Episode 4: Age Before Beauty
This one starts in Milan, at a fashion show. It’s the usual stuff: glamour, beautiful women, and clothes nobody would ever wear in day-to-day life. As one of the models is coming down the catwalk, an old lady grabs her and says something in Russian. She keeps repeating the Russian words as she’s dragged away by security and says them one more time before dying. We jump to Cardiff, Wales, where Pete is getting his ass kicked, as usual. Myka stops Pete’s attacker from fleeing and engages him in a sword duel.
She does pretty well, but ends up getting knocked down. Pete tosses her a stone that looks like a big egg and when her attacker tries to slice and dice her, the sword passes through the stone—and Myka—harmlessly. Pete pounds the guy with a shield and they call Artie to tell him they’ve recovered Excalibur. Apparently, it was hanging as a wall decoration in this castle for centuries. Artie says the stone that saved Myka (by causing Excalibur to go out of phase) is how King Arthur originally retrieved it. Artie tells them to head to Milan right away.
In Milan, Pete and Myka check out the dead old lady from the fashion show. The autopsy found that she had silicone breast implants (Pete: “I’ve never seen them like this before … you know, when they weren’t on active duty.”) The detective in charge tells them about the woman’s Russian babbling, 
which Myka translates as “They stole me.” Pete checks the serial numbers in an implant database and the fake boobs were implanted in a nineteen-year old Russian model named Anya Verdikov. Pete and Myka realize the old woman probably is Anya, aged in some paranormal fashion. Back at the Warehouse, they find out a whole bunch of models have gone missing, with mysterious old ladies turning up dead later. Nobody made the connection before, but now that Claudia knew what to look for, she found plenty. Artie says he doesn’t know any artifact that could cause rapid aging like that, but if someone’s targeting models, New York is the place to be, since it’s Fashion Week.
After Myka and Pete leave, Claudia gets several texts from Todd, the hardware store dude she met last episode. He wants to have coffee, but she’s not into it. Artie urges her to text Todd back and tries to give Claudia some fatherly advice, but he kinda sucks at it. At Anya’s agency in New York, Pete’s in his glory, surrounded by models. Myka tells him to try not to be
twelve years old (Pete: “No try … only do, or do not.”; Myka: “Then do.”; Pete: “I’ll try.”) They run into a supermodel named Isabella and Pete is immediately twelve years old. Isabella’s gracious, but says she has to leave because she’s coming down with something. They talk to the head of the agency, Sutton Harris about Anya. Sutton’s pretty broken up about her death and mentions Anya had the flu last time she saw her. Pete figures whatever Anya had might be affecting Isabella, so he chases her down, but it’s too late; she ages right in front of his eyes and keels over.
The agency covers things up, saying it was just some old woman who wandered in, but Sutton is really freaked out about what’s happening to her clients. Artie tells Pete to get a blood sample from Isabella and Myka says 
she checked all Isabella’s clothes and stuff and couldn’t find anything artifact related. They speculate on who could be doing this, but there are hundreds of people involved in the fashion show, so the list of suspects is pretty long. Pete gets an idea—one that he knows Myka will hate—and tells Sutton about it. The way he’s looking at Myka, it’s easy to guess his idea … yup, he wants her to go undercover as a model. One quick change later, Myka struts down the stairs in a really hot dress and shoes, and all Pete can say is, “Holy crap!”
Myka’s reluctant, saying she can’t be a model, and it does seem like the odds are against her. The designer (Damian) calls her fat, another model (Ramana) wishes someone would kill her, and a creepy photographer
(Gunther) acts … well, creepy. As Pete says, “It’s like a game of gay Clue.” In spite of all that, Myka actually seems to be getting into the whole model thing—she certainly enjoys ordering Pete around. At the Warehouse, Claudia’s analyzing Isabella’s blood sample (Artie has a “thing” about blood) when she gets a call from Todd. Seems she did text him and now he wants to have coffee. Artie tells her to go ahead, and advises her to be herself.
In New York, Myka meets another photographer (well, she accidentally punches him, but whatever) named Perry, who tells her she has a good look. Pete lets Myka know that Ramana and Anya had some kind of feud going; he asks her to distract Ramana while he goes through her dressing room. On 
Claudia’s “date”, she babbles on about movies, can’t tell Todd anything about her past (or present, for that matter), and spills chili on him and runs off in embarrassment. So, not a great start. In New York, Myka tries to make nice with Ramana, but she’s a stereotypical model, snotty and condescending. Ramana tells Myka that a good model has to bare her soul on the runway and project it everyone watching. While Ramana is philosophizing, Pete slips into her dressing room and goes through her stuff. While he’s there, Ramana’s assistant, Jenny, comes in and leaves a weird-looking brass Buddha statuette on the table.
