Lure of the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

Maybe it was the tide of regret, of focused rage welling deep inside.

  “I hear you,” she said quietly. “Yeah, I get it. I’m going to kill Carson, don’t you worry about that.”

  “That’s not the part that worries me.” Her fingers loosened, and Naomi let her go. “I really wish you’d been quicker on the uptake.”

  “Fuck you. If you know everything—”

  “I don’t.” Jessie turned, once more following the narrow hall. “But what would you have done if I’d come to you and said, ‘Hey, if I point out a group of people and call them witches, can you lock them up for me?’ ”

  Naomi opened her mouth, hesitated. Her fingers curled into her palms as she admitted grimly, “I’d ask all sorts of questions.” She frowned. “Jesus Christ. Just lead the way, princess.”

  “Funny, Miss Ishikawa.” Jessie’s tone flattened as the flashlight arced through the smoky shadows. “Who’s the princess now?”

  Naomi ate that one. Fucking fate.

  They walked in silence, following turns and bends that Naomi couldn’t place. She didn’t know where they were. Where they’d come out of. Finally, tired to death of staring at the faint luster of the light on Jessie’s gold hair and sage green uniform, Naomi broke the silence. “How the hell do you know about these tunnels?”

  Jessie’s eyes gleamed as she glanced over her shoulder. “Spatial awareness.”

  “Bullshit.”

  The woman sighed briefly. “Didn’t your last director tell you guys anything?”

  Naomi’s jaw locked. “Apparently not. Peterson’s notes didn’t seem out of the ordinary.”

  “Your new director must be having a field day,” Jessie said wryly. “I know about this stuff because I see the present.”

  “See—?”

  “The present,” she repeated. “Anything going on right now, anywhere in this city, country—hell.” She sighed. “Some people see the future, right? I see anything happening right now anywhere in the world. And without setting foot outside my door, if I wanted. It doesn’t stop.”

  “Holy fuck.” A witch with that kind of power? Naomi gritted her teeth.

  For the moment, she had to trust this witch. Was she fucking surrounded by them?

  “Shh.” Jessie clicked off the light. “It’s here somewhere . . .” Naomi waited in the dark as the other woman ran her fingers over the plain, faceless wall. Beams shifted. Dust and smoke swirled.

  “Here.” She paused. “Naomi, it’s not good.”

  “Just open the fucking door.”

  A seam of light split the smoky darkness. Naomi surged past Jessie, threw her weight against the panel. It sprang open, slammed against the wall, and rebounded into her shoulder.

  She didn’t care.

  All she cared about was the ring of people staring at her, eyes wide. Two held guns.

  There was blood everywhere.

  “Gemma.” Naomi ignored the guns, ignored the gasps of fear, of surprise. Of recognition. “Jesus, Gemma!”

  Two of the men held a gun, each in the Timeless uniforms. They shifted, reached out to stop her from getting past the crimson stains on the floor.

  Naomi’s level, murderous challenge forced one to reconsider. The other leveled a gun at her head. “Don’t move,” he ordered. “Please.”

  “Let her—”

  Too fast, too reckless, Naomi palmed the gun and wrenched it, twisting his fingers. Bone grated against metal. He yelped, squawked in fear and alarm as she caught his wrist, turned, and stepped into his wide open stance as he struggled for balance. She jammed an elbow hard enough into his throat that his shout turned into a gurgle.

  He collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.

  Naomi holstered the gun into the waistband of her jeans and met Liz’s narrowed stare. “—come in,” she finished with a muttered snort. “That wasn’t necess—”

  “Get the fuck out of my way,” Naomi snarled.

  Maybe it was the unbridled impatience. Or the sheer lethal promise Naomi didn’t do anything to mitigate.

  Maybe it was Jessie’s wild signal in her peripheral vision.

  She stepped out of the way.

  Rage guttered. “Gemma.”

  Phin’s mother was too pale, her skin gleaming with sweat. With streaks of blood. She lay on her back, her curls stuck to her forehead and cheeks. Naomi could clearly see her veins underneath her fragile, translucent skin.

  Could see her lungs rising and falling in shallow, gasping breaths.

