The Shadow Court

by Jenn Stark

  We moved along the wall closest to the entryway, our meandering progress unnoticed by the crowds doing much the same thing. It was easy to get swept up in the grandeur of the Sagrada Familia’s interior, with each gothic flourish more over the top than the last. There were additional elaborate sculptures of everything from fruit to members of the angelic host, and after a few minutes of searching, my money was on one set of the treelike pillars serving as the key to our Two of Wands. But which set? It was almost impossible to tell one from the other, as large as the space was.

  “You said this manuscript contained mystical teachings that were kept out of the original Zohar. But you’ve read the most recent criticism, and most people think the guy who wrote it was a scammer. Why would he have cut the best section out? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “He didn’t,” Armaeus countered, his eyes still on the wall. “I doubt he even knew he’d written it. The man you followed into the synagogue took it. He was also deeply wounded, by your account, as if he suffered a great deal to get that sacred text into the right hands, desperate to learn the truth.”

  I’d experienced this tone from the Magician before, and while in times past, I would have found it deeply irritating, at the moment, it was strangely heartening. “This is a teaching moment for you, isn’t it?”

  He looked at me sharply. “A what?”

  “Never mind.” I waved at him. “Carry on.”

  “We do not know the true motivations of the writer of the Zohar,” Armaeus said. “It is possible he was guided by authentic mystical urgency. It is equally possible that he sought to make as much money as he could from an audience eager to find greater mysteries and arcane knowledge in the ancient teachings of Judaism. What we do know now is that there was an additional section of the Zohar that was not included in the final book. That chapter went missing and eventually arrived in the hands of a holy man in one of Barcelona’s—one of all Europe’s—most ancient synagogues. There it disappeared. There is also no indication of anyone referencing it, either in mystical practices or as the source of teaching—particularly not the author himself. It essentially vanished. But it clearly existed. Perhaps there were some Jewish mystics who wanted that chapter for themselves, or who wanted to destroy it. And perhaps there were some who wanted to take it from the messenger who carried it so valiantly to the synagogue in Barcelona. That is the man I am more interested in. Was his motivation to secure the text from the kabbalists and preserve it for Jewish leaders, or protect it from a third group?”

  “You mean the Arcana Council?”

  He frowned. “The Council doesn’t dabble in the esoteric teachings of mortals. The kabbalists developed their form of mysticism without our interference.”

  “But this was something different, wasn’t it?” I pressed. “If it was really the be-all and end-all of mysticism, you would have wanted it for yourself, at least to sneak a peek of it. And you can’t remember anything about it other than that it was something you forgot.”

  “Precisely.”

  I groaned. “I feel like I’m in an Escape Room designed by a four-year-old.”

  Armaeus apparently didn’t think this was very funny, because he moved his attention to the far wall…then stopped.

  “Miss Wilde,” he murmured, the words barely a breath.

  I turned to look at what he saw, and froze as well. In the archway below one of the extraordinary stained-glass windows—a window split into a distinct three-leaf-clover pattern—there was an angel statue with elaborately spread wings perched on a ledge, a book in his hands. At either side of the statue stood two treelike pillars, their leafy stone boughs exactly like the far larger versions that graced the center of the nave. Other than a few electric candles near the statue that could be illuminated with the donation of a euro, no one stood near it.

  “We’re not going to break into an angel statue,” I said, even as we both shifted in that direction.

  “The manuscript is within the statue itself, do you think? Or hidden around it?”

  “I want to believe around it, not in it. One, because I’m inherently lazy, and looking around the statue for a loose stone is a lot easier than busting it open. And two, because whoever planted that book is presumably religious. It seems like planting it inside a messenger of God would be sacrilegious. Who’s the angel?”

  Armaeus closed his eyes briefly again, then scowled. “There’s no marker. Nothing is written about it.”

  I grimaced. “Well then, maybe it’s just a very pretty angel-shaped box.”

