by Jenn Stark
If I recovered his property intact, there would be a bunch of cash dropped on my head. If I didn’t, I got the feeling it would be a piano.
He wasn’t the only one glaring at me though. I could feel Brody’s scowl through the Arcana limo windows as he watched me be driven away, but at this point, he could get in line.
Once I arrived at Prime Luxe, however, it wasn’t to meet Armaeus alone. Instead, the entire Council as I now knew it had assembled for the Welcome Home party.
Armaeus stood at the head of the conference room table, his face shuttered of emotion, but fury boiling off him in a palpable mist. Kreios, next to him, swiveled in his chair to scan the room, enjoying the show. The Fool perched at the far end of the table, and when I glanced at him, he waved. Armaeus’s gaze snapped to me, but the Magician didn’t move otherwise. It was as if he was caught in a thrall of his own making, or he was listening to a self-help CD that no one else could hear. Based on what I was seeing, that wasn’t working out too well.
Eshe sat to the left of the Magician, her eyes also on me. I couldn’t figure her out. Over the last few times that I’d been her oracle, she’d vacillated from being obnoxious to impressed to concerned, then back to obnoxious again. Now she stared at me as if I were a bug, which, frankly, was Armaeus’s job. I could only be the in-house curiosity to so many people at once.
But it was the final person at the table who held my attention the most. Roxie Meadows sat in a low-cut cocktail dress of vivid electric blue, her face serene, but her eyes as curious as Eshe’s—and all for Armaeus. She seemed to revel in his distress.
“Great, you guys have a quorum. Does this mean you can vote in the next board or something?”
My words roused Armaeus from his reverie. “Events are moving more quickly now.”
“Events you put in motion.” I didn’t bother to hide my anger. “You failed to mention that. Kind of defeats the whole nonintervention thing you’ve got going if you decide to herd psychics here to tempt SANCTUS into striking. Are they already here? Is that what’s going on?”
I hadn’t heard anything from Nikki or Dixie while I’d been at the police station. Then again, it was two in the morning. Presumably even SANCTUS had to sleep sometime.
“SANCTUS is not in the city,” Armaeus said, his sharp tone cutting across my thoughts. “They’re not the problem.”
“Yet,” Roxie’s musical voice sounded, and everyone else at the table jolted. How long had it been since she’d sat in on their weekly PTA meeting? Quite a while, I would guess. Eshe’s face turned sour, and I relaxed. A whiny Eshe made everything all right.
Still, Roxie continued. “There have been more Connecteds entering the city, including the creatures of the northern lands. The city is full to bursting, Armaeus. SANCTUS would be foolish to miss this opportunity.”
“We will deal with SANCTUS in the proper time,” Armaeus snapped. “Theirs is not the greatest threat. They’ve never been the end game. As you well know.”
Not the greatest threat? “So who took the gold?”
“Not Soo,” Kreios answered. “She was nearly admitted to a hospital by the time she exited the Grand. It was possibly an agent of Fuggeren’s, though if so, he’s playing the outraged seller to the hilt.” He shrugged. “Most likely Mantorov. After going peacefully along with the police, he never made it to the rooms where the questioning took place, and currently he’s unable to be found.”
“He’s vanished,” the Fool put in, waggling his brows at me. “Even Armaeus can’t track him. It’s been a wonder to see.”
“I have my suspicions,” Armaeus said tersely.
“But we don’t have time for suspicions.” Eshe also regarded me, her perfectly arched brows raised. “We have time for Sara to do the work for which she has been uniquely prepared.”
That sounded like the High Priestess I knew and despised. I relaxed further. “Good to see you too, Eshe. Glad you’re still creeping around.”
“Miss Wilde.” Armaeus’s voice rang out crisply, and I turned toward him. “Grigori Mantorov is a mortal. As such, he cannot be brought down directly by a Council member. To find him, we require your assistance.” He pointed to a spot on the table, where a familiar stack of cards caught my eye. “Your cards can guide us, or, if you would prefer to work with Eshe—”
“Not going to happen.” I pulled out a chair and sank into it, leaning forward to collect the deck. It was my third favorite deck, but it’d been the one lying out on the counter in my hotel room, so I wasn’t surprised Armaeus had found it. And it was pretty, which I needed, the hues a watercolor wash of the traditional Rider-Waite deck, but softer and with fewer crazy eyes than the original depictions. I shuffled the cards, feeling a few more of my kinks relax. “You know, you guys could have pulled a few cards while I was waiting, if you were in that big a hurry.”