  Dying in Lillian’s arms.

  Naomi sank to her knees beside the stiff-lipped woman, smoothed her hands over Gemma’s damp cheeks. “Fuck.” It was all she could say. All she could think as Phin’s mother bled out around her.

  Gemma’s paper-thin eyelids fluttered. Her hands rose, bloody, grasping. “Naomi?”

  She caught them, held tight. “I’m here,” she said tightly. “I’m right here. Did Carson do this?”

  “Doesn’t—” Gemma coughed, cringing with the pain that Naomi knew must fill every part of her. Burning, eating. Draining. “Doesn’t matter,” she managed. “Need . . . you.”

  “I’m here. Where’s Phin?”

  Gemma’s smile was weak. Her eyes glittered, feverishly bright into Naomi’s. “White . . . knight. N-Naomi. You must . . . take it.”

  Around her, Naomi dimly registered gasps. Mutters.

  Questions.

  Jessie eased around the circle, a thin, fragile point of awareness in Naomi’s peripheral. She watched her, watched Gemma, and her expression told Naomi what she’d already known.

  The woman was beyond help. Gut shot.

  Tears balled in her throat. “Take what?” she asked, her voice cracking. “What can I do?”

  “The fountain.” Gemma’s fingers tightened. Hard enough that Naomi’s bones ground together, that pain rippled to her elbows. “You’re . . . right.”

  “Right?” Naomi shook her head as the first tear trickled over her cheek. “I don’t want to be right, Gemma, I want you to get up off this floor and—”

  Gemma’s laugh cut her off. It wasn’t the bitter, broken laugh of a woman dying. It wasn’t the angry surge Naomi expected of anyone gunned down by a bastard with a grudge.

  It gentled. Brushed over her like a caress.

  Sweet. Loving.

  “I know you’re right,” she whispered. “Phin . . . knows you’re right.” Naomi’s heart twisted. “Take the power.”

  Her eyes widened. “The what?”

  Gemma’s closed. “Take it. Protect it. Pl-please.”

  “Naomi.”

  She looked up from the shiny, twisted mask of effort on Gemma’s pallid face. Jessie met her eyes, her gaze vibrant gold and shimmering with regret.

  “She’s a witch.”

  Naomi’s hands jerked.

  Jessie grabbed her shoulder, hard enough to leave nail marks in her skin. The skin that should have been scabbed and furrowed. “Shut up, turn it off, and listen to me. The power she carries heals, but only others.” The witch crouched, smoothed her hand over Gemma’s forehead. “She is the fountain of life, Naomi.”

  “She’s a witch—”

  “You’re the only one,” Jessie said flatly, “that can keep this from dying out right now. You don’t take it, something beautiful and helpful and good dies, and the world loses another part of its soul with it.”

  Naomi flinched. “This world can eat its own tail and die trying.”

  “It’s her last wish, Miss West.”

  Gemma cracked open her eyes. “I can—I can do my own pitch, thank you,” she said with some shadow of her former asperity. But it weakened with every word, slipped into broken lines as Naomi tightened her grip on Gemma’s hands and struggled to hold it all in.

  To keep her together.

  Damn it, to keep herself together.

  Jessie’s smile flashed. Sad. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought—”

  “I’ll do it.” Naomi avoided Jessie’s gaze. “Gemma, how do I hel
p you?”

  “Come down here,” she whispered. “You, Cally . . . whoever you are. You’ll know when . . . we need the water. The . . . warm one. Waterfall.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jessie whispered.

  Around them, the loose circle stirred. Beyond the uncertain faces of the uniformed people framing the bloody circle of power drawn on the floor, Michael Rook and Jordana lay slumped together; breathing, but unconscious.

  The man she’d throat-punched in her fury met her gaze, unapologetic. “They won’t see anything,” he rasped, fingers massaging his neck.

  Her skin prickled. Magic all but thrummed in the vast, echoing hall, but her seal was dormant. Why?

  How?

  A copper-skinned teenager laid his fingers on the man’s shoulder. “Sorry, Joel,” he said solemnly. “I didn’t think she’d fight like a man.”

