by Jenn Stark
“Armaeus?” I whispered, my voice nearly soundless with fright. How could he have been caught in the Hanged Man’s explosion? He was the Magician of the Arcana Council, the strongest immortal that ever lived. How was it possible that this—this upstart, this mad scientist, had somehow locked him in place?
I waved my hand in front of the Magician’s face once, then twice for good measure. “Armaeus?” I tried again, even more weakly this time.
No response.
Slowly, inexorably, I turned around to face the black hole where once the knotted snarl of electricity representing Tesla had hovered. There was nothing there but scorched earth, the beautiful etched silver seal sitting in the middle of the clearing.
Almost ruefully, I approached the disk, then squatted down to pick it up. Despite the blackened ground around it, the singed grass, the disk itself remained cool to the touch. The beautifully inscribed Flower of Life still gleamed from its surface, and I smiled as I rotated the seal in my hand. Then I straightened, wondering what to do. Everything was wholly still, as silent as…
Well, not completely silent, I realized.
An old-fashioned reel now sounded in the distance, a few blocks away. The entire rest of Nashville remained locked in stasis, but that music…that music was there, it was real.
It was where the Hanged Man would be.
Stowing the silver seal in my hoodie, I started walking, fighting the urge to rush. The tinkling calliope music got louder as I moved up Broadway, but I found myself staring at the tableau of laughing, happy drinkers, caught in the moment of listening to their favorite tunes, enjoying a night filled with good friends and the rhythm of the heartland. They were eerie sentinels to my walk, their eyes still bright, their grins still full. What were they thinking at this moment, I wondered? Could they even discern what was happening, that time was passing before them while they stood frozen, immobile, unable to break free?
I turned the last corner and saw where the music was coming from. Bojangles’ Musical Theatre stood in front of me, its sign lettered in ornate script, its façade decorated like an Old West saloon, down to the rickety porch and front steps leading up to the building. There were people motionless on that porch and the walk in front of it, but the theater’s doors stood wide, beckoning me into the brightly lit lobby.
I passed the teller window with its smiling occupant looking like a wax museum figure, and stepped inside.
“Come in, come in.”
The voice was so shocking, I jumped. It was Nikola Tesla, of course, no longer a mass of electrons but a living, breathing, apparent human. He was dressed the same way I’d seen him in my astral travel vision, in an impeccably tailored suit from the early 1900s, his hair swept back from his forehead and brushed to a high sheen. His face was open and expansive, his smile wide as he shot out his cuffs, adjusting the pristine white sleeves beneath his dark jacket, twirling cuff links that appeared to be made of—what else—pure silver. He once again surprised me with his impressive height and almost severe slenderness, but he was possessed with so much animation, he seemed to move even while standing still.
“Come on, then,” he urged now with a smug smile. “The show is about to begin.”
Without waiting for me to reply, he disappeared into the open door to his left, the light above it flickering with the sign Auditorium A.
Swallowing, I palmed the etched seal in my hoodie pocket, and headed in after him.
The room was a small theater, with the curtains swept back showing a silver screen that had to be an antique. A fraction of the size of the screens in the last Cineplex I’d visited, it nevertheless was the perfect size for the maybe hundred or so folding seats that filled the small room, the place smelling like faded upholstery and stale buttered popcorn.
Tesla spoke from the back of the room. “Sit down, if you would, Miss Wilde. I’ve been waiting so long to have a proper introduction to you. And I must say, I’m most excited for you to see the invention they said could never be created.” He tsked. “The minds of the masses were always so difficult to sway back then. Now, I find it so much easier, don’t you? Sit, sit.”
Unsure how to play this, I took a seat midway up the sloped room. As I settled in the chair, the screen came to life in front of me—grainy footage that gradually morphed from faded black and white to almost surreally vivid technicolor, before evolving to the cool, crisp colors that would be found in any modern-day movie theater. The film was of a series of city streets. I leaned forward despite myself. I could almost recognize what I was seeing…
Then I froze.
