He shook his head and said, “No, you wouldn’t, P. All you gotta do is work with me. Why can’t you just f**kin’ see that?”

“Because I’m not like you, Keith,” she snapped. “And damage control is the only way I have a remote chance of getting out of this nightmare.”

“I can’t believe you would just walk away.” He looked as petulant as a little boy.

“I walked away a couple of months ago,” she reminded him. “You just wouldn’t stay gone. Now pick up that piece of paper and swear the binding oath, or I’m leaving and you’re never going to get what I stole. That would mean you’ll have to renegotiate a different payment plan with those ‘associates’ of yours on the money you owe them. Wouldn’t it?”

She didn’t have to say how those different payment options would go. She could tell he knew his life was on the line. Keith regarded her, his mouth turning down at the corners. “You know, it could have been good.”

She shook her head. “Only in your dreams, cowboy.”

He walked over to the spell and picked it up, reluctance in every step. She held her silence as he paused one last time. She could tell he was trying to think of a way to get out of reading it. But there was nothing he could do, and they both knew it.

He read it in a fast, ill-tempered tone. “I, Keith Hollins, hereby swear never to talk about Pia or her secrets in any way, either directly or by inference or silence, or I will lose my ability to speak and suffer unremitting physical pain for the rest of my life.”

He gave a shout as the magic activated. The paper burst into flame. Pia sighed as a weight lifted, just a little, from her shoulders. She went to stuff her things into her backpack.

Keith said, “Okay, I did what you wanted. Now we go to pick up what you stole. What is it—a gem, a piece of jewelry? It had to be something you could carry.” Avarice crept back into his eyes. “Where did you hide it?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t hide it anywhere.”

“What?” Realization dawned. He bared his teeth like a feral dog. “You had it on you the whole time.”

She drew a folded linen handkerchief from her jeans pocket and handed it to him. He tore it open as she shouldered her backpack. She walked out the door as the swearing began.

“Oh, f**k me. You stole a goddamn PENNY!”

“Bye, baby,” she said. She walked away. The hall misted in front of her. She gritted her teeth until pain shot through her jaw. She would not spill one more tear for that loser.

He shouted after her, “What is a dragon doing with a penny in his hoard? How do I know this goddamn penny is even his?”

Well, there was a question.

She thought about reminding him his “associates” could verify a real theft. She thought about telling him she knew a fake would have gotten him killed, but the poor dumb schmuck was doomed anyway.

Either Cuelebre would find and kill him, or sooner or later he would piss off one of his “associates.” They would want to know how he got hold of Cuelebre’s property. And now Keith wasn’t going to be able to tell them. How awkward was that.

Then she thought of telling him about her own stupidity since it hadn’t occurred to her to try to pass on a fake to him. Despite a few unusual abilities, Pia didn’t have a larcenous bone in her body. She couldn’t think with the cunning of a criminal.

Besides, she hadn’t dared to do anything but the job once she had realized real Power moved in the shadows behind him. Something was brewing. It was bigger and worse than anything Keith could imagine or she would want to. It smelled dark like assassination or war. She wanted to run as far and as fast as she could away from it.

Never in a million years would she have imagined finding a jar of pennies amid all that blinding treasure in Cuelebre’s lair, or that “take a penny, leave a penny” would come to mind. Everybody did it at gas stations. Why the hell not.

She thought of a whole conversation she could have had with him. Instead she shook her head. It was past time to leave.

“You’ll be sorry!” he shouted at her. “You’ll never find anyone else that will put up with all your bullshit!”

She gave him her middle finger and kept walking.

Alow-level panic continued to urge Pia to run. After several lip-chewing minutes, she decided not to return to her apartment. The difficulty of the decision surprised her. She didn’t own many things that mattered. Her furniture was just furniture, but she did have a few mementos from her mother and she was fond of some of her clothes. Aside from possessions, the real wrench was breaking from the continuity of what home she did have.

Don’t let yourself get too attached to people, places or things, her mother had said. You have to be able to leave everything behind.

