by Jenn Stark
I slammed into a brick wall. Chaos roiled around me, and I crumpled to the ground, dazed and more than a little confused.
I decided I’d hang out there awhile, see the sights of Reykjavik from the sidewalk. It was a very nice sidewalk. Flat. Cold. Sidewalk-like…
“There you are, dollface.”
Nikki’s strong hands gripped me, and she hauled me to my unsteady feet. She wasn’t alone, I realized, blinking around as she started hustling me forward. A phalanx of men and women with semiautomatic pistols surrounded us—Agnar’s actual security. Had to be. They shot a round of gunfire into the sky, effectively keeping everyone well back as we jogged along. They ran next to us until we reached a familiar-looking limo and I was dumped summarily into the backseat.
I cursed as I rolled to my back, then suddenly realized that my old friends from the arcane black market hadn’t simply spontaneously forgotten how to shoot after all. I’d been hit, and not merely in the shoulder.
“Sweet Christmas,” I muttered. I peered down at my legs and realized they were streaked with blood, my left bicep had been clipped, and I was sporting a growing pool of crimson across my belly. “That’s not good.”
“Totally going to leave a stain,” Nikki agreed, studiously avoiding looking at me. Though my recently acquired healing abilities meant I wouldn’t be dropping dead anytime soon, it still was hard for her not to flinch when I was injured. Instead, she focused on the babbling Agnar, holding both his hands as he stared at her, wide-eyed. I pulled myself higher on the seat as one of the helpful bodyguard types passed a large white towel toward me.
“Hospital.” Agnar finally used an English word, and I looked up. Nikki was shaking her head, and I tried to look less full of bullet holes.
“Through and through,” I said quickly, managing a smile. “No hospital needed, just some gauze and tape.”
He blinked at me, then turned to the guard opposite the one who’d given me the towel, clearly some sort of security chief. I felt the weight of the man’s gaze on me, and I peered out the tinted windows of the limo.
“Maybe a drugstore?” I asked, preempting whatever the man started to say. “After that, I’m good. Then you can drop us back at our hotel. That’d be fine.”
“More than fine,” Nikki said steadfastly. “We don’t mean to be trouble.”
“Trouble!” This represented Agnar’s second English word, which I thought showed tremendous progress. “You’re no trouble.” He glared at the bodyguard and spoke rapidly.
The man translated, a pained look on his face. “Given your assistance tonight, you must accept Mr. Hilmarsson’s hospitality,” he said. “You’re coming with us.”
Nikki sighed. “It’s not necessary—”
“You must,” Agnar said firmly.
Bingo, I thought. Payment coming due. The Six of Pents in the flesh: getting what you deserved for a service rendered.
I sank back against the plush leather seats and did my best not to grin.
Chapter Two
Thor Bjornsson’s house was about as close as you could get to a Viking stronghold without actually having someone blowing a mighty horn at the entrance. We passed through an honest-to-God…or, well, gods…stone gatehouse with enormous flanking walls, and the gate slammed shut behind us with absolute finality.
I didn’t mind that part so much, though. If we were locked inside, the anti-Sara mafia would be kept outside, at least for a night. How we’d get off the island with the nails intact was a problem, but not my immediate concern for this evening. Right now, I needed to convince ol’ Agnar and his team that I wasn’t nearly as shot up as he thought I was.
“She requires Dr. Mattsson,” the glowering security chief said next to me in perfect English. The limo continued gliding up the long drive toward the stone fortress that passed as the family’s local pied-à-terre. “The call will be logged.”
“No—I don’t. Really.” I managed to sit a little more upright. The heat flares had started up in my body, signaling the healing about to take place. Not as well or as quickly as when the Magician of the Arcana Council put his skills to good use, but there was no point in informing Armaeus about our goings-on. He’d just get curious, and I didn’t have time for curious. The Arcana Council had been my primary client for artifact-finding missions until recently, the super high-end collection of demigods paying top dollar for anything rare, beautiful, and, above all, magical. The Gods’ Nails would definitely qualify, but in this case, finder was definitely keeper.
