by Jenn Stark
“Smog, I can definitely find for you. And Father Jerome has many friends. There is a home I know for certain is unoccupied right now, a bit away from downtown but on the Seine. You will like it, I think.”
I waited until Max got into the car to study him in profile. His manner was wound up—too wound up for the lateness of the hour. He knew what I was going to ask, but he let me work around to it. We talked of more nothing for a few minutes, then I leaned forward in my seat.
“So?” I asked, not missing the way he tensed. “What did you learn from me? I assume that’s what you were doing when you held my hand as I talked to that girl.”
“What, you don’t like having your hand held?” he teased, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“Not by someone who practically sears it off with the brush of his magic, no.” I gave him another moment, then continued. “You learned something. And you haven’t come anywhere near me since you touched me. Was it really that bad?”
“Ah—no,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to think. You have abilities beyond what I expected. Beyond any of the kids we have processed through here, even some of the ones who manifest as travelers and clairvoyants. And you can’t do any of that. You don’t wield actual magic.” His gaze flicked to me. “Right?”
“Nope.” I edged back in my seat, eyeing him. “That’s why I use the cards.”
“Spirit speaks to you, definitely,” he said, almost as if he was talking to himself. “Through your intuition. That’s certain. But the rest—your ability to travel, to jump dimensions, to command angels—to—”
“Whoa, what?” I sat up straight. “You can cross ‘commanding angels’ off your list. I’m pretty sure I’d know it if I had that skill.”
“It’s there.” He shrugged. “The truth comes to me in words and images, sometimes both. That one was words. And there were swords—swords all around you. I know what that’s about too.”
“Jerome said the children were talking about the swords before I got here.”
“They’ve been talking for days. All about the Houses in general, but Swords is the only one they’ll name. Swords and you as its head. They don’t seem to know the leaders of the other Houses—and we’ve asked. We figured you’d want to know.”
“I would.” I shrugged. “I will, eventually.” I pinned him with a hard stare. “Father Jerome doesn’t want me to lead the House of Swords.”
“Father Jerome doesn’t want you to be killed.” Max gentled his words with a smile. “He is a big softie, for all his toughness. I get why he’s nervous. But this…” Max shook his head. “I don’t see you getting out of this one, Sara. Those swords were all around you. Not like the Eight of Swords either—they were out, flying past you. Like you had a battalion of actual swords at your disposal, and you knew how to guide them.”
“Which would be impressive, if I could do something more than cut steak.”
Max lapsed into silence, and I let him be. I suddenly wasn’t sure I wanted to know what kind of skills he thought I had. Not if I wasn’t going to use them. Not if I wasn’t going to enter the war as the head of the House of Swords…whatever that meant.
I shifted in my seat, scowling as I watched the lights of Paris ease by. Eventually we turned closer to the river, but high enough past the city that we wound our way along large estates and manicured lawns, everything reeking of money and class.
“Father Jerome has friends here?”
“It’s an amazing estate.” Max turned into a drive, the gate opening almost before he glanced up to the camera. “We’re expected.”
“I guess so…” Still, it wasn’t until we’d slid all the way around the perfectly curved drive that I realized my mistake in trusting Max Bertrand to take me anywhere.
The sight of the man waiting for us struck me like a visceral punch to the gut.
He owed a debt of thanks to his Egyptian mother and French father, the best of both their features commingling in his raven-black hair that now curled to his shoulders, his black-gold eyes, and the sharp, aristocratic cut of his jaw. His sensual lips were now tightened into a sneer, but the expression didn’t detract from the raw perfection of his face. He wore his impeccably cut suit open, unbuttoned, and the fine material sat comfortably on his tall, rangy frame. He wasn’t thick or heavy, but that grace was deceptive. I’d seen the muscles corded over his arms and torso, his legs, his—
Focus.
“You’re killing me, Max,” I muttered.
“Sorry,” Max said sheepishly, not meeting my glare. “But the ties that bind, you know.”
“Great.” Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off the figure standing at the bottom of the stairs to the elegant estate house, perfect and devastating in his burnished-bronze glory.
Armaeus Bertrand, the Magician.
Chapter Five
Armaeus didn’t speak as Max parked the car. Out of a perverse sense of obstinacy I stayed in the limo until the younger Max came around to open my door. The younger Bertrand stood in awe of Armand on so many levels, he deserved to be a part of this handoff, to be addressed by his uncle, no matter how many great-greats there were between their generations.
I stepped out and immediately felt the intensity of the Magician’s gaze on me, ice and fire. Ignoring Armaeus, I turned to Max. “You’ll take care of Father Jerome? He looks tired.”
“He’s not so tired as that,” Max said, his lips quirking up in a grin even as he seemed acutely aware of Armaeus shifting his gaze to him. “He puts on a show for you, to get you to do what he wants.”
That made me feel somewhat better, but then Max stiffened, his eyes going wide as he raised up slightly on his toes.
I swung my gaze to Armaeus. “What are you doing?” I asked sharply.
The Magician had lifted his hand slightly—enough to make it clear he was the one holding up Max as if by the scruff of his neck. But the look he turned on his far-removed nephew wasn’t angry, exactly. It was cold, calculating, his dark golden eyes now nearly black with intensity as he scowled at Max.
