The Lost Queen

by Jenn Stark

  Oliver was gone.

  “You know, this is a particularly useless gift if you’re going to give me ghosts who can’t actually help me,” I muttered to the hidden Eye of Horus. It may have rolled its eye. I couldn’t tell through my shirtsleeve. Instead, I set off.

  Once through the door, I tried my magic again, but there was nothing. I had no interest in feeling my way along the cold, slimy walls, but I wasn’t without resources. I pulled my phone out and swiped it on. It flickered to life, but I could see the charge was already down to twenty percent. And there was no connection this deep underground. Still, it was enough to see by, and that was really my main goal.

  I continued to try to figure out the cards. Eight of Pentacles—a man, apprentice working at a work desk, hammering out disks. Several of them already done and hung on the wall. An armory? A workshop?

  I turned the corner and immediately felt a difference in the air. It was lighter here, cleaner, I was almost certain. This had to be the way out. But my goal wasn’t to get out, it was to find wherever the witches were gathering in the rooms above me and get back to them. If I was dumped out on the grounds a quarter of a mile from the house, then even if I immediately poofed myself back inside, it might be too late.

  Too late.

  My brows lifted. Had my dumping here been intended not to take me out permanently, but merely temporarily? Or…no. It was far more likely that I wasn’t supposed to be dumped at all. Lara could have entered her office at any time during the day. She herself said she never invited people into her inner sanctum. She was supposed to enter, pour herself her habitual glass of wine, collapse to the floor—and fall through.

  And no one would find her in time. Dead or incapacitated, she would be out of the picture.

  So maybe I wasn’t the target after all.

  But for that idea to hold, the killer couldn’t have been onsite, or at least couldn’t have been in a position of control onsite, near the inner sanctum. Otherwise, they would have known that Armaeus and I were with Lara at the time of her disappearance.

  Who was behind this?

  I peeked into the first door I saw, and winced. It was an empty room with a lone gurney pushed up against the wall. There was a drain in the center of the floor. Everything looked found-footage white in the ghostly light from my cell phone, but I didn’t want to look too closely. There were three other rooms exactly like that, then a fourth, then…

  I grinned, counting ahead. Eight. Could it really be that easy?

  Hurrying more quickly now, I reached the eighth room past the door and peeked inside. It looked exactly like the others, but, taking a deep breath, I entered. There were no doors attached to their frames in any of these rooms along this hallway, I reminded myself, so there’d be no one coming along to lock me inside. No doubt somebody’s attempt to render this place less creepy, but it only helped marginally.

  I turned around, trying to find some hint as to what to do next.

  There was no gurney in this room, and nothing in any of the drawers of the medical cabinets that could help. There were no windows, of course, but also no tools. No pentacles. I moved over to the corner of the room and boosted myself up onto the counter, then rested my head against the wall, thinking. There were no symbols on the floor, no symbols on the wall, no symbols on the…

  I thought of the card and let my eyes trail up. The Eight of Pentacles depicted the man, his work station, and then eight pentacles extending up in a vertical line toward the ceiling. I frowned, staring at the ceiling. It…was stained, I realized. Which was super gross.

  Beyond that, if it was stained, that technically meant there had to be something above the ceiling that could leak onto it.

  Grimacing, I stood on the counter and braced myself against the wall, then reached up to the ceiling. It was made of drop panels, and the one that was looking exceedingly gross crumbled to the touch as I brushed against it. I wiggled it free and winced as more detritus came crashing down. This was definitely some sort of hole, but for what?

  Then I saw it.

  Covered in cobwebs and some indeterminate slime, a wooden panel rested about one foot above the drop ceiling. Holding my breath, I punched into the panel with as much magic-enhanced strength as I could muster, even halfway warded.

  The wet and rotten wood didn’t break, but it definitely gave. Progress.

  It splintered on the third punch, and by the fifth, it cracked clean through. I barely had time to crouch out of the way as wood, dishes, and something foul and white cascaded down onto the counter, leaving me staring. Had this been some sort of dumbwaiter system? Was I beneath a kitchen?

  I kicked the pile of rubble off the counter, then stepped forward, peering up with the help of my phone light. And…there it was.

  A ladder extended up the wall, the metal slats worn down into soft semicircular shapes. I had no idea where it led to, but it couldn’t get any more on the nose with my card than this. Those rings led upward, and upward was where I needed to go.

  Of course, I immediately thought of the next card in my draw, the Five of Swords. That card depicted a young man on a field of battle, his combatants—whom he’d clearly bested—walking away from him, their attitudes one of defeat while his was one of smug superiority. Drawing the Five could mean any number of things, but its most usual underlying meaning was “be careful what you wish for.” You win, only to discover that winning wasn’t so much of a great idea.

  Sort of like finding that your way out of a creepy sanatorium basement was up through a chute that smelled like death, body fluids, and spiders. I mean, hooray that this was undoubtedly the way out and—if the cards were to be believed—the fastest way for me to find the lost queen. But boo for all the spiderwebs.

