Fate's Edge

explained how they had found her. She took two glasses, George took the other two, and they brought them to the table.
    “Should I check it for poison?” Kaldar asked.
    “I would,” she told him. Waste your time, go ahead.
    The blond boy passed a glass to the dark-haired boy. The changeling sniffed, took a sip, held it in his mouth, and swallowed. “It’s clean.”
    “First you let one child get hit by my car, now you make the other one act as your human poison detector. You really have no conscience, do you?”
    Kaldar leaned back. “ I didn’t ask him to check for poison. His brother asked him.”
    Audrey shook her head and turned to the changeling boy. “What’s your name?”
    “Jack.”
    “Jack, there are poisons that are tasteless and odorless, the kind that even a changeling can’t detect. Next time, let Kaldar drink first. If he dies, no big loss.”
    Jack snickered.
    Kaldar sighed. “Tell me about the heist.”
    Audrey shrugged. “My father needed money to put my asshole brother into rehab. Yet again. I agreed to help them for the last time. My father and I took a plane to Orlando and met Alex there. We crossed into the Weird through the Edge in Florida, broke into the pyramid, and nabbed the box. It was a plain wooden box, about a foot and a half long, a foot wide, eight inches tall. We took it, popped back into the Broken, and drove up I-95. When we reached Jacksonville, I left them and flew back to Seattle.”
    “Did you know who commissioned the heist?” Kaldar asked.
    “No. I suspect it was the Hand. Am I right?”
    “Yes.”
    Oh, Seamus. You moron. “I told my dad it was a bad idea. But no, he had stars in his eyes. They’d promised him a small mountain of gold, and he figured if he flipped it into US currency, he’d get a little over fifty grand. I take it his buyer double-crossed him?”
    Kaldar reached into his bag and pulled out a small contraption of pale bronze-colored metal. A bowl, formed by several circular bands sat on a narrow stem, which widened into a base resembling tree roots. She’d seen high-end gadgets from the Weird before, and it had that polished look: beautiful, with an attention to detail that was usually paid only to fine jewelry. You could sell it to some art gallery in the Broken. They’d auction it off and never know what it was.
    Kaldar squeezed the stem. A whisper of magic shivered through the air. The metal panels of the stem rose, revealing the insides of tiny, fine gears in a dozen of shades. The circular bands rose, turning slowly. A faint glow coalesced above them. Kaldar leaned closer and said, pronouncing the words with crisp exactness, “Adriana. Fountain.”
    The glow snapped into a ghostly three-dimensional image of a cobbled square with some sort of ruin in the center that might have been a fountain at some point but now was mostly a heap of broken marble. Flesh-colored remains dotted the scene. Alex’s handiwork. He must’ve teleported out, and someone held on to him half a second too long.
    The Hand didn’t get their goods, which meant they would be hunting both her father and Alex. And her. Her heart skipped a beat.
    “Is my father dead?” Audrey asked. Her voice came out flat. She wished she would’ve felt worry or fear. Something. But she felt nothing at all. A better daughter should’ve wondered if she shouldn’t have left them alone, but she wasn’t that daughter. You reap what you sow, Dad.
    “I don’t know,” Kaldar said. “If he is, he lived long enough to deliver your brother to the rehab center and pay for it, which means he found another buyer.”
    “I have no idea who that would be.” Audrey shrugged. “My involvement ended in Jacksonville.”
    “He didn’t contact you?” Kaldar peered at her face. “Shouldn’t you get some reward for this venture?”
    “Ha! My reward was that I would be left alone to live my nice life, which you’ve ruined.”
    “Oh no, darling,” Kaldar shook his head. “You ruined your own life when you took that job. Every Edger knows to keep the hell away from the Hand. This was a high-risk/ low-reward heist. There are much easier ways of getting money. Were you born yesterday?”
    Just who does he think he is? “I’m not your darling. It was a family matter.”
    “When family insists on being stupid, you steer them away from it. It’s not that difficult.”
    “You don’t know me.” Audrey crossed her arms. “You don’t know my father. Don’t come here and tell me how