Morgan smiled.
Penny reached up, demanding a high-five, “Preach, sister.”
Sitting on the sofa with her friends made Lucy feel better. She was glad Marcus had put on the brakes. Now that she had a little distance, losing her virginity in the back of that limo would have been gross. In LA, at Marcus’ mansion, that seemed like a much better idea.
Lucy noticed a mini-camcorder box sitting on the table and poked it with her foot. “What’s this?”
Penny snorted. “Morgan bought it and insisted we run up and down the Strip like tourists, recording stuff.”
“We are tourists, and I seem to remember you prancing for the camera,” said Morgan.
“I never pranced.”
“Shall we go to the tape?” Morgan asked, reaching for the camera.
“Okay, so maybe there was a little prancing.”
Lucy chuckled. “I have an idea, how about we do all the tourist stuff tomorrow? Morgan can record it all for posterity and there will most definitely be more prancing.”
“Yes!” Penny shouted.
Morgan just smiled at the two of them, the mini-recorder nestled in his lap. Lucy could tell he was over his jealous tantrum, which was good, because she and Marcus were about to become a thing and she would need her best friend’s support when her parents flipped out.
But there was something else going on with Morgan. He was projecting a strange kind of calm. No, it was more like a resolve. It was odd and she wondered what he was thinking.
Her train of thought was interrupted when a pillow slammed into her head and Penny began laughing hysterically.
“Oh. It is sooo on,” Lucy said, all thoughts of tentacle-monsters, Mr. Muscles, and even how she had basically tried to rape Marcus in the limo, gone from her head.
CHAPTER 12
It turned out that Morgan, the video confessional guy, had been Lucy’s best friend back in the day. The kid tried to play it down, but it was obvious by how he talked about Lucy that his feelings extended beyond friendship. He explained how they came to be in Vegas, staying in a high-roller suite. Marcus Horn—or Uncle Marcus as the kid referred to him a couple of times—not only introduced Lucy and Morgan to magic, but set them up in Vegas to try out their newfound hobby. And they won big, fifty thousand and counting, by the time Morgan recorded the tape.
But Morgan had started to get a creepy vibe from Marcus’ fascination with Lucy, especially when the older dude had shown up in Vegas and disappeared with Lucy for an evening of who-knew-what. My imagination could come up with an entire list of not so great things, and by the look on Morgan’s face he wasn’t lacking in the imagination department either.
Morgan was sure Marcus’ intentions were nefarious, seriously that’s the word the kid used. So, Morgan decided to make the tape and mail it to himself from Vegas, just in case something bad happened—smart man.
I was nice, and I waited until the tape ended before I made snarky comments.
“Horn? Really?” I sighed. “He’s a bad guy and goes by the last name Horn? I’m assuming it’s not his real name, because you magical folk aren’t big on using your real names, but why, oh why would he choose Horn? I mean, if I’m on the lookout for renegade blood-mages, which I’ll bet a million dollars he is, the person I’m going to check on first is the dude named Horn.”
Wyatt’s face was squished up into an I’m-not-laughing expression, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Elyse was patting my thigh and smiling politely.
“Are you finished?” Cynthia asked.
“No, not even close,” I said, a little loud. “Why didn’t you show us this tape before we went in? It would have been nice to know the possibility existed that Lucy’s coma-brain might have thrown a blood-mage at us.”
“We had no way of knowing that you would end up in Lucy’s memory of the Las Vegas trip,” Cynthia said, calmly. “And even if we had, every account we were able to collect after the fact, with the exception of this video, states unequivocally that Marcus was nowhere near Las Vegas that weekend.”
“Wait, why would you be looking for Marcus in Las Vegas anyway?” Maddie asked.
Cynthia let out a long tension-filled breath. “Because, the day after Lucy returned from Las Vegas, the Society found her inside the home of Marcus Horn. She was literally drenched in blood and there was an entire coven of blood-mages laying in pieces at her feet.”
Everyone, including Wyatt, was rendered speechless by that visual. I was dumbfounded. If Cynthia had given me a hundred guesses I would have never come up with that.