  As we talked, Armaeus and I moved deeper into the room, where I noticed a third set of individuals as interesting as the tourists and Connecteds, but sporting much more impressive hardware. A private security force.

  “Someone’s expecting trouble.”

  “It’s a large tourist event at three in the morning,” Armaeus said dismissively. “The Sagrada Familia is funded by ticket sales and private donations, so the police won’t be called in unless absolutely necessary, most likely in the case of crowd control in the event of a riot. Which we don’t want, Miss Wilde. The last thing we need is attention drawn to this location, especially if we’re not able to secure the manuscript tonight.”

  I looked at him oddly. “Why wouldn’t we be able to secure the manuscript?”

  “There’s—a unique energy pattern that’s in force that I’m only now becoming aware of, that’s beginning to drag on me. I need to understand it, to subject myself to it so that I can study its effects later, but it’s draining my energy at a very deep level.”

  Alarm snaked through me. “Are you doing too much?” I asked him, searching his face. Sure enough, he did look more tired all of a sudden—not a good look on him. “Should you even be out of Dr. Sells’s care at this point? Should you sit down? Get a cane?”

  Armaeus chuckled, his gaze returning to the angelic statue. “No, no. I assure you, there’s no cause for alarm—”

  A high, terrified scream shattered the night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The crowd at the Sagrada Familia was comprised of mostly adults in their late forties and older, a few knots of college students, and virtually no children. It was three in the morning, after all, and even Spain had its limits. But the screech in the middle of the crowd was of a decidedly young and female variety.

  “No, no, no! You can’t, I won’t go!” The words were Portuguese, and as the crowd peeled back, I could see they belonged to a young woman of maybe fifteen years who was writhing in the clutches of—no one at all. Both her hands were clapped to her temples, and she whipped her head back and forth violently, as if trying to shake off an unseen attacker. She appeared to be less than successful, but she did create a wide circle of space around her. I started forward to help, then realized Armaeus wasn’t moving with me and turned back to him.

  He was stone still, his eyes as dark as pitch.

  I cleared my throat. “Armaeus?”

  He didn’t move, didn’t blink. All he could apparently do was run his tongue over his lips and gasp one word. “Angel.”

  Then another scream sounded. And a third.

  I grabbed Armaeus and pulled him toward the unmarked statue, but it was slower going the closer we got to it. It was almost as if a force field was emanating from the statue itself, attempting to push the Magician away. Excellent for indicating we were on the right track, but a serious drag, literally, for getting him positioned where he needed to be. By the time we reached the alcove where the angel statue stood, I was sucking wind and Armaeus’s skin was the color of cement. For a man with a significant amount of Egyptian blood running through his veins, it wasn’t a good look.

  I propped him against the far wall and turned, surprised to find the journey that’d seemed to take me the better part of forever had actually taken only a few seconds. The women and men with their hands over their ears were still midscream, while the first girl was only now inspiring ordinary people to rush to her aid
. A curious problem with the aid givers, though—they broke into two very distinctive groups. The first set rushed forward and kept going, the second started out strong, then ended up on the ground.

  Some sort of force field, for sure. Belatedly, I realized that the shard of Nul Magis in my hand was throbbing like it was its job, and I gritted my teeth and burst forward toward the knot of afflicted Connecteds.

  Just as a shout cracked out over the crowd.

  “Heretics!”

  Exclamations of shock and confusion burst out as the people closest to the sacristy whirled to see a man in priest’s robes come striding out. To either side of him were more of the security force, and there was something unnerving about a religious leader of any sort enforcing the will of his church with guns. Especially when he also had a force field that was dropping everyone around him like flies.

  “Help us,” a woman begged me from her position at my knees, her face rigid with pain. But other than drag her bodily out of the room, I didn’t know what to do. My mind fixed on the Tarot card I’d drawn that hadn’t played out yet—the Tower. Armaeus didn’t want to attract attention, and blowing up the Sagrada Familia, which was my first inclination, was probably going to get noticed.

