Chapter 28: Chapter 26: Force of wisdom

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> “The Convention plods on in the suffocating heat. Luckily, recruitment efforts are going well. Soon, we will have a full complement of Guild members again.”

The sidewalks were white when I finally exited the subway. I didn’t even know if she would be at the corner, but I was already here so it was worth looking before I messaged her. And somehow my luck finally hit because there she was, with that same stupid box and those same stupid shells that had first dragged me into this mess in the first place.

Polly Janssen.

A family of five all sporting fanny packs was in the middle of having their money stolen by the little punk, and I watched her seamlessly move the ball between the shells just like before. The father was about to tap the left shell when I interrupted.

“I think you want the middle one,” I said, and a look of shock registered on Polly’s face when she saw me.

The father stared at me as if I was crazy and withdrew his hand.

“Look, if I’m wrong, I’ll take the loss,” I said.

“Oh-OK,” he said with an accent I couldn’t quite place, and he moved his hand over to the middle shell and tapped it.

Polly glared at me as she turned over the shell to reveal the ball, and I smiled. She handed the man some money, and he and his family walked away.

“So,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

“It has, hasn’t it, ‘Jade?’” Polly said with a sneer. “Or should I say, Jen?”

“Beatrice told you about me, did she?”

“Yep. Where is she? Or is she out with the family and too busy to give me a message herself?”

“Not exactly. I’m here on my own accord.”

“Oh. Come to yell at me then? Or maybe I should be the one yelling at you, after all the trouble you got me in with my dad.”

“Ah. Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. I’m good at lying. Anyway, what do you want Jen? I assume it’s something you don’t want to tell her about, since you’re ambushing me and all.”

“Sort of. We’re not exactly on speaking terms at the moment.”

“What’d you do? Screw up a Raid?”

“In a way. I need your help. Is there somewhere we can talk? Privately?”

“Sure. I know a place.”

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Sweat dripped down my brow as I waited in the steam-filled room. It had been 20 minutes and there was no sign of Polly. This was getting ridiculous. When I asked if she knew a place, I thought we would just go to the supermarket where she first wrote the call numbers of Rita’s diary on the freezer case. But instead, she had stashed her box in a nearby parking lot and then beckoned me into the subway. We rode in silence, exited at Union Square, and then walked in silence to the East Village until we arrived at a Russian bathhouse.

“This is the place?” I said. “They’re not even going to let you in.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Polly. “Just go in and I’ll meet you in the steam room in a little bit.”

“Fine.”

I had done as she asked and was awkwardly waiting in a towel, hoping some overweight 70-year-old man didn’t come in first.

The door swung open and I saw a figure walk in. The steam was thick so I couldn’t make out who it was, only that the person looked to be tall with blond hair.

A bead of sweat trickled into my eye, and I wiped it away with my hand. But when I opened my eyes again, there was Polly, in a bathing suit.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” I replied. “Did you walk in with someone else?”

“Nope, just me.”

She walked up to the top level of the small room, sat down next to me, and let out a big sigh.

“Nothing better than a steam,” she said.

“Aren’t you a little young for this?”

“No. Besides, it’s the one place I know we won’t be overheard. So, what’s so important that you needed to talk to me and not our mutual friend?”

“It’s a long story.”

I told her everything, from the showdown with Beatrice at the party, to becoming her novice, to the spin class shenanigans, and, finally, the door and the three hidden locations. It was cathartic in a way I hadn’t expected. I had been keeping all of this inside for months, with no one to share it with except a woman who I was half-convinced was going to kill me at some point. I had left out that last part - the truth I had learned about Kate.

“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” said Polly after I had finished. “But I still don’t get why you want my help. You know I work for her, right?”

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“I do. But you’re not going to tell her about this.”

“Oh, I’m not? You’ve got me all figured out?”

“Not exactly. But I’m guessing your dad would be furious to know that you, a Janssen, were working for a grinder like Beatrice.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No, no, of course not,” I said with a smile. “Just putting everything on the table.”

“Fine. I’ll help you. Just this once.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s called crypto-ink.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The tattoo. You were right, there is a second type of ink. Although I’ve never heard of someone using it for a tattoo. Smart. Would be harder to get all the hidden information.”

“So you don’t think I got it all? That there’s a fourth set of numbers in the tattoo.”

“I don’t know. Each new layer requires that much more…wait a minute.”

Polly stood up and walked down to the door, which was covered in condensation.

“So you started in New Jersey, right?”

“Yeah, in Weehawken.”

She made a little circle on the left side of the door.

“Right, and then you went up to Harlem.”

Polly drew a diagonal line up from the first dot, stopping slightly off center about three-quarters of the way up the door.

“And finally, you came down to Long Island City.”

The girl added another diagonal line going down to the right side of the door, forming two sides of a triangle. She completed the shape, connecting the first and third dots and then took a few steps back.

“Clever idea,” Polly said. “Hide the three corners in the tattoo, but omit the actual location.”

“Wait, so the real location…”

Polly nodded.

I walked down to the door and drew a line from each corner to its opposite leg. They intersected in the middle, at a location that was probably somewhere in Manhattan.

“Holy crap,” I said, standing back from the rudimentary map. I looked over at Polly, noticing for the first time that she was sporting a silver ring on her right hand that she hadn’t been wearing earlier.

