Susanna called while Tabitha was curled up on a bench under the trees in Bryant Park, reading a book from the carts of the Open Air Reading Room. She hurriedly marked her page and stepped out of the designated space, lest she incur a dirty look from a fellow reader.

“How are you?” asked her old friend, her voice reflecting genuine concern. “Are you still in New York?”

“Yeah—I’m not supposed to move to a different area without permission, and it was enough of a hassle to be allowed to leave Portland. So I’m staying put for a while.” This was true, but she hadn’t told Susanna, or anyone else, about her search for the relic. It seemed to be little-known even among the Mara, and the last thing she needed was to set off some kind of demon-centered scavenger hunt to recover it.

Susanna’s voice grew even more sympathetic. “I felt so sorry for you about why you had to leave Portland.”

“I didn’t have to. I probably would have left even if he hadn’t started up with Amy, just so we wouldn’t run into each other. That whole thing made it more uncomfortable, but I can’t imagine how we would have managed to abide by the ban if we were living in the same place. My intentions were good, but Sam can be . . . persuasive.” She sighed and looked out over the park. “It would have been untenable.”

Susanna tittered slightly. “You’re handling this a lot better than I would.”

She sat down on the grass, in the shadow cast by a distant trio of silver buildings. “What am I supposed to be, jealous? About a human? Please.”

“Well, he’s coming down for a visit tomorrow. Isaac and I wanted to have a chat with him because apparently—” She laughed without humor again, as if she could hardly believe what she was about to say, herself. “He’s moved in with this girl.”

“Yeah, I suspected as much.”

“You knew?”

She rubbed her brow. “Well, I figured. It’s Sam. He doesn’t like being by himself, hates sleeping alone, and he’s an attentive boyfriend. Of course some girl’s going to jump on that. The surprise would have been if he didn’t want to move in with her.”

Susanna seemed to be choosing her words delicately. “The troubling thing—I don’t know if you’ve realized—is, for example, say she notices how much he’s slipping out at night. She gets suspicious, maybe follows him. Imagine what she’d see—this guy appearing and disappearing in a little poof of sparks. And God forbid, what if he gets lazy and visits a neighbor, and she looks in the window? If it’s dark enough, she won’t necessarily think, ‘Oh my God, my boyfriend’s turned into a smoke monster,’ but she’ll definitely recognize a Sam-shaped person in, um, amorous congress with the neighbor. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, right? Next thing you know, she’s telling everyone, posting about it on the internet—”

Tabitha saw where she was going with this. “And suddenly, because he’s drawing attention to us, he gets labeled as an Obstructor. I hear you.”

“Right. I mean, the Leaders take that stuff seriously. This whole country has been obsessed with zombies and vampires and aliens for years at a time, and yet somehow they never pay any attention to us. And that’s a good thing. You know it best, right? You know firsthand what happens when people get afraid of some supernatural creature coming for them, and react emotionally. Next thing you know, ta da, Salem Witch Trials.”

“I lived in Andover, but yeah. There was plenty of witch-hunting action to go around.”

“Except unlike with the witch hunts, you actually can prove if somebody is Mara, though it’s not like they could lock us up.” Susanna was on a roll now, and no longer bothering to protect Tabitha from thinking about the more unseemly possibilities. “They could come after the cambions, though. Do you know what pops up when they paternity-test those kids? I don’t, but even if there’s some sort of magical work-around, I’ll bet it’s a huge headache for the Leaders. Everything related to technology is. And if Sam got people talking about how to keep the demons out of your bedroom at night, they’d make him an Obstructor in the blink of an eye. And then, you know how it goes—he could never partner again, any one of us would have the right to drown him, and inevitably, someone would.”

“I think he’s too careful for any of that to happen,” said Tabitha. “He’s survived this long, after all. But I do see where you’re coming from.”

“It’s hard for me to believe the girlfriend wouldn’t already be noticing that something’s a little off, when they’re living together. Even if she’s a very sound sleeper, is she really not noticing that he’s abnormally nervous about the rain? Or that dogs won’t come near him? Or that he doesn’t spend forty-five minutes a day in the bathroom the way most human men do?”

Tabitha sighed. “I think that, right now, it’s probably like any human romance in the early stages, where she’s focusing on the positives and ignoring the warning signs. I don’t think she’ll get suspicious unless she starts feeling neglected, and Sam is not one to make a girl feel neglected. If she’s suspicious of anything, it’s probably that he’s on a daily dose of Viagra.”

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“Then hopefully she won’t brag too much. Envy makes others look at your life much more critically.”

Tabitha scratched a spot on her leg and pondered this idea. She considered, then discarded, the idea of mentioning Amy’s Instagram. All the photos had made her fear was a messy breakup, not a permanent disaster, although Susanna’s point was entirely valid. If Susanna and Isaac saw the pictures, they might freak out completely and demand he end the relationship at once, and that would only backfire. Sam could be reasoned with, but he dug in his heels when it came to his loyalties, and with the word love getting batted around, it was best not to push him.

