“Wait, wait, wait.” He stepped toward her and paused, leaning slightly away. “What do you mean you summoned me?”
Jessica gestured toward the cauldron on the desk. “I found a picture of you two and figured you were the best chance I had for getting answers.”
“You found a picture.”
“Yeah. You and Tabitha at Lions Park.” She shrugged. “And it worked. A lot faster than I expected, honestly. And with slightly different results.”
He slowly closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “That was the last time I saw her in person. And she kept that stupid picture.”
Jessica gritted her teeth. This was not going the way she’d expected. “Listen, if you seriously don’t know why the vault’s gone haywire or what’s missing or…literally anything that could be helpful, I hate to be a jerk about it, but I should start looking in other places. Unless you’re ready to start talking.”
Ben ran a hand through his blond hair again and sighed. “Sorry. I can’t help you. Wish I could.”
“Yeah, me too.”
With a nod, Tabitha’s godson turned back toward the front door. Four steps, and he paused. “I’m guessing you had her picked up, then. Right? When she…died.”
Jessica nodded. “There wasn’t anyone else to call. Cleaners were in and out of here in ten minutes. Sorry.”
He winced and shook his head. “I wouldn’t’ve been able to do anything anyway. We’re not related.”
“Right.”
“Right. Well, good luck, I guess.”
She snorted.
“It’s Jessica, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He crossed the rest of the lobby and stopped by the door. “If you find anything that’s, like, more personal than useful…something of hers…”
“I’ll put it aside. Sure.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, and if you happen to remember anything, I’ll take whatever I can get at this point. So…you know where to find me.”
A small, pained smile lifted his lips, then he turned around and reached for the doorknob. “Yeah. Just don’t—”
A crackling flash of blue light burst from the doorknob and zapped Ben’s hand with a loud buzz. He jerked his hand back with a hissing breath and shook it out. When he looked over his shoulder at Jessica again, his frown was convincingly condescending.
She shrugged. “It…does that.”
“Still, huh? Whatever.” He lunged for the doorknob again, which didn’t offer up any more cold jolts of energy but did unlock itself this time, and disappeared through the door. The bell attached to the crow’s feet jingled, then Jessica was alone again in the bank.
She couldn’t stop staring at the doorknob, where the same blue energy had zapped her just like that the first time she’d stepped into this lobby. And countless times after that.
“You trying to tell me something about him?” She gazed at the ceiling and looked quickly back down when a brief flash from the pendant caught her attention. “Great. Too bad you can’t actually tell me. Because that was just another completely useless dead end.”
Almost completely useless. Ben hadn’t given her any helpful hints about why the bank was suddenly acting up. But at least she knew now that Tabitha hadn’t shared this place’s secrets with anyone, even the guy who thought of her as an aunt and brought her food until he’d written that off as a lost cause too. And there was something about him the bank liked.
That thought made a humorless laugh burst from her mouth. Leave it to a sentient building to act like a second-grade boy. Oh, it liked somebody? Well then, better zap them with a painful jolt of bank magic. That’ll get the sentiment across perfectly.
She returned to the armchairs to grab the half-empty glass of water from the coffee table and downed the rest of it in one quick swallow.
They were right back to square one. Felt more like square zero, but they had to start somewhere.
“Can’t you give me anything to work with?”
The only reply was a loud creak from beneath the armchair.
She stepped back and tilted her head to see Confucius’ golden eyes blinking at her from beneath the upholstery.
“Yeah, I’m not even gonna try to decipher that.” She took the glass with her into the kitchen and stuck it in the deep sink.
The bank hadn’t stopped her from scrying and summoning Ben. It had pushed her out so she’d get her ass to the library, which was a dead end too except for the scrying spells she’d found. And this place didn’t zap clients. Unless they were actually Requiem members or part of a rogue team storming in and trying to wrest that stupid coin away from her. So there was something about Ben she needed to pay attention to.
Whatever it was, she’d have to let that play out on its own. Right now, she still had to figure out how to get that vault door open and the deposit boxes responding to their clients’ fingerprints again.
Raging threats and endless attacks seemed pretty damn likely in her future, otherwise.
“If you can still read my mind, bank, I hope you heard that.” Jessica climbed the back staircase, pulling herself up with a hand on the creaking wooden bannister. “Because that’s what we’re looking at. Now that everyone and their magical mom knows who’s running this place, I don’t think we’re done being attacked. So get it together and help me out.”
No, the bank didn’t reply. The pendant didn’t give her another muted flash of light either. For this, apparently, Jessica was on her own.
She hadn’t been in Tabitha’s secret reliquary closet behind the bedroom wall since the last time she’d gone through the scryer’s more personal magical affects for the warded potion recipe. But it couldn’t hurt to look through things one more time.
Jessica gathered the pristinely kept spellbooks from the bottom shelf, tucked them under her arm, and left the glowing hidden closet as the bedroom wall rematerialized. If she’d learned anything during her years spent running, hiding, and breaking more laws than she could conceive of in a single thought, it was that there was always more than one way to get a job done.
She stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
No one had answers for her. Fine. She’d just have to go through this by trial and error and hope for few trials and significantly lessened error.
Jessica glanced at the creepy dungeon door at the end of the upstairs hallway, and almost as if the Gateway itself had read her mind, a thin tendril of eerily glowing green light curled up from beneath the bottom edge of the door.
“Or those assholes get what they want from you,” she hissed at the door, “and we all die. Right?”
She thought she heard a low, growling chuckle on the other side, but that could’ve been her imagination.
Because then she realized the rapid, urgent thumping of that damn coin welded inside the desk drawer downstairs had returned too.
“No. Absolutely not.” She spun away from the Gateway and booked it down the stairs.
The coin thumped with even more urgency, rattling the drawer and what sounded like the entire desk in its effort to escape again.
Jessica’s shoulder slammed into the wall at the bottom of the staircase landing before she turned and hurried toward the lobby. Confucius skittered right in front of her from out of nowhere, hissing madly. In her effort to avoid tripping over him, she tripped over her own feet instead and staggered toward the desk. The spellbooks under her arm toppled to the ground and slid away, the covers open and the pages bent beneath their own weight.
She slammed her hands down on the desk to stop herself from hitting the floor too, and the wood beneath her hands grew hot. “This has got to stop!”
The crow over the front door cawed before the bell jingled wildly and the door flew open.
“No, no, no. Not now! We’re closed!”
The second the newest magical client stepped through the front door, the coin ceased its crazed pounding against the inside of the drawer.
“I’ve been c
oming here for the last two hundred years, witch,” the man said in a low voice as the door shut behind him. “And this bank is never closed before seven o’clock.”
Removing her hands from the desk’s surface, Jessica straightened and swiped her hair away from her face. “Yeah, well, it’s under new management now, so…”
Despite the magical client’s pert smile and contained demeanor as he slowly pulled off his gloves by the fingertips, Jessica froze.
Not only had the magicals downtown outside the library known who she was, making it a lot more difficult for her to slip beneath the radar just to find a less creepy bus ride home, but now they’d followed her here too.
It was one of the magicals in business suits who’d stared at her from across the street. The one who, if she remembered correctly, had been standing right beside the woman who’d fired off a magical-flare salute as Jessica booked it away from the library.
She blinked. “What do you want?”
“Oh, come now. Is that any way to treat your clients?” The man slowly closed his fingers around both gloves in one hand and smoothed his dark hair back with the other, taking slow, deliberate steps across the lobby. His gaze roamed around the room, moving up and down from shelf to stuffed shelf.
“You weren’t a client the first time I saw you.” Jessica’s hands balled into fists. “And I haven’t seen you here before, either.”
“Ah. Well it’s only been two weeks, hasn’t it?” The suit took a long, slow sniff of the air and closed his eyes. “Though I must say, you’ve done plenty to improve the overall atmosphere in that time.”
“Well, I didn’t wanna hang around without giving it a personal touch.”
He shot her a sidelong glance and smirked. “I’m sure.”
Jessica watched him carefully as he eyed a small box on the shelf and poked it with a finger. Forget how creepy it was that she’d seen this guy five hours ago on the street, staring after her as if she were a walking, talking, agitated piece of steak. The last thing she wanted was for the guy to ask about a deposit—or a withdrawal—only to be told the witching vault was currently out of order.
She didn’t think she could handle another angry magical threatening her with whatever they thought was supposed to make an impact. At the very least, she could play grumpy bank owner and go with serious deflection.
“You look like a guy who can read.”
The man turned toward her with a raised eyebrow. “If that was meant as a compliment, I’m not sure—”
“Yeah, I’m not sure, either. Because the sign out front clearly says we’re closed.”
“But the door was unlocked.”
Shit. She didn’t really have a comeback for that one.
The guy stepped lightly toward the desk, looking it over with a brief, almost patronizing glance. “I’m not here for any transactions, Miss…”
“Okay.” Jessica gestured toward the door. “Then feel free to head right back out. I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“You look fairly free to me. I only want to ask a few questions, if you don’t mind. Seeing as the time for such discussions draws shorter every day.”
She scowled at him and stepped toward her side of the desk. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The reckoning.”
“Yeah, everybody felt it, and now everybody knows. Great. If you want me to get back to work, I need space to actually—” The coin thumped madly around in the drawer again. Jessica slammed both hands down on the desk and hissed.
Before she saw him move, the man leapt toward the desk and slammed his hands down right in front of hers. She whipped her head up to meet his gaze as the coin thumped and rattled and smacked against the drawer.
His eyes flashed with a burst of crimson burnt orange and gold, and for a split second, the grin he shot her looked like it was made of sharp, glistening fangs. Then his illusion returned. “Perhaps I was mistaken.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jessica didn’t bat an eyelash. Damn straight he was mistaken. The nerve of this guy.
“Most people are these days,” she muttered through clenched teeth.