  Somewhere, deep in the house, a gong rang—loud enough for me to hear it all the way in the basement.

  I held my breath and started climbing.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As I ascended the Chute of Disgusting, my mind churned through everything I knew so far. We’d had three primary witches as potential Myanya proxies. Now we had two. We had three initiates who were in various stages of freakout. We had Lara Drake, who had lots of good reasons both to want the Myanya prophecy to succeed and to want it to fail.

  Then came the victims. Four of them in LA, one of which was an aspiring consort, the others not. Several other male witches had shown up as walk-ons, but they’d done little more than feed the power of Myanya. Had that power escalation allowed the vessel witch to strike down Tammy, who was a high-level Connected in her own right? The deaths of RZ and Tammy so close to each other was more than a little concerning. The prophecy was clearly on the cusp of fulfillment.

  I kept circling back to the three non-Connected victims, though. Herm Lannister, Judith Granger, William MacPherson. They were the key. Where would the three of them interact with the witch and create such an impression that she wanted their heads on a pike?

  It took me three more spiderwebs and a spill of what I hoped was decades-old tomato juice to figure out the connection.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. I hauled myself up eye level of the grate and realized it was bolted shut. But with a flick of my hand, I successfully produced a blue ball of flame and so…

  Boom.

  Sara Wilde was back in action.

  The bolted door of the grate flew outward, and I scrambled out of the hole as another gong sounded through the house. Someone was getting summoned all right, and I had a feeling it was for the big show. I spent twenty seconds getting the worst of the grit out of my hair and off my clothes, then blew through the kitchen, flicking open my third eye. I could sense the power focusing in the center of the house, and I thought about what Oliver said. His descriptions of the solarium were so real, so visceral—and so eighty years out of date. Still, time waited for no witch hunter.

  Focusing hard on the mental image he created for me, I started smoking…

  And landed
in a coat closet. I flailed, struggling for air, only to realize that I was being smothered by thick black cloaks. If I needed a disguise, I could grab one right here.

  I considered the issue. Probably not necessary, but…you couldn’t be too careful. I grabbed the nearest cloak and edged open the door, pulling back quickly as a trio of skyclad women walked by. Sighing, I dropped the cloak back to the floor. Skyclad. Hadn’t thought of that. But it’d been a good idea.

  Besides, I should be able to craft my own disguise, even among witches.

  Electing to keep my clothes on for the moment, I waited until I couldn’t hear anyone pass by, and nudged open the door. The hallway was clear, and I slipped out of the closet, trying to get my bearings.

  Instantly, I realized where Oliver steered me wrong. The solarium remained in the center of the house, but it had been remodeled to take up less space, now hemmed in with an interior wall that was lined with what looked like mostly supply closets and waiting rooms. The witches of previous generations had probably gotten tired of hauling all their supplies to this room for the big show.

  The most recent iteration of that show was already underway.

  Taking a page out of the Magician’s Book of Illusions, I blended in with the crowd that was moving into the solarium. About half the group were clothed, so that was where I focused my attention. No one noticed me. I watched as the other witches, more than a dozen of them, took their places in a circle. A silver pentagram had been carved into the floor, the deep trench lined with silver. I’d seen this party favor before. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do but wait. I eyed the secondary triangle surrounded by a circle that was next to the elaborate pentagram. I had a feeling that was going to be where my girl would be. And when she was, I was going to take her down. I didn’t care how much salt she had flying through the air.

  “What the hell did you crawl through?”

  I froze and pivoted slowly to the woman next to me, who was giving me the stink eye.

  “How can you see me?” I asked Danae.

  “I can see you because Kreios gave me the exact same spell you must have gotten from Armaeus to effect this illusion, right before he dropped me off at the front door. I swear, if we got a hold of the Council’s grimoire, fur would definitely fly.”

  I eyed her, willing to be distracted as more perfect naked bodies filed in. Did they get these people from central casting? “Exactly how many magic lessons have you been getting from the Devil? I gotta think there’s some sort of conflict of interest there.”

  “You’d think so,” she said archly. “As it turns out, this incarnation of the devil is surprisingly more…flexible than most.” She turned her attention to the group assembling. “I couldn’t stay away.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that.” I smirked. “Whatever happened to ‘what happens in a coven stays in a coven’?”

  “When the Magician of the Arcana Council takes it upon himself to whisk a witch to safety from a threat internal to her coven, all bets are off. That’s a measure of attention that could mean that coven is about to become a challenge to the entire hierarchy of established power.”

  “You’re jealous,” I summed up.

  “I’m jealous,” she agreed. “I don’t want the Council’s interference within my own coven, and I am not too keen on it getting overly familiar with another coven either. There’s been some…unusual energy surrounding the Council’s intervention here that I’ve been watching with some concern.”

  “Energy related to the Council? Or to this actual location?”

  “Both. There is a primary ley line through the city, but it’s been split off and redirected to this location. That’s been the case for well over a hundred years, and the energy it pulls to this area has remained fairly steady during all that time. But not anymore. Now it’s damned near a geyser.”

  “How long ago did the surge start?”

