The only way to secure true happiness was to never invest your heart fully into something.
So why did this hurt so much? Why did it honestly feel as if someone had taken a knife to my heart and carved it up?
I didn’t have long to consider that question. Something in the wall started to groan. There was an echoing click, a thump, and I heard the unmistakable movement of machinery.
Then a door appeared out of the very wood. It went from being nothing but wall one second, to being a fully formed door the next, one that looked as if it had always been there.
The door swung open silently on its hinges, and in walked a man.
“Who are you?” I managed to stutter.
“That’s the Lonely King,” Jim answered through a hiss.
Damn. The Lonely King didn’t look like I expected him to. I imagined he’d be a cookie-cutter of Max the sorcerer king from the past. Broad shoulders, powerful build, and a look like he could split the world in two with nothing more than his gaze.
But this man looked like nothing more than an ordinary person. He wasn’t too tall, didn’t have a particularly broad build. He looked as if he were in his mid-40s, and his features were unusually soft, giving you the impression he was a nice man.
He was wearing a pristine white, pressed shirt, gray suit pants, a dark black leather belt, and golden cufflinks.
As he walked into the room, his hand was pressed into one of his pockets, his lips folded into a muddled smile. At first, he cut his gaze towards Jim, his eyes ticking over the rusted bars of the cage. Then the Lonely King locked all of his attention on me.
Though I’d managed to push myself into a seated position, suddenly a wave of nausea pressed through me, and I almost fell backward. I had to clutch both of my hands into fists, drive them into the plush carpet, and draw in a deep breath to steady myself.
There was something deceptive about this man’s presence. If Jim hadn’t announced him as the Lonely King, I would have just thought this guy was an aide of some description, maybe some modern version of a butler.
But the longer I looked at him, the more I realized something. He had the kind of power that wasn’t immediately visible. While Max from the past, with his broad chest and powerful persona, immediately struck you as a man who could move the very tides of time to achieve his desires, the Lonely King was far subtler in his approach.
And yet, right there in the middle of his gaze was the undeniable force of someone who would crush everyone in their path.
He continued to watch me with a nonplussed look.
It took until I clenched my teeth and hissed through them that another smile spread across his lips.
“You should save your strength,” he commented. “There’s no way to get out of this room, seer. And nor is there a way to call on your powers. They are blocked. I have laced your blood with a compound that will block your magic. And the more you try to fight against it, the more it will fight against you. So just sit there, rest. Tonight, you will literally make history.”
“Piss off,” Jim spat, wrapping his hands harder around the rusted bars of the cage and rattling them.
All the Lonely King had to do was dart his gaze towards the cage, then the bars suddenly became electrified.
Jim was thrown backward. But with nowhere to go, he struck the other wall of the cage. Instantly, his body bucked forward as another wave of electricity pulsed through it. He was thrown on the floor, heaving body pressed up against the metal. He tilted his head up, and I saw a flash of his determined gaze. “Go to hell,” he spat.
The Lonely King pressed his lips together in the coldest smile I’d ever seen. “Not today. Not today.” He returned his attention to me.
The more I sat there in his presence and assessed his persona, the more I saw through the act. Through the soft smile, through the pleasant features. The more I saw the power within. It seethed and bubbled like lava in the heart of a volcano getting ready to explode. It was honestly one of the most violent things I’d ever seen.
I brought up a shaking hand and ground it over my mouth, my eyes pressing open wide as I stared at him in horror.
“No need to be afraid.” He chuckled. “No need to be afraid,” he repeated, voice dropping down lower.
I wanted to jolt back, but there was nowhere to go. So it was time to fight. “I’m not going to help you. I’m not going to let you win,” I spat.
He pulled his hand out of his pocket and gestured wide. “You have no option, seer. You are trapped. Even though you are blocked from your powers, surely you can appreciate that? Surely you can appreciate that?” he repeated again. I doubted he was repeating himself for mere emphasis. No, every time he did so, his voice dropped a notch and had this mesmerizing quality to it, almost as if he were trying to hypnotize me into surrendering.
I shook my head sharply, my hair scattering across my face. “What have you done to Max? Where is he?” Fear pounded through me as I asked that question.
A confused expression crossed the Lonely King’s face, and it took him some time to answer. “Why would you care about such a thing? He is but a tool.”
“Where is he?” I demanded, voice finally becoming strong as it battled through my throat.
“It is irrelevant. All that is relevant is that you sit here and wait. Guard your power, little seer, for I will need it tonight.”
“Go to hell,” Jim spat again. “There’s no way the coven is gonna let you go through with this spell. They will stop you, no matter what it takes.”
“The coven have had years to hunt me down and stop me, Jim Preston. But in all that time they have not. Because they cannot. They cannot go up against my power. For to do so would require all of their powers, and it would kill them, one by one. Crushing them, using up their life force as the magic burnt them like a sacrifice.” The Lonely King’s expression was deceptively calm as he spoke those violent words, and yet his tone was harsh, biting, hard.
It sent another wave of nausea slamming through my body, but I held on. God did I hold on. “Where’s Max?” I demanded once more, voice little more than a rattling hiss.