Maddie finally broke the silence and asked, “What did she say happened?”
“Lucy had suffered massive damage to her psyche,” Ellen said quietly. “She had no memory of what occurred that night. Even the events of Las Vegas were lost to her.”
“But she must have remember who she was, and her family?” Maddie said.
“For Lucy, the first eighteen years of her life are spotty at best. She recalls fragments, snippets of birthdays, holidays spent with her family. But when we found her, she couldn’t even tell us her home address.”
Maddie blinked away tears and Wyatt looked like he’d just been gut-punched. I’d had to say goodbye to my Aunt Tina when she went into the Society’s version of witness protection, but I still had all my memories of her, all the happy recollections of my childhood. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have all that taken away, and it would be even worse to know just enough that I’d had a family but couldn’t remember them. It would be torture.
Cynthia typed a few commands on a keyboard and a split-screen image appeared on the TV behind her. The image on the right was of a ginormous house, and on the left was a thirty-something-looking man. He had dark hair, matching dark eyes and had that hedge fund, rich guy look.
“Meet Marcus Horn,” said Cynthia. “Billionaire, blood-mage, psychopath.”
“He looks like Iron Man,” Wyatt blurted out. “You know, Tony Stark, only an evil, dick-ish version of Tony Stark.”
Cynthia glared at Wyatt until he scooted back in his chair and covered his mouth with his hands.
I studied the face on the screen. Wyatt was right that Marcus looked like an evil Tony Stark, but I didn’t actually recognize him.
“We didn’t see this guy anywhere in Vegas,” I said, looking at Wyatt for confirmation. He shook his head and kept his mouth shut.
“That’s not surprising,” said Ellen. “According to Morgan, the young man from the video, Marcus was only in Las Vegas for a few hours on the first evening.”
“He didn’t say that on the tape,” Elyse said. “Did you guys go talk to him after?”
“We had a coven of dead blood-mages,” Ellen said. “Who appeared to have met their fate at the hand of a girl who, by all accounts, had no power. Of course we spoke to him—and everyone else we could find who could help us make sense of what happened.”
“Wait,” I said. “What about her family? They must have known something?”
Cynthia and Ellen shared a look.
Uh-oh.
“We couldn’t locate her family,” said Cynthia.
“What do you mean, you couldn’t locate them? That kid, Morgan, said they were best friends. He had to know them, where they lived?” I said.
“By the time we reached Morgan and the other girl, Penny, they’d both had their memories modified, as were the memories of their immediate families and multiple, mutual friends. We did our best to recover what we could from Morgan. However we used a technique that is far from perfect. So the additional information he provided was incomplete.”
“But there was nothing about Lucy, his best friend?” I asked.
“Morgan only had a vague memory of a girl named Lucy,” said Cynthia. “Someone he had known in school, but nothing beyond that. In his mind, he and Penny made the trip to Las Vegas alone, and they had run into his Uncle Marcus. When the tape arrived it caused the boy to question his own sanity. Could you imagine watching yourself describ
e a person and an event that you had no memory of? We did what we could to help him. As for Lucy and her family, like I said before there was no record they ever existed.”
“Whoa,” said Wyatt.
“Yes, it was quite a ‘whoa’ moment,” said Ellen.
I thought about the heated conversation I had with Lucy on our way to Stanford, when I’d asked her real last name. This explained a lot.
“How do you make a family disappear?” I asked.
“It would take power, of both the magical and regular worldly variety,” said Cynthia.
“So, it was Horn?”
“That’s the theory, yes,” Ellen said.
My eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my head. Why did Society members insist on talking in circles and riddles? My frustration got the better of me and I slammed my hand down on the table harder than I’d planned. At least I had everyone’s attention.
“It’s been over thirty years,” I said. “Are you telling me you haven’t been able to hunt this dirt-bag down and make him pay for what he did to Lucy’s family? You have a magic map in the other room, you’re telling me that can’t help?”
