by Jenn Stark
She pulled a face. “I wasn’t here for that part. When I got your text, I was out on the Strip with Detective Delish.”
“Dressed like that?” Brody Rooks was another long-time friend of the Council, and an even longer-time friend of mine. He was also a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, with a habit of drawing the short stick of crazy when it came to psychic complaints or crimes. Of which there were more and more in Vegas of late.
“He knows how to roll well enough. I needed the backup of Las Vegas’s finest, and of course, that meant him. After the Beltane crazy a few weeks ago, the local Connected community is amped to the max. And there’s another festival going on this week, so he asked me to help him handle it. On the down low, he said, drawing no attention to ourselves.”
I snorted. That explained her dress. Nikki didn’t do anything on the down low.
“So anyway, I showed him the text you sent of the woman who attacked you, and he had me send it to his phone. He didn’t think much of her tat, even questioned that’s what it was, but I could see it plainly. After I told him he was clearly blind, he zoomed in on just that part, taking everything else out of the frame, and sent it off to some friends of his. Good enough. He didn’t recognize the motorcyclist either. Then I shipped both images over to Kreios, who happened to be with Armaeus, and he showed them to Armaeus. They talked for another few minutes, and the Magician claimed he was tired, wanted to see Dr. Sells, all that. Kreios went off for her. When they came back, Armaeus was out of his bed—vanished.”
“Cameras?”
“Everything we had on him shorted out with a spike of electricity, from the looks of it. It’s back online now, but what we’ve got is the Magician lying in his bed, looking about as lousy as you do, staring at the tablet where he’s got an image of Chick Vicious. Kreios is out of the room at this point and something shifts in the Magician’s face, like he’s put something together. He lays down the tablet, he lifts his chin, he closes his eyes, and he goes poof. We’ve got no electrical signature on him, but we don’t think he’s in Vegas anymore. We think he’s with you.”
I made a show of checking the room around me. “Pretty sure I would’ve noticed that.”
She grinned. “I’m pretty sure you would’ve too. Simon’s watching all his regular residences, but we think he’s gotta be focused on the house Mercault sent you to. It was bugging the shit out of him that he couldn’t remember the significance of that home, even though records check out that it’s been in his family since at least the French Revolution, and probably long before. At first, he said he didn’t want to go see it himself. He understood he’s operating with less than a full deck, and everything was comfy cozy in his little hospital fort. All that changed when he saw the picture you sent.”
Great. Just what I needed, a half-baked Magician trying to find his way home. “You guys figure out anything about that tattooed symbol?”
“That would be negative. According to Simon, it’s probably important but not too important given where the girl chose to emblazon it on her skin. Most super-secret symbols are a little more hidden away than that.”
I thought about the woman who’d attacked me, all fierce energy and rage. “Unless she didn’t give a crap.”
Nikki finger-gunned me. “There is that. But if that was the case, why would you use her on an important op? Sloppy.”
“She didn’t come in until the end,” I mused aloud. “I’d taken out two rounds of asshats before that. She was a high-level Connected, but she was running on something more than her love of life. It’s possible she wasn’t supposed to take an active part in the capture, just the aftermath, at which point no one was expecting me to be in a position to take selfies.”
“I can buy that,” Nikki said, nodding. “Detective Dreamboat seemed to think the symbol could represent a major high-end gang, though he’s never seen it before. And he should have, given all the paper he’s read on international drug syndicates. So he’s not happy.”
“And you think Armaeus is here, in Paris, after seeing that tattoo? Why?”
“No clue,” Nikki admitted. “The original plan was for us to pore over data while Dr. Sells continued to monitor the Magician’s cell regeneration. Apparently, he’s got off-the-charts growth happening with his neural circuits, and there are some other physiological changes that have her all atwitter. Vascular expansion, higher oxidation of his blood, the whole nine yards. It’s like he’s getting pumped up for American Gladiators.”
“And his neural circuits?”
“A total cluster. Some areas of his brain are lit up like Christmas, some are completely dormant. There’s absolutely no correlation between his brain activity and typical neurological activity of sample subjects, and he sleeps like it’s his job.”
“Well, maybe he’s having a growth spurt.”
She snorted. “He’s definitely doing that. But even he recognized he’s nowhere near one hundred percent. If he joined us in the search, he almost certainly wouldn’t improve our chances of finding his missing memories.”
“Yet he took off anyway.”
“He did. And you should know, he didn’t ask about you once. Kreios worked up the full report on your injuries, your enemies, any information we could get to figure out who the assholes were who jumped you in the park, because he figured the Magician would want to know. But Armaeus never asked. Which is definitely not normal.”
It was a testament to how used to the new reality I’d become that Nikki’s words didn’t faze me. Much. Over the past few weeks since Armaeus had suffered a trauma in Ireland, in large part to protect me, he hadn’t seemed merely walled off from me, he’d been completely absent. Almost aggressively so, as if he was deliberately pushing me away and not focusing on me or anything I did or said. At first, my feelings had been hurt… Okay, my feelings were still hurt. But I knew enough about the Magician to know he had a plan in what he was doing. I just didn’t know what our relationship would look like when he came out on the other side.
