The Red King

by Jenn Stark

  “And said bad guy is now…”

  “With Gamon. I didn’t stay to chat.”

  Brody looked a little green. He’d known Gamon about as long as I had. “Gamon. Who’s, um, Judgment. And probably acting in ways that are decidedly extralegal. In my jurisdiction.”

  “If it helps at all, it’s technically above your jurisdiction,” I offered, pointing skyward. Unlike me, Gamon had had no problem creating an aerie for her own personal use. To those who could see it, it looked like a giant Mount Doom made out of meatloaf, hovering above what was now named the SLS Las Vegas, a place I’d always know as the Sahara no matter what they called it.

  “It doesn’t help, no.” Brody grimaced. “Why do you smell like smoke?”

  I ignored that and glanced back at the doorway to the library, which was now an empty hole. “Um, I need a couple of new doors. And a new security system. And…I don’t know. Magic-sniffing dogs, maybe.”

  Before Brody could respond to that, a sharp rap sounded on the doorframe to the outer corridor, and Nikki strode in. “Yo, Loverboy,” she said to Brody. “Glad you finally made it.”

  “Do you know what’s going on here?” Brody complained, sounding very close to a whine.

  “I know the good parts.” Nikki flopped onto a couch I hadn’t noticed before. Then again, the only two times I’d been in this room, it’d been stacked with either boxes or bodies. “Word’s out that Sara here has taken on the role of Justice. No one here seemed to think that was going to be a big deal, but the rest of the world begs to differ.”

  “And…” Brody made the hurry-up gesture with his hands.

  “And now she’s a target, it would seem. Both by people who want her help and by those who want amnesty on their library fines. Which is the case with Mak’rep the not quite so powerful. Am I right?” She looked at me. “Mrs. French called, said she thought he was the perp, based on what the boys told her. Though she didn’t use the word perp. She used…” Nikki furrowed her brow. “Miscreant.”

  I sank into my own chair. Armaeus remained propping up a wall, though with a wave of his hand, he replaced at least the front door. Apparently, the library door was beyond his dice roll for the moment. Brody simply stared from me to the broken library door. “You got attacked by someone named Mak’rep?”

  “It’s been a really long day.”

  “So here’s the lowdown, love chop,” Nikki said. “Sit, sit. This is going to take a minute.”

  Brody sat. Heavily. “I have to report something,” he grumped. “There was a disturbance. The hotel was concerned. The guests directly beneath this floor were concerned.”

  We all looked at the floor. “I hadn’t thought about that,” I said.

  “Should we rent that floor too? I’ve been looking for someplace to store my winter clothes.” Nikki tapped her chin. “And we can install the bodyguards you clearly need.”

  My lips turned down. “I don’t need bodyguards. I need magic-sniffing dogs.”

  “You need more than that.” Brody pulled out his notepad and flipped it open. “Guests reported explosions, screams, children crying, and gunfire. They flooded the front desk with calls, and for obvious reasons, it was everything the staff could do to hold off a panic. A report was filed, and that means paperwork, and paperwork means a trail.” His scowl got deeper. “You do not want a trail, Sara. Not until you figure out exactly what this Justice thing is all about. The moment the local police think you’re some sort of vigilante—or God forbid Interpol does—you can kiss your freedom goodbye.”

  “I agree with Detective Delish,” Nikki put in. “But to bring you full circle, boy-o, Sara here got hit with a number of new jobs earlier today. As per protocol, they were lined up on her desk for her to review, with nobody realizing that they were part of a spell. The lights go out, the pages become thugs, the library aides come in to investigate.”

  “Library aides.”

  “Never mind that part. The aides alert Mrs. French, the head librarian, she sounds the alarm, chaos ensues. Sara shows up, blasts a hole through the door, giving the thugs entrance to the library, and then they perform another change-up act, becoming Mak’rep in the flesh when she opens his magic box.”

  “They were golems. It was one of Mak’rep’s more advanced skills,” Armaeus put in. “They led you to the box, and you opened it. He believed his power would overwhelm yours. It didn’t.”