  Joel’s lips twitched, but it did nothing to ease the shadows from his eyes.

  Gemma tugged on Naomi’s hands, her grip already weaker. Swallowing back the knot of tears and tension swelling in her throat, forcing herself to ignore every shrieking, Mission-trained warning in her head, Naomi bent over the dying woman.

  Phin’s mother.

  A witch.

  So the Church isn’t investigating my home?

  He’d known. The lying, manipulative, traitorous son of a bitch had known.

  And he said he’d loved her.

  Gemma cupped the back of her head with one crimson hand. Her eyes flared open, beautiful, chocolate brown, swimming with pain and that focused determination she’d read so often in Phin’s own gaze. “I’m sorry,” she breathed.

  Naomi smiled crookedly. “It wouldn’t be the—”

  Her words died as Gemma tugged her face down, seizing her mouth in a kiss that stole the breath from her body.

  She tasted the copper tang of blood and the salt of bitter sweat. She tasted peppermint, the soft warmth of Gemma’s lower lip, and swallowed surprise and a sudden rush of pain that didn’t feel like her own.

  The world detonated around her.

  For an eternity of silence, everything went white.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The pop and crackle of the fire woke her.

  Naomi drifted away from dreams she couldn’t remember, away from the surreal emptiness of something she couldn’t name and into snug comfort. Warmth bathed her skin. Soothed her mind, her agitated soul.

  She was home.

  She inhaled, smelled burning resin and the wonderful fragrance of pine as she drew it in, wrapping it around her like a blanket.

  For the first time in years, nothing hurt. Nothing ached. Nothing burned or throbbed or bit sharply. Naomi was whole, peaceful.

  She smiled, opening her eyes.

  The mahogany mantel gleamed in the golden light, polished to within an inch of its life and so shiny she could almost see her reflection in the beautiful sheen. The fire blazed merrily, cast a friendly warmth throughout the study.

  There were no photographs framed on the mantel. No family pictures to tell her where she was, but she didn’t need them to know that it was safe. Nothing could reach her here.

  Around her, books lined the walls in precisely ordered reams of color. The wood matched the mantel, polished just as beautifully and all but hidden beneath row upon row of colored spines. Encyclopedias, new books printed since the earthquake, some rarer books from before.

  Some had letters that gleamed gold in the light, and those were her favorite. So shiny and pretty. Others barely held up in the shadow, old and marked, their spines creased with age.

  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, the beautifully woven afghan sliding to her waist. She’d never caught her father reading any of them, but sometimes she’d take one down and leaf through its pages. Sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, she’d pretend she read the mysterious books with their jumble of pictures and words she couldn’t understand yet.

  Naomi stretched. Froze.

  Suddenly shaking, she touched her lips. Her face. The soft afghan blanket in her lap.

  A core of ice slipped down her spine.

  “Are you awake?”

  The voice slammed into her skull, a memory plucked from the depths of her mind and transformed into a sledgehammer. Warm, serious, patient, the masculine sound of it seared every nerve she had until she shot off the couch, already knowing what she’d find and dreading it.

  Hating it.

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Daddy.”

  Katsu Ishikawa didn’t look up from his neat, precise notes. The firelight flickered, gilded his slicked-back hair and thin, angled features in gold. His eyebrows moved as he spoke, a trait she’d loved.

  They moved now. Furrowed. “Why are you here?”

  Naomi sucked in a small, painful breath. “I don’t know.”

  “Unacceptable.” Deftly her father licked one finger. Turned the page over. Without looking up from his letter, he said, “What do you want from me?”

  Too much.

  No. Exactly enough. Naomi’s fingers fisted. “It’s too late now.”

  “Is it?”

  “You’re dead,” she snarled.

  “Ah.” Still, he kept his eyes on the letter. Signed it, ended with the same neat signature he signed all things. He rose, straightening the tailored suit jacket that always made him look so distinguished. So handsome.

  Naomi circled the settee, knew she stared. Her eyes feasted on every detail of his face, his posture. Every angle, every feature. So familiar.

  The cheekbones, high and defined. Even his jaw, never overly square but perfect. And his nose, straight and strong like hers.

  Half her own reflection.

