Starcrossed

by Allie Therin

  It took a few minutes, longer than usual, but finally Ling was hurrying toward him “They’re still unconscious,” she said, as she unlocked the door and opened it.

  “Unconscious?” Arthur’s stomach dropped as he stepped inside. “Who?”

  But he could guess, because his wait had been long because Zhang wasn’t awake to see him outside.

  “Jianwei and Miss Robbins,” said Ling, confirming Arthur’s fears. “We found them that way, the library ceiling cracked and a bookshelf broken, two of Pavel’s potions shattered.”

  And Arthur hadn’t been around to do anything about it because he’d run. “Are they—”

  “They’re all right. We got them into bed. My aunt thinks they’ll wake in a few hours and be fine. It’s Pavel’s potions; wild, but they don’t hurt people.” She added regretfully, “We’re looking, but we haven’t found Rory yet. Without Jianwei, we can only look on foot.”

  He nodded, trying not to let his despair show on his face. Rory could have been taken anywhere, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to send Zhang’s family after Hyde even if he’d known where to tell them to look.

  Ling held out her hand, Rory’s compass in her palm. “I was going to give this back today, but I didn’t have the chance. Thanks for letting me take a look at a vessel of alchemy. Is it yours or Rory’s?”

  Arthur stared at the compass, his heart picking up speed. “Thank you,” he said, with a glimmer of hope. “I’ll take it.”

  Five minutes later, he was pulling his Cadillac up in front of a blue-and-white-striped awning on Hester Street. Most of the street’s shops were closed for the Jewish Sabbath, including the lawyer and tailor on either side of Taussig’s Chemists.

  The pharmacy itself was also closed, but the Taussigs had always made accommodations for the Ivanovs to work Saturday and visit their church on Sunday instead. So when he saw movement in the pharmacy’s window, his heart started beating too fast with hope. He walked up to the windows and put his face beneath the letters that spelled out Pharmacy, Prescriptions, Powders, then knocked urgently on the glass.

  Sasha saw him first and scrambled over to unlock the front door. “Arthur,” she said, opening it for him. “Is everything all right?”

  “I need your help.” Arthur swallowed, feeling unusually small to find himself again desperate for the aid of others. “Please.”

  “Anything, of course.”

  “Three paranormals took Rory.”

  Her eyes widened. “Quickly, come in. Tell me all.”

  Arthur filled her in with what Wesley had said as he followed her through the pharmacy, his throat getting tighter as he told the story. “It has now likely been more than an hour since they took him,” he finished. “I know I haven’t the right to ask, but you helped me save him once before...” He trailed off, his eyes drifting several feet away.

  Pavel hadn’t come over. He was standing at the counter, a small tin of headache remedy open in his hand. His eyes were closed as he took a pinch of the powder and rubbed it between his fingers.

  Sasha bit her lip. “He’s been consumed by his alchemy since we returned to the city today.”

  Arthur’s heart sank with guilt. He’d bet the pomander relic was at fault, leaving behind magic Rory could taste only two blocks from Grand Central. Maybe they should give Pavel the damn thing. Pavel had seen war too. Maybe he could be trusted with a relic.

  But Rory’s ring had a way of getting away from him, and if the pomander’s violation magic escaped Pavel’s control...

  Arthur crossed to the counter. “Pavel.” He touched Pavel’s shoulder gently.

  Pavel made no reaction. There were purplish circles beneath his eyes and a pallor to his skin. He took another pinch of the powder, and under Pavel’s touch, the white headache powder turned to sparkling pink.

  “Pavel.” Arthur forced himself to keep his voice soft, but fear was creeping in. “A group of paranormals took Rory.”

  Still no reaction. Sasha came up quietly behind Arthur, biting her lip. “I don’t know if he will respond, Ace. His magic is clouding his every sense.”

  Arthur swallowed. Numbly, he reached for his neck. “One of the paranormals is a twisted and very cruel man,” he said, almost a whisper, as he undid his bow tie and let it hang loose in his collar. “I know he’s a bad man—” his throat tightened “—because of what he did to me.”

  He opened the top button of his collar, and finally, Pavel looked at him.

