Ellis’s Adam’s apple bobbed with his swallow. “Everyone, on her,” he snarled, pointing at Jade. “She so much as twitches, you shoot.”
The gangster hurried over to Jade, leaving Arthur and Mrs. Brodigan somewhat alone. Arthur let his heavy head tilt in Mrs. Brodigan’s direction. “I beg your pardon for my language, Mrs. Brodigan, but what the hell?”
“Can you reach my hands?” she whispered urgently.
Arthur strained against his cuffs, trying to make it look like he was working out the painful kinks Gwen had left behind. He stretched his fingers out behind his back until they brushed Mrs. Brodigan’s. “Yes. Why?”
“Because I’m a harmless old bird,” she said, as something small and metal pressed against his palm, “so they didn’t search me.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Meaty fingers dug into the back of Rory’s neck as Gwen’s two gangsters dragged him across the boardwalk at a pace that had him tripping over his own feet. “Geez, where’s the fire?”
One of the mobsters snorted like a bull. “Not our problem you’re short.”
The wind was ice cold, the full moon bright white as they marched Rory along the wooden planks lit by iron lampposts, past the line of boarded-up trinket shops and ice-cream parlors to the boardwalk’s steps down onto the beach. Coarse sand slipped into the sides of his sneakers as Rory was hauled toward the ocean. In all his dreams of seeing the sea, it’d never gone like this.
Gwen was several paces ahead, the amulet’s box gripped in one hand.
“How’re you holding that lead like it’s nothing?” Rory demanded.
“I don’t give a toss about a stinging hand when I’m so close to regaining control of my magic.” She stopped at the edge of the black waves and turned to look over her shoulder. The wind blew her long curls away from her face, her eyes colorless in the moonlight. “Join me.”
One of the mobsters shoved Rory between the shoulders, sending him stumbling forward into the water’s edge. Rory cursed as the icy water came up over his sneakers, soaking his feet.
“Was that—Italian?” Gwen cocked her head. “Rory is an Irish name.”
Rory ignored that. “I wanna hear you say you’ll let Ace go.”
“Frankly I’d prefer to. He was a friend once and he’s never done me or Ellis wrong.” She held up the box under the moonlight. “When this is mine, he’s all yours.”
A man on a high cliff watches with cold eyes as the tidal wave sweeps forward, toward the walls of a castle perched on the coast—
Rory shoved away the memories of the amulet’s history and hugged himself tightly. “What’re you gonna do when it’s unlocked?”
“See Ellis’s face instead of his magic,” Gwen said, and Rory’s chest ached in sympathy for thirty entire seconds until she tilted her head and added, “And then use the sea to drown a baron.”
Rory stared at her. “Wait—wait, you don’t know what’ll happen if you mess with the sea—”
She grabbed his hand in her own, and that was all the warning he had before the knife sliced over his palm. He hissed and yanked his hand away, clenching his fist against the sting. Ellis and Gwen had Arthur, but all thosepeople.
“I’m not gonna help you drown New York,” he said, scrambling backward.
His back hit the barrel of a gun. “You’re gonna do whatever she wants,” said the henchman, as Gwen calmly drew the small silver blade over her own palm without flinching. “Her head’s screwed on wrong anyway. Doesn’t mean a word.”
“Are you stupid?” Rory barked. “Of course she means it. Haven’t you seen Ellis’s knife?”
But the other henchman grabbed Rory’s wrist and forced his hand out, toward Gwen. His blood was welling in the cut, between his clenched fingers, and she clapped her own bloody palm over his fist.
He sucked in a breath as their blood met.Magic. For a second, he was paralyzed, seeing only a halo of light around her, a flash of her aura.
Then her hand was gone, and so was her aura, as she seized the amulet in her bloody fist and plunged it into an oncoming wave.
The wave stopped.
Time seemed to slow as the wave didn’t return to the ocean but lingered at full press on the beach, frozen like a picture. Rory’s skin broke into goose bumps as the air grew thick and magic poured into the amulet.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered one of the mobsters.
