Guild of Tokens, Chapter 45

Stalking horse

Chapter 44 recap: The head of the Guild reveals themselves to Jen and Beatrice

Part 1 | Part 2 | Interlude | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 | Chapter 41 | Chapter 42 | Chapter 43 | Chapter 44

Illustration: Tom Parker

“Will you turn that stupid thing off?” Beatrice scowled at me as we walked into a coffee shop in Times Square and found the lone empty table near the back. 

“What?” I said. “How do you expect me to change back when there’s all these peo-”

“We’re in the middle of a crowded hellhole within another crowded hellhole. No one is giving us a second glance.”

“Fine,” I said, rubbing the stone with one hand as I attempted to cover my head with the other.  I felt the glamour melt away once again. “It was your idea in the first place to wear it.”

“And your point is?”

“I don’t why you’re so-”

“Can we just sit here for a minute without launching into another therapy session?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go get us some coffee.”

I returned a few minutes later with two steaming cups of sludge doused with too much cream and sugar and set them down on the table. Beatrice eyed them with suspicion before taking a sip and nearly spitting it back out.

“What did you put in here?” she asked, her features recoiling. “It tastes like burnt trash.”

I took a sampling myself and had nearly the same reaction. “With just a hint of tart. It must be because of that whiskey she gave us. Should have stuck with water.”

“What we should have stuck with was the original plan, which was silence. Instead, you let her take almost everything of Rita’s that we have.”

“Exactly,” I said. “You brought the page from the 1777 diary like I asked?”

“Yes,” said Beatrice. “And kept it stowed in my pocket, also like you asked. But I don’t see the . . . oh. Very clever. This page has the memory ink, which used to be the ring, which is still linked to both the other ring and the memory ink in the other diary, both of which Dalia now has on her person.”

I smiled. 

“But insane,” she continued. “So now we’re just going to follow Dalia around and hope something fruitful comes about? You’re not exactly James Bond. What if she spots us?”

“She won’t. Because thanks to you, she still has no idea what I look like. And she won’t spot you, because you’re not coming with me.”

“This just keeps getting better and better. Since you seem to have everything figured out to a T, what shall I do, oh wise one?”

“You’re going to go find that gold token.”

It was 3 a.m. and the lone waitress in the 24-hour diner on Madison Avenue where I was camped out was reluctantly refilling my mug with decaf coffee for the umpteenth time. I gave her a sheepish smile and promised her a big tip come morning and she walked away, muttering to herself. The coffee tasted like charred toast but it was oddly soothing in a weird sort of way. As I lifted the cup up to my mouth, I felt the familiar gentle pull of the parchment paper on my arm. 

It had been a little too easy to trail Dalia with my makeshift compass. She had emerged from the hulking office building sometime around 5 and into a black sedan. This I had known when the diary page had started gently trying to pull itself free from under my sleeve. Fortunately, I had been waiting next to a bikeshare stand and quickly grabbed a red-painted bike and began my pursuit up Sixth Avenue. 

Her car eventually stopped outside a tony boutique and I hung back a block as I saw Dalia open the door and walk into the store. Several minutes later, she had exited carrying several small bags and the car had resumed its journey northward until it turned west and stopped in front of an even tonier apartment building, just a stone’s throw from the Met. 

So began three hours of circling the building, waiting to see if Dalia would show herself again and lead me to someplace interesting. But by 10, I was beginning to suspect that she had called it in for the night and I had debated whether to continue my surveillance or go home and come back at 6.

I had chosen the former.

The foot traffic on the surrounding streets had petered out around midnight, which is when I had taken refuge in the diner. My dinner with Duncan and even the run-through had seemed like a lifetime ago and I had so far resisted the urge to open my work email, where no doubt news of my firing had been delivered. Maybe Duncan had mercifully ended our relationship electronically too and then I wouldn’t have to deal with that part of my life at all.