Be prepared to run on a moment’s notice.

The definition of their lives had hinged on this. Pia’s mother had kept stashes of cash and different identities for them in a half-dozen places throughout the city. Pia had memorized public transportation routes, lock combinations and safety deposit numbers for all the locations by the time she was six years old. They’d had regular escape-from-New-York drills where she would go through the routes and get access to the documents and cash while her mother followed and observed. The picture IDs got updated as Pia had grown older.

Still, while Pia had nodded and said she understood, the events of last week showed just how much she hadn’t really understood or internalized things. Her mother had died when Pia was nineteen. Now, at twenty-five, she was beginning to realize how sloppy her behavior had become.

It wasn’t just her monumental foolishness at trusting Keith. She had kept up with the regular self-defense and martial arts classes, but she had fallen out of the habit of taking them seriously. Instead she treated them like they were for exercise and entertainment. Now her mother’s early lessons were coming back to haunt her. She only hoped she would survive long enough to appreciate what it meant to be sadder and wiser.

Earlier Pia had wiped out one cache to pay the witch for the binding spell. Now she took a circuitous path to Elfie’s bar in south Chelsea. She managed to hit one safety deposit box before banks closed and a second, less conventional cache hidden at her old elementary school playground. She had three new identities and a hundred thousand dollars in unmarked nonsequential bills stuffed in her backpack, along with a renewed paranoia weighing her down.

When she pushed through the front door to Elfie’s bar, she had begun to feel like she was wearing half the dirt in the city. She felt grubby and hollowed out, emotionally drained and physically hungry. Stress had clogged her throat for days and she hadn’t been able to choke down much food.

Elfie’s was open for lunch during the day. Lunch, served from eleven to three, was a supplemental part of the business, as Elfie’s came alive at night. Quentin, the owner, could have turned it into one of New York’s premiere clubs if he had wanted to. He had the charisma and style for it.

Instead Quentin kept a lid on the business getting too big. Elfie’s was known as a good neighborhood club with a steady, loyal clientele of mixed breeds from all three races. They were the city’s very own Island of Misfit Toys, the flotsam and jetsam of societies, not being fully Wyr, Fae, Elven or human and thus not fully belonging anywhere. Some were open about their mixed-breed nature and argued the benefits of living out of the closet. Many, like Pia, hid what they were and pretended to fit in somewhere.

She had worked at Elfie’s since she was twenty-one, when she had pushed through those same front doors and asked Quentin for a job. It was the only place she had found after her mom had died that came close to feeling like home.

She pushed her way to the servers’ end of the bar and sagged against it. The current bartender on duty, Rupert, paused in slinging drinks and looked at her in surprise. He lifted his chin, silently asking if she wanted him to get her a drink.

She shook her head and mouthed at him, “Where’s Quentin?” The bartender shrugged. She nodded, waved at him, and he went back to work.

Air-conditioning licked her overheated skin. Her eyes threatened to water again as she looked around familiar surroundings. She liked bartending at Elfie’s. She liked working for Quentin. She hoped Captain Fantastic and his hyenas rotted in hell.

The after-work crowd cluttered the large trendy space and lined up three deep for drinks. Low-level magic items and Power sparkled through the constant buzz of conversation. Sports channels played on huge HDTVs on the other side of the bar. Most people watched the wide-screen mounted high in one corner of the bar. She looked up to a CNN newscast.

“. . . and in local news, reports continue to roll in on the extent of the damage from this afternoon’s mysterious event. Meanwhile, speculation continues to run rampant as to the cause.” A blonde lacquered woman, one of CNN’s regulars, gave the camera a professional smile. The reporter stood in front of a sidewalk where crews of workmen were sweeping up mountains of broken glass.

The barfly next to Pia said in a voice that sounded like tumbling rocks, “Hey, gorgeous. Weren’t you taking a week of vacation? What are you doing here on your time off?”

