“Concocted by a highly skilled alchemist from unicorn horn, dragon's blood and angel feathers, the Immortality Injection will restore you to your prime and keep you there forever, barring misadventure or murder. And even then, should you be killed for whatever reason, you will be reincarnated at the place of your injection, in the state you were before. It is the proverbial extra life, the last chance, the final saviour of a desperate person.”

  I couldn’t really pay attention to the auctioneer. My eyes were roving across the elite crowd gathered below. Miss Artington was fanning herself with a simple white fan, hiding her face so only her eyes showed above the flashing silk. Eyes that shared something I recognised and approved of even more than her generous display of cleavage. Greed. Lust. Desire.

  Those same emotions were mirrored across the rest of the company, all eyes locked on my treasure, ready to fork over vast sums of gold to acquire it. Goody.

  “Bob. I think you should hold your own hand now,” Esme said tightly as she extricated her hand from my grip and patted the back of my hand gently.

  “Sorry, love.”

  “You’re excited. Hell, I’m excited! We’ll have so much to spend on the business, and time to go get the egg back from the TOTS.”

  Why did she have to ruin it with the S word? Spending wasn’t high on my list of objectives. Sleeping was the right S word for the hoard I was about to acquire.

  “We haven’t seen an example of this potion for over two hundred years, and we’re not likely to see one again for just as long. This is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the astute person of wealth, and it could perhaps mean that you are still here when my great-great-grandson gets a chance to auction off the next one. We will start the bidding at a hundred and fifty million. Do I hear one fifty?”

  Almost every paddle in the room went up, as did certain parts of my anatomy. I was going to be so damn rich. The comfiest, shiniest, most impressive mattress in the world was soon to be mine.

  Bids flew back and forth, and my heartbeat rose in time to the tempo of the fierce price war going on below me. Dalgliesh was holding back; he hadn’t raised his paddle yet. Maybe he’d only been there to try and get a dragon-killing weapon… for some unfathomable reason. What’s the term for when both parties attempt to double-cross each other? “My future” was probably the right one.

  Constantinius, leaning forward eagerly, was bidding against everyone, but Lady Artington was only raising her paddle intermittently.

  “They’re the three,” Kat said, looking up from her book. I caught the title as she shifted to point into the audience: “He Vampired Billionairely Into Her Life: Blood Love.” Jesus, Kat.

  “Which?” Esme asked, reaching for her glass of wine.

  “Monopoly guy, Posh-Slut and the kid. They’re the ones to watch.”

  “How do you know? Dalgliesh hasn’t even bid yet,” I replied.

  “Firstly, they’re the only ones that have mattered in the early rounds, so it’s obvious. Secondly, from what Rosebaum said, they’ve got the deepest pockets, and thirdly, there isn’t a barefoot neophyte being mocked by the others because they don’t know he had a recent lucky encounter and can secretly afford the super rare item. Have none of you ever been to an auction before? Pfft.” She returned to her book, and I noted with worry that Esme was squinting over her shoulder and trying to read along between sips of very expensive booze.

  “Do I have three hundred, Mr Habberwell?”

  Captain Moustache shook his head, clenching his fists in frustration. Lady Artington raised her paddle and smiled like a viper at the thin man.

  “Three hundred bid. Three five? Lord Constantinius, thank you. Three ten?” His eyes roved the hall, and Dalgliesh, the little monster, raised his paddle. “Three ten. Three fifteen?”

  “Now the real bidding begins,” Kat said, turning a page.

  “Hang on, I didn’t finish the part about the vampiric psuedopods reaching up under her dress!” Esme objected. “Bob, you can shapeshift, right?”

  “Not like that!” Even the disturbing revelation of Esme’s literary tastes couldn’t distract from the one thing every dragon and nerd loves to see: numbers going up.

  And by god, up they went. When we passed four hundred million, I broke the arms of my fancy velvet-lined chair. They just snapped in my hands, and I dropped them to the sides as Miss Rosebaum left to find a servant to clean them up.

  Clasping my hands in front of myself to avoid further damage, I leaned forward, my purple eyes flicking from paddle to paddle like it was Wimbledon, but interesting.

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  “What will your associates do when they realise how much of their money you’re willing to spend, Dalgliesh?” called Lady Artington as she raised her paddle for the five hundred million mark.

  “It won’t matter. The only associate that matters is the one right behind me. Even your Sacred Band fear Big Kenny, lass. How will the Madson feel about you not winning this auction?” Dalgliesh sneered in response as he bid five-five.

  Half a billion. My fingers creaked. I had to let go and stretch my hands out as the cramps building up were becoming painful. But so, so worth it.

  “I’m afraid that neither of you has deep enough pockets. The Madson will not become an immortal emperor, nor will you get your extra life, Mr Dalgliesh,” Lord Constantinius rumbled, upping the bid yet again.

  At this particular moment, I didn’t care who they were or what their goals might be. If I had to kill Dalgliesh twice, well, arrange for him to be killed twice so as not to break our contract, that was fine. And if the emperor wanted to live forever, who was I to judge? He seemed like a powerless figurehead from what I’d gathered thus far; the real power lay with the nobles and the guilds.