“Your abilities are not new. You’ve hidden this your whole life,” he said, and his words contained a vocal projection that shivered through my bones. I grimaced. Max didn’t have a lot of experience with Armaeus’s auditory tricks. I did.
Max, for his part, looked frozen in shock. His words, when they came, were a babble of French.
Armaeus flicked his fingers, and Max stumbled back, regaining control of his body before he fell down. “Does Claire know?” the Magician asked, referring to Max’s great-aunt, the matriarch of the Bertrand family who lived deep in the heart of France, knocking around an enormous mansion that had more bedrooms than a Hyatt. “She should.”
“She doesn’t,” Max said, and to the boy’s credit, he straightened under Armaeus’s gaze, his shoulders going back. “She won’t, not by me. I don’t have time for anything but the children right now. And they keep coming, Armaeus. They keep coming, and if what I’m learning is true, that’s not going to end anytime soon. They deserve someone to fight for them.”
It was perhaps the most serious speech I’d ever heard Max make, and I kept utterly still as I watched them, afraid to interrupt the moment. Max had already done so much—committed so much—and pride swelled within me at how much more he could do. This was the reason to fight, I thought. People like Max, who dedicated themselves to those who needed a champion. This was the reason to lead.
Even if I couldn’t handle a sword.
The two Bertrands stared at each other a long moment, then Armaeus turned back toward the house.
“As you will,” he said, and strode up the stairs. “Miss Wilde.”
Max looked poleaxed. I resisted the pull of Armaeus’s command for a moment more as I gave Max the thumbs-up.
“You rock,” I said. “Now leave before I beat the crap out of you for dragging me into his holiness’s domain.”
“Miss Wilde.” Armaeus’s pull was more i
nsistent now, and as Max’s faltering smile began to firm on his lips, I let myself be dragged up a step. Armaeus had not done this before, I realized with some surprise. Before, he’d certainly encouraged me to move where he wanted me to move, but never by using overt magical force. This was new.
I wasn’t a fan of new.
Still, I climbed the stairs more quickly as Max started the car and eased the sedan forward, his night’s delivery complete. Ahead of me, Armaeus paused to watch the vehicle move into the darkness.
“He’s a good guy, you know,” I said, speaking to the Magician’s profile. “You should cut him a break.”
“The likelihood of him dying a violent death has now increased exponentially with your interference in his life and your encouragement of his gifts,” Armaeus said without inflection. “When he dies, and of course he will die, there is now an eighty-seven percent chance that his death will be directly attributable to the conversations you’ve had with him and the trajectory you’ve sent him on. I should think if anyone should cut the young man a break, it would be you.”
He stalked through the open door.
I thought momentarily about turning around and trotting back down the stairs. Max wouldn’t be far, or I could catch a cab—
Miss Wilde. As I waffled, Armaeus’s words flowed through me, sensual and insistent. Would you truly give up this opportunity? There’s so much you want to know.
My brows went up. So that was how he was going to play this?
Spinning the Magician’s stupid ring on my finger, I climbed the last few steps and entered a palatial marbled foyer. I could see all the way down the long hallway to the veranda and Armaeus’s imposing figure beyond. He was ready for a chat? I could chat.
By the time I reached the end of the corridor, I’d built up a full head of steam.
Armaeus stood at the edge of the stone veranda overlooking the tumble of forest down to the wide river. I stopped well short of him. I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t much like him right now. And due to a series of recent events, in which so many of my memories with him had been proven to be lies, I didn’t exactly know how to base an opinion of him going forward.
“Okay, I’m here now. Let’s chat,” I said, and Armaeus turned. Once again, I steeled myself against his impossible beauty, as shocking in this moment as it was every time I looked at him.
For his part, the Magician’s eyes glittered as our gazes connected, and I sensed the desire curl between us, more intense even than our shared fury.
“What is it you want of me, Miss Wilde?” he murmured, and his voice hinted at mysteries better left unexplored, treasures I’d do well to leave buried. It was magical hoodoo, a diversionary trick—but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was my favorite one. Armaeus might be a master of promises unkept, but they were always really, really good promises.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the patience for any of that tonight.
“I want the truth,” I said, my annoyance ratcheting up again at his smirk.
“I find that’s rarely the case of anyone, least of all mortals.”
“You know, you’ve been immortal again for about thirty-seven seconds. And if you’ll remember, I was the one who got you there.”
His eyes turned a decidedly darker shade. “I don’t think I’ll be forgetting that anytime soon.”
“Yeah, well, you know what I won’t be forgetting? Simon, drunk off the poison I should have ingested in the Tel Aviv airport, telling me all about how you guys had the time of your lives trying to figure out what exact kind of freak I was.”
His expression didn’t change. “You’re upset that we discussed you?”
“I’m upset that this whole time when I thought you were legitimately hiring me and paying me to find artifacts for you, you knew I was a walking time bomb of crazy. And rather than warn me so that, oh, I don’t know, I could maybe watch out for myself, you simply observed me. Watched me like a bug. You put me in dangerous situations just to see what I would do.”