“So Isaac and I are going to have a talk with him about it,” Susanna went on. “Or more accurately, Isaac asked Meridiana to come down and talk some sense into him.”

Tabitha let out a high laugh. “Oh, no. Poor Sam.”

“She’ll be nice. She likes your guy, in spite of how frankly idiotic he’s been acting lately.”

“I know she likes him. How’s she doing these days? Does she still have that bishop on her little string?”

“He’s an archbishop now. Although she might have a bishop too, for all I know. I can’t keep track of her priest business.”

Tabitha smiled. “Give Sam a big hug from me. Just don’t tell him it’s from me. I miss him so much, I feel like my heart’s going to burst sometimes.”

“Good thing it’s enchanted,” quipped Susanna. “We’ll try to get ahead of this before it gets crazy. I’ll keep you updated.”

Tabitha tucked her phone away and lay back in the grass. She looked up at the clusters of buildings that circumscribed the sky. Four million men in this city, four million potential dreamers, and not a single one mattered to her. All she wanted was to get back to the one who was three thousand miles away, in another girl’s arms.

~ * ~

A heavy rain was falling as Tabitha made her way down Crosby Street, forming puddles that pooled beneath the streetlights and reflected back their whitish glow, like portals to a subterranean world. It was three in the morning, and she had already delayed this excursion for too long, hoping the rain would ease. It was not to be.

With a scarf pulled up over her hair and her short trench coat belted at her waist, she at least gave the appearance of someone trying to avoid the rain. In fact, it didn’t bother her at all, but she knew the streets would be more abandoned because of it, and she didn’t like being the lonely person walking along a block. It attracted attention.

The old brick apartment building was only a few more paces away. She fairly skipped to it, catching the gleam of the acrylic panel that covered the names of the residents, with buttons beside each one so visitors could be buzzed in. She wouldn’t be needing those.

She slipped under the door and into the stairway, righted herself to hurry up the stairs, and then shrank down again to get under the fifth-floor apartment door. It was dark, its resident asleep. She stood and unbuckled her trench, already perfectly dry.

The space was airy and light, like the Kid’s bedroom, but not much larger, though it was an entire apartment—or rather, it was a studio. A textured white backdrop hung from a wire frame along one long brick wall, while another held a sheet of canvas splashed with paint in many colors. In front of these stood the metal riggings of lights, two cameras on their tripods, and a broad reflector. Around the room were spread the various props of the owner’s trade: wicker chairs, a black trunk with brass fastenings, and oversized gold frame with nothing in it. The bed was shoved into the corner—double-sized, lacking anything more than the most basic metal frame, covered in simple white linens. It belied the status of its owner.

Under its soft duvet he lay asleep, stretched out on his stomach. Above the bed hung a simple canvas on which was painted a child’s idea of a crown: a quick zigzag of angles, united at the bottom by a straight line. This space, she knew, was not the man’s home. Two months ago, when she was still fairly new to the city, she had sat with her coffee in a bookstore cafe, reading a recent novel for free, and gradually lost all interest in it as she listened to the anguished conversation going on between the two men behind her. By now she had forgotten the finer details, but the basic ones remained: a decade-long relationship with a man, over which his parents had disowned him; the aforementioned man’s drinking problem, which led to constant fighting, which led to a fling with a famous female client, which led to more drinking and fighting. He didn’t even want to go home anymore, and was spending most nights in his studio.

This was a situation Tabitha could work with.

Under the light that shone in through the high, arched windows, he was a good-looking guy: clean-shaven, fit, and conscientiously lean, his dark hair trimmed by someone who didn’t work cheaply. His face and the tone of his skin had a vaguely Italian look. He slept in a white undershirt and cotton pajama pants, always, and he was a light smoker. She loved the smell of him. It reminded her of Sam.

He kissed her readily, when she approached him, and she wasted no time in bringing him a most pleasant dream.

For a guy who ostensibly preferred men, he certainly seemed to like breasts; he couldn’t get enough of hers. His urgency was welcome; she felt particularly frenzied tonight, and an enthusiastic dreamer was exactly what she needed.

Afterward, she kissed him gratefully and climbed off with some regrets. If this were Sam, she would have stuck around for much more, and he would gladly have attended to her. But this man was only a human. He had done his best.

She dressed, cinched her coat, and slipped into the small bathroom. Quietly, she lifted the top of the toilet tank and removed the small, waterproof plastic box, of the type in which people store their money and cellphones at the beach. She unscrewed the lid and took out two fifty-dollar bills.

It was a good trick to hide it there, but people had done that in the ’30s, too.

She glanced at what was left—enough for a few more visits. That was a shame. She was going to have to see if he had another stash somewhere—perhaps in a hollow book, or a food container in his small refrigerator.

You could always come see him just for fun, she reminded herself. But for now, she was keeping such indulgences to a minimum. Now that she knew—or believed she knew—that Cian O’Malley had been the last person to hold the relic, she had a real possibility of finding it. She just needed to figure out where he’d put it next.