Chapter Twenty
Twenty
As soon as Rose shut her apartment door behind her and Henry and locked it, she sagged against it in relief. “I still can’t believe we did this.”
They’d taken an Uber home. During the ride, Henry had been silent, and Rose had chatted to the driver in a general way about the comedy show they’d supposedly been to.
If the anti-recog glasses had worked, and their faces hadn’t been visible on Reuter’s security camera footage, they wouldn’t even be suspects in the theft.
Hopefully, the bloodstone with the heliotrope oil would keep them from being recognized, too.
Still, she figured the alibi couldn’t hurt.
Henry retreated to the bathroom and emerged a minute later with damp hair, having washed out the gray streaks. “I’m going to wash up, too,” she told him. “I smell like hot dogs and fear.”
When she emerged, deodorant-ed and more comfily dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, Henry was sitting on the sofa, the messenger bag on the coffee table.
He looked up at her. “I was waiting so we could take a look at it together.”
“Amazing,” she said, touched by his restraint. She came over, clicked on the lamp, and sat down next to him. Then he pulled out the astrolabe, set it on the table, and set the bag aside.
“Wow,” Rose breathed. “It’s gorgeous.” It was about the size of a dinner plate, with two open circles, both with symbols and lines, attached in the middle to the base. It awed her to think that such an elegant device had been crafted so many centuries ago.
“It’s much shinier than when I saw it last,” Henry said.
“It’s been restored. Like Emily does at the museum.” She grazed a tentative fingertip along the rim. “What do all these things mean?”
“These lines here on the bottom plate show the sun’s height.
See, the horizon line is here.” More energy came into his voice.
He was always in a good mood when he got to explain something, she’d noticed.
It was too bad that he had been stuck in a time and place where there were so many things he couldn’t explain.
He pointed to the curved line. “At the top we have noon, and at the bottom, midnight.”
“Okay, wow.” Rose leaned closer to him, and he put his arm around her. That always felt so good. “What’s the layer on top of it, with all these fancy curved shapes?”
“The tips of the shapes are the stars and constellations.” He turned the plate a bit. “And this top plate shows the path of the sun.”
“The moonstone goes here, right?” She pointed to what looked like an empty setting in the outer rim, at the bottom.
“Precisely. It’s not part of the mechanisms representing time and space.”
She unzipped her purse and took it out. “I’m going to get some superglue.” She set it on the table and got to her feet, then paused. Henry was staring at the stone intently.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He gave a quick shake of his head. “I am sure it is but a trick of the light. I thought that it seemed to glow, from within.”
She looked down, then took in a quick breath. “No, you’re right. That star glow is brighter.” She bent down to touch it. “And it’s vibrating again.”
Henry picked it up and held it in his palm. “I can’t feel it.”
“No, it’s like…I don’t know, spiritual.”
She went to the kitchen and dug around in the junk drawer overflowing with takeout menus, aluminum foil, a plastic bag of High John the Conqueror root she’d forgotten about, and two measuring tapes. Finally, she found a tube of superglue.
She returned to the living room. As she carefully squeezed a couple of drops of clear liquid into the empty setting on the astrolabe, she winced.
“I’m sure Emily wouldn’t approve of my restoration methods.
” She screwed the cap back on the tube again and put the moonstone in its place.
“Yep, it fits perfectly…I’m just going to press on it for a minute, and then it should hold. ”
“Perhaps you may attempt the spell in the morning,” Henry said.
“We should do it tonight,” she realized aloud. The exhilarated triumph of the evening drained out of her. “If we somehow did get arrested for stealing this, we’d miss our chance.”
Henry’s expression sobered. “It seems likely we will not face arrest. And surely you are exhausted—”
“No, listen. It’s still Saturday, and it’s almost midnight, so it’s great timing for a spell reversal.” The fact that it had been the full moon before troubled her, but she put it out of her mind. That had been a love spell. This was different.
His dark eyes bored into hers. “Is timing so important in magic?”
“I wish it wasn’t.” She wasn’t going to cry while he was still here. “But in magic, timing is everything.”
He took her hand and kissed it. In a low voice, he said, “In love, too, I suppose.”
Her heart ached. “That’s right.”
She went to the hook by the front door to grab her purse, which still held what she needed for the spell. Then she returned and picked up the astrolabe, keeping it flat because the superglue would still be drying.
