The hare’s head shot up at the sound of the accident.
Anouk lunged. “Got you!”
Her hands closed over it and this time it didn’t slip away. She wrestled the hare to her chest, hugged it tight. She looked up triumphantly, but then her face fell.
Cricket was in the middle of the street, straightening up after throwing a knife. She looked untouched. Safe. Someone had darted across the street, and a black town car had driven up onto the sidewalk and hit him. Sinjin! He was moaning. Blood stained his white coat.
Anouk jogged over to Sinjin, clutching the hare. From the looks of it, Sinjin hadn’t been hit fatally. One of Cricket’s knives protruded from his shoulder. The car doors opened and people climbed out, and Anouk jumped in surprise to see familiar faces. “Beau! Hunter Black!”
Beau ran around the car and checked for Sinjin’s pulse—?they needed him alive so they could question him—?then grinned up at Hunter Black. “Just like in Lisbon.”
Anouk scoffed. “That’s what happened in Lisbon? You ran someone over?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Hunter Black smoothed a hand over his black shirt with its gleaming glass buttons. There was a note of satisfaction in his voice.
Cricket came over and nudged Sinjin with her toe. “He wouldn’t have darted into the street if I hadn’t wounded him first with my knife. So it counts as my catch.”
“What? That’s not fair!” Beau protested.
Anouk crouched by Sinjin. His forehead was slick with a yellowish sheen. She glanced warily at the smoke drifting out of a nearby sewer grate. “We need to get him inside. Quickly. Beau, Hunter Black, carry him through the loading dock straight into the basement. It’ll be safe there. I bolted the door to the upper levels—?let’s hope it holds.”
“What’s in the upper levels?” Beau asked.
Cricket snorted. “Trust us.”
They picked up Sinjin and carried him toward the museum, Cricket and Anouk right behind them. Anouk still clasped the hare firmly. She whispered reassurances in its ear—?then made a face as she thought about what they were going to have to do to get that ruby back.
Chapter 33
The four of them brought Sinjin in through the exterior loading dock. Beau checked the rest of the basement doors to make certain they were locked against the dead upstairs, while Cricket searched for a place to put their prisoner. She settled on a wire storage locker currently filled with artwork from one of the museum’s rotating exhibits. She shoved aside some paintings, pausing to appraise the expensive gold frames, and then they dumped Sinjin into the makeshift cage.
“Careful.” Luc stood up from where he’d been tending to Viggo, who’d gained a few stitches in his arm. “Those are priceless paintings. Part of Monet’s Water Lilies series.”
“How priceless?” Cricket stroked her chin.
Her pockets, Anouk noticed, were no longer bulging with stolen goods. At some point in the past few minutes, Cricket must have hidden the Assyrian bowl somewhere.
Luc felt Sinjin’s forehead. He lifted both of Sinjin’s eyelids and checked the pallor of his lips with a frown. “Cricket, were your blades poisoned?”
“Of course. I’m not an idiot. I use every means I have.”
He carefully drew Cricket’s knife from Sinjin’s shoulder and sniffed the blade. He suddenly dropped the knife to the floor. His eyes went wide. “This is nightrose poison! Once it gets to the heart, nothing can stop it, not even magic.”
Cricket nodded. “That’s the point.”
“You stabbed Viggo too! When were you going to tell us so that we could cure him?”
She rolled her eyes. “That knife didn’t have poison on it. Unfortunately. Look—?he’s fine.” Viggo had turned a shade paler, but it was true, he didn’t look poisoned.
Luc shook his head as he fetched his herbalist bag and started to make an antidote for Sinjin out of various elements preserved in dark bottles. He handled every flower with grace, every set of wings with care. In Mada Vittora’s service, he’d made love potions for Goblins, obedience potions that he soaked into clothing, tonics that sometimes smelled divine, sometimes reeked, sometimes were the electric color of heat lightning, sometimes were blacker than night. Anouk suspected that half of Mada Vittora’s power had come not from her magic but Luc’s skill.
Anouk sidled up to Cricket, the hare clutched in her arms. “What did you do with that carved bowl?”
Cricket gave a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry about it.”
“If you’re planning something against Rennar, I don’t blame you, but tell me.”
Cricket looked mildly annoyed. “I’m not completely obsessed with revenge, you know.” Then she sighed. “Look, it’s . . . it’s just a new spell I’ve been working on. A stealing spell. There are plenty of spells for masking intention or distracting security guards, but there are no spells for making an object disappear from one place and reappear elsewhere, regardless of walls or vaults or anything between it and a thief.”