Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Henry, in his suit jacket, was inspecting his reflection in the hotel bathroom mirror and practicing in his mind the words he wanted to say to Rose. A knock came at his door, and he rushed over to open it.
When he saw Emily Porter, he was sure his disappointment showed on his face. He’d forgotten the cardinal rule of entertaining: the person you felt the least comfortable talking to always arrived first.
“Hey, Henry.” She gave him a tight-lipped smile.
“Good evening, Miss Porter.”
“Rose went to pick up Ryan, so she told me to tell you she’s on her way.”
Rose would’ve told her all about what had happened.
And knowing Rose’s frank nature and her sister-like friendship with Emily, the fact that it had happened during an extremely intimate moment would not have been left out of the conversation.
Emily might be imagining him in that situation right now, which was mortifying.
She also probably thought he was either stupid or mad.
He slightly preferred the latter, although she might think he was both.
“Can I come in?” Emily prompted him.
“Ah. By all means.” He opened the door and stood aside. It still struck him as scandalous to allow a woman, alone, into such a private space, but no one else thought anything of it.
She closed the door behind her. “Oh! You got room service!” she said, looking over to the table and the ironing board, where over a dozen covered silver dishes waited. “A lot of room service.”
“Rose said to order dinner.”
“Thank goodness. I’m starving.” She headed over to the table and lifted a silver lid. “Wow, lobster!”
Henry strode over to the table. “We will wait for Rose. And the others.”
“No, yeah, of course,” Emily said, setting the lid back down and holding up her hands.
Rose had said, You know what I like, but taking up the menu, he hadn’t felt sure of that at all, and had been in an agony of indecision.
In the end, he ordered most of the main courses, a few first courses, several desserts, and two bottles of wine: their most expensive white, and their most expensive red.
“Isn’t the view amazing?” Emily asked, moving to the window. “This is where Griffin and I stayed after our wedding.”
“I never conveyed my felicitations,” Henry said, without looking at her or the view. “Allow me to do so now.” He suspected his voice sounded cold, but he should still get credit for congratulating someone on their happiness when he himself had been rejected.
“Thank you.” After a short silence, she said, “You know, Rose really cares about you.”
His head shot up. “She threw me out. As you well know.” Perhaps Emily also knew that he had stood naked in Rose’s living room, tears in his eyes, pleading with her to understand. Had any man been so humiliated?
Emily sighed. More quietly, she said, “Rose is always helping everyone else, and sometimes she winds up feeling used. I think she’s scared that nobody loves her just for being herself. You know?”
A knock on the door made him jump. Having no response to Emily, Henry stalked over and opened it. Rose, carrying a large quilted bag, stood there with her brother. Henry’s mouth went dry.
“Hey bruh,” Ryan said, though with less friendliness than last time, Henry noticed. “Nice room.” He crossed the room to look at the view, too, and Henry imagined throwing both him and Emily out. Rose lingered by the doorway after Henry shut it behind her, looking at Henry with a wan smile.
“I am very glad to see you,” he told her. She looked lovely as always, although more pale than usual. Or was that because…?
“Why are you wearing black?” he demanded. “It’s not Saturday.”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
Another knock sounded at the door, and Henry opened it to Jason. After everyone had said hello and Jason had left his suit jacket in the closet, Henry invited them all to eat dinner. Jason carried the duffel bag in his hand over and set it down next to a chair.
Ryan lifted one silver lid, and then another. “Ooh, cheesecake,” Rose said, eyeing the dessert.
“I got that for you,” Henry said quickly, since she seemed to want it.
“Sheesh, Henry,” Ryan said as he continued to uncover dishes. “Think there’ll be enough for all of us?” Jason, looking mildly exasperated, took the silver lids from Ryan and stacked them in the corner.
Once they were settled on chairs and with full plates, Jason said, “Rose, what did you find?”
“Well…maybe it’s not a big deal. But I figured out the keys to using the astrolabe in the painting.”
Jason set down his fork. “Go on.”
“In the background, there’s a vase with Hecate on it, and a vase with Venus.”
“Those are goddesses?” Henry asked.
“What did you think they were?” Rose asked.
“Ancient Greek…ladies, I suppose,” he said, trying to recall them. Charlotte had purchased the vases, and he knew that classical artifacts were a fashionable addition to a gentleman’s study, but he’d never had any real interest in them.