Besides, there was nothing Armaeus could do to heal me, that I couldn’t do myself, with solitude and a stiff shot of whiskey. “Just—a bathroom would be good.”
“And some gauze,” Nikki chimed in. “We’ve already been too much trouble.”
“Trouble!” This word was clearly not a favorite of Agnar’s, and he burst into another rash of hurried Icelandic. Nikki couldn’t speak it any better than I could, so we smiled gamely as the security chief’s countenance darkened. At last, he nodded, however, and relief skated through me. I didn’t know what deal Agnar had negotiated, but if it kept us on the premises, I was in favor.
It took another ten minutes for us to get into the house, “temporarily” liberated of our weapons, then deposited in a bedroom with an en-suite bath attached, impressively sized by European standards and teeth-achingly luxurious. Or, it could be that my teeth simply ached. The moment Nikki closed the door behind her, I sagged against the sink.
“Well, that sucked.”
“Ambush.” She strode up to me and helped me out of my shirt, whistling at the state of my back. “Did you have a target printed on you? Or are you just that slow?”
“I knew the shooters,” I said. “Some of them, anyway. They weren’t entry-level players. And there were a lot of them.”
“Uh-huh. How’d they know we’d be there?”
I shrugged, my shoulder squawking in pain. “Unless that party really was for Agnar, and we were bonus entertainment?”
“Nope. When I finally talked him around to the Gods’ Nails, Agnar’s frontal lobe lit up like a Christmas tree. The nails are here, and they’re as big as your arm. More importantly, however, no one needs to steal jack. The family is ready to sell. They’ve got appointments for the next four days in London to take all bids—both from whoever ordered the hit, and from whoever’s feeling lucky.”
“Bids?” I paused in my peeling off of my jeans, which were now caked with blood and stiffening by the second. Black was so handy in my line of work. Pivoting, I dumped the pants in the sink, then opened the faucets. Nikki was already scrubbing my shirt in the other sink.
She looked up at me and winced. “Dollface. For God’s sake. There are lingerie manufacturers who’d have an aneurism if they saw what you’re wearing. There’s no need for you to dress like a gym teacher all the time.”
“Except when I’m getting shot.” I gritted my teeth as I peeled off the last of my clothes, then threw those garments in the sink as well. They were made of a fast-drying fabric, which mattered more to me than pink satin bows.
I straightened, giving myself the once-over. The belly shot was the worst, black and red and puckered, but the skin was already starting to close. I hadn’t been lying to Agnar about this part, though: the shots were all through and through, from what I could tell. My skin was a mass of bruising, but the blood loss had dropped to a trickle.
There was a knock at the door. Nikki grabbed a bathrobe from a cushioned hanger and threw it to me. I’d barely lashed it on when the door opened. A female security guard stepped in, her gaze traveling from my trussed-up form to the pile of steaming clothes in the sink.
“We can wash those,” she said stiffly, as she offered up a care package of what looked like antibiotic cream and enough gauze to fashion a wedding gown.
Nikki took the supplies from her. “We’re good. This bed—can we sleep there?”
“Her, yes,” the guard said, pointing at me. “You—Mr. Hilmarsson would like to thank you
more properly, when you are finished.” She squinted at me as Nikki stepped into the bathroom, depositing our gift-with-purchase. “You look much better than I would have expected.”
“I’m a bleeder.” I managed a weak smile. “Only a few shots hit me, but there was a lot of blood to go around, and I was on the move. I’ll be shipshape in no time.”
The woman didn’t look convinced, but I didn’t worry much about her. People believed what they wanted to believe. And nobody wanted to believe that a gunshot victim could spontaneously heal in less than half an hour. I didn’t much want to believe it either, though I couldn’t say I wasn’t grateful for it. My healing ability was even better here than it had been in Vegas a few weeks ago.
The Magician hadn’t told me it’d speed up this fast. Of course, the Magician wasn’t big on sharing information if he could avoid it, which he usually could.
