Jade came all the way into the box, the curtain falling into place behind her. Arthur hurriedly got to his feet, offering her the seat he just vacated.
There was still a suspicious set to the seller’s mouth as he eyed Jade. “I’ve made Lieutenant Kenzie’s acquaintance. And who are you?”
“Shelley Laurent.” Jade gracefully took Arthur’s seat. She glanced casually down at the show below, then back to the seller. “Arthur here plays my cover. It’s my magic in his aura—please forgive us the deception.”
“And what is your magic?” the seller asked.
Arthur studied the seller from under his own top hat. Not aura-sight, then, if he couldn’t see what Jade’s magic was.
“Dream-reading.” Jade said it so easily Arthur would have believed her. “What’s yours?”
The seller’s expression turned uglier, unsettling and cruel. “It doesn’t work right anymore.” His gaze cut to Arthur, and for a moment, there was something so disturbingly predatory about his expression that Arthur’s skin broke out in chills. “I don’t like talking about it.”
Christ. The sooner they got this over with, the better.
The seller looked back at Jade with an air of being done with Arthur completely. “I much prefer to deal with paranormals directly. You’ll forgive my anger, won’t you? One can never be too careful.”
No, one can’t, and certainly not if you’re selling stolen artifacts. Arthur leaned back against the wall of the private box. Standing, he was now eye level with the two henchmen, and they were making no secret that they were watching him and Jade closely.
Jade crossed her legs, and if the seller found her man’s tuxedo odd, he didn’t remark on it. “Did you bring the siphon with you?” She gestured around the empty box. “There’s nothing in here but us.”
Something in the balcony’s atmosphere shifted, a new tension filling the air. Anger flashed in the seller’s eyes, but not at Jade, or at Arthur. “My plans were changed,” the seller said, lip curling again.
“I see.” Jade sat back in the seat, eyes on the seller. “Changed by what?”
“Not what,” said the seller. “Who.”
The taxi pulled up in front of a hotel as ritzy as the best hotels in New York, with at least four doormen and bellhops holding doors and getting bags for exquisitely dressed women and well-suited men.
And Rory was still dressed like a sad clown.
“Oh boy,” he muttered.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” Ellis ordered, as one of the doormen came forward and opened their taxi door.
In the hotel lobby, Rory refused to meet anyone’s eyes, keeping his on Gwen and Ellis as he followed them past blocky, artsy-looking couches and sculptures beneath a gilded ceiling. Gwen led the way across the marble floor straight to the elevator bank. Her pupils dilated as she glanced at all four elevators, looking up past their doors to the mechanical sounds whirring through the floors above.
A moment later, she walked decisively into the farthest elevator, which Rory was grateful to see was modern enough not to have an operator. She scanned the button panel.
“There.” She pointed to the top one. “That’s the magic I’m seeing. It’s had a trap rigged so that pushing the button will freeze the elevator.”
Rory winced.
She pushed the button just below the top. “We’ll get off one level down and find another way up.”
They got off on the ninth floor, into a long hall with red-and-gold carpet. Like the lobby, the ceiling was gilded, and intricate crown molding lined the length of the hall.
They walked past endless doors, making two turns before they found a much plainer hallway leading off the main one. At the end of that hall was a single, much larger elevator, big enough for a housekeeping cart, and next to that was a plain door.
“Staff staircase,” said Ellis. “Let’s go.”
One flight up the stairs was a tiny landing and another door that led to an even fancier hallway. Rory peeked around the corner. This time, he could see only one door, directly across from an elevator.
They approached on quiet feet, and just in front of the door, Gwen stopped. “More magic,” she said, examining the knob. “Ellis, darling, you can cut through this dead bolt.”
Rory furrowed his brow as Ellis withdrew the Venom Dagger.
“Enchanted blade.” Ellis carefully slipped the blade between the door and the frame. “It doesn’t just paralyze, it cuts through just about anything.”
