“No, thanks. Aren’t you supposed to drink vodka?”

“Aren’t you supposed to wear pointy hat and ride on flying broomstick?”

“Touché,” I said.

Sanya shook his head and flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Eleven. Plus six. Seventeen. It could be worse.”

“But we nailed Thorned Namshiel,” I said. “And Eldest Gruff laid out Magog like a sack of potatoes. I’ll get you his coin tomorrow.”

A flicker of satisfaction went through Sanya’s eyes. “Magog? Good. But Namshiel, no.”

“What do you mean, no? I saw Michael cut his hand off and drop it into his pouch.”

“Da,” Sanya said, “and the coin was under the skin of his right hand. But it was not in his pouch when he went to the hospital.”

“What?”

Sanya nodded. “We took off his armor and gear in helicopter, to stop the bleeding. Maybe it fell out into the lake.”

I snorted.

He grimaced and nodded. “Da, I know. That did not happen.”

I sighed. “Marcone. I’ll look into it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I know those people. I’ll go see them right now. Though I was looking forward to going home for a while.” I pushed my hips up off the counter they leaned on. “Well, what’s one more thing, right?”

“Two more things,” Sanya said. He vanished and returned a moment later.

He was carrying Amoracchius in its scabbard. He offered it to me.

I lifted both eyebrows.

“Instructions,” Sanya said. “I’m to give it to you and you will kn—”

“Know who to give it to,” I muttered. I eyed the ceiling. “Someone is having a huge laugh right now at my expense.” I raised my voice a little. “I don’t have to do this, You know! I have free will! I could tell You to go jump in a lake!”

Sanya stood there, offering me the sword.

I snatched it out of his hands, grumbling under my breath, and stalked out to my Volkswagen. I threw the sword into the back. “As if I didn’t have enough problems,” I muttered, slamming the passenger door and stalking around to the driver-side door. “No. I gotta be carrying around freaking Excalibur now, too. Unless it isn’t, who knows.” I slammed the driver-side door, and the old paperback copy of The Two Towers Uriel had left me, and which I’d dropped into the pocket of my duster, dug into my side.

I frowned and pulled it out. It fell open to the inside front cover, where there was writing in a flowing hand: The reward for work well-done is more work.

“Ain’t that the truth,” I muttered. I stuffed the book back in my pocket and hit the road again.

It took a phone call and an hour to set it up, but Marcone met me at his office on the floor over Executive Priority. I walked in carrying the sword to find Marcone and Hendricks in his office—a plain and rather Spartan place for the time being. He had only recently moved in, and it looked more like the office of an active college professor, functional and put together primarily from expediency, than that of a criminal mastermind.