“As you know, that is not the map’s function,” Cynthia said through gritted teeth. “Until now we assumed Marcus died with his coven. That Lucy had ended him in such a way that there was nothing left to identify. You all understand the Society doesn’t just let blood-mages run wild. If we suspect someone of blood-magic, a case is built, evidence is procured, and only then do we act. Marcus had been under suspicion for years, but no evidence was ever found to prove his guilt until the night we discovered Lucy in his home. Flash forward to now and certain things about the spells used by the blood-mage at Stanford, particularly his metamorphosis into a winged creature, have Marcus’ signature all over them.”
“Fantastic,” I said, sighing.
“If Marcus survived the carnage of the night we discovered Lucy, it means he’s been in hiding all these years. We need to know, either way.”
“And you think even with her nuked memory, Lucy might remember something?” Elyse asked.
“The fact that Lucy’s subconscious is fixated on this particular memory, the memory of Las Vegas, it can’t be a coincidence. We’ve always known that it was the pivotal point for her. We’ve just never been able to figure out why. If she is beginning to remember what happened, we might finally have an opportunity to get the answers we need.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why is it so important to know if Horn is dead or alive?”
I switched on my sight, watching Cynthia’s aura as she formulated her answer. She was a powerful mage in complete control of her power, but I was the Ollphiest and she couldn’t hide the truth from me.
Cynthia spoke slowly, “Marcus, the items we found in his house, his personal grimoire of blood spells . . . it became obvious that—”
There!
My inner-beast was on high alert.
Yep, I agreed.
It had just been a flash, the smallest blip in her aura, and I knew Cynthia was lying to us.
I kept my face composed as Cynthia went on, “What I should say is that the evidence was overwhelmingly clear Marcus was the most powerful blood-mage the Society had encountered.”
Why would she lie?
She is a witch.
While I’m glad that very simple explanation works for you, I’m going to need a more complete explanation.
“Alright,” I started spinning as fast as I could. “So we need to wake Lucy up, which is proving difficult due to her demon-dog protectors.”
“Demon-dog-sharktopus,” Wyatt corrected me.
I rolled my eyes. “Right. With Lucy conjuring up those things, waking her up is turning out to be problematic. And now what? You want us to hang out in her memory to see if we catch sight of Horn? Because that sounds like a very bad idea.”
“You won’t have to wait long,” said Cynthia. “Marcus is due to show up this evening. Well, the 1988 evening that Lucy is reliving.”
“My brain is starting to hurt,” Wyatt said, massaging his temples.
“It is really quite simple,” Ellen explained. “We will have you reinserted. It was afternoon when we pulled you out, and it stands to reason that you will re-enter the memory at almost the precise moment that you exited.”
“Yeah, but you said the blood bath went down in LA a couple of days later,” I said. “Are you really suggesting we hang out in Lucy’s brain for a few days?”
“I know it sounds daunting, but we need to know if Marcus survived,” said Cynthia.
“You can’t be serious,” said Elyse, unhappy. “It doesn’t sound daunting, it sounds insane. Maybe everyone missed it, but Orson and Wyatt were nearly killed. And you want to send them back in?”
I patted her hand resting on my thigh. “Hey, we had the situation under control. The thing was almost dead.”
“I don’t care what you think you were experiencing,” Elyse snapped at me. “Because here in the real world, you were having a massive seizure and you were crashing.” She turned to Cynthia. “Go on, tell them how the healers were freaking out because they didn’t know what was wrong or how to stop it.”
Cynthia sighed. “Elyse is correct. The healers were worried when you started seizing. But they think they know how to stop that from happening again.”
“Really,” said Elyse, folding her arms.
Cynthia was patient, ignoring Elyse’s sarcastic tone. “Yes, the healers suggest sending both you and Maddie into Lucy’s memory with Orson and Wyatt. You can, obviously, help with any other possible attacks, but more importantly Maddie would provide direct healing to anyone who may need it. The healers feel that an immediate and direct response to the specific scenario will create a much more stable healing effect.”
I waited for the punch line, but it didn’t come. Cynthia was serious.
I was done, and I made sure Cynthia would understand where I was coming from when I said, “That is the single, stupidest thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth.”
