We got up to follow Granny out of the office. “Wow, magical puritans. Who’d have guessed?” I said once we were in the reception area.
“I’d heard rumors of groups like that, but they’re usually dismissed as crackpots,” Owen said with a shrug.
“Crackpots can still be dangerous,” I pointed out. “And it sounds like it could be really bad if their plan succeeds.”
“Which is why we’re going to stop them. How do we go about posing as catering employees?”
“Sadly, we’re not too far off—for either caterers or magical puritans,” I said with a grimace. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt. “Lose the jacket and tie, and you’re there. I’m already dressed for it.” I frowned in thought as I studied Granny. “I’m not sure what to do about you, though, Granny. You don’t really fit the catering waiter profile.”
“But I could teach them a thing or two about cooking, I’d bet.”
“Maybe a pastry chef, doing the finishing touches on-site?” Owen suggested as he folded his stack of spell pages lengthwise and handed them to me. “Can you put these in your purse?” Then he moved his phone from the breast pocket of his suit coat to the front pocket of his slacks.
“It’s worth a shot,” I said with a shrug.
“And if they don’t believe me, I’ll just hit ’em with a sleeping spell,” Granny said as she took off for the stairs.
“Let’s try to avoid the sleeping spell,” Owen said to me. He handed me the case of tranquilizer darts. “You should probably keep this in your purse, too. Use them wisely.”
I tucked the case away and gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.” He rolled his eyes as he took off his tie. He left the jacket and tie lying across the chair next to Trix’s desk. On our way out of the building, I said, “I know we’re in a hurry, but I am not getting on another flying carpet. Probably never again, ever, but definitely not today.”
“No, no carpets,” Owen agreed with a shudder. “We can get an express train, though it’ll be crowded at this time of day.”
“Young people today have no sense of adventure,” Granny said with a sniff as we headed for the subway station.
The train was crowded, with every seat filled and people crammed in like sardines. Even so, the train had barely started moving before Granny had a seat. Apparently, the young man who’d been sitting there discovered that there were more uncomfortable things than standing on the subway. I wasn’t sure if magic was involved or if she’d just glared at him until his skin crawled.
I took the sheaf of transcribed spells out of my purse and handed them to Granny. “Here, you can make use of the time to read up on what you might face,” I suggested. She put on her reading glasses and buried her face in the pages.
Meanwhile, I tried to remain aware of my surroundings. In that crowd, it was nearly impossible to tell if we were being followed. We’d caught our mole, but the bad guys were still out there. Most of the people in the car were wearing conservative black outfits, and the rest were wearing less-conservative black. For all I knew, everyone on the train was either a magical puritan or a magical enforcer from the Council. I leaned so that I could speak directly into Owen’s ear. “Are you feeling any magic?”
“There’s something nearby,” he said vaguely. “More than on your usual subway trip, especially now that the magical Spellworks ads are gone.”
“If it’s someone following us, illusions and veiling won’t work. We should notice.”
“Do you recognize anyone?”
I glanced around again. “It’s hard to say. There are some people who look kind of familiar, but is that because they’ve popped up everywhere we’ve gone today or because we work in the same part of town and see them frequently?”
“Our priority is getting to the brooch. We don’t have time to take evasive measures like changing trains just to smoke out a tail.”
“What if he’s not just following, but trying to stop us from getting there?”
“We can sic Granny on him.”
I couldn’t help but grin at the mental image, even though I felt stressed and paranoid. Granny chortling to herself as she read the spells made it even funnier. “But that’s just mean,” I said, which made Owen smile, too.
By the time we got to the station nearest the museum, I was rethinking my position on magic carpets. We’d have been there a long time ago if we’d flown—that is, if we’d arrived alive and hadn’t ended up as a damp spot on Fifth Avenue that disrupted rush-hour traffic after another gargoyle attack.