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The train was crowded, with every seat filled and people crammed in like sardines. Even so, the train had barely started moving before Granny had a seat. Apparently, the young man who’d been sitting there discovered that there were more uncomfortable things than standing on the subway. I wasn’t sure if magic was involved or if she’d just glared at him until his skin crawled.
I took the sheaf of transcribed spells out of my purse and handed them to Granny. “Here, you can make use of the time to read up on what you might face,” I suggested. She put on her reading glasses and buried her face in the pages.
Meanwhile, I tried to remain aware of my surroundings. In that crowd, it was nearly impossible to tell if we were being followed. We’d caught our mole, but the bad guys were still out there. Most of the people in the car were wearing conservative black outfits, and the rest were wearing less-conservative black. For all I knew, everyone on the train was either a magical puritan or a magical enforcer from the Council. I leaned so that I could speak directly into Owen’s ear. “Are you feeling any magic?”
“There’s something nearby,” he said vaguely. “More than on your usual subway trip, especially now that the magical Spellworks ads are gone.”
“If it’s someone following us, illusions and veiling won’t work. We should notice.”
“Do you recognize anyone?”
I glanced around again. “It’s hard to say. There are some people who look kind of familiar, but is that because they’ve popped up everywhere we’ve gone today or because we work in the same part of town and see them frequently?”
“Our priority is getting to the brooch. We don’t have time to take evasive measures like changing trains just to smoke out a tail.”
“What if he’s not just following, but trying to stop us from getting there?”
“We can sic Granny on him.”
I couldn’t help but grin at the mental image, even though I felt stressed and paranoid. Granny chortling to herself as she read the spells made it even funnier. “But that’s just mean,” I said, which made Owen smile, too.
By the time we got to the station nearest the museum, I was rethinking my position on magic carpets. We’d have been there a long time ago if we’d flown—that is, if we’d arrived alive and hadn’t ended up as a damp spot on Fifth Avenue that disrupted rush-hour traffic after another gargoyle attack.
Sam met us on the sidewalk outside the station. “I got a full briefing from the boss, and he sent me to make sure you get there okay. I got nothin’ against the Middle Ages, seein’ as how that was when I was made, but lemme tell ya, it’s nothin’ to get nostalgic for, magic or not. Anyone who wants to bring back those times didn’t actually live in ’em. And anyone who wants to turn the Eye loose on the world to make the boss look bad is clearly cuckoo.”
“They’ll want to keep us away from the museum, at any cost,” Owen said.
“Don’t worry, kiddo. I’ll be with you.”
That made me feel a little better, but fanatics willing to kill for their beliefs wouldn’t be easy to stop. What would they do to keep us out of the museum?
Owen’s phone rang, and after he answered it, he put it on speaker and held it out so we could all hear. “We’re in the museum, and it’s closed,” Rod reported. “The event staff are coming in. They’re setting up in the indoor courtyard of the American wing. So far, it’s mostly the heavy lifting stuff—setting up tables and chairs and the like.”
“Any sign of Mimi?” I asked. “She’d usually be micromanaging.”
“She’s here, but I haven’t been able to get close enough to tell if she has the brooch. She’s always surrounded by flunkies. She does seem to be on a power trip, though. She’s made them move each of the tables about a dozen times, usually by no more than an inch each time, and it looks to me like they end up right where they were to begin with.”
“That’s not the Eye,” I said. “That’s normal Mimi. Has she yelled while doing it?”
“No. She’s actually been pretty apologetic about it.”
“Then that’s nicer than normal Mimi.” I looked up at Owen. “Is it possible that this thing has an opposite effect on someone who’s already evil and power hungry and turns them nice and meek?”
“We can only hope,” Owen said. Into the phone he added, “We’re almost there. Be careful.” As he put his phone back in his pocket, he glanced at Granny, and then stepped out to the curb to hail a cab. “We’ll be running around enough tonight. We may as well stay fresh,” he explained.
“And it’ll be harder to tail you in a cab,” Sam said approvingly.
Owen wasn’t quite as efficient in getting a cab without magic as he’d been with it, but one stopped soon enough, and we piled into the backseat. A glance through the rear window showed Sam following us by air but no other followers. The ride was short, and Owen tipped the driver extra to make up for the low fare.
As we got out in front of the museum, I saw that a crew was setting up a red carpet and platforms for photographers on the main entrance stairs. Meanwhile, groups of people dressed in black skirts or pants and white shirts converged on the ground-floor entrance, where a man stood at the door, checking names and IDs against a list on a clipboard.
“Let’s find another way in,” I said.
“Give me a second, sweetheart,” Sam said. “I’ll see what I can find. There aren’t too many buildings that a good gargoyle can’t find a way into.”
“Yeah, but remember that we can’t fly.”
“I’ll find a door I can open for you.”
