Spellbound Page 4

  His voice broke. He made himself say it again. “You got out. You got out. This. Is. Real.”

  He tensed all the way from his clenched fists to his toes—and then, like a bowstring loosed, his body crumpled.

  He let out a breath that was almost a sob as his tension turned to trembling. He rolled onto his side and curled into himself on the floor, as if he could somehow stop the shaking. Would have been nice to have a blanket. Or company.

  Or be a different person.

  It took several minutes for his breathing to slow and the dizziness to fade. Finally he braced himself on the bookshelf and shakily pushed up enough to see the antique clock over the cash register.

  It was nearly ten.

  He’d been lost in the ring for hours.

  And suddenly he was furious. He grabbed the ring box and shoved to his feet, heading straight for the open briefcase on the cash register counter. He ignored the prickling in his hand long enough to stick the ring box in the briefcase and slam it shut. He yanked the briefcase off the counter and stormed into the office, where he jammed the case in the lowest file cabinet drawer and locked it tight. Then he reached for the desk and the paper with Arthur Kenzie’s contact information.

  He burst through the shop’s side door into the brownstone’s lobby, where a handful of people were smoking cigarettes and checking their mail. Ignoring them, he snatched up the party-line telephone and bit out the exchange and number for the operator.

  The call was answered on the second ring. “This is Arthur Kenzie.”

  Kenzie’s voice was deep and confident and he had a ritzy accent, like he hadn’t always lived in America. It was unquestionably sexy and that only pissed Rory off more. “You think ’cause you got money you can stomp all over us?”

  All heads in the lobby turned his way. In his ear, Kenzie sounded very unimpressed as he said, “I beg your pardon—”

  “How dare you give Mrs. Brodigan that—that thing.”

  There was a barely perceptible intake of breath. “Who is this?” Kenzie’s voice had gone sharp.

  “We don’t appraise weapons!” Rory’s heated shout nearly sent his broken glasses tumbling off his face.

  “Where’s Mrs. Brodigan?” Kenzie demanded. “Why do you know about the ring—”

  “That’s no ring. Whatever that piece of hell is, you’re taking it back.”

  “But—”

  “Keep your job, keep your money, and keep the hell away from us. You’ll get your monster back tomorrow and I better never hear your fucking name again.”

  Rory slammed the receiver back on the cradle. He stood for a moment of righteous anger—then slumped as all the fight left him in a rush.

  That...might have been a bit harsh.

  He hunched his shoulders, conscious of every pair of eyes in the lobby staring at him. He slouched as small as he could and slunk away from the phone—

  When it suddenly rang.

  Rory froze. His gaze landed on the phone. It rang again, the long-long-short ring that meant a call for the antiques shop. And no one else in the lobby was moving, all eyes staring at him, so finally he swallowed hard and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Don’t bother sending the ring back,” said Kenzie. “I’m coming to get it myself.”

  Chapter Five

  Arthur hung up on his mysterious caller without another word. He swept up his suit jacket, winter coat, and hat, dressing as he took the stairs down four flights to catch a cab on Central Park West.

  “Hell’s Kitchen,” he told the driver, then sat back, steepled his fingers, and considered the call.

  Who the hell was that uppity little shit? How the hell did he know about the ring? And the most pressing concern—where was Mrs. Brodigan?

  Christ. Had she opened that box?

  Arthur’s knowledge of psychometry was limited and his experience with it nonexistent. He’d never met a psychometric in person—had never even met a person who believed a sane psychometric could exist. The risks to the mind from the visions were simply too great. Arthur knew of some of those risks from rumors, others he could quite well imagine, and if Mrs. Brodigan hadn’t heeded his warning, if she’d had any contact with that relic—

  The consequences could have made an unknown young man very angry with Arthur.

  Shit. He leaned forward. “I’ll pay double if you can make it in under ten minutes.”

  The cabbie looked like Christmas had come earlier. “Sir, yes, sir,” he said, and floored it through a red light.

  * * *

  Rory could not move fast enough.

