by Jenn Stark
“Ah, but one betrayal is smart, two is bad for business,” Mobo goaded back. “And Gamon’s pockets are as deep as her reach is long. I will not betray her.” He spoke the words a little too loudly, as if even the walls had ears, and I pulled myself into a crouch. I only had one shot at this. I needed to make it good.
“You have chosen the wrong ally after all, Mobo,” I called out, deepening my voice by several octaves as I surged upward with an Academy Award-winning performance. I swirled my hands impressively in front of my chest as if I was massaging an air kickball, and Mobo halted the swing of his gun, his eyes riveted on me. “You have heard of the powers I have, and now you will—”
Two gunshots rang out simultaneously. It was as if Mobo’s body had nowhere to go, a punching bag stuck between rival combatants. He fell backward and then thrust forward, his eyes still wide and startled even as twin bullet holes started gushing rivers of blood.
I turned to Nikki, crying out as she sagged forward.
“Scalp wounds always bleed like a bitch,” she gasped, dropping her gun on the floor as she sagged to her knees…then rammed her shoulder against the edge of the counter. Her expletives rang out across the kitchen as her shoulder popped back into place.
“An excellent shot.” Nigel stepped into the corridor behind Mobo’s body, rolling him over. “I can’t say I’m happy yours entered first, though. Mine was the better vantage point.”
“Anything to shut up the great and powerful Oz here,” Nikki cracked, her voice only a little thready. She winced as I pressed a towel to her face, wiping off the worst of the gore. “Was he really buying that?”
“He was buying something.” Nigel’s voice sounded a little strained, but I didn’t have time for him yet.
“Are you hurt bad?” I asked her. “Can you walk?”
“Gut wound. Too close to the damn windows.” Nikki winced as I pressed the towel against her side. Even Mercault’s kitchen towels were luxury on steroids, and she scowled down at the blood staining the thick cloth. “You know that’s never gonna come out. Might as well be mustard.”
“Sara—”
“Hang on.” I cut off whatever Nigel wanted to say, draping Nikki’s arm over my head as I noticed a second patch of red. “Shit, Nikki, your leg?”
“That was all Mobo. Dickhead.” She growled. “Missed hitting me full-on, though.”
I grimaced, moving with her toward Nigel, who was looking at me like I’d grown two heads. “Luc? Is he dead too?”
“No. Mobo’s bullet went wide, but Luc went down with a convincing thud, banking on the chaos to keep him out of the fray.” He smiled wearily. “There’s a reason why he’s lived so long.” Nigel seemed to shake himself into awareness and stepped forward, “Let me take her. I’m bigger than you are.”
“Hey,” groaned Nikki. “I’m sensitive.”
But no sooner had Nigel settled her weight onto his shoulders than he turned to me. “Perhaps that might explain Mobo’s surprise at your performance,” he said quietly, nodding behind me.
Both Nikki and I turned, and while she said something, I couldn’t hear it—couldn’t process anything except what was right before us.
There, hovering above the kitchen counter, was the Honjo Masamune, twisting and spinning in place, exactly how I’d been guiding my imaginary kickball. It pointed at the space where Mobo had been standing, but as I breathed out a startled “Whoa,” it flicked again toward me, the point of its mythical blade mesmerizing in its lethal beauty.
“I can kind of see how Mobo might have gotten distracted,” Nikki said, her words barely audible. “Can you, uh, tell it to sit?”
“I have no idea.” Swallowing, I took a step toward the blade and lifted my hand, exactly as if it were a wild creature I was somehow expected to tame. Before I embarrassed either of us, though, the blade suddenly clattered to the counter, inert.
“Good God,” Nigel breathed. “When did it start doing that?”
“Pretty much right now.” I hesitated, then picked up the blade, once more feeling the shock of its power in my grasp. The sword had championed me. And more importantly, it had kept Nikki alive, all without shedding a drop of blood.
Pretty good trick for a samurai sword.
I slid it into its scabbard at my hip, surprised at how natural the movement was. Maybe I could learn to wield the thing after all.
