The Red King: Wilde Justice, Book 1

by Jenn Stark

  “I thought it was cute,” Nikki said, leaning over the silver-tipped white feathers that had collapsed into a neat pile atop her invitation. She slid the card out from beneath the plumage and read aloud. “We’re to meet at the Palazzo Mystere tonight.”

  “The Mystere!” Valetti said, as if this was news to him. He tore open his own envelope, tossing it a little as he did so. The explosive effect was much more impressive that way, a profusion of flying feathers that cascaded in a happy little storm over the card. He picked up the invitation and scrutinized it. “You are quite right. But there hasn’t been a Spettacolo there in all the years I have served on the magicians’ senate. A true coup indeed for the prelate to have kept this so secret.”

  Was that a tiny bit of jealousy I heard in Valetti’s voice? “The prelate runs the Spectacle every year?”

  “He has for the past ten years. He also hosts the Magicians’ Ball at the Casino of Spirits, but the Spettacolo is, as they say, a movable feast.”

  “And this palazzo they’ve chosen is awesome?” Nikki asked. “It seems like every house I’ve entered in this town is cooler than the last.”

  “The Mystere is one of the oldest and most beautiful palazzos in Venice,” Valetti said, but his voice was more perplexed than enraptured. He pocketed the card, then placed both hands on the table. “If you will excuse me, I have much to prepare. Please do accept my apologies, Justice Wilde, for startling you with the invitation. I should have warned you.”

  “I should’ve warned you that I don’t like surprises.” I added the slightest bit of emphasis to my words, but if it made an impression on Valetti, he gave no indication. We watched him leave with bemusement, and Nikki turned to me.

  “Was it something we said?”

  “Not us,” I reached for her invitation. She handed it over, and I read its contents. Though the envelopes had been hand addressed, the card inside looked generic. I could only assume that Valetti’s had read the same as Nikki’s. And there was nothing there of interest. The name and address of the Palazzo Mystere—which sounded a little ridiculous, frankly—the attire of “standard” and the time. That was it.

  “What’s standard?” I asked. “Are we wearing the same costumes we wore to Ca Daria?”

  “That would be negative. I already got a call from Signora Visione that she’s expecting us at three o’clock for a fitting. I think she got a kick out of us.”

  “Or she wants something.” I’d shared my run-in with Lorenzo Garcia already with Nikki, and we were both still coming to terms with it. I had no love for the dark practitioners, but the carrot they were dangling was pretty hefty. And the man was right: I had made my peace with Gamon, whose crimes were numerous, specific, and brutal.

  “Or that.” Nikki nodded. She gave me a long look over her espresso. “You haven’t told Armaeus yet about Lorenzo and his gang.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I’m Justice of the Arcana Council, and they were marked. I brought them to Gamon’s door, and she can hear their case. If Gamon judges them worthy to approach Armaeus with their request, they’ll be given that chance.”

  She made a face. “You know he’d support you if you wanted him to at least listen to the guy.”

  “That’s not the question.” And it wasn’t. I knew without a doubt that Armaeus would support me, no matter what I did as Justice. Setting aside his personal feelings for me, he wanted the Council to be strong. You couldn’t get that if you micromanaged your members, beyond a few hard and fast rules. Only trouble was… “I suspect he supported Abigail Strand as well when she was Justice. Not in the same way, maybe.”

  Nikki scoffed. “I sure as hell hope not.”

  “But it sounded like he gave her a pretty long rope. And with that length, she entered into some relationships that maybe she shouldn’t have with the dark practitioners. Relationships he let happen.”

  “Or she was already in those relationships, and she couldn’t find an easy way out.” Nikki’s phone pinged, and she scanned a few screens with evident satisfaction, then stood. “Either way, you’re not her, and we’ve got our own itinerary. You ready to go?”

  “You mean go, go, or teleport, go?”

  “The latter. The morgue is closed today, and you’ve got a clear shot at…this. Simon snapped it before he shut down the cameras early this morning.” She flipped her phone around and showed me a utilitarian room with a lot of metal drawers lining one wall. It was dark, and empty, and creepy as hell.

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  Nikki waved me quiet as Valetti’s housekeepers entered to clear away our plates, apparently signaled to do so by Nikki standing. I followed her as she moved to the side of the terrace, and waited until she continued in a low voice.

