Marge looked up from her drink and gave him the kind of smile Jessica had assumed the necromancer incapable of giving anyone. “Leandras. What a pleasant…”
When the scarlet-haired woman’s gaze fell on Jessica, her winning smile faded. “You.”
“You too.” Jessica stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and cocked her head.
“What’s going on here?” Marge looked up at Leandras again and sipped delicately at the dirty martini in her hand.
“You know exactly what this is.” The fae didn’t wait for an invitation before slipping into the booth across from the necromancer. “And it’s time.”
“Bullshit.” Marge stared at him as she pointed at Jessica standing beside the table. “You obviously don’t know who this is.”
One corner of his mouth twitched into a grimace. “You’re obviously mistaken.”
The necromancer’s nostrils flared as she took another slow, thoughtful sip of her drink. After dabbing her lips with a cocktail napkin, she looked up at Jessica. “Are you with him?”
Jesus. How loaded could a question get?
“We walked through the door together, yeah.” That was as much as Jessica was willing to say.
Marge looked her up and down, then scowled at Leandras.
“We’ve come to a certain agreement,” the fae muttered. “Which is, of course, dependent upon you fulfilling your obligations.”
“You have no proof.”
“She’s standing beside this table.” Leandras folded his hands and stared intently at the necromancer. “Ask her.”
“You’re standing awfully close to the line in the sand, fae.” Marge took another sip. “Does she understand the stakes?”
Jessica couldn’t help herself. “You know what? She’s standing right here.”
“I’m aware, witch.”
Come on. The fae had told her to let him do the talking, and now that he’d told Marge to ask Jessica whatever it was she needed to ask, neither of them bothered addressing the owner of the bank and the Gateway’s Guardian standing right here in the flesh.
Gritting her teeth, Jessica took a deep breath through her nose. “What do you wanna know, Marge? I’m here, so ask.”
The necromancer stared at Leandras, her air of decorum and carefree apathy quickly deteriorating. “When are you going to open it?”
“Jessica?” Leandras didn’t look at her either.
Well, great. Apparently, she was the one who got to talk while these two duked it out in a battle of wills.
Jessica glanced around the bar, where all the other magicals were mostly minding their own business except for an occasional curious gaze tossed her way. “Phase two tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest. Assuming we can get everything done tonight like we need to, and you’re the one holding us up right now.”
Marge snorted. “What did you do, Leandras? Brainwash her?”
For fuck’s sake.
Moving quickly, Jessica slipped into the booth beside Leandras, who didn’t bother sliding over to give her more room. So she sat dangerously close to the fae, his arm pressed up against hers, and joined him in staring down the necromancer. “I saved his life. And he kept a few things in line for me. That’s all you need to know, and now that we’re on the same page, it’s time for you to quit playing games and do your part.”
Marge blinked rapidly and finally flicked her gaze toward the witch sitting across from her. “What happened to the clueless little apprentice who could hardly handle a vault deposit?”
“You know what happened.” Jessica dipped her head and leaned slightly forward. “I’m not screwing around this time, either.”
“Apparently not.” The necromancer took another sip. “The scryer spent an entire lifetime fighting against the understanding that only took you…what? A month to come to on your own?”
“The thing about scryers is that they already know what’s gonna happen. Hey, if you feel like asking her, go ahead. Seemed like you two were pretty tight when you stopped by to deliver her little message for me.”
Evidently, sharing that little nugget of information was enough to pull Leandras’ attention from the necromancer and settle it on Jessica now instead. “What message?”
Marge paled and firmly set her martini glass down on the table. “That doesn’t matter. She’s made her point.”
As the woman rummaged in the large maroon purse beside her on the booth, Jessica looked up at Leandras and shrugged. “I’ve made my point.”
“Here.” When Marge lifted a small black box from her bag and set it on the table, she slid it across not to the fae but to Jessica. “I just hope you know what you’re doing. There’s no going back after this.”
“So I’ve heard.” Jessica took the box and slipped it into her jacket pocket, trying not to react to the instinct tingle of energy rising through the thin cardboard and into her fingers. “Anything else?”
“Thank you, Marge.” Leandras dipped his head, and Jessica took it as her cue to stand so they could both get out of the booth and this bar that suddenly felt even less welcoming. The fae hovered at the edge of the table for a moment and smiled thinly down at the necromancer. “I assume we won’t be seeing you at the—”
“Absolutely not. You and I are finished now.” She stared across the table and downed the rest of her drink in one quick slug.
Without another word, Leandras turned and headed back to the bathroom hallway.
Jessica stuck her hands in her pockets again and eyed the other magicals taking their own reprieve from a long Monday with their drink of choice. A table of trolls stared at her as she passed, but what else was new?
She joined Leandras at the end of the hallway between the bathrooms, and he brushed his finger against the solid wall. The same silver light appeared, and the doorway opened to the long passage leading out to the alley.
He didn’t say anything until they were halfway through the tunnel and the light and noise from the bar muted when the doorway shut itself. “That went rather well.”
