Starcrossed

by Allie Therin

  “Go to hell,” Rory bit out, like he wasn’t starting to shake. “I’m not scrying anything for you.”

  “You’re not going to have a choice.” Hyde reached for the lid. “If I put this on you, you’re going to fall into its history whether you want to or not.”

  If Rory reached for his magic, he could find that link to Arthur, the one that would lead him out of even a relic’s past. It was still fainter than it had been, like it had gone into hiding after the pomander—

  Like his magic didn’t want to be a path to hurting Arthur.

  Rory lifted his chin. “You put that on me, I’m not gonna give you its secrets.”

  Hyde pointed with his claw, an inch from Rory’s jugular vein. Rory flinched before he could stop himself. “You’ll give me whatever I want,” Hyde said, with quiet menace. “Every man thinks he’s a tough guy until he actually faces pain. And I am very good at pain.”

  Rory swallowed.

  Sebastian stepped between them. “Where is the sense in having him scry now?” he said sharply. “Wait ’til London.”

  “I’m done waiting.” Hyde reached for the lid of the box. “They’re only just starting to board our ship. Plenty of time for him to take a peek.”

  “Hyde, wait—” Sebastian started.

  But Hyde cracked the lid of the pomander’s lead box.

  The magic rushed Rory like the Tempest Ring’s once had, weeks earlier in the antiques shop. But the pomander’s magic was thick, like being swept under a wave of rancid oil. And as his stomach turned and his skin crawled and the smell of rotten flowers hit his nose, Rory’s magic rose up within him like an answering wind—

  —and his link to Arthur snapped.

  Shock and terror and relief shot through Rory as the crater of loss abruptly opened in his chest. Suddenly anchorless, he was falling too fast with nothing to pull him back from history’s edge.

  But at least there was no path for magic to travel to Arthur.

  “Enjoy the Inquisition,” he heard Hyde say, from a distance.

  And then the present was gone.

  * * *

  The deeper Arthur came into Philadelphia from the north, the more the compass needle pointed south. He drove as fast as he dared through crowded Philadelphia streets, seeing the steamships come into view as he neared the river. It was as he had feared, then. Hyde was trying to move Rory by sea.

  And they could be on any of the ships; Hyde hardly needed a first-class ocean liner when he was probably willing to stuff Rory in a cargo crate.

  The compass was pointing south now as Arthur turned to follow the river’s path. Great plumes of black smoke floated from multistory stacks, making the air thick and acrid. He crossed a set of railroad tracks and passed pavement with small clusters of people.

  But as he neared the water, Arthur suddenly saw spots. For an instant, he thought he smelled rotten flowers, thought he was going to faint—

  And then he gasped as his chest burned like someone had reached inside him and pulled an organ out. He swerved, crossing into the other lane of traffic. People screamed and honks split the air as Arthur hit the brakes so hard they screeched. He fumbled to right the steering wheel but overcorrected, sending the car skidding toward the curb, and there was a stomach-turning bump and then a sickening crunch as his car ran up on the sidewalk and smashed into a lamppost.

  People were pointing and staring at his car as he took heaving breaths. “I don’t understand,” he said out loud. “Why—what—”

  He looked at the passenger seat, where the compass had fallen when he swerved. He snatched it up with one shaking hand.

  “Oh no.”

  The needle wasn’t pointing south anymore. It wasn’t pointing anywhere, just spinning in lazy, useless circles.

  And Arthur abruptly understood.

  It had lost Rory—because their link was gone.

  * * *

  The pool of blood spreads across the marble. A man with pale skin and dark hair, dressed in a puffed tunic with a white high collar, delicately steps around the blood as he walks toward the balcony. From deeper in the castle, voices are raised, some in devoted chants, some in screams.

  “—I said close the box.”

  Rory’s eyelashes fluttered. The world sounded strange, like he was lying in the bath but his ears were still underwater. He could see Hyde and Sebastian, their faces too close, their voices too loud. Arguing.

