The Shadow Court

by Jenn Stark

  The wraithlike man walked right through us, pausing only slightly to shudder, and stepped inside the door.

  “Follow him.”

  Armaeus wasn’t usually one to give commands like that, but in the sway of the spell he was wrapping around us, I nodded. I could see what the messenger saw as he stepped into the synagogue, and because I could see it, I could be there as well. But I watched for a moment longer as the man moved through the outer rooms and into a very modest-sized room, a sacred space where candles burned and incense hung heavy in the air. The image was so compelling, I stepped forward. Heat danced over my skin as I crackled Armaeus and me into the old synagogue.

  The old synagogue had changed.

  Overlaying the images I could still see because I was looking through the eyes of the man I followed was what looked like a tidy, timeworn space, a present-day chapel with pews and an altar and unlit candles. But the flickering shadow of the messenger still hastened forward, and I realized there was another person in that long-ago room. Clad in heavy, simple robes, a rabbi stood next to a burning bowl and watched the man approach with kind and knowing eyes. He reached out his hand, and the messenger thrust the bag at him, pausing only to receive a blessing before dropping to his knees.

  “Please—please, you must read it,” the messenger implored.

  “It will be cleansed in fire,” the holy man said, but this wasn’t the answer the messenger was looking for.

  “No! You must read—!” he insisted, but the holy man turned and, without any fanfare at all, set the manuscript into the burning salver. It immediately caught fire with a bright burst of light, making both men shrink back. Then the fire guttered out, and it was clear from the other flames in the room that the chapter remained in the salver. Charred, but otherwise unharmed.

  The messenger groaned. “You must—”

  The man slumped to the ground, and only then could I see what his dark cloak had hidden before. He was bleeding through his clothes.

  The rabbi erupted into a flurry of movement, but the scene instantly evaporated in front of me. I came to, leaning against the wall, sweat dripping from my face as I coughed. “What the hell was that?”

  “The visions you saw were a communication path I am not privy to, as I cannot read your mind, Miss Wilde. I find it fascinating that you were able to keep your barriers tightly in place despite the clear physical distress you were experiencing.” He gestured to my damp hair and trembling body, and I hugged my arms around me.

  “There was a man carrying a manuscript. The lost chapter, I assume. He was injured. I didn’t realize that. In pain.”

  “He died over five hundred years ago,” Armaeus said, not unkindly.

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t a good way to go. But why could I hear him? For this to be a problem of Justice’s, he had to have been assaulted by another Connected—a powerful one, intent on doing psychic harm. He certainly had enough physical harm done to him. This guy was sliced to shreds.”

  “There may have been wounds within as well. What happened to the book?”

  “I…” I frowned and looked back blindly toward the center of the room, but the images were gone. The messenger had delivered the manuscript to the old rabbi, determined to understand it though he feared it all the same, and the man had promptly thrown the thing into the fire. The fire had not consumed the tome, however. It had made the manuscript glow incandescently bright, then had left it charred but intact. And the fire itself had almost melted away…

  “That rabbi was Connected,” I said. “Powerfully so.”

  “One of the most common places for men of magic to hide throughout the centuries was in the ranks of established churches,” Armaeus said. “If this rabbi that you saw was a secret kabbalist, a follower of the practices of Jewish mysticism, he would be receptive to a lost section of the Zohar, particularly a manuscript that promised arcane teachings that only he would then know.”

  “Except he tried to burn it.”

  “Even in a synagogue only two rooms large, the walls have eyes,” Armaeus countered, turning around. “There may have been other reasons too. The book could have been spelled by an outside hand, cursed, or he may have wanted to determine its authenticity. But after…?”

  “The vision stops when the man died. He was the one who had been wronged, who was crying out for Justice.” I shivered. Would I eventually find his request buried in the shelves of Justice Hall? Had whoever was Justice during the time when this man had lived heard his cry? If so, he or she hadn’t come in time to do any good.

  But the manuscript…the manuscript had been there. Bound in some sort of leather, thick with inscribed pages. It had been tested by the holy man and survived. What would the rabbi have done with it then?

  Armaeus remained off to the side, running his fingers along the walls, as if the stones could speak. I quirked a glance at him. “Are those bricks talking to you?”

  “Yes,” he said drily. “They’re saying the answer still lies within you. So maybe you should move it along.”

  I blinked in surprise, then realized he was joking again. “You know, I definitely liked you better when you remembered me.” Still, I understood what he wanted. I pulled the deck of cards from my pocket and shuffled them as I scanned the rooms. “This place is insanely small for a synagogue.”

  “You’ve seen too many cathedrals.”

  I thought of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the compact priest I’d met within its soaring walls. Father Jerome would have enjoyed this mission, without question. Though a devout believer himself, he was open to the beliefs of any and all who sought the true path. A lost chapter of the Zohar would have been catnip to him. “That’s probably a true statement.”

  I pulled three cards from the deck, scanning each of them before I handed them over to Armaeus. “I’m not sure how much this helps us. We’ve got the Hierophant, the Tower, and the Seven of Swords. I was almost certain I was going to pull a card that indicated that the book had been hidden in the stones here, but none of these are leading me to believe that.”