  Arthur’s fingers were steady as he opened the first few buttons above his vest, his body remembering how to compartmentalize, how to function even when his heart wasn’t working. When he reached the top of his vest, he pulled his shirt aside enough to show Pavel his bare chest and the thin lines of scars Hyde had carved into his skin with his claws.

  Sasha made a small gasp and covered her mouth. Pavel stared at the scars, his light brown eyes wide with shock and a terrible kind of recognition.

  “I regret that you understand,” Arthur said softly. “I regret with all my heart that we’re brothers in this pain. But the man who gave me these has Rory.”

  Sasha closed her eyes, hands still over her mouth.

  “Please,” said Arthur. “Help me find him before Hyde can hurt him too.”

  Pavel’s gaze was on the scars. Then he looked up, straight into Arthur’s eyes, and nodded once before setting off at a brisk stride toward the back of the pharmacy.

  Arthur and Sasha chased after him. “Have you anything of Rory’s for a potion?”

  Arthur reached into his pocket, his hand closing around cool metal. “I have Rory’s compass,” he said, with a pulse of gratitude for Ling. After this, he was going to get something of Rory’s to keep for his own.

  They followed Pavel into the storeroom in the back of the pharmacy, a windowless room with a heavy metal floor safe. As she had before the gala at Luther Mansfield’s home, Sasha once again moved the safe with her superstrength. Pavel crouched and pulled up the loose floorboard, retrieving a small metal box.

  Arthur kept his feelings shoved as deep as he could as he watched Pavel take a small vial out of the box. Pavel closed his eyes, and a moment later the potion was roiling in its vial.

  “The compass,” Sasha said softly.

  Arthur swallowed and passed it over to her. She put it on the top of the stepstool, and Pavel crouched down and poured the potion over it, the liquid disappearing into the metal like water absorbed by a sponge.

  Arthur held his breath as the needle slowly began to spin. Sasha grabbed his wrist. He kept his breath held, heart beginning to lift—

  Then the compass needle sped up, round and round without slowing.

  Arthur’s heart plummeted. “Why isn’t it stopping?” he whispered, watching the needle spin in useless circles. “It should be pointing to Rory, right? Why is it just spinning?”

  “Lost.” Pavel’s rough, deep voice cut through the storeroom.

  Sasha furrowed her brow. “He means his magic can’t find Rory. Something is confusing it.”

  Arthur’s stomach plummeted. “There’s a man with Rory. I don’t know exactly what his power is, but he disrupts magic like a boulder in a river.”

  Sasha glanced at Pavel. “We’ve never encountered something like this before.”

  Arthur raced for some kind of idea. “Can we make Pavel’s magic stronger? Go to Rory’s boardinghouse, get something more of his—before we also had a note, maybe I can find another—”

  But Pavel was shaking his head.

  “It wouldn’t be enough this time, not to overcome an interfering magic.” Sasha’s voice was reedy and pained. “You can make alchemy very strong, but you need more than a possession.”

  “Then what?” Arthur said desperately. “Whatever the cost, I’ll get it—”

  “You cannot pay for this.” She swallowed. “This is somethi
ng Pavel does not like. But to make his alchemy its strongest takes blood.”

  Arthur’s eyes widened. “Blood magic.”

  “Very little is stronger than magic made with blood. Pavel does not like it, but he would do it, to find Rory. But we need Rory’s blood, because we need Rory’s magic.”

  Rory’s blood, with Rory nowhere to be found. Arthur clenched his teeth. “There must be something we can do.”

  Pavel looked at him. “Sorry,” he whispered, in gravelly, accented English.

  No. No, there had to be an answer, Arthur wouldn’t give up—“What about me?”

  The words burst out of Arthur. Both of the Ivanovs stared at him as Arthur put a hand over his heart. “I’m Rory’s anchor,” he said, blurting out the secret and praying they wouldn’t think too hard about why he and Rory would be so close, that they wouldn’t throw him out or call the cops. “He made me his lifeline to the present by linking his magic to my aura.” He took a breath. “I have Rory’s magic in me. Can Pavel use my blood?”

