Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
With a tiered pearl drop earring in one hand, Jimmy squinted in concentration. Water droplets rained from his other hand,
and he grinned. “Water again.”
“Pearl earrings: water conjury,” Mary repeated, dutifully writing it down.
As Jimmy tossed the earring into the pile of elemental conjury they’d identified thus far, Emmy stifled a yawn. They were
next door to the Bronze Door yet again, waiting for Jack and Oliver to arrive. Judging by the time, the two Society boys might
not make it out of whatever watering hole Oliver had chosen for the night, and this entire trip would be for naught.
Six days until the season ended, and three of their targets still roamed free. The odds were suffocating.
“They’d be more useful if we knew how much power she put in them,” Jimmy mused, “or how much they have left.”
“That’s the least of our concerns.” Emmy nodded toward the growing pile of jewelry with conjury they’d never before seen.
A bangle that made auras appear, revealing people’s emotions. A necklace that allowed Jimmy to move objects across the room
without touching them. Perhaps even more disconcerting, there were at least five pieces that were as frigid to the touch as
the others, yet they hadn’t been able to figure out what sort of conjury Grace had bridged with them.
Grace had been bridging conjury unbeknownst to the Society. Once she realized her arsenal had been stolen, she was going to
be livid.
Jimmy selected a silver ring next, pushing it up his pinkie, then giving it a little twist, like Mary had shown him earlier.
He disappeared.
“I had a feeling that one was me again.” With a sigh, Mary added silver ring: invisibility to their inventory. “She asked to bridge my conjury all the time.”
Jimmy appeared right in front of Emmy, startling her. But his eyes were locked on the jewelry box, his brow creased. “The
bottom—there’s a lift there.”
Emmy tried to look where he was looking. “I don’t see anything.”
“Let me just . . .” Grabbing the ornate box, Jimmy turned it upside down, sliding his fingers along the seam. He paused. “I
feel it.”
The bottom of the jewelry box sprang open.
Emmy could not reach the box fast enough. Jimmy was already pulling out its contents. Papers. Some were crisp with relatively
fresh ink, while others looked ancient.
Careful not to tear them, Emmy plucked the yellowed ones from the box. Three handwritten pages, all in whirling French. The
edges were cut. She could hardly breathe as she scanned them. Over and over again was the same word: relique. “She took these from the Fontaine grimoire.”
“That conniving sneak.” From the couch where he’d been listening for Jack and Oliver, courtesy of his conjury, Caleb’s eyes
flew open. “She might have tried to replicate Rose’s relic, but it’s impossible.”
“So you and Jack keep saying.” Emmy stared at the pages. Neither of them knew Grace like she did. “Jimmy, if Grace had gotten
a taste of unfathomable power, allowing her to use the conjury of anyone in her vicinity—do you think she’d give up on it?”
“Never,” Jimmy agreed. “We already know she’s willing to kill for it.”
And if she found out that Winnie Fairchild had Rose’s relic, she’d slit Emmy’s throat in her sleep—a more difficult feat, now that they had her enchanted jewelry collection.
Jimmy set the other papers on the floor. “Addresses, mostly in Lower Manhattan.”
Emmy peered at the list. The handwriting wasn’t Grace’s. “What is she up to?”
“Later,” Caleb whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. “Jack and Oliver just arrived.”
In silence, they hurried to their positions: Emmy found the mark she’d left on the wall and, with the relic in hand, transformed
a tiny hole in it, where it would be hidden by a colorful painting. Jimmy headed to the door, where he’d listen for trouble.
Caleb sat tall on the couch, rubbing his temples as he prepared to conjure once again. And Mary put the jewelry back into
its box, watching them all with a bewildered expression. She’d begged to come along tonight, eager to uncover whatever secrets
Grace’s jewelry held.
They were running out of time. With each passing day, the season drew closer to an end.
Swallowing her frustration, Emmy pressed her forehead against the wall. There was Jack and his perennial Nathaniel smile,
but by now, Emmy could read him like a book: He was agitated. And drunk. To his right was Oliver, studying his cards from
beneath the rim of his top hat. Emmy watched his sleeves, waiting for an extra card to appear. Ideally, one of the other players
at tonight’s table would be the one to catch Oliver.
But no one seemed to suspect anything as the Stratton heir won. Again.
A flurry of waitresses arrived with drinks, and Emmy healed the wall before leaning against it, her frustration simmering.
“I didn’t see him cheat.”
“And I couldn’t hear a damn thing over your stressful thoughts about time running out.” Caleb rubbed his temples. “This isn’t working.”