  “The Hierophant,” Armaeus mused. “A reference to the church, certainly. It traditionally represents the pontiff, but it could as easily mean another synagogue.”

  “Yes—but the Tower isn’t a good sign. Was there a synagogue that burned down? Or exploded, somehow? If this is referencing the Jews themselves, they didn’t do so well with the coming of the Inquisition. That manuscript could have been spirited out at any time. In fact, that’s probably a good explanation for it. If I’d had it in my possession, I would have taken it out of Spain well before the Inquisition got rolling. The fires and death didn’t reach Barcelona for a few years, after all. They would’ve had time.”

  “They would, but the energy of this city…” Armaeus shook his head. “There must be something more. What are we missing?”

  I pulled another card, then frowned down at it. The Ten of Pentacles was generally one of the better cards to pull in the deck, the card of abundance and joy and the kind of enduring wealth that could keep your family rich for generations. But that wasn’t helping me here. In fact, standing in this humble synagogue, the act of pulling such a card of obvious wealth felt almost obscene. It was exactly the opposite of what I would have expected to find.

  “Miss Wilde?” Armaeus asked.

  I flipped the card to him. “Money. A whole lot of money, spilling out around us, only we don’t need money right now, we need…what?”

  Armaeus was smiling again. While I really wasn’t in the mood for another knock-knock joke, I figured I’d appreciate his humor more if I understood it.

  He didn’t make me wait long. “Where would you hide an artifact of unprecedented worth and unprecedented danger if you wanted to make sure no one would ever look for it?”

  “Deep at the bottom of the ocean?”

  He laughed. Once again, the sound was absolutely foreign coming from his lips. Foreign, but not bad, exactly. Lighter. Freer. Ev
er so slightly unnerving.

  Was he happier for not knowing me?

  Oblivious to the sudden lurch of pain in my chest, Armaeus spoke. “A reasonable choice, but not exactly the answer I was going for. No, I’d say that you’d hide it somewhere directly under the noses of those who feared it most. Not only would that ensure they’d never look for it so close by, it would also ensure that anyone interested in stealing the artifact for their own arcane use would be forced to go through the ranks of their enemies.”

  I tilted my head, trying to follow his logic. “So, for this missing book of Jewish mysticism, you’re thinking the Catholic church?”

  “Not any Catholic church,” Armaeus said, holding up the Ten of Pentacles. “One that was all about family. La Sagrada Familia, right here in Barcelona.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Back in the relative anonymity of predawn Barcelona, I employed my lesser-known but highly valuable skill of walking without watching where I was going as I searched on my phone, using the Magician to run interference between me and the wave of tourists. There were still way too many people out to be reasonable, but at least they didn’t slow me down.

  “Well, the Sagrada Familia works great as far as the cards are concerned, and it’s a very cute idea to stow a lost ancient book of Jewish mysticism in the middle of a very Catholic basilica, but there’s another problem. Gaudi started work on the church in the late 1800s. You banished the manuscript of the missing chapter into Nowheresville in 1478. That’s quite a long time where we didn’t know where the book was.”

  As I scrolled, we turned onto the Carrer de la Marina, less than three miles north of the ancient synagogue in El Call. Armaeus didn’t look my way. He was too busy looking up—and up farther still. Meanwhile, I kept staring at the phone.

  “And it didn’t even become a church proper until a few years ago and the darned thing isn’t even done—holy crap.”

  I finally looked up to see what Armaeus was staring at, and the impossible façade of the Sagrada Familia rose above me, illuminated all around by high-tech spotlights.

  “I’m fairly certain Gaudi would have been edified by your review,” Armaeus said drily as I continued to gawk. The Sagrada Familia looked like a power lifter who’d doubled down on steroids for about five years too long. Huge, sprawling, and top heavy, it sported a massive central nave that exploded up into the sky as if angry at the heavens, and so many thick, soaring spires, I lost count of them almost immediately. It didn’t help that most of the spires were surrounded by varying degrees of scaffolding. As I stared, I began to pick out stunning bits of detail: a bunch of bananas perched atop one of the lower pinnacles, a dozen expressive statues built into another wall, a burst of doves flying up the rock face.

  “What is this place?” I murmured.

  “One of Gaudi’s greatest labors of love, a church to honor the Holy Family of Christ.” Armaeus pointed to the spires. “Each of those spires represents a member of Jesus’s family and closest disciples, with the center spire reserved for the son of God himself.”

  “But it’s enormous. And it’s nowhere near done, it looks like.” Huge cranes as well as draped and fenced construction sites surrounded the church.

  “Apparently, Gaudi once told a critic that his client was not in a hurry,” Armaeus said, earning another side-eye from me. But the quip was without inflection, so this was clearly not a joke.

  “Is it actually in use?”

  “It has served as a church since it was consecrated, yes, but it mostly operates as a tourist attraction and spectacle of Gaudi’s work. Still, there’s no question that he intended it to be used as a house of God and prayer.”