  “Right,” Nikki said, sending Armaeus a sharp look. “And why didn’t it, again?”

  We all switched our attention to Armaeus, but I was already watching him, so I saw the reaction the others didn’t. A reaction which honestly didn’t make me feel all that good.

  “You don’t know,” I said, a hollow pit opening in my stomach. “His power should’ve trumped mine.”

  “Mak’rep was an exceptionally powerful and ancient sorcerer. By all rights, yes, he should have given you at least some minimal trouble. He didn’t.”

  “He tried.” I thought of the sorcerer waving his hands around, then back to my own issues when I first entered the library. “I figured the library hit him with the same dampening effect it hit me with.”

  Armaeus nodded. “Yes…” he said, though that didn’t seem to make him any happier. “The role of Justice ended abruptly with Justice Abigail Strand. She made several unorthodox changes to the library without advising me. When she died—”

  “Wait, what?” Nikki cut in. “She died? That’s how she left the role of Justice?”

  The Magician slanted her a look. “If she was among the living, don’t you think she would still be occupying the role?”

  “Not necessarily. She could have retired. People do that. They retire. Play shuffleboard. Drink mai tais. She sure as hell would have earned it, given the Library of Neverending Stories in there.” Nikki folded her arms tightly against her chest. “You didn’t tell us she died.”

  “How’d she die?” I interjected.

  “Poison,” Armaeus said briskly, and we all gaped at that. “Meant to look like a suicide, but almost certainly not.”

  I felt a little dizzier. What had the boy said inside the library, one of Mrs. French’s diminutive staffers? That I’d go crazy if I opened that box?

  Was that really a thing?

  Brody’s startled voice drew me back. “You let her get killed on your watch?” he accused Armaeus.

  “She was on a case, alone. She lost her focus.”

  “So then she lost her life,” Nikki said bluntly. “Who did it?”

  “Most likely someone whose crimes also remain interred in the library, but who knew the dangers the library itself presented.” Armaeus cocked his head, then shook it. “Not Mak’rep.”

  “So are these bad guys looking to knock off the next Justice too?”

  “Unlikely. We established several mock Justices over the next twenty years, and the bait was never taken. Whatever Abigail knew died with her. So did any interest in killing her specifically. Tonight’s actions are unfortunate but unrelated.”

  The Magician spoke with enough confidence that I should’ve been satisfied, but I wasn’t. My head was beginning to pound. “How likely is it that we’ll continue to get interested parties who are, ah, interested in partying in the library, then?” I asked. “One of those golems shot me. With a gun. That’s some serious animation ability.”

  “They didn’t bring the gun with them.”

  The voice came from my office, and I turned to see Mrs. French, her fussy gray Victorian dress and starched white collar in stark contrast to the body-length black apron she had lashed around her body.

  “Wait, what—” Brody began, but Mrs. French ignored him. Her gaze was steady on me, her chin up, and she was practically quivering with repressed emotion.

  “Justice Abigail kept guns in the library. A lot of guns. Many I’ve found and removed, what with the children about. But every time I’m back there, I find another pistol or derringer or rifle or something. The
boys know to look for them now too, but no sooner do we confiscate one than another seems to appear.”

  Brody spluttered again, but I didn’t have time for his sensibilities either.

  “Brody, this is Mrs. French, custodian of the library. Mrs. French, Detective Brody Rooks of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. So how many guns are we talking exactly, Mrs. French? And how is it the golems knew about them?”

  “Pleased to meet you, Detective.” Mrs. French bobbed a very proper curtsey, and Brody opened his mouth, then shut it again, staring at her. “Justice Abigail told me once, she’d planted five hundred. I’ve only found two hundred and thirty. Two hundred and thirty-one, I should say, with tonight’s discarded piece.” She patted her apron.

  “Five hundred…” I echoed.

  Brody clapped his hands to his head as if trying to keep his brains from falling out, then spun toward me. “You have more than two hundred loaded weapons in that room, and you have no idea where they are? And this—whatever it was who shot you, did? How the hell is that possible?”