After so many nights trekking back and forth to the city, he was tired. They all were.
They could not do this much longer. Oliver had to fall tonight. “Tell Jack that he’s going to have to be the one to catch him. We can’t wait for one of these cads to wise
up.”
With a dramatic sigh, Caleb closed his eyes, wincing. “He says he needs to stay out of it, to maintain their friendship if
it doesn’t work.”
Now was not the time to hesitate. “Tell him to stop overthinking.”
Caleb once again squeezed his eyes shut. “He says that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
“Tell him—”
His gaze cut to her. “I’m not wasting the little conjury I have left playing messenger.”
A fair point, but Emmy was all out of patience. They’d underestimated Oliver. He was excellent at avoiding detection, keenly
attuned to the other players to ascertain whether they had the card he needed before he used his face-changing one.
“I hate to point out the obvious,” Caleb said in a low voice, “but we need a new plan.”
Jimmy was watching her. Mary, too, as if they could sense that she was ready to explode. As supportive as they were, they
didn’t need to succeed. Only Jack could truly understand, and he was stuck at Oliver’s side.
Emmy plucked one of the invisibility rings from the floor. “How does this work? I just twist it?” Back home, Grace hadn’t
had the skill to create triggers and limits for the things she conjured, but while Emmy was wasting away, Grace had turned
into quite the student.
“You’re going in there?” Mary paled. “What if it loses its strength and they see you?”
“Then they’ll see someone else.” Focusing on the relic against her sternum, Emmy’s modest gray dress morphed into the black aproned uniform of the waitresses.
Her hair, she lightened to red, like Mary’s, and her face, she conjured using features from two of the waitresses she’d seen in the card room. “Well?”
Jimmy grinned, but Caleb looked wary. “Do I even want to know your plan?”
Emmy hardly knew it herself. Before she could lose her nerve, she twisted the ring, checked her arms to make sure she was
actually invisible, and walked out of the flat.
From the outside, the casino blended into the other respectable town houses along West Thirty-Third Street, with no signs
in its windows or seedy patrons loitering on the stoop. But it had to have a back door. Turning into the alley, Emmy passed
a few men having a pissing contest against a brick wall—even uptown, Manhattan could not be tamed—before she found a rear
door guarded by two formidable men in navy uniforms. Cops.
She stood as close as she dared, waiting for someone to enter or exit so she could dart in, undetected. The minutes ticked
by, and just as Emmy was reconsidering, the door flew open as two waitresses passed through it.
Emmy slipped inside.
A cacophony of music and laughter greeted her, along with the noxious scent of cigar smoke. Gas lamps flickered along the
corridor, and Emmy tried to settle her racing heart as she searched for the stairwell. She found it, finally, and hurried
to the third floor.
The hall was as luxuriously decorated as any mansion in Avalon-on-Hudson, though the heady aroma of cigar smoke cheapened
it. The left side of the hall seemed quiet, so Emmy turned right, but the stairs had spun her around, and she hadn’t the faintest
idea which way to go.
Oliver’s haughty laugh beckoned from the end of the hall. With a steadying breath, Emmy followed it. As soon as she stood in the doorway, she nearly lost her nerve.
The room was far more crowded than she’d realized, the chairs so close to the walls, there was hardly enough space for anyone
to pass. Sucking in a breath, Emmy squeezed along the wall until she stood just over Oliver’s shoulder.
She’d need to be quick. If he pushed back from the table, he’d bump right into her.
“Have I told you,” Oliver mused as he examined his downturned card, a nine of clubs, “how exquisitely soft your cousin’s lips
are?”
Emmy nearly choked on her own spit.
“You might have mentioned it.” Jack glanced at his own cards, his face hidden beneath his hat.
“That’s no way to talk about another man’s relations,” the man to Oliver’s left muttered. He had a thick neck with an even
thicker beard, and judging by the way he eyed Oliver, he was not taken by the Stratton heir.
“She’s a distant relation.” Oliver set the cards down as he gazed about the table, scrutinizing the others. If only Grace
had bridged Caleb’s magic, so Emmy could know what Oliver was thinking—but if Grace could read minds, they’d all be in Grimsbane.
Or dead.
The men went around the table, tossing inordinate stacks of money as if it were meaningless, and Oliver glanced at his down
card again. Instead of that nine of clubs, he had a king of spades, giving him two pair with his upturned cards. Emmy had
to hand it to him; she hadn’t even seen him pull the charmed card from wherever he was hiding it.