“Good.” The old man thrust his hand toward Nick. “Here. Take it. Put it on.”

Slowly, Nick reached over and took the ring. The old man’s skin felt cold and scaly. “What?”

“Put it on,” the old man repeated.

“No, it’s not for me-it’s for a lady friend,” Nick said.

“It doesn’t want her,” the old man said flatly, an edge to his voice. “Put it on.”

Nick shook his head. “There’s no way it’ll fit,” he warned, slipping the filigreed gold onto his right ring finger. Sure enough, it stopped at the second knuckle. “See? It-”

And broke off as the ring somehow suddenly slid the rest of the way to the base of the finger.

“It likes you,” the old man said approvingly. “It knows you can do it.”

“It knows I can do what?” Nick demanded, pulling on the ring. But whatever trick of flexible sizing had allowed it to get over the knuckle, the trick was apparently gone. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s the Ring of the Nibelungs,” the old man said solemnly.

“The what?”

“The Ring of the Nibelungs,” the old man repeated, the somber tone replaced by irritation. “Crafted hundreds of years ago by the dwarf Alberich from the magic gold of the Rhinemaidens. It carries the power to create wealth for whoever possesses it.” His lip twisted. “Don’t you ever listen to Wagner’s operas?”

“I don’t get to the Met very often,” Nick growled, twisting some more at the Ring. “Come on, get this thing off me.”

“It won’t come off,” the old man said. “As I said, it likes you.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Nick shot back. “Come on, give me a hand.”

“Just take it,” the old man said. “There’s no charge.”

Nick paused, frowning. “No charge?”

“Not until later,” the other said. “Shall we say ten percent of your earnings?”

Nick snorted. The way things were going, a deal like that would soon have the old man owing him money. “Deal,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll just back up the armored car to your door, okay?”

The other smiled, his eyes glittering all the more. “Good-bye, Mr. Powell,” he said softly. “I’ll be seeing you.”

Nick was two blocks away, still trying to get the Ring off, when it suddenly occurred to him that he’d never told the old man his name.

There weren’t any messages from Lydia waiting on his machine. He thought about calling her, decided that it wouldn’t accomplish anything, and ate his dinner alone. Afterward, for the same reason people tune into the eleven o’clock news to see a repeat of the same multicar crash they’ve already seen on the six o’clock news, he turned on his computer and pulled up the data on the international stock markets.

Only to find that, to his astonishment, the six o’clock crash wasn’t being repeated.

He stared at the screen, punching in his trader passcode again and again. The overall Nikkei average was down by nearly the same percentage as the Dow. But somehow, impossibly, Nick’s stocks had not only survived the drop but had actually increased in value.

All of his stocks had.

He was up until after four in the morning, checking first the Nikkei, then the Hang Seng, then the Sensex 30, then the DJ Stoxx 600. It was the same pattern in all of them: The overall numbers bounced up and down like fishing boats in a rough sea, but Nick’s own stocks stubbornly defied the trends, rising like small hot-air balloons over the violent waters.

He fell asleep at his desk about the time the London exchanges were opening… and when he awoke, stiff and groggy, the NYSE had been open for nearly an hour, he was two hours late for work, and already he’d made up nearly everything he’d lost in the previous two days. By the time the market closed that afternoon, his portfolio’s value had made it back to where it had been before the free fall started.

By the end of the next week, he was a millionaire.

He broke the news to Lydia over their salads that Saturday at Sardis ’s. To his annoyed surprise, she wasn’t happy for him.

In fact, just the opposite. “I don’t like it, Nick,” she said, her face somber and serious in the candlelight. “It isn’t right.”

“What’s not right about it?” Nick countered, trying to keep his voice low. “Why shouldn’t one of the little people get some of Wall Street’s money for a change?”

“Because this was way too fast,” Lydia said. “It’s not good to get rich so quickly.”

Nick shook his head in exasperation. “This is one of those things I can’t win, isn’t it?” he growled. “I head into the Dumpster and you don’t like it. I turn around and bounce into the ionosphere, and you still don’t like it. Can you give me a hint of what income level you would like me to have?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Lydia said, her eyes flashing with some exasperation of her own. “It’s not about the money. It’s about your obsession with it.”

“Could you keep your voice down?” Nick ground out, glancing furtively around the dining room.

“Because you’re just as focused on money now as you were a week ago,” Lydia said, ignoring his request. “Maybe even more so.”

“Only because I’ve got more to be focused on,” Nick muttered. Heads were starting to turn, he noted with embarrassment, as nearby diners began to tune in on the conversation.

“Exactly,” Lydia said. “And I’m sorry, but I can’t believe someone can make a million dollars in two weeks without some serious obsessing going on.”

Heads were definitely turning now. “Half the people in this room do it all the time,” Nick said, wishing that he’d waited until dessert to bring this up. Now they were going to have to endure the sideways glances through the whole meal.

Still, part of him rather liked the fact he was being noticed by people like this. After all, he was on his way to being one of them.

“I’m just worried about money getting its claws into you, that’s all,” Lydia persisted.

Out of sight beneath the table, Nick brushed his fingers across the filigreed surface of the Ring that, despite every effort, still wouldn’t come off. “It won’t,” he promised.

“Then prove it,” Lydia challenged. “If money’s not your master, give some of it away.”

The old shopkeeper’s face superimposed itself across Lydia ’s. Ten percent of your profits, Mr. Powell. “I can do that,” Nick said, suppressing a shiver. “No problem.”

“And I don’t mean give it to the IRS,” Lydia said archly. “I mean give some of it to charity or the community.”

“No problem,” Nick repeated.

Lydia still didn’t look convinced. But just then a pair of waiters appeared at their table, one sweeping their salad plates deftly out of their way as the other uncovered freshly steaming plates, and for the moment at least that conversation was over.

Despite the rocky start, the meal turned out to be a very pleasant time. Lydia might like to claim the high ground in her opinions about money, a small cynical part of Nick noted, but she had no problem enjoying the benefits that money could bring.

They were halfway through crème brulee for two when a silver-haired man in an expensive suit left his table and his dark-haired female companion and came over. “Good evening,” he said, laying a gold-embossed business card beside Nick’s wine glass. “I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation earlier. My congratulations on your recent achievement.”

“Thank you,” Nick said, his heartbeat picking up as the name on the card jumped out at him. This was none other than David Sonnerfeld, CEO of one of the biggest investment firms in the city. “I was just lucky.”

“That kind of luck is a much sought-after commodity on Wall Street,” Sonnerfeld said, smiling at Lydia. “Would you by any chance be interested in exploring a position with Sonnerfeld Thompkins?”

“He already has a job,” Lydia put in.

“Actually, I don’t,” Nick corrected her. “I quit this afternoon.”