Page 23 of A Violet Obsession

Fine.

By the time I return with the tea, she’s more relaxed, talking quietly with Vincent.

I place the mug in her hands. “It’s hot.”

Our heads are close enough that I catch a faint whiff of something soft and floral before she moves back.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, her eyes on mine.

I straighten too fast. “Right.”

“Lily was telling me about her work at the auction house,” Vincent says. “What she does there.”

She nods and gives a quick summary. Her body language is open, her posture loose. She’s comfortable with this information.

She’s telling the truth.

“I’ve seen a lot of really amazing things. We even had a whole auction lot last year that was just Nikola Tesla’s patents,” she says, glancing up at me through her lashes. “I remember you saying he was a scientist for the people. Not in it for the money like Edison. You had a poster of him.”

A weird skipping sensation flutters in my chest. She remembered the poster on my wall. From a decade ago.

I clear my throat. “That must have been cool.”

That must have been Cool. What are you, twelve?

“That’s why they like you for the robbery? They think it was an inside job,” I say, to cover the strange, awkward feeling taking over my body. “You’d have had access.”

The flush drains out of her face. “Yes.”

Vincent shoots me a look that says I’m a jackass, then turns back to her. “The necklace was auctioned last night... You said there was some sort of argument over it.”

Lily takes her eyes off me and turns to Vincent, and I irrationally want her to stop paying him so much attention.

“The Veridian Amethyst...” Her throat works. “Hasn’t been on the market in over a hundred years.”

“A hundred years. How old is this thing?” I ask.

She shrugs. “No one knows for sure. It’s old enough not to have a documented origin, but the first time it appears in recorded history is 1340. That’s when it was given its name—after the alchemist Veridian, who owned it. Then every couple of hundred years it would surface again. In a written text or a painting or a will. Always with a strange story attached.”

“Okay, I’ll be the dumb one, since you both seem to know what it is,” Vincent says. “What’s an alchemist?”

“In medieval times, some people believed they could use magic to change base metals into precious ones,” I say, not particularly interested in the arcane belief.

“There’s more to it than that.” Lily looks at me like she’s disappointed I don’t know more, and suddenly I want to prove that I do.

“On the surface that’s what they believed. But there were some practitioners who were after something bigger. At their core, alchemists believed everything in the natural world carries an energy—a frequency—and that if you understood the principles well enough, you could manipulate it. They called it transmutation, but the true believers didn’t want to just change metal. They wanted to change matter itself. Some of them even claimed they could heal disease, extend life, see into other dimensions…” She pauses. “The more fringe texts talk about manipulating people. Thoughts. Emotions. Bending someone’s will.”

“So, basic, evil billionaire shit,” Vincent mutters. “That sounds right up Voss’s alley.”

“Voss wanted the necklace badly,” Lily continues. “But he lost to the representative for the Transcendents.”

Vincent and I must be wearing identical expressions of confusion because she keeps going. “They’re a commune of sorts, out west. I don’t know a lot about them other than it was founded by Richard Tate, the tech guy, and they worship crystals or something like that.”

“Tate started a commune?” I’m familiar with the man’s genius, but this is the first I’ve heard of a commune.

Lily lifts a shoulder. “That’s how my boss Dawn described them. Anyway, the amethyst must be important to Tate, because it’s one of the most expensive items we’ve ever auctioned.”

“How much?” I ask.