“We’re speaking right now,” Arthur said impatiently. “Literally speaking to each other, at this precise moment—”
“In private.” John glanced at Arthur. “Please.”
Arthur stilled. The gray afternoon light through the window highlighted John’s face, the unusual pallor to his face, the deep bags beneath his eyes. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept in days. “Is everything all right?”
“Come to Trinity when you get in,” John said, naming his private gentlemen’s club instead of answering. “I’ll expect you around four.” He looked past Arthur. “Ah, Stevens! Just the man I was looking for.”
Arthur frowned at John’s retreating back. John had been an exceptional pugilist, and at thirty-nine could still match Arthur in the ring. It wasn’t like him to neglect his health, no matter how busy he got.
As John disappeared into a group of suited men, Arthur’s gaze landed on a tensed figure quickly snatching up hors d’oeuvres. Edgar Barnes—Dear Edgar, Arthur tended to think of him, because he was better acquainted with Edgar’s wife, his sister’s sorority sister Josephine. Edgar was a pale, skinny man with limp blond hair and a lawyer, Arthur remembered, one who didn’t often stray from his Fifth Avenue clients. If anyone here might know something about trusts and estates—specifically, one recently deceased mogul’s estate—it could be Edgar.
He strode hurriedly over, catching Edgar just as he was scurrying away from the buffet. “Mr. Barnes, how are you?”
Edgar hunched as he glanced Arthur’s way. “Kenzie.” His thin lips curled in a sneer as he didn’t offer his hand. “Good to see you.” It sounded like a lie.
“And you, though I’m surprised to see you so far north of the city,” Arthur said easily. “What brings you up?”
Edgar’s eyes darted to John, who had already moved on from Stevens and was now charming a widow Arthur knew had even more money than his parents. “I go where my clients need me,” he said, his lip curling again on the wordclient. He couldn’t mean John; none of the Kenzies were clients of Edgar’s.
Before Arthur could ask, Edgar added, “Josephine’s been talking about you.” His gaze darted across the width of Arthur’s shoulders and briefly down his body. “You and yoursuits.”
Arthur barely managed not to roll his eyes. Jealous husbands were everywhere at these things, most of them happy to letch after their secretaries but unable to tolerate the same from their wives. “And how is your lovely wife?” he said innocently. “I haven’t seen her since everyone was celebrating the mayor’s inauguration.”
Edgar blanched like he’d seen a ghost. “Were you there too?” He wet his lips, then stepped closer, lowering his voice to a whisper that just barely cut over the crowd. “At the gala? The night Luther Mansfield was murdered?”
The ring box was heavy in Rory’s pocket as he picked his way down the steep, tree-covered hill. It was colder than he’d expected as the wind cut over the Hudson River, carrying specks of ice through the air and right through the holes in his coat. The trees were taller and grown in thicker than they looked from the estate, their bare branches shadowing what little light was left in the day.
Rory took a careful step over a rock only to put his foot down on a root. He bit back a yelp as his foot slipped, grabbing the tree’s trunk. He reflexively reached for the small box in his pants pocket to make sure it hadn’t slipped out and then yanked his hand away just before he made contact. He didn’t need icy fingers stinging from lead too.
He steadied himself, holding on to trees with his bare hands as he maneuvered downhill around patches of ice and frozen mud under white powder. It wasn’t anything like Central Park, where he could always hear the city when he listened. Here, the forest was muffled like he had blankets over his head. There were no leaves to rustle in the wind, nothing to hear but the soft crunch of snow beneath his sneakers and bickering cardinals high in the trees.
It was all just a little too quiet and he itched to turn around and go back to the warm luxury of Harry’s mansion. He made himself keep going. He wasn’t planning to use the ring, just scry it, but things could always go sideways. If the wind came and went knocking trees over when he was lost in a vision, he’d end up squashed.
Or worse, the wind might blow too hard on Harry’s house. Rory wasn’t ever gonna let that happen—he was gonna find an open space as far away from Harry’s house as he could get.You’re not gonna open up that box anywhere near the kids, he promised himself.You gotta scry it for Pavel, but you’re gonna get far away, far enough that Ellie, Ev, and little Bobby are safe.
But it didn’t look like there were open spaces in the woods along the Hudson. Rory made it all the way down the hill, to the edge of the river, without seeing so much as a decent clearing. He paused, squinting behind his glasses as he took in the Hudson River. It was a lot more impressive up close: blocks wide, and frozen all the way across like a huge version of the Central Park Lake.
Arthur had said it was a half mile to the other side, and that the river was frozen solid enough the ice dealers were still driving across. It looked plenty solid now. But Arthur’d also said there wasn’t anything across the river but more trees.
In fact, the only open space around looked like out on the frozen Hudson itself.
Rory pursed his lips. It didn’t seem like a great idea, wandering out onto the ice by himself. But there weren’t any other patches without trees and he wasn’t stupid enough to think he might not blow everything around him down while scrying.
The lead-lined ring box was dragging his pocket down, pulling at his suspenders. If he closed his eyes, he could feel the magic link in him that would lead him out of any vision and to Arthur. He didn’t need the ring.
Pavel did.
Gingerly, Rory took one step out onto the frozen river. His foot slipped a bit, but the ice was solid as sidewalk under his sneaker and held him easily. He looked across the expanse of the river again, took a breath, and then carefully began to make his way out onto the ice.
Chapter Five
So you were there too? At the gala? The night Luther Mansfield was murdered?
For an instant, the memory of the moment of Mansfield’s death assaulted Arthur’s mind, the bright red of his blood, the gurgling noise he’d made as the paralysis began, the shock of his killer.
Arthur shoved the memory back into the corner of his mind, to the vault where he compartmentalized all the deaths and horrors he’d seen. He let numbness ice out any feelings and kept his face carefully neutral because in the here and now, he had to consider John’s reputation. Mansfield’s politics had been in direct opposition to the Kenzies’, and Arthur should not have shown his face in Mansfield’s home. He wouldn’t have, if the fate of Manhattan hadn’t literally been in the balance.
“I dropped by to see if the old man was going to break out any of that pre-Prohibition liquor,” he said, in his most bored party voice. “He didn’t, so I left. Terrible tragedy, most shocking. Were you two close?”