“Yes, well, you were there only this afternoon, I would expect you to remember it,” Tesla said.
He stood at my side now, so close I could smell the freshly pressed wool of his suit.
“May I?” he asked rhetorically, before settling next to me. “Terribly sorry about the sound, haven’t quite worked that part out yet.”
“What is this?” I managed as the film continued its slow pan through the streets of downtown Memphis.
“Merely the city of memories you didn’t see today, couldn’t see, really, as blinded as you were by the Council. The city you really should see, if you would best understand who and what you are.”
“What?” Even as I spoke, however, the camera panned out, showing a man and a woman sitting on a park bench. The scene looked intensely familiar to me, and a moment later, I blurted the location. “That’s the zoo. The city zoo.”
“You were quite the enthusiast. See? There you are.”
As I watched with wide eyes I saw a small child in a green jacket and long pants and tennis shoes, her hair in a messy ponytail, spinning around like a top, her arms wide, her face bright with laughter. She stood beside a man I recognized, and a woman I almost didn’t. My father, the Hermit. And the woman he’d paid to be my mother. Only Sheila Rose Pelter looked so…young. So perfectly, impossibly young.
“What is this?”
“These are your thoughts, Sara Wilde,” Tesla said. “Your memories. The history that is locked inside you that you could never unlock on your own. I tried for years to patent a projector to present thoughts in the way you see them here, but the invention was too far ahead of its time, I’m afraid.” He gestured to the film. “It’s quite impressive, no?”
“I…” I couldn’t speak as the images moved more quickly. More visits to the same park, with something—someone in the distance watching. My father again? The figure was too far away to see, but I got the sense of an intense protective scrutiny. My mother and I at the zoo when I was older—perhaps ten years old. A visit to an old Victorian mansion that once more seemed not quite right…like something was happening just outside the frame. A series of visits with my mother’s friends, all of them laughing and chattering, fawning over me with delight as I brought out a deck of cards.
I winced. Had I really been that young when my mother had started showing me off as some sort of parlor trick?
“She couldn’t help it,” I heard myself saying as the women chattered silently over and around me, my small hands struggling to shuffle the cards and lay them out exactly so. “She wanted to be important.”
“She was important,” Tesla said. “So important and influential in your life that I’m afraid she became a bit of a liability for the Council—well, certain members of the Council, I should say. Members who could see the writing on the wall with the woman, her enthusiasm, her need for attention.”
The film sped up again, and I watched it spooling forward as I sat riven with shock. “We were there today,” I whispered. “Armaeus and me. By the river.”
“Ah, the illustrious Magician.” I could feel Tesla’s gaze on me. “Strange, isn’t it, how he seems so interested in knowing so much about you, and yet—he is the Magician, no? Shouldn’t he already know what transpired on his watch? What his own Council members were doing?”
The camera panned more widely. A car drove into view, a long, elegant limo. It stopped, its doors opened, an
d my mother stepped out, followed by two men. “Those men,” I said. “They worked for Viktor.”
“The Emperor, yes.” Nikola peered at the film. “If it makes you feel better, he truly is quite strong. It didn’t require much for him to distract the Magician from his antics over these several weeks when the Council first encountered the illustrious Sara Wilde, nee Sariah Pelter. Viktor was wise to be so cautious, in a sense. At that point, we didn’t know your parentage.” He sighed. “But that still does not—cannot excuse what happened next to the poor woman.”
I watched the film like a child transfixed by a horror movie. My mother was beautiful that day, I realized. Bright, full of excitement. She’d been posing as a psychic to lure attention away from me, I knew, but some part of her, the part I was seeing now, did crave the attention, as Tesla said. The power was clearly evident on her face and—at least in that moment—there was no fear.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Tesla murmured. “Sheila Rose Pelter believed in her abilities. She believed in them so much that she was willing to stand up to men who in any other circumstance would have had her cowering. But she didn’t cower that day. Imagine what that would be like. To be so confident in your own power that…”
He broke off. “Well. We can stop watching here.”