  Sasha and Pavel looked at each other. Sasha said something in Russian. Pavel pursed his lips, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small folding knife.

  “Give him your hand,” said Sasha. “Left hand.”

  Arthur swallowed but held his hand out, palm up.

  Pavel acted quickly, drawing the knife so fast across his lifeline that Arthur flinched in surprise pain. Blood welled in the cut almost immediately, scarlet under the pharmacy lights.

  “If Rory’s magic is in your aura, it may be in your blood.” Sasha’s gold-brown eyes were glued to the compass. “And now we hope it’s strong enough to find him. Pick up the compass.”

  Arthur sent a silent prayer to the complicated religion Rory still had faith in and grabbed the compass.

  The instant his bloody palm touched the metal, a shock shot up his arm like he’d touched a live wire. He gritted his teeth as his skin began to burn—

  But as suddenly as the pain had started, it was gone.

  “No more pain?”

  Arthur looked up at Sasha in surprise. She had the first light of hope on her face. “The potion should have burned like fire in an open wound,” she said, “unless you have another magic strong enough to protect you.” Her gaze went up to his eyes, lingering for a moment, then back down to the compass. “Now we hope you can find him like he finds you.”

  Arthur wrapped his fingers tightly around the edges of the compass and watched the needle spin and spin, becoming erratic but not stopping.

  Come on, Arthur willed it. Find Rory.

  The compass needle spun like a roulette table—and then abruptly began to slow.

  He caught his breath.

  The three of them watched as the compass needle slowed and slowed and finally came to a stop, and not on north. “Southwest.” Arthur felt dizzy with relief and lingering fear. “He’s been taken southwest.”

  So not east, already on the ocean, en route to Germany. No southeast to the Brooklyn piers, or due west to the piers on the Hudson. But southwest could mean Staten Island or Jersey.

  Or farther.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Hyde was watching him.

  Rory hunched into the padded seat of the private train compartment, his hands in his lap, wrapped in a scarf so the handcuffs didn’t show to the conductor or anyone else passing by. He supposed he should be grateful his wrists were cuffed in front, not behind him where his shoulders and arms would be numb, but the needlelike sting of the lead in the cuffs was enough to keep his teeth grinding.

  The window was on Rory’s left, Shelley on Rory’s right, and Hyde and Sebastian on the seat across. Their compartment had a sliding door that was firmly shut, but every time Rory so much as twitched, Hyde perked up with interest, the light catching his fangs. So Rory didn’t call for help.

  Outside the window, the landscape was flat, with bare-branched trees rushing past, shorter than the trees of upstate New York. They’d been riding more than an hour, sometimes passing through cities he didn’t know.

  “Theodore Giovacchini.” Hyde tilted his head like a wolf. He took up more than his share of the bench seat with his broad shoulders, crowding Sebastian too close to the edge. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  Rory felt a chill over his spine. “How do you know that?”

  “Baron Zeppler keeps an ear out for interesting paranormals.” Shelley was playing with her necklace again, turning the stone in her fingers. She smiled dreamily. “Well, not an ear, exactly. A mind, shall we say? A request for a doctor for a boy who thinks he sees the past certainly qualifies. The baron was terribly disappointed when he learned of your suicide four years ago. Canceled all his travel plans.”

  Rory felt the hairs on his neck rise. The asylum had sent for a doctor from Europe to handle Rory’s lobotomy. Mrs. Brodigan’s sister, Miss Lorna, had seen a future where that doctor had come for him.

  “He’s delighted to hear of your recovery,” Shelley went on.

  Hyde looked at her sharply. “You told him?”

  “Sent a telegram that same day.” Shelley still had her dreamy smile. “You’ll do great things with Baron Zeppler’s guidance, Mr. Giovacchini, you’ll see.”

  Rory’s heart began to pound.

  “Wasn’t alerting the baron a bit premature?” said Sebastian. “We’re not actually certain of this boy’s magic.”

  “We know his magic is powerful. You saw the locks on his door; I have locks like that myself.” Shelley’s smile grew as she rubbed the stone between her fingers. “Had locks.”