Naturally, Pete assumes the statuette is the artifact, but when they confront Jenny, she admits to giving some of the models diet pills that aren’t legal in the U.S. Yet. The Buddha’s head comes off and Jenny’s pills are hidden
inside. Myka tells Jenny to go home before they call the DEA on her. So, that rules Jenny out as a suspect, but they still have no idea who’s aging the models, or how. Speaking of which, we see another old woman arriving at someone’s photo studio. We can’t see who she’s talking to, but she tells him she’s getting tired of waiting and asks if he’s found the right one yet. He hands her a photo of Myka and the old woman says she’s perfect.
At the Warehouse, Claudia returns from her terrible date and Artie tells her he found silver nitrate in Isabella’s blood. Claudia’s barely listening and gives him shit for his “be yourself” advice. At the fashion show, Myka’s having a mini freak-out about being on the runway, so when Pete says he 
doesn’t want her to go on, she agrees right away. She says being a model isn’t her thing, since she’s not the “pretty one”, her sister is. I know it’s hard to get past childhood roles and everything, but I’m kinda tired of the trope where hot women don’t think they’re hot; if Myka honestly doesn’t think she’s attractive, then she’s not nearly as observant as she’s supposed to be. Pete gives her a pep talk, saying she’s so hot he wasn’t sure he’d be able to work with her when they first met, because he figured he’d be checking her out constantly. But after getting to know her, he found out she’s even more beautiful on the inside. That makes Myka feel better and she heads for the catwalk … which Pete remembers too late is the opposite of what he wanted.
Myka struts down the catwalk and Ramana complains that Damian gave her the killer dress. (She does look pretty damn good in it.) Pete figures the dress is the artifact and leans on Damian. He confesses he switched dresses
at the last minute, but for perfectly banal reasons; Ramana’s been an asshole to him lately and he wanted to twist the knife a bit. On the catwalk, Myka sees Perry, the photographer she met earlier snapping pictures of her, and notices the old woman we saw in the studio staring at her. Myka tells Pete about the old lady (who was wearing huge ruby earrings) and they go to look for her, but she’s gone. The photographer Gunther is hanging around, looking ominous.
In the photo studio, the old woman has her picture taken and transfers ten million dollars into a Swiss bank account. The guy who took her picture 
(whose face we still can’t see, but I have a pretty good idea who it is) goes into a darkroom to develop the photo he just took. When he puts it in the fixer with a photo of Myka, the old woman’s image gets younger, while the image of Myka ages. At the fashion show, Myka keels over, aging instantly in Pete’s arms as the woman at the studio becomes young. When Claudia and Artie show up at the hospital in New York, they’re shocked by Myka’s appearance. Artie is so freaked he can’t even go in the room. Pete gives him a sample of Myka’s blood and says they probably don’t have much time.
Artie finds silver nitrate in Myka’s blood, just like in Isabella’s. Pete points out that silver nitrate is used to make photo film and Artie remembers hearing about a camera once owned by Dada artist Man Ray that had artifact properties. They figure one of the photographers must have the camera, so Claudia hacks the security footage and they see Perry taking Myka’s photo
(with a very old-fashioned camera) and leaving right away. When they get to Perry’s studio, he’s packing to leave. Pete roughs him up a bit and Artie finds Man Ray’s camera and the photos of the woman with the ruby earrings (now young) and the aged Myka. Perry admits if you double expose photos in the camera the change is almost instantaneous, but he figured out away to delay it with the processing chemicals. While Artie’s going through the chemicals, Perry tosses his lighter into a tray of developer and takes off.
Everyone emerges from the fire okay, but they’re pissed off that Perry got away. At the hospital, Claudia checks Perry’s bank accounts and mentions 
that he’s been sending flowers to someone a lot lately. Myka remembers Ramana getting flowers and tossing them in the garbage and Pete says he’ll get Perry to tell him where the woman is who stole Myka’s youth. Claudia wonders what they should do if they can’t find her … is it ethical to take someone else’s youth to replace Myka’s, maybe someone bad? Artie remembers Perry referring to Man Ray as Manny and wonders if that’s significant.
At the fashion show, Perry tries to get Ramana to leave with him, saying he never used the camera for financial gain until he met her. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about and doesn’t care how much money he has now, she’s still not into him. He gets rough and Pete shows up and jumps him.
They fight and Perry gets hold of Pete’s Tesla gun, but before he can zap Pete, Artie shows up and takes Perry’s photo with the camera. Turns out Perry knew Man Ray personally … that’s how he got the camera. He’s been using it to keep himself young all these years (he’s actually 98), but Artie has double exposed the photo he just took with Myka’s and Perry starts aging rapidly. Artie doesn’t feel too guilty, saying Perry has been young long enough.
Pete and Artie rush back to the hospital and find Myka looking like her usual young, hot self. She thanks them and tries to talk to Pete about what he said 
before the fashion show, but he’d prefer to pretend that never happened. Later, Artie and Claudia are at the diner in Univille and he apologizes for his bad advice about Todd. He says she deserves someone better as a father figure, but she says he’s doing okay. Todd shows up (obviously orchestrated by Artie, though he tries to pretend it’s a coincidence) and he and Claudia seem cool, so Artie takes off. It’s nice Claudia’s met someone, but I can’t really see it going anywhere, since she has to hide her current activities from him.