Then she watched the way he pulled a leather wallet from the inside pocket of his perfectly tailored tuxedo jacket and told the elderly gentleman working behind the bars at the window, “Change five hundred, please.”
The gesture was so easy, the voice so confident, that the man in the booth never even asked to see an ID, and Kat knew that this was as close to home as W. W. Hale the Fifth might ever come.
“What?” he asked, right before Kat realized she was staring. He gave her a wide-mouthed grin. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
“Yes.” She smirked. “I think the canary left some feathers in there after you ate it.”
The attendant slid a golden ticket through the slot in the cage, and Hale placed it into his coat pocket, patting the place over his heart for extra measure.
“Come on.” Hale took her hand. “I feel lucky.”
That might have been a good time to remind him about the curse. It might have been an equally appropriate time to point out that blackjack was a game of probability, and roulette belonged to fools—all the little things that she had learned at her father’s knee and Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table.
So, no, luck had nothing to do with anything, as far as Kat was concerned, but right then did not seem like the proper time to say so, because Hale put her right hand in his own and placed his left gently at her waist, guiding her through the tall doors and the crowd. Kat couldn’t help but think that it was almost like a homecoming dance. Or maybe a prom. For one brief moment, she allowed herself to feel like a normal girl, all dressed up and on the town with the boy of her dreams. But then they stopped at an ornate railing and looked across the casino floor. It stretched out beneath them, roulette wheels spinning. Cards flipping. Tuxedoed men and elegant women almost as far as the eye could see. And Kat knew that nothing about her life was ever going to be normal.
“So this is where the ball will be.…” Kat said.
“Our last shot before the auction,” Hale went on. He leaned onto the rail and turned to look at her. “So how’s it look?”
Kat wanted to say beautiful. Most would have said glamorous. It was easy to imagine the room full of big bidders and music and food and, of course, the most valuable emerald that the world had ever known, so Kat just shook her head and said, “Hard.”
Hale looked at her. “You know, I’ve always loved a good party.”
Kat let her gaze drift across the room and knew that a sane person would have experienced a small bit of panic when she counted the guards (28 on the main floor, 56 in total). Uncle Eddie, by all rights, could have disinherited her for not walking away as soon as she counted the steps from the emerald’s likely position to the nearest exit (212).
There were too many thoughts inside her head in that moment—too many theories and strategies and plans. Kat closed her eyes and cleared her mind. What would Visily Romani do? she wondered for a split second, then shook her head and asked the question that had been plaguing her for hours: What did Uncle Eddie do? And Charlie? And Maggie?
Maggie…
“Well, of course they’re giving me a line of credit!” a big brassy voice yelled from down below. “A great big green one!” Maggie finished, and the crowd that surrounded her erupted into laughter. But, to Kat, nothing was funny anymore.
The ornate railing was smooth beneath her palms as she stood staring down at Maggie, who laughed and talked and cajoled like the queen of the ball.
Maggie, who had sat trembling in that rainy diner, holding a black-and-white photo of someone else’s childhood and begging someone else’s child to take a terrible chance.
Maggie, who had used the name Romani.
Maggie, who had stood in a room much like that with Kat’s uncles in 1967, and had been chasing that emerald ever since.
My uncles, Kat thought to herself, then smiled sadly. Her uncles would know what to do.
Then, with the thought, her smile changed.
“What are you looking at?” Hale asked. “Why are you smiling? I worry when you smile.”
“I know why she did it, Hale. I know why she conned me.”
“Well…yeah,” Hale said. “I can think of a hundred million reasons.”
“No, Hale.” Kat pressed her hands against his chest, felt his heart pounding beneath her palms as she said, “I know why she conned me. You can’t pull this job without the real thing—forty years ago maybe, if the fake was really good and the black market really shady. But you can’t even do a black market deal with today’s technology. And if you don’t have the real Antony…and if you can’t fake the Antony…”
“You can’t sell the Antony,” Hale finished for her.
Kat nodded and shrugged. “So the only way to pretend you have the Antony is if you really do have the Cleopatra. And the only way to pass off the Cleopatra as the Antony is if you know where there’s a fake Cleopatra to swap it for. But how many forgers in the world can do that?”
“Just Charlie?” Hale guessed.
Kat nodded and sighed. “Just Charlie.”