Rules of Justice (The Exceptional S. Beaufont Book 8)

by Sarah Noffke

  Wake up, Lunis commanded. Finish what you came here for.

  B-but, Sophia stuttered, realizing the mirror was still in her grasp. I’ve been…

  Yes, you’ve been cursed, he said, pity in his voice. We will deal with that later after you survive this. Do what you came here for.

  She nodded in reply and held up the hand mirror.

  The specter seemed to expect this and narrowed her empty eye sockets at Sophia. Once more, she howled, but this time just once that spoke of her grief over losing.

  For a moment, just like with Lee’s mirror, nothing happened. Then a beam of purple light shot out of the reflective surface of the mirror. It instantly magnetized to the specter and wrapped around Tatiana, again and again, like a lasso.

  Sophia gripped the handle tightly, thinking it would pop out of her hands if she wasn’t careful. Her hands were so slick with sweat she had to concentrate on her grip to keep the handle in place. The energy that ran down her arms from holding the mirror was overwhelming.

  On top of that, it was incredibly fatiguing. Sophia couldn’t imagine Lee having to maintain this for as long as she had. Holding one's arms straight out for a period of time was taxing enough but doing it when a force was rebounding around them, was quite another.

  The tether gripped the specter tighter and tighter, all slack disappearing from the string of light. Sophia didn’t know exactly when she should get the perfume bottle but felt powered by instinct. She continued to hold the handle tightly, believing she’d know when it was time.

  Just as she stuck her faith in that belief, the specter yanked back a few feet and then forward again several times like a part of a weird tug-a-war. This happened until she was jerked into place and rose high into the air, suspended by the two strings of light.

  The tether was complete.

  Chapter Ninety-Eight

  The strength it took to hold onto the mirror was so great that Sophia worried she couldn’t release one hand to fetch the perfume bottle. However, when the tether was suddenly in place, all the energy rebounding from the hand mirror lessened greatly. It felt as though Sophia was just holding a regular mirror that wasn’t connected to a suspended specter.

  Still, her arms were fatigued and her legs and body were shaking from exertion.

  Drawing in a breath, Sophia dared to take one of her hands off the mirror and slip it into the pocket of her cloak, where she found the small bottle with a silver lid. Using two fingers, she unscrewed the lid and knelt, careful to slide the glass bottle along the pavement without breaking it.

  Sophia couldn’t quite reach it all the way to the specter, which was hanging like a frozen statue in the air—an expression of horror stuck on her face.

  Toeing the bottle, Sophia urged it a few feet forward until it was directly under the white figure.

  The hand mirror shook in her grasp and Sophia held it tighter. It vibrated as the monster in the air began to shriek.

  Unsure what was happening or if she’d done something wrong, Sophia watched with wide eyes. The specter began spinning in the air, at first slowly, like a ballerina on the top of a jewelry box and then quickly like an out of control ride at a carnival. Tatiana’s screams filled the air, overwhelming Roya Lane, and breaking windows. The front display panes of the Fantastical Armory to the side of Sophia burst.

  She winced from the explosion, turning her head to avoid getting glass shards on her skin.

  Like being sucked down a toilet, the specter continued to spin as she shrunk and sank down into the bottle, like a genie disappearing after granting its wishes. The only wish that had been granted though, was that the specter was gone, and Sophia had survived to witness it.

  The purple beam of light disappeared from the hand mirror, and Sophia was released from her job of holding up the object. She dropped her hand like a stone, feeling instant relief.

  Striding forward, Sophia knelt and retrieved the perfume bottle, which was now full of a murky white substance. She screwed the cap onto the bottle and shook her head at the object. She couldn’t believe that something so small could be full of so much evil. The only thing that mattered was that the specter had been contained and was no longer her problem, although Tatiana might have left Sophia with a new dilemma.