  He sprinted from the lobby, fumbling for the keys in his trouser pocket. It took him three tries to lock the side door with his shaky hands. What had he been thinking, mouthing off like that? He’d just been so shaken—so scared, if he was honest with himself. He’d lost hours to that ring, and he didn’t want to think about the last time he’d gone that deep—

  But of course Arthur Kenzie didn’t know that. Kenzie was just another wealthy jerk-off wanting an appraisal. He had no idea what that ring had done to Rory and probably enough social clout to blacklist Brodigan’s Appraisals and make sure the shop never got another customer.

  Rory had to fix this. He had to be gone when Kenzie arrived. His boarding house was locked tight by now and he was facing another night in the shop, but he could walk the streets until the coast was clear, and maybe Mrs. Brodigan could smooth things over for his stupid big mouth in the morning.

  But before he could run, he had to lock up, or he was just rolling out the welcome mat for Hell’s Kitchen’s gangsters. He held his broken glasses on his face best he could as he scrambled to empty the cash register into the safe, to lock up the files, to cover the items that needed covering, to draw the curtains—and, most important, lock the drawer with the briefcase in it.

  He was in the office yanking on his coat and newsboy cap when the shop door’s cheerful bell jangled like a funeral march.

  Oh, balls. Why hadn’t he started by locking the front door?

  The posh voice from the phone split the shop’s silence. “Where’s Mrs. Brodigan?”

  Rory winced. Weighed his chances of sprinting to the side door. Weighed his chances of spontaneously becoming invisible. Then, with defeated reluctance, he peeked around the office’s open pocket door.

  Whoa.

  Standing in front of the door was the most handsome man Rory had ever seen, tall and well built, with coal-black hair, sky-blue eyes, and a frantic expression. But Kenzie didn’t seem to notice him staring as he crossed the shop in two long strides and began poking his head into every crevice, even checking behind the register.

  “Excuse you,” Rory said, finally finding his voice. “This is a private shop. You can’t just—”

  Kenzie was suddenly right in front of him. “Where’s Mrs. Brodigan? Don’t think of making me ask a third time.”

  He towered over Rory by a head, and he had the broad shoulders and muscles of someone who did real exercise, not just moved the occasional antique lamp. His black wool coat and three-piece suit must’ve cost more than anyone in Hell’s Kitchen could make in a lifetime.

  Rory tried not to sound intimidated. “She’s in bed, yeah? If she’s not asleep yet, she’s reading a novel with a cup of tea.”

  “Tea? Why the—is she all right? Have you rung for a doctor?”

  Rory blinked. “She’s fine. Isn’t she?” He covered his mouth. “Oh God. Is she all right?”

  “You should know!”

  “Why would I?”

  Now Kenzie paused. “Mrs. Brodigan is unharmed? She’s not in a coma, or babbling nonsense?”

  “Not that I know of,” Rory said warily. “But if she is, we should—”

  Kenzie waved him quiet. His gaze swept over Rory, from the shaggy hair, to the broken glasses, to the second
-hand tennis shoes. Rory had his full attention for the first time and it was enough to make him squirm. “Who are you?”

  “Rory Brodigan.” After four years, the lie came easy, the name now his own.

  Kenzie’s gaze returned to Rory’s face. Lingered on his eyes. “A relative, I presume. What are you doing in her shop so late?”

  “Inventory.” Rory recited their well-practiced cover story. “I’m Mrs. Brodigan’s nephew. I help her out around the shop—just the little things that need doing, you know, taking deliveries, carrying boxes, getting things off of shelves.”

  “Not the top shelves, clearly.”

  Rory narrowed his eyes. “What’s it to you?”

  Kenzie smiled, no warmth, all menace. “It’s not every night I get a call at ten o’clock from someone who, and I quote, never wants to hear my fucking name again.”

  Rory winced. “Ah—”

  “Look at that, you blush.” Kenzie folded his arms. “Where was your shame fifteen minutes ago?”

  Rory tried to will his cheeks back to normal color. “Mr. Kenzie, I—I, might, um—”

  “Where’s my briefcase?”

  Rory bit his lip and pointed to the office. Kenzie pushed past him and began rummaging through the desk, and Rory froze in place as a terrible thought struck.

