by Jenn Stark
Eshe had learned quickly that if she trusted me to get to her on my own once she started playing “twist the nerve endings,” she’d just as likely find me in a gutter as in the Luxor lobby. She was getting better at playing fetch.
And what was her deal, anyway, freeloading at Council headquarters instead of having her own digs? I mean, the Fool didn’t really have a home either, and I’d never met the Emperor or Empress, so I had no idea if they actually lived in their castles in the air. But presumably they’d lived there at some point instead of couch-surfing it, Arcana style. Not Eshe.
The pain jabbed me again, blinding my third eye with white-hot agony, and I curled into a ball in the back of the limo. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
As usual, there was no response. The High Priestess didn’t go in much for mind chatter. Beyond being able to interpret oracular visions, she was skilled at afflicting the nerves and emotions of others, to bring about the futures she most wanted to see happen, and to forestall the futures that didn’t fit with her shopping schedule. With me, she used that skill like an invisible leash. If I was anywhere within a hundred-mile radius, she could bring me to my knees.
Once the oracle twins were out of the city, I’d technically no longer be beholden to her. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t keep trying. Because my newfound skills at astral travel should have faded already—and they hadn’t.
I struggled to an upright position, my head against the cool glass of the window, and considered my options. Maybe if Eshe thought I was weakening in my skills, my vision dimmer, cloudier, she would leave me alone. It’d only been a few weeks, but I couldn’t seem to remember a time when the itch of the gas hadn’t squirmed through my skull. Or when I hadn’t been on the edge of falling down into an abyss of darkness and vertigo.
This needed to stop. And it wouldn’t stop unless I made it.
Maybe…
Another blast of pain exploded against my eyeballs, and darkness swept over me.
I awoke in a familiar setting: a conference room table fronted by large, comfortable chairs, lights gleaming from fixtures in the table’s surface. Surrounding the enormous, sleek table, shadows encroached from all directions. I was alone today, the other chairs empty, which was not how this normally went. Usually, either the Magician or the Devil was on hand to witness my attempt at oracular gymnastics. Either to record my responses or to scrape me off the floor when I was done, I was never sure. But given that I was currently collapsed on the Arcana Council’s conference table, my head in my hands, my mouth dry with panic, their absence seemed…notable. And ominous. Slowly, I lifted my gaze, blinking into the shadows.
“Are you prepared?” Eshe’s disembodied voice floated over me as I sank back in my chair. I felt like three-day-old sushi, so it wasn’t too hard to look sullen. I didn’t favor her with a response, just a quick, brusque nod.
“Do you swear to see all—”
I waved her off. “Give it a rest, Eshe. We’ve done this often enough to skip the theatrics.”
Her disapproval radiated through my fog of pain, which made me feel better. Something shifted at the side of the table, and I realized Kreios had joined our little séance. Armaeus remained absent, probably shining his astrolabe. “Hey,” I managed.
Kreios inclined his head politely enough, but his gaze drifted over my face with sensual intensity, his blatant carnal interest apparently undimmed by my appearance. Then again, this was Kreios. He had resting sex face.
“Focus.” Eshe’s command pulled at me, a primal calling. I fell back into the chair, my face tilted up, my own breath gagging in my throat. Instantly, a spill of images assaulted me, one after the other, as they always did.
In a burst of pure energy, I moved out of Armaeus’s conference room, out of Vegas. Eshe burbled and muttered in my ear, sneered and poked, and I angled down toward a familiar location with its soaring domes and cathedrals, its crowds of people in the street. I plunged once more into Vatican City, a broken falling star.
And found…nothing.
The last time I’d been here, the rooms beneath the Vatican had held men hunched over a table, blinking schematics flush against the wall, carts bristling with tech. This was SANCTUS’s main stronghold, the cadre of men and presumably women who were dedicated to erasing magic and its wielders from the face of the Earth. They’d already made quite a dent in the Connected population, particularly in parts of Eastern Europe. Everywhere they went, they left behind scattered remnants of the community, mourning their dead.