  “Destroy the heretics in our midst—you see them. They are marked as unbelievers by God.” The guy in front of the altar spread his hands as if he were the pontiff himself, and I realized he was exhorting the populace in Spanish. Who was this guy? I’d run into a splinter faction of the Catholic church once before with a hate-on for Connecteds, an organization known as SANCTUS who was both well-funded and off its collective nut, but I’d thought it well and truly disbanded.

  I grimaced. Much like the Arcana Council had well and truly disbanded the Shadow Court, only to have them keep reappearing.

  I scanned the crowd quickly, running out of options as some of the crowd heard the priest’s words and turned toward the suffering Connecteds with blood in their eyes. The Connecteds who were back in the sacristy, appeared to be exempt from the attack, or they were already dead, but these poor souls, I didn’t know how to help without betraying my existence and putting Armaeus in danger.

  Still, these Connecteds were strong—some of them very strong. So, dammit…they could help themselves. They needed to help themselves.

  My third eye flinched as the energy patterns in the room crackled and hummed, and I recognized I’d made that surge happen just by the urgency of my thoughts. It was as if the currents were uniquely attuned to me. In a blink, I also realized these Connected were, well…connected, their energy systems linking up exactly the way the kids in the nave of Saint-Germain-des-Prés had to create a stronger whole than the sum of its parts. I didn’t know why that was happening, but I didn’t need to know why, right now. I simply had to use it.

  I dropped to my knees, acting like any of the other non-Connected helpers who weren’t swayed by the priest’s cries of heretics. Not a word you wanted to throw around in Barcelona, no matter how many years had passed. The nearest Connecteds on the floor of the Sagrada Familia jolted, their eyes going wide with the realization that something was happening.

  I reached for the woman still huddled against me. “You help them. Help all of them,” I said to her and hugged her close, pulsing all my energy through her body, lifting the pain from her and using her own Connected ability to reinforce the electrical impulse I generated. Her head jerked back, her eyes going wide with surprise and relief. Then she wrenched away from me, leaping to her feet.

  “Enough!” She yelled with so much gusto that her energy then reinforced the energy of the people she was nearest. For some, that was all that was needed to break through the pain locking them down.

  I scrambled across the floor until I reached a knot of college-aged Connecteds huddled together, their shoulders hunched against their shared agony. I wrapped my arms around them, and one of them looked up at me, meeting my gaze.

  “Help,” she managed, but before she could get the word out fully, I was already focusing all my healing energy, the strength of my arms, my love, my belief in her until she convulsed, gasping. “Yes—I see it now. Yes!”

  She and her friends split apart like struck balls on a billiard table, each of them going in separate directions. I whirled around to keep track of where Armaeus was but couldn’t find him. He wasn’t leaning against the wall next to the angel statue anymore, and he wasn’t on the floor in front of it either. Hopefully, he hadn’t climbed inside the thing. I moved toward the statue just as another hand snaked out, grabbing on to my leg.

  “Heal me,” the man whispered, his eyes wide, crazed, and I moved without thinking, pulsing both health and strength into him. His electrical field swelled like a rose in full bloom around him, and he stared at me with something close to adoration in his eyes before turning and diving back into the crowd.

  But for every good psychic Samaritan, there were four other non-Connecteds who saw people in full heretical fits on the ground. Some ran for the door, some stood transfixed between their concern for their fellow man and their belief in a religious leader—any religious leader—some pushed through the propaganda and helped their fellow man…and some turned vicious. Rushing across the open nave, they fell upon the afflicted, kicking and screaming like animals kept too long from their food.

  I was only one woman, and I couldn’t cause a scene, but really, the scene was already well underway. I grabbed a tall candle in a brass base—

  And was smashed in the back by a club.

  “Unghf!” I went down like a sack of potatoes, only to see a half-dozen black boots surrounding me. I looked up into the barrel of a machine gun. The chaos and screaming roared all around me, but these guys were wholly focused on only one thing. Me.

