Chapter Eight #2
Jason paused, looking as though he was deliberating. “One of the reasons my group exists is to keep things away from people like Reuter.”
“How did he obtain it?” Henry asked.
“He bought it at auction from a private collector in Dubai. Unfortunately, I didn’t see it was up for auction until after the sale.”
Henry grunted. “I would offer him a fortune, could I but draw upon my bank.”
“He doesn’t need more money,” Jason said.
“Then what does he want?” Rose asked.
Jason shrugged. “All these superrich guys either want to rule the world, or want to be immortal. In this case, it could be both. So we’d like to get it away from him before he finds a way to track down the moonstone, or finds a way to make the astrolabe work without it.”
Henry gave a huff of frustration. “It is rightfully mine.”
“It’s somewhere in that house.” Jason took a sip of his tea.
“You don’t know that,” Ryan said. “He must have other properties.”
Jason nodded. “Sure. He’s got a mansion in Zurich.”
“Lake Zurich?” Rose asked, thinking of the northwestern suburb.
“Zurich, Switzerland,” he clarified, as Ryan laughed at her.
“Shut up,” Rose protested, but she laughed, too. “Lake Zurich’s kind of fancy!”
Jason said, “Plus an estate in Florida, where he used to spend every winter. But ever since he bought the astrolabe, he’s barely left the Chicago residence.
So yeah, I don’t know for sure, but in my experience, with objects like these, people’s primitive instincts kick in.
They don’t want their prized possession out of their sight. ”
“It can’t be easy to get in there,” Ryan said.
“Usually, no. But he’s hosting a charity gala at the mansion in a few weeks.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” Henry asked.
“For good PR. Or so he can meet with someone without anyone noticing, because he’ll talk to dozens of guests.” His gaze slid to Rose. “There are still a few tickets available.”
Ryan folded his arms across his chest. “The guy’s trouble. My boss said he’s got a lot of enemies.”
“And I’m one of them,” Jason said. Rose’s head swiveled around to stare at him, waiting for an explanation.
Jason shifted in his seat. “I, uh, once bought something right out from under him.”
Rose asked, “So Henry and I could try to find the astrolabe at the mansion and…” She shook her head. “Use it for a reversal spell? I don’t even really know how.” Henry nodded, agreeing with her skepticism.
“Even if it can be used, it would probably take a lot of tries,” Jason agreed. He swept the café again with a glance. “I’m sure my colleagues would offer a generous reward to anyone who obtains it for us.”
Henry sat straighter in his seat. “Mr. Yun,” he said, even though Jason had definitely said to call him Jason. “Are you suggesting you’d like to hire us as common thieves?”
Jason looked to Ryan. “You know the house’s floor plan.”
Ryan seemed to be staring right through Jason. “Count me out. I’m not going to jail again.”
Jason raised a finger as if to say, Hold that thought, and the server arrived at the table again with their food.
“Oh, this looks great!” Rose said too brightly.
Jason seemed to be texting with someone.
Once they were alone again, she asked in an undertone, “Why would your group hire us, anyway? Instead of, you know, professionals?”
Jason grimaced. “We don’t have a contractor right now.”
“What happened to the last one?”
He held up his hands. “He retired. And every time we bring someone new in, we run the risk of exposure.”
Rose glanced at Henry. She really did want to help him get back, if she could. He was cautiously putting a forkful of black beans into his mouth, and he gave an unconscious shrug as if to say, Not bad.
She considered what Jason was saying. “No one would be surprised if the social media manager at the museum went to a museum benefit.”
Jason scrunched up his face. “I think it would be better to go under assumed names. And maybe even change up your look.”
“I can see that.” If she was seen sneaking around, it could be awkward. She looked to Henry. “What are you thinking?”
“Under the circumstances, I cannot object to this bit of trickery. If we can find the astrolabe, we do not need to take it…but we can attempt to return me to my time.” He cut a piece of his pork. “Or perhaps, since time travel appears to be possible…a few years before that?”
Her heart sank. Of course he wanted to be with his wife again.
“I have no idea how I would do that,” she admitted. “That’s a whole different thing from a reversal spell. I just feel in my gut that I can’t put someone in any year they want to be.”
Henry nodded soberly. “But you think you could undo what you did.”
“Yeah. Reversal spells are common, so I feel like it’s at least possible? Though it probably won’t work, either.”
“Almost certainly not,” he said, which made her feel bad and took the pressure off her at the same time. He looked to Jason. “It is not against the law to skulk around a fine house, I presume? Guests do it at Everly Park all the time.”
“No, that’s fine.”
Ryan asked, “What if he’s got, like, a hidden GPS tracker on the astrolabe, or some kind of motion sensor, or something?”
Jason shook his head. “Trackers aren’t small enough to hide. We don’t even use them in the museum, because you risk damaging the piece.”
“I wouldn’t attach something electromagnetic to something magical,” Rose mused aloud. “It seems like you might ruin its energy.”
Ryan picked at the label of the bottle of his nonalcoholic beer. “He’s going to have security cameras everywhere. And if you knock out the Wi-Fi, they’ll know something’s up.”
“Not if you do it a few minutes here and there,” Jason said. “I’ve got a portable jammer, and I can give you anti-recognition glasses that look like regular ones.”
“Sick,” Ryan said, sounding impressed in spite of himself. Rose felt as befuddled as Henry looked. Ryan explained, “They reflect infrared light so your face doesn’t show up on CCTV footage.”
“Wow,” Rose said.
Ryan added to Jason, amused, “For a museum curator, you’re a sketchy motherfucker.”
Jason’s mouth quirked upward, but Henry gasped.
Rose assured Henry, “He doesn’t mean it literally. It’s just an insult.”