  Chapter Ninety-Nine

  Sophia nearly slammed the perfume bottle containing the specter onto the glass counter of the Fantastical Armory but decided it was probably best to not chance breaking the object and releasing the monster again.

  Papa Creola casually glanced up, pulling his attention from a particularly perplexing crossword puzzle question.

  “You could have mentioned the part about the leash running out,” she said, bitterly.

  “I could have,” he replied, reaching out and taking the bottle and holding it up to the light.

  “That wouldn’t be very much fun for you since you feast off the adrenaline and fear I give off when I think I’m about to die, right?” she asked, mock curiosity on her face.

  Papa Creola shook his head. “My job is to give you enough information so that you’re successful, but not so much that you overthink things.”

  “I almost forgot to think when I nearly peed on myself,” Sophia told him.

  Lee entered the shop, rolling out her arm the way a baseball player does after a particularly grueling game. “Speaking of peeing on yourself, I nearly did waiting for this whole thing to wrap up. I should have remembered to take a potty break before we began. Imagine my anxiety when I’m holding a hand mirror that suddenly weighed as much as my wife and my bladder is like, ‘Hey, time to empty me.’”

  Sophia couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, thanks for maintaining focus. If you had slipped up even a tiny bit, I would have been a goner. Especially at the end when the specter was only a few feet from me, at the end of her leash.”

  “Oh, is that how it worked?” Lee asked, combing her fingers over her chin and looking impressed.

  “Well, not that anyone wanted to tell us that before, but yeah.” Sophia gave Papa Creola a pointed expression.

  “I don’t know why you’re so angry,” he said. He was seriously perplexed why her near-death experience had her on edge. “You were successful and you didn’t die.”

  “I was literally three feet from death,” she argued. “Also, I believe that the monster cursed me.”

  Solemnly, Papa Creola nodded. “Yes, I believe that as well.”

  “Because you saw it?” Sophia asked.

  He shook his head. “I see it about you.”

  Lee tilted her head to the side, regarding Sophia while squinting one. “She looks tired and a bit flustered, but I don’t see anything cursed about her.”

  “It’s marked on her soul,” Papa Creola explained.

  The assassin baker laughed. “Oh, that’s not so bad. My soul was cursed a long time ago.” She gave Sophia an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, souls are overrated. I don’t think you actually need one. It’s like deodorant. You’re fine without it.”

  “You’re wrong on both accounts,” Papa Creola said before turning his attention to Sophia. “I will work on the method for removing the curse from you, but in the meantime, you’ll have to manage.”

  “What does that mean?” Sophia asked.

  “You’ll suffer from hallucinations and the inability to sleep,” Papa Creola stated matter-of-factly. “When you are able to fall asleep, you’ll be plagued by nightmares.”

  Lee nodded and gave Sophia a commiserate expression. “So you’ll pretty much be me.”

  Sophia shook off her friend’s attempts to make light of something that sounded very serious. “Is there something that I can do?”

  Papa Creola looked up and to the right, seeing something that none of them could. “You were given something for your birthday that will help, but unfortunately only marginally. It is better than nothing, though.”

  Sophia thought about the things she had been gifted for her birthday. Mama Jamba had given her a pair of shiny earr
ings she said would possibly save her life. There were a few other things that could help, but Sophia needed to get back to the Castle and see firsthand. More than anything, she longed to get back after this adventure and hug her dragon and feel Wilder’s warmth.

  It wasn’t lost on Sophia how much she craved the ones she’d grown to love with such fierceness. They were the reasons she wanted to save the world, and they were the comfort she needed once she’d gotten one step closer to making the planet a safer place.

  “Good work on containing the specter,” Papa Creola complimented her, having glossed over which present would actually help Sophia. She didn’t think he was going to provide any more details. That was fine because she was prepared to figure it out herself.

  Making for the door, she waved at the father of time as he retreated for the back. “Anytime that you need my help, just call someone else.”