The guard left. Nikki helped me slather the remaining open wounds with the pungent cream, then wrapped me up with the gauze.
That took another ten minutes, along with some artful application of blood stains to make it look like I was at least somewhat the worse for wear. And the pain certainly was no picnic, so my mad healing skills weren’t completely superhero-worthy yet.
“You gonna be okay while I go let Agnar fawn over me?”
I nodded. “I could use a nap, actually. Everything hurts, even if it’s technically knitting back together.” I focused on her, planting my feet firmly to keep my balance. “You think he’ll show you where the nails are?”
“Yup. Right after he shows me his etchings.” Nikki turned to the mirror and fluffed out her hair, turning first to the right, then the left to view herself at all angles. “Hmm. Not nearly enough blood.” As I watched, she pulled a sodden sock from the pile in the sink, squeezing out a thin trail of red down her sweater’s left sleeve.
“And that’s for?”
“For Agnar to suggest he provide me with new clothes.” She batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes, which had somehow managed not to run despite the evening’s duress. “Of course, I suspect nothing will fit better than one of his own shirts.”
“You can’t get the information you need by shaking hands?”
“Girl. I’ve been getting three-a-day mud packs for the last forty-eight hours. Somebody needs to appreciate the glory that is this body, it might as well be Agnar. And who knows?” she winked. “Maybe he keeps the Gods’ Nails beneath his bed.”
I felt a headache coming on. “We haven’t discussed extraction yet.”
“Nope,” Nikki said. “And we’re not going to until I get a load of the artifacts with my own eyes. If they’re really as big as he’s making them out to be, we can’t exactly smuggle them out in our bras.” She slid her glance to my blood-soaked clothing. “Well, you might be able to.”
“Nice.”
Nikki was still cackling when she left the outer bedroom, and I sagged in earnest against the sink this time. The pain seemed worse than it should, by a fair margin, especially if I was going all Heather the Healer with the actual gunshot wounds. Was something going wrong? Was I doing something out of order?
I stumbled into the bedroom, unreasonably glad for the oversized bed. I crawled into it, feeling almost drugged.
The bed was infinitely better than I had any reason to expect it to be. I realized that the pain was finally fading as well, a sweet and unexpected languor overtaking my bones. I hadn’t rested in—days, really. Not since the last time my immortality had been tested. After helping Armaeus welcome the latest member of the Arcana Council back into the fold—over that member’s strident objections—it’d taken the Magician’s touch to put me back together again. But he had, and along the way I’d learned a few things about him that I suspected he didn’t realize. Things I wasn’t quite sure how to manage yet, but I would.
Armaeus had a particular hold on me, it was true.
But I was beginning to realize that I had a hold on him too.
I’d had no time to truly ponder the ramifications of that discovery, however. The following morning, Nigel had called me about the Gods’ Nails and their unique, supposed properties. Within twenty-four hours of that call, I was here, buried in mud.
Now I was getting shot at. A lot. By people who normally didn’t play together so well.
I groaned, turning over in bed, ruminating again on the spread I’d pulled in the club. The Ten of Swords meant a betrayal on a very personal level—my own. The Five of Wands meant a fight, but could also mean a minor wound, an athletic competition…
I frowned…athletic competition? That would make this, what, some sort of test? But who would be testing me?
I shook my head, trying to clear it, but it was a losing battle. In truth, I’d never felt this drowsy without the assistance of grade-A drugs, or the Magician’s touch. And Armaeus wasn’t anywhere near this time zone. In addition to the mental lockdown I had in play, Iceland was surrounded by water. A lot of water. That tended to dim the Magician’s effects unless I opened my mind wide to him, which I categorically was not doing. Maybe someone had slipped me a horse tranquilizer.
I smiled blurrily, succumbing to sleep at last. Succumbing to…
Wait a minute.
I jerked upright. I’d been solidly on my way to recovering when we’d reached the house, I knew that. The walk to the bedroom had been a little taxing, but nothing too impossible. But then the guard had shown up with the antibiotic cream and gauze…
My gaze jerked to the bathroom. Who in their right mind spiked antibiotic cream? Who did that?