  Um, Armaeus?

  Probably not my best idea to retest our psychic connection when I was in relatively dire straits. Predictably, I got no response. Fantastic.

  While I’d been knocked to the ground, winded and badly bruised, there was nothing wrong with my third eye. Flicking it open, I got a bead on the electrical currents vibrating through the space. I flung my arms over my head and tucked my knees up to my chest, more to protect myself than anything, then, at the last moment, stretched my arms out wide and sent another crackle of healing, empowering electricity along the floor, between the boots of my attackers. It reached the nearest Connecteds a second later, and they roared to their feet, flinging off their own attackers with cries that were half rage, half exultation.

  Absolute power didn’t always corrupt absolutely, but you definitely noticed it.

  And so it was the Connecteds who turned on my assailants and started battering them from the other side, people who looked enough like ordinary humans that the guys in black had the sense not to gun them down in cold blood. Smart move, since—finally—cops started entering the church from the main doors, blowing whistles and shouting through bullhorns. The gunmen surrounding me broke ranks and melted into the crowd of screaming people, and I struggled to my feet, my gaze immediately pinging to the alcove of the unmarked angel. Still no Armaeus—but someone had shot the shit out of the wall around the angel, pockmarking the stone and shattering the top of the statue. Where the angel’s head had once gracefully tilted, there was now nothing but a smoking black hole.

  I narrowed my eyes. I hadn’t heard any gunshots.

  Armaeus…

  No response.

  “Heretic!” I was surprised to hear the screech again, what with the police and all, but then I realized it was coming from an entirely different location. I looked up, and up still farther, and saw the barest glimpse of crimson robe disappearing from a catwalk that rimmed the top of the half-done spire, as if the priest was being dragged away. Since the guy had been in front of the altar not ten seconds earlier, there was only one person who could have collected him and gotten that high up in such a short period of time. The apparently rejuvenated Magician.

  With no idea how to reach
the top of the spire any other way, I sprinted across the nave to where the scaffolding lay roped off. I vaulted the obstruction and started to climb. I might not possess super strength, but I did have speed on my hands. Speed, and a whole lot of pissed off.

  Armaeus!

  Still no response.

  I reached the top of the scaffolding where I’d seen the priest pulled away, but on diving through the heavy cloth drapes, it was all I could do to stop myself from sliding across the ledge and crashing through the flimsy plywood barrier that was apparently the only block to the predawn sky. Armaeus stood beside that barrier now.

  Holding the priest over the edge of the scaffold.

  “What are you doing?” I screeched as I scrambled to my feet. Luckily, no one on the streets below us had noticed the dangling priest yet, but the place was lit up like the Fourth of July. Eventually, somebody would look up.

  Armaeus turned his head toward me as if he was some kind of robot, and I took one look at his eyes and stepped back. They were black—fully black, which meant he was accessing seriously deep, dark magic.

  “Help me!” gasped the priest, his voice barely audible as he clawed at Armaeus’s fingers. The Magician didn’t seem to notice.

  I didn’t particularly want to help the priest, but he didn’t have an ounce of Connected ability in him, probably because he was filled up with a hundred percent asshat. But as a non-Connected, he was off-limits for a revenge drop kick. Which the Magician certainly knew.

  “What’re you doing, Armaeus?” I asked, more levelly this time. “Why don’t you let the guy back down?”

  “Speak.” The voice that swelled up from the Magician was nothing like the coolly sophisticated accent I’d grown to know and love. This was a croaking hiss, the voice of a demon, and the priest looked to be on the verge of passing out. But Armaeus shook him, making his feet sway like a rag doll’s.

  “Ah…if you’ve got something to say, you better say it,” I suggested to the priest, edging slightly closer to Armaeus. I didn’t think he was going to throw the priest off the ledge, but something the man had done had offended the Magician, clearly. And then there was that voice. “What were you doing down there?”