“No,” I said, and my voice was hollow. “No. I want to watch it.”
Tesla didn’t say anything more but merely studied the film alongside me, as the men directed my mother to the small picnic table by the water’s edge. She happily, almost giddily, pulled a deck of cards from her purse and turned away from them, focusing on the table—
The strike happened so fast, I nearly choked on my own scream. One of the men’s hands went up, holding some sort of short club, and it came down again once, twice. My mother slumped forward, and the cards spilled everywhere, caught by the breeze. The second man hastened forward, and I couldn’t see anything more, then, there was something in my eyes, and—
I turned away, and the images on the screen dimmed to darkness, the lights coming up…and leaving me caught by the cool, sparking gaze of Nikola Tesla.
“Why?” I whispered, my voice sounding hollow. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I came back into this world for you, Sara Wilde. For you and people like you.” His face was stony with intent. “Oh, I didn’t want to. Armaeus was quite right about that. But I knew I was on borrowed time. Why else do you think I was expanding operations, speeding up production so quickly? After so many years outside his purview, time was no longer a luxury I possessed. But the Magician chose to use you as a tool and that…changed things for me. Now I decided it was worth it, if I could draw you out, if you could begin to see…”
The realization struck me fast and hard, and I sat up straight. “You’re lying,” I said. “You said this movie—that it was my thoughts, my memories. And maybe it started out that way but that last part...” I shook my head vigorously. “I never saw my mother’s death. That can’t be right. It can’t.”
To my surprise, Tesla simply beamed at me. “Very good, Ms. Wilde. There’s hope for you yet. You’re quite right of course. I took some liberties at the end there. But it was quite effective, no? Almost makes you wonder what truly occurred that day?”
The outrage was so strong I nearly choked on it. “How dare you!” I gasped. “How dare you manipulate me—”
“Me? Me?” He snapped back. “Perhaps you should be asking who else is manipulating you, and why? That is the question I would be seeking to answer, were I you. And yet, I cannot ask it for you.”
He held out his hands as if I would cuff them. “Regrettably, it appears our time is running short. Collar me, and I’ll go quite willingly. I’ll even help Armaeus in his quest to strengthen the Council. But if I’m going to do this, then you’re going to need to do something for me.”
I waved his hands away. “What?” I asked warily.
“Pay attention,” he said.
I blinked at him. He’d said that before. “Attention to what?”
“You’re in up to your ears with the war on magic, the leadership of the House of Swords, these technoceuticals. Your mind is making connections, but you’re not paying attention to them. It’s time you started.”
He laid a hand against his chest. “I know what I am, who I am, and what I’m willing to fight for. But you are fighting for something you don’t even fully understand, allying yourself with a Council you don’t know. You don’t even know who you are, and it’s high time you learned. I can help you, yes. I will assist you. But the Magician can assist you too, in his own way. You have a power over him that you have not even begun to exercise. If you’re serious about helping humanity, helping every mortal to not only believe in his or her power like your mother did for one brief shining moment, but access that power to back up the belief, then you must own up to who you really are.”
Suddenly, the calliope started playing in the front of the saloon.
“Ah!” Tesla said. “The Magician has worked his way out of his daze. It looks like it’s time for you to hand me over, your captured prize.”
He gave me a little bow, then turned to prance up the slanted floor toward the exit.
“But don’t forget, Ms. Wilde,” he said almost cheerfully as we entered the bright lobby of the theater, the sounds of Broadway once again rolling through the humid night air. “The connections are there. Pay attention to them.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Council meeting was an almost festive affair. We’d been summoned to attend, but I didn’t know why, exactly. Then again, Nikki and Max had gotten jolted into the next century as a result of Council activities. Maybe they’d get some sort of medal of honor for that. They stood beside me now, all of us Connecteds of the hour, and I wasn’t sure if Max’s brain cells could handle it.