“You weren’t really serious about you doing all the talking, were you?”
“Speaking only when necessary presents a much more ominous front, Jessica.” The wall at the back of the alley disappeared as they approached, and he stepped aside to wait for her. “I must admit I’m rather more impressed with that display of yours than I expected to be.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
Turning toward her with another of his feral grins, Leandras cocked his head. “It was. You sounded like a Guardian who finally knows what she’s doing.”
“And you sound like a fae who thinks he should get the credit.”
“Not at all. If you can handle yourself like that for the rest of the night, I imagine we’ll be finished before midnight.”
She snorted. “Right. Before you turn into a pumpkin.”
“That only happened once.” With a soft chuckle, he extended his hand toward her. “Ready?”
Jessica looked down and grimaced. “Nope.”
But she grabbed his hand anyway and steeled herself for the pressure of being squashed flat across the physical plane toward their next destination.
She didn’t need this second experience to know she really hated teleporting. The last thought flying through her mind before they appeared at their next destination was that she should probably get a car after this.
Even after six more jumps like that with her hand in Leandras’ and the energy of his teleporting jumping up her arm and into the side of her face, Jessica hadn’t managed to keep her stomach under control. But after the third jump, there was nothing left in it, so she was reduced to dry-heaving every time they landed.
Good thing she had a fridge full of Chinese food waiting for her when they were finished.
The fae took her into a nightclub, another bar, the back room of an underground gambling house, the front lawn of an impressive estate somewhere up in Conifer—where the owner of the place had set up a little soiree
of her own, complete with hovering lights, a four-string quartet of instruments that played themselves, a heating enchantment against the frigid mountain air, and a patio of startled guests—and a private library that looked a lot like the restricted section in Denver’s public library. Though there were no gnomes or dryad to greet them there. Only a hunched, decrepit wizard in a full-length housecoat who removed himself from studying the rune stones sprawled across his side table to retrieve what she and Leandras had finally come to collect.
And everything they collected from each stop was presented in the same black box as the first from Marge. Jessica didn’t dare try to open them. She’d had enough of boxes that buzzed and wiggled and sent heavy magic racing through her fingers like she’d just clamped her hand around an open electrical wire. Plus, being asked by each and every magical they visited—who obviously knew Leandras in some way or another and seemed to gather pretty quickly who Jessica was simply by association—when she was going to “open it” didn’t make her want to open anything at all.
After leaving the second bar, though, she had insisted on popping into the CVS down the street to buy a small tote bag. Teleporting around Colorado with powerful magical reagents sticking out of her pockets at bulky angles was just asking for even more trouble.
“Don’t you have a purse?” Leandras had asked when she’d returned with a small black overnight bag.
Jessica had snorted as she emptied her pockets and dropped all three boxes they’d already gathered into something better suited to carry them. “Not really my thing. And not like you’d know either way, but women’s jeans apparently weren’t made with teleporting and stuffing pockets full of all this stuff in mind.”
The fae had merely chuckled and extended his hand again for another jump, and they were off.
By the time they finished darting all over the damn state, Jessica’s right arm and side of her neck buzzed with the leftover energy of being sucked through spaces anyone with an actual body was never meant to be sucked through. Her left arm tingled nonstop with the collective power of their reagents all hanging out together in the overnight bag, and it took her three aggravating attempts before she could pull her keys from her pocket outside the bank’s front door.
When she finally did, she stopped and slowly turned to face the fae standing there like he didn’t feel the frigid wind gusting down from the mountains with the oncoming threat of a heavy snowstorm. “We are done, right?”
With his hands clasped behind his back, Leandras turned his gaze away from the end of the dark street and blinked at her. “Unless you’ve forgotten something.”
“Nope.” She turned quickly back toward the door and fumbled to unlock it. The key finally turned, and she thrust open the door into the dark but astoundingly inviting warmth of the bank’s lobby. “I don’t think I’ll make it through another jump.”
“It does take time to grow accustomed to the sensation. You hardly paled after the last one.”
A wry chuckle escaped her. “But a car wouldn’t make me feel even a little nauseous.”
The lights mounted on the lobby walls blinked on when Jessica stepped inside.
‘Wow. I thought you’d be gone all night.’
I guess not.
‘You’ve got some serious power in that bag, Jessica. The kind that usually takes months to round up altogether at the same time like that.’
The statement made her pause halfway across the lobby, and she turned around to eye Leandras as he entered Winthrop & Dirledge and closed the door behind him. Without an invitation. But she hadn’t exactly told him to stay outside, either.
‘Someone’s getting a little too cozy, huh? Especially with all that hand-holding…’
Stop.
“How long did it take you to put all this together?”
Leandras looked sharply up at her and raised his eyebrows.
There. Finally, she’d asked a question he didn’t seem annoyingly prepared to answer.
“I’m sorry?”
“You heard me.” Jessica headed for the desk to set down the bag. Might as well give him a minute to collect himself. “We just brought back enough magic in whatever these things are to blow an entire city off the map. And you just bounced us from one secret room to another like you owned every one of them.”
