Home > Starcrossed (Magic in Manhattan #2)(5)

Starcrossed (Magic in Manhattan #2)(5)
Author: Allie Therin

   “I’d hardly be a decent lookout if I let Harry catch you scrying,” Arthur said, matching his whisper. “Don’t you think I’d protect your magic from being discovered? We can hide your psychometry. It’s not like you brought your tempest-starting ring.”

   Rory’s expression did a funny twitch. Almost like guilt. “Um. About that—”

   “There you are, Arthur.”

   Arthur turned to the porch to see Harry standing at the top of the stairs, baby Robert in his arms.

   “Are you driving to the fundraiser or am I?” Harry tilted his head in a practiced sort of way as Robert poked at his glasses. “Oh, and Mr. Brodigan. One of the compasses was counterfeit, and Mrs. Brodigan mentioned that if I was going to toss it, you might like to have it instead?”

   Rory’s eyes went big as dinner plates. “I—I, uh—yeah, but—”

   “Wonderful.” Harry gently loosened Robert’s chubby fist from the temple of his glasses. “Consider it yours.”

   “Oh,” Rory stuttered out. “That’s—I—Igottago,” he blurted, and took off, vanishing like a ghost around the side of the house.

   Harry raised an eyebrow at Arthur. “Does he always behave a feral alley cat?”

   “He’s quite brave, actually,” Arthur said despairingly. “The first time I met him, he told me to screw off. About six times.”

   “Charming,” Harry said dryly. “Well, if the boy has a backbone, I’ve yet to see it. At this point, I barely believe he has a voice.”

   Arthur swallowed. It doesn’t matter what Harry thinks of Rory. You don’t need them to get along. It’s not as if you could ever tell Harry any truths about Rory anyway. Focus on the fundraiser, on finding someone who might know something about Mansfield’s estate. “I’m driving. Let’s go.”

 

 

      Chapter Three


   The mansion’s side stairs led to the basement and a kitchen bigger than the restaurant Rory’d once worked in. There were copper pans hanging from the low ceiling, a giant gas cookstove with five burners and a barrel-door warming oven on top, and a dumbwaiter to take the meals up to the butler’s pantry on the first floor. The staff dining room was across the hall, with windows to the grounds and a big fireplace. It wasn’t fancy like the dining room where Arthur and the family ate, but there was lots of space, and Rory’d been eating out of tins in his boardinghouse room so long that getting the chance to eat decent food he helped make himself, it was hard not to eat himself sick.

   Right now the kitchen smelled like beef stew and baking bread, nice to come into from the snow. Rory made a beeline for the cook, Mrs. Ivers, a short woman with salt-and-pepper hair.

   “Let me take over.” He jerked a thumb toward the door. “We’re leaving tomorrow. I’m sure you and Mrs. B want some time.” Mrs. Brodigan and Mrs. Ivers were immigrants from the same part of Ireland. It was sweet to hear them together, even if Rory was never gonna see the appeal of cabbages and bacon.

   Mrs. Ivers smiled brightly. “You’re a good lad.”

   The kitchen’s small windows faced the long driveway, and as Rory stirred the stew he caught a flash of moving red. Arthur’s Cadillac, Arthur behind the wheel and Harry in the passenger seat. Harry, who’d just given Rory an Italian compass like it was no big deal, like it wasn’t worth more than all of Rory’s other possessions combined.

   He bit his lip and watched the car disappear down the driveway, feeling a twinge in his magic as Arthur got farther away, in the link that let him find Arthur when he’d been heading all the way to Brooklyn.

   What’d it do to someone without magic, to have something anchored in their aura?

   Arthur said he never felt anything, but Rory suspected Arthur wouldn’t’ve owned up if it did bother him. Not if he thought Rory needed it.

   Rory finally turned away from the window, picking up the pot holder. He opened the lowest oven door to find the loaves golden all over, so he pulled them out and set them on the burner just as boots stomped in the hall.

   Pavel came in just a moment later, craning his head to look over Rory’s shoulder at the bread with obvious interest. “It’s gotta cool or it’s gonna fall apart when it’s cut,” Rory told him.

   Pavel didn’t look very impressed by that, but he turned away and instead took an orange from the basket sitting on the wooden table.

   “Thanks for letting me borrow your brother this morning,” Rory said, as Sasha appeared with several potatoes.

   “I was not far,” she reassured him over her shoulder, as she set the potatoes down in the sink. She and her brother had the same brown eyes and honey-brown hair, though hers was long and kept back with a kerchief.

   Rory looked at Pavel, who was methodically stacking orange peels in neat piles on the edge of the wooden table. They were alone, but he still dropped his voice to a whisper. “Is he gonna use those in a potion?”

   Sasha nodded. “He gets restless if he goes too long without alchemy. I would not be surprised if he makes the potion this afternoon.”

   The orange peels made Rory think of the orange potion at Coney Island, teleporting Gwen and Ellis to safety while sticking Rory with the mess. “What Pavel can do’s amazing.”

   “Yes,” she said softly. “But not worth the price.”

   “No, I know,” Rory said, with feeling. “Believe me, I know.”

   She glanced his way. “Yours is a similar magic, yes? Seeing history is subordinate, Ace and Jade call it. Maybe you understand.”

   Rory understood a little too well. He opened his mouth, but there was a loud clattering in the hall as more staff came in the side door, and he and Sasha both shut their mouths. But as Rory looked for a knife for the bread, his mind was spinning.

   Baron Zeppler had tried to use Gwen’s magic to unlock the Venom Dagger, and had cast her so deep into her own magic she’d seen nothing but auras for two years.

   Had something like that happened to Pavel?

 

* * *

 

   Rory’s room was in the basement too, at the other end of the low-ceilinged hall from the kitchen. It was the smallest of the men’s staff rooms but still bigger than his lodgings at the boardinghouse, with a narrow but sturdy wood bed and a window and, best of all, no rats or roaches.

   As he walked through the doorway, he stilled. A small box was sitting in the middle of his bed, like a slightly bigger version of the ring box, and next to it was a sheet of paper.

   He crossed to the bed and picked up the paper. Don’t try to give the compass back, it read, in Mrs. Brodigan’s neat handwriting, staving off his protests just as they started in his head. You earned it, and it was going to be thrown away.

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