At midnight, after the crowd has left the show space and as the stagehands clean the place, I finally release the protective wall I sorcered to hide Gunn’s meeting. None of the troupe even notices—my manipulation was flawless, only noticeable if you went ahead and walked straight into it, which none of them are likely to do, seeing as no one uses that hall but Gunn—and besides, everyone is exhausted at this hour, or coming down from shine. Not at their sharpest.
I head upstairs with the rest of the sorcerers, share a whiskey nightcap with Grace on my fire escape—ten minutes she spends grilling me over what I really think about Alex. But her questions are warm, and teasing, and it feels good to talk with her about something real, instead of dancing and sidestepping around my business with Gunn.
Still, as soon as she leaves, my nerves return. I sit in my room, counting the minutes until I’m sure everyone’s asleep. I need to talk with Gunn as soon as I can, and his meeting in the VIP lounge has to be wrapping up soon. This can’t wait. I might have an answer, the solution he’s been waiting for, the missing piece in his plan that will determine both our futures. Alex, of all people, might have managed to help me crack the riddle of the caging spell—
I think we went and spellbound the magic itself.
These simple words of his set off an idea, one that grew strong and fast and stubborn as a weed. Trick the magic. That’s what we need to do, to get around the problems with the caging spell, make a long-lasting shine feasible, and let a buyer open the damn jar.
Trick the magic itself.
I walk down my upstairs hall carefully, quietly, round the two flights downstairs, then knock on Gunn’s office door, barely able to contain the nerves and excitement flowing through me. Then I knock again. It’s not like me to be so impatient, but I need to pass this on, and I see a faint light from Gunn’s office lamp filtering out through the bottom crack of the door. This caging spell riddle has been a thorn in my side, sharp and relentless. So relentless, in fact, that somewhere along the way of trying to solve Gunn’s puzzle, I stopped worrying about the hypothetical people in their hypothetical homes across America—the ones who might get hurt if a shippable shine comes to pass—and focused all my worry on me and mine. What would happen if I didn’t deliver, what would happen to Ben and Ruby—
I close my eyes. But you are delivering. Their world is only going to get better. Not just the money from your work in the show, but payments on the cabin. And when Gunn rolls this shine out to the world, ten percent of whatever flows back in—
The door clicks open, interrupts my thoughts, and I jump back to find that weaselly-looking fella I used to see with Alex when he was still working the street: one of Win Matthews’s junior guys, always on the sidelines but never in the spotlight, and almost always shined. Howie Matthews.
“Joan,” he says too warmly, with big shined-up eyes, like we’re long-lost soul mates. “Sorry for the wait, doll.” He glances back to Gunn and throws him this disgusting, suggestive grin. “Man’s all yours.”
Howie shoves his hands in his pockets as he angles past me. He starts whistling down the hall after he leaves, and I close the door behind him. What the heck is a bottom-feeder like Howie doing with Gunn’s ear?
“What is it, Joan?”
“That shiner Howie’s working for you now, sir?” I say slowly, as I settle into the chair across from Gunn. He’s hunched over a large map. If I squint, I can see the vague cursive of Potomac scrawled down the sky-blue river that runs right down the middle.
“He has information on Alex Danfrey.” Gunn traces his finger down the left border of the Potomac. “Information I felt compelled to hear.”
I freeze at the mention of Alex’s name. “Is something wrong? I told you I’d keep an eye on Alex, sir. And he did great tonight.”
“I keep tabs on everyone, Joan.” His eyes glance up to me briefly. “It’s nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
Everyone. Including me. When I don’t answer right away, Gunn pushes, “You had something to tell me?”
But my twisty, almost electric anxiety has given way to a dull hum. “I might have come up with a solution, to our shine problem,” I say flatly.
At that, Gunn stops looking at the map.
I take a deep breath. “It was something Alex said, in passing, about our double-sided trick tonight. The one we use to enchant the glass stand.” I lean forward a few inches. “You know how you’ve talked about magic being alive, that it needs and wants things, same as the rest of us?”
“And?”