Zhang’s cousin, Ling, had been helping them come up with a safe way for Rory to practice with the Tempest Ring. She’d given them a pink powder in tins, promising it would act as an absorbing wall for magic.

But what about a relic’s magic? Rory had asked.

She’d made a face. Let me know, she’d said apologetically, because how would she? They knew so little about what could control the ring’s magic, which was exactly why Rory needed to take advantage of this trip to practice.

Pavel was already dusting along the line where the shore’s rocks became grass. The powder wasn’t something he’d made; as far as Rory knew, he hadn’t made a potion since he’d started wearing the polarity-reversing lodestone to stop his magic from choking him. Now it hung on a longer cord so it could be hidden under his shirt. Rory had scried its history, seen the once-in-centuries moment five hundred years earlier, when the lightning bolt struck a paranormal and the fallen body had bled onto rocks, in the process transferring its magic to a chunk of magnetite.

Macabre, and Rory could’ve done without seeing that death, but he’d wanted to know it’d be safe for Pavel to wear, and as far as he could find, it was. The magnetite had been found and broken into pieces. What happened to the other pieces, Rory didn’t know, but he’d seen the history of the piece that was now Pavel’s.

The lodestone wasn’t the pomander.

Rory walked several yards down from Sasha and began to sprinkle the powder along the rocks. It’d been several weeks since he and Arthur had gotten away from Hyde with that particular relic. The pomander was with Arthur now, and Jade and Zhang, somewhere up in Canada, too far away for Rory to find Arthur’s location with the link. They were trying to destroy the pomander before it was ever used against the non-magical, and Rory could appreciate that, even if he had to work and couldn’t go off with them.

He still missed Arthur so much it hurt.

He met Sasha back on the rocks a few minutes later.

“You are ready?” asked Sasha.

The ring was in a new lead box in his pocket, its heavy weight unmistakable. “Not really,” he admitted.

She smiled sympathetically. “If the wind gets out of control, I knock you out. One hit.”

Rory chewed his lip. He hadn’t put the ring back on since Arthur had finally gotten it off the night Rory had wrecked Jade’s speakeasy. He wasn’t sure he’d ever want to put it on again.