Rory started up the steps to his own building. He’d get into his room and calm down, figure out what the hell he could do without Arthur, Jade, or Zhang.
Somewhere on the upper floors, a couple was fighting. Rory hesitated, but he only heard shouting, not blows or kids crying, so he let it alone and trudged up the rest of the way, pausing only to shake the shoulder of the large white man snoring against the rail. “Frankie, go inside. It’s freezing and you reek of gin. Bulls are gonna catch you.”
Frank only grunted. “Scram.” He turned his shoulder and huddled into his coat.
Rory sighed and went inside. There was a small crowd in the cramped front room, playing cards around the one unbalanced table. Rory slunk past them, but not before Miss O’Connell saw him.
“Hey! Rory!” She managed the building for some prick on Fifth Avenue, and like Mrs. Brodigan, her gray hair still had its original red mixed in. Unlike Mrs. Brodigan, she had a perpetual sour frown. “Rent’s almost due.”
Rory ducked his head. “I’m gonna have it, Miss O.”
“It’s extra this month.”
Rory stopped in his tracks. “What? Why?”
“You know there’re no visitors.”
“What visitors?” he demanded.
“The man with the accent and nice coat. I saw him coming out your room not an hour ago.”
Ace?Rory’s anger was gone as he pushed past the last of the crowd and tore up the stairs as fast as he could, cresting the third-floor landing with almost a jump.Did Ace come to see me, did he come to make up—?
But he froze in the hall, his brain finally catching up to his heart. How could Arthur have beaten him here? HeknewArthur wasn’t here: if he reached for him now, he could feel Arthur to the southeast of Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown maybe.
His heart began to pound.
Who the hell had been in his room?
He approached the door on silent feet. He’d never replaced the flimsy lock Arthur had picked those weeks ago. It wasn’t much security, but Rory didn’t have much to steal.
The door looked as it always had. But instead of reaching for the knob and going inside, Rory put his palm flat on the door and let his magic get there first.
The hall of Rory’s boardinghouse is empty. Frankie is in his room, singing loud and off-key, probably zozzled on the cheap bathtub gin Abe is making on the fourth floor.
The hall looks as it always has: narrow, dark, the floor scuffed and the walls dirty.
Then—it flickers, like a moving picture where the film comes off the reel.
It flickers again.
And then, just as with Grand Central Station, there’s nothing to see.
Rory pulled himself out of the vision and stumbled backward, away from the door.
The paranormals had been here. They’d been at his door, in his room, and he couldn’t see what they’d done because his magic couldn’t see those minutes of history.
Rory didn’t wait to see if he could learn more, or if anyone was coming back. Because if the paranormals knew enough to come here, they might know enough to keep on looking for Rory.
And they might know to look for Rory at the antiques shop, where Lizbeth Meyers would be home from school on Saturday and hoping to find Rory for jacks.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The organ had started by the time Arthur was hurrying inside the stunning, cavernous St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 50th and Fifth Avenue, the new cap for Rory in a hatbox tucked under his arm. He gave the cap and his own overcoat and top hat to the coat check, and ducked his head as he walked quickly up the right aisle, gaze on the rows of graceful white arches and careful not to meet any of his family’s eyes as he slid into pew twenty.
Where he had more space than anticipated.
As the music rung off the soaring ceiling and stained glass, Arthur glanced down the dark wooden pew. Five red-eyed English gentlemen, shaking off the last of a night at the Magnolia and the shocking murder of one of their party’s valet; three English ladies, perfectly coifed, and if they’d gotten up to anything illegal the night before, they were hiding it better than the gents.
