Rory stared at the skyline in the distance. “Look at Manhattan.” He pushed his glasses up his nose, round black frames like his old ones but lenses about ten times nicer because Arthur had bought them, and apparently rich people even got to see better than poor folks. He could see every tiny whitecap on the waves here, where the ocean and the Hudson met.
He pointed to one of the skyscrapers under construction. “I think that’s the one I went up on with Arthur.”
“It’s lovely from a distance.” Sasha was repinning her new bobbed hair, probably to keep it out of her eyes from the constant breeze that smelled of salt and diesel. “It’s still likely that we’re all the only paranormals in the city. But...”
She trailed off. Rory wrapped his arms around himself. “But it is weird a boat caught on fire in the middle of the Hudson and had to turn around.”
They’d taken the first ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island that morning. It was a risk, leaving the magical protections that had been set in Manhattan, but if there was a chance someone was trying to breach those protections, Rory was going to find out.
Or at least, he’d planned to.
“Boats have oil,” Sasha said. “Perhaps someone threw their cigarette in the wrong place.”
“Boats also use lead paint.” He was still sore about it. “How am I supposed to see who’s lighting fires if I can’t see the past?”
“How rude of them not to take your psychometry into account when they painted the ferry,” she said, teasing.
He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Fire happened to be on the one boat with a fresh coat of lead paint,” he said. “Could be a big coincidence. But all I’m saying is that if I were hiding my tracks from other paranormals, I’d pick that ferry too.”
She scrunched her nose. “True,” she admitted. “But even if you couldn’t scry, we can still carry out our other plan.”
Rory touched the heavy box in his pocket. She was right, because for this they’d needed to be somewhere without other people around.
From the ferry, they’d walked until they’d found a stretch of rocks with no one else to see. Pavel had walked up to the road for a quick scout, and now from behind them, he called down something in Russian.
“He’s ready,” said Sasha. “Come. Let’s set our barrier.”
Zhang’s cousin, Ling, had been helping them come up with a safe way for Rory to practice with the Tempest Ring. She’d given them a pink powder in tins, promising it would act as an absorbing wall for magic.
But what about a relic’s magic? Rory had asked.
She’d made a face.Let me know,she’d said apologetically, because how would she? They knew so little about what could control the ring’s magic, which was exactly why Rory needed to take advantage of this trip to practice.
Pavel was already dusting along the line where the shore’s rocks became grass. The powder wasn’t something he’d made; as far as Rory knew, he hadn’t made a potion since he’d started wearing the polarity-reversing lodestone to stop his magic from choking him. Now it hung on a longer cord so it could be hidden under his shirt. Rory had scried its history, seen the once-in-centuries moment five hundred years earlier, when the lightning bolt struck a paranormal and the fallen body had bled onto rocks, in the process transferring its magic to a chunk of magnetite.
Macabre, and Rory could’ve done without seeing that death, but he’d wanted to know it’d be safe for Pavel to wear, and as far as he could find, it was. The magnetite had been found and broken into pieces. What happened to the other pieces, Rory didn’t know, but he’d seen the history of the piece that was now Pavel’s.
The lodestone wasn’t the pomander.
Rory walked several yards down from Sasha and began to sprinkle the powder along the rocks. It’d been several weeks since he and Arthur had gotten away from Hyde with that particular relic. The pomander was with Arthur now, and Jade and Zhang, somewhere up in Canada, too far away for Rory to find Arthur’s location with the link. They were trying to destroy the pomander before it was ever used against the non-magical, and Rory could appreciate that, even if he had to work and couldn’t go off with them.
He still missed Arthur so much it hurt.
He met Sasha back on the rocks a few minutes later.
“You are ready?” asked Sasha.
The ring was in a new lead box in his pocket, its heavy weight unmistakable. “Not really,” he admitted.
She smiled sympathetically. “If the wind gets out of control, I knock you out. One hit.”
Rory chewed his lip. He hadn’t put the ring back on since Arthur had finally gotten it off the night Rory had wrecked Jade’s speakeasy. He wasn’t sure he’d ever want to put it on again.
But there was a telepath out there who knew about Rory now, who knew he saw history and had secrets in his mind. A telepath who had once sent his lieutenant to torture Arthur, who might send more people after them. After Arthur.
Rory’s jaw tightened. He couldn’t be afraid of the ring, because if he was ever gonna meet Baron Zeppler, he was doing it with a gale at his beck and call.
He knelt on the beach and, with a quick curse against the stinging lead, set the box on the sand in front of him. He took a bracing breath, then quickly popped open the top. The ring shone against the gray day, bright gold and brilliant jewels. Rory stared at it for a moment. Then, without letting himself hesitate, he slipped it back on his finger.
