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It isn’t you she wants.

It’s the Alchemist.

It wasn’t true. He refused to believe the worst in Nina Harrow.

He knew her.

He shook the idea from his mind and stalked into Colson’s. He did not regard a single person as he rounded the bar, went through the kitchen and out the back door, his eyes on the little brown house in the courtyard.

Patrick entered his mother’s kitchen, shucked off his coat, and let it drop to the floor. Tentatively, he pulled the blackened coin from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. The head of Lord Tanner on one side, a canary on the other.

For a long time, he simply stared at it, then he tossed it and let it fall into his palm. The canary glinted back at him.

He sighed deeply, shaking his head again. “I trust her,” he mumbled to himself, then replaced the coin in his breast pocket.

He reached the Scribbler’s cranny just as a piece of parchment from the top of the stack crinkled, ink appearing where there had been none.

Other scribbles from the day were waiting, but his eyes glued to the cursive now winding slowly across this latest one in a hand he did not recognize.

The lettering was slow. Deliberate. The words took an eternity to form.

But form they did, right before him, in punishing bold ink.

And every letter made him cold.

To the attention of Patrick Colson, with urgency.

Trouble with the Alchemist.

Please attend at earliest.

Patrick dropped into a chair. No name attached to the scribble.

It isn’t you she wants. It’s the Alchemist.He felt the words burn in his pocket.

And in his mind, walloping from some corner he’d bidden it into, came Nina’s voice.You wouldn’t make the sacrifice? Not even to save your own men? Your ownfather?

Slowly, as though it had lain dormant and waiting, a voice of reason rose its head. It berated him for being a fool.

He took the scribble and tucked it alongside Theodore’s message, then left his mother’s kitchen and carried his unwilling body back to the hotel, his eyes on the windows high above.

At the bar, Otto and Scottie sat talking softly. Both looked up at the sight of Patrick coming toward them.

“You all right, Pat?” Otto said, the man’s warm features etching slowly in worry.

Patrick spoke in a voice not his own. “I need you tonight, boys. Urgent business.”

Minutes later, Patrick arrived in front of room fifteen without remembering how he’d gotten there. But for the shake of muscle in his legs, he might have sprouted wings and flown.

He didn’t go in immediately. Instead, he bottled the rage slowly brewing, creeping up his throat and filling his mouth. His vision blurred. The door distended. Beyond it, there would be Nina.

She loves me, Patrick told himself, over and over. He knew that, didn’t he? Didn’t it burn in her eyes when she looked at him?

He opened the door to a dark, tepid room. From the bed came deep, rhythmic breaths, hair strewn across a pillow, fathoms of perfect bare skin.

Nina rolled over as he descended beside her. Her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled. She curled into his side. All the lines of her pressed to all the lines of him. He let his fingers wonder down the curve of herwaist. He felt her breaths lengthen, her languid heart beating reassuringly against him.

And already he felt the call of sleep. His body slackened immediately, expectantly. How easily she could spell him into stupor.