Now the place was empty. Not merely of robed figures leaning over screens, but of all their tech too. The room could have been any subbasement stone chamber, its walls craggy, its floor swept clean but already showing signs of encroaching dust.
I must have spoken, because I was pulled out of the Vatican and thrust farther east, a rag doll shoved into other rooms of a dollhouse, looking for someone to play with. But I saw no one in the places I was sent—not the fancy homes of Roman officials, not the outlying abbeys dotting the countryside. Not farther south or east. Had SANCTUS disbanded? That seemed…unlikely.
Armaeus’s voice sounded near me, his words sharp. Apparently, he’d decided to show up.
“They know we’ve been spying on them.”
“Impossible,” Eshe hissed. “They are not that strong.”
“They could have moved operations to ensure their safety.” This was the Devil, but no concern marred his voice. Simply speculation. Curiosity. “The Vatican has come under fire.”
Their voices faded. Another pressure urged me forward then, farther to the west. The hills of Tuscany gave way to the Alps of the French borderlands, and then the sprawling beauty of château country. I thought I’d rush by, but something drew me down into the bosom of the French countryside. I’d been here before. Some of the most entrenched of my clients lived here. I hovered, an oracle without anything to see as the Council argued around me. While I hung in the odd embrace of space and time, my third eye fluttered open.
Instantly, the world changed beneath me, becoming a kaleidoscope of color. And I saw everything more clearly, more sharply.
I knew this place.
Able to move without being pushed, I angled down.
The château of the Mercault family was as ostentatious within as it was outwardly classy, a huge stone monument to generations of wealth and privilege. That privilege had not merely survived the French Revolution, it had thrived during it, staying far away from the barricades of Paris and keeping its own ruthless vigil on the family’s private holdings. Monsieur Mercault preferred to operate his business from afar, never wanting to see the help, but he’d asked me to deliver an artifact directly to him once: a jewel-encrusted drinking glass. It was small, fragile, and impossibly old. I’d found the thing in a bazaar in Mumbai, though not exactly on the shelves of some open-air market stall. It had taken a bit to secure it for Mercault, but he’d been very generous in his thanks.
Now as I approached his home like a ravening wraith, the place seemed…strangely still. The usual swarm of gardeners wasn’t bustling over the grounds and when I entered the walls, the psychic pain that jolted me had nothing to do with my own molecules being rearranged.
“Death,” I whispered.
If the Council took note, they didn’t stop me. The bodies started in the foyer—a dozen of them piled on the floor. The servants and grounds people. They had been killed recently—the air hung with the cloying sweetness of drying blood. More bodies were in the kitchens and the bedrooms. Mercault’s wife had been struck down before she could exit their bed. At least one set of adults, Mercault’s children or guests, had also been killed. The murders weren’t clean, but they didn’t appear to have been motivated by torture, either.
I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t find Mercault, though. He was more than the brains behind his operation; he was its only brain. His minions were legion, but he’d trusted none of them with the information on his empire. It was how he managed to hold on to it.<
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Something shifted deep in the bowels of the building, and I turned, flowing forth.
I found Mercault in his office. He wasn’t alone.
He wasn’t dead yet either.
With the benefit of my third eye, he also appeared different to me. I’d never touched the man, so I would have had no way of knowing this before but…Mercault was a Connected. A weak one, untrained, but there was no doubting the shimmer of power in his spirit.
Now his eyes were glazed with pain. He was bloody, the right side of his face gashed, his mouth agape. His clothes were half-rent from his body, the dishevelment giving him a wild, unstable look. The men who faced him were the exact opposite. They weren’t gowned as priests, but they had that feel. Serviceable suits, quiet faces, soft hands. Hands that were now busy at Mercault’s computer.
I scanned what they were doing, reporting it, and the arguing Council members around me grew quiet, allowing me to focus. Mercault’s screen was up, but I didn’t understand the complex codes running across it. I did understand the racks of flat cases the intruders had lined up on the table, however, along with the long, sleek syringes that were lying next to them. My gaze swung back to Mercault, and in his eyes I saw something that unnerved me far more than his ragged body ever could.
