Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5

by Jenn Stark

  I wanted Armaeus Bertrand. I wanted him with every fiber of my being. I’d somehow been exactly calibrated to match his frequency, so that when he was this close, everything within me hummed.

  “You feel it,” he murmured, and there was a roughness in his voice that skittered through me, flipping every switch to go. “That’s what I needed, in order to build you up and tear you down and lay you open for my understanding. None of my research would have been possible without it.”

  “You could have simply asked,” I said miserably, the desire racing through my veins impossible to ignore, the heat soaking through me as real as life itself. “You didn’t have to trick me.”

  “If I’d asked, I never could have had this,” he murmured.

  Then he leaned the final few inches and brushed his lips against mine.

  Chapter Six

  There was no denying the hot, electrical surge that jolted through me, setting my nerve endings on fire. There was also no denying the anger that erupted on its heels.

  “So you used me!” I shoved the Magician back with both hands, as much to create distance between us as to emphasize my point. “You used my attraction to you, whatever this thing is between us, as a means to get you information, to figure out how I could drag ever more complicated crap back to home base. First the artifacts, then people— For criminy’s sake, I went to Atlantis for you!”

  “You went to Atlantis for yourself,” Armaeus corrected me. “I merely told you where to find the weapons you needed, and Death showed you the path.”

  “Yeah, well, did she know you were jacking me up on purpose? Were you guys all sitting around comparing notes?” I put my hands to my temples. “Sweet Christmas, Eshe. That pompous windbag crawled around inside my head, Armaeus. She—”

  “Eshe and I do not discuss the progress of my work with mortals.”

  If he’d meant those words to reassure me, he was in for a shock. “Your work with mortals. Are you for real?” I stared at him, so unreasonably irate I could feel my split ends sizzle. “I…goddamnit, Armaeus. I thought—I mean, you said—”

  I stuffed the words back into Pandora’s Box as quickly as I could, but once again the Magician’s entire body went tense, like a pointer closing in on a bird.

  “I said what, Miss Wilde?”

  I could feel the vocal projection shifting through me, but not even the magic of the Arcana Council could outweigh the survival instincts of a woman so totally scorned.

  “You didn’t say anything at all,” I snapped, weighing my words with a healthy dose of self-disgust that was not remotely feigned. “I heard something in my head that I wanted to hear. But that’s over—we’ve gotten that out of the way. From now on, though, you need something, you ask. Don’t play games with me simply because it’s a shortcut. It’s not necessary.” I rubbed my hands over my eyes, wincing as my flayed palms chafed against their bandages, but glad for the pain to steady myself. “Whether you need me to go to Atlantis again or astral travel or find stuff—whatever it is”—I passed a hand over my brow—“for the right price, I’ll do it.”

  Armaeus watched me for a long moment before nodding. “Very well,” he said, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Annika Soo has charged you with taking over the House of Swords.”

  “I know, I know—”

  “Decline that invitation.”

  I pulled my hands away from my head. “Wait, what?”

  “It’s a simple enough request, Miss Wilde. It’s not your place to become the head of the House of Swords. Decline it.”

  “Oh, geez—what is it with you people?” I demanded. “First, Father Jerome is on my case, then you? Him at least I can understand—he doesn’t want me to get dead all that soon. But what do you care about the House of Swords?”

  “It’s a task that others are better suited to do. Moreover, it’s beneath you. Your skills are such that you are made for greater things than an earthbound House.”

  I scowled at him. Something wasn’t adding up here. “An earthbound House that you couldn’t learn anything about until it practically fell into your lap thanks to me,” I said. “But now you want me to step down?”

  “You’ve not even begun to step up.”

  “Semantics. I would’ve thought you of all people would be into this side job. What better way for you to find out about this House that’s eluded your grasp for lo, these past thousand years? And not only that one, but the others besides.”

