"Independent work?" he replied with a snort "Bounty hunter... great... fine, you wanna help where an entire contingent of guards can't?  Be my guest."<br/><br/>Standing, he pulled out a small medallion from his pocket, and then tossed it to the wolf-woman.  It's made of platinum inlaid with gold, emeralds, and rubies in an intricate arcane pattern.  It was quite old too, by the looks of it, centuries at least...<br/><br/>"<em>That</em>was what was stolen." he said, then when the confusion was bound to set in... "<em>That</em>is a fake.  All of the materials, aged properly, perfect physical design, indistinguishable... but the magic is<em>off</em>.  Someone went to a big<em>fucking</em>effort to replicate my great grandfather's medallion and swapped it, so much so that I didn't notice until I had to work on something for the matriarch herself.  The aura was normal, but it was an illusion spell bound to the medallion permanently, once I broke it it was nothing but a transmutation to emulate the medallion.  Wasn't that long ago either, no more than a week ago when I last observed it's magical auras..."<br/><br/>A growl, and he turned and a<em>fireball</em>could be seen soaring down a long hallway to splash open at the end.  Apparently he was<em>quite</em>irritable...<br/><br/>"Grrr... is this the sort of thing this<em>criminal</em>you're after would do?"