Page 74 of Demon Loved
“You presume correctly,” he said. His voice didn’t have a trace of accent, and was friendly enough.
Not that she believed his outer aspect of goodwill for a second.
“What do you want?” she demanded. “I’m not selling any magical artifacts here. Just paintings and prints and some local jewelry.”
The smile he wore didn’t even flicker. Or at least, while it remained in place, his appearance glitched once more. Again, not so much so she could see what he really looked like, and she wondered if he was doing that on purpose to put her even more on edge.
“Oh, I know that,” he said casually, although his gaze lingered on Connor’s oak tree painting before returning to her. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“I’m not paying you for that orb I broke,” Bree remarked. “I’ll admit I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, but I’m pretty sure ‘you broke it, you bought it’ doesn’t work when it’s a case of self-defense.”
The Collector chuckled, and she couldn’t miss the amused glint in his brown eyes.
Well, the eyes he’d decided to wear for this meeting, anyway.
“No, I wasn’t expecting that of you,” he said. “While I wasn’t pleased that a servant of mine would be so careless with an object of such value, I can’t fault you for doing what you must to protect yourself.”
She crossed her arms. Her brain was working furiously, wondering if there was some way she could use her strange, multidimensional talent to reach out to Belshegar or her father, and yet she couldn’t figure out how to make something like that happen.
Still, she had to try.
Belshegar! she called out with her mind, doing her best to imagine the thought flying upward and away from the gallery, rising to its destination on Paradise Lane.
A good plan, she’d thought.
Unfortunately, nothing happened.
To her relief, though, it also didn’t seem as if the Collector had noticed what she was trying to do, so at least he wasn’t omniscient.
“No,” he went on, “I must admit I was surprised by the talent you manifested during that altercation with my servant. It isn’t a gift I’ve ever heard of before, although I assume it must have something to do with Levi McAllister being your father.”
She wanted to ask the Collector how he knew about any of that, except Belshegar had already made it sound as if their foe was someone who possessed far more information about the McAllister clan than he should.
“Maybe,” she said carelessly. “We haven’t had too much time to really investigate it yet.”
“A mistake,” he replied. “You should be doing everything you can to test your gift, experiment with it, instead of playing shopkeeper.”
That same thought had passed through her mind several times today, but there was no way in the world she would admit such a thing to the man who’d caused such mayhem.
Because she only stared back at him, her expression as stony as she could make it, he seemed to realize there wasn’t much point in pursuing that line of attack.
“No,” he continued, “I came here because I wanted to offer you a deal.”
“‘A deal’?” she repeated, her tone incredulous. “Why in the world would you think I’d be willing to make a deal with someone like you?”
He didn’t even blink — and his appearance held steady as well. “Because,” he said softly, “I can show you how to use your extraordinary gifts. Not even your father has the same understanding of magic that I have, so you will never reach your full potential under his tutelage.”
“An understanding of magic gained by stealing everything magical that isn’t nailed down?” she shot back, and the Collector’s mouth quirked slightly.
“I suppose you think I deserved that,” he said. “But I am not here to explain to you why it is so important that these artifacts are in my keeping and no one else’s. I am only here to tell you that if you want to understand how your magic truly works, then it would make the most sense to join forces with me. Also,” he added, seeming to sense she was about to offer further protests, “if you do so, then I will stop trying to retrieve the amulet…and also the talisman your red-haired witch friend took from my servant. That one is definitely mine, an artifact I loaned the man so he would have a greater chance of success in his mission, and it is nothing that should have been in your clan’s keeping in the first place. But I would allow it to remain here.”
How magnanimous of him. At least that explained why the dreadlocked thief had had the little rock crystal amulet on him in the first place. No one had known for certain whether he’d found it while he was out doing the Collector’s bidding and was bringing it back to his master, or whether it had been given to him to boost his chances of making away with the artifact Devynn and Seth had found back in 1884.
Not that it really mattered now.
What mattered was that it had been safely locked up as well, which meant there was no way the Collector would be able to get his hands on it.
“As far as I can tell,” he went on, since she hadn’t quite been able to come up with words vitriolic enough to express exactly how violently she planned to refuse his offer, “this would benefit everyone involved. Your clan would no longer need to fear any incursions by me or my servants, and you would finally have the chance to develop your talents to their furthest extent.”
