Story: One Foxy Dame

 

 In this line of work, you gotta do some unsavoury things to survive. Illegal things. Dangerous things. Sometimes you've got to talk to people who can rub you out in a second if you look at them the wrong way. Sometimes you've got to break into a place to find the clue you need to move forward. Sometimes you get into firefights.

But the most dangerous thing of all is when a smoking hot dame crawls into your lap and doesn't seem like she wants to move. Trust me. I speak from experience. That kind of thing can make a man lose track of his common sense. Makes him do things even more dangerous and stupid than he would for any amount of dough.

Make no mistake. When I say a smoking hot dame, I mean that she was practically walking lava, poured into a slinky dress and given a mischievous, playful attitude.

“Match?” Plus she was actually smoking. "Now, it seems that we must combine our talents once again. My knowledge of the mystic, and your knowledge of... your general line of work."

"Your tact is noted," I gruffly replied. At least, that was my intention. Try being gruff to the dame all but giving you a lapdance. I'd have an easier time chewing a diamond. "An old fashioned heist, huh? I've done a couple of those in my younger days." You don’t get to be a good PI without a shady past after all.

"A young man like you has younger days?" She all but swooned back into me. "One day, you're going to tell me all about them. For now, though..." She took another puff of her cigarette and leaned back to torment me more.

For now, the two of us were back in my office, sitting at my desk. The words 'take a seat' had a meaning I'd never imagined, but was now engraving into my pelvis. I quite literally did not know what to do with my hands. If I didn't know better, I'd swear my client was into it. But no. She was probably trying to use my libido and her supernatural allure to... Keep me under her thumb. Though it occurred to me then that many men would pay for a chance to be under some part of her body or another, thumb or otherwise. Pay through the nose.

"For now, we've done the first part of any big job," I said. "We cased the joint. Got a pretty good feel for their security. Next, we gotta come up with a plan."

"Then we follow the plan?"

"Then we come up with a backup plan for when the first plan goes to hell," I corrected. "Probably need about ten of them, based on how nasty that guy came off. I don't want no chances taken he'll have me at his mercy."

"True, he did give off a sense of extreme sadism. So, how do we proceed with one of these plans' of yours?"

"Entry, item acquisition, exit," I said firmly. "Those are the three crucial steps. Each defined by the last. The less we leave to chance, the more likely each has to succeed. So. First question: How do we enter the building?"

There are two answers to that question: legally, or illegally. We go legally, we'll be watched at all times and like hell we'd get a snowball's chance in hell of getting near the vault, never mind getting out again. Which meant we'd have to break in.

Normally that would mean lock picking, window smashing, having a point man to distract the guards - but those were mundane methods being used against a guy who bought and sold magical goods.  Hard to believe he wouldn't have defenses against those kinds of methods.

"Think you could get in, open a window for me?" I asked. Previously, that sort of play would've been a bad one because they didn't know the layout of the building. Now that they'd had a good look at the place, got a feel for everything, there was a good chance she could pull that sorta trick. who seems less than mundane.

“You’d be surprised how often that works though.” Another puff of smoke, “But this guy is sufficiently paranoid and chuffed with his own cleverness.”

That ought to take care of the first part then. As for the vault...

"This is where you come in," I said. "Come on, you're the expert, and you got a good look at how he locked up his vault. We gotta break in there. How do we do that?"

"It's not something cheap like a key or a pass phrase," was the answer. Of course it wasn't. Would be too easy. A regular lock? I could've picked that i na minute flat. "It's a magical imprint detector. It scans the person trying to open it, and if that person doesn't match the spirit of those allowed to open it, then they will not be allowed in. If they try to brute force it, a magical alarm will go off that everyone in the building will hear."

I frowned. "That seems a bit nicer than I would've expected."

"Yes, well, you didn't see the curses laid out inside the vault." After a moment  I Thought I heard a few unpleasant words spoken under her breath, but the only one I could make out was 'leprosy'. And no, that didn't have anything to do with the fact that my traitorous hands had been resting on her hips while I wasn't paying attention to what they were doing. "Getting in shouldn't be that much of a problem though. All we need is a Mimicry Goblet."

"A what now?"

"A Mimicry Goblet," she repeated, patiently. “Surely you’ve heard tales of doppelgangers and changelings here in the west?”

"That's where they come from? This goblet?"

"Well, no, doppelgangers and changelings are their own magical species - but at least a few of your stories about them were caused by goblet misuse. Honestly it’s more the other way around. A magician with more smarts than sense picked out some of how their innate magic worked and put it in a cup." She shook her head and took a particularly long drag. "Honestly now, you'd think that magicians would learn, you don't put magic in a cup. It never ends well."

I got enough common sense about me to not question that further for the time being, something in her tone warned of nightmares that might plague me the rest of my natural life. Maybe even beyond that. Focus on the task at hand.

"So, you got one of these things to hand?" I asked.

"No, they're carefully monitored by those in the know precisely because they're so handy in getting by magical security. Still. I do know where we can get one."

With that kind of information, my imagination went right into hyperdrive. Perhaps guarded in some castle hiding in the clouds? An underground crypt full of shambling corpses? A sunken ship where mermaids lurked to pounce on the unwary? It was like I was reading some pulp novels again, a magical world’s been unlocked so why not explore it?

Five minutes later, I was holding Mickey at the end of a leash and staring at a pawn shop. A regular old pawn shop. Where I was supposed to go. Buy this goblet that <i>apparently</i> someone hawked at this joint and nobody snapped it up right away. Leaving it for me to buy. Using my client's money, of course. Business expenses and all that.

"Hey Mickey, why do I get the feeling this ain't gonna go smooth?" I asked the hopefully temporary dog. Mickey yipped back at me. "Right, right. Pattern recognition."