“I’m all dressed and I’ve put my makeup on.”

“No,” I growled.

“What if this is a clever ploy and while you’re at dinner Hugh d’Ambray comes and kidnaps me?”

Oh, for the love of . . .

“You won’t be able to get it out of your head now,” Julie called. “You’ll worry about it all night.”

Curran laughed.

I sank deeper into the water.

Why me? Why?

“Also, Ascanio is downstairs,” Julie said. “He says that he was charming and the cranky neighbor’s name is Justin Thomas Rogers. Ascanio has the address. Mr. Rogers’s daughter reported him missing yesterday. He got this picture. I’m sliding it under the door now.”

Curran walked into the bathroom and held a photograph to me. A middle-aged man looked back at me, balding, thin but somewhat flabby. The giant that had rampaged through the Guild had worn his face. There it was, the confirmation we’d been looking for.

“Can I tell him that you remember him now?” Julie asked. “He invited me to his pity party, and I really want to leave.”

CHAPTER

19

I WALKED INTO Applebee’s wearing my work clothes: loose dark pants, boots, a gray sweater, and a simple black jacket. Sarrat’s weight rested comfortably between my shoulders. Curran walked next to me. He wanted to wear sweatpants, because “they tear easier.” I asked him if he wanted me to get him some male stripper jeans so he could avoid looking like a Russian gangster from pre-Shift movies, after which he got all offended and put on a pair of regular jeans instead.

Julie brought her Kestrel axes. She also wore her big black steel-toed boots, the burgundy-colored sweater I’d knitted for her, and a short pleated skirt with no stockings despite the cold. Some things had no logical explanation. You just had to roll with it.

The hostess looked at the three of us and pointed to the sign above her head. “We have a strict no-weapons policy.”

“What if my fists are lethal weapons?” Julie asked.

A manager emerged from the back room, saw us, and nearly sprinted down the hallway.

“You may keep your fists,” the hostess said. “But—”

The manager nearly slid to a halt in front of us. “This way. Your table is waiting.”

The hostess opened her mouth and snapped it shut.

He led us to the back of the restaurant to a table by a window. The table was designed to seat six. My father sat by himself, wrapped in a plain brown cloak. The cloak had seen better days and the deep hood that hid his face was frayed. He was trying his best to be inconspicuous, his magic folded and wrapped around him. His “god in beggar clothing” act was impressive, but I saw through it anyway.