by Jenn Stark
I sent a burst of healing power through Lara’s inert body, stripping away the strength of the poison and reinvigorating the muscles and nerves it sought to deaden. It was an extremely fast-acting poison, but I reached Lara’s heart a moment before it did, and her brain was never seriously in danger. In another moment, Lara coughed, and I rolled her over to her side, pulling her hair out of the way as she further damaged her expensive carpet. I was pretty sure that no amount of magic would render that carpet redeemable at this point, but such was the danger of running a coven. Cleaning bills were the least of your problems.
“I’ll go get—”
“No!” To my surprise, Lara staggered to her knees, waving at me frantically. “Don’t tell anyone of this. No one must know.”
I stared at her for a second, my lips curling in a derision I didn’t try to hide. “Look, I get that you don’t want people to know you have a weakness, and I even get that you don’t want people to know you could’ve just been killed. But the fact remains, you could’ve just been killed. You’ve got a big problem on your hands, and unless you’re not telling me something, it’s almost certainly coming from somebody in the next room. Exactly how many enemies do you have?”
“More than I like to think about.” Lara scowled, then took a deep breath. “The doors were open when I left to greet you. Anyone could have come in then—or this wine could have been poisoned weeks ago.”
“True.”
“But you misunderstand me,” Lara continued. “I don’t want you to tell everyone I’ve just been attacked. I want you to tell everyone I’ve just been killed. The attacks—they’re still coming. I want to see who reveals themselves as being behind this little coup.”
She waved at the mess on the floor, then at the bar, then herself. “Please—a towel, napkin. Anything.”
“Right.” I hurried to the bar and ran water over a towel, then brought it back to her, brushing her hands away as I wiped her face. “So you want me to convince the others you’re dead. Keep you hidden away.”
“I’ll need to stay hidden away,” she agreed. “Until we know the truth. But there are witches here who’ve known me a very long time. I’ll need your help in convincing them I’m dead. Starting now.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced this was a good idea, but I nodded, reaching for and creating the same bubble of silence that I’d accessed in Lure. Anything within the bubble still was kicking along, but those outside the bubble…
She lifted her brows. “You’re in here with me too. Your Magician will notice immediately.”
“He’s good at faking it, and we need his reaction to convince the peanut gallery out—”
At that exact moment, the door to Lara’s study blew open, the heavy panels rotating completely on their hinges before smacking into the walls. Armaeus filled the doorway, his eyes wide. “Miss Wilde.”
“Help me!” I managed with a credible amount of sincerity as Lara slumped in my arm. “Close the doors!”
That last was purely for show, but Armaeus complied anyway, slamming the doors shut with a wave of his hands. He advanced into the room more cautiously now, his gaze going from Lara’s grinning face to mine, then to the mess of wine and vomit on the floor. If anyone had seen that, it was only going to improve our story.
“What…is going on?” He reached out and tested the force field I had built, and it was his turn to smile thoughtfully. “You do learn quickly, Miss Wilde.”
“Someone just laced Lara’s wine with a straight shot of poison. I thought it was—” I frowned, looking at the spot where the guard had stood, but didn’t much feel like biting into that cupcake of crazy right now. “Someone in the next room. Either way, it’s probably someone close.”
“It could be anyone,” Lara groaned. “We held a ceremony here two nights ago, on the full moon. The entire coven was in attendance. Slipping into my office with a hypodermic filled with poison would have been child’s play for half of them. It was merely a matter of waiting for me to drink it.”
“Right,” I said. “Especially with that in mind, Lara’s convinced me that she’s better off dead.”
The tide of conversation was rising in the room outside, and Lara nodded. “If I’m dead, there must be a successor to lead the coven. Ordinarily, that successor is chosen in a naming ceremony within these very walls, one that can be called by even the newest of our number—which is why I don’t often hold celebrations here, nor have witches for centuries, other than the ones in which we are very strong.”
“The death of Tammy Butler,” Armaeus said. “The gathering here.”
“It can’t be a coincidence. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have seen it, but I felt absolutely no threat,” Lara insisted. “It was only natural for me to gather my strongest witches close to reassure them. That level of reassurance is best achieved here, not in the Assembly House, especially after the ceremony earlier this week. We wouldn’t have another reason to meet here for weeks. I also believed—would still like to believe—the threat comes from outside the coven, not inside it. But now…”
“Yeah, probably not. Nevertheless.” I withdrew my arms from her, and she sat up, smoothing her hair. “We can’t keep you here.”
“I can transport her,” Armaeus said. “She’ll be safe. You’ll need to stay here, however, Miss Wilde. Nikki’s still on the grounds, and I’ll alert her to keep the perimeter closed. But if there’s going to be some sort of claim to power, your magic is most closely attuned to the coven’s.”
“Well, you seemed to be dialing yours in quite nicely too,” I teased, and Lara watched us with patent curiosity, her gaze shifting like a rabid tennis fan’s as each of us spoke.
