“Felix,” Nell said as she turned, relieved. He was in a custom, perfectly tailored tux, shoes shining, and looked incredible—like a diplomat or a movie star. “Finally! I’m glad you’re here.”
“Give it to me now,” Francis murmured tensely. “For your own good.”
“You know what,” Nell said, moving farther from him and closer to Felix. “I think I know what’s for my own good.”
“I need to talk to you,” Felix said to her.
“Please,” Francis repeated. “It’s not safe.” He took a step closer to her, and she moved back again. She could see in the strain of his expression that he was desperate not to lose her, but like at the funeral, he wouldn’t talk openly about the map now that someone else had joined the conversation.
“All of this is ridiculous,” she said, and he flinched, his eyes begging her not to reveal anything to Felix. “You’re embarrassing. I can’t believe my father was mixed up in whatever this is. A joke. A scam.”
“Nell—” Francis said, frantic, warning, at the same time that Felix said her name, too.
“You won’t believe what he told me,” she said to Felix, raising her voice slightly over Francis’s whispered protests. “He said that Agloe is a real place. Like an actual, physical place, that we can go to with the map, like”—she sneered as she said the last word—“magic.”
“Nell.”
She finally realized that Felix wasn’t the same as when she’d seen him the night before. He was much quieter now. Colder. He seemed to have not even registered the utter ridiculousness of what she’d just said, in fact.
“I just passed Irene Pérez Montilla on the way in,” he continued once she’d gone silent.
It took her a moment to change gears.
“What?” Nell asked.
“She told me she’d just come from chatting with you, and that I could find you near the hanging Ratzer piece. She looked upset, so I asked her if she’d had a chance to talk to you about Dr. Young’s map yet. ‘There was no map,’ she said.”
Oh no.
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
Nell bit her lip to keep from cursing. “I can explain.”
“You were never going to do it.”
“I just need a little more time,” she pleaded.
But the hope had already gone out of his eyes.
“Come on,” she said. “You couldn’t honestly have expected me to turn it all over without—”
“I did,” Felix replied. “Because you promised you would. I trusted you.”
Nell cringed. “I’m sorry, Felix, but this is important.”
“And I’m not?” he asked.
But he didn’t look angry. He just looked sad.
“I thought it was going to be different this time. That we were going to do things together. But here we are, again. I’ve done everything you’ve asked to help you, but you’re doing whatever you want, without telling me what’s going on, without stopping to think if it might hurt me. Expecting me to simply fall in line.”
He was talking about the Junk Box Incident now, she knew.
“That’s not fair.” Her throat was uncomfortably tight. “There was no way I could have known my father was going to turn on us like that, back then.”
“But you didn’t have to fight him on it. To push him that far.”