“Not necessarily,” Sebastian said slowly. “The invisibility could be his magic, but there are potions and totems that can cause that effect as well. I’m starting to think his magic is something else.”
“Why?”
“Do you remember how Mateo was, in Yorkshire and Paris, lost to visions of the future? Or how Isabel painted her home in Spain to keep her mind from getting lost in colors?”
Wesley’s eyebrows went up. “You think he has some kind of subordinate magic? And that’s what’s affecting his mind?”
“It’s possible.”
“Mad magic men, why not,” Wesley muttered. “So he murders Sir Ellery and steals the brooch. Then what?”
“He ran,” said Sebastian, “and my magic went wild.”
“Yes, it did,” Wesley said bluntly. “I could barely think.”
“I heard you, though,” Sebastian said, eyes closed as he tried to bring the memory up. “It was like—like there was a stampede in my head, loud as thunder. Magic everywhere. Then I heard you, and that let me call the horses back.”
Sebastian kept his eyes closed, trying to remember what he’d felt. “Alasdair was gone. I think he knew my magic would go haywire and didn’t want to be affected.” He suddenly opened his eyes. “But therewaslead. I felt it when my magic was loose, like a boulder at the edge of the water. Something big.”
“Lead in the alley?”
“No, a little farther,” Sebastian said. “I think we need to search the area.”
Chapter Nineteen
They walked back down the sidewalk, which had few people at that time of the morning. As they passed back by the alley, however, there was no evidence to be seen of the night before: no police officers, no blood stains on the bricks.
“No police,” Wesley observed, “despite there being a murdered baronet right in that alley. But then, it probably wouldn’t have taken more than a phone call for Alasdair to have a body outside his speakeasy cleaned up. In fact, the bouncers may have been expecting it.”
They ducked back into the cigar shop and newsstand, where they could survey the shop from across the street. The hat shop had a largeClosedsign on its door, although Sebastian could see someone moving around inside, tidying and setting up.
He frowned. “How are we going to do this? Normally I’d just do a sweep with my magic, but—”
“But you’re not allowed to use your magic right now,” said Wesley. “You will answer to me personally if you so much as try.”
“But how do we search without magic?”
“With our eyes,” Wesley said dryly. “And our brains.”
Sebastian scrunched his nose.
“I’m choosing to interpret that face to mean that you can’t wait to show me how humbled you are now that you’ve realized magic isn’t everything.”
Sebastian sighed. “It was a lot of lead. We’re looking for something big.”
“What, like the paint on the shop’s walls?”
Sebastian shook his head. “That would have felt like—well, a wall. This felt like a boulder in the river of magic.”
“Large and leaden.” Wesley pulled out his cigarette pack, then stuffed it back in his pocket without taking a cigarette out. “A safe, perhaps? That seems like something Alasdair might have in the back of his hat shop or speakeasy.”
“And it would be a convenient place to hide anything magic,” Sebastian said.
They exchanged a glance. “I say we search.” Wesley’s face was set. “As I said last night, I’m tired of being jerked around. Alasdair decided to pick this fight; I don’t intend to run away.”
“I didn’t plan to show up at the fight unarmed,” Sebastian muttered.
“We’ll just have to get creative,” Wesley said, eying the shop across the street. “Come on. I have an idea.”