“Magic is a conversation, and Connecteds are called that for a reason,” Kreios supplied. “There is a…knowing when the Council acts out of turn. An imbalance.”
“This whole noninterference-kinda-but-not-really modus operandi is getting a little old.” I frowned. “What happens if you throw caution to the wind and interfere? Do you get a time-out?”
The chill that settled over the room caught me up short. I lifted my gaze to Armaeus. His return scowl was wintry. “Perhaps better stated than you realize, Miss Wilde. More to the point, if we weaken in our resolve, so too weaken the wards we have set in place to ensure the balance of magic.”
“Oh, please.” Roxie’s interruption was startling in its bitterness. “Like you truly care about the wards.”
“Tick tock,” Simon put in. “Mantorov left via private airplane at twelve twenty-four a.m., its flight manifest patently bullshit. He’s going somewhere, though, and at speed. We’d probably do well to get there first.” He turned to me, his eyes shining. “Madame Reader?”
I blew out a long breath. Shuffling the cards, I felt the combined weight of their stares. In more than one way, this was ridiculous. Assembled in this room was the most powerful set of Connecteds I’d ever seen, yet they needed me to read their cards for them. Not because I was better at it either. These people were at such a high level that not even Mantorov’s audio blast bothered them.
My hands working the cards, I shifted my gaze to Kreios and Simon. “What was up with the musical bit? Mantorov did that, right? Why couldn’t you guys hear it?”
Kreios shrugged. “My hearing at certain frequencies was damaged by my recent encounter in Italy. I do not know when it will come back, if it will come back. I did not hear the changing musical fluctuation.”
“I recorded it from another floor, but not on a live feed,” Simon put in. “I was blocking it to focus on conversations.” He shook his head. “The recording ate itself. I’m trying to recover that.”
“Miss Wilde,” Armaeus prompted. “Shouldn’t you be focusing?”
Not really, but I knew it would make him feel better, so I bent to the deck, clearing my mind of everything but the Connected who’d stolen the scroll cases.
Grigori Mantorov. No matter why he specifically wanted the cases, I knew they would eventually be pressed into service of a campaign that involved the kidnap and abuse of the youngest and most unprotected Connecteds. I needed to find the bastard for other reasons than the Council and their money. Speaking of which…
“You will be paid, Miss Wilde,” Armaeus, as always, was one step ahead of me. “We do not have much time.”
I spread the cards out in a fan. On the run, I could pull a given card or two from my pocket or bag, or even find the cards extant in the world around me—signs, symbols, tats, playing cards on the street. But here, under the eyes of the Council, I craved the solace of a traditional read.
That didn’t mean it wouldn’t be fast, however. Reaching out with my left hand, I selected three cards in quick succession, laying them face up on the table. The first card was the Six of Swords, the second the Chariot. The third Judgment.
“Travel over water, fo
llowed by travel over land, but there’s more to this…” I leaned forward, my right hand snaking out to pull another card, positioning it over the Chariot. I’d known the truth of the card before I’d turned it over. “The Magician.” I glanced up at him. “You know where he’s going, Armaeus, even if you don’t realize it.” I ran the symbology of the Chariot through my mind. “And this card is interesting for another reason. It’s the sphinx. Those scroll cases were originally Egyptian. So were you. Kind of a nice coincidence, I gotta say.”
He nodded, but there was a resolution in his eyes that unnerved me. He’d already known the truth. He’d simply wanted someone to agree with him. “And Judgment?”
I considered the card. “Resurrection from the dead, the horn of the angels, a blast of trumpets, the biblical apocalypse, could be anything. But in this case…” I reached for another card, but Armaeus’s voice stopped me.
“It is enough, Miss Wilde. I know where he’s gone.”