She glanced at the hulking, squat half troll perched on a custom-made steel stool. On his feet, he slouched at eight feet tall with pale gray skin and a thatch of black hair that refused to lie down. “Hey, Preston,” she said. “Yeah, I’m still off. I just need to talk to Quentin for a minute.”

Preston was one of Elfie’s regulars. He declared he lived life on his own terms. A freelance computer programmer, he worked from home during the day and warmed the bar stool at Elfie’s at nights. He drank like a fish and occasionally acted as volunteer bouncer when things got dicey. “You know it’s a bad sign when you can’t leave work at work, honey,” he grunted as he slurped down a tall Coke glass filled with scotch.

“It’s a curse,” she agreed. Pulled by an invisible string, her gaze drifted back up to the overhead screen. She watched in equal parts fascination and horror.

“Quentin went somewhere about twenty minutes ago,” the half-breed troll told her. “Said he’d be right back.”

She nodded as the CNN reporter continued. “. . . Meanwhile public officials confirm that the origin of the event occurred some distance from Cuelebre Tower on Fifth Avenue, in a local park near Penn Station. Cuelebre Enterprises has released a press statement claiming responsibility for the unfortunate ‘research and development accident.’ We now go to Thistle Periwinkle, PR director for Cuelebre Enterprises and one of the more famous spokespersons from the Elder Races.” The scene cut to a small figure surrounded by reporters in front of Cuelebre Tower’s polished chrome and marble veneer.

The crowd at the bar broke into two-fingered whistles, scattered stamping and applause. “WOOT!” “Faerie Barbie—yes!” “My GIRL!”

The petite figure wore a pale pink business suit that accentuated an hourglass figure with a tiny waist. Standing close to five foot ten, Pia always felt like a galumphing horse when she saw the faerie on television. Cuelebre’s famous public mouthpiece wore her fluffy lavender hair in a chic flipped-up bob. She wrinkled her tilted nose with a sympathetic smile as a dozen microphones were thrust in her face.

“God, she’s hot.” Preston heaved a sigh. “What I wouldn’t give for a chance at that.”

Pia gave the huge craggy male a quick glance and scratched at the back of her head. The fact that the cutesy faerie was Cuelebre Enterprises’ PR spokesperson always seemed manipulative to her. Look at how nice and friendly and safe we are, oh my.

The faerie held up a delicate hand. As soon as the shouting quieted, she began to speak. “This will be just a brief statement today. We’ll follow up later with more details as we better understand the situation. Cuelebre Enterprises regrets any inconvenience this incident has caused the good people of New York and promises a prompt resolution to any and all property damage claims.” The faerie’s gamine smile died. She looked dead-on into the lens of the camera, her normally merry expression grim. “Rest assured that Cuelebre is using every resource available to conduct a full investigation. He gives you his personal guarantee that what caused today’s incident will be taken care of swiftly and decisively. There will never be another occurrence.”

So much for cutesy. The crowd of reporters around the faerie stilled. In the bar the constant burr of noise died. Even Rupert stopped serving drinks.

Someone nearby said, “Damn. Did that twee little chick just pull off scary?”

On the wide-screen the scene erupted into chaos again before it cut back to the main newsroom at CNN where the blonde reporter said in an urgent tone, “And there you have it, Cuelebre’s public statement, and didn’t it sound like a loaded one, folks.”

The news show went on to do a brief biographical sketch on Cuelebre. There wasn’t much documented about the reclusive multibillionaire. He was universally acknowledged as one of the oldest Powers in the Elder Races and recognized as the iron-fisted ruler of the New York Wyrkind demesne. He was also a major, if shadowy, power player in the Washington political scene.

Close photographs and film segments of him always blurred. The most detail cameras had been able to capture of him was from pictures taken at a distance. The network showed a couple of snapshots of a group of tough-looking, powerful males. In the midst of them towered a massive, dominant figure caught in aggressive midmotion, dark head turned away.

Cuelebre had never made a public acknowledgment of what he was, but news shows loved to speculate. They avoided claiming anything but made much of how his first name, Dragos, really meant “dragon” and Cuelebre was a mythological giant winged serpent.