  “A worthy consideration, but shortsighted. Now that the House of Swords has been definitely revealed to me and the Council, there are other agents who can be assigned to learn more about its inner workings and personnel.” His glare bored into me. “And it is not a side job, as I suspect you well know. House leadership belongs in the hands of someone ruthless and unforgiving, and one willing to spend her every waking hour dedicated to action and self-protection.”

  “Maybe you missed the geisha brigade at the Bellagio when Gamon came to attack Soo,” I said dryly. “Trust me, I’ve got self-protection covered.”

  He shook his head. “You’re missing the key point of my objection. You’re meant for more than House command, Miss Wilde.”

  “Yeah? So what color parachute have you picked out for me, then?” I waved off his confused expression. “Cut to the chase, Armaeus. You got that much work lined up that you’re going to put me on retainer?”

  Inexplicably, Armaeus’s face lightened. “Retainer…” He pursed his lips.

  Whoops, bad idea. “Never mind, it’s not an option. What is it you need me to do?”

  His lips flattened again. “It’s not so much a matter of you doing something, it’s you being something. You’re an asset to the Council.”

  “And I’m mortal, and the Council isn’t. So forgive me for wanting to ally myself with the home team a bit more.”

  “The Council is not arrayed against the Connecteds.”

  “You don’t have a stellar track record of protecting them either. I’ve seen what the dark practitioners are doing to those kids, Armaeus. Adults too who’re particularly gifted. If all that magic gets stamped out, you and your precious Council won’t have anything left to balance, remember? So why shouldn’t I get involved?”

  “Perhaps because you could be operating at the position of puppet master, versus the doll dangling from a string.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Once again, you’re not listening. I don’t want to be a puppet master, Armaeus, I want to be down on the stage with everyone else. These people are my people. The Connecteds have a place in society that is determined by their own sense of what’s right and wrong, even if that sense doesn’t agree with what you think they should be doing. They deserve better than to be used as tools, whether by the dark practitioners or frightened organizations like SANCTUS trying to stamp out magic, or even by the Council. If they want to form an army, great—they can go to war. If most of them prefer to hide in the shadows, to protect themselves or their spouses and children, also great. There will always be those who are willing to fight.”

  “And since when are you one of those people?”

  Since two wide-eyed Connected girls told me to pick up my sword and save the world. “What I do now or in the future is none of your concern, Armaeus. You can sit back and watch like the rest of the Council, and—”

  “No!” Armaeus’s outburst was so violent that the chairs on the stone veranda jumped, though he hadn’t pounded a wall or stamped his feet. Still, the energy in the air turned crystalline, heat glazed by the intensity of his emotion. “That is where you are wrong, Miss Wilde. You’ve spent so long protesting your right to do whatever you want that you neglect to see what is right before you. The game has changed. I have changed. And I will no longer be satisfied with sitting by and observing, as you so succinctly put it. I have done that quite enough.”

  I’d snapped my mouth shut in surprise, but Armaeus didn’t need any encouragement to continue. “Allow me to share with you what I saw in Hell, when I wasn’t
trying to keep you and your depraved twin soul from twisting events to your own despicable ends.”

  I winced. That was totally unfair, but now didn’t seem the time to cry foul.

  Armaeus barreled on. “The woman you saw in that plane was not a mirage or a memory, Miss Wilde. She was the woman I’d pledged my life to love and protect. And then the needs of the Council grew too great, and I did not return one fall as I had intended to. That year, the winter was particularly harsh. Though Mirabel had money and retainers, she could not outrun the sickness that ravaged the land. She came into contact with a stricken man at breakfast and was dead by dinner, as the saying goes. I was told weeks after her body was cold in the ground. Cold! Here I was, the Magician of the Arcana Council, able to move from state to state, plane to plane, and I could not protect the only woman I’d ever loved.”

  I really didn’t want to hear this. I even more didn’t want to see him as he spoke such words, their truth etched in every angle and plane of his face. But I couldn’t look away. I’d known Armaeus had changed in Hell, but looking at him now, it was as if he was a different person entirely. Gone was the smug self-assurance, the mild-mannered certainty that he was righteously correct in all his actions. In its place was an almost feral outrage that defied anyone to stand in his way—including and especially, me.

