That was when he cut and ran to Maine. It was ironic: for once in his life Lovelady had lucked into something genuinely powerful, a big score. But it was too much luck all at once. He was out of his league. He could have dumped his stock, all of it, right there in the middle of the frozen woods, but after a lifetime of greedy scrimping he didn’t quite have the gumption. It would have broken his avaricious heart. Instead he rented a Kozy Kabin in the woods at the off-season rate and conducted a thorough inventory.

He recognized it right away, mixed in with a jumbled consignment of grubby costume jewelry, in a plastic bag tied with a twisty. He didn’t know what it was, but its power was obvious even to his untrained eye.

He motioned Penny over to a corner, reached into the pocket of his seedy overcoat, which he hadn’t taken off all night, and laid the Baggie on a round particleboard bar table. He grinned his livid, discolored grin at Penny. The buttons were ordinary surplus vintage buttons: two holes, four holes, fake leather, fake tortoiseshell, big angular novelty knobs, and tiny bakelite pin-pricks. A few of them were just leftover beads. Penny’s eye immediately went to one of them, a flat, otherwise unremarkable pearlescent-white overcoat button about an inch across. It was heavier than it should have been. It practically vibrated with barely contained magical force.

He knew what it was. He knew better than to touch it.

“A magic button?” Janet said. “How weird. What was it?”

Her hair was a disaster, but she was obscenely relaxed, sipping coffee in an armchair, showing off her legs in a short silk bathrobe. She obviously felt triumphant, relishing her conquest, and by extension her victory over Alice. Quentin hated her at that moment.

“You really don’t know?” Penny said.

Quentin thought he had a guess, but he wasn’t going to say it out loud.

“What did you do?” he said instead.

“I made him come back with me to my house. That night. He wasn’t safe where he was, and at least I had a basic security setup. We called the woman who sold him the consignment, but she insisted the buttons weren’t in her records. The next day we went and got his stuff and drove to Boston, and I gave him eighty thousand dollars for it. He wouldn’t take cash, just gold and diamonds. I practically cleaned out a Harry Winston, but it was worth it. Then I told him to fuck off, and he did.”

“Eighty thousand dollars,” Eliot said, “wouldn’t clear out a display case at a Zales, let alone a Harry Winston.”

Penny ignored him.