Referenced in:
—Portals of North America: A History (14th Edition), Monica Astercroft, Oxford Press, 2014.
—The Magical’s Guide to Long-Term Collections, Argyle Belarious, Beyond The Norm Publishing, 1996.
“Seriously?” Huffing out a sigh, Jessica scowled at the search box and tried to come up with a better avenue. There had to be something on the damn bank. It was a business. And if it had been around as long as Tabitha and anyone else who’d commented on the Gateway seemed so sure it had been, there had to be records of it, right?
She stuck her fingers back into the gel with a different phrase on her mind, forcing herself to repeat it over and over.
Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking.
The search screen flickered, and the only difference now was that the entry from Portals of North America: A History had disappeared. There wasn’t even an entry for the name Winthrop by itself. Or Dirledge, for that matter. If the bank had been named after actual magicals, whoever they were didn’t exist in any kind of formal database—and the magical library in particular was supposed to extend worldwide.
Awesome. Looked like this was a dead end.
So now what? Jessica was back to square one, and that was exactly where she didn’t want to be.
She turned away from the fancy new search box and headed toward the scrying section. Not scrying in the way Tabitha did it, though wouldn’t it have been nice to be able to see her own future? Then again, Tabitha had foreseen her own death, and that might’ve had a lot to do with why the woman had seemed completely insane.
The scrying section of restricted magical library books, however, was for the kind of spells one needed to find things. Or people. And with no luck finding books, Jessica was ready to move on to the next best thing. Most living, breathing beings were a lot less likely to be outdated anyway. And the MJC couldn’t put an injunction on what two magicals decided to talk about in a private conversation. At least not yet.
When she reached the scrying section at the other end of the room, it only took her another two minutes to find the book she wanted—Scrying Stones and Soul-Tracking. That would just have to be good enough. She couldn’t exactly sit back and wait for someone with the knowledge she needed to come waltzing into her bank that no longer worked, completely willing to do the brand-new owner a solid for nothing in return.
The book had obviously been pored over by many different hands. It opened easily and with just a tiny click within the leather-bound spine, and it even came with a table of contents. Convenient.
She found the section on scrying for living beings and took out her phone to snap pictures of the four full pages devoted to the subject. So it wasn’t a completely useless trip, and Tabitha didn’t have anything like this stored away in her secret magical closet upstairs. Why would she when she could see most of what she wanted in the future and never had to find anyone on her own?
Sure. Most magicals Tabitha had wanted to see probably just ended up finding her instead.
Jessica returned the book and paused when her gaze landed on the title that had gotten her, Mel, and Rufus banned from the Denver Public Library three years ago. Temporarily, it seemed. To Find the Unseen by Bradley Emmerson Moore. Yes, the man had been a scryer too, and he’d added more value than he probably understood to the art of tracking an artifact’s magical signature.
“This guy is the expert on untraceable scrying,” Mickey had told them before sending them off to the library. “Find his book. Figure out what we have to do to get into that mansion. And try not to fuck it up.”
They’d found the book, all right. And the spell that got all of Corpus into the target’s highly expensive panic room turned personal vault and back out again unscathed. The only problem with that had been the fact that of the three of them Mickey had sent to hunt down the spell, no one had thought to read any of the warnings marked out with perfect clarity in the beginning of the thick book that was restricted for a very good reason.
Hardcore scrying spells and magical library security did not mix. Yeah, Meryl had been well within her rights to kick all three of them out with a lifetime ban. She could’ve done more, honestly. But at least she’d taken the time to wrap To See the Unseen in a web of solid chains reinforced with orange glowing wards and stick the thing up on the very top shelf.
So they’d all walked away from that one with a new lesson learned.
Jessica turned back toward the shimmering doorway marking the exit of the restricted section, shaking the memory of that massive snafu out of her head. She was a different witch now. Those kinds of mistakes were way in the past.
Now she just had to make sure she didn’t make any more mistakes with the bank, like not listening to the thing’s warnings in her mind and making withdrawals for sexy yet infuriating fae men in crumpled suits telling Jessica they needed her help. Not something she was planning on repeating anytime soon.
The two old magicals whispered to each other behind her, then a low groan made her turn around. Reynaldo pushed himself out of the armchair again, then bent down toward what had to be a case of some kind on the floor in front of him; when he stood, he held a miniature dustpan in one hand and an equally small broom in the other. “Well if you’re not going to move your stiff backside and clean up after yourself before we go, one of us needs to hold a modicum of responsibility.”
“I said I would handle it before we leave,” Boris grumbled.
“Yes, and it takes you forever just to get ready to do that.” The gnome stopped short when he saw Jessica beside the exit, and his eyes widened above another goofy grin. “Ah. Find what you’re looking for?”
She shrugged. “Not exactly. But it’s a start. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.”
Boris’ arm creaked when he raised it over the back of the armchair without turning around. “The pleasure was all mine.”
“Okay. Well…have a good one, then.” She turned back toward the shimmering doorway, but Reynaldo shuffled after her.
“I’m sorry. So sorry, Miss Jessica. Just a moment, if you don’t mind.”