  Mrs. French fielded that one, her hands now clasped tightly in front of her. “Begging your pardon, sir, Justice Abigail made no secret of her arsenal while she was alive. And she kept unusual company. It’s possible some of the locations of the weapons were more widely known. I have tried to find them, I surely have. But because of the wards—both yours and Justice Abigail’s—there’s no way we can use magical means to discern them. And without magic…”

  “We’ll deal with that later,” I said, rubbing my head. I really didn’t feel well. “Armaeus, back to the issue of who else is going to play Raid the Library. Because if we’ve got weapons in there…that’s not good.”

  “Dogs,” Brody said abruptly. “We can get dogs in there, right? They’re not magic.”

  “They’re not.” Despite myself, I smiled at Brody’s outburst. It was a good idea. And it would certainly keep the boys’ minds off what had happened here tonight, at least somewhat. “Dogs,” I echoed, liking the sound of it.

  “On it.” Nikki pulled out her phone.

  Armaeus shifted in the doorway, reclaiming my attention. “After we publicize Mak’rep’s attempt and failure, especially the part about the library being far more than people think, I suspect we will have no more than a few who attempt to remove their cases from your inventory. But some, certainly. It would be alarming to know that your long-buried crime is suddenly back, as they say, in circulation. The worry would prove difficult for some to bear.”

  “Right.” It made sense. “I’m going to need to expedite those cases somehow.”

  “Twenty-four seventeen,” Nikki intoned miserably.

  “What’s that?” Brody asked. “The number of cases you have back there?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, my eyes still on the Magician. “There’s got to be a way to weed out the more sensitive ones. Everything in there is ladders and scaffolding and gears and pulleys. It’s insane.”

  “C’mon, you don’t like the pneumatic tube system?” Nikki asked.

  “There is an advantage to the system the way it is,” Armaeus said. “If you can’t digitize it…it remains tangible. Finite. Impossible to duplicate, or to hide evidence of a breach.” He waved at the very obvious evidence around us of tonight’s breach.

  “That’s fine for out here, but have you seen that place?” Nikki jerked a thumb toward the blown-open door. Brody followed her gesture, then stood, wandering that way. “You wouldn’t have a hard time hiding evidence of a war, let alone one little scrap of paper going sideways.”

  “Everything’s marked,” I said suddenly. “That’s what you mean. Like Mak’rep’s box. There was a date on it in silver. But only one. Its intake date.”

  The Magician smiled. “Of course. You check something out of the library, there’s a record. The system is inviolate.”

  “And the library catalog is…”

  “Oh my God. Are you serious?”

  I glanced over to see Brody standing at the ruins of the door to the library.

  “There has to be at least twenty levels in there that I can see, floor-to-ceiling with books,” he said. “Forget the weapons, there’s no way you’re going to be able to sort all those cases out to determine which are the most problematic. And even if you did, something that you might consider to be completely inconsequential may in fact be the number one priority for someone on the other side. There’s absolutely no way of telling.”

  “It’s not quite that unsophisticated,” Armaeus returned mildly. “Justice Abigail knew the most challenging tasks before her, but it was always her choice as to whether or not she would address them straight out. Toward the end, she completely ignored the backlog of cases for Justice in favor of handling assignments that came to her more directly.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Much like the guns, I suspect. It gave her a sense of control.” He looked at me, his gaze probing, intent. “And then there’s the small problem of potential insanity that the cases that came in through official channels seemed to exacerbate. A condition of which Justice Abigail was very much afraid,” he said, his words audible in my mind alone.

  I kept my expression neutral, but Abigail’s paranoia was making more sense all the time. You’ve got to be joking. That was real?

  “That was real. Your friends…”

  Don’t need to know.

  Armaeus nodded sharply. “For now,” he said aloud, “it’s enough to know that a balance between ad hoc cases and those which come through more traditionally is probably your safest course. That and managing your time effectively.”

