Crown of Whispers

by Isabella August

  Even as Beatrice opened up her senses, she became aware of a pulsing web of hungry, bloody briars that crawled along every inch of the walls. The wards, she thought. Zoe had clearly used the faerie magic granted her by the Lady of Briars to safeguard the building. The blood on the thorns was a strange touch, but Beatrice wasn’t familiar enough with the dizzying number of faerie lords in Arcadia to know why it might be there. Either way, she was glad she’d gotten an invitation inside the office. She had a feeling those wards wouldn’t be kind to anyone who tried to use magic here without one.

  Beatrice flicked the old silver dollar from her blouse pocket and danced it across her fingers, calling on the magic she’d infused within it. Coins were a Gemini’s best magical anchor; older coins, or those with a particularly emotional connection to the witch, were better. Beatrice’s grandfather had given her this coin from his personal collection before he died—it had long since become a source of instinctive comfort for her, which made it doubly helpful for focusing on her magic.

  That magic flickered across the coin now, hissing through the air in a bright orange crackle of electric energy. As Beatrice watched, the orange power darted around the room in a frenetic current. It arced from corner to corner, feeding facts back to her in a constant whisper of rippling data. Slowly, Beatrice began to map the flow of information through the room, noting the subtle grooves left behind by repeated patterns.

  Gemini magic was well-suited to communication of all kinds—but ever since her dive into computers, Beatrice had noticed that her magic excelled at tracing information, both literal and abstract. Every spoken whisper, every downloaded file, every phone call… they all showed up to her spells as bright orange pathways and clouds of data.

  Beatrice became keenly aware of the laptop on the desk, where the greatest amount of activity occurred. Her magic noted a deep sense of isolation there, confirming her suspicions—the laptop hadn’t been connected to the Internet for ages now. A ghostly orange pathway flickered near one of its ports, suggesting that her theory about the USB key was correct.

  Another orange trail blazed from the phone on the desk toward the secretary’s desk out front. Beatrice reached out to brush the trail with her fingers and got the impression of letters on a screen. The text messages, she thought. She tried to push the idea away again.

  The uncomfortable reminder was interrupted, as Beatrice’s magic swirled around Dorian’s chair... and stopped.

  There’s something important there, Beatrice thought. But her magic was having trouble getting at this particular information for some reason. She frowned, pouring more of her power into the spell. The bright orange magic pulsed weakly, in time with the driving beat from her headphones. Beatrice walked around the desk, dipping her hands into the flickering orange aura there. The electrical tingle of her magic popped against her skin, sinking into her bones.

  Sinister whispers rose up around her in a cold gray mist. A thousand voices echoed and distorted around her, so mixed together that she couldn’t make out what they were saying. An alien shiver ran down her spine.

  “C'est quoi ça, Dorian?” Beatrice hissed to herself.

  It was Dorian’s power, she was sure—but he had never used this particular magic in front of Beatrice before. The magic was resisting her. Beatrice was certain that Dorian had discussed incredibly sensitive matters from that chair—but those clamoring whispers drowned out any reasonable information she might have gleaned with her magic.

  Beatrice circled slowly, chewing on her lower lip. She didn’t really expect that any of Dorian’s clients had torn unwilling secrets from that strange aura of his. But the terms of her contract were very clear: she was expected to see just how effective his magic was.

  That meant she was supposed to try and bypass it.

  Beatrice gave one last deep breath... and sat herself down in Dorian’s office chair.

  Those gray whispers closed in around her like a smothering curtain. Beatrice clenched her fingers into her palms, blinking against a sudden dizziness. Her focus flickered away again, eaten away at the edges by a strange mental acid. Shortly, she found herself looking down at herself in confusion, wondering just why she was sitting in Dorian’s chair, why she’d opened her Witchsight at all—

  The phantom DJ in her headphones dropped the beat, dragging her back to the present. The magic is trying to mess with my head, Beatrice thought. She gritted her teeth and pulled her magic closer around herself, shoving the whispers roughly away. Her head cleared, and she focused on the lingering conversations around her once again.