Emily was already pulling up the image of the painting on her phone. “How do you know they’re Hecate and Venus?”
“Hecate’s carrying torches, just like she did when she led Persephone out of the underworld, obviously,” Rose said. “And Venus is rising up out of the sea. So I was calling on the right goddesses every time.”
“Are you sure?” Jason asked, as Emily did another furious search on her phone.
“Of course I’m sure.”
Emily held up her screen toward Jason. “Look at this one in the Hermitage. It’s pretty similar.”
“Okay, yeah.” He turned back to Rose. “This is really good to know.”
“That’s not all! There’s the moon globe on the shelf…I think it’s going to work better during the full moon. I even worried about that the last time. Moon phases are so important! And there’s a deck of cards on the bottom shelf.”
“I do not gamble,” Henry interjected, because he thought it a low habit. “My wife Charlotte played a solitary card game.”
As soon as he said her name, he regretted it. But he had to be free to speak of her. He met Rose’s gaze—and saw that faraway look in her eyes, like that of a person who is trying to identify a voice from another room.
You remember, he wanted to say.
But what if he was wrong? The idea startled him. He’d felt so certain. But she felt certain, too.
He was not always right. In this new world, he was often wrong. And many things, it turned out, were shrouded in magic and mystery. Maybe, for once in his life, he could live without knowing.
“Uh, what’s the significance of the cards?” Jason asked, looking from one of them to the other.
“Oh! It was eight of clubs!” She looked around them for their reactions. Getting only blank looks, she said, “Clubs in a regular deck are wands in a tarot deck! I used the eight of wands the first time!”
“So maybe that’s another key element of the spell,” Jason said, nodding. He’d pulled a small notebook out and was making notes now. “This is great.”
“There were two other cards,” Henry said. The Lovers. And one that he couldn’t recall now…what was it she’d said? It represented memories. Home. “Are they not important, too?”
“I think they were just random,” she mumbled, deepening Henry’s stoic misery.
“Charlotte gave you the astrolabe,” Ryan said to Henry. “But she couldn’t have put clues in the painting. She was already…” He gave an apologetic shrug.
“She did tell me that corner of the study would be the place for a portrait,” Henry recalled aloud. “But as I have said before, she never told me the astrolabe was magical.”
“What would you have said if she had?” Rose asked.
He gazed into her blue eyes, regret filling his heart. “I would not have believed her. I did not know then that truth is not the same as logic, and some truths are very hard to accept.”
“If Charlotte did leave clues,” Ryan said after a moment, “does that mean anyone can use the astrolabe?”
Rose shook her head. “I think you have to be able to work with the moonstone. Like, magically.”
“I am certain she is right,” Henry said quietly. “She can feel its power—its vibrations. It glows around her.”
Frowning, Emily asked her, “But you can just send him back, right? Without going yourself? Because you passed out last time.”
“I think I can send him back on his own,” Rose said.
“It’s not the way it worked before,” Jason pointed out.
“True.” Rose frowned. “If I have to go with him, and then use the astrolabe to come back by myself, I will.”
Henry felt a stab of alarm. He had never expected her to do that. He supposed that it would be the same as last time, except that at the key moment, she would let go of the astrolabe, as she’d planned to do before.
Perhaps this was all madness, and he should stay in Chicago. But Rose no longer wanted him there.
Ryan crossed his muscled forearms over his chest. “That’s way too dangerous. What about winding up in the 1950s for a few seconds?”
“I think it was glitching because I had the timing wrong. We should’ve gone on the full moon.”
Jason set his plate on the TV cabinet and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Well, if you go briefly into the past, and then bring the astrolabe back here again, I can give you two million dollars for it. I would split it between you two, but I don’t know why Henry would need it.”
Henry no longer cared about giving up the astrolabe. He’d already lost Rose, it seemed. But it would be some comfort, at least, to know she was taken care of.
Before he could express his agreement, Rose told Jason, “I would just feel bad. It’s his astrolabe. Maybe there’s a way I can use it to come back without taking it with me—”
“Bullshit!” Ryan exploded, jumping to his feet.
Both women startled, and Henry found himself standing before he even had time to think. Ryan’s anger was like a palpable flash of heat, and Henry’s defensive instincts spiked in response. Jason and Rose had stood, too, but Emily froze in her chair.