  What if Kenzie opened the box again?

  “A little more direction than that, if you please,” Kenzie called over his shoulder.

  Rory’s breaths had turned rapid and shallow as a cold sweat broke over his skin. He considered another lie, but the office was tiny. Kenzie would find it eventually, even without his help. “File cabinet, b-bottom drawer,” he made himself say. “Key’s under the—the desk.”

  He could run. He should run, put some distance between his frayed mind and that horrible ring. But Rory couldn’t make his body move, could only stand by helplessly as Kenzie crouched, then fished the briefcase out of the drawer a moment later. The case looked so completely normal as it dangled uncaringly in Kenzie’s large hand.

  “If Mrs. Brodigan isn’t hurt, why did you call and bite my head off?”

  What an annoyingly good question. Rory tried to think over his pounding heart, flailing for a lie Kenzie might buy. “I thought—uh—I thought a ring in a locked case must be—stolen. That you’d involved Mrs. B. in a felony.”

  “Stolen,” Kenzie repeated doubtfully. “You said your shop doesn’t appraise weapons.” He held up the briefcase. “You called this a piece of hell.”

  “I thought it was stolen,” Rory said stubbornly, as he averted his eyes from the briefcase and stared at the ceiling instead. “But obviously a ritzy fella like you isn’t gonna steal, so—”

  “People can always surprise you.” Kenzie rattled the briefcase carelessly. “This was kept closed?”

  “It’s locked, isn’t it?” Rory’s knuckles were white as he clenched his fists tight. Please don’t open it again please please please—

  “Oh, would you relax?” Kenzie suddenly snapped as he strode out of the office without opening the briefcase. “You deserve to be contrite, but all the cringing makes me feel like a monster.”

  He hadn’t opened the case. Rory’s tensed muscles went loose with relief. He slumped against the bookshelf, knees weak, heart still racing. “Are you?” he managed to say.

  “Not the kind that hits children. Christ, are you even eighteen?”

  First cracks about his height, now his age? “Yes,” said Rory. “Much older.”

  “Really.” Kenzie leaned back against the cash register counter. “And how much is much older?”

  Twenty suddenly didn’t seem to fit the bill. “Twenty...um...six?” Kenzie would believe that, right?

  “Twenty-six.” Kenzie blatantly looked him over again. Was Rory imaging it, or had those cool blue eyes grown more interested? “And you’ve worked for your dear auntie Leena how long?”

  “Four years.” That part was true, at least.

  Kenzie studied him some more, as if weighing his options, and then he seemed to come to an abrupt decision. “In that case, you can apologize to me over drinks.”

  Rory could not have heard that right. “But—”

  “You do owe me an apology, don’t you?”

  “Well, I—I mean—drinks like...sodas?”

  “No.” The corner of Kenzie’s mouth turned up. Geez, he had nice lips, soft and pink, not chapped like Rory’s. “Surely an ancient man like yourself remembers the golden days before Prohibition.”

  Rory had never had a sip of alcohol in his life. He’d also never shared a table with a man even half as good-looking as Arthur Kenzie. He was like something out of a dream: broad shoulders, pricey clothes, nothing making him human except the black stubble dotting his jaw, like his morning shave was already wearing off.

  Rory nervously licked his lips. He needed to stop staring before Kenzie noticed.

  “You sure?” he couldn’t help but ask. “It kind of still feels like I’m in trouble.”

  “Because you are.” Kenzie inclined his head to the door. “My cab is waiting. Are you in?”

  Rory hesitated. He should say no. He should say hell no. Drinking was illegal. Kenzie was still angry. Rory should leave, should wander the freezing streets and dodge the gangs, not come back to the shop until Kenzie was gone and then bolt himself in to stay awake in the frigid cold all night, afraid to sleep, afraid the visions were coming back—

  “I’ll lock up,” he said, and tried to pretend that Kenzie’s smile didn’t make him think of a wolf.

  * * *

  Arthur held the cab door for Mrs. Brodigan’s nephew—Rory, he’d said his name was—and said, with saccharine courtesy, “After you.”

