Free City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte

they were in the Prague Castle complex. There were at least a dozen really fabulous places to off yourself within easy walking distance.
    “Well, yes,” Miles said, frowning. “Yes, it was Max. And Nicolas Pertusato, whom you’ve met.”
    “How did the police conclude it was suicide?” Sarah asked, a little more sharply than she intended. “I’m sorry, but it just seems so unlikely.”
    “Max has had video cameras installed outside the building,” Miles said, pointing out the window. “He doesn’t trust the construction workers. Or anyone, really. Sadly, one of the cameras had footage of . . . apparently it was very deliberate.”
    Sarah shook her head in disbelief.
    “And Douglas Sexton—he’s working on the collection of Carl Robert Croll paintings—had a conversation with Absalom earlier that evening,” Miles explained. “Douglas had gone to Sherbatsky’s room to borrow some antihistamines and Sherbatsky had given him the whole bottle saying that he no longer needed them. He told Douglas,
The way across has been revealed to me, and I intend to cross over tonight
.”
    “That doesn’t even sound like him.” Sarah frowned. “Sherbatsky was fusing traditional musicology with brain science. He definitely did not talk like Professor Dumbledore.”
    Miles smiled sadly.
    “I met Sherbatsky about ten years ago,” he said softly. “In Vienna. I liked the man, enormously. I can’t help feeling responsible.”
    Sarah glanced quickly at Miles, who seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the window.
    “I asked him to come,” Miles sighed. “I admit I ~,"- away fknew that with his name behind it we could draw a lot of attention to the Beethoven collection, but I also wanted his company. I should have known something was wrong. He was very preoccupied. And there were complaints. I put it down to Sherbatsky’s eccentricities but I feared he was making . . . enemies. In the group.”
    A door across the room clicked open and Miles’s troubled and pensive gaze was instantly smoothed out as he smiled over Sarah’s left shoulder. His hand moved from Sarah’s elbow to the small of her back as he led her away from the window. “Ah, good. Here are two more of our family. Sarah Weston, meet Bernard Plummer and Miss Shuziko Oshiro.”
    They made an almost comically contrasting couple. Bernard Plummer was well over six feet and massively built. He sported a luxurious mustache and was clad—there was really no other word for it—in a kind of medieval cape. Shuziko Oshiro barely came up to his shoulder despite at least five inches worth of spiky heels. She was impeccably dressed in a gold suit with a green-and-gold-flowered scarf wrapped around her throat.
    “They are Rococo and Weapons,” Miles added. “And Miss Weston is Beethoven, of course.”
    Bernard Plummer barely glanced at Sarah before launching into a complicated story about a wrangle with certain imbecile customs officials. He waved enormous hands that looked more than capable of handling pikes, staves, and battering rams. Miles at once became extremely businesslike and whipped out a cell phone.
    “Sarah,” he said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to pick up our tour later. And I need to bring you up to speed on what you’ll be working with. Let’s meet tomorrow morning. Get some rest today.” Miles, with Bernard at his heels, left the room as Sarah turned to the delicate Japanese woman.
    “So, Rococo?” Sarah said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say and her mind was still sorting through the conversation with Miles.
    “Ah, shit, no,” the Japanese woman said, in a thick and unmistakable Texas drawl. “Rococo is Bernie. And don’t get him started, girl, because once you do I swear to Gawd it’ll be hours of descriptions of funny-lookin’ snuff boxes. I’m Weapons, honey. Guns, baby. Guns.”
    •   •   •
     
    A n hour later Shuziko—“call me Suzi”—and Sarah were in the cramped kitchen of