“Gone,” the Lonely King said. And he would not elaborate. He tilted his head to the side, appeared to survey me like you would a barnyard animal you’d just bought from a fair. Then he turned on his foot when he was satisfied.
I hadn’t been paying attention before, and I hadn’t picked up how he’d gotten into the room. But now I concentrated with all my might.
He placed a hand into his pocket, appeared to clutch something, and shifted his fingers around as if he were typing on a device. Then a door appeared. It just blinked into existence on the far wall as if it had always been there.
I didn’t just concentrate with my sight – I tried to call on whatever sense of magic I’d developed over the last several months. I did not, however, call on my fireflies. Do that, and it would probably kill me.
The Lonely King took several steps towards the door, then stopped, arching his head towards me. “There’s nothing you can do, seer,” he pointed out once more. “You cannot open this door without the use of your powers. And you cannot access your power. Now, I do not honestly care if you spend the last hours of your life conscious or unconscious. That is your choice. But know this – now you’re in my clutches, there is nothing that you can do. Nothing that you can do,” he repeated, that same mesmerizing quality shifting through his tone, making it sound soft, smooth, almost as if it were designed to slip right through your ears and seep into your very brain tissue.
I clenched my teeth and fought against the power of his words. “Jim’s right – the coven will come for us. You underestimated them, idiot,” I said, baiting him. Because the longer he stood there, and the longer the door remained open before him, the more I could find out. And knowledge was the only thing between me and death.
The Lonely King chuckled. “As I’ve already told Jim Preston here,” he gestured towards Jim in the cage, “if the coven had possessed th
e power to go against me, they would have gone against me when I’d started killing off their witches one by one.” He moved his lips slowly around the words one by one, almost as if he were savoring the taste. “But there is nothing they can do, nothing they can do.”
My eyes became heavy. The more he repeated his words, the more I felt an undeniable spell filtering between them.
Just as sleep threatened to reach up and embrace me, I clenched my teeth.
No.
I reminded myself that all magic came at a cost and that this asshole had to be practicing magic on me right now. Not someone else’s magic – his own. Because he was the only person in the room other than Jim and myself.
And magic costs everyone. It was a lesson I could no longer turn from.
Surely, all I had to do was figure out what it cost the Lonely King and push him to use enough that it started hurting him.
“You know, I’ve seen your future,” I suddenly said, lying. I didn’t have to control my expression, didn’t have to try particularly hard to ensure my voice was steady, my breath easy. I’d been lying my whole life, after all.
You know, before this ridiculous magical adventure had begun and I’d been plunged head first into the McLane curse, I’d never thought lying was a bad thing.
Lies – from little white lies to absolute corkers – had their place. Because sometimes – heck, often – the truth hurt more than fiction. Plus, whose truth was right, anyway? Wasn’t it the famous physicist Heisenberg that said reality is just the questions we ask it? The truths we gather in our lives aren’t objective – they depend on the questions we ask. And so too with the fictions we make. All that matters is that we do good in the end. Telling someone they were ugly and hopeless and would never find love may be true by one person’s estimation and completely false by another.
Truth was always what you made it.
But this? This was a lie. And that was the whole point.
I tipped my head back, looking the Lonely King right in his eyes. “I see your future,” I controlled my tone, making it drop down low, making it shake through my throat with an ominous rattle. “You die,” I said simply.
I watched the Lonely King stiffen. Sure, it was obvious he was trying to hide the move from me. Obvious as he shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to keep his shoulders even. It was just as obvious that he couldn’t conceal his true emotional reaction from me.
So I smiled. I made sure it was cold, direct, unaffected. “You die,” I repeated. “Because you aren’t in control. You can’t see the future,” I dipped my head low, looked up at him from underneath my eyelashes, “but I can.”
Slowly, he opened his mouth. It looked as if he were trying to smile, trying to shove my comment off, but it didn’t work. “You’re lying,” he managed.
“How can you be so sure? You can’t see the future. I can,” I added, my voice now shaking with a singsong quality, “and in the future, you die.”
As I lied to the Lonely King, I kept half my attention on his reaction and the rest on the door. I tried to figure out everything I could about it, tried to figure out what kind of device was in the Lonely King’s pocket and how it worked.
And heck, if the least I could do was keep the Lonely King chatting long enough that I managed to scrounge back a little of my strength, maybe I could just make a run for it.
Or not, because that wouldn’t work. No, the only way to defeat the Lonely King would be to bring him down.
“I will not die. You will,” he said, voice literally shaking through the room.
There, I felt it. A charge of magic. He was using it again. And again it had something to do with his voice.
I wanted to frown, but I controlled my reaction. Instead, I kept my gaze leveled at him, my head deliberately tipped low so I was gazing at him from under the furrowed line of my brow. “You used too much magic. Left yourself vulnerable. You’ll die,” I said slowly, forcing a puff of breath between my clenched teeth and giving my words all the more power.
He seriously stiffened this time. There was no hiding it. I watched each muscle in his neck become taut as his jaw jutted out hard.