“An insult not to be borne!” He turned to Jason. “Does honor not require you to call him out?”
“Nah, I’m good,” Jason said and checked his phone. “I’ve got a call with PR in twenty minutes.”
Rose felt a pang of guilt that she’d put Jason into this predicament—not to mention what she’d done to Henry. “At least it’s not a theft.”
Jason nodded, still looking at his phone. “If you could tell me where in the house the astrolabe is, that would be a huge help. We can give you and Henry fifty grand apiece for that. And any close-up photos would be great.”
Holy crap. That was a lot of money for something she’d been about to do anyway. Although scoping out a house for a possible theft was probably a crime, too, now that she thought about it.
Ryan sighed. “I bet I know where it is.”
“How?” Rose demanded. “Reuter didn’t even have the astrolabe when he moved in, right?” Ryan had said that was a year ago.
“No. But a guest bedroom had that raised paneling, whatever you call that?”
“Wainscoting?” Jason suggested.
“Yeah, I guess. One of those panels is on some kind of hinge? It swings right out and there’s a storage space. I don’t know if it was always like that, or what.”
Rose gaped at her brother. “How did you find a secret compartment?”
“We banged a nightstand too hard against it, and it sounded weird. So I went back later to see why.”
Henry was looking at Ryan with new respect. “It was uncommonly observant of you to notice such a thing.” Jason nodded his agreement.
Ryan gave a dismissive snort. “I’ve pushed a lot of furniture against walls.” He took a drink of coffee.
“As I said before, keen observation and investigation are two of the hallmarks of a scientific mind,” Henry insisted. “Few would have noticed, and fewer still would’ve investigated, especially amid what was surely a long day of heavy labor.”
Rose wanted to hug Henry. Ryan didn’t get a lot of praise for his intellect these days, after getting a constant stream of it growing up. Ryan gave a dismissive shake of his head, but she knew how much he appreciated it.
Ryan said, “There are back stairs by the kitchen. That’s how we took everything up. The guy’s got all these vintage pinball machines and arcade games like Frogger and whatever that weigh a ton. But the bedroom I’m talking about was a guest bedroom near the top of the stairs.”
“There could be many such secret compartments in the house,” Henry said soberly. “I do not like our chances, but we may at least look.”
Rose nodded. “We’ll look in that guest bedroom first.”
Ryan picked at a cuticle. “I still don’t like it.”
“It’ll be fine,” she assured him.
Jason said, “In the meantime, should we put Henry here up in a hotel room? I can arrange something.”
Inwardly, Rose sighed. Of course, that made total sense.
The duke would feel much more at home in a luxury hotel suite than in her guest room.
His presence here clearly had more to do with the magical astrolabe and its missing moonstone than with her amateur love spell…
even if part of her still kept thinking that maybe, despite his grumpiness at being in the twenty-first century, he might wind up liking her, after all.
Henry cleared his throat. “As I understand it, my being a guest in Rose’s home will cause no harm to her reputation. If I am not importuning her too much, I am sure it will be more convenient to our shared endeavor if I remain there.”
Rose’s heart did a little leap. “I’m not importuned.”
“If fortune favors us, I will not be there for long,” Henry added, making her heart settle right back down again.
“It’ll make things a lot easier,” Jason agreed.
“Your Grace, let me give you some walking-around money. It’s the least my colleagues and I can do.
Rose can hold on to it for you.” He added to Rose, “Put your purse on your lap.” It was such an odd order that she obeyed.
Jason glanced around again at the empty tables near them and then handed Rose what appeared to be a fat stack of hundred-dollar bills secured with a silver clip.
Ryan leaned back in his chair as if it were poison. “Okay, that looks like drug money,” he muttered. Rose stuffed the cash in her purse, and before she zipped it up again, she peeled off a couple of bills and put them in her wallet.
Henry was averting his eyes, as if to avoid witnessing something indecent. “Never in my life have I been in need of financial assistance.”
Ryan gave him a patient smile. “Bruh, you were born with financial assistance.”
Henry repeated, “Bruh?”
After learning the term jagoff, he probably thought it was another insult. “It’s short for brother,” Rose said quickly.
Henry said to Ryan, “It is true that I have always enjoyed great privilege.” He looked thoughtful. “It is possible that I have made justifications for it that do not withstand my own intellectual rigor.”
Awww. Rose admitted, “I think it’s human nature to take good luck for granted.”
“I’ve got to go,” Jason said abruptly, looking at his phone. He stood up, his chair scraping against the floor.
The meeting with the PR team. “Good luck,” Rose told him, and he headed for the door.
Henry turned cautiously to Ryan. “I have two questions, if I may.”
“Shoot,” Ryan said around a mouthful of his sandwich.
Henry paused, and then asked, “Why was Mr. Yun not offended by the epithet you bestowed upon him?”
Ryan blinked. “The what now?”
Henry’s face colored slightly. “The insult having to do with Mr. Yun’s mother.”
“Motherfucker?” Ryan gave a Robert De Niro–esque shrug, the corners of his mouth turning down. “It was just a joke. I mean, it’s not polite.”
“Politeness has never been one of his things,” Rose said lightly.
“Be careful who you call that, though,” Ryan advised Henry. Rose grinned. Henry would never, in a million years, say that word. “What was the other thing?”
“You were going to explain…particles?”
“Subatomic particles.” Ryan sat up straighter and launched into an incomprehensible explanation as Rose finished her French fries. She couldn’t tell how much of it Henry was following, but he seemed riveted. Nerds, she thought fondly.
When they reached a pause in the conversation, Rose said to Ryan, “We’re going to buy Henry some gym shoes. You want to come with?”