Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

sailing over the sea of drowned men.
    “What do you think the country of origin for this is?”
    Raphael was watching the office. “Hell if I know.”
    I wished I had Kate with me. She would’ve told me when and where it was made and for what god.
    I turned to the next plastic page. This photograph showed an ancient jug made of brown clay with a long conical spout. The tip of the spout had broken off.
    “What do you think this is?”
    “A piss-pot.”
    “That is not a piss-pot. Will you take this seriously?”
    “I’m taking this very seriously,” he said under his breath.
    I flipped the plastic. A beat up–looking dagger with an ivory handle…Wait a minute.
    “I know this.” I tapped the plastic. “I saw it today in the library. Jamar had bought that knife. It’s from Crete and I didn’t see it in the vault.”
    I stared at the knife. It was very plain, with a foot-long, curved blade and a simple ivory handle in surprisingly good condition.
    Raphael focused on the blade. “It’s ceremonial.”
    “How do you know?”
    “The blade has never been sharpened.” He drew his finger along the knife’s curved edge. “See? No marks on the metal. Also the profile is wrong. It’s too curved to stab in a forward motion, but if I slashed with this, I couldn’t draw it through the wound all the way. It almost looks like a tourné knife.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s a cooking knife for peeling. You remember, we have the set in our butcher block.”
    He would have to stop saying “our” sometime. Pointing it out to him now would stop the flow of knife information, though, and I needed his expertise. I knew guns, but Raphael knew knives.
    He kept going. “If it was sharpened and shorter, it might be a variation of a karambit, a curved knife from the Philippines. Shaped like a tiger’s claw. I never really saw much use in it—too small and my own claws are bigger. Where was this found, did you say?”
    “Crete.”
    Raphael frowned. “Cretan knives and swords were typically narrow and tapered, like the Greek kopis.” He turned the picture. Turned it again. “Hmm.”
    “What?”
    He lifted the picture with the knife pointing down. “Pickaxe.That’s what it reminds me of. The only way to get the maximum effect of this blade is to stab someone with it straight down.” He raised her fist and made a hammering motion. “Like with an ice pick.”
    “Like if someone was tied down and you stabbed them in the heart?”
    “Possibly. And Anapa killed four people for that?” Raphael’s voice dripped with derision and rage.
    “We don’t know that.” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice. “All we know is that Anapa knew about the knife and it’s important. We don’t know why.” And there was no convenient description of it either. A little card listing its name and special powers would’ve been nice. “It’s a place to start looking.”
    I flipped to the end of the book. More artifacts. Nothing else I recognized. The knife had to be the key.
    “You matter to me,” Raphael said. “You always did, and not because you were a knight or a shapeshifter.”
    Suddenly the game wasn’t funny anymore. “I mattered so much that rather than waiting for me to get my shit together, you found another woman. Let’s be honest, Raphael, get a blowup doll, put a blond wig on her, and she and I would matter about the same to you. Hell, the blowup doll might be better. She won’t talk.” Christ, I sounded bitter.
    “I don’t want to play anymore,” he said. “I love you.”
    It hurt. You’d think I’d be numb by now.
    “Too late. You are about to be engaged.”
    “Rebecca doesn’t matter,” he said.
    “Raphael, she’s a living, breathing woman. Someone you felt strongly about. Of course, she matters.”
    “Rebecca isn’t my fiancée.”
    I froze. “Come again?”
    “I said, Rebecca is not my fiancée,” he repeated.
    “What do you mean, she isn’t ‘my fiancée’? I mean, your fiancée.”
    Raphael shrugged. “She’s some gold digger I picked up at a business engagement. Someone must’ve pointed me out to her as a good catch, so she attached herself to me. My mother has been getting on my last nerve with her machinations, and since I had to go to the Bouda House for a barbecue, I tookRebecca there. After she told Mom that it was very exciting that we all turned into wolves, I explained to my mother that if she didn’t lay off me, someone like Rebecca would be my next