one leg between the blustering Indian man’s thighs, and wiggled her hips. Then, with a flourish, she spun away and settled down onto the prince’s lap, one arm draped over his shoulders; he could see right down the line of her body. She held the box up to the light. “So, you didn’t get this for me?” Luna asked.
The prince, eyes unfocused, didn’t so much as flick his gaze away from the stripper’s exposed breasts and taut tummy. “No, no. It is for my father. He is not well. I want to see him healthy again. I am not ready to take on his duties as Maharaja.”
“My prince!” Arjun hissed, then covered his own mouth.
“Oh, a prince, huh?” Luna said. She grinned at me. “You always bring me the nicest things, Miss MacKenna.”
“Don’t say I never did anythin’ for ye,” I replied, with a sigh.
Luna giggled and began playing with the prince’s hair. “So, you want to use this to save your daddy? Wait…if you’re a prince, does that make him a king?”
“My father is a maharaja,” the prince said. “It is different.”
“But,” Luna said, grinding against the prince to the tune of “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground, “if he dies, then you become the Machu Pichu thing, right?”
Arjun’s face purpled with outrage.
“The Maharaja,” the prince corrected, saying it painfully slowly, his eyes practically rolling back in his head. “But yes,” the prince said, eyelids fluttering, clearly too distracted to follow her Machiavellian train of thought.
Arjun, on the other hand, seemed to catch on remarkably quickly—apparently being a misogynist didn’t make him an idiot. He snatched the box from the industrious stripper and held it in front of the prince’s face. “My prince,” he said, “we should leave. Now. We must return with this and aid your father.”
“Oh, do you have to go so soon?” Luna asked, tilting the prince’s chin to get him to look up at her. “I get off in twenty minutes,” she purred, locking her smoldering gaze on him. “Perhaps you could, too,” she murmured suggestively.
I rolled my eyes.
“Twenty minutes,” the prince said, breathily. “I can wait twenty minutes, I think.”
“My prince!”
But the prince wasn’t listening.
“I did warn ye,” I said, rising, clutching the scroll.
Arjun’s eyes widened. “You did this! You brought him here to tempt him! I bet the herb will not even work, and this was your plan all along.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Believe what ye want to believe,” I said, finally. “But your prince is a big boy, I’m sure he’ll do the right t’ing.” I sidled around the table, waved goodbye to Cadence, and headed home with my prize—happy as a saint on a cross on Judgment Day.
That’s the thing about being an arms dealer: having a conscience is a liability. Granted, a small part of me felt bad for inadvertently exposing the prince to Luna’s attentions, but I wasn’t the hand-holding, hand-wringing type; if the prince let his father die to please his new stripper girlfriend, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop him.
Not my throne, not my problem, that’s what I say.
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