  As for Constantinius… I had no idea about the man.

  “Miss Rosebaum, who does Constantinius represent?” I asked.

  “He has numerous business interests ranging from construction, agriculture, and consumables to fine art. He has controlling interests in both the Armaments and Enchanters Guilds, among others,” Rosebaum supplied helpfully.

  The door failed to creak as a servant came in with a dustpan and brush to tidy up the sawdust I’d made of antique chair arms. I barely registered the man’s presence. They’d gotten to five hundred and fifty million gold. This was going even better than I had dared to dream.

  “I’ve not had any run-ins with the Enchanters, but the Armaments Guild has sided with the Umbrati in the civil war,” I muttered absently.

  “They’re both powerful, and Lord Constantinius controls them both,” Rosebaum replied.

  “Let me get this straight. The three contestants here are a dude who’s probably against my interests, a tiny psycho who’s definitely against my interests, and the emperor whose sole claim to fame is that his dad was mental?”

  “Sounds about right, Bob. You guys really don’t know how auctions work at all,” Kat muttered, slapping Esme’s hand away from her page.

  “Mr Dalgliesh, I’m authorised to offer you a full pardon if you withdraw from the bidding,” Artington announced. “A clean slate for all your previous crimes, and as a sweetener, how about total control of the docks?”

  “As tempting as that is, the opportunity to skip the next ten years of puberty still somewhat outweighs it,” the gangster responded.

  “How about a sweetheart deal with the Armament’s Guild?” Constantinius announced. “You’ve been getting shafted on the arkendrite of dubious provenance. How about the full two million per ton?”

  Two million per… That little shit had been screwing me!

  “Tempting, Connie. Very tempting.” Dalgliesh raised his paddle again to bid six hundred million.

  “Not tempting enough. How about I call off the bounty on your head?” Constantinius replied. “Big Kenny can’t catch them all. It just takes one to get through, and you’re new life is over before it really began.” He upped the bid again.

  “I figured it was you, old man.” Dalgliesh counter bid.

  “None of you can match the Imperial treasury.” Lasy Artington raised her paddle.

  “Do I see six fifteen?” asked the auctioneer.

  Another rapid-fire round of bids pushed the price up to six hundred and eighty million.

  “Just give it a rest, the pair of ye. You know you can’t beat the underworld,” Dalgliesh slurred, waving his paddle and reaching for another glass of whisky.

  “That remains to be seen. I bid eight hundred million!” announced Constantinius. My chair disintegrated. I don’t know why. I was leaning on the railing of the booth, fingers digging into the ornate stonework as I fought down the urge to stick my head through the privacy screen and egg them on.

  “Eight fifty,” Artington replied coolly.

  “Nine.”

  “Nine ten!” Constantinius snapped, but he was sweating now, and his monocle had slipped to dangle against his chest.

  “Nine fifty!” Dalgliesh blurted. “Kenny, the next ones to come after me, make a proper example of them, yeah?”

  “Nine sixty,” Artington said, fanning her bosom with her paddle.

  “Nine sixty-five,” Dalgliesh muttered uncomfortably.

  “Nine sixty-six!” Artington replied immediately.

  The auctioneer looked to Constantinius, who shook his head roughly and rose to his feet. “Good luck with the bidding,” he snarled as he stalked out like he’d just landed on Mayfair.

  Before the door clicked shut behind him, all eyes had swung back to Dalgliesh.

  “Nine seventy,” he said carefully, waving his paddle drunkenly.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” I muttered under my breath. So close… I threw the handfuls of stone I’d scraped out of the balcony railing behind me and found a new place to cling to, ignoring the thuds as the fistfuls of compressed, formerly artistic rock embedded themselves in the door.

  “Nine seventy-five.”

  “Nine eighty.”

  I had never really understood the interest some people took in numbers increasing. Oh wow, my strength went from nine to ten, woohoo! Or my perception is nine million, ergo I can never be surprised, and the rest of the book is boring as fuck and I’ll just win every time for the next ten million words. But this was real. These numbers mattered.

  I was already fabulously wealthy by most Helstatians’ standards, but I was on the threshold, the edge, of becoming so insanely wealthy I’d never need to do a thing again if I didn’t want to. But… I’d still have to do stuff, right? I’d need to buy a new mountain, with a proper lair large enough to accommodate my new hoard, somewhere far, far away from any would-be thieves, but I could just disappear.

  This would be what I used to think of as “fuck you” money. But there was still the looming issue of my soul, my lack of standing in the eyes of the multiverse and the fucking hall monitors that apparently ran it. I couldn’t just retire to sleep on the shiniest pile of hugest gold ever.

  A thought struck me. If they could afford to shell out this much for a potion… they had to have more. This had to be something they could afford. With Constantinius being out of the race, that left Dalgliesh, who I already owed an acidic death for betraying me, and… the imperial faction.

  “Nine nine-one!” Dalgliesh bid.

  “Nine nine-two!”

  "Nine nine-three!”

  “Oh, for gods sake, someone just bid a billion and get this fucking over with!” I screamed as I stuck my head through the privacy screen.