  “I’ll message you when I’ve had time to look into your curse,” he said, a promise in his voice.

  “Time!” Lee said with a laugh, slapping her knee and going over to the counter where Subner was hunched, reading a magazine on how to make bongs.

  “See you later, Lee,” Sophia said, waving to her friend. “Try and stay out of trouble until the next time I see you.”

  The baker assassin shook her head, glancing over her shoulder at Sophia. “Fat chance of that, but good job on surviving and all. I’d pick you to be on my kickball team.”

  “Thanks,” Sophia said, actually proud of that. She’d never played team sports and hadn’t had a normal schooling experience with physical education classes, but always feared that if she had, her height would make it so she was picked last for team sports activities. “Good work to you today. I really couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “That’s true,” Lee stated. “Don’t worry, you’ll get my bill.”

  “Can’t wait,” Sophia chimed, heading for the door as Lee turned her attention back to the owner and operator of the Fantastical Armory.

  “Can I take a look at those Chinese throwing stars?” the baker assassin asked. “I think I could bake something like that into a cake.”

  Chapter One Hundred

  With a new pride for Baba Yaga’s spellbook, Sophia slid it into a locked vault she found installed in the wall in her room. It was brand new, not having been there when she left.

  After shutting the door to the safe, she glanced up at the ceiling and smiled. “Thanks, Castle. You seem to know what I need before I even do, somehow.”

  Sophia watched as the flames in the torches on the walls grew brighter and then dimmed, the Castle saying, “You’re welcome,” in its own way. Like Ainsley and now Trin, Sophia was starting to understand the language of the Castle. She could understand how complicated and confusing it must be for Trin to learn since she’d have to work so closely with the Castle. Sophia still stood by the decision to make the cyborg the housekeeper. She was the right choice and would soon adapt to the strange magic that ran this place.

  Thankfully, Sophia hadn’t experienced any of the hallucinations Papa Creola said would be a part of the curse from the specter known as Tatiana. She hoped they didn’t happen, or he found the cure before they started.

  Her eyes slid to her large four-poster bed, and although she was exhausted and it was night at the Gullington, she feared closing her eyes, knowing she’d be plagued by nightmares.

  The guys, according to Hiker, were all off, dispersing the cure that Bep had made for distortion. It warmed Sophia’s soul to know magicians and elves suffering worldwide would be cured and have their magical powers back.

  That also meant there was no one to eat dinner with or take her mind off her new troubles. Sophia’s soul might be warmed by the cure she helped to get, but it was also cursed too.

  She strode over to the table where her birthday gifts were sitting, not having had the opportunity to really appreciate them since the party.

  There was the pair of pants Ainsley gave her back, which had originally belonged to her. That reminded Sophia that soon she’d have to return to the Silk Armor to get the shapeshifter’s dress.

  Her gaze slid to the walk-in closet Trin and Quiet had built for her. That didn’t seem like the thing that would relieve her new affliction.

  The silver loop earrings from Mama Jamba were beautiful and sparkly, but she still didn’t think they’d be what would help her with this problem. Still, she pulled off the backs of the earrings and put them into her ears. It wouldn’t hurt to wear them.

  Lunis had offered her a bunch of jokes for her birthday, and that did make her soul feel better, especially when facing real danger. No one made her laugh like her dragon.

  Her eyes fell on her phone on the corner of her desk, and Sophia remembered what Wilder had given her—a playlist of songs he’d made on Spotify.

  “Castle, please play Haggis,” she said, naming the list Wilder had titled based on their running joke about the food served on her first night at the Castle.

  The song that started playing was one that Sophia had heard, but not in this form. It was Teenage Dream, but sang from a guy’s perspective, instead of Katy Perry’s.

  “I think you’re pretty without any make-up on,” the singer began, instantly making Sophia smile. Wilder was definitely good for her soul. He was healing. He was like home.