  The chair was a much better vantage point from which to pry at Dorian’s client meetings. There was something symbolic about taking his place in the office that made the whole thing much easier, in spite of his magic’s stubborn obstructions. Beatrice saw the distant echoes of past conversations floating around her now like orange smoke—faint, and half-shredded by the passage of time.

  She reached out to drift her fingers around the most solid-looking cloud.

  “—someone else.” Dorian’s voice murmured in Beatrice’s ear, though it sounded like a badly-tuned radio. “Anyone else would be better. Je ne veux pas voir cette femme dans mon bureau.”

  The words shot through her like a jolt.

  He’s talking about me, Beatrice thought, with a sick feeling in her stomach. Dorian tried to convince Jean Belmont not to hire me.

  The awfulness of that revelation nearly broke Beactrice’s trance again. But her job wasn’t done yet, she knew. This wasn’t information that Dorian had actively tried to hide with his magic. It wasn’t a secret that belonged to one of his clients.

  Beatrice swallowed down her injury and turned her attention toward one of the weaker, more insubstantial clouds of orange magic.

  “You were right not to want me here, Dorian,” she muttered tightly. “I left your secrets alone for a long time, you asshole… but you just signed them all away to me.”

  Beatrice plunged both hands into the other cloud, tugging at its edges with her magic.

  A hideous screech of nonsensical sound flooded her ears.

  Beatrice jerked her hands back to try and cover her ears, choking on a scream of her own. The motion immediately ended the awful noise, as her hands left the echo—but Beatrice left her palms over her headphones anyway, cringing into the leather chair.

  That was white noise, she thought, as her senses flooded back to her. There was no unscrambling that mess—there wasn’t even a recognizable pattern in it. Somehow, Dorian’s magic had stripped that lingering conversation of all meaning, turning it into the equivalent of a messy old dial-up internet tone, or a speaker gone on the fritz.

  “Damn,” Beatrice muttered crossly. “Now I have a headache too.”

  The office door opened abruptly, and she startled in the leather seat. Zoe blinked at Beatrice from the doorway with those strange green eyes. The secretary gestured gingerly toward her own ears, as though to mimic taking off some headphones.

  Beatrice tugged her headphones loose with a wince. “What?” she snapped, more sharply than she’d intended.

  Zoe blinked. “It’s, um... fifteen minutes to close,” she said. “I’d stay later if I could, but I’ve got a kind of pre-existing commitment.”

  Beatrice closed her eyes. Then—slowly—she closed her Witchsight.

  Screw this whole day, she thought tiredly.

  “That’s fine,” Beatrice said, forcing her voice into a calmer tone. “I’m basically done. Just give me a second to get my stuff together.”

  By the time she opened her eyes, Zoe was gone again. Beatrice didn’t blame the poor woman. Punk Corporate Trixie hadn’t made the very best impression on anyone today.

  Beatrice sighed and started packing up her things. In between, she pulled out her cell phone and typed out a text message to her current employer.

  Through the tech review, she texted. Report forthcoming, but there’s no evidence so far that your leak came from this office.

&nbs
p; The personal correspondence was a bit unusual—normally, Beatrice would wait until the job was complete and submit her report to an impersonal email address. But almost everything about this job had been unusual so far. Jean Belmont was a man with a lot of money and a lot of enemies, and his trust seemed to be in short supply these days. He also seemed to be in a hell of a hurry.

  Beatrice was still surprised when her phone buzzed with a text reply less than a minute later.

  Dinner, SVP, it said. I will pick you up directly.

  Beatrice frowned. Dinner with the client was also irregular. But Jean Belmont’s contract was very particular: until Beatrice left Montreal, he owned her time completely.

  As you like.

  She sent back the reply and pulled her bag back over her shoulder.

  Outside, Zoe was just picking up her own purse. Dorian stood close to the secretary, with a hand on her shoulder—but his gray eyes were fixed on the street outside the window, where a sleek silver car had just arrived.