Jim wasn’t saying a word, just watching us. And I was gratified to see he was spending an equal amount of time watching the door. He would have a much better chance of figuring out how to use the door than I would. So I stuck with what I was good at. Lying.
“Your past will catch up with you,” I said, making my voice dip low. I rocked backward and forwards as if I were in the throes of a vision. “Your past will catch up with you,” I said again, making my voice drop even lower.
The Lonely King clenched his teeth, pared his lips back in a jerking wobble, and hissed at me. “I’m immune to your lies, seer. Now spend the last few hours of your miserable life contemplating your death.” He began to turn on his foot to head towards the door.
So I simply scrounged my energy to rock back and forth harder and harder until my knees rhythmically bumped and thumped into the carpet. “Your past will catch up with you. All the people you’ve murdered – all the hearts you’ve eaten, all the souls you’ve contracted to steal their magic – they will catch up to you. For,” I let my voice rattle out as if I were a theatrical actor in a Shakespeare production, “magic costs. It always costs. And you will pay your dues.”
He stopped. He’d taken a single step towards the door, but now he stiffened, every muscle down his back seizing with such force I saw them ripple beneath his shirt.
“I will not,” he said, but he barely spoke the words. Oh no, I saw the entire building speak with him. For everything shook as if it were being pounded by an earthquake.
I used all of my training as a fake fortuneteller to control my expression, to ensure fear didn’t crack across my face. I kept my head dipped low, my eyebrows furrowed, and my gaze locked on him. “That which you have feared is catching up with you. Your true destiny. For no one can hide from magic, Peter,” I said.
He snorted.
So his name wasn’t Peter, then? “It will peter out, peter out,” I shifted track, “your life. Your magic. The luck that has kept you going this far.”
The key to a believable fortune was in the details, often guessed, often statistical. The more apparent details you can throw in about a person’s fortune, the more likely they are to believe you. Though I often googled my clients to mine their social media accounts, I couldn’t exactly do that for the Lonely King. So I just had to wing it. “You’ve seen your own death, haven’t you? Imagined it year after year. It will come to pass. There is no running anymore.”
That one worked.
It had been a pretty safe assumption that an asshole who’d killed as many people and lived as long as the Lonely King would imagine his death. He’d be obsessed with it. Sure enough, from the exact raw emotion that cracked over his visage, it was clear I’d hit a nerve.
“You dream of it. It haunts you. Every waking moment. The moment your life will end. The moment your rampant use of magic will catch up to you. It’s coming. It’s coming. Tonight it ends,” I let my voice drop down as far as it would go until it croaked out of my throat like a dying breath.
A cold wave of horror crossed through the Lonely King’s gaze, and for the first time since the conversation began, I saw his fragility.
As I baited the Lonely King, Jim kept his attention on the door. He was doing something with his fingers, counting on them, tapping them methodically. I hoped like hell it was helping him to figure out a way out of here, and he wasn’t doing it to train the dexterity and strength of his hands.
“You are nothing. A broken seer. Nothing more than a husk – nothing more than a heart ripe for the taking. Your irrelevant life will give way to my spell, feed my future.”
Feed his future? Everyone seemed certain that the Lonely King was using a time spell to go to the past, so how exactly would that feed his future? Suddenly, something hit me. Something that should have hit me a heck of a lot earlier. Why exactly was thi
s prick called the Lonely King? It couldn’t be that he alone ruled – that tended to be the nature of kingship. So what if it was something else?
I’d managed to string the Lonely King along so far with a combination of luck and gall. Now it was time to take a risk. I suddenly closed my eyes as if a vision was sweeping over me. I rocked forward and backward so violently, I chafed my knees beneath my torn jeans.
I let my lips part with a gasp. “It won’t work. Your spell. You won’t be able to bring her back. She is gone forever, lost to the ravages of time.”
Though the first thing I wanted to do was open my eyes and see if my lie had struck home, I held on long enough to hear a shaking, choked breath.
I controlled my smile as I finally opened my eyes, as I saw the horror and shock crumpling the Lonely King’s face.
Bam. My lie had struck home.
I rocked backward and forwards again, not caring that pain kept shooting up the back of my thigh. I could feel that the injury had opened again, and a wet slick of blood was covering the back of my leg.
One of the first rules of fortune-telling was that you went with your client’s emotion. If one of your lies stuck, and they began to react to what you’d said, you milked that lie for all it was worth like an oil company drilling a well dry.
“You failed her. Left her in the past. There’s nothing you can do. For everything will catch up to you. Nothing you can do.”
“Lies,” the Lonely King bellowed.
Again, the room shook with him. There could be no doubting whatsoever that he was using his own personal magic. It wasn’t whatever device was in his pocket. It couldn’t be one of his many faceless assassins operating from the shadows. No. The more I wound this guy up, the more he let loose with his power, and the more time and opportunity it bought me.
Even if the least I could do was unsettle him, it would make him more likely to make a mistake. It would buy us time.
And, at the very least, it would help me figure out what his power was.
A Lying Witch Book Three Page 9
