Arthur’s postcard stared back at him.

Kept safe in Rory’s trunk with the postcards and his Italian compass was the maintenance key to Arthur’s apartment that Rory had once stolen. Arthur had mailed it back to him just after he left with Jade and Zhang.

You are welcome here, he’d written in the letter, because Arthur was generous, and had taken a stranded Rory in, offering his own bed before they’d even slept together.

But Rory’s own words to Mrs. Brodigan replayed in his mind.

Everyone oughta have a savings that’s all their own, just in case.

That’s rather cynical of you, dear.

Sometimes people bail on the ones they’re supposed to take care of.

Rory carefully set the postcard to the side where he wouldn’t crush it. Maybe he was cynical. He trusted Arthur as much as he could possibly trust another person. But he still needed his own money, because sometimes even the people you were supposed to be able to trust with your life bailed on you, and it wasn’t Arthur’s job to take care of him in the first place.

He turned back to the want ads spread around the bed. Bank clerks, office boys, automobile painters, boat builders—he didn’t know how to do any of that. A few ads for salesmen, but he hated sales.

Wanted—waiter to start immediately. Must be neat.

The restaurant was a nice one in Midtown, maybe a thirty-minute walk if he pushed it. Neat, though; he’d have to mend some clothes.

He chewed on the end of his pen for a moment, then circled the ad.

Arthur had been to Niagara Falls a handful of times, mostly on the American side. Now, in Ontario, he stood on the viewing platform and watched the horseshoe-shaped Canadian falls thunder over the rocks and drop thirteen stories, filling the air with mist. Far below, a tour boat floated in the water, and several families with excited children were milling on the platform at the base of the elevator, waiting for their turn to tour the scenic tunnels under the falls.

Jade stood on his right, also watching the falls from under a pretty umbrella. “Is Zhang having any luck?” he asked her.

“Not too much security,” she said. “We should be able to come back tomorrow night and slip behind the falls.” She made a face. “But I’m not going to be much help, because Madame Legrand was right on both counts; the falls are one of the natural phenomena that impact magic, and they do neutralize the magic around them. Jianwei’s astral projection can’t go through them.”

Arthur straightened, heartened. “So maybe this plan has a chance.” A chance to destroy the pomander and its magic that could enslave non-magic minds, that Rory had been so determined to hide the key to its lock that he would have withstood torture.