Everyone turned to him, allowing me to palm the final card and drop it to my lap. It wasn’t that I was trying to be sneaky, but a card once drawn needed to be seen and understood. No matter if the Magician himself was speaking.
Armaeus hit a button, and beneath my cards—the whole length of the table in fact—the surface switched to a screen. The Fool knelt on his chair, leaning over in fascination as the map coalesced. I gathered the rest of the cards out of the way, keeping them separate from the final card in my lap. I needed to read it, but I needed to see this too.
“It is an ancient city in middle Egypt, or what’s left of it,” Armaeus said. “Now called El Ashmunein, it’s known best as Hermopolis. Its ancient Egyptian name was Khemenu. The town that is left there is unremarkable.”
“What, no temple?” I glanced up at him. Though I knew enough to get around, Ancient Egypt wasn’t my thing. Wasn’t his either, technically, but he’d lived there a lot closer to “ancient” than I had. “No museum? Where is he going?”
Armaeus shook his head. “There is nothing like that. Some excavated ruins, little more. At one point, of course, the Temple of Thoth in Hermopolis was considered one of the most powerful centers of worship in the Old Kingdom. Scholars would pore over ancient texts and create careful and exact oral translations of histories, all to celebrate the deity Thoth and his gift of language to the world. It was believed by many that the texts of the great library of Alexandria were merely the newest incarnation of works first held within the walls of the Temple of Thoth.”
“Okayy…” I frowned at him. “And nothing remains of that temple today? Not even underground?”
He shrugged. “The temples were tragically destroyed during the Napoleonic wars.”
Something in his voice pinged my Spidey sense. “Tragically.”
He met my gaze. “And completely.”
I looked around the room. Unlike in Armaeus’s private abode, the walls of the Arcana Council conference room were not covered in cases containing priceless antiques and artifacts, also lost in antiquity. Or, at least, lost to a significant portion of society. “So sad that the library of Alexandria has bitten the dust too,” I commented. “That leaves none of the ancient texts available for mortals to study.”
“We have all suffered much through the march of time.”
“We should go. We have to go.” The Fool sprang from his chair, pacing the room as the plans for our departure consumed him. “There will be electronic signatures with those scroll cases. There have to be. If he’s taking them to Hermopolis, then he thinks something will be triggered. Something could be triggered, with the right frequency. Makes sense. Thoth, god of language, scroll cases containing a script or actual parchment within that has a heretofore-untold language. It fits, it fits.” He stopped and glared at us as if confused why we weren’t moving. “We have to go.”
I glanced down to my lap. Against the hemline of my leather skirt, the card gleamed up at me. The picture of a man striding into the darkness of an early morning, the cups of his past resting on the windowsill, symbolizing everything he was leaving behind. Not a happy card, not necessarily a positive card, but a card that was clear and obvious no matter where it landed in the reading. I held it up for the Arcana Council, then dropped it on the table. The Eight of Cups.
“He’s right,” I sighed as they studied it, feeling the ineffable pull of sadness the card always evoked in me. “What’s past is past and done. We have to go.”
“And I’m in, nonnegotiable,” the Fool said immediately. He stared belligerently at us. “Kreios is currently deaf as a doorpost at higher magical frequencies, and he gets to go everywhere. Besides, I can track the electronic signatures of the scroll cases.”
“Fine, I could use the help,” I said. The fatigue was washing away from me, the same way it always did before an assignment. I turned to Roxie. “Dixie said you were her mentor, sort of a Welcome Wagon—before you joined the Council anyway.”
She eyed me. “I was.”
“Well, the Connected community in Vegas needs you again. Watch over them. I don’t like the idea of SANCTUS loose in the city.”
“Your worry is misplaced,” Armaeus said. “The Rarity will continue, which is where SANCTUS’s focus will remain for the time being. No one knew precisely what was to be shown, except for the scant few who got in today. Most of it remains.” He paused. “I do not anticipate any action until solstice. That is when the full contingent of Connecteds will be in Vegas, and the Rarity will be in its closing hours. It is the perfect day for them to strike.”