  “But she did not really die, it would seem,” he continued scathingly. “Not in the manner she should have, the manner that would have taken her from this place and moved her to the next plane of existence, for her to live and love as she was intended to. No. Her spirit would not loose its hold on this earth, and for that she was consigned to the plane closest to our own, where mortals go to live out their regrets—their regrets, Miss Wilde. That is what I found when I finally deigned to enter a plane I could have breached at any time in the last thousand years. A woman mired in the regret of a life she no longer held, all for the love of me.”

  I don’t know where the words came from that welled out of me. I didn’t summon them. I didn’t want them. But that didn’t stop them from boiling forth to spew at Armaeus in a scalding wash of pain.

  “You’re not the only one who suffered in Hell, Armaeus. You say that place was built for regrets? I regret ever setting foot in it, ever seeing what I was forced to see, forced to feel, forced to hope—”

  Once again Armaeus’s nearly preternatural awareness sharpened. His gaze raked over me so ferociously that I barely got my mental barriers set in time to avoid the blast of his attack as he reached out tentacles of ripping power, pounding into my skull.

  “Get out—no!” I gasped, clasping my hands to my head. “You have no right—get out!”

  “Make me, Miss Wilde.” Though my mind was beset with a howling wind, I could still hear Armaeus’s words slip silkily over the top of the storm, as insidious as the magic he blasted at me. “That’s twice you have wanted to betray something buried deep within you, so deep I cannot reach it. And I want to reach it. I want to know. You say you will do anything for money; then I will pay you. What is it you saw in Hell that gives you such pause? What is it that grips your entire energy with fury and despair whenever you rake over it, like a nail from the Holy Cross? I will pay you whatever you desire if you will tell me this—”

  “No,” I seethed, wrenching back from him, though he made no move to restrain me. “Get your bony ass out of my mind—now!”

  Without thinking, without even feeling, I pulled my hands away from my head and thrust them out, as if I was hurling a medicine ball out of my skull. The movement lit me on fire from my center up and out, and the world around me was suddenly too white—too bright—a fury of crackling energy blowing up between Armaeus and myself.

  I yanked my hands back just as quickly, and the illusion shorted out, leaving nothing but singed air in its wake.

  Singed air and a very feral-looking Armaeus. The Magician’s touch was no longer on my mind, nowhere close to me, in fact. It was as if my brain now floated behind vaulted doors and bulletproof glass, and I stood taller for it, my shoulders lighter, my eyes clearer.

  “What…” I said flatly, “was that?”

  “That,” Armaeus purred with a positively opulent interest that had never boded well for me, “was magic, Miss Wilde.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He took a step toward the side, as if he intended to circle me, the newest orangutan at the zoo. “Not the magic of illusion, or the psychic skill of a Connected able to astral travel or dimension hop. That was not a magic born of your mind. It was born of your heart, your sacral center. The magic of a Magician, some would say.”

  “So your magic returned back to you.”

  “I don’t think so.” Deep, fathomless speculation gleamed in his eyes. “Mortal sorcerers borrow magic from other entities—demons, the djinn, angels, there are a thousand sources they claim to channel. You pulled that burst of power from within yourself. Do you still think your role in the war on magic is one of bloodshed? To lead a syndicate known more for its executions and technoceutical drug deals than for the furthering of magic’s place in the world?”

  Back to this again. But at least this complaint I could handle. Especially without the Magician’s infernal touch on me.

  “This war you speak of is not the Council’s war alone, Armaeus. It’s a mortal war as well.” My words sounded too loud, and I tried to modulate them, but I couldn’t seem to control my voice. Or my hands and feet for that matter. I visibly trembled, and backed away from the Magician toward the house, only dimly aware that he paced toward me like a hungry leopard. “And as it turns out, I’m mortal. I’m also in a position to help. And I can help. I’m strong enough for that.”