The courtyard was a mass of activity by the time we got outside. I folded Nikki into a Parisian version of a minivan that was about the size of a toaster, but she could almost lie straight. There were no emergency vehicles this far out, but the hospital in Amboise had a full surgical suite, according to Nigel. He sent three armed guards with Nikki and a car trailing behind. He watched the vehicle bounce off the lawn and onto the drive with a fierce scowl, and I liked him better for it.
Luc stood surveying the mess, then looked up as we approached. “Pretty clean job, it seems, for all of that,” he said in his querulous French accent. “Didn’t see Mobo turning so quickly, though. Alaina had her doubts.” He spat. “Should have listened.”
“And you should have kept me apprised of that.” Nigel turned his sour glare on the bombed building. “Mercault isn’t going to like it.”
“He’s got about six more châteaux in the valley. He’ll survive.” Luc lifted a hand and rubbed his chin, then transferred his gaze to me. “You’ve certainly made an impression.”
“So Alaina was Cups, Mobo, Wands?” I asked, my mind split between the question and the image of Nikki’s face, spread with blood and grime. “That leaves you what, Pentacles?”
“Or Coins, if you prefer to call a spade a…well.” He shrugged. “Unlike Nigel and Mobo, I didn’t split my allegiance between Houses. Gets messy when you do that. As you can see.” He gestured to the mess. “Alaina was exclusively Cups, Mobo played in both Wands and Coins. Had to have, in order to plant those bombs, I’m thinking. They’ve been there awhile.” His expression was bleak. “Mercault will have to spend more money securing anywhere that bastard went.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…” What they were saying finally dawned on me, and I stared, rocked by the realization. “Mercault is the head of the House of Coins?”
Nigel and Luc stared at me, then Luc shot him a glance. “Not much gets by her, does it?”
Nigel lifted one shoulder. “It’s a gift.”
At that moment, a soldier trotted up, waving a familiar-looking cell phone. I swiped for my pocket out of habit, even as the man stopped in front of us. “It’s been ringing constantly,” he said with an apologetic smile as he handed it over.
“Thanks.” I frowned as I scrolled through the calls, instantly worried about Nikki.
But it wasn’t Nikki’s name on the screen—it was Father Jerome’s. Over and over again.
I clicked through to the voice mail, meeting Nigel’s gaze.
Then started running.
Chapter Nineteen
We reached the outskirts of Paris in less than two hours, arriving at Jerome’s secondary safe house well after the area had been cordoned off with police tape. I ducked under it, Nigel on my heels, ignoring the gendarmes as they tried to stop me first in French, then English.
“Sara! Sara—” I turned as a familiar voice called out, then Father Jerome was there, hastening forward with a dirt-stained face split by a wide, relieved smile. “You didn’t have to come, I told you we are fine, I was simply worried—”
“Do you know anything more?” I stood back and surveyed him critically. As always, he wore the simple clothes of his position, black pants and black shirt with the white collar, no robe or cap to distinguish him further. He shook his head.
“There was simply the blast. The front windows were blown out, you see? We were away from the house by accident, actually. Wednesdays are usually quiet days, but the museum—” He held my hands, and his weren’t the ones shaking. “No one was hurt, Sara. The children are safe.”
“You’ll have to move them.”
“It
’s already done.” Father Jerome looked up, noticing Nigel for the first time, his gaze pinging back and forth between us. “You’ve been hurt. You said there was a similar explosion, that your friend Nikki was injured. Others killed.”
“Windows blown out there as well,” Nigel said crisply. “If I may?” He gestured to the house, and I nodded, feeling slightly awkward at giving the man permission to do anything. He stopped briefly to show something to the police, who also nodded him on his way. No one had more fake identities than Nigel Friedman. Which made me wonder why he kept the name Nigel Friedman.
Father Jerome linked his arm in mine and steered me toward the gardens. “What is happening, Sara? What have you stumbled into?”
I forced my own breathing to steady. Father Jerome was unharmed; the children were safe. The bomb that had been set in this house hadn’t been followed this time by a horde of Gamon’s operatives—though it could have. Should have, really. The safe house didn’t have a phalanx of guards around it. It didn’t need to—it was supposed to be secure.