  “Why am I here?” she whispered.

  Carefully he set the papers on his desk, just at the corner. He adjusted his cuffs, ensuring they remained precisely in place.

  He’d always been so careful with everything. His study, his schedule, his evening brandy.

  Her father didn’t look at her as he powered down the sleek computer. “That’s an excellent question. Why should I know?”

  She flinched. “You’re my father.”

  “Am I?”

  Naomi sucked in a sharp breath. Anger simmered low in her belly. Bubbled. “You know you are.”

  “What is a father, Naomi? Is it genetic? Is it sperm count? Is that all a father is? Is it a memory?”

  Still he didn’t look at her. His dark eyes remained fixed on his own tasks as he moved around the desk. He crossed the carpeted floor and pulled the drapes closed.

  She shook her head. “You raised me.”

  “For how long, pet?”

  Five years. In the scheme of things, it seemed so little. She raised her chin, jaw tight. “You marked me.”

  His hand froze over the drapes. Now, slowly, he turned his head and met her accusing stare.

  His own brimmed with regret. “For that,” he said, so politely, so gently, “I am sorry. I had hoped five years would be too little time to remember me.”

  “Sorry?” Naomi threw out her hands, trembling with so much she couldn’t define. A terrible, slashing hurt. “How could you say that?”

  He looked away again, and it seemed as if his shoulders weren’t as broad as she’d remembered. Not as strong. He seemed leaner, thinner than she thought. Was her memory wrong?

  Was it skewed by her years spent raised among men built like brick walls?

  Quietly he pulled a drapery cord from its moorings.

  Naomi’s anger turned to an avalanche of fear. “Daddy, no.”

  “Have you ever wanted something so badly,” he asked as he coiled the rope around his arm in precise increments, “that you’d stop at nothing to get it?”

  She shook her head as tears of fury, of terror, overwhelmed her speech.

  “Then you get it.” Slowly he crossed the study once more. Retraced his steps. He didn’t look at her again, passed her as if she were the ghost. “And it’s everything you’d hoped, everything you’d dreamed, an
d everything . . . you dreaded.”

  “No.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper. “And still you suffer it. Gladly. Every day a torture and a joy.”

  Naomi reached out to seize his shoulder. Sobbed a broken curse as her hand slid through it, flesh through smoke.

  He paused, uncoiling the silken cord. “Then it’s gone,” he said quietly. “Just gone.”

  Naomi staggered backward. Her legs slammed into the settee and she sprawled. Helpless. “Daddy, don’t. Don’t do this.”

  The rope gleamed in the light as he tossed it high. It found the rafter, curled over it with ease. “What else was I supposed to do? My family’s honor was ruined. My reputation tarnished. Her creditors were calling every day.”

  Tears crystallized, spilled over in acid grief. “You had me,” Naomi said bitterly. Her hands clenched in her lap, but she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t do anything but watch as long, deft fingers twisted and knotted. As he coiled drapery cord into a thin noose.

  “She wanted you.”

  Naomi’s head jerked. “No, she didn’t.”

  “She’s a fickle woman. She wanted you to spite me, but I wouldn’t have it. So I gave you away in secret. She got everything else.”

  “No.” She lurched to her feet as her father stepped onto the chair he’d placed by the desk. The fire crackled, spitting sparks onto the slate floor around it.

  It glittered wildly in his face. Caught the dead sheen of his eyes as he tugged the rope. Tested its hold.

  Her breath shuddered in her chest. “Daddy, don’t.”

  “I’m sorry, pet.” Slowly, mechanically, Katsu Ishikawa slid the noose over his head. Tightened it behind his neck. “There is honor to consider.”

  “There was me to consider,” she shouted. She lunged for his waist, his jacket, anything, and only swore viciously as he gave way like smoke. As he leaned out and sent the chair flying into her legs.

  It hurt. The wood slammed into her shins and sent her staggering, hobbling. Pain ricocheted from wood and bone.

  But she couldn’t touch him.

  Couldn’t do anything but scream in bottled rage and horror as his body jerked like a twisted marionette on the edge of the rope and danced a final, twitching dance.

  For a long moment, she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.