Rory scrambled to his feet. He darted across the lobby and out to the landing. But Arthur was bigger and faster, and Rory couldn’t keep up as he chased Arthur down the stairs.

He sprinted out of the cabaret’s building and onto the sidewalk just in time to see Arthur run into the busy street.

“No!”

Brakes screeched. Arthur hit the ground in a roll, popping back up like a puppet on strings on the other side of the road.

The driver of a convertible car stood up, shaking his fist, and shouted in French.

As Rory ran forward, Arthur grabbed the driver and hauled him over the car’s side with the strength Rory rarely saw him fully deploy. Arthur shoved the driver to the side of the road and climbed into the car.

Then, before Rory could reach him, Arthur drove away.

Rory skidded to a halt in the street. A chorus of honks rang out around him as he stared in horror at the disappearing taillights.

“Like a puppet,” he whispered.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Arthur’s hands calmly turned the steering wheel of the Delage DI. His feet calmly pressed the clutch, the brake, the gas pedal. His body calmly drove him out of Paris completely out of his control as his mind screamed.

I shoved him.

The moment replayed itself over and over in his mind: Rory smacking into the balcony’s railing with bruising force, the shocked hurt in his eyes, how he’d had to dodge away from Arthur’s fists.

Stop. Turn around. Go back to Teddy.

But Arthur’s body continued to drive the Delage, and nothing he tried could make it stop. Sebastian de Leon’s words about the Puppeteer’s blood magic came back to him from London.

Body control. Your mind is a helpless prisoner as your body, and your magic, are no longer yours to control.

Arthur didn’t have magic of his own for the Puppeteer to control, only muscles, and oh Christ, he’d used them against Rory.

As he drove, unable to change a thing, he could have sworn his aura was burning. Like an electric storm against his skin, same as it had in the barber’s chair—

Oh.

Oh, of course.

Despair welled in Arthur. He’d been played for a fool, because he hadn’t thought of a barber as a danger. He’d let a stranger take a knife to his throat when they knew blood magic was on the table.

Rory’s magic flared again in his aura, fiery lightning and fury, strong enough that Arthur’s eyes watered even if nothing else in his body twitched.

Like Rory’s magic was fighting. Like it was trying to free Arthur.

Teddy, come on, his mind shouted. You can do this.