I saw recognition.
Crap. I shifted back, rewarded when the big ox shook his head, his voice garbled as he attempted to answer a question of one of the men. French wasn’t my strong suit, but it seemed pretty clear that he was being asked if he’d seen anything. Whether he was desperate enough or drugged enough, he shook his head, spitting blood. But I knew better.
“Miss Wilde.” The Magician’s voice was in my ear again in the conference room, almost as if he knew what I was thinking.
Either way, I didn’t care. Mercault was no prince, but he’d never cheated me. And he’d never stolen children, nor trafficked Connected. Because he was one himself?
It didn’t matter. I knew what I had to do.
I had appeared before, wraithlike, to people while I’d served as an oracle to Eshe. But my body had always been incorporeal. I’d moved through buildings, enduring the drag of stone and walls while willing myself further toward vapor to escape some of the pain. How hard would it be to will myself the other way? And maybe really scare someone?
“Miss Wilde. No. We have agents on the way. Watch and report. Nothing more.”
But Mercault wouldn’t stop staring at me, at the place he was convinced I’d been. There were only the three men—impressive, really, that they’d bearded the lion in his den with so few people. They must have had something to help them. I scanned their bodies, noting the heavy gunmetal gray wrist cuffs, etched with symbols. Jerry Fitz had worn a sheath similar to that, though it’d been blown to bits when his underground lair had exploded. Was there a connection?
I faded back into a different room, this one mercifully free of dead bodies. But not of a living one.
I blinked. “Simon?”
The Fool glanced up at me from behind a newspaper, his legs crossed. “Hullo, Sara.”
“Who—how?” I struggled to understand. “Are you…you’re not traveling, not the way I am. You’re here. You’re corporeal.”
“All true,” he nodded. “Armaeus asked me to come to you, so come to you I have. Sadly, my ability is limited. I can’t leave the structure into which I’ve teleported. And, incidentally, I can’t wear clothing.” He grinned as my gaze dropped to the newspaper. “I’m sure I’ll scrounge up something. More importantly, though, I’ve been instructed to tell you to wait, but that seems like no fun at all. So instead, I can let you know that I’ll keep an eye on Mercault’s tech while you take out the assholes who rearranged his face.”
“Take them out?” I frowned at him. “I’m a ghost.”
“You were a ghost,” he corrected. “You’re becoming charmingly corporeal during this little jaunt, much to Eshe’s surprise and Armaeus’s fascination, I’m warning you. And you have clothes.” I frowned down at my body, but he was right. I remained dressed in the same outfit I’d been wearing when I’d dragged myself into the Arcana Council chambers. “Armaeus does have a team on its way. We’d prefer to take at least one of them alive. And Mercault, of course.”
“And what, you won’t help me keep him alive?”
He placed a hand on his chest, his eyes aghast. “My dear Sara, I am a member of the Council. We do not involve ourselves in the affairs of mankind. We merely watch.”
“I think you need to revisit your charter.”
“You’re running out of time.” Simon tilted his head, as if he could see through walls. “They’ve figured out Mercault is holding out on them.”
“Right. And if there are more guards roaming the hallways? Are you going to be safe?”
Simon returned to his newspaper. “I’ll be more than safe, trust me. Run along.”
I tried to will myself back into incorporeal status, but there was nothing doing. It appeared I’d have to do this the hard way, by actually using doors. I exited the room, which opened onto a hallway.
Getting my bearings became a lot easier when Mercault screamed.
Chapter Twelve
I knew enough about Mercault’s toys to know what I had to do. The Frenchman was one of the foremost leaders of the technoceutical market, a nasty bit of business that combined pharmacological pills and injectables with high-tech, magic-infused ingredients, predominately to help users achieve an altered state of consciousness—or unconsciousness—with some additional side effects of physical alterations. Heavy users had permanently dilated eyes, and their pain receptors dimmed enough for them to become a threat to themselves. Simultaneously, their pleasure receptors were stimulated, so their kink was…pretty intense. Not a good crowd to get on the wrong side of at a party.
