“But the moon is in play now,” said Jade. “And we’re hoping it’s strengthened the magic-dampening effect.”
“It has.” Zhang’s eyes were closed. “I can only go as far as the door.”
Jade rubbed her hands. “That’s promising.”
Zhang opened his eyes, nodding. “There may be deeper parts of the tunnels where magic still works, but I can’t get to them. Let’s aim for the window that overlooks the falls.”
The pomander was in its heavy lead box, tucked in Arthur’s coat pocket. He hadn’t forgotten what it was like when it was out of its box, the terrible scent that had choked his throat and made him retch. He wasn’t looking forward to opening it again. “Well, we should know fairly quickly if the falls’ dampening effect works on the pomander,” he said grimly, “because this relic reeks.”
The lock on the door to the tunnels gave way easily enough to Arthur’s lock picks. There wasn’t anything to steal, after all; the locks were only a safety measure designed to keep out daredevils and thrill seekers.
They turned on their flashlights and stepped inside, the gray rock shiny and wet in the beams. Arthur hadn’t been here since childhood, and the new tunnel built last year was longer than the old one he vaguely remembered from the tour his family had taken. It was strangely quiet in the deepest parts of the tunnels, the pounding water distant.
But as they turned down a long tunnel and approached the back of the waterfall, the volume grew again. Finally, they were standing at the end of one tunnel, just behind the guardrail that separated the last few feet of tunnel from the opening cut like a window into the rock directly behind the falls.
Arthur’s flashlight beam danced over the streaming water just beyond the rock’s edge. “How’s your magic, you two?”
“I’m trying to lift off Zhang’s hat,” Jade said wryly, “and it won’t budge.”
“I can’t project at all,” Zhang added.
Arthur put the flashlight beam on his watch. “It’s just oh-three-hundred now,” he said. “Moon is at its zenith.”
“We’ll need to get close as we can to the water,” Jade said, but in the edge of the flashlight, Arthur saw her make a face.
“Something wrong?” Zhang asked her.
Her expression turned almost sheepish. “I don’t like unpleasant scents.”
Zhang blinked. “Scents? Really?”
“You’re a telekinetic, bootlegging ex-spy,” said Arthur.
“I like perfume!” she protested. “Flowers, fresh fruit, those sorts of things. Not...” She waved a hand in the general direction of Arthur’s pocket. “You know. That thing. I already know the scent made grown men vomit.”
“I was one of them,” Arthur muttered. “For what it’s worth, when Hyde opened it on that ocean liner in Philadelphia, it hit me much harder than it hit him. I was vomiting; he was barely slowed. And it became easier to bear when Rory remade the link, so perhaps being paranormal will give you protection.”
“Hyde’s magic had been altered by Baron Zeppler and a relic, though,” said Zhang. “He’d lost his ability to shift back to fully human form, but his magic was likely stronger than ours and gave more protection. And down here, where our magic’s dampened, we may not have any extra protection at all.”
“So we’re all going to hate it.” Jade sighed. “Come on. It’ll be worse if we put this off.”
She’d dressed in combat boots, not her usual heels, and climbed gracefully over the railing that kept viewers from the slippery rocks closest to the falls. Arthur followed, then Zhang, and the three of them huddled on the rocks as the spray from the falls soaked their coats and faces.
Arthur pulled out the pomander’s box. He set it carefully on the rocks. “Brace yourselves,” he said, raising his voice over the thundering water, “because if the falls aren’t powerful enough to dampen its magic, the smell could knock you over and right out of the tunnel.”
Taking his own advice, he gripped the soaked and slippery rocks of the circular tunnel mouth as best he could with his left hand, and then opened the box with his right.
The stench of rotting flowers burst into the tunnel, as sickly sweet and choking as it had been the night on the ocean liner. He heard Zhang retch and Jade choke as his own stomach promptly revolted with so much force his hand slipped on the rocks.
He still might have caught himself, except a slash of unfamiliar pain suddenly cut across his chest.
He gasped. His arm seized up and he was tumbling forward, toward the opening and the waterfall, as the much more familiar sensation, the sizzle of Rory’s magic, erupted against his skin.
A hand closed on Arthur’s arm. “The box!” Zhang called, as he yanked Arthur back, away from the edge.
There was a hiss of pain from Jade as she slammed the lid of the pomander’s box shut. A moment later, the smell was gone, disappeared into the mist of the unending water.
Arthur was breathing hard. He rubbed his chest, but the strange pain had vanished, almost as if it had been driven away by the static electricity of Rory’s magic.