  “Anyone else would be better.” The memory of Dorian’s voice whispered in Beatrice’s mind, unbidden.

  She clenched her jaw and headed past him for the door.

  “Is that Jean’s car?” Zoe asked curiously, craning her neck around Dorian to catch a glimpse.

  Dorian released the secretary abruptly in order to pull out his wallet. As Beatrice passed, he handed Zoe a fifty dollar bill. “I cannot give you a ride today,” Dorian said. “Please take a cab home.”

  Beatrice swept back outside into the heat, letting the door fall closed behind her. With the sun just below the horizon, the temperature had finally begun to drop a bit—but the oppressive humidity lingered. She ran her fingers back through her hair and grimaced down at her pink-stained blouse. Not what I wanted to wear to dinner with this particular client, Beatrice thought. But it’ll have to do.

  The door opened again behind her. The world softened and silenced, and she knew without needing to look that Dorian had stepped outside to join her.

  “Do you know who it is you are working for?” he asked softly.

  “Anyone else would be better,” his voice whispered again in her memory.

  Beatrice straightened her spine and chilled her voice. “I know what the name Belmont means,” she replied. “He’s a vampire, from the Belmont bloodline. The local supernaturals address him as monseigneur—if I’m not mistaken, he basically runs this city. I doubt he intends to eat me before his security review is complete, Monsieur Moreau.”

  This time, Beatrice caught a faint flinch in Dorian’s posture. The distant formality had hit him squarely.

  Dorian paused for a long moment. “You should know then that vampires sense weakness,” he said. “If you get into that car feeling upset, monseigneur will find that difficult to ignore. And his... intentions... may not hold true.”

  Beatrice couldn’t help the frown that flickered across her face at that. She’d thought she had a handle on her composure... but if Dorian could tell she was upset, that was a problem. Beatrice inched her fingers toward the aluminum earrings that climbed her right ear—another set of anchors she sometimes used in a pinch. A quick, subtle surge of her magic rippled through one of the earrings, then climbed down across the surface of her skin, tingling like static. The concept of Punk Corporate Trixie solidified itself like a mask over her emotions, shoving them down out of sight.

  Beatrice could still feel her anxiety pricking at her mind, as real as ever. But for now, it would be easier to ignore—easier to hide. She knew she would pay for the evasion later; she’d probably have a panic attack in her hotel room tonight, as the suppressed neuroses surged back to the surface all at once. But for now, it seemed more important not to tempt her employer into gobbling her up.

  “I’m sure Monsieur Belmont is capable of staying professional,” Beatrice told Dorian in an acidic tone—though she knew by the way he looked at her that he suspected something of what she had just done with her magic. “Though your much-belated concern for me is noted.”

  Beatrice hiked her bag up over her shoulder then, and walked for the car. The back door opened for her, and another blast of air conditioning wafted along her face.

  “Madame Martel,” said a smooth male voice from inside the car. “I look forward to hearing about your day.”

  Beatrice ducked her head and slid into the back seat of a rich sedan with the most important vampire in Montreal.

  Chapter 3

  The man across from Beatrice might as well have been a marble statue. His profile was perfectly chiseled, and his dark hair was mussed in such a beautifully natural manner that she knew a very expensive hairstylist had to be involved. Jean Belmont was wearing a tailored suit—but the collar was loose, and the fabric was casual. Everything about him was calibrated to make him seem simultaneously important and approachable.

  Jean’s chest didn’t move with any breath, though—and there was an acutely predatory air to his presence that set Beatrice instantly on-edge. Whatever she’d said to Dorian, Beatrice was suddenly very aware of the feel of that barely-leashed hunger scraping across her skin.

  It took an act of will to close the car door behind her... but she did it anyway.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you in person, madame,” Jean said, in a voice that was as cold and calm as the grave. “Though, I will admit… I was expecting your hair to be blue.” His French accent came through strongly as he spoke—obviously Parisian, and not French-Canadian.