This had all seemed like a great idea when I was in the throes of the buffs. My mind had neatly laid everything out in front of me and it had all made so much sense then. But now, as I reread what I had written, the words felt like they had been the product of someone else entirely and I was just following orders. 

The whole exercise just seemed to be long on cleverness and desperation, but short on usefulness. If I picked up Dalia’s trail again tomorrow morning, then what? She was going to lead me right to the cure to the stone curse? And I wasn’t optimistic at Beatrice’s chances of finding the gold token based only on my drug-induced hunch. 

Something from the meeting also still gnawed at me. Why was Dalia so insistent that we didn’t have the Medoblad? I set my brain to the puzzle, but found that it was in no mood for any further mental exertion, so I leaned my head back against the booth to rest just for a second.

And then it was morning and my arm began to twitch. 

I jumped up from the booth, threw a bunch of uncounted bills on the table, and ran out the door into the pouring rain. The cold wind whipped through me, and I ran up the block to take refuge under an awning and gather my bearings. The bike dock was opposite me on the east side of Madison, so I dashed across traffic and quickly mounted my two-wheeled steed. Back on Dalia’s block, I spotted the black car from yesterday and the chase was on again.

The rain beat down on me as I furiously tried to keep up with the sedan’s crisscrossing path downtown. Finally, it turned west onto 51st Street and pulled into a parking garage mid-block. I stowed the bike and continued on foot, watching from afar as Dalia walked up the ramp from the garage with a big red umbrella. The tension on my arm threatened to cut off my circulation, but I trailed after her nevertheless. 

She veered off the sidewalk and walked under a wooden trellis, which led to one of the most peculiar things I had seen during my years living in Manhattan. Up a short flight of stairs was a gorgeous little pocket park, with rows of trees and potted plants creating a veritable forest in the middle of midtown. At the back was an enormous waterfall cascading down a wall of stone, which looked ominous in the rain. My arm beckoned me further but I retreated back out and across the street, lest Dalia spot me.

I spent the next 20 minutes battling both the rain and the cheap umbrella I had purchased from one of the street vendors that always magically appeared as soon as the first drops began to fall. Finally, my arm jerked forward again. I waited for Dalia’s red umbrella to appear from the park, but then my arm shifted in the opposite direction and then back again as a man with slicked-back hair in a blue blazer holding a green umbrella in one hand and carrying one of Dalia’s bags in the other crossed under the trellis and began walking west.

Was this the famed Gilbert that had dogged our steps for so long? I quickly snapped a picture and sent it to Beatrice to confirm while my arm continued its schizophrenic movement. It was then that I realized what was happening: Dalia had split up the items she had taken from us. 

I glanced across to the park and a foolish thought entered my head. That foolish thought became action as I crossed the street and entered the park. It was practically empty, the rain likely driving everyone indoors, but of Dalia and her red umbrella, I saw no sign. The tension on my paper compass faded to a dull twitch the further I went into the park and I doubled-back to the street. How had I missed her? 

The man in the blue blazer, meanwhile, had not gotten very far, so I gave chase. He descended into the subway at Lexington and down the long escalator to the E/M platform. As I slowly followed behind him, two trains entered the station, one heading to Queens and one heading downtown. I tried to break through the barricade of the unmoving people in front of me, but they held firm, even as we stepped onto the platform. 

As throngs of commuters jostled against me in their rush to get to either train, the glamour stone sprung free from under my shirt, along with my mother’s locket, and I foolishly grabbed both of them with my bare hand, only to feel the ripple of Jade wash over me. But I didn’t have time to worry about the consequences of my public transformation, as the doors-closing chimes rang in stereo. I held my arm out in front of me, felt it drift to the right, and quickly pushed myself into the train car and into a woman with blonde hair, who had entered a step ahead of me.

“So sorry,” I said to the woman, who was locked arm-in-arm with an older man with a very pronounced slouch, but when she turned around, I froze dead in my tracks, as Eva’s green eyes met mine.

Next: A betrayal. Read it below.

Guild of Tokens, Chapter 46