  He half expected him to rabbit and run, like a man with an ounce of sense, but Rory was either made of sterner stuff than he looked or he wasn’t very bright because he slunk into the cab like a confused stray dog into a warm house.

  “Harlem,” Arthur told the cabbie, as he climbed in second, and didn’t miss Rory’s small intake of breath. “What’s your problem with Harlem?”

  But Rory just shook his head. “No problem,” he said, earnest enough that Arthur believed him. “I’ve just never been.”

  “It’s barely four miles from you.”

  “I know, I just don’t—” Rory bit off the words. “I’m just not from the city,” he said, instead of whatever he’d been going to say.

  Arthur rested his back against the cab door. “And where are you from?”

  Rory made a vague gesture. “Oh, you know. Upstate.”

  Clear as mud. Arthur’s instincts told him Rory was hiding something, and his bet was on Mrs. Brodigan’s psychometry. He’d spent weeks trying to track down information on Mrs. Brodigan and all this time she’d had a mouthy nephew, a potential fountain of inside knowledge.

  Arthur was going to crack him like a rusty vault.

  The cab slipped through the streets, the city lights rippling over the back seat like gentle waves on a lake’s edge. “Where’re you from?” Rory was eying Arthur’s lips. “You got a fancy accent.”

  An accent bought by Arthur’s parents, taught at his expensive schools and then made more pronounced by frequent transatlantic travel. “I spend a lot of time abroad,” he said. “How exactly are you Mrs. Brodigan’s nephew? I understood she had a single sibling who died childless.”

  “Through the late Mr. B. Cousin of a cousin of a third cousin twice removed, that sort of thing. Nephew’s easier to say than sorting out a big Irish family.”

  “So you’re Irish?” Arthur raised an eyebrow. “With those eyes?”

  Rory bristled like a porcupine raising its quills. “All sorts of folks wear cheaters.”

  Arthur hadn’t meant the glasses. In the dark of the cab he could barely see Rory’s eyes, but he’d noticed them instantly in the sho
p—hadn’t been able to stop noticing them. The deepest of browns, like coffee, fringed with long jet-black lashes despite Rory’s blond hair. Those eyes belonged on a lush Adonis from a sultry Mediterranean beach, not some surly urchin from Hell’s Kitchen.

  He rapped the door behind him, getting the cabbie’s attention. “Drop us here.”

  Rory clambered awkwardly to the curb as Arthur paid, looking around the empty, snowy street. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly.” Arthur waited until the cab was out of sight, then tugged Rory by the sleeve toward the street’s corner, to a deli with a green awning and an abandoned tobacco shop.

  Chapter Six

  Benson was the one to take them into the Magnolia again. Rory slouched behind Arthur as they walked, head down and hands crammed in his pockets like he could make himself invisible. “People can still see you,” Arthur pointed out. “You’re not that short.”

  “You’re not that funny.”

  Despite himself, the corner of Arthur’s mouth quirked up.

  The place was wall-to-wall packed with bodies, but Benson somehow found them a small table along one wall, the closest thing to private the club had. On stage, Stella had ensnared the crowd with a slinky red dress and a heartfelt rendition of “I’m Nobody’s Baby.”

  Arthur took a seat, tucking the briefcase under his chair, and watched as Rory, eyes glued to her, walked straight into the table. “You have seen a woman in your twenty-six years, haven’t you?”

  Rory scowled as he found his chair. “Yes. Just not many as airtight as her.”

  “It runs in their family,” Arthur said, gaze stealing to Benson’s retreating back.

  “You know her?” Rory huffed. “Of course you do. Figures a big-timer who looks like you knows a doll who looks like that.”

  Arthur blinked. The words were as grouchy as everything else out of Rory’s mouth, but that had been a compliment.

  Rory turned to look at the stage again, the lights illuminating his profile; the line of his jaw and neck above the collared shirt and suspenders, the blond curls clamped down by the newsboy cap, the near-black of his striking eyes. As the light flashed wrong off the side of his glasses, Arthur frowned. The cap was patched twice, the coat three times; Rory wouldn’t be careless with something expensive.