by Kat Howard
“But the thing that’s odd is the potential removal of her assets from Unseen World holdings altogether. That’s something I’d expect to see if it looked like the House were in danger of being unmade. Which—did you hear? House Greenfield was.”
Sydney set her fork down. “What did they do that was bad enough?”
“Apparently, they tried to re-create your audition spell as part of a challenge. Turns out it’s harder to drive a flying bus than people think, and seven mundanes wound up in the hospital, all talking about how the crash felt just like the bus falling out of the air.”
“So that’s enough to unmake a House, but Colin can . . . You know what, never mind,” Sydney said. “Anyway, Prospero?”
Madison nodded. “Prospero is currently ranked second. There’s no imminent danger of it being unmade as a result of performance, and Miranda’s way too careful to allow Ian to pull the kind of shit that could cause exposure to the mundane world, not to mention he’s too good. So shifting assets to fully mundane concerns makes no sense. I’m looking into it.”
“I think maybe I can help with that. What if it’s not just House Prospero that’s in danger,” Sydney said. “What if it’s the entire Unseen World?”
“What?” Madison asked, her voice knife-sharp.
“If something’s wrong with magic. Which, there maybe is. Actually, almost certainly there is—I’m just not sure precisely what or how bad yet. But it’s obviously bad enough that people are noticing. How much have you heard about the failures of magic?”
“Are there failures beyond what happened with Ian’s duel with—who was it—Hawkins?”
“Yes. Verenice said normal spells are starting to go haywire, too. There was a mess at the Mages’ Club the other day. So something is for sure going on. And if Miranda thinks the entire Unseen World is in danger of falling apart—”
“—then switching her investment portfolio to mundane concerns makes perfect sense. Shit, goddamn, Sydney.”
“Exactly,” Sydney said.
“Okay, now I really have to go.”
“Thanks, Madison.”
“Not a problem.” She swiped a strip of bacon through the lake of syrup on Sydney’s plate, and left.
• • •
A quiet chime interrupted Miranda at her desk. She glanced up at her mirror.
Miles Merlin is at the door. The words scrolled in perfect cursive, a precise replica of her own handwriting.
“Miles . . .” she started. Miranda sat back, steepling her fingers, then got up. He’d have an agenda, and he wouldn’t mean it to be helpful, but it was always possible she could glean something useful from whatever rumors he’d come to spread. “I’ll see him in myself.”
She smiled as she opened the door. “Miles! What a surprise!”
“Miranda.” He looked around the entry, taking in the sweeping staircase, the beeswax-polished wood and soft-white candles on tables and in sconces. Mirrors reflected white flowers and Morris-print wallpaper. “I always forget how traditional this House is.”
“I’ve never been as enamored of technology as you are, Miles. But I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss interior decorating.” She led him down a hall lined with marble sculptures of Greek goddesses in recessed niches and into a sitting room.
“No, I came because I wasn’t sure if you would have heard about Grey’s most recent challenge.” He sat across from her.
Miranda sat on the edge of a chair, back straight, knees together, feet discretely tucked, as poised as a duchess. “Can I offer you something? Coffee, tea, water? The House would be happy to put something together for you.”
“Oh, did you have that automated?” He looked around, interested enough to be distracted from what he had come there to say.
“No, that’s always been done through the House’s magic. I see no reason to change it, not with the spell working as well as it does.” And that was a dig, if a polite one. The stronger Houses, the ones with a close bond to their Heads, could do such magic. House Merlin, notoriously, could not. She suspected it was part of why Miles spent so much time at his club, why he’d installed enough technology to make his House look like the set of a sci-fi movie, that the expensive shine was a distraction that kept people from wondering about the real reason that the oldest House didn’t run on magic.
“Nothing for me. This isn’t a social call. Did you hear about Grey?” Awkward now, and impatient because of it.
“I was just about to get more tea. Are you certain you don’t want any?” Miranda asked, cuttingly polite.
“Really, no.”
“A pot of tea please, Lady Grey.” She didn’t want it, not really, but she did want to keep Miles off-balance.
Of course.
The drink followed on the mirror’s chime and agreement, the scent of lavender and bergamot steaming into the air.
“Thank you for being patient,” Miranda said. “As you may have gathered, since you’ve been through something similar recently, the disinheritance left things strained between us. Grey and I don’t talk; nor are we part of each other’s lives. As you might infer from that, I haven’t paid particular attention to his progress through the Turning.”
“It was a duel with House Morgan.” Merlin’s eyes watched her face like the hawk he shared a name with. “Something went, well, not exactly wrong. Let’s say overenthusiastic. It was a Briar Rose spell. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such thorns. It was almost as if they wanted to hurt him.”
Miranda kept her face carefully blank. Just because she was magically prevented from speaking about the circumstances of Grey’s disinheritance didn’t mean they were gone from her mind.
She knew, too, that Rose Morgan had been murdered a year after, in circumstances that were close enough to those that had triggered that disinheritance to chill her heart.
She had not asked. She would never ask.