“I was working on my own theory, as it happens.” Armaeus smiled as he spoke the words, the curious pink-gold light flaring in the depths of his black gaze. Something was ratcheting up his alien DNA, without question. “The witches of the LA coven, like many organizations worldwide, know the Arcana Council only tangentially. That’s been by design, of course. There’s been no advantage to advertise our strength, especially when we weren’t as strong as we now are. As a result, a certain measure of mystery has grown up around the Council. Mystery can be useful. Ignorance is not. And a lack of respect least of all.”
The dots connected in my mind. “They know you’re the Magician, and they know—knew—remembered—or thought they once heard something about your magic being born of Enochian sex magick. You were playing them.”
“Not exactly playing them.” His lips curled into a sultry smile. “My strength is born of sexual mastery, yes. However, it’s a very, very old variant of the practice, one that predates what is now known as modern sex magick by several thousand years. None of that is as relevant as me giving the impression of power to a group that was…perhaps unaware of or, more troubling, unimpressed with that power.”
“Uh-huh. For any particular reason? Or did you simply want to get your rocks off while you passed the time waiting for something more interesting to happen?”
Armaeus laughed, and the sound ricocheted around the room, the effect on both Lara and myself immediate and visceral.
“Please tell me that wasn’t felt by anyone outside the force field,” I muttered, glad I was leaning against Lara’s desk. Lara looked equally happy she was already on the floor.
“It wasn’t,” Armaeus said, eminently pleased at the impact he was having on us, and no doubt riding the same high of sexual response from the witches in the room beyond. “And primarily, it was an academic exercise. What I found, however, is that half the witches in the room were trying desperately to be noticed for their abilities, half of them were trying desperately to advance their abilities, and a very small subset—whom I could not identify—were trying desperately to mask their abilities. I was very close to identifying who when…your energy shifted.
“Interesting,” I said, stepping away as Armaeus stooped to pick up Lara in his arms. “Well—take her and…I�
��ll see if I can pick up where you left off.”
“Agreed.” The Magician nodded to me, his voice dropping to a distinctively low Austrian bass, channeling Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator. “I’ll be—”
“Stop,” I growled warningly as Armaeus disappeared, the hint of his laughter lingering on the unnaturally still air.
I stood there for a moment longer, considering all my options, barely hearing the whisper of gears. The sound was so faint, I almost dismissed it—
Then the floor dropped out beneath me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I crashed to the floor after a drop of only about ten feet, rolling away from the opening as it slammed shut above me. “What the hell is this?”
An irritated voice floated out of the darkness. “It’s not like you shouldn’t have expected booby traps. It’s an old house. Filled with deceivers. Traps are what they do.”
I turned sharply, then turned again, trying to see in the darkness. I lifted my hand, and the typical blue glow of my magic barely created a puff of smoke.
“That won’t work either,” sighed the voice. “I swear, you people should do your research. You really think Lara is that smart? She’s not. She merely inherited smart systems. Anything below the level of the main house is deeply and heavily warded against any magic of any type. Even that belonging to the Justice of the Arcana Council.”
“Who are you?” I demanded. But I had a bad feeling I already knew. The silence that followed my question wasn’t encouraging. “You’re a dead person, aren’t you? This little trap is where people are sent to die.”
“Technically there is an exit,” the voice defended itself. “I simply was already compromised when Miranda dumped me here.”
“Miranda?”
“Miranda Green, 1942’s version of Lara Drake, only nowhere near as pleasant. She’d discovered these subterranean corridors early in her reign and used to lock servants down with two days’ worth of food and a flashlight, because the rumor was there was a way out to an exit corridor. Only a few made it out, though, and they were stone-cold insane by the time they managed it. Once she went through an entire season of staff members, she decided it was a good enough place to dump people she wanted to be forgotten. I was one of those people. My name is Oliver Malloy. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Can I see you?”
“Sort of.” A shift in the darkness, and a pale shaft of light eased out from behind the rock. It was barely enough illumination to discern features, but the figure was a short, slender man in a loose-fitting suit. He was crushing a fedora in his hands, and he seemed the soul of innocence.
“Why did she send you down here?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “And for that matter, why was I? Lara was already gone. Who had the controls?”
The apparition merely stared at me.
“You can’t handle more than one question at a time, can you?”
“It’s a question of civility, really,” Oliver sniffed defensively. “You can’t expect me to keep up with a train of thought that is constantly jumping the rails. No one knows the value of slowing down.”
“What is this place, anyway? Some kind of basement?”
I looked around the room, my eyes slowly adjusting to the limited light of Oliver’s glow. I’d expected it to be a cave system, but it didn’t smell like a cave. It smelled like concrete, mildew, and rat dung.
Oliver remained quiet, and I backtracked, refocusing on him. “Do you know what this place is?”
“Certainly, though I haven’t been out of this room, unfortunately. I cracked my head almost immediately. Always was a little too clumsy for my own good.” He sighed as I waved my hand at him. “Civility, civility. No one has time for a proper story. But it was an underground system of rooms needed for the original structure on this property, before the witches bought it. A sanatorium. When patients died, they needed a way to transport their bodies out to sea without anyone seeing them, and then there were some examination rooms down here too. For the noisier residents.”
