Sweetman smiled widely. “I mean to eat it, Mister Taylor! Only the rarest and most exquisite gastronomic experiences can arouse my jaded palate these days, and this particular delicacy should prove most satisfying . . . You have a gift for finding things, Mister Taylor. Find the box for me. However much the little witch is paying you, I will double her offer.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But I have to be true to my clients.”
“Even when they lie to you?”
“Perhaps especially then.”
I got up to leave, and Sweetman immediately gestured to Gunboy at the door. He straightened up as I approached and brought one hand out of his leather jacket. I brought one hand out of my trench coat pocket, ripped open the sachet of coarse pepper I always keep with me, and threw the whole lot in his face. His head snapped back, startled, but it was already too late. He sneezed explosively, again and again, while shocked tears ran down his face from squeezed-shut eyes. He waved his finger back and forth, but it didn’t worry me. With his nose and eyes full of pepper, there was no way Gunboy could concentrate enough to manifest his conceptual guns. Never leave home without condiments. Condiments are our friends. I easily sidestepped the weeping Gunboy and opened the door. I risked a quick look back, just in case Sweetman had his own hidden weapons, but he had lost all interest in me. He had his arm around Gunboy’s shaking shoulders and was comforting him like a child. Or almost like a child.
I shut the door quietly behind me and left the Hotel des Heures. At least I hadn’t wasted any time.
THE OLD MARKET HALL IS A GREAT OPEN BARN OF A PLACE, AND THE ONCE and Future Collectibles traveling show filled it from wall to wall with hundreds of stalls, large and small, offering more rare and unusual memorabilia in one place than the human mind could comfortably accommodate. I strolled up and down the aisles, glancing casually at this stall and that, carefully not showing too much interest in anything. Not that there was anything particularly exceptional on offer . . . An old Betamax video of Elvis starring as Captain Marvel, in some other world’s 1969 movie Shazam! One of Dracula’s coffins, complete with original grave dirt and a certificate of authenticity. The mummified head of Alfredo Garcia, smelling strongly of Mexican spices. And the mirror of Dorian Gray.
I finally wandered over to the Queen of Hearts’ stall, as though I just happened to be heading in her general direction. Big Bad Betty was running the whole thing on her own, as usuaclass="underline" large as life and twice as imposing. A good six feet tall and strongly built, she wore a stylized gypsy outfit, complete with an obviously fake wig of long dark curls and a hell of a lot of clanking bracelets up and down her meaty arms. The fingers of her large hands were covered in enough heavy metal rings to qualify as knuckle-dusters, and she looked like she’d have no hesitation in using them. She was attractive enough, in a large, dark, and even swarthy kind of way. I gave her my best ingratiating smile, and her baleful glare didn’t alter one iota.
I pretended to look over the contents of her stall, to give her time to realize the scowl wasn’t going to be enough to scare me off. Big Bad Betty liked to style herself the Queen of Hearts because she specialized in heart-related collectibles. She was currently offering the carefully preserved heart of Giacomo Casanova (bigger than you’d think), a phial of heart’s blood from Varney the Vampyre, and a pack of playing cards that once belonged to Lewis Carroll, with all the hearts painted in dried blood. Nothing special . . .
“You’ve got some nerve showing your face here, John Taylor,” Betty said finally.
“Just looking,” I said easily. “I do like a good browse.”
“I hired you to find my missing husband!”
“I did find him. Not my fault he’d had his memory wiped and didn’t remember you anymore. And not in any way my fault that he’d had his memory wiped to make sure he wouldn’t be able to remember you. Maybe you should have tried counseling . . .”
She scowled at me. “You never called me afterward. Not once.”
“That wasn’t what you hired me for.”
“What do you want here, Taylor? On the grounds that the sooner you’re out of my sight, the better.”
“What can you tell me about the rosewood box, called by some Heart’s Ease?”
She couldn’t resist telling me. She does so love to show off what she knows, and no one knows more about hearts than the Queen of Hearts.
“The box is centuries old, supposedly first put together in pre-Revolutionary France, designed to contain the suffering of a brokenhearted lover. He put it all in the box, so he could be free of it. Hence the name, Heart’s Ease. How very French. Though there are other stories . . . that what the box contains has become something else, down the centuries. Something . . . darker. Hungrier. Making the box the perfect container for all kinds of magical and significant hearts. Which is why the box has had so many other names. Heartbreaker, the Hungry Heart, the Dark Heart; you pays your money, and you believes what you chooses. Far as I know, no one’s dared open the box for years. Any collector with two working brain cells to bang together stays well clear of it.
“Now: Buy something, or get lost.”
I nodded politely and moved away from her stall as quickly as possible without actually running. I’d gotten everything I needed from Betty, but I was still going to need a little specialized help if I was to find Gideon Brooks, his traveling house, and the rosewood box. So I concentrated and raised my special gift. My inner eye slowly opened, my third eye, my private eye; and I looked round the Market Hall with my raised Sight, searching for what I needed. A key that would unlock a traveling dimensional door. Something blazed up brightly, not too far away, glowing white-hot with mystical significance. I strode quickly down the aisles and finally stopped before a stall that offered nothing but keys, in all shapes and sizes. Skeleton keys to unlock any door, blessed silver keys to reveal hidden secrets, solid iron keys to undo chastity spells. Keys are very old symbols and can undo any number of symbolic magics.
One key stood out among all the ranks and rows of hanging keys, shining very brightly for my inner eye only. A simple brass key, marked with prehuman glyphs. I’d seen its kind before, in certain very restricted books. This was a summoning key, which could not only open any door, but actually bring the door to you. Just what I needed. Unfortunately, the key didn’t have a price tag on it. And in a place like this, that could only mean that if you had to ask the price, you couldn’t afford it. So, I used my gift to find the one moment when the stall-holder’s attention was somewhere else, and I just reached out, took the key, and walked away.
I could always give it back later, when I was finished with it. When I found the time. The stall-holder really should have invested in some half-decent security spells.
I WAS HEADING CASUALLY FOR THE NEAREST EXIT, THE KEY TUCKED SAFELY away in an inside pocket, when Holly Wylde appeared suddenly out of the crowd to block my way. She smiled at me winningly.
“I had a feeling you’d be here. And so you are! Aren’t you glad to see me again?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I do prefer my clients to tell me the truth, whenever possible.”
“I didn’t exactly lie,” she said, pouting. “All right, yes, there’s a lot about the rosewood box I didn’t tell you, but I was pretty sure you’d find that out on your own, once you started looking. I didn’t want to scare you off, after all; and I do so want my heart back! I just don’t know what I’ll do without it.”
I sighed. It was hard to stay mad at her. Though probably worth the effort.
“Why would Gideon Brooks put your heart in such a precious and important box?”
“Because it was the only thing he had that he knew I couldn’t get into,” she said artlessly.