  “There is no doubt that you are,” Armaeus murmured, his eerie dark eyes glittering. “How are you feeling, Miss Wilde?”

  “Fine.” I took another few steps back, entering the house again. Its cool confines should have been soothing, but they were suddenly too close, too thick. As if the air was too tight against my skin, my skin too tight against my bones—

  “Are you sure?” Armaeus’s expression was entirely too aware. “The use of magic—especially when it is not merely channeled power—can have a significant effect on a person. One that is difficult to ignore.”

  “I’m solid.” I turned, the front door of the house once more in my sight. I needed out of here, away from Armaeus, away from Paris. I needed time, space, breath. The heat that was pooling in my body, surging higher with each of Armaeus’s words, might be an unfortunate aftereffect of whatever I’d pulled out of my brain…but it was simply an aftereffect, and one I could manage.

  Really.

  Armaeus had somehow gotten around me, and I stopped short as I realized he now stood at the front door. But to my surprise, he wasn’t blocking me. Instead, he reached for the door and held it open, inviting me to pass.

  “You remain, as ever, an enigma, Miss Wilde,” he murmured as I finally moved past him. His words seemed to arrow straight into my core, and how I managed to keep walking was a bit of a trick, what with everything south of my navel threatening to dissolve into a puddle of need. “And I look forward to exploring your newfound abilities more deeply when next we meet.”

  I turned back to him. “Not going to happen,” I said, and there was still the weird thing with my voice—too loud, too full. “At this point, I’d rather set myself on fire than let you touch me.”

  The Magician’s smile, if anything, only deepened. “It would appear you’re going to do both.”

  Chapter Seven

  I’d texted Nikki Dawes the moment I hit US airspace, so I wasn’t surprised she was waiting for me at the front doors of McCarran International Airport. Chauffeuring me around was one of the many ways Nikki earned her undisclosed monthly stipend from the Arcana Council, and she totally owned the position.

  What did surprise me, however, was that she wasn’t alone.

  A white-haired Asian woman stood next to Nikki, and though they were clearly together, they
couldn’t have looked more different. Nikki had eschewed her normal chauffeur uniform for what could only be termed “bohemian chic.” Her six-foot-four frame was draped in a poet-sleeved snow-white crocheted tunic that ended just above her jean shorts, and miles above the calf-high multi-fabric cowboy boots that adorned her size-thirteen feet. Her long auburn hair was stick straight today, topped with a man’s fedora above oversized aviator sunglasses. Over Nikki’s shoulder was slung a hobo bag that looked like she’d wrestled it off an actual hobo, and her wrists and fingers, ears and neck sported enough turquoise to open her own mall kiosk.

  Beside her, the much older Asian woman held herself perfectly straight in her cream linen suit and elegant pumps. She’d focused on me the moment I’d entered the wide corridor that birthed the next generation of tourists into Sin City. Her eyes were a fathomless black, and her gaze only sharpened as I approached. She was petite—barely coming up to Nikki’s bicep—and she appeared dressed for an international law conference, down to the expensive leather briefcase.

  In contrast to the two of them, I probably looked like yesterday’s lunch bag. Which would have been fine with me, since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. My little face-off with the Magician had healed up my hands nicely but hadn’t quite rid me of my need for food.

  “Dollface!” When Nikki smiled, her entire face lit up like a neon WELCOME sign, and the icy fist I’d clamped around my guts the entire way to Vegas unkinked a notch. Then she was striding forward, engulfing me in her arms and turning me around.

  “Nikki!” I managed. “I’ve only been gone a week.”

  “I’ve lived through a typical week with you. It’s like a lifetime in other people’s worlds.” She swung me toward the woman in cream. “This is Madam Peng—Jiao to her besties. She showed up this morning at Eat and wouldn’t leave, so we communed over shrimp and grits. She’s one of Soo’s people, which I guess are your people now.”