  I peered at the enormous front doors. “So how is it open this early in the morning? And how are we supposed to find a manuscript in such a big place if it’s filled with people?”

  Armaeus didn’t have an answer to that, electing instead to move me toward the throngs of tourists lining up outside the front door. The spotlights combined with the huge outpouring of light from inside the church made for a fantastic spectacle. It was so bright, my regular eyes flinched away, but something caught my attention as we entered the church, causing my third eye to flicker open.

  Crap. “We’ve got company.”

  “Who is it?”

  The electrical patterns in the Sagrada Familia were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Although most places of worship featured a stronger electrical signature than regular buildings, whether they were sacred groves, sanctified cathedrals, or the home of a prophet, like everything else about the Sagrada Familia, this church took it to the next level. The enormous treelike columns that served as the foundation of the nave seemed to be generating their own energy source. Electrical currents arced out from those bases, dipping and eddying around every outcropping, leaded glass window, and statue. Those currents of energy served as a canopy for the milling crowd below, but the group of tourists also contributed to the light show. About thirty percent of the audience, roughly speaking, were Connected—and some of them quite powerful, though I almost got the feeling they didn’t realize it, the way they were walking around and staring at the magnificent church as if it was the true miracle of this place and not them.

  “Um… What’s the special event tonight?”

  Armaeus closed his eyes briefly, summoning his inner Google, then glanced around. “They are consecrating one of the most recently completed spires, apparently the first in a series of completions scheduled between now and 2026. The guest list is almost entirely Spanish VIPs, but the event is also open to the public. It is just that the elite group will get a special experience once the general public is moved through.”

  “And they scheduled this for the middle of the night? Even in Barcelona, this is pushing things a little late.”

  “Apparently, part of the show is a light-based representation of the finished basilica that will gradually dim as the sun comes up. That’s not scheduled for another two hours, by the way. More than enough time for us to collect the manuscript.”

  “You really think it’s here?”

  Armaeus’s sigh was rich with satisfaction. “I absolutely know it’s here. This is the first time I’ve set foot in the basilica since it was roofed over. I admittedly only tried to enter it once, when I was in the city on other business. When it was blocked to me, I assumed it was the nature of my business that caused the problem. I left the city and didn’t have any compulsion to return until today. Now I believe I was restrained from entering by my own hand because the missing manuscript was here. And it was not yet time for me to find it. Nor did I possess the key to unlock the gates I had resurrected around myself.” He glanced toward me, a soft smile playing at his lips. “For that, I needed you.”

  “Well, or maybe you simply needed to go for it. Simon said—”

  “No, Miss Wilde,” the Magician said, his words resolute. “I believe Simon was wrong. The key to me recalling my memories wasn’t simply being presented with that which I’d forgotten. It was you. Something about you is unraveling even my most carefully crafted spells, now that those spells are detrimental to me. Somehow, some way…you are the key.”

  We stared at each other a long moment, my mouth going dry at the expression in his eyes. The Armaeus of old had never looked at me quite this way—not only with wonder and curiosity, but with hope, I finally decided—and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Especially since he didn’t really know me at all, anymore. How soon until he learned that his hope was completely unfounded?

  “Well, keys are good,” I finally said, nodding to the collection of goons near the altar. “But what we really need is one that can get us into the cool kids’ party in the back room. It doesn’t look like those guys are planning a mass anytime soon, but they’re ushering small groups to the back, and all of them are Connected. That’s…kind of weird.”

  Armaeus accepted my redirection easily, narrowing his eyes as he took in the small group asse
mbled near the altar. “Interesting. But at least it serves as a distraction to any who might otherwise notice us.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I’d still like to know what they’re doing in there. Can’t you just go in and look around, then report back? I don’t think the manuscript is going to be stuck inside some closet where they keep the spare Bibles.”

  “Then where do you think it might be?” Armaeus spoke with the air of someone expecting me to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but I settled for a card from my pocket. Or two, actually. The entire church was lit up like Christmas, so I wasn’t going to find the manuscript by its electrical signature. Still, like Armaeus, I did feel it was here.

  I handed the cards over to him, glancing around the nave of the basilica. “Two of Wands, Three of Pentacles. Up is the name of the game, I’m thinking. But how far up?”

  Armaeus hummed in concentration as he swept his gaze along the church interior’s soaring arches. “The book could have been moved well after the foundation for the cathedral was laid, but in thinking back to that year when I first encountered resistance, a lot of the outer ramparts had been completed, but not much of the spires themselves. I would think the book would be contained in this central space.”

  “That would be handy, except this central space is packed full of people.”

  “Perhaps near one of the windows?”

  I considered the Three of Pentacles. A trinity-style set of windows would ordinarily be a good bet for a location, but once again, logic argued otherwise. “If you had a sacred book, would you really put it someplace where it could get rained on? That doesn’t seem super smart.”

  “Then an interior façade?”

  “That would seem most likely. And then too, there’s the Two of Wands. Two staffs driven into the ground, a young man between them, looking to a far horizon. So maybe a location that can be seen at a distance…”