  “You’re leaving the relic exposed too long.” Sebastian’s voice was sharp. “What if you destroy his mind? What if you send him to the past for good—?”

  “Who cares?” Hyde made a low growl. “I want answers and he hasn’t given them.”

  Hyde and Sebastian faded from view. The pomander hangs from the man’s belt. Its scent floats through the castle, so strong, the musk thick, the flowers already rotted.

  “You’re so soft for the subordinate paranormals.” Hyde’s face cut through the castle again, his lip curled in scorn. “Gwen, Shelley, now this one. Do you feel sorry for them, is that it? Or do they remind you of your cousin?”

  Sebastian had gone paler. “Subordinate magic is useful, that’s all,” he said, although it wasn’t convincing. “Giovacchini is very useful, so if you want me to come to London with you, put the relic back in its box before you shred his mind.”

  “You’ll come to London with me no matter what I do.” Hyde’s voice was low and menacing. “Because you’re desperate to know if your cousin has kept any of her sanity without your magic to help her.”

  Sebastian swallowed. “I can find my own transatlantic ship.”

  “But you’ll never find the London paranormals on your own,” Hyde said softly. “With your magic, you won’t be welcome. You never are.” He leaned closer. “But go ahead and leave the boy alone with me. I want the company; the trip takes a week and boredom is such torture.”

  Sebastian’s jaw tightened.

  “That’s what I thought.” Hyde let out a scoff, like a wolf’s huff. “It’s time to board the ship.”

  Rory’s eyelashes fluttered, and there was Hyde’s face, only inches away.

  “They’re not going to let him on, he’s clearly addled.” Sebastian’s voice came from behind Hyde, anger making his soft accent tense.

  “Then we’ll get creative.”

  Hyde dangled something over Rory’s face. A necklace. Shelley’s necklace.

  The lodestone.

  “That’s not going to bring him back,” Sebastian snapped. “The lodestone isn’t strong enough to cancel a relic’s magic, especially not whatever that magic is. It smells like death.”

  “Maybe not.” Hyde smiled, showing teeth. “Let’s put it on him anyway. I want to see what happens.”

  “Hyde—”

  The man leans on the balcony, enjoying the view of the countryside. Behind him, his zealots continue their slaughter.

  Rory closed his eyes and fell back into the history.

  Chapter Thirty

  Arthur got out of the Cadillac, aware that every pair of eyes at the dock were on him, a man in a tuxedo scrambling out of a smashed car that stuck out like a show dog in a street pack. He ignored the stares, tucking the compass with its useless, lazily revolving needle into his vest pocket and shoving his despair as far down as he could.

  Rory had to be here somewhere. The compass had sent him south, straight toward these docks.

  He took a steadying breath. The smell of coal from the older ships hung heavy in the salt-thickened air. His gaze darted down Delaware Avenue, at a partially built bridge looming over them, then down the row of piers to the south. Many were empty, their business gutted by last year’s anti-immigration legislation, giving the waterfront a stagnant flavor. He glanced toward a warehouse that had seen better days as the El screeched on the tracks above his head. He’d find a harbormaster, figure out which o
f the ships was bound for Germany—

  Raised voices made his gaze snap back to the piers. One of the piers had a crowd gathering on it.

  An angry crowd.

  Arthur hurried down the street. The cranes next to the ship were dormant, despite the crates still on the dock. Men in uniforms were in front of the ship, hands up to placate the crowd.

  The ramp was in place on the port side that led up to the third-class entrance near the back of the ship. A large white man in a cap and branded jacket was talking to a group of upset-looking women.

  Arthur strode up to them. “What’s going on here?”

  The man in uniform raised his eyebrows at Arthur’s tuxedo. “First class boarded ages ago.”

  “Perhaps I’m here for third.”

  “You been checked for lice?”

  Arthur’s eyes widened. “Lice?”

  “And you got your tickets and health inspection certificates?” the man said. “No one’s getting in third class without ’em.”