“Perhaps I do.”
“What?” She spun around to stare at him. “That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. I’ve spent more time preparing for these next few days than you can possibly imagine.” Leandras walked casually across the lobby. “And I’ve been in this world long enough to recognize how useful money can be.”
Jessica blinked dumbly.
No, wondering about other magicals’ career choices hadn’t exactly been on her radar over the last month of trying to figure out her own. Or even before she’d inherited the bank. Jessica had been a transient witch with half her memories and all her magic—a courier first, then a low-level thief until Mickey had found her. And now she had all her memories, only half her magic, and more money than she even knew how to handle.
‘Correction. More than you know even exists.’
Fine. But it wasn’t like Jessica had the time now to spend that money beyond quick pitstops in convenience stores. Leandras, on the other hand, had clearly had plenty of time. Satin suits. Decent shoes. A penthouse apartment in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in downtown Denver. And now, if he wasn’t yanking her chain just for fun, a bunch of businesses all around the state, including a big-ass house in the mountains and…wherever the wizard had lived.
Not to mention the fact that he hadn’t actually paid a single one of those magicals to hand over the little black boxes buzzing around on her desk with explosive magical energy.
“Okay. I’ll bite.” She stuck a hand on her hip and cocked her head. “What do you actually do, then?”
Leandras stopped on the other side of the desk and gently settled his fingertips on the rough wooden surface. “Would you like to venture a guess?”
“Not really, no.”
“Then I prefer to keep that part of my personal affairs to myself, if you don’t mind.”
Jessica couldn’t blame him for wanting that kind of privacy. She’d refused to tell him about Mel, and what her own previous employment had been before her stint at MJ Pen, and the fact that her memories had returned to add one more flavorful dash of complete insanity to the odds they faced in the next few days.
No way in hell would she start now.
‘Plus, I’d have to remove these walls in your brain if you wanted to talk about the… Well, you know.’ The bank tsked. ‘Can’t say I’m gettin’ good vibes from that idea.’
“Fine.” She’d probably said it to both of them, honestly.
The fae, at least, acknowledged her decision to back off of prying into his “personal affairs” with a gracious dip of his head. Two thick strands of his swept-back hair fell out of place and dangled down across his forehead. With a strained smile, he smoothed them back again and nodded. “I trust you can keep those reagents out of sight and under control until we’re in need of them tomorrow.”
“Under control.” Jessica hissed out a sigh and slugged the strap of the overnight bag over her shoulder again. “Good thing I own North America’s most secure vault for crap like this, huh?”
“Not crap, Jessica. The contents of that bag are more valuable than anything else in your possession. Or the vault’s.”
“For more than one reason. I get it.” Sliding the notepad across the desk toward her, she realized in that moment how weirdly prepared she was for this. Or in all honesty, how prepared Tabitha had been. Because Jessica had had her own box in that vault since day one, and now she finally had an opportunity to use it.
Leandras watched her silently as she dipped her finger into the inkwell and pressed a fingerprint down on the top sheet of paper.
Her own personal calling card for the one box in there that had her name on it. Not lit
erally, of course, but almost.
She ripped off the top sheet and waved it at the semi-amused fae. “I’ll be right back.”
“Of course.”
The overnight bag filled with six different black reagent boxes bounced against her hip as she headed for the back hall and the witching vault. The constant tingle of all that magic together in one place made her entire body vibrate by the time she opened the door to the vault and stepped inside. The sooner she could get rid of it, the sooner she could quit feeling like she’d just been electrocuted.
‘And the sooner you can check off all the boxes on our list.’
Jessica lifted her fingerprint paper, and the witching vault rumbled to life around her, spinning in every direction as the impossibly tall columns of black safety deposit boxes shifted to bring her the one she wanted. “What list?”
‘You know, the “Do All These Things So We Don’t Destroy the World” list. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten, witch. All your memories are right here.’
The black squares rimmed in gold slowed to a halt, and the box in front of Jessica flashed a green light through the oval window at the top. She waved her fingerprint in front of the window and immediately stepped aside as the box shot out from the wall with a deafening roar and a metallic clang. “Yeah, I remember. We’re not doing any spells tonight, though. Obviously.”
‘Not really that obvious, but I guess it makes sense to get some sleep before you have to kill a Matahg, reabsorb your magic, then turn around and use it to kick off phase two.’
Jessica grimaced. “And hearing you say it like that just makes me exhausted.”
‘Good thing we’re on the same page.’
When she approached the edge of her own vault box and slid the strap of the overnight bag down over her shoulder, she definitely wasn’t expecting any more surprises. At least not tonight. But the fact that her safety deposit box wasn’t completely empty—just the way she’d left it—was definitely a surprise.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“How the hell did that happen?” Jessica stared at the brightly colored flip-flops lying neatly at the bottom of her open box.
The Secret Coin (Accessory to Magic Book 3) Page 20
