> “I am anxious and excited to see how Duff and Lorna have grown. They had so much potential. I hope they have not wasted it.”
“So,” I said to Ty as she scooped up the scattered memory rings, making a scraping sound as she did. “If I’m a goddamn liar, what does that make you?”
The teenager flicked one of the rings at the box from several feet away and it hit the rim and fell onto the floor.
“Depends on your definition of lying,” said Ty from underneath the table. After a few seconds, her hand reappeared holding the ring. She briefly considered tossing it back into the box with the others, but instead placed it on one of her fingers.
“How do you figure?”
“I told you that you were being followed by a Guild tracker. And you were, to an extent.”
“You forgot the part where that ‘tracker’ was actually your former crazed apprentice pretending to be you! Not to mention the fact that you were also Gilbert this whole time and that you-”
“I’ve always been straight with you, Jen. I gave you the glamour so you could hide from Doug. I warned you not to overuse the glamour, but you did anyway. And I would have helped you deactivate it if J.P. hadn’t activated that damn nullifier.”
“So this is my fault, then?”
“Probably. I don’t know. You probably broke the thing now, so who cares?”
“Where did you get it?” I asked. “And yours? From what the clerk at the Boston Night Market told me, these aren’t exactly your run-of-the-mill magical jewelry.”
“They’re not. As to where I got them, that’s a story from another time. Suffice it to say, I’m beginning to think they are more trouble than they’re worth.”
“That’s an understatement. I didn’t think I was ever going to be me again. Maybe I should send J.P. a thank you note.”
“You can thank him after you’ve found Beatrice and the Compendium,” said Ty. “But don’t worry, I will help you.”
“Oh, great. Because your help has been so useful as of late.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Besides, it’s not just me who’s going to be helping you. You’ve got nearly half the Guild at your disposal as well. They’ll be more than willing to assist, seeing as how they will stand to lose a lot if Dalia loses the Chairmanship. As do I.”
“How long have you pretended to be him?” I asked. Now that I knew the truth, that there was no Gilbert, I wondered if the fear that Beatrice had felt had come from Ty’s excellent acting or maybe this current front was a facade, and deep down, she was a creepy psychopath just like Doug.
“Too long,” said Ty. “The last holder of the New Amsterdam Second Seat died with no issue and no will. Under the bylaws, the token should have reverted to the Guild, to be issued to a worthy individual who passed the Gauntlet. But my mother had a different idea.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She created a fake long-list nephew who just happened to be named Gilbert.”
“Almost. She was going to find someone to be a puppet. It was my idea to use the glamour, to take the Seat for myself. I didn’t think she would go for it. After all, with enough money, she could persuade anyone to do anything she wanted. Me, on the other hand…”
“…revived a crazy stalker and tried to rehabilitate him by locking him up for years. Yeah, can’t see why your mother didn’t think you were right for the Seat.”
“In my defense, it sounded better on paper. And I should have realized that splitting a person into two glamour stones would never be as robust as a single gem. Anyway, we’re getting off course here. You only have a month to track down Beatrice. I’d get moving, if I were you.”
My mind had nearly cracked from the whirlwind of the past 48 hours, and if I was forced to begin yet another errand not of my choosing, I was going to completely lose it.
“Thanks for the tip, but I’m taking a mental health day. There’s just something about letting a disembodied gemstone use me as its puppet that has put me all out of sorts.”
I walked back to the Orange Table where I had deposited the glamour and gingerly picked it up. There was no way in hell I was putting this thing back on, and the bare wooden desk in my office in the north tower that only I could unlock needed a nice decoration.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“And besides,” I said, turning back to Ty, “what about all your friends who were lining up to help me a minute ago?”
“They still will. I just need a day or two to set them straight. After all, they really only knew me as Gilbert. Go grab the low-hanging fruit, and I’ll see who’s ready to talk by Thursday.”
----------------------------------------
I spent all of Tuesday either asleep or drunk. Sometimes both at the same time. On Wednesday morning, I woke with a splitting headache that unfortunately lingered until the mid-afternoon, as I was still too afraid to take any of the vitality serum that Jade had stashed in my bathroom.
The low-hanging fruit took most of the day and the next to locate and determine it was rotten. I hit Beatrice’s known locations: her downtown apartment, our former office in the Chrysler Building, our other former office off the south shore of Long Island, and finally Beatrice’s Madison Avenue apartment. I saved that one for last, not wanting to confirm what I’d already suspected: that Beatrice had even abandoned her son to escape the Guild’s clutches.
With a fancy (and rather heavy) bouquet of flowers in tow, I arrived in the lobby of her building at 6 p.m. on Thursday. One smiling doorman in a burgundy hat and jacket pushed the revolving door for me, and then another greeted me at the fancy desk just inside.