  Beatrice swallowed hard. Jean Belmont was dangerous—but in a way, he was easier to handle than Dorian had been. There was no personal history between them; the worst that the vampire might do was hurt her physically. Beatrice’s anxiety eased off slightly at that realization, and she breathed in.

  “My company photo is out of date,” Punk Corporate Trixie replied for her, as cool as a cucumber. “I get bored easily. This is my third dye job since then.”

  Jean chuckled pleasantly on cue. His presence was cool, but his behavior was just warm enough to set people at their ease. He leaned toward Beatrice ever-so-slightly, meeting her eyes directly as she talked. The vampire had put on a mask too, though it probably wasn’t magical in nature—Beatrice decided she would call it Genuinely Interested Jean.

  Jean clearly had a response in mind—but before he could speak, there was a firm rap of knuckles at the window on his side of the car.

  The vampire raised an eyebrow at Beatrice. “Are we expecting company?” he asked. Beatrice shrugged in reply, and Jean flicked a switch to roll down the window.

  “Monseigneur.” Dorian’s voice filtered through the window. His shadow fell upon the car in the last of the red sunset’s light. “I thought I would remind you of the terms of our contract. I have allowed your consultant full access to my office. In return, I am to be included in any reports that result—verbal, or otherwise.”

  The tense feeling of hunger that permeated the car jumped slightly at the interruption. Jean’s pleasant expression didn’t change… but Beatrice knew the vampire was more irritated than he let on.

  “...certainement,” Jean said, after a momentary pause. “You are correct, of course. Please forgive my oversight. Would you like to join us for dinner?”

  “How kind of you to offer,” Dorian replied. Somehow, he managed to keep the irony from his voice. “I will ask your driver for the address.”

  Jean frowned as he rolled back up the window. He and Beatrice sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, before the car pulled away and started to drive.

  Beatrice closed her eyes in frustration. She’d almost been Dorian-free for the entire rest of the evening. Now, she was going to have to deal with him over fancy wine and present all of her results with him sitting right next to her.

  “I will admit to being surprised,” Jean said finally. “Monsieur Moreau keeps very strict working hours. He will not even give me his lunch hour, let alone a working dinner.” Beatrice opened her eyes to find the vampire watching her contemplatively. “
Does he have reason to worry that your tests went badly today?” Jean asked her. “Or is there something else of which I should be aware?”

  Beatrice pressed her lips together. Punk Corporate Trixie didn’t get nervous… but she did get angry sometimes. She barely managed to prevent herself from going for the silver dollar in her blouse pocket, to work off her frustration. It wouldn’t do to show off a nervous tic in front of the vampire. Besides which, Jean Belmont was almost certainly well-versed in all things supernatural—a Gemini playing with a coin in front of him would raise his hackles for sure.

  “I disclosed my previous personal relationship with Dorian when you asked me to assess his office,” Beatrice replied coolly. “He might be worried that I intend to smear him out of spite. If so, he’ll be disappointed. I wouldn’t risk my entire career just for a bit of petty revenge.”

  Jean nodded slowly, apparently satisfied by the explanation. But Beatrice wasn’t entirely sure of it herself.

  Dorian was good at hiding his emotions—he always had been. But he’d also always been prone to overprotective tendencies. If they’d still been dating, Beatrice would have assumed that this was Dorian’s way of making sure the vampire didn’t get any ideas about nibbling on Beatrice over dinner.

  But Dorian had been very clear just how little Beatrice meant to him when he’d ended their relationship. It was hard to imagine that he’d somehow regained any fondness for her in the years since then.

  Beatrice was surprised when the car stopped at a small French bistro in the Old Port. It was classy, of course, and reasonably expensive—but it had a quietly cheerful atmosphere that seemed at odds with the cold, professional vampire next to her. Dorian wasn’t far behind them. He watched Jean with an oddly focused expression as the vampire held the door open for Beatrice… but he didn’t otherwise comment.