I stared at him, horrified. “You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all. When the land was acquired in the late 1800s, the passages were filled in, or so it was said. But there were still the rumors of witches disappearing during high celebrations, or trespassers dispatched and no one ever knew the wiser.”
“And you?”
He smiled sadly. “I had the misfortune of being a witch in love with Miranda Green, at a time when it proved not to be convenient for her anymore. She dropped me down here to tuck me out of sight when her primary lover showed up unexpectedly, and—like I said. I’m a bit klutzy.”
“She killed you?”
“In her defense, she didn’t mean to. And it wasn’t like I could lobby a protest. I was dead.”
“Did she know that you became a ghost?” I rubbed my bicep where the Eye of Horus itched with a flaring heat. I wasn’t really sure how many dead people I could take in a single day. Especially not dead people at a sanatorium. Those had to be extra dead.
“I’m not a ghost. I can leave at any time.”
Oliver’s response brought me back to the more pressing issue: getting out. “You can? Then why are you here?”
He shook his head, and I flung out my hands in exasperation. “Come on! That technically wasn’t two questions. Why are you here if you aren’t actually a ghost? Why would you—” I cut myself off before I could double down on the question.
Oliver continued to twist his fedora. “Because you summoned me. That’s the strength of the Eye of Horus that Death provided you.” He smiled a little dreamily. “Ah, Death. Had I known she existed, I would never have fallen for Miranda. She was a real dame when she came to collect me.”
“I’ll try to unsee that,” I muttered. I thought back to the dead guy I’d met earlier. Had I actually summoned him? He’d simply seemed to be there… I frowned, vaguely remembering my spoken question. What had I asked? And what had I said to bring Oliver back from the dead?
Either way, it didn’t help.
“Why’d Lara deep six me?” I asked, staring at the ceiling.
“Not Lara,” Oliver countered. “I doubt Lara knows of those particular controls, even in her own office. A woman entered—oh, I’m not even sure when. Time…” he sighed, seeming to become slightly less substantial.
“Focus, Oliver. It’s important.”
“It’s just she was so…indistinct…” he faded some more, and I gave up.
“Scratch that question. How much do you know about what’s going on upstairs? I have to get to wherever their high celebration room is.”
“Ah! Yes, that I know” Oliver turned his gaze upward as if he could see through brick and earth. “In my day, there were two gathering points, one that was beneath the open sky, but you wouldn’t use that. It’s too cold outside. The other was in the center of the building, a solarium. Quite beautiful, in fact. The rays of moonlight would shine down on the gathered coven, bathing their bodies in silvery light. There was a center area, directly under the glassed-in ceiling, that was the focal point for the celebrations. Three full circles of seating surrounded that, though the chairs were not built in, so there may only be the daises remaining. The whole area before you reached the seats was about, oh, perhaps thirty feet in diameter.”
“Big space.”
“Needed to be, for all the witches. And the witches were truly glorious, particularly the women.” He sighed happily.
“Poetic. Do you know if that still exists?” I hadn’t been anywhere in the building but the main ballroom and Lara’s study.
He looked at me mournfully. “I do not.”
“Then how exactly are you helping me?”
“The spirits you summon are intended to give you whatever you don’t have. Sometimes it’s answers, sometimes merely…” He shrugged, making his light beam dance. “Illumination.”
“Well, light isn’t going to be that much use if I can’t t
ake you out of this room,” I muttered. “And if I can’t use my magic, I can’t poof…wait. Let me at least try to do that.” I concentrated hard and felt my body warm up, but there was no spontaneous combusting. “How is it that magic is so dead down here? This is a serious liability.”
“It’s supposed to be,” Oliver said. “The sanatorium wasn’t meant for ordinary souls, but witches. Some very powerful, some very insane by the time they ended up here. Their combined magic made this place very special, but some grew to be too unruly. The coven got together and created a dampening spell to ensure anyone on this ground—specifically in these halls—couldn’t summon their abilities. Anything given to them, tools and wands and hats—those would work. But no organic magic. It was a precaution that lives on.”
“But how am I supposed to…”
And then I got it. The cards. There was a reason I never left home without them.
I reached into my pocket and pulled three cards free, sidling closer to Oliver so I could see them. Then I frowned.
“Eight of Pentacles, Five of Swords, Queen of Swords,” I murmured, staring at the cards before looking around again. There were three doors out of this room, each looking much like the next. “If you’re not actually tied here, do you know where they would take the bodies out?”
“No, but I know where they took mine out, if that’s of any help.”
“Well, it can’t hurt.”
“That one,” he said, pointing to the far door. I considered it, then looked at the cards again. They remained useless. “Does that, uh, go to a library, by any chance? Or maybe a—” I cut myself off before I could ask the second question.
“It does not,” he said. “It actually leads to a dead end, if you’ll excuse the turn of phrase. I don’t remember anything after that part—I was fading in and out. They had to break out the maps and retrace their steps.”
I looked again at the Eight of Pentacles. It showed a man working at a table, hammering on disks. Traditionally, it was considered the card of apprenticeship and study, but I guess it could also mean someone studying a map. I headed for the far door, then at the last second, turned around. “You’re not scamming me, are you, bro?”