“Come on. Let’s go to my altar.”
She’d never invited anyone to join her at her little altar before. For her, it was almost more intimate than the things she and Henry had already done. He followed her into the bedroom and knelt down next to her.
After she set the astrolabe on the altar, she pulled things out of her purse, first returning her Hecate statue to its usual place.
Then she put all three tarot cards back on the altar, but upside down.
Instead of a pink candle, for love, she put a black candle, for undoing, in its holder, ready to be lit.
She asked Henry, “Can you, like, set the astrolabe to Gemini? Since the moon is in Gemini tonight?”
Henry frowned. “Yes, I can.” He leaned forward and moved the middle plate.
As she took her matches out of the wooden box, she almost lost her resolve. But she had to do what was best for Henry. And as much as she would’ve liked to believe that staying here, with her, would be best for him, she knew that wasn’t true.
She took out the page with the incantation and unfolded it, feeling horribly self-conscious. It wasn’t like she really knew what she was doing.
“Let’s both hold on to the astrolabe, okay?” she suggested, resting her free hand on one edge. He took hold of the other side of the rim. “I’ll let go before I say the last words, but you hang on. I think if it works…you’ll go back, and I’ll stay here.”
“Where will the astrolabe be?”
“I think it’ll go with you?”
Henry took her hand that lay on the instrument and lifted it to his lips. Rose’s heart skipped a beat. Then he gazed up at her.
“I do not know if this will work, but whether it does or not, I want you to know how much I…” He paused, as though looking for the right words.
Rose’s throat tightened. “You’re welcome. I really do want you to be happy.”
He ducked his head, frowning.
“All right, here we go,” she breathed, and began reading the new incantation.
She’d tried out several drafts, increasingly complex, involving myths associated with time and esoteric references.
In the end, she’d chosen a more straightforward approach.
Each of the five lines corresponded to one of the elements—earth, air, fire, water, and spirit—beginning with fire, for Hecate.
O Hecate, torchbearer and the keeper of the keys,
guide Henry on the tides of time to his own century
and to the one place on this earth that he loves most dearly.
Reverse what I have done so breezily and carelessly,
and make things right for him, body and soul. So mote it be.
Nothing happened.
Rose opened her mouth to say, Well, I tried.
Then her vision went black and the floor fell away from under her feet.
She’d forgotten to let go of the astrolabe!
She couldn’t see or hear. As far as she could tell, she wasn’t breathing. Was Henry with her? She thought she felt his presence. They were floating outside time and space. The astrolabe was the only thing she could feel, and if she let go of it now, she felt like she might be lost forever.
Then a solid floor was under her bottom and legs where she sat, with the reassuring grip of gravity. Were they in Everly Park? Had she done it?
The air felt cold and damp. The darkness lifted—but only barely. In the dim light of a crescent moon, she could make out that they sat on an open stretch of land. She met Henry’s astonished gaze.
“Rose. Why are you here?” His voice was hoarse.
“I didn’t let go in time!” In fact, she was still gripping the astrolabe, and so was Henry.
His brow was knitted. “I should’ve made certain that you did. We must get you home safely.”
Rose got to her feet. “Where are we?” Then a wave of dizziness and nausea hit her, and she swayed.
He stood up slowly, asking, “Are you unwell?”
“I feel a little messed up,” she said.
“Yes, I feel it, too, just as before. And my head is once again starting to ache.”
“Ugh, mine, too. Right behind my eyes.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Are we near your house?” Everly Park was probably on a huge tract of land.
“No,” he said, squishing her hopes as he scanned their surroundings.
He had the calm, alert manner she’d seen in him at the mansion.
This must be how he reacted in a crisis: by becoming very focused and trying to think his way out of it.
Well, he hadn’t been calm when he’d first appeared in her apartment, but those had been extreme circumstances.
Thick grasses, up to her knee, rustled in the breeze.
Around them lay…nothing. The silence of this place freaked her out.
There were crickets and tiny rustlings in the grass, but no hum of traffic, no drone of a distant airplane.
Hundreds of silent stars glittered, and a cloudy purple streak arched down to the horizon.
In another situation, the sky would’ve delighted her.
But here and now, it filled her with dread.
“I believe we may be on the moors,” Henry said. “If so, we are hundreds of miles away from Oxfordshire.”