  “Barely a month ago, about the same time that the first whispers of the prophecy being reborn hit the covens. It took a few weeks before the attacks on the prospective consorts happened, and in that time, a handful of non-Connected targets were struck. We didn’t notice those at first either, because, well, they were bad guys, in the main. It was tough not to feel good about them getting hit, until we established that the victims and witch consorts were being hit by the same woman.”

  I glanced at her. “And you’re thinking who I’m thinking, right?”

  She shrugged. “Depends. My money’s on Gail Fredericks.”

  “Gail?” I blinked at her, genuinely surprised. “You really think she would have allowed herself to get covered in muck and gore from head to toe, and then have to sit in her own stink while the travesty was captured on video, all to establish her alibi?”

  Danae seemed to consider that. “Well, there is that…”

  “And you actually think she would have the balls to take on Vlad the Impaler’s descendent and leave him hoist on his own petard?”

  She shrugged again. “That, I can believe. The Fredericks family is of French descent and was active in the Old World for centuries. It’s not unreasonable that she bore a grudge against Vlad Dracul.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not buying it. The energy is too strong, too virile. The attacks too personal.”

  She followed my line of thinking. “Tammy Butler was the obvious candidate, but she’s dead now.” She frowned at me. “Isn’t she?”

  “Exceptionally dead,” I agreed. I pointed as the triangle flared into life, a sheet of flame shooting up. “But her assistant isn’t. Her assistant who served as her tagalong everywhere, even to—especially to—all of Tammy’s swank, wannabe celebrity parties, where she no doubt encountered the skeevy side of LA more times than she could count? She’s right here.”

  In the center of the triangle, cloaked all in white, stood Heather. Her long, dark hair was smoothed back in a graceful braid, her ears, neck, and wrists were devoid of ornamentation, and her face was shaded a ghostly white—not from makeup, I was pretty sure, but from the power radiating through her.

  I focused on Heather with my third eye and discovered something else that caught me by surprise. Her energy patterns were familiar. I knew she’d been studying under Tammy, and Tammy had been an acolyte of Lara’s. Was that what I was picking up on? Or was there simply a symmetry to the way she wove her magic that was striking a familiar chord with me?

  “She’s not strong enough,” Danae muttered. “We checked the backgrounds of all the initiates as well as fully consecrated witches. Heather Winthrop came up with nothing.”

  “She was invisible,” I said. “An assistant. I’m sure if you look deeper, you’ll find her path intersected with a whole raft of people in positions of power. People who’ve now been turning up dead.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she mentioned Herm Lannister in her rant about Tammy Butler, obviously trying to sell her story, only—no one’s talking about the guy except us. We’d only barely attached Lannister to Myanya—and his death was ruled an accident. But here Heather was, wanting to make sure he was part of the conversation. That didn’t sit right.”

  “Okay, but—we’re just going to sit here and let her go through this process?” Danae demanded. “You know she’s our girl. You’ve got her right here. Why not take her out of commission and end this farce?”

  “I’d do that,” I said, “except she’s not the only player I have a problem with. The spirit of Myanya has been targeting witches for centuries now, forcing them into a power play that hasn’t had the payoff it should. I think it’s time for her little reign of tyranny to be at an end.”

  Danae stared at me. “So you said you didn’t care about the prophecy. That you merely wanted to bring a rogue, murderous witch to Judgment…but here you are interfering with a witch tradition. A tradition you can’t possibly know or understand but you still seek to stifle.”

  “Not stifle,” I said, my eyes on Heather. �
�And you’re wrong. I want nothing more than to understand it. So much so, I’m willing to let Heather get her full power on before I strike.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Danae warned. “I’ve never seen this prophecy fulfilled, but there’s very deep magic going on here. Some of these spells are not in any grimoire I’ve ever read.”

  “That’s kind of what I’m hoping.” I leaned forward as Heather lifted her arms.

  A raging wind whipped up inside the pentagram, fire and smoke billowing forth but held within the confines of the star-shaped structure, but I remained focused on the young initiate. Now that I could fully see her, her attention not on keeping herself cloaked but letting her magic show itself nakedly, I realized the connection I’d noticed before—this was the granddaughter of Iskra Mikhailova, a witch who’d once again defied the odds to position herself in Myanya’s sights. Though in Heather’s case, she clearly wanted the honor.

  “The time has come for the strong to be made weak to be made strong again, to lead the chosen coven into a generation of power unmatched across the land.”

  Danae muttered something under her breath, and I elbowed her quiet.

  “I call upon the spirit of Myanya to fulfill the prophecy and make me whole!”

  The witches around the pentagram lifted their hands high, and energy crackled above the circle even as Heather went rigid. Her body jolted once, a second time, then writhed and twisted as if she was one of those hot air promotional wind socks supported by an industrial-strength fan. She screamed as the power filled her, though I wasn’t sure if that was out of true distress or merely for show. I’d bet, once we looked deeper into Heather’s past, we’d find a young woman who had trained as an actress too, who wasn’t merely content to hover in Tammy’s shadow.