  “You’re not letting anyone in third class at all!” one of the woman snapped.

  “It’s not on me, all right?” the man snapped back. “Everything’s stuck up on the boat.”

  Stuck? Arthur frowned and looked up the tall side of the ship. Several people were walking along the promenade, but not in the usual excited manner of passengers about to leave. Instead, they were staring blankly forward, their movements awkward like wandering sleepwalkers. “Where’s this ship going?”

  “London.”

  “Then on to Hamburg, by any chance?”

  The man shook his head. “We don’t got any ships going to Germany this week.”

  None? That couldn’t be right. “Are you certain—” Arthur caught movement on the second-class deck out of the corner of his eye. “Grab her!”

  But no one on the ship reacted as a white woman in a brown fur coat stepped right up to the railing of the second-class promenade and unhesitatingly tipped forward over it.

  The passengers on the dock screamed as the woman fell more than twenty feet to the Delaware River, hitting the water with a sickening splash. Arthur made a move toward the water, but men in uniform were already shoving their way down the pier.

  “Move, move, move!” came the shouts, and then Arthur heard another splash.

  He glanced in the water. The woman had surfaced, her trancelike state gone and her face sheet-white with terror. A man was swimming toward her, a life ring in his hand.

  Arthur hesitated, but another man had jumped in, and he’d be in the way if he added another body to the water.

  So with the path no longer blocked, Arthur seized the moment of chaos and sprinted up the ramp into the ship.

  At the top of the ramp was a small, bare deck, empty of passengers or crew. The ship’s engines were running, diesel ones, not the older coal boilers, the vibration familiar under Arthur’s feet. But otherwise, the ship was oddly silent.

  As he stepped on the deck, his skin erupted with prickles, the hairs rising on his neck and arms. Tiny painless shocks danced over his body like static electricity—and then it was gone like a gentle breeze disappearing into a summer night.

  He rubbed a hand over his arm. “Teddy?” he whispered.

  Because that was Rory’s magic, he was certain. He recognized the touch from the night it had chased away his nightmare, and maybe even from before that, weeks earlier in a speakeasy in Harlem.

  There was no answer to his whisper.

  Arthur pursed his lips and turned aft, toward the stern, following the deck to where a heavy door was set into the side of the ship, clearly labeled. No third-class passengers beyond this point. Arthur shoved it open with his shoulder and stepped into a narrow hall that cut sideways across the ship.

  A few steps and the hall opened into a small lobby area, with modest furniture and hallways leading off in both directions that were lined with simple cabin doors. A small set of stairs led down, deeper into the boat. Two white men in navy service uniforms were in the lobby, both standing nearly motionless and staring blankly forward.

  Arthur’s stomach dropped, but he approached anyway. “Excuse me,” he tried. “Have you seen anything odd tonight—?”

  But neither man twitched.

  Arthur frowned and stepped closer. “Hello?”

  “The man’s clothes are very strange,” the shorter of the sailors said. “The orb clinks where it hangs on his belt.”

  Arthur’s eyes widened.

  He was talking bunk, as Rory would say—exactly like Rory in a vision.

  The other sailor tilted his head, looking past Arthur. “He’ll stay at this castle awhile. He likes the screams.”

  Arthur took a step backward.

  He had to find Rory.

  Where would Hyde be keeping him on a ship like this? Arthur could only guess in the belly, where they’d be undetected. He took the stairs two at a time to the door at the next level, another third-class area that smelled of the chlorine of the swimming pool. The halls were more mazelike here, doors to the shared third-class cabins every few feet. He turned at the squash court, toward a door marked Staff Only.

  Behind that door was another staircase, this one a small and poorly lit spiral. The stairs were steeper too, and so shallow that Arthur had to turn his feet to fit them on the steps.

  Below decks the ship was cramped, the hall barely wider than Arthur’s shoulders. It was hot as well, no doors or windows to let in the cold night air and counter the engines. He passed the post office and pushed his way into the first-class baggage rooms.