Trying not to grimace, she turned back toward the gnome whose head only came up to the center of her chest and stuck her hands in her pockets. “Yeah?”
“I have one question. Since you’re here, and we’re here, and there’s no telling when this grumbling old fossil will find it in him to get up and make it all the way down to your establishment…”
“Don’t bother her with the trivialities, Reynaldo,” Boris warned.
“Trivial? Ha! Says the dryad who can just root himself into the forest and wait out the worst of it, if the worst were to come upon us.”
Jessica pressed her lips together and frowned at the gnome.
The worst of what?
“Ignore him.” Reynaldo waved dismissively at the back of his friend’s armchair. “But I do speak for both of us when I say we’re unbearably curious—”
“You speak for yourself, old chap.” Boris’ chair creaked as he shifted with the sound of cracking, snapping branches. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Yes, yes. I know. And we’re in the middle of a conversation, thank you very much.” Shaking his head, the gnome blinked expectantly up at Jessica through those insanely thick lenses and shot her a crooked smile. “We just want to know, well… When do you plan on opening it?”
The small bit of good will she’d unintentionally fostered for these two disappeared. How many times was she going to be asked the same question in one day?
“Open what?” she muttered.
“The Gateway, my dear,” Boris growled, still unseen beneath the armchair’s tall back.
“To finish what you’ve already started,” Reynaldo added, clutching the broom and dustpan to his chest and gazing at her with wide brown eyes. “It’s a heck of an undertaking, obviously. But even harder to roll the clock back now that it’s done, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Uh…yeah. I guess it is.” Or she would have if she ha
d any idea what the guy was talking about. “I don’t have an answer to that right now, honestly. But feel free to stop by if you need to, you know, make a deposit or something—”
Boris’ rumbling laughter echoed around the room, his armchair kicking up almost as much noise as it creaked in protest.
“Well, yes,” the gnome continued. “But surely you have some sort of inkling as to—”
“Let the Guardian be,” the dryad interrupted. “We’ve taken up too much of her time already. Someone has a job to get back to.”
Reynaldo scoffed and spun around to glare at the back of his friend’s chair. “Are you implying that this is my job now? Cleaning up after you?”
“I was talking about Jessica.”
And Jessica was getting out there before she found herself caught in the middle of a debate that didn’t have anything to do with her.
As she snuck off toward the shimmering door in the wall, the gnome tsked and stooped over to sweep up the first scattered pile of Boris’ shedding wood chips, shaking his head and mumbling about dryad and their infernal messes. Jessica didn’t bother saying goodbye before she slipped back into the bathroom hallway. The tingle of passing through the magical door made her breath hitch.
Okay, at least she felt like she still could breathe with that. When the bank took over, there wasn’t much of any real sensation at all. And if she didn’t figure out how to get the bank to talk to her again, chances were she wouldn’t make it through another gang invasion in anywhere near the condition she’d come out of the last one. Namely alive. Unless, of course, she undid the Shattering so she could use her full magic again…
“Stop it,” she hissed at herself and booked it down the hall toward the periodicals across from the computers with internet access. She wasn’t going down that road. Jessica had made a promise, and magicals who kept their promises were hard enough to come by these days. Even if they made those promises to themselves.
Her next step was to find that Ben guy from Tabitha’s picture on her own. He’d know something, if not about the bank then at least about Tabitha in a way Jessica never had the time to discover. Consequences of having her boss murdered after one day on the job and all that.
As soon as she passed the computers, she felt eyes on her. On her right, a man in a long black overcoat stood beside the windows, staring at her. He lifted a black-gloved finger to rest it just beneath his eye and winked. A shimmer of green light flashed across his iris when he opened his eye again.
No more changelings. No, thank you.
Jessica shoved her hands into her pockets and headed down Schlessman Hall toward the main desk in the lobby and the front doors. More gazes from more complete strangers followed her—a mage snapped her fingers with a brief flash of purple light and pointed at Jessica. Two men around her age stood in the center of the lobby, blocking her way to the door, and stopped talking when they saw her approach. One of them dipped his head at her, and the other ran his tongue over his top teeth before smirking and folding his arms.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, skirting around them.
“Jessica,” Meryl called, abandoning the universal rule of soft voices inside any library. “You’re leaving already?”
She turned to see the librarian staring at her with a completely different expression—wide eyes above an actual smile. On the other side of the main desk stood two other hedge witches. When they turned toward Jessica with their own knowing smiles, she saw the pins on the collars of each of their jackets. Five pentagrams arranged in the shape of a larger star marked them as part of either a coven or some other secret society she’d never heard of and didn’t want to hear about at all.
Yeah, this was Meryl suddenly trying to play nice. Why? Because apparently, being the new owner of Winthrop & Dirledge came with its own level of celebrity. But where in the world was everybody getting the damn information that Jessica actually was who they thought she was?
“Yeah, I found what I needed,” she said quickly, turning toward the front doors. “Thanks for the access.”
“Hold on a second, huh?” Meryl darted around the front desk one more time, gesturing for her friends to wait as she raced after the witch she’d almost kicked out of the library forty minutes ago. “Jessica!”