Wyatt made a sound that was something between a hiccup and a sneeze.
Cynthia locked eyes with me, her face a blank slate. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” I said quietly. “Wyatt and I are the only ones with Lucy’s tattoo spell, so I’m assuming some Society flunkey has figured out how to duplicate Lucy’s spell work.”
Elyse had a death grip on my hand. Maybe she thought that if she squeezed hard enough, I might shut up.
Not a chance.
I said, “And I’m also assuming that you’re planning on inking Elyse and Maddie to, as you put it, send them in. The thing is, if it’s that easy to tattoo someone up and jam them into Lucy’s head, why don’t you go? You’re the resident uber witch, so get yourself inked and dive right in. We’ll stay here and watch.”
The silence was deafening. Not only had I basically called Cynthia stupid, and in a roundabout way accused her of not valuing our lives, I had also called her a witch. Now, in polite Paragon Society circles, the ‘W’ word is never used, it is considered a slur. Society members were mages—not witches, wizards, magicians or any other term Hollywood embraced to describe magic folk. And if you decided to break protocol and let fly with one of the forbidden words, you would probably end up in a fight with someone who could fling fireballs at your face.
Cynthia didn’t blink. Her hands remained perfectly motionless on top of the table, but her hair began to float.
Huh.
That was new, Lucy’s hair never floated. Of course, Lucy wore her hair short in a spiky sort of punk cut, so there was nothing really to float. Cynthia’s hair was past her shoulders and apparently when she started to suck in massive amounts of power, her hair floated like her head was encased in a Zero-G bubble.
I decided to let the Ollphiest peek out and say hi. I growled, low and menacing, and knew from hours of practicing in the mirror that my eyes were glowing.
Elyse and Ellen moved with what looked like
coordinated speed. Elyse jumped up, sliding her cute butt onto the table, using her body to break the staring contest between Cynthia and me. Ellen did some kind of dampening mojo that sucked all the magic energy out of the room. It was super-impressive. With my eyes in glow mode, my magic sight is automatic, so when Ellen did her thing I saw the magic energy wink out just like someone blowing out a candle.
Cynthia was already charged and ready to rumble, and as a shifter I carried my magic with me, so the situation was far from over. Cynthia stood, pushing her chair away with a foot. She needed a clear line of sight, as it made for better aiming.
“Cynthia,” Ellen said, doing her best to break Cynthia’s focus.
“He crossed the line,” Cynthia said, never breaking eye contact. “I’m not going to do any permanent damage. I’m just going to remind Mr. Reid who’s in charge.”
“Hey guys,” Wyatt said, with a nervous laugh. “Jokes over, come on. It’s time to save Lucy, enough of this crap.” Wyatt was inching in my direction. I knew if he got a finger on me he’d blink us away.
It turned out that everyone worried needlessly, because Maddie, who hadn’t moved or said anything, ended the standoff before anyone knew what was happening. Individual bubble shields popped up round Cynthia and me.
Cynthia shrieked in frustration and slammed two flaming fists into her shield with zero effect. While flaming-mage-hands are really cool as weapons go, razor-sharp Ollphiest talons with the bonus of being able to shred magic like paper are way cooler. I swiped at the shield and it popped, only to be immediately replaced by another. Maddie was quick, I’d give her that. I swiped at the new shield and once again a new one instantly replaced it.
I growled.
My eyes flicked toward Maddie. She was still sitting casually in her chair. How the hell was she pulling this off?
Show them that we do not play games.
The voice inside my head roared.
Whoa, easy. I’m standing right here, you don’t have to shout.
Cynthia had to stop banging on her shield because her flaming fists sent sparks flying around the inside of the bubble and the hem of her skirt had caught fire. Ellen and Elyse were smirking at the spectacle. Well, I could do much better than that. I started swiping again, this time with full shifter speed. It still wasn’t enough—my claws moved with blurring speed, but the shield-bubbles reappeared at the speed of light. I gave up after I’d popped maybe twenty.
Lucy: A Paragon Society Novel (Book 3) Page 12
