Chapter Eleven
It was nearly nine fifteen and Rory still hadn’t shown.
“You’re wearing a hole in the carpet,” Jade said mildly. She was on the settee, wearing a man’s suit again, a houndstooth check Arthur wanted to steal for himself. She looked in the direction of the study’s empty table and tilted her head, listening. “And Zhang says you should relax.”
Arthur ignored them and continued to pace. “What if he didn’t wake?”
“Ace—”
“We kept watch on him night before last night, but what if it wasn’t long enough? What if he dreamed about my tailor again and got stuck? If my suit cost that boy his sanity—”
The bell rang. Jade gave the table a knowing look.
“Don’t you two gang up on me,” he told her. “Just for that, you can get the door.”
She smiled, not looking sorry in the least as she waved a hand. A moment later, the front door swung open by itself. “Hello?” came the tentative call.
Arthur raised his voice. “In the study.”
Rory appeared in the door frame a moment later, scruffy in his cap and suspenders again but otherwise whole. “Sorry I’m late,” he said awkwardly. “I overslept.”
He looked confused as he said it. That wasn’t reassuring.
Arthur pointed at him. “What’s the year?”
Rory’s gaze had traveled to the sun pouring in the study’s large windows, wide eyes making him look even younger than twenty. But at Arthur’s question, he scowled. “I know what year it is.”
“You want your breakfast, you’ll tell it to me,” Arthur said. “And it better be the right one.”
“Ignore Ace,” Jade said, as she got to her feet. “He worries.”
“I do not,” Arthur lied.
Jade took her own advice and ignored him, already leading Rory to the sideboard, where Arthur’s occasional housekeeper, Mrs. Polkowski, had put out coffee and pastries before she’d gone back to Arthur’s parents’ city home.
“It’s because he doesn’t have powers of his own, you know,” Jade was saying to Rory. “I’m afraid he thinks we’re all volatile, delicate flowers.”
“And you’re not?” said Arthur.
Jade gave him a flat look over her shoulder. “He’s fine, Ace.”
Arthur huffed, but Rory did look hale enough, so he grudgingly sat back in his club chair. “Must be that luck of the Irish,” he said dryly.
That earned him another scowl, Rory glaring up from under the cap and behind the glasses. Still cute, damn him. The eyes alone ought to have been illegal.
Rory looked away from Arthur to the study’s large and empty table. “So who’re you and what’s your deal?” he said to the table. “You’re all…glowy.”
Arthur picked up his coffee. “Rory, these are two of my associates. You’ve met Miss Robbins, and the gentleman you can see but I can’t is Zhang Jianwei.”
Rory jerked his head back toward Arthur. “Thewhat?”
Arthur brought the cup to his lips. “I assume you can see Zhang?”
Rory pointed at the table. “The Chinese fella in the fancy suit and bowler hat, sitting right there? Of course I can see him, he’s glowing like a firefly. What do you mean you can’t—” He paused, staring hard at the table, then said, “What the hell is anastral walker?”
“Zhang can walk in the astral plane,” said Arthur. “Which is a charming way to say he can send part of himself across Manhattan without ever leaving his bed. Other paranormals can see him when he does so, but he’s quite invisible to the rest of us.”
“You can’t see him,” Rory repeated. “You can’t see the glowing man sittingright thereat your table?”
