“She was keeping her word,” Nell said. “It felt…important to her. Like she had something to prove.”
“To herself?” Tyler said.
“To me.” Nell lowered one hand, the other still propping up her chin. Her fingernails rested lightly on the tabletop. “And she’s got nothing to lose. Like you said. She won.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Seelie said.
Nell turned to face her. At first, Seelie had thought her fire had gone out, snuffed in Leda Swan’s hurricane winds. Now she saw something different in Nell’s eyes. The glint of tempered steel.
“I made the choice I could live with,” Nell said.
Seelie had read her silence for dejection, for despair. There was a little of that, around the edges, but now she understood what she was looking at. Leda had taken Nell’s story away. She’d taken her dreams of fame and success and a Pulitzer and broken them one by one.
But she hadn’t broken her. The woman that remained was stripped-down, leaner, faster, more dangerous than she’d ever been.
“You still up for a little grave-robbing?” Nell asked.
“Hell yes.”
“I don’t see a way in,” Tyler told Seelie. “She has to be watching Prospect Cemetery like a hawk. Best-case scenario, she stops us from trying. Worst case, she stands back, lets you dig up the relics, and sends Rime in to grab them. You heard what Nell said: she bashed his skull in and the guy popped right back up again. I don’t know if anything can kill him, short of a nuke.”
“I know a spell.” Seelie held up a finger. “I mean, just the one. But it works.”
Nell shook her head. “It hurt him. It didn’t stop him. And next time we face off, he’ll be ready for it. No, we can’t win with a head-on fight. We have to get tactical here.”
Tyler eyed her, sidelong. “You got a plan?”
“What’s she expecting us to do?”
“I don’t know. Hide? Lie low?”
“Right,” Nell said. “So we go the opposite direction. The best way to get her eyes off that graveyard is to give her something else to look at.”
“What do you have in mind?” Seelie asked.
Nell flashed a tiny smile.
“She’s curious. Let’s give her a mystery that can’t be solved.”
* * *
Seelie was back at Crystal Moon, the occult bookstore in the East Village. This time she brought a shopping list. The sun had vanished below the Manhattan skyline, chased away by a coming storm. It was full dark now; they’d waited as late as they could, sending her into the store at ten minutes to closing time. The dark was their best ally tonight.
“I need recommendations,” she said. “Anything you’ve got on Viking magic.”
The clerk tilted her head. “Like runic divination?”
“Sure,” Seelie said. That sounded good. “Also, do you have anything on banishing demons? Like, exorcisms?”
“That’s…a little heavier than we really get into here. We do have an excellent book on purifying your household with incense, though, and it’s very newbie-friendly.”
“I’ll take it.” Seelie eyed the wall of jars, each one heaping with dried herbs. “Also, I need…exactly three and one-third ounces of mugwort.”
She held up a sliver of blue plastic.
“I’ll put it on my debit card.”
Five minutes later she was on the move again, pausing on the sidewalk just long enough to check her phone for an imaginary message, and make sure the traffic camera had a chance to pick up her face.
Right about now, she thought, ducking down an alley, Leda knows where I am and she knows what I bought. And if the plan works, she’s going to tie herself into knots trying to figure out what I’m doing with a sack of completely random junk.
They’d worked up a few possible angles back at the apartment, but it came down to finding a street with no camera coverage. Like the one running parallel to Crystal Moon, one block north. Seelie turned right, breaking into a sprint along the sidewalk. Tyler was up on the corner and holding a cab for her, shoveling over cash to keep the driver happy.
“Nell’s on the opposite side of the block, waiting in a Lyft.” He took her shopping bag and opened the door for her. “Leda’s blind on this street. She’ll know Nell paid for a ride, but she can’t see the car, and if everything goes right, she’ll assume the three of us are in the back seat. Eventually she’ll realize you aren’t with us, but we’ll make her work for it. We’ll buy you as much time as