Against my better judgment, I lurched out of bed, then stumbled back toward the bathroom. It took far longer than it should have to unwrap myself, but once I dropped all the gauze to the floor, I staggered into the shower and flipped on the spigots. Instantly, I was bombarded with jets streaming from the ceiling and two walls, the pounding pressure enough to revive every last shred of pain I’d vanquished and bring it screaming back to life. I drew new blood from clamping my teeth into my lower lip, but the onslaught of pain cleared my head, and I flopped against the wall, gradually rejoining the world of the living as the narcotics in the cream washed off my body. Thank Christmas I hadn’t used too much of it.
“Think, think,” I muttered.
There were any number of reasons why Agnar and his goons might want to drug me. The easiest, and most benign, was that he wanted Nikki to himself for, ah, non-life-threatening reasons. The second easiest, and less benign, was that he wanted Nikki unprotected so he could kill her, torture her, or otherwise scuff her manicure. I didn’t know enough about Agnar to know which way he was going to lean, but I couldn’t take the risk.
And, arguably, there was still the question of the artifacts themselves. If they actually did have magical binding powers, I’d feel much better having those particular toothpicks in my bathroom cabinet than in the hands of whoever it was out there who had a hate on for me right now.
It took a solid ten minutes with the hair dryer to get my underthings mostly dry, and my shirt was more or less presentable a few minutes after that. The pants and socks, however, were nowhere near workable. I left them hanging over the side of the shower door and stalked back into the bedroom, pulling on the robe again. A quick perusal of the drawers yielded no clothing, no nothing. I didn’t want to walk around in my robe—but even going out at all was a problem. The guards had seen the torn clothing. They’d expect at least a few bullet holes in my person.
I scowled, glancing around for my cards. They’d been in the apron, I remembered, and I didn’t remember pulling the apron off me. We’d tumbled into the car, the guards had been there, and then—
Across the room, there was a short preemptory knock. Before I could call out, however, the door opened and a man stepped through, vaguely recognizable. Not the main security guard, but one who’d been in the tight-knit group. Had he been with us in the car? Given me the towel? I couldn’t remember. I squared my shoulders, but the man put his finger to his
lips and shut the door quickly behind him. He carried a black duffel over one shoulder, visible briefly before he turned back to me.
“Madam Wilde,” he said in a clipped British voice, bowing deeply to me, then straightening and widening his stance as if preparing to do battle. “I serve the House of Swords. You are in grave danger.”
Chapter Three
“Danger? Me?” I frowned, trying to shake off the last dregs of my happy juice drug cocktail. “Or do you mean Nikki?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s one and the same. Your lack of regard for your own life is negated by your concern for your team. They become the access point to you.”
I frowned. That hit a little too close to home.
“Um… Who are you again?”
“Greg Williams. I’ve worked in the Bjornssons’ employ for the past five years, at the behest of Madam Soo.”
Annika Soo, the former leader of the House of Swords, had dipped her fingers into many, many pies. A dozen or so had even been legit businesses. She’d been cunning, shrewd, and ruthless…and she’d left me utterly unprepared to succeed her. I hated being ignorant, and that was something I was trying to fix…if only people would stop trying to kill me.
I narrowed my eyes at the man. For all I knew, he was no more a friend than the haters I’d encountered in the club. “Why did she assign you there?”
Williams smiled thinly. “Mr. Bjornsson is a man of considerable influence, and Madam Soo tended to keep tabs on such people. That’s not what’s important, though. The call for the artifacts went out too quickly for me to respond officially through my House contacts, and I didn’t want to betray my alliance in any event. But I was positioned well enough to join Hilmarsson’s security detail. Your identity is well known to him, given your utter lack of attempt at concealment. It was his intention to seek you out tomorrow.”
“Why me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “Bjornsson has fifty different people gunning for the nails.” I set aside his dig at my lack of a disguise, but deep in my soul, I knew he was right. Which was why I didn’t like hanging out that deep in my soul.