The door suddenly swung open, and it was only then that I felt my finger tug toward it.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Beatrice from the doorway.

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The three of us sat in silence around a small table in the empty bar behind the coffee shop. It was an hour before opening and the bouncer, after some prodding from Beatrice, had let Polly in. I held my water glass close to my chest, as if that would stop someone with an arsenal of alchemy at her fingertips from slipping in a drop of poison.

“So,” I said, looking at the two of them.

“So,” said Beatrice.

“Yep.”

I looked down at my glass, debating whether to take a sip or at least pretend to.

“Well, this is enthralling,” said Polly. “Is there a reason I still need to be here? I already figured out the location and you were going to…”

“Zip it,” Beatrice said to Polly with a scowl. “Jen, was there some reason you decided to keep all this to yourself and then go and ask Polly for help? I already told you she worked for me. What did you think was going to happen?”

“Kate O’Laughlin,” I said, wondering if the Medoblad was still in Beatrice’s bag, which was resting unattended under the table.

Beatrice took a long sip of her water. There was a note of sadness in the eyes that I couldn’t believe, after what I had seen.

“Those stupid apples. More trouble than they’re worth.”

“That’s it?” I raised my voice slightly. “You killed her!”

If this revelation was news to Polly, she didn’t show it. Another sociopath in the making apparently.

“How much did you see?” Beatrice asked.

“Enough to know that I don’t want anything to do with you.”

Beatrice let out a long sigh.

“You know, the first time I did it, I couldn’t sleep for months afterward. I told myself that it had to be done, that Doug wasn’t going to leave me alone. But with Kate, it was easier. She came after me first, did you see that part?”

I nodded.

“So then what’s the issue? I told you last time we were here that I would kill you if you fucked with me. Kate fucked with me, so I dealt with her. If the Guild has no qualms about killing people that get in their way, then why should I?”

She reached under the table and I recoiled, expecting the worst.

“Relax,” said Beatrice. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

Beatrice plunked her hand down with a thud and pushed something toward me. It was the Medoblad.

“What…what are you doing?”

“What does it look like? Giving you a show of trust. Like I said, I don’t need this to kill you. Also if I used it, then I’d be stuck with an incredibly heavy stone statue of you and what am I going to do with that? Put it in my living room?”

“No, but why are you giving this to me? After what happened before…”

I picked up the knife. Its handle was smooth, the material definitely ivory, and it was surprisingly light, even with the leather scabbard.

“You don’t look like a crazed adderallic at the moment. Plus we need to start taking precautions, and I’m highly doubtful of your ability to properly defend yourself.”

“What are you talking about?” Polly chimed in finally.

“Not you. What are you even still doing here?” said Beatrice.

“I was asking myself the very same question. But there is the little matter of my payment…”

“Oh. Fine. Here.”

Beatrice retrieved a small box from her bag and put it in Polly’s hands.

“Now you can go.”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Polly said as she got up and walked toward the coffee shop, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or both of us. Given that she betrayed me to Beatrice before I had even had the chance to blackmail her, I didn’t exactly feel like thanking her.

“What did you give her?” I asked, once Polly was completely out of sight.

“That? Oh, a smidge of the ink. Just enough to get her into trouble, I’m sure.”

“Aren’t you worried about what she could do with it?”

I could think of a lot of things I would do with that ink and the idea that more people were running around the city with it gave me the chills.

“I probably should be, but we have bigger problems to worry about.”

The ease with which we had returned to our regular banter worried me. Did she not care that I had gone behind her back? It was unnerving, but I needed to keep up a normal front, as difficult as that was, now that I knew what Beatrice was truly capable of.

“Such as?”

“The Guild. I think they’re following me.”

“Shit. How do you know?”

“I just have a feeling, ever since I turned in the location of the door. It’s partially why I haven’t been in touch. That and you brought me to the wrong apartment.”

“What do you mean the wrong apartment?” I asked.

“Did you think it was a particularly good idea to bring me, passed out, back to my Madison Avenue apartment, so that my husband and son could see me like that?

“Oh. I’m … I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, I’m over it. Never thought I would have to use the memory serum on my own kid. Garrett, I’ve given it to him so many times that I think he’s developing a tolerance to it, but Jack-Jack …”

Beatrice took a swig of her drink and I pretended not to see her eyes tearing up.

“Anyway, you should be careful,” she said. “I don’t know if they know about you, but we should assume that they do. Try not to take the same routes you normally do. Switch the time of your coffee break. Anything to break up your routine.”

“But why now? We can’t even open the door.”

“Exactly. So the next logical step for me would be to reach out to my source and ask for help. And that’s when they would strike.”

“But don’t you get these tips all the time? Why do they care about this one?”

“No, it’s not like that. I get one maybe once a year, if I’m lucky. And I’ve never failed before. But thanks to Polly, it looks like I’m not about to start. Now, let’s see these pictures.”

I reluctantly handed Beatrice my phone, and she put it beside hers, which she used to insert the three sets of coordinates into some sort of map app. The three points appeared on the screen and Beatrice connected them all to form a triangle, just like Polly had done on the steam room door. Then, Beatrice drew lines from each point to the opposite side and zoomed in on the intersection.

“Well,” said Beatrice. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“What?” I asked, peering down at the map, which showed the intersection forming right over a museum.

“You up for robbing the Met?”