“I wouldn’t know,” said Nick.
“Let’s go over some things,” Mae suggested, striding over to Jamie. She did not touch the new hand, but she kept stealing glances at it, looking away quickly every time she did so, as if she feared it could not bear the weight of her gaze. “So. A team of magicians was sent after you and Nick.”
“They didn’t get us,” said Sin. “So they’ll either try again, or they’ll go for the obvious next step. Another attack on the Market.”
“So we don’t let them make the next move,” Mae said. “This calls for a little pre-emptive self-defense. We go after them instead.” She pulled roughly at a handful of pink hair, a gesture Sin was pretty certain that Mae was unaware of and also pretty certain she had picked up from Nick. “Of course, our attack plan would look a whole lot better if we had any idea where the hell they are.”
“They abandoned the
He got the same look saying Gerald’s name as he did whenever he was caught by the sight of his own missing hand and sat looking at the space where it had been for a few minutes.
He looked down at his new hand now and smiled a rueful, crooked smile.
“You can check off every property on that list,” Mae said gloomily. “Isabella just came back from the bolthole by the Tower.”
Sin gave her an inquiring look. Mae hadn’t said she was sending scouts out to Celeste Drake’s properties.
Mae met her eyes with a level gaze, glanced at Nick, then leaned forward, frowning and suddenly intent, as if Nick was a mathematical equation she was bent on solving.
“What?” Nick said at last. “Do I have something on my face besides good-looking?”
“What if we’re thinking about this the wrong way?” Mae asked. “Gerald didn’t just inherit a leadership from Celeste. He inherited the Obsidian Circle from Black Arthur first.”
“Did Black Arthur have any property in London?” Sin asked doubtfully.
Mae was a tourist, so perhaps she didn’t understand that it would be very unusual for a magician to live anywhere near another Circle’s territory.
“Yes, we know he did,” Mae said, giving her that cool look again. “He has a house in Knightsbridge.”
“I found out I was a demon there,” Nick remarked flatly.
He offered nothing else. Sin hesitated, then beckoned to Chiara. Chiara slid a wary look at Jamie’s shimmering-magic eyes, but she approached.
“Pass the word to the pipers and the necromancers that we have another location to stake out.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Chiara murmured, and left.
It was Sin’s turn to meet Mae’s eyes with a level stare.
Jamie threw down his pencil. The noise made Sin turn to him, and when she did she saw determination on his face.
“I’d like to talk to you and my sister,” Jamie said. “Alone.”
Sin looked at Mae, who looked as puzzled as she was, and then nodded slowly.
“Before we go,” Jamie said, and lifted the new, magical hand to the light. Sunlight wrapped his fingers like five golden rings.
“It looks almost real,” he said, a little wistful. “But it’s not. Come on, Nick.”
Nick drew in a deep breath, and in that moment, in the space between a demon’s breaths, they all saw the hand dissolve, becoming transparent first so the light shone through it and it seemed as if the magic was becoming light itself.
Then the magic was gone.
Jamie nodded, drew his wounded arm against his chest, and turned away.
They left Nick and Seb, with Nick looking bored and Seb looking as if he was nursing a wistful daydream about punching Nick in the face, and went to Ivy’s wagon.
The new wagon looked forlorn. So many of Ivy’s books and maps had been lost with her sister, but there were maps of London out on the table and notes in Ivy’s large handwriting.
She wouldn’t disturb them. Sin had seen Ivy having a fight with Matthias, who had pestered Ivy by crankily demanding why she did not know sign language until she was driven to scratch out on her slate in capital letters: I LIKE THINGS TO BE WRITTEN DOWN.
So they had the wagon to themselves and the curtains drawn down, creating a dim wooden cavern for Sin, Mae, and Jamie to meet alone.
Sin was sitting in lotus position on one side of the table. Mae sat opposite her, elbows on the table among the maps.
At the head of the table, Jamie reached out his hand and held it cupped over the small candle that stood in the center of the sea of maps. The candle sparked under his fingers and burst into a long thin stream of light. When Jamie drew his hand away, twin reflections of the candle flame danced in the magic-iced mirrors of his eyes.
“Ladies,” he said, “I want to make a bargain with you.”
Mae frowned and laughed at once, wrinkling her nose at her funny, puzzling baby brother, but Sin could not help seeing him as a magician first. She had no problem taking Jamie seriously.
“What do you want?” she asked, and at the serious sound of her voice Mae’s face changed.
