Jade picked up the chopsticks, by hand this time. “We went to Ellis Island this morning. Gwen arrived last night, her immigration papers arranged and paid for by Luther Mansfield. He’d even sent a car for her and her baggage.”
Jade dipped a dumpling into soy sauce, wielding the chopsticks with a new ease that spoke to just how often she’d been eating Chinese. “The paperwork names Gwen as an art dealer but as far as I know, she’s never bought or sold art. She declared three paintings and a sculpture, claiming she has to be in America to conduct the transactions.”
Jade shook her head. “The timing can’t be a coincidence. Mansfield has been trading in magical artifacts for money without a care for where the deadly magic ends up. And now he’s likely tangled up in whatever relic is on board that Swedish ship.”
Zhang pursed his lips. “What’s Gwen’s magic?”
Arthur bit into another fresh bun. “Witch-sight.”
“Aura-sight. Stop calling it that—we’re not witches,” said Jade, elbowing him. “She sees auras in the mundane and magic in paranormals.”
Zhang raised an eyebrow. “Like the inquisitor from the story of the relics,” he said. “So if she saw a relic out of its lead prison, she’d see what kind of magic is locked inside. Useful, sure, but I still don’t see why you’re watching for her.”
Arthur and Jade exchanged a look. “She was changed by a relic,” Jade started. “Her magic. Her morals. She can do more thanseeauras now, and the things she candoto an aura put even the Inquisition’s interrogation techniques to shame.”
“My advice is to stay on her good side,” Arthur said. “Barring that, don’t get close enough for her to touch.”
Zhang furrowed his brow. “You said you were friends?”
“It was the three of us in Paris,” said Arthur. “Along with two other paranormals, Ellis and Philippe, another American and a Frenchman, soldiers who fought with me.”
“We called Philippele pyromane,” Jade said, in a flawless French that Arthur had never got the hang of, despite his time in Paris. “The pyromaniac, a firestarter.”
“Ellis was a mate from my platoon who could turn himself invisible,” said Arthur. “We were all friends, Ellis and Gwen were madly in love, and Paris was wonderful, until—” His throat tightened. “Until Baron Zeppler found us.”
Zhang muttered what sounded like a curse in Chinese, then said, in passable German, “Der Zauberer.”
The Magician. “You’ve heard of him,” said Arthur.
“More thanheard.” Zhang sat back in his chair with a huff. “He stole from us.”
Arthur let out a low whistle. If someone had stolen from the Zhangs, he was putting his money on magic. “Tell me it wasn’t a relic.”
“Of course it was,” said Zhang. “A brooch we found in Puerto Rico. I had taken it to Paris to show my father’s colleague.” He ran a hand over his face. “The night I gave Hoca Mustafa the brooch, it was stolen, and he was murdered in his rooms. Zeppler didn’t even bother to cover it up.”
Jade made a noise of deep sympathy. “Baron Zeppler is a telepath,” she said. “His spies are every unknowing mind in Europe. You couldn’t have been prepared.”
He gave her a pained smile. “I went after the baron,” he admitted. “But the war broke out, and I couldn’t get into Germany, and it seemed like the world’s more immediate need was finding wounded on the battlefield.”
“It was,” Arthur said, with feeling.
“Zeppler had another relic,” said Jade. “A blade colloquially known as the Venom Dagger. He was desperate to unlock its powers and believed the secret lay in paranormal blood. None of us even knew relics existed until he brought his to Paris.”
“Gwen,” Zhang said, in understanding.
“Yes.” Jade’s expression was sober. “Her subordinate magic drew her right to the relic. Right to the baron.”
“I was in America, at my sister Alice’s wedding. Jade was in the South of France with Stella. But Ellis and Philippe went after Gwen.” Arthur swallowed hard. “By the time Jade and I caught up, Baron Zeppler had destroyed them.”
“The relic had corrupted their magic.” Jade bit her lip. “Ellis was dead at Philippe’s hand, incinerated by wild magic, nothing left but soldier’s tags in the ash. Philippe died the same day, in a stolen boat that caught fire and sank in the Port of Le Havre. And Gwen’s powers had consumed her. She couldn’t see our faces anymore; only Ace’s aura, only my magic.”
Zhang’s eyes widened. “How did she survive?” he said, with feeling. “I’ll stay on the astral plane for a day, but I damn sure don’t want to live there.”
Jade had tried to explain magic to Arthur like electricity: a brief touch prickled; an unending current was intolerable. “She barely spared a thought for her own pain,” Arthur said. “She was furious over Philippe’s death, inconsolable over the loss of Ellis, and dead set on revenge against the baron. She wanted to charge straight back into Germany but we convinced her to come with us to Switzerland instead, to chase a rumor about relics, to let us search for a way to restore her magic’s balance.”
“But the rumor was a false hope,” said Jade. “And one night in Geneva, Gwen just—disappeared. We woke to find her room empty and her things gone, no trail to follow. I don’t know if her magic ever recovered. And I don’t know why she’s come to New York or if she would listen to us now.”
Arthur had never stopped regretting how they’d failed Gwen. Now another relic was on its way and Gwen had returned, with Pavel’s and Rory’s subordinate magic in the mix—
