“How?” said Arthur. “How did he figure out how to unlock it?”

“By murder and accident,” Sebastian said grimly. “I won’t tell you how, but his coincidental success was why he was already obsessed with the relics when he lured Gwen to him.”

Rory frowned. “What’s its magic?”

“It lets magic work on paranormals just as well as the mundane,” Sebastian said quietly, his fingers wrapping around his glass. “His telepathy would work on even you and Gwen, and like your magic, it’s too strong for me to weaken.”

Rory gestured at Sebastian’s wrist, where the ink of his tattoo poked out from beneath his sleeve. “But telepathy doesn’t work on you, does it? Because that tattoo your cousin inked on you traps it in a whirlpool, same as her paintings do. I couldn’t see you in history and neither could Zhang from the astral plane. So if telepathy doesn’t work, what does? What’s Zeppler got on you?”

Arthur thought he could guess. “Blood magic.”

Sebastian’s tiny wince was confirmation enough.

Rory’s eyebrows went up. “Why? ’Cause it’s violation magic?”

“Remember what Zhang told us in New York?” Arthur said. “Blood magic isn’t in a mundane person’s aura or a paranormal’s magic. It’s directly in the veins. I assume it’s stronger than everything except the relics themselves.”

Sebastian looked down at his drink. “Zeppler doesn’t work alone,” he finally said. “He has a devoted second in command. In English, they call him the Puppeteer.”

“Oh, marvelous, that’s not terrifying at all,” Arthur muttered.

Sebastian turned his tonic water, tiny bubbles clinging to the sides of the clear glass. “Zeppler takes the blood of everyone bound to his service to secure our cooperation. With a drop of your blood, the Puppeteer can make anyone, paranormal or not, do anything he wants.”

Rory and Arthur exchanged a glance. “Mind control?” asked Rory.

“Body control.” Sebastian was still staring at his glass. “Your mind becomes a helpless prisoner while your body, and your magic, is no longer yours to control.”

The way he said it—Arthur could hear the scars in his voice. Discomfort curled in his gut. He liked to think he was a hard man to scare, but the very idea of what Sebastian was hinting at made Arthur ill. “Christ,” he muttered. “Do you know if he has Gwen’s blood?”

Sebastian shook his head. “The Puppeteer was on a side mission when Zeppler went to Paris with the Venom Dagger relic. Zeppler was too eager to try to unlock the dagger to save Gwen’s blood, or Ellis’s, for the Puppeteer. If the baron has one weakness, it’s avarice.”

Arthur tilted his head. “How are you free now?”