  “If you say I need to focus on what’s important instead of what’s urgent, I’m going to cut you,” I grumbled. My headache and sloshy brain was getting worse. “This is feeling more and more like a corporate job all the time.”

  The Magician spread his hands, but his eyes glittered with amusement. “It’s far more straightforward than that. You simply have to ask what’s next.”

  “Maybe try that again in English?” A knock at the door cut me off mid-scowl.

  Brody turned away from the library entrance. “You expecting anyone else tonight?”

  “I wasn’t expecting the first people,” I said, standing. We all stared at the main door, no one making a move to open it. After a brief pause, the knock came again. It was light, professional, courteous. And as it echoed softly in the room, I realized my headache was going away.

  I slanted a glance at Armaeus. Who’d disappeared.

  “I didn’t ask what’s next,” I complained, staring at the empty space. “Did anyone hear me say it? Because I didn’t say it. I just want to point that out.”

  “At least he fixed the library door before he went.” Brody reached out, then grunted as he laid his hand on the vertical surface. His hand floated about an inch beneath the plane of the door, piercing the very effective illusion. Then again, the Magician was all about effective illusions.

  “The game has changed, Miss Wilde,” came the voice in my mind. “There’s still too much I don’t understand. That said, you are right. You didn’t say the words. However, that doesn’t change the fact that there is a man at your door with a need that only you can satisfy.

  My first thought was a gigolo, but of course it couldn’t be that easy.

  “Fine,” I said, drawing both Brody’s and Nikki’s surprised glances. I stalked across the room and opened the door.

  Definitely not a gigolo.

  Standing in front of me was a man I recognized instantly, for all that I’d met him only once. It’d been a few short months earlier, beyond the sumptuous front entrance of one of the world’s finest and grandest old hotels. I’d had a meeting scheduled, and this man, the hotel manager, had graciously shown me to my reserved rooms.

  And he’d then proceeded to point out the staff gunmen he’d secreted in elegantly carved alcoves around the room, should I have any need to blast my associate
s to kingdom come. Definitely the best hotel service I’d ever received.

  “Mr. Stone. Welcome.” I stood back and allowed him to enter.

  As it had that day in the Hotel Metropole Geneva, Luca Stone’s elegance struck me first—he moved with a grace and complete mastery of space that should have tipped me off immediately that he was no ordinary hotel manager. He was maybe sixty years old, with neatly cropped gray hair and a wiry, slight build. One elegant silk patch was affixed over one eye. When I’d seen him last, he was wearing a tuxedo, but his suit tonight was equally effortless and bespoke. Despite the elegant attire, there was no questioning the strength in his slender form. The man looked like he could break someone into little pieces, then brush off his fingers, shoot his cuffs, and return to a garden party.

  “Madame Wilde,” Stone said. “I do apologize for the lateness of the hour, but I was encouraged to come here immediately, on the off chance you were available.” He glanced around the room. “I see now this was good advice.”

  I stiffened. “Good advice from whom?”

  “Your former compatriot, General Ma-Singh.”

  “Ma-Singh?” I reached out mentally for Armaeus, but the Magician had left the building. Handy of him.

  “Indeed. I was en route to the House of Swords to shore up some routine contracts when he telephoned. When I heard what he had to say, well. I knew I could assist.” He looked past me toward Nikki and executed a bow. “Mademoiselle Dawes. It is my absolute pleasure to see you again. I’m so glad to see you in such good health.”

  The dots stopped jumping around my brain and connected with an audible click. “The Red King,” I said, and Nikki straightened too. “You have information on the Red King.”

  “Ah, Sara?” Brody prompted.

  “Right—right, sorry. Luca Stone, this is Detective Brody Rooks, Las Vegas Metro Police Department. Brody, Mr. Stone is an acquaintance of mine from Geneva. He took great care of me when I didn’t realize I needed it.”

  Brody made an appropriately welcoming noise as Stone’s gaze shifted to him, and Stone betrayed nothing in his expression but the faintest lift of his brows. “It seems I’ve caught you at an inconvenient time.”