Sebastian folded his arms. “Telegrams to London?”
“Come with me.” Hyde’s voice dropped to a more soothing register, his accent becoming less gravelly and more refined, completely at odds with the blood still smeared on his face. “Come to London, Sebastian.”
“And why would I?” Sebastian said flatly.
Hyde bent closer to his level as Rory huddled against the wall and stared. “Because your cousin is still there.”
Sebastian narrowed his eyes.
Hyde smiled, wolflike, his fangs fully visible. “The baron didn’t want you, did he? He wanted your cousin. Has it paid off, sacrificing yourself in her place? Has Zeppler helped your family like he promised or are you now a prisoner in his web like the rest of us?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sebastian said tightly.
“I know all Zeppler will ever do is find a way to ruin you, like he ruined Shelley. Or me. Or Gwen.”
Sebastian looked away.
“Ally with me instead,” Hyde said softly. “We’ll take the boy and the relic. A ship departs for London in two hours—we’ll be on it.”
Sebastian looked at Rory. “Giovacchini is more powerful than he looks. He practically exhales magic with every breath. How are we going to make him cooperate for a week?”
Hyde’s tongue swept out to lick a stray drop of Shelley’s blood off his lip. Rory choked back vomit.
“Leave transporting the boy to me,” said Hyde.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Getting anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard from New York would have been faster by train, but Arthur would have had to be certain where he was going, or he could end up blowing past Rory and wasting time trying to find his way back. The roads were hardly in straight lines, so Arthur had tied the compass to his steering wheel with his bow tie and done his best to follow it, pushing his Cadillac’s V-8 as fast as it would go.
But as the first hour passed with no wavering of the compass’s direction and no sign of Rory and the paranormals, with a churning in his gut, Arthur thought he might now know where he was going. The governor had shut down the ports around New York to search for the murderer. If Hyde wanted an Atlantic-crossing ocean liner to take Rory and a relic back to Germany, and he couldn’t leave from New York or New Jersey, he’d have to have found another port. And if Arthur had to place a bet, he’d be betting on the smaller but perfectly serviceable Port of Philadelphia.
At Trenton he was forced off the main auto routes to stay on the west side of the Delaware River. It was maddeningly slow going, but the compass needle hadn’t wavered, and Arthur was just going to pray that meant Rory wasn’t being moved.
Hyde had cuffed Rory to the radiator and then disappeared, leaving Rory alone with Sebastian. Rory drew his knees to his chest, making himself an uncomfortable ball next to the radiator as he watched Sebastian lean against the wall. He’d taken off his coat, and underneath he wore a vest and dress shirt, the shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the tattoo on his wrist.
“So is it Sebastian orSebastiano?” Rory said, pronouncing the name in Italian.
Sebastian glanced at him for a long moment, like he was deciding whether to answer.“Sebastián,”he finally said, emphasizing the final syllable.
Was that Spanish? He was probably Arthur’s age, and his posture was just as noticeably straight. “I thought Spain didn’t join the war?” Rory said, eyes narrowed. “Did you fight for Baron Zeppler, like Hyde?”
Sebastian shook his head and said, “American army. My father’s Spanish. I grew up in Puerto Rico.”
“But you got a cousin in London?”
“You’re familiar with her work.” When Rory furrowed his brow, Sebastian added, “Isabel paints.”
Paints? But—Rory’s eyes widened. The paranormal painting at Luther Mansfield’s home that had trapped his mind in its spinning dancers. “How d’you know about that?”
“We know almost everything that happened that night and on Coney Island. If you didn’t want anyone to find out, you needed to kill the guards instead of letting them run to tell the world what they saw.”
“I’m not much of a killer,” Rory said tightly.
“The world is probably lucky for that.” Sebastian turned, enough that he was facing Rory. “Because you’ve got quite a lot more magic than you let on.”
Rory set his jaw. “Lots of subordinate paranormals have too much magic.”
“They do. But there are subordinate paranormals, and then there’syou.” Sebastian raised his hand, and Rory’s skin started to prickle. “You don’t fall to my magic.”