“I know you’re very busy, Miles, so while I certainly appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to tell me this in person, I’m not sure why you felt that I needed to know—he did survive, or I would have heard that before now.” That same note of polite curiosity and nothing more.
“Yes, yes, he survived—that challenge was even decided in his favor. But he was, though he tried to hide it, quite hurt. And the casting magician was the older sister of the girl from that House who was killed. Grey dated her around that time, I believe—or am I remembering incorrectly?” He adjusted his cuffs.
And now the reason for the visit was clear. Merlin, with his fingers full of threads, was shaking his spider’s web and hoping to catch her in it. “Again, Miles, Grey is not a part of my life; nor am I a part of his. That’s been the case for years now. I don’t pay attention to whom he has had relationships with. I’m not sure what else you expect me to say.”
Merlin held his silence for a moment. Two. Then he shook his head. “Perhaps I misestimated the power of a mother’s concern. No matter—I’ll see myself out.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll walk with you,” Miranda said, and led him out of her House.
After he had gone, she stood, her hand on the back of the door that would no longer open to her son and very carefully cleared her mind of the reason why.
There are some things that cannot bear looking at.
• • •
Harper had asked some of the other women at work where to find the bar. She knew there would be one, because this was New York and somewhere in this city there was a bar that catered to every possible clientele. She had simpered and giggled and made jokes about wanting to find a guy with a little magic in his wand until she was sure they all thought she was some sort of magician groupie, but they had told her where to go. “Houdini’s Elephant. It’s next door to a magic shop.”
She had poured herself into a push-up bra and minidress, slicked her lips with gloss, and had gotten to the bar early enough to get a seat at the corner, where she could see the other people there without being obvious.
She’d known she was in the sort of place she was looking for when she’d had to prove she could light a candle to get in. She was currently treating the resulting headache with an excellent vodka gimlet, and watching the crowd.
It was, probably, a stupid idea to put herself out there as bait. There were at least five good reasons she could think of not to, not the least of which being she could wind up dead. But she’d heard rumors—women being killed, in a way that made her think of how Rose had been killed. Details that matched the parts of the police file she wasn’t supposed to have seen, full of horrors.
And it had been unexpectedly hard, working for Wellington & Ketchum, knowing that she was so close, almost there, and yet not really any more likely to find out who had killed Rose than before. So she’d drowned out the voices that knew precisely how stupid this was because being smart about it was too frustrating.
She waited and watched and the evening dragged on, and her glass got closer to empty, and Harper felt less and less like she was going to find anyone useful in this bar. There weren’t a lot of people there, and those who were seemed . . . obvious. Magic so aggressively over-the-top that it looked fake. She wondered if it was, and leaned across to the bartender. “That guy has lit his own hair on fire three times now.”
The bartender rolled her eyes. “He’s in here all the time. The hair thing is his one party trick. It usually comes complete with a joke about how hot he is. Three’s a slow night for him. He’ll be fine.”
Drunken antics with the addition of magic really weren’t any more entertaining than normal drunken antics. Harper contemplated ordering another drink but decided against it. They were slammed at the office, and she was hoping that if she proved herself on the mundane stuff quickly, Madison would let her work on files directly related to magic. “I’m calling it a night,” Harper said.
“Be careful. There’s women who have been hassled—maybe even worse—after leaving here. Take a cab, maybe.”
“What do you mean, worse?” Harper asked.
“Worse like murdered. Finger bones removed.” She shuddered.
“Finger bones?” The dread of recognition, a lump in her center that she had to breathe around. Rose’s hands had been cut into, like someone wanted to remove her bones.
“Like they were killed for their magic. Which means this creep is stalking magicians. So like I said, be careful. Take a cab.”
Harper added an extra twenty to her tip, grateful for the warning. “Thanks. You, too.”
She stood outside, letting the cold air wash over her, letting it clear the noise and closeness of the bar from her mind, and thought about walking home. She wasn’t that far. But then she thought about how swollen her feet were in her shoes and the likeliness of being able to run in them. “You aren’t actually a superhero,” she reminded herself, and hailed a cab.
• • •
Grey left Colin Blackwood’s party early and in a bad mood. He’d had to stand there and listen as Colin—Colin, of all people, who hadn’t even made it past his second challenge, who’d been humiliated by that chick Laurent had hired—had bragged about how he was in Miles Merlin’s inner circle, how he’d been promised a place in House Merlin at the end of the Turning.
“You should talk to him, Grey. I heard your last challenge was rough.” All artificial sympathy.
“Not that rough—I won.”
“Still. Merlin can help. I’ll put in a good word for you.” Colin smiled, and Grey wanted to punch him in his perfect teeth.
He’d mumbled something half-polite and left.
“I couldn’t wait to get out of there, either.” She was curvy and dark-haired, and Grey was sure he knew her. He racked his brains, and knew it was his lucky night after all when they spit out a name.
“Hayley? Hayley Dee?”
“Wow, I didn’t think you’d remember me. I had such a crush on you in high school.” She smiled, stepped closer. He could see the flush of alcohol in her face, her unsteadiness on her feet. She had been, he remembered, a couple of years behind him in school. Barely any magic.