I set the vase down with a thud on top of the marble counter, my forearms nearly jelly.
“That’s quite an arrangement,” said the doorman. “Who’s it going to?”
“Taylor, Apartment 31C.”
The smile on the man’s face vanished in an instant.
“Sorry, I think you have the wrong building.”
“Are you sure? The order’s for Beatrice Taylor. It’s from her husband, Garrett and their son, Jack-Jack. A belated Mother’s Day bouquet I was told.”
“They don’t live here. So please go.” It was more of a command than a request, so I complied and retreated to the revolving door with the vase, where the first doorman was now also glaring at me.
“You can leave the flowers if you want,” he said. “I’m sure my wife would love them.”
I resisted the urge to tip the vase over and let the water slowly spread all over the fancy blue marble floor and instead set it down gently before showing myself out.
The rest of the night I spent huddled over my laptop at home, trying to find some clue online as to where Beatrice had gone. Their apartment hadn’t been sold, Garrett’s LinkedIn profile still showed him at the same job, and she had done nothing to merit a mention on Page Six.
I texted Ty at 11 p.m. to report my failures and was surprised when she responded within a few seconds.
Dont worry, Clouser is going to help us. We’re meeting him tomorrow morning.
Whos that again?
First Seat of the Pavonia Table. Hated Emma’s dad and hates J.P. So I was almost positive he would be willing to talk.
Great. When/where?
9 a.m. Philz Coffee. Navy Yard.
Oh. Didn’t know there was a Philz in NYC yet.
There isn’t. It’s the one in D.C.
What? Y the hell do we have 2 go all the way down there.
Because that’s where Hugo lives. He’s the Guild’s man in Washington.
----------------------------------------
Despite the early hour, the 6 a.m. Acela was packed to the brim, and I walked nearly the length of the car, my overnight bag in hand, before I found a pair of empty seats together. I was beginning to think that Ty had missed the train entirely, but she finally appeared in her familiar jacket as we pulled away from Metropark Station.
“Don’t talk to me until Baltimore,” she said as she sat down in a huff. “Last time I had to get up this early, it was the morning of the 9th grade English Regents exam.”
“You were the one who scheduled the meeting! And I didn’t think you actually went to school.”
“What did I just say?”
Ty pulled an eye mask from her jacket pocket, snapped it around her head, and slumped down on the tray table attached to the seat in front of her. Well, at least this train ride was an hour shorter than the one up to Boston.
I did as instructed and didn’t say a word to Ty until we arrived at Baltimore, even though she had woken up at Wilmington.
“OK,” said Ty, when we were 20 minutes away from Union Station. “Do you know what you’re going to ask Hugo first?”
“What do you mean, what am I going to ask him first? I don’t even know why we’re seeing him in the first place!”
Ty rolled her eyes.
“I thought you said you went through the low-hanging fruit. Don’t tell me you missed the part where your ex-partner got served with divorce papers and then a restraining order on top of that after she tried to kidnap her own kid?”
“I … umm … no, I did not hear about either of those. How did you know?”
I could see Beatrice divorcing Garrett. I mean, I was surprised she hadn’t done so years ago. But him getting the drop on her?
“The police blotter is your friend in times of need. Unfortunately, by the next day, Beatrice had skipped bail and evidently town. The trail went cold after that because everything’s under seal, but I’m hoping Clouser will get us back on track.”
“How’s he going to do that?”
“You’ll see. Come on, we’re almost there. I don’t want to wait in the horrid cab line.”
Ty marched us up the length of the train until we were just outside the first class car. Then, when the doors opened, she bolted out onto the platform, and by the time I caught up with her after running through the massive marble lobby, she was already climbing into the back of a cab.
“8:45,” she said after we had cleared the traffic circle in front of the station. “Should get there right on time.”
“Why the rush? I thought he wanted to help us. Who cares if we’re a few minutes late? We did just bust our butts to get down the Acela corridor at the crack of dawn.”
“Because,” said Ty. “Hugo is one of those people who schedules his day down to the quarter-second. He probably has a 10 a.m. somewhere on Capitol Hill with a senior staffer, then lunch at Charlie Palmer with a senator or two, and then who knows what in the afternoon? Sometimes I think he likes his above-ground job more than being in the Guild.”
We pulled up to Philz at exactly 8:57, and Ty threw a wad of cash at our driver before bolting out the cab door, leaving me to take our luggage. Inside, a line threaded its way toward a row of seven baristas, who were efficiently doling individual pour-overs to the mix of government workers and hipsters.
“Two iced mint mojitos, please,” said Ty when we made it to the front.
“Make it three,” said a voice behind us, and I turned around to find none other than Gilbert.