  “I think you’re funny when you tell the punchline wrong,” the singer continued, making Sophia laugh, remembering how many times she’d botched up jokes she’d told Wilder. He always smiled at her in his usual endearing way.

  The playlist would make her feel better, but it wasn’t what would aid her with this curse.

  Hiker had given Sophia advice about knowing when to rest and when to fight. That seemed like rude irony now. She didn’t want to close her eyes, fearful of the nightmares she’d have.

  Then her eyes slid to the far corner of the table, where Mahkah’s birthday gift was partially obscured by the pants Ainsley had returned. The stoic dragonrider had thoughtfully given Sophia a dreamcatcher.

  Her fingers were trembling when she reached out for the beautifully constructed dreamcatcher done in turquoise and made of braided leather. Like a spider web, it had a stone suspended in the center. Sophia held it up in the air and let it dangle.

  “Of course,” she said out loud to herself. It might not work totally, but the gift would hopefully catch most of the bad dreams she’d been cursed with.

  She pressed the dreamcatcher to her chest, feeling grateful for her friends, whose thoughtfulness would undoubtedly be her strength and quite possibly save her life.

  Chapter One Hundred One

  “How many more maps do you need?” Nevin Gooseman asked, leaning over King Rudolf Sweetwater, the vein in his forehead pronounced.

  Surprisingly, for the fae, it hadn’t taken him very long to fluster the politician. Now he just had to stall a little longer until he found more information to help Sophia and Liv take the evil man down.

  “Well, these just aren’t good enough,” Rudolf replied, sweeping his arm at the stack of maps of Tanzania and Zanzibar. He wasn’t worried that these guys now knew the approximate location of the Great Library.

  Many knew this information and still couldn’t find the magical library after months of searching. They didn’t know to look for the Fierce, and that was the only way to find the location. They usually gave up, never finding the Great Library. However, there was no Fierce now. Instead, Plato had cloaked the library until Rudolf gave Liv the heads up that they were ready to storm the place.

  Before that, Rudolf was stealthily searching for information on the magitech military Nevin Gooseman planned to use to destroy the Great Library—not that it was going to happen. Then Rudolf needed evidence that would discredit the politician and prove he was behind the things he blamed on the Dragon Elite.

  The lines around Nevin Gooseman’s lips deepened as he frowned. Rudolf considered telling the man but decided he’d save it for later when he was really angry. �
��What kind of map do you need?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Rudolf began, unrolling a map and studying it. “Something that highlights all the food cart vendors would be good.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because that’s an excellent bit of information that explains how the Great Library has shifted location,” Rudolf explained.

  “You can tell the location based on where the food vendors are located?” Nevin asked.

  “In every city in the world, you can tell tons of stuff based on where food vendors set up shop,” Rudolf imparted. “They know the flow of traffic and capitalize on it.”

  Nevin Gooseman nodded slowly, looking to one of the many men with uptight expressions he kept around all the time. They were the worst and never laughed at Rudolf’s jokes. The king of the fae was pretty certain that most of them peed sitting down and lived on large amounts of Metamucil.

  “Can we get that information?” Nevin asked one of the suits.

  A man with thinning hair and an expression on his face like he’d smelled something bad, nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll have our guys work on that.” He pressed his hand to the earbud attached to the side of his head and began speaking in a whisper to the team they had stationed in Zanzibar. Rudolf had already sent them on various tasks, making them count the number of tiles on the old bell tower and measure the refraction of light during different times of day from the square in Stone Town.

  Nevin continued to send them on these strange tasks because he was desperate and believed Rudolf was his only chance of finding the Great Library. When the time was right, when he had everything he needed and the sisters were ready, the king would lead the politician to the library where his magitech army would get its ass handed to them.

  “Oh!” Rudolf chirped excitedly. “And also I need a map that details the population density, stating how many people live in each area.”

  “Like a census?” Nevin Gooseman asked, calming a bit. This was a reasonable request. That would not do.