“In Manhattan?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“There are gardens. Community gardening is very big, and there are rooftop and container gardens. She could teach them a lot of things, I’m sure.”
“Maybe we could get the boss to invite her out for dinner.”
“Bite your tongue!” I snapped, getting queasy at the idea of my boss and my grandmother getting cozy. They already seemed to like each other more than was comfortable for me.
“They don’t have to date. They could just spend time talking shop.”
“But what if something did happen and she decided to stay permanently? Even if she moved out of your place, she’d still be around, meddling.”
“Okay, then, garden club it is. We’ll do an Internet search and ask around the office tomorrow.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the idea that he wanted alone time as much as I did. I was still grinning when we reached Union Square and left the train. My grin faded when he whispered, “Don’t turn around, but try to look around casually the first chance you get.”
I gulped. “You mean Sam was right about watching ourselves? Does he have some kind of precognition?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell if you’re being followed in a place this crowded, but I have a funny feeling.”
He led us on a more roundabout than usual route out of the station. The area around the park was still pretty crowded with commuters leaving the subway station, and we stuck to the busier Park Avenue to head uptown instead of cutting over to Irving Place, like we usually did. Eventually, though, to get to Owen’s home we had to go down one of his neighborhood’s quiet side streets, where there wasn’t a lot of traffic—vehicular or otherwise. It was the kind of neighborhood where I didn’t mind walking alone at night. When I saw in the rearview mirror of a parked car that a small group of young men had followed us, I realized that today was apparently different.
They looked like gangsters. That is, they looked like gangsters in a high-school production of West Side Story. They didn’t much resemble the current breed of street toughs that you almost never saw in the vicinity of Gramercy Park. In spite of my nerves, I had an overwhelming urge to bend forward and snap my fingers menacingly as I walked down the sidewalk. Then we passed another car’s mirror and I caught a glint of metal in the reflection. These guys were armed, so I doubted they were going to limit themselves to intimidating us through virtuoso choreography.
“Do you remember that shield spell you learned today?” Owen whispered.