“My God,” he said in a strangled voice. “That has to be the High Priestess.”
I sighed. Eshe always got the biggest reaction from the newbs, but I had to hand it to her, she was taking her reintroduction to Tesla seriously. Instead of her usual toga-and-gilded-sandal ensemble, she was wearing a blood-red sheath that skimmed over her body and cascaded down her legs, a thigh-high slit showing enough skin to turn Tesla even whiter than he usually was. Unlike Max, however, the scientist appeared most fascinated by the Hierophant—Michael’s nearly translucent skin, snow-pale hair, and ice-blue eyes as exotic to Tesla as his beatific smile.
Armaeus had entered with Viktor, to my surprise, the pair remarkably at ease despite their typical disaffection for each other.
I found myself unable to look at either of them. Instead, I fixed my gaze on the far window, staring at nothing. We’d done it. Armaeus and I had secured the Hanged Man, who was currently sitting in this room as if he’d been away for a long weekend instead of seventy years. He was still dangerous, still unpredictable, but flesh and blood and bone and tied to the earth in such a way that Armaeus could at least control him. To some extent.
Now that the fight was over and everything had returned to normal, however, I found myself unusually keyed up. Kreios entered the room, strolling casually, and his gaze drifted indolently over the room before settling on me. He smiled with encouragement and even genuine affection, but I glared back at him. None of this felt right anymore, thanks to Tesla and his little video of horrors. Some of it had been bullshit—but some of it hadn’t, I was certain. And I got the feeling if I played that reel a second time, I would see different things, new things. Truths that were hidden in the shadows, waiting to be discovered.
One thing I didn’t need a replay to know: I didn’t want to be in the same room as Viktor, or Tesla either, for that matter. The Hanged Man had managed to stop the Magician back in Nashville, even if temporarily, and that bothered me more than it should. Why hadn’t Armaeus been stronger? Why had he allowed Tesla to take the upper hand?
In any event, Armaeus seemed pretty chummy with him now. Tesla didn’t appear to be constrained in a
ny way, his presence on the Council at once voluntary and assumed now that he was corporeal again. Whether that presence would turn out to help or harm the Magician was unclear, but at least Tesla’s mind—and his powers—were out of the ether and back in service to the Council.
“No way Death shows up here, right?” Nikki asked, nudging me. She was dressed in Vegas formal for the night’s festivities, a spandex minidress covered in hot-pink sequins, topping white platform go-go boots. She had a white hairband securing her bouffant-styled auburn hair, which was also glitter sprayed for the occasion. “Because, not to take anything away from Eshe, but this is turning into a BSD-fest.”
“BS—” Max started, furrowing his brow, but broke off as Armaeus strode forward and took a chair. Kreios remained leaning against the window, silhouetted by the kaleidoscopic Vegas skyline.
Viktor took a seat as well, and I stared resolutely at Kreios, who held my gaze with a small half smile as I sensed Viktor’s gaze on me. Did the Emperor know, I wondered? Did he realize that Tesla had bested Armaeus, that the Magician’s magic had been temporarily frozen?
I could ask Kreios about it—the whys and the hows behind what had happened between Armaeus and the Hanged Man. The Devil had a penchant for honesty that was refreshing after the layered duplicity of the Council, but his answers always came with a price. Armaeus had been at the front door of the musical theater by the time Tesla and I emerged, and he’d taken immediate custody of the Hanged Man. He’d appeared eminently cocky as he’d done so, but then, so had Tesla.
I hadn’t seen or spoken to either one of them since.
Based on what the Hanged Man had shown me, however, there were truths I’d witnessed as a child that I didn’t want to fully face. Truths about the people who’d surrounded me during my earliest memories, truths about myself. Was the Hanged Man correct—that I’d deliberately blinded myself to the reality of who and what I was because it was simply too hard to face the facts? I didn’t like what that said about me, not at all.