  Trunks and crates were stacked to the ceiling, forming tight corridors like a hedge maze. Just before departure, the room should have been bustling with the sounds of porters and workers, grunting, swearing, and snapping, the crash and thunks of outrageous amounts of luggage being loaded onto a ship.

  But the room was uncomfortably quiet. Arthur turned a corner and froze. Four men were standing motionless in the small space, their eyes completely vacant.

  “More screams,” said one. “They’re all going to die.”

  Arthur swallowed and took a step backward—

  Only to feel something hard and metal against his tuxedo jacket, between his shoulder blades.

  “Hands in the air, Lieutenant Kenzie. I suspect you’re familiar with a Mauser pistol.”

  The man’s voice was cool, with a soft Spanish accent. Arthur clenched his teeth but put both hands up. “You know my name.”

  “I do.” The pistol cocked. “Turn around. Slowly.”

  Arthur blew out a breath. Not one of the men had so much as looked in their direction. Keeping his hands up, he slowly turned around.

  The man was indeed holding a Mauser. He was around Arthur’s age and obnoxiously handsome to be pointing a gun in Arthur’s face. On the hand that held the gun, Arthur could see the inside of his wrist and a tattooed pattern that disappeared into his shirtsleeve.

  Arthur smiled thinly and adopted his most polished party voice. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, then, because I don’t believe I’ve been given your name. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr....”

  “De León. But Sebastian will do.” He said it easily, like he wasn’t concerned if Arthur had it, which didn’t bode well if he thought he had that much of the upper hand. “I thought you weren’t magic.”

  “Nobody’s perfect,” Arthur said lightly.

  Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “So why aren’t you in a trance like the rest of the mundane aboard this ship?”

  Why wasn’t he in a trance? But even as the thought crossed his mind, he knew why. Because it’s Rory’s magic. It knows me. It won’t hurt me. The thought gave him courage. “I’m hardly the person to explain magic,” he said, instead of answering.

  “Hmm.” Sebastian eyed him. “Did you come all this way for the
antiques dealer? A fool’s errand that’s only trapped you too.”

  Arthur narrowed his eyes. “Is he with Miss Shelley?”

  His jaw tightened. “Shelley’s gone. I’m afraid you’ll have to take your antiques dealer up with Mr. Hyde.”

  Arthur’s blood went cold. “I don’t make a habit of fighting,” he said, clenching his fists. “But I need him returned, and I suspect I can grab that gun faster than you can shoot me.”

  “No,” Sebastian said calmly, “you can’t.”

  And before Arthur could move, something swept over him, and his legs gave out.

  He collapsed to the floor of the luggage room, his muscles like water, his body refusing to stand. “What—”

  “Enervation.” Sebastian’s Mauser stayed trained between Arthur’s eyes. “It weakens magic, and it’s not much fun for auras either.”

  Arthur tried to reach up but his body didn’t want to obey. His eyelids were heavy, his heartbeat sluggish in his ears.

  “So you’re not in a trance, but my magic works on you.” Sebastian crouched. “I’m sorry about this, but I need answers, and if you know Theodore Giovacchini well enough to come all the way to Philadelphia for him, I think you know why my magic doesn’t work on him.” He moved the pistol closer. “I know of only one explanation for magic as strong as his, so tell me: which relic does he control?”

  Arthur forced his lips to move. “What do you know about the relics?”

  “Plenty.” Sebastian sounded unenthusiastic, the way Arthur might sound if someone asked him what do you know about politics? “The question you should be asking is why you know anything about relics.”

  Arthur furrowed his brows.

  “For four hundred years those relics have stayed buried,” Sebastian said. “Have you never wondered why they’re suddenly being found again?”

  Arthur’s mouth opened, then closed.

  “But you haven’t answered my question.” He gestured with the gun. “Which relic is bound to Giovacchini?”

  Sasha’s words rang in Arthur’s head. Very little is stronger than magic made with blood.