He lifted a sardonic brow. “And paid you handsomely as well.”
“Oh, don’t give me that—what’s payment to you when you can literally create money?” I spread my hands. “Don’t get me wrong. I set a fair price, and by God, you paid it, but I didn’t realize I was your science fair experiment. Every job you let me stumble around and fall and fail—and for what? So you could collect some new data about those wild, wacky mortals? Are you guys truly that bored?”
“You’re hardly the average mortal, Miss Wilde.” Now irritation sharpened his words, as I hoped it would. A cold Armaeus was a guarded one. But piss him off, and things got far more interesting. “That was clear before your family ties were uncovered—part of them, anyhow. Or has Willem told you who your mother was?”
His name drop of dear old Dad—current Hermit of the Arcana Council—was one too many stops along the crazy-train express. I hadn’t even fully processed the fact that my father wasn’t some drunken skirt chaser who’d stuck around Memphis only long enough to knock up my mom before skipping out on her again. No, he was sort of bodyguard of the universe, pledged since the Middle Ages to protect humanity from a magical being bent on our destruction. That still didn’t clear him from missing all my soccer games, but it got him closer.
Either way, the woman who raised me wasn’t even my mom. She was a paid caregiver in the Hermit’s employ. Which pretty much meant my family tree should be clear-cut and turned into pressboard, but that was way beside the point right now.
“You can leave Dad out of it, and I’m not the one answering questions here. Why were you fixated on me? Why me, specifically? Because I know I’m not the strongest Connected out there. Not by a long shot. There are kids I met today who could run magical rings around me.”
Armaeus was watching me intently, and I stared back at him until he shook his head.
“You’re not the strongest Connected on earth right now, no,” he said. “But from the first time I engaged you, your potential was clear.”
“My potential. Right.”
“There’s a reason for dark practitioners craving the blood and bones of innocents, Miss Wilde. The Council is not so different. Many of the higher-level Connecteds available to us had already set their minds and hearts on a path from which they would not be dissuaded. Or they were too young, unable to make their own choices. You”—he spread his hands—“had every choice available to you, but no path.”
“I have a path,” I snapped. “One I was walking along quite happily without you.”
“We do not have the luxury of ignoring our obligations anymore. The balance of magic had fallen hopelessly askew. With an Adept Connected also bent to the task of maintaining that balance—”
“A what Connected? Are you even listening to yourself?” I took a few steps forward to see him more clearly. As expected, he improved with proximity. Asshat.
“I’m not working with the Council as an all-you-can-freak buffet,” I said. “You hired me for a job.”
He shrugged, the movement aristocratically elegant. “And you’re worth more than the job for which we hired you.”
“Then why not simply tell me that? What’s with the cloak and dagger?” I pounded my chest with my index finger. “This is me, Armaeus. Is there anything about me that suggests to you I couldn’t be bought? My entire livelihood depends on me being willing to trade my time and skills for money. Why lie to me? Why make me think that—”
I broke off too late, but could see instantly that the damage had already been done. I’d strayed dangerously close to revealing the true reason for my sense of betrayal at Armaeus’s cold treatment of me. Not that I could have died, not that I’d been injured in the course of working for the Council. That was to be expected for the amount I was being paid.
But Armaeus had become more than my employer. Much more, I’d thought. And that reality had made me incredibly weak when I most needed to be strong.
His next words confirmed my misstep. “So, is that your
issue, then, Miss Wilde?” he asked. He’d somehow moved toward me, or my own traitorous feet had drifted me closer to him, the spider in the center of a glittering web. “You wish to know how I feel about you?”
“I couldn’t give a crap how you feel about me anymore,” I said, but my words were not as convincing as I wanted them to be. “I simply don’t understand why you couldn’t keep it all business. We had an arrangement. A good arrangement. I would have happily taken more money to push my abilities.”
“You would have.” Now Armaeus did move deliberately. As he stepped closer to me, the very air charged with electricity, and my breath seemed to grow thicker in my throat. I couldn’t get enough oxygen, yet every one of my nerve endings was lit on fire with each foot he erased between us.
Then suddenly he was there in front of me, close enough to touch.
“Do you feel this current between us?” he murmured. He lifted his hand, and I flinched reflexively, causing his lips to curve into a cold, hard smile. He drifted his fingers along the side of my face.
Electricity sparked wherever he touched. My heart thundered, my hands went damp and clammy in their bandages, and my knees turned to milk. It was all I could do to stay upright, despite the anger building up inside me.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” I hissed, holding myself perfectly still. “None of this is necessary to accomplish your goals.”
“Do you know so little about me, then, that you truly believe that?” Armaeus dipped his head so his eyes were nearly even with mine, and I couldn’t break contact with their smoking depths. “My magic is born of the physical, Miss Wilde. The heat and electrical connections between two people is the most natural wellspring to fire it. And I needed it to be fired to understand you.”
He leaned closer, so close that when he spoke, the whorls of his breath caressed my skin, teasing and tempting. My mouth opened of its own volition, and though I told myself it was merely to prepare to scream, I knew better.