Was I truly a threat to Armaeus, like I’d been to Father Jerome? Was he better off not knowing me?
I pushed those thoughts away. “What’s Doctor Sells’s assessment of his physical capabilities at this point? And how much of his magic does he still have? Did he undertake any tests along those lines?”
“Kreios says no, that he was focused entirely on his internal healing, but I call bullshit. Since he left Dr. Sells’s care and returned to Prime Luxe, Armaeus has been squirrelly. I pulled the cameras for the last few days since you were running around the jungle. He stayed in his actual bed the bare minimum, but I have no idea where he went. The moment I get a chance, I’m going to pin Simon to the ground and figure out where Mr. Magus was spending his time. That said, I think we’ll find he stayed pretty damn close. He’s got everything he needs for full-on conjuring in that fortress of his. He’s prepared like that.”
“So why come to Paris still broken, without all his toys?”
“Maybe he has different toys in Paris?”
“Maybe…” I drummed my fingers on the hotel desk. “Do you have eyes on his Paris house or apartment or whatever it is? The one Mercault pointed me toward?”
“Simon’s tapped into the security system there. It’s pretty basic. Home itself doesn’t look used other than to be kept clean by staff, who don’t live on-site. Conventional security in the main, but it hasn’t registered another person in the house. Since Armaeus blew town here, there’ve been no alarms or even a stray heartbeat picked up on any of the monitors. What that means, though, I don’t know. Either Armaeus is there but neutralizing his presence, or we’re wrong and that’s not where he went. But we don’t think he would’ve gone after the operative whose photo you snapped directly. Especially not knowing where she was, unless he knew far more than he let on to Kreios.”
“He wouldn’t have done that.” My certainty about the Magician’s behavior had less to do with his friendship
with the Devil and more to do with his sense of practicality. With the Magician under the weather, leadership of the Council had been split between Kreios and the Emperor, Viktor Dal. It was a deliberate delaying tactic, and it made for an unreasonable number of meetings, part of the reason I was glad not to be in Vegas. But Armaeus was letting Kreios take the lead, and he wouldn’t throw the Devil under the bus deliberately. “Something simply must’ve clicked, and the shock of his discovery sent him flying.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Still, I suspected I was missing something. “Armaeus knows there are two chunks of memories that he’s lost, maybe three if he dropped other pieces besides his memory of me. But he has zero knowledge of this group that’s following me or these rumors of threats to the Council. What’s going on?”
Nikki blew out a long breath. “Based on their conversations, Kreios suspects that the Magician now believes that the Council is going to be straight up overthrown as a result of current events unless they follow a distinctly specific course.”
“Overthrown?” I blinked. Nobody had said anything about the Council being overthrown. Attacked, yes, damaged, sure. But how could you overthrow the most powerful group of Connecteds in the world?
“Sells doesn’t concur. She believes that Armaeus implanted that particular belief in his mind at some earlier point, to come to the surface at the necessary time to create a sense of urgency. But, now he’s gone. And we’ve got no record of him in Paris or anywhere else in the world. He’s in the wind.”
“I’ll find his little Parisian bungalow as soon as I’ve caught some sleep,” I said. “I’m just short of hallucinating, and that won’t do anyone any good.”
“Agreed.” Nikki nodded. “Because you look like—”
I stabbed the phone off before she could finish, then sat back in my chair. On any other mission, I would reach out to the Magician with my mind, seeking the connection between us that was equal parts galvanizing and healing. But I’d locked down my mental barriers against Armaeus the moment he’d stopped recognizing me. Part of that was for his benefit, not wanting him to see how distressed I was and have it distract him from his own healing. Part of it was self-preservation, not wanting him to see how distressed I was out of simple pride.
But the time was rapidly coming that I’d need to put aside my fears and open myself up to him whether I liked it or not. Because he wasn’t healing on his own. I wasn’t sure I could heal him either, but it was theoretically possible, even if he no longer remembered I had that capability. In healing him, and giving over such a personal part of me, would I lose myself in the complex construct of the Magician’s altered mind? Was I strong enough to heal him and preserve myself as well?
I slumped further, my mind racing through everything I’d learned since coming to Paris. First, someone was targeting me—me and, apparently, the Council at large. That somebody had a well-equipped army of Connecteds large enough to deploy in the streets of Paris on the off chance they might pick up my trail. That army, combined with the whispers Mercault had picked up, spelled money and influence.
Second, the arcane black market attacks on the most vulnerable of the Connecteds hadn’t gone away simply because I’d stopped paying attention to them. If anything, they’d gotten worse. And someone was now deploying low-level Connecteds as their eyes, ears, and hands in grabbing these children off the street. The same somebody who was targeting the Council? Odds were good.
Third, Armaeus was in worse shape than I’d realized, worse shape than he should be. The image I’d messaged him of the motorcyclist bad guy and the fierce young female warrior and her tattoo had sent him running…straight to Paris, I was sure of it. Yet he still hadn’t tried reaching out to me.
Which meant he wanted me to come to him.
Right?
“All right, Armaeus,” I whispered to the empty room. “We’ll do this your way.”