  Hyde leaned forward, lip curled enough to show his fangs. “Zeppler will never let you keep the lodestone.”

  Shelley’s dreamy smile vanished. She clutched at her choker, covering the stone with her fist. “Of course he will.”

  “You’re an idiot,” said Hyde. “A fool. Haven’t you figured out yet what the baron’s plans were for us?”

  “That we would come to America and bring him back the finest prizes,” Shelley said, although her dreamy voice was too sharp. “A relic and a subordinate paranormal to scry it. Of course he’ll give me the lodestone in return.”

  Rory made himself speak. “What’s it do?”

  “Shut up,” said Hyde.

  But Shelley smiled. “You’ll wish it was yours,” she said, eyes too bright. “My lodestone.”

  Rory deliberately shrugged. “That doesn’t sound special. And it looks like a rock.”

  “It’s priceless.” Shelley leaned in toward Rory, holding the choker an inch away from her neck so his eyes were drawn to the gray stone. “This is magnetite, marked by lightning and magic, a magnet like no other.”

  “You’re running your mouth,” Hyde started.

  “I can say what I like,” Shelley snapped. “You forget your rank, dog.”

  Hyde’s eyes sparked with what might have been red, and Rory caught a bigger flash of teeth. Then Hyde closed his eyes, and was taking a deep breath through his nose, loud enough to fill the space of the tiny compartment. Sebastian looked sideways at him, one eyebrow raised, like he was used to Hyde’s rages.

  Shelley ignored them both. “A compass can use a magnetized lodestone to find north,” she said to Rory. “But this lodestone is different. Special.” She held it a little higher. “It reverses the polarity of magic.”

  Rory furrowed his brow. “Polarity?”

  “It reverses the direction the magic goes.” She leaned in and whispered, “It makes subordinate magic insubordinate.”

  Rory met her eyes in shock.

  “It’s a marvel.” Shelley closed her eyes, hand over the stone. “I read the dreams of others. Before the stone, if I was near someone else asleep, their dreams came to me, whether I was awake or asleep, assaulting my mind whether I wished to view them or not.” She smiled again. “But now, I am the Sandman. I w
ield dreams—and nightmares—like weapons.”

  Rory drew in a breath. Don’t react. Don’t let on that you know John Kenzie. Don’t connect yourself to Arthur.

  “Your magic’s so useless,” Hyde said derisively, drawing Shelley’s glare. “So you gave a politician a few bad dreams. So what? You never managed to learn anything useful about Coney Island. You never helped us find Gwen.”

  Shelley made a fist. “I gave John Kenzie dreams of his brother. I would have thought you of all people would appreciate that, Hyde.”

  Hyde ran a tongue over a fang. “I don’t care about John.” He stretched his hands, still in their black gloves. “It’s the youngest Kenzie I want and you made us leave before that happened.”

  Rory clenched his fists, just managing to bite his tongue. He’d find a way to call the ring and a tempest from New York before he’d let Hyde get a claw near Arthur.

  Sebastian huffed. “You two fight so much.” His eyes stayed on Rory, though, and when he pointed at him, Rory caught a glimpse of the tattoo on his pulse point. “I want to know more about Giovacchini’s magic.” Rory’s Italian name rolled off his tongue more smoothly than either Shelley or Hyde had said it.

  Hyde smiled with a cruel edge. “If he won’t tell us, let’s put the lodestone on him and see what happens.”

  Rory’s eyes widened.

  “No.” Shelley covered the necklace with her hand. “It’s mine.” She sneered at Hyde and Sebastian. “I also told the baron about both of you. He knows of your reluctance to follow my lead.”

  Hyde’s eyes flashed, but Sebastian spoke first. “Telepaths know too much,” he said, which made Shelley’s nostrils flare.

  She sat back against the seat with a huff. A moment later, she was playing with the lodestone, seemingly oblivious to the way Hyde was now watching her instead of Rory.

  Rory considered screaming. He took a shallow breath.

  Hyde’s eyes immediately landed on him. “Give me a reason,” he said, showing his fangs. “I’m bored and angry and there’s a family in the next compartment whose children sound delicious.”