I nodded. “Well, great, but that doesn’t give us much time. You keep me posted too, while we’re gone.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Armaeus said. “I’m coming with you.”
“What?” Everyone in the room stopped and stared. Armaeus stood at the front of the room, his face eerie in its composure.
“The actions of the dark practitioners have been a thorn in the side of the Council for generations, Miss Wilde. Though they have not known it, their efforts to deepen and darken the world of magic, the creation of technoceuticals, and the development of practices involving the sale and trade of Connecteds for service and body parts have created an imbalance. An imbalance which we have sought to remedy as organically as possible. But it has been a war of attrition, and there is no question who is losing.” He shifted his gaze to me. “There are simply not enough Father Jeromes and Sara Wildes in the world to counteract Mantorov or his ilk. And with the rise of SANCTUS, it has created even more of an imbalance.”
I squinted at him, remembering Danae the witch’s words, blaming the dark practitioners for the spread of technoceuticals—but not them alone. Could SANCTUS be involved as well?
Armaeus continued, inexorably. “This new situation is different. Before this past month, I did not know these scroll cases still existed. Before this week, I did not know that hands were moving in the market to force our more immediate action, an action which we have, perhaps, resisted too long. ”
I let him spool on, but I held on to the word that struck me most out of his little speech.
Still.
He didn’t know that the scroll cases were still in existence. Which meant he’d thought they were destroyed. Which further meant, based on his earlier comments about the Temple of Thoth, that he might very well have been the one who’d attempted to destroy them.
“What exactly are in these scroll cases, Armaeus?” I asked. “Why does it matter who has them and where?”
He turned to me. “The scroll cases, in and of themselves, are unimportant. Based on the images that Simon sent me, however, the ancient inscriptions on the side are not warnings not to partake of what is within. On the contrary, they are invitations. Not all gods in the faiths of this world believed that knowledge belonged solely in the realm of the deities. The monarchs and their advisors needed that knowledge as well, to rule their people.” He waved a hand as if to include everyone outside the room. “To rule all people.”
“And…the re
cipe for that knowledge is what’s left in the scroll cases? Sort of an Evil Empire 101?”
“Not exactly.” Armaeus’s smile was thin. “For explanation, look no further than the ancient texts, starting with the Bible. ‘And God said, let there be light.’ Everyone focuses on the last part, never on the first.”
“’And God said’?”
He nodded. “What resides—potentially—in the scroll cases is the language of the Highest Power ever to affect the world and all who reside in it. It is the language that brought the world into creation. The language that could bring it to its end.” He tapped the table, displaying the ancient city of Hermopolis in high relief. “And the key to that language lies here. Grigori Mantorov is going to my home, Miss Wilde. I grew up amid the ruins of the Temple of Thoth, and I witnessed its final destruction. Whether he knows it or not, he has brought this conflict to my very door. And in such a way that I cannot ignore it.”
“Bring on the cavalry,” Simon said, slapping his hands together.
But Armaeus merely stared at me. “The Council has long allowed the affairs of man to cull the strength of magic. That is how it has been, and that’s how it shall be, once this crisis has passed. For the moment, however, a different course must be taken. We must reclaim the balance between the dark and light, ignorance and knowledge, death and life. And we must do that while preserving the wards that have kept this Earth safe from an even greater threat for millennia.” His gaze intensified. “It appears we’ll be working together on this assignment, Miss Wilde. I trust that won’t be a problem?”
“Oh, geez, not at all.” I spread my hands. “I mean, hey, at least this time if a Connected dies in the line of fire, she’ll have signed up for it, versus having been herded blindly to her doom. That’s progress right there.”
Chapter Nineteen
There’s no easy way to get to El Ashmunein, aka Hermopolis, aka the ancient Egyptian town of Khemenu. We flew into Hurghada Airport, south of Cairo, where we boarded another much smaller plane to avoid the five-plus-hour trip by car. I’d slept for as much as one body could possibly sleep without being in a coma, but though I was completely rested, my head still carried the residue of astral travel pain. I saw no reason to open my eyes while we angled down to the patch of dirt that apparently would serve as our landing strip.