I tightened my jaw, the sudden image of a skull overrun by scouring beetles flashing in my mind. That was what Eshe’s shield had shown me, what Gamon’s operatives were capable of. That was the fight I was undertaking. Poorly, as it happened.
“How many of Gamon’s children went through here, how long ago?” I asked, a new image of tattooed arms assaulting me. “Any one of them could have been the leak.”
“Or a hundred other children in a hundred other places,” Father Jerome said quietly. He lifted his hand to brush my cheek. “Your friend, she will be all right?”
“She will.” I nodded too quickly. Nikki had been admitted for overnight observation, to her strident and outspoken dismay, and I’d spent most of the ride into Paris assuring her that Nigel wouldn’t leave my side. She’d then asked to speak to him, and while I couldn’t hear her side of the conversation, he seemed to be of a mind to agree with everything she said. “She got pretty banged up, worse than I thought, but—she’ll be okay.”
“And how banged up did you get, this time? How damaged will you be the next?” Jerome didn’t continue with a tirade, contenting himself with patting my hand as we walked together beneath the trees. Then his words took a decidedly different turn. “The children have started to speak of you again. The gifted ones. They have a name for you.”
I pulled away from him. “Is it a name you can repeat in public?”
“It’s an interesting one,” Jerome said. He released my right hand and it dropped to my side, my left still resting on my sword. Surprisingly, the gendarmes hadn’t blinked when I’d come striding up with a thirteenth-century blade strapped to my body, but then again—this was France.
Jerome waited until my attention wandered back to him, smiling benevolently as I blushed. “You do not sleep enough for all the lives you live, Sara. You’ll have to be more careful.”
“I’m fine,” I said, giving him my best healthy-and-happy grin. “Distracted is all. So—the children have given me a nickname?”
“Vigilance,” he said, without preamble.
He kept speaking then, but the word blasted through me with a strength that shook me to my toes. In a single heartbeat, my mind exploded with a dozen different images—places I’d been, people I’d known—things I’d seen. I’d heard that name before, seen the image. A picture, high on the wall of a domed throne room, an image of a woman holding the scales in one hand and a sword in the other. So very similar to the Tarot depiction of Justice, but undeniably more forceful. Instead of being seated with a placid demeanor, the woman of Vigilance rushed forward, her sword outstretched, the scales as much a weapon as the sword…
The sword.
“Sara, what is it?” Jerome’s voice broke in. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. They meant it as a compliment—a compliment!” He was back to chafing my hands, and I blinked at him, trying to regain my balance.
“It’s okay,” I managed. “It’s okay. I just—it took me by surprise. The name. I’ve heard it before, hunting items for the Council. It’s some sort of older goddess, maybe a precursor to the Tarot, I don’t know.”
He pursed his lips, then turned to walk again, distracted by this new question. “I’m not familiar with a mythology that incorporates that imagery with that name, but as you say, there are any number of esoteric societies that sprang up during the Renaissance and even before. That one of them would have taken on the depictions…”
I let Father Jerome’s words wash over me as I strode beside him, a thousand miles and several dimensions away. The denizens of Atlantis had reacted strongly to me when they’d seen me come storming out of the abandoned throne room, dagger and scales in my hands, my hair and eyes wild. They’d known me, recognized me, from a picture that had been painted thousands of years before Christ, etched into the stones of a lost civilization. Why were the children using that name to describe me now? Had they been given it by someone? Fed it by a scholar of the ancient city? Or were my gun and my perpetual state of darkness enough to bring the name to their minds organically? I grimaced. It could go either way.
Nigel stood on what was left of the front steps of the house when we circled back around. “Exactly the same configuration of device, remote detonation, not a timer. Someone knew to blow this second set at the same time the first set went off miles away.”
My adrenaline jacked, and I turned to Jerome. “You’re sure the other houses—”
“Not affected. I checked. We’re having bomb teams come in to be sure. And there is nothing damaged here other than what you see.” His lips turned down. “I suspect there is extensive damage to Mercault’s château, however. What was its location again, specifically?”