Perfect.
“I always remember the cute girls. Want to go grab a decent drink somewhere?” he asked.
“I’d like that,” she said.
He needed more magic, and she had just enough. He made sure they never got to the bar.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When the next failure of magic occurred, it was extremely public and impossible to mistake for anything else.
It happened in front of nearly the entire Unseen World. Another party, one to mark an unspoken change in the first part of the Turning and to celebrate the success of everyone still competing. A subtle signal that the real challenges—not just those about settling petty grievances and taking revenge for decade-old gossip—were about to begin. The duels weren’t mortal yet, but they were serious now.
The evening was meant to be a civilized, elegant occasion. The duel was even being fought with a civilized choice of magic: illusion. Perfect accompaniment to champagne bubbling in graceful coupes and rich food arranged like sculptures on plates the precise warm cream shade of the beeswax candles that decorated the tables.
Sydney had been right that Laurent would be invited to all the parties after her performance at the first duel. It seemed increasingly likely that the end of the Turning would see the establishment of House Beauchamps, and better to get to know him now, so as to have his ear and his friendship when he came into power. So that he might, perhaps, even feel indebted to those who were welcoming when he was still an outsider. Laurent knew exactly how much those welcomes meant, and so he turned down most of the invitations, but as he was that evening’s challenger, he was there, tall and elegant in his tuxedo.
She watched, grey eyes keen, as Heads of Houses and their heirs introduced themselves to Laurent, invited him to dance, leaned close and whispered to him as they stood around the small, high-topped tables that ringed the room. Miles Merlin, she noted, had not gone over to pay court. He was, instead, watching her. That was fine. She had come to be watched. She waved, pleased when Merlin ostentatiously ignored her.
She felt Ian at her elbow before she heard his voice. “You’re looking well.”
“Blood on the inside this time, and look—not even a scar.” Her dress, a severe plunge of black held by the thinnest of straps paid proof to her words.
“Better than well.” Ian smiled. “And what splendid activity do you plan to put them through tonight? Will you convince the gilded Heads of all the Houses that they should cluck like chickens or sing opera?”
“Not in the least,” Sydney said. “I think I’d like to see an opera someday, and the quality of the arias likely to come out of this crowd would probably end that desire. Besides, tonight’s challenge is illusion.”
“Will you play our nightmares over the walls like movies?”
“It’s not a bad idea. If I do, I promise to buy you popcorn first.”
“And sit with me and hold my hand during the scary bits?” He stepped close enough that she could feel the warmth of his skin.
“They’ll all be scary bits. That’s the point of nightmares.”
He stepped closer, leaned in as if he might whisper some secret, but was interrupted by the announcement of the challenge. Sydney sliced through the crowd, to stand at Laurent’s side. The representative of the challenged House was announced, and the casting began.
It was a Four Seasons illusion. No points for originality, but they wouldn’t be needed if it was well done. It was a complicated, exhausting spell that required a great deal of control to both bring the illusion fully into being and to maintain the subtleties of the transitions from one season to the next. A good choice. Sydney watched the woman’s hands as they bent and folded into the necessary shapes. She was casting well—her fingers graceful even in the extreme positions required, bending and stretching with ease.
As was tradition, the illusion began with spring—grass and trees and flowers slowl
y growing up out of the polished wood of the floor. Petals opening, leaves unfurling, the air ripe with the scent of growing things. It was beautifully done, and with an immense amount of power—pieces of the illusion filled the entire room and were as rich and detailed at its far end as they were near to the woman holding the spell. A second set of trees grew from walls and tables. The air grew warmer, richer, greener. It felt almost electric—the first edges of an oncoming storm.
Sydney went string-tight. “Something’s wrong.”
“Are you sure?” Laurent asked.
She pushed him. “Yes. Go. Get out. Now.”
“It’s rude to—”
“Better rude than dead.” She didn’t wait for him to respond, but set off across the floor in the direction of the casting magician.
Spring did not peak and shimmer into the haze of summer’s glory. Instead, physical vines burst into the room, crawled through the floor, grabbed at tables, at chairs, at the feet of the watching magicians, the illusion searching for any way to further anchor itself into reality. Trees grew, faster and faster, and the rumble of thunder rattled the windows. The green scent of the air no longer pleasant, but choking.
It wasn’t an absence of magic but a surfeit, extra power, pulled from somewhere, avalanching into solidity.
Sydney raised her voice to be heard over the crowd, over the roar of the magic. “Beauchamps forfeits the challenge in the expectation it will be ruled a failure of magic and strongly recommends you all leave before the forest takes the room.”
No one moved.
Branches curled from the ceiling. Floorboards flew through the crowd. A tree exploded up, driving straight through a thin man in a tuxedo, killing him before he could even gasp in shock.
People moved then.
The air was suffocatingly humid. Wind howled. The growth of the forest was so rapid it could be heard over the chaos of people running for the doors.
Sydney continued to fight against the fleeing crowd, toward the casting magician. Ian’s hand closed over her arm. “Is there a reason you aren’t taking your own advice?”