The room gave no response. Or if it did, I couldn’t hear it, as sleep finally took me down.
Chapter Eight
Morning dawned way too soon, and I awoke with the first beam of light through the opened curtains. If anything, I felt more drained than I had when I’d gone to sleep, but a scalding-hot shower helped. The coffee and croissants cheerfully offered in the hotel’s lobby also went a long way toward restoring my will to live. The morning was cool and clear. Jacked on espresso and buttery goodness, I made good time walking through the streets of Paris, finally consulting my phone map to narrow in on the appropriate street.
The address corresponded with a largeish patch of green that had no name or title indicating it was a public park. My curiosity grew the closer I moved to my destination. Rue du Chambourg was impossibly charming, with trees and green space not entirely common in this section of Paris anymore. The mansion rising behind an elegant wrought-iron gate was equally unusual. Especially because it looked like it was resting at the front of a multiacre secret garden.
How could Armaeus have forgotten a house that looked like this?
The three-story structure most resembled a baby Palais de Justice, with its creamy marble front, gilded doors, and curved roof. The grass surrounding it was manicured and stretched luxuriously to either side of the building before flowing back to a stand of heavily pruned trees. I itched to see the extent of the secret park, but there was the problem of the wrought-iron-and-stone fence that surrounded the property, fronted by an imposingly ornate gate. There was absolutely no sign of life in the building, but this was Paris, not the American South. Armaeus wouldn’t likely be sitting out on the front porch sipping sweet tea, waiting for me to come calling.
That said, who locked their gates against friends? Even friends they couldn’t remember anymore?
I blew out a long breath as I curled my hands around the gate, eyeing the lock. But no sooner had I touched the cool metal than the clasp snicked and the gate popped open. Not due to any of my own effort or electrical pulse either. Which meant someone had been waiting for me, no rocking chairs required.
The speaker crackled beside me. “Please come in, Miss Wilde.”
I couldn’t stop the full-body shiver that Armaeus’s words, spoken in his rich European accent, caused me. I was so used to hearing the luxurious roll of syllables inside my mind, elegant and articulate, that hearing him speak out loud was always a visceral pleasure. But while he’d known I was leaving Vegas for French Guiana and a trophy hunt for Mercault, the Magician hadn’t spoken to me about the trip. He hadn’t said two words to me alone since he realized he didn’t know me.
So this…this was different. This almost felt like we were meeting for the first time. I wasn’t good with meeting anyone for the first time, let alone a man who had, up until very recently, been my lover. There really needed to be a self-help book for that.
I couldn’t stop the weird hitch to my pulse as I moved down the smooth stone walkway, which was hedged by overflowing pots of flowers that looked generously tended. The thick stone walls of the mansion, trimmed with more stone in mellow white, gave the impression of money—lots of money—and age. I could easily believe this home had originally been built for French aristocracy, and I wondered idly when Armaeus had picked it up. Had he needed to guard it behind its sturdy fence from the bloodthirsty rebels of the French Revolution? Had he watched Napoleon’s armies assemble from the upper windows? The park space behind the building alone must be worth a fortune, but the Bertrands had never lacked for funds.
I jolted as the door swung open, and Armaeus stood in the shadowed lee of the shallow front porch. “Were you planning to spend the morning staring at the house?” he asked.
My cheeks flushed at the wry comment, but it was his smile that nearly undid me. Armaeus looked at me with curiosity and interest—but for the first time since his collapse, it was an interest that was edged with sensuality. It was as if he’d finally recalled that there had been something between us, even if he wasn’t sure what, and that there might again be some
thing between us, along with an appreciation of the delicious state of uncertainty in the present.
I had less of an appreciation for the present, frankly. Especially since I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
I said nothing but moved forward, mounting the few steps and entering the fortress as Armaeus stepped back. The interior was exactly what I would have expected in any house that had its walls cordoned off by little velvet ropes and a discreet placard suggesting an optional donation at the front door in exchange for a colorful map.
“When in the world did you live here?” I blurted, my gaze immediately going to the paintings that lined the walls floor to ceiling, the gilded balustrade of the staircase that started deep in the foyer and wound sumptuously upward, and the shadowed hints of polished floor chasing deeper into the house.
“It would appear I maintained an active residence in the late 1500s, during the portion of time I have conveniently forgotten. I quit the house abruptly in 1571, though I no longer know why, and didn’t return to Paris for any reason until the Revolution. At that point, I remained long enough to secure the interests of myself and my family, as well as offer what protection I could to those who were caught on the wrong side of history.”
“Protection,” I echoed. “Or, in other words, you were willing to tip the scales in your favor to keep your family and friends safe.”
“I never made any assertion to the contrary,” Armaeus responded smoothly. “The balance of magic must be maintained at all times, yes. But as long as that is assured, I’d be a fool not to use the benefit of my position to protect those who should be protected.”
The comment wasn’t untrue, but it still made me blink. I was used to the other members of the Arcana Council being mercenary, and I certainly made no excuses for my own avarice. But Armaeus had always seemed above that fray, separate and apart from righting the petty wrongs of ordinary men.