He asked this last as my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I jerked it free from my hoodie, hoping for another of Nikki’s rants. Instead, a different name flashed across the screen, and I smiled despite myself. One rant was as good as the next, I supposed. I hadn’t planned on being out of town this long.
I swiped the phone on, then held it to my ear. “Sara,” I said, bracing myself for Brody’s explosion.
There was nothing on the line for a moment. Then a familiar rasping feminine voice filled up my whole world.
“I’m afraid Detective Rooks took an untoward step today, Sara Wilde, investigating a property you have no claim to.”
I went stiff, only dimly aware that Nigel and Jerome kept walking. “Where is he?” I asked stupidly. “How do you have his phone?”
“It seems he’s not the only friend of yours convalescing in a hospital,” the voice continued. “You’re becoming dangerous company to keep.”
“If you hurt him…”
“The day you are a threat to me is a day I will relish,” Gamon scoffed. “But it is not today. Stay out of a war you cannot hope to win. Give up your sword. Let others do the fighting while you lurk in the shadows. I have spared the foolish children you seem so intent on saving. Believe me, I’ve kept the ones I’ve found who are truly useful. And those you snatched from me before I could find them—life is long. I can afford to be patient. You cannot, however. Your every associate is at risk, from the lowest to the highest reaches, unless you let things flow to the fullness of their—”
I clicked off the phone. With every word, I was getting more convinced that Gamon was insane, but insane was tricky to manage, and I was full up on my allotment of crazy for the day. Hitting speed dial, I reconnected with Nikki, who picked up on the first ring.
“You’re coming to get me,” she said.
“You’re still on a morphine drip.”
“I’ll take it to go. What’s up, dollface? Hit me.”
I filled her in on Brody, asking her to connect with anyone she could back home to find out what was happening to him—and to let the police know his phone had been swiped. Doubtless that meant Nikki would be contacting Dixie Quinn, Brody’s current girlfriend, but she was the least of my problems. Nothing like being responsible for all your friends landing
in the hospital to give you some perspective on what mattered.
I rang off to find Nigel and Jerome back to staring at me. “Gamon blew something else up,” I said. “One of Soo’s properties in Vegas. I get the feeling it might not be confined to there.”
Nigel nodded, fishing his own phone out of his pocket. “I would’ve been advised if it was a widespread attack, but there may be more outlying events. We’ll track it.” With a curt nod, he moved off, leaving Jerome and me staring at each other again. With a start, I realized I hadn’t asked about Max.
“No one was hurt?” I pressed him. “Not Max either?”
“Max?” Jerome looked at me with a bewildered smile. “Sara, I thought you knew. He went on vacation immediately after you left—to visit family, he said. I’ve been working him diligently for weeks, and before today, things had been going so well with the children. He has more than earned a respite. I don’t expect him back for several more days.” He reached for my hand and pulled me toward the back of the house. “He’ll be fine, I suspect.”
I let Jerome take me to a quiet courtyard, accepted his French wine and soothing talk, but I knew in my heart that Max wasn’t relaxing somewhere with cousins in the south of France. He’d delivered me gift wrapped to Armaeus, and I’d fled within the half hour. But something had tipped Armaeus off to the changes going on inside me—both then and when he’d touched me in my dreams. And no one knew my abilities more clearly right now than Max Bertrand.
Which meant he could only be one place right now: spilling my every secret to Armaeus. Even those I didn’t know I had.
I waited until Jerome was called away by the police before I settled back in my chair. Everything hurt on my body, most especially my heart. Nikki was in the hospital—Brody as well, if Gamon were to be believed. Everywhere I turned, someone was insisting I give up Soo’s commission and relinquish control of the House of Swords.
But I also had an uptick in my Connected abilities that hadn’t been on my radar screen before now. The burst of power that I’d thrust out to keep Armaeus away, that I’d used to keep myself and Ma-Singh alive, that I’d distracted Mobo with long enough for Nikki to plant a bullet in his skull. My odd connection with the Honjo sword—something else I hadn’t been prepared for.
