Her eyes glint in the firelight, yellow as a cat. “All in due time, Mr. Mansfield.”
“You’re supposed to tell me what it does,” Mansfield snaps. “That’s what your witch-sight’s for.”
Gwen’s gaze locks on him. “A bargain has two sides,” she says sharply. “And I will hold my end and tell you the relic’s magic when you produce your payment—and the names of your buyers.”
A hard jab with a cane sent Rory stumbling down the sidewalk. “Damn rummies,” said the man in the fedora. “Talking nonsense—”
Rory fumbled to catch himself as he crashed into a parked car. There was a long honk and an angry shout. “Get off my cab!”
Another, longer honk, more shouts, but Rory ignored it all. He had to keep walking, keep following the draw across the park, the wrong way.
The wrong way?
Because that’s the magic pulling you.
You don’t want the magic. You want Arthur.
There were several ear-splitting honks, a shrill whistle. “Someone grab that kid!”
Find Arthur.
But before Rory could get his bearings, the vision swept him again, another ocean wave with the riptide pulling him under.
“Maybe I want to change our deal,” Mansfield says darkly.
Gwen sighs, almost put-upon. “I would not advise it—”
The man in the double-breasted coat holds up the knife pointedly.
“—then again,” Gwen says calmly, her gaze on the man, the smallest of smiles on her lips, “who am I to tell you what to do?”
“You’re damn right you won’t.” Mansfield’s lip curls in a sneer. “I’ll pay you when I’m good and ready and you’ll watch your mouth around me. Your kind doesn’t have rights in America. No one would care if I told the amulet’s buyers about you and your magic. I bet they’d like to meet you.”
The man with the knife stares hard at Gwen and pointedly spins it by its jeweled hilt.
Gwen tilts her head. “Very well,” she says, and if the threats make her nervous, it doesn’t show. “The money can wait. Give me the names of the buyers.” She raises her hand, one finger extended, and runs it along the air like she’s tracing Mansfield’s outline. “Why prolong our business? I can see how much you dislike me.”
Mansfield makes a face like he’s sucked on a lemon, but he reaches into his breast pocket and holds up a small, folded piece of paper. “Four buyers. I’m not going to bother trying to say their German gibberish names.”
She takes the list and unfolds it. Her yellow eyes catch the firelight again and the corners of her lips curl up. She tucks the list into her pocket and leans closer to Mansfield. “The tide,” she whispers.
Manfield’s eyes widen, blue but like ice, not like the sky, not like Arthur’s—
And with the thought of Arthur, Rory wrenched himself out of the vision—
To find himself right in the path of an oncoming car.
Arthur hung up the phone with his brother, relieved. “Harry can take in Rory and Mrs. Brodigan tonight,” he said to Jade. “He’ll send a car to the Hyde Park station. Now I’ve got to get down to Hell’s Kitchen and—”
He paused as a clamor rose up from the street.
“What’s all that commotion?” Jade pushed up from the table.
Arthur was already crossing to the study window, Jade at his heels. On the street four stories below, cars were honking, people were shouting, and a police whistle had split the air. “It sounds like—Rory?”
Arthur reached uselessly for the window as on the sidewalk down below, Rory stumbled into an overdressed young fop with a gold-topped cane and a fedora. The man viciously jabbed Rory with the cane, sending him reeling into a cab, then Rory dodged the grip of a policeman only to stagger off the sidewalk like a drunk—
Right into the middle of Central Park West and an oncoming Model T.