“I see you are, in fact, quite busy. No doubt you have your hands full.”
“My hands, my business.” She cocked her head and pounded the top of the desk with the side of her fist.
To her surprise, the coin actually responded and settled the hell down.
The man’s lips twitched as his grin widened, then he pulled away from the desk and reached into the inside jacket pocket of his long winter coat. “I do hope no one else has made you an offer.”
Jessica scoffed. “That really depends on what kind of offer you’re talking about.”
“First rights.” He removed a business card from a silver card holder and slid it across the desk toward her. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for quite some time. Many of us have. When it’s open, give me a call. I’m sure we can find a suitable arrangement for both parties.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she growled.
The lunatic who might have been a Kulmáro—if all those fangs were really his and not just another illusion meant to rattle her—chuckled softly. It was the kind of chuckle passed around circles at fancy parties where no one was amused by anything in the slightest. Then he tapped the desk with two fingers and turned away. “I would hurry, if I were you. The last owner of this establishment squandered fifty years with her lack of action. Honestly, I’m impressed by how much you’ve managed in such a short amount of time. But the Dalu’Rázj won’t wait forever, you know.”
“The what?”
“You’re quite amusing. Do let me know about whatever other offers make their way across your…desk.” His nostrils flared when he glanced at the desk that was now still and completely silent once more. “I’m more than willing to top any of them.”
“Great.” Jessica glared at his back as the Kulmáro strolled casually back toward the front door. Her fingers brushed against the melted lock of the desk’s center drawer, and she didn’t remove them until the man had disappeared down the sidewalk.
She needed to get rid of this coin. Or at least make sure it quit acting up like this when anyone else was in the room. Because she was pretty sure she’d just been bribed for something, and she had absolutely no idea what that was.
“I don’t think so.” Jessica pointed at the door, and the yellow light flashing at her fingertip slid the bolt into place to lock up tight again. Then she looked down at the lightless pendant resting against her chest and shook her head. “We need to fix this. I keep saying that, you keep holding back, and now I have to prepare for whoever else is gonna come storming in here trying to buy their way into…what?”
Shooting a brief glance at the ceiling, Jessica grimaced and removed her hand from the drawer’s magically soldered lock. “Fifty bucks on the Gateway.”
It was a fairly low-stake bet, but she’d learned not to go overboard with high prices and show her hand. That didn’t mean she was any less sure that whatever the Gateway was about to do, she’d be dealing with a lot more slimeballs just like the Kulmáro who should never be allowed to get their hands on that door. No matter how much they were willing to pay.
Fortunately, no one else showed up before 7:00 p.m. rolled around and it was officially time to close up. Even though the bank had already been closed since Jessica had taken off on her useless adventure to the library.
She microwaved herself a frozen dinner and took it back upstairs with her, as well as Tabitha’s old spellbooks she’d only had about an hour to sift through after how long it took to shake off the creepy-crawly feeling the Kulmáro had left on her skin. And he hadn’t even touched her.
Jessica hadn’t touched his business card either, which could have been charmed or hexed or warded with any number of things, and she wasn’t interested in selling anything to anyone. Which was odd, because two weeks ago, she would’ve sold almost anything just to make ends meet and keep
from going back to her old life.
Two weeks ago, she would’ve been thrilled not to have the bank’s constant smartass remarks running through her head. Now, the lack of them made the bank feel entirely too quiet. And lonely.
She wolfed down her extra-hot macaroni and broccoli and got to work sifting through Tabitha’s spellbooks. It was oddly reminiscent of her first night spent doing the same thing. Only this time, Jessica wasn’t looking for clues as to how to keep things running smoothly while she had this job. She was looking for a fix to a problem she was pretty sure hadn’t existed in the history of Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking. Until she’d gotten her hands on it.
The reading put her to sleep after an hour, and she passed out on the gray couch in her bedroom only to wake with a crick in her neck and the foreboding feeling that she’d had another dream she wasn’t supposed to have. Though she didn’t remember the latest one, it still left her with the same awful sensation as the first.
She shouldn’t have been dreaming about her past. At least not that far back. And certainly not about the things she’d paid good money to ensure she never thought about again. How much had she paid for that?
That was the strange part. Jessica remembered the Peddler and his home. She remembered stepping through the slanted front door and brushing bits of plastic sheeting aside, which the grimy magical had told her was from their remodeling. Honestly, using the plastic as a way to warm the house against the drafty chill was a lot more likely. She remembered the man’s warning that once he locked onto the memories she didn’t want and removed them entirely, there would be no possible way for her to regain them. He’d asked her if she was sure, and Jessica had agreed with every fiber of her being.
But she couldn’t for the life of her remember what those memories were or why she’d believed removing them was her only option.
What had she been doing for two years between that night in the alley—with all the fires and screaming and the faces in silver mist—and the day she’d walked right into a Peddler’s house to pay for illegal mind-sweeping?
The Cursed Fae (Accessory to Magic Book 2) Page 13