Nope.
Jessica shoved the glass doors open with a shoulder and hurried onto the front sidewalk. She needed to get as far away from here as possible.
“Why are you running away?” Meryl called after her, sidestepping around a young mother pushing a stroller into the library. “Do I need to go check on the that room again?”
Jessica whirled around to deny the accusation, whether or not it was meant as a joke. “Everything’s fine. No problems, I promise. Not like last time.”
“Yeah, well nothing’s like last time now, is it? You should’ve told me what you were looking for. I can help—”
“Didn’t need any help.” Jessica avoided the woman’s gaze and started to turn back around toward the street. “But thanks for the—”
She grunted and stumbled backward after having just bumped into someone else heading for the library entrance. Someone who couldn’t have avoided Jessica with all this space out front?
“Sorry,” she muttered and tried to slip around the stranger.
A hand clamped down around her upper arm with surprising force, and the girl jerked Jessica back toward her with a grin. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen, maybe sixteen, but the force of her grip was eerily strong. Her seriously creepy grin matched it perfectly. “Oh…my…goddess…”
“Not quite.” Jessica jerked her arm out of the girl’s hand and forced herself not to rub what would probably be bruises by tomorrow. “Sorry I ran into you—”
“It’s you.” The girl looked at Meryl and barked out a laugh. “It’s her. What’s she doing here?”
“Looking through the restricted section.” The librarian pressed her lips together but couldn’t quite purse away her smile as she eyed Jessica up and down. “Wish I’d known before she was in such a hurry to get out of here.”
“Yeah, okay.” Jessica turned away from them both but couldn’t get three paces toward the street before both Meryl and the teenager caught up with her.
“So when’s it happening, huh?” the girl asked.
“It has to be soon.” Meryl leaned forward, trying to catch Jessica’s gaze. “I mean, you can’t wait forever to open it, right?”
“Not as far as I’ve heard—”
“Christ, will you cut it the fuck out already?” Jessica spun around and stepped backward down the sidewalk, spreading her arms to get herself away from the two witches pressing in on her. Black sparks flared at her fingertips, and a streak of her dampened magic darted from one hand to crack against the cement in front of the teenager’s Ugg boots.
The younger witch stumbled backward, staring at the cracked sidewalk and the tendril of thick black smoke rising into the air before it disappeared. Meryl slowly looked up at Jessica, her eyes widening so far, they looked like they were about to pop out of her head as her mouth dropped open in surprise. Or horror.
Jessica couldn’t tell which.
Shit. That was not the way to stop anyone from asking questions.
Chapter Eleven
“Holy crap.” The teenager bent over for a closer look at the fractured sidewalk, then looked up at Jessica and laughed. “What are you?’
“No one. Nothing.” Jessica turned quickly and headed down Fourteenth Avenue Parkway toward the westbound bus stop. She paused and looked hesitantly back over her shoulder. “That doesn’t count as damage to the library, right?”
Meryl looked up at her in a daze. “I’m sorry?”
“Never mind.”
“Hey, wait!” The girl raced after Jessica, laughing wildly. “You have to tell me how you did that. Hey. I’m talking to you!”
The second she reached for Jessica’s arm again, Jessica leapt away and couldn’t keep her magic from sparking dangerousl
y close to the girl’s hand this time. “Stop. Just…don’t touch me, okay?”
“Sure. If you tell me how you did that. What kind of magic is it?”
“Look, I’m not…” Jessica glanced across the street and found a group of men and women in business suits standing perfectly still, staring at her. One of the women opened her hand to reveal a flicker of yellow magic in her palm before snuffing it out.
Yeah, now she was definitely being followed. Or at the very least intentionally watched. For good or bad, the only way this ended well for everyone without another pile of bodies was for Jessica to split.
“I gotta go.” She spun away from the girl and jogged down the sidewalk.
“But what about… Aw, come on!”
Jessica shook her head and picked up the pace toward the bus stop. The sooner she got off the streets of downtown Denver and back to her own private corner of Golden—to the safety of her bank, and she couldn’t believe she was actually thinking that—the better. She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets again and felt the folded photograph of Tabitha and Ben inside.
She could put all this behind her as soon as she found this Ben guy and got answers from the only living person—or magical, most likely—who was still alive to give them.
It took her only a second to notice the giant woman sitting on the RTD bus stop’s bench beside a man at least two feet shorter than her. They both rose slowly to their feet when they saw her, and Jessica booked it past the bus stop too.
Fine. She’d take a different bus. But she was not having this conversation again with anyone else. However the word had gotten out about who she was and what she was now in charge of protecting, that was how she wanted to keep it. Protected. Not the topic of popular conversation with every damn magical who crossed her path.
The huge woman and comically stocky man both nodded at her through the scratched, stained plastic of the covered bus stop as Jessica blew past them. She kept her head down and her feet moving forward one step at a time.
After twelve months in magical prison, she really hadn’t expected the need to adopt the same “don’t look at me, and I won’t look at you” position on the outside. Not on parole. Could this be any more screwed up right now?
The Cursed Fae (Accessory to Magic Book 2) Page 10
