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“He’s beautiful,” Carly says.
I pick it up and inspect it, turning it around and around, admiring how he captured the bold and grippy claws. The ornate detail of the wings.
“He got somebody to make our griffin friend.”
“He made it himself,” I say. “He got up there somehow and got some photos, and he carved it. This is all Henry—this vision. The passion of it. The way he knew.”
“You’re quite the expert.”
Yeah, I think sadly.
“There’s a card.” She slides a tiny blue envelope across the table.
I take it and open it.
I should’ve trusted you. Let me fight for us.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Vicky
I put on my favorite sweater—dark purple, so dark it’s almost black, with black obsidian buttons down the front, and a black pencil skirt and a few white Smuckers hairs, unfortunately. I pick them off one by one in the back of the cab to Locke Worldwide HQ with Smuckers in his pleather purse. I need to see Henry. Partly it’s to thank him for Brave Protector Friend. The note.
Mostly it’s to see him. I’ve listened to his voice mails. Read his texts. In different ways they echo the small note in the griffin box.
The cabbie pulls up. I make my way through the grand lobby and up to the executive floor. It’s unusually quiet. Henry isn’t in his office. I head over to the admin area and find April.
She stands. “Hey!” She comes over and scratches Smuckers’s little head. “We didn’t expect you guys.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Queens,” she says in a tone, like, where else would they be? “The Ten?”
“Is something going on?”
“The emergency meeting?” Her face goes pale. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
“They carried on as if you knew. I assumed you didn’t want to come—it’s more detail than you usually get into. It’s an emergency meeting.”
I straighten up, unsure what to think. “Well, let’s get a car.”
Five minutes later, April and Smuckers and I are riding in the back of a speeding limo.
April has Smuckers in her lap. “It came up fast,” April says. “The project is in jeopardy. It’s bad.”
“What happened?”
“Dartford & Sons. They’re blowhards. Total asshole developers.”
“So I’ve heard. What’d they do?”
She’s absentmindedly playing tug with Smuckers. “Here’s the thing with a development like the Ten—if Locke tells the neighbors about their plans before they’ve bought up all the properties, word will leak and a competitor will buy one key lot and hold it hostage. Dartford & Sons is notorious for that.”
“So Dartford bought a lot in the middle of the Ten?”
“No—we just closed on the last property, so the Dartford brothers can’t wreck it that way. Instead, they poisoned the neighbors against it. Acted like Locke has been doing things in secret. They’ll get the councilperson to veto the project, make the land worthless, then try and get a racetrack through.”