I was pretty sure that the three ninja soldiers of SANCTUS didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with a technoceutical high. Assuming I could rush in, grab a syringe, hurl it like a javelin of death at the Kevlar-armored men, and have it magically strike home, I should be set.
Piece of cake.
As I slowed, however, a nagging voice in my head brought me up short. It wasn’t Armaeus—it wasn’t Eshe. It was, however, speaking English. With a heavy French accent.
“Clock…bench. Gun!”
I winced as Mercault screamed in my head, but turned up the hallway. At the far end, an imperious grandfather clock loomed over a delicate upholstered bench, the kind of bench no one ever sat on. I ran for it, crouching down when I reached it, and swiped my hand beneath. The gun I found was oddly weighted in my hand, a semiautomatic but with an unnatural heft. As if Mercault had filled it with the kind of bullets you’d need to take down a Transformer. Worked for me.
Keeping time with his anguished howls, I crab-walked along the floor. When I reached the door to his office, Mercault sagged forward in his restraints, either passed out or faking it nicely.
“Knock, knock.”
The man ministering to Mercault turned and shouted, and I squeezed off my first round, aiming for his neck.
The gun exploded in my hand with the force of a bazooka, and I fell back even as my target spun around. Then the other two men sprang into action. One of them had apparently read from the same bad-guy playbook I had and grabbed a syringe from the table, hurling it at me with impressive force.
I ducked in time, but guy number two was more nimble. His shot clipped my shin. Pain exploded in a fiery bolt, and I fell back on my ass, bringing the gun around and blasting it toward his face. He jerked sideways with the blast, and I skidded back against the wall with the force of the report again, waving the gun to clear the smoke. Mercault hung more heavily in his bonds, pretty close to dead, but his eyes were fixed on me with a fierce, unwavering stare. I couldn’t quite read that stare, whether it was happy or sad, but I was struck again with the conviction that this had been an inside job. There were too many bodies for it not to be.
Which meant Mercaul
t needed to pick his friends a little more wisely going forward. If the Council really did have men on the way, his life wasn’t about to get any easier.
The momentary distraction was a bad choice on my part, however. A sound at the front of the room caught my attention too late, and suddenly there was another sharpie zinging toward me. The gun went off in my hand, but my aim was nowhere near on target, and a bolt of fire seared through me as the needle struck home. I wrenched it out of my arm and fired again, then a third time, praying I wasn’t hitting Mercault in the process but not really caring so much. Dizziness swamped me, and I dissolved just that quickly, back to incorporeal state. Had I ever really been truly animate in this place? Would I ever be again?
I had no recollection of moving back through the walls of Mercault’s castle, but soon I was drifting through the woods like smoke, noting the long, sleek limo barreling along the private lane. I felt …detached. So detached. A ghost, a wraith, a flitting shadow dissolving into ever-thinner wisps. Pain enveloped me, but not in any specific place—I’d been hit in the shin and the arm, but in this state, I had no legs, I had no arms. In this state, I was naught and nothing and—
The hard crack of a palm against my face woke me with a gasp.
“Kreios!” Armaeus’s sharp voice brought me the rest of the way. I jerked back reflexively, twisting out of the Devil’s grasp. His smile was harder, fiercer than I remembered it, and I brought my fingers to my abused cheek.
“Ouch.”
“My apologies,” he said, looking distinctly unapologetic. “You were going into shock.”
“Remind me not to recommend your bedside manner.”
“I wasn’t finished with her!” Eshe’s petulant whine drew my attention. Her getup today was inspired—colorful toga, darkly outlined eyes and painted lips, long dark hair, golden armbands: Katy Perry in full-on Cleopatra mode. “She went entirely different places than we wanted her to go. What use is she—”