  “No matter what Valetti said, the police aren’t releasing the report on Greaves and Marrow anytime soon. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s squashed it. But Simon did some digging around and found out where Greaves is stowed.”

  “Of course he did.”

  “Simon also told me that Greaves’s brother is flying in tomorrow to identify the body as next of kin and sign the papers for release. We all suspect those signatures will be meaningless if someone wants the disposition of the remains to remain, well, indisposed, but they’ve kept the body close at hand for viewing, which means you can also see it. You know…really see it.” She tapped her forehead with a long, manicured fingernail. “With your magic eyeball.”

  I grimaced. “What’s it going to be stuffed with, sawdust?”

  “Don’t know. But if they aren’t doing an autopsy, or if they’re quashing the results of that autopsy, no one will ever know if they’ve got beanbags for kidneys or not. In real life, Greaves and Marrow were unmarried and lived together. Possibly partners, possibly just roommates. Either way, a hell of a way to go for them. They deserve better.”

  I thought about the purple corona that had surrounded both men. They did deserve better, I thought. They deserved Justice.

  In the end, teleporting into a morgue was a lot more exciting than it should have been. While Simon’s image was solid on the broad strokes of the room, apparently the morgue wasn’t quite as closed as he’d believed. I poofed into existence close enough to a dead body to check its back molars.

  “What in the—” I wheeled back and crashed to the ground, barely scrambling behind a rolling metal chest of drawers before a tech blew through the door. For the next twenty minutes, I died a thousand deaths as the tech helped prepare a guy who’d endured just one. Finally, he deposited the corpse in a drawer and exited, and I peeked up from behind the chest of drawers.

  I scuttled over to the wall of shelves, found the drawer for Greaves, and pulled it out.

  My third eye did the rest. I gazed at Greaves’s bloated, mottled face, then swept my gaze swiftly down his body. He’d been a magician of some power, I could see even now, despite his light having been so forcefully stamped out. There’d been no Nul Magis administered to him either. He’d been killed by some other drug.

  But that wasn’t the piece that was important. I didn’t have to fake my gasp as I staggered back from the gurney.

  The magician Greaves had been hollowed out, then expertly rehealed…with a jumble of what looked like extra parts shoved inside him. I couldn’t even tell if the extra parts were human.

  “Sweet Christmas, I’m sorry, Greaves,” I murmured. The purple corona around his head was fainter now, but still present, convicting me.

  The thick voice behind me made me jump. “Explain to me, if you will, why I should not arrest you right now and turn you over to Interpol, Ms. Wilde.”

  I jerked around so fast my head spun, and came smack up against Detective Tall, Dark, and Dour from the night before last. “I’m sorry, I think there’s been some mistake,” I offered lamely, never mind that I was standing in the middle of a Venetian morgue without any right to be there. “I mean, I happened to be walking by, took a wrong turn, I don’t know how I ended up in—”
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  “Ms. Wilde.” At the detective’s stern tone, I looked at him—really looked at him. And beneath the badass dark eyes and short, cropped hair and lantern jaw, he was definitely Connected. Which meant…

  My eyes went wide. All three of them. “You know Greaves and Marrow are magicians,” I accused.

  The detective’s expression didn’t change. “I got the request from Count Valetti to expedite cremation today. Count Valetti is a longtime patron of the Venice police, and we are grateful for his support. There have also been rumors that Valetti has…esoteric interests, but at first I thought nothing of that. These men, this Greaves and Marrow, they were not Venetian citizens, however. It is not so easy as that. But there was definitely something that did not feel right about these bodies, you see? And there was also something odd about their energy, even in death. So I thought I would wait, and I would watch. I confess, I was curious to see who came for them.”

  “Maybe I was curious too.”

  “Perhaps so, but I also paid attention these past few months when a particularly striking brunette was designated first with a Blue Notice, and then with a Red Notice, and then with no notice at all, from Interpol. I rather liked the looks of her, so I took notice. I did not expect to meet you here, however.”

  “That makes two of us.” I directed his attention back to Greaves. “How much do you know?”

  “You understand, we see many, many drowned bodies here in Venice. This one bothered me, and I am not without resources of my own. While I did not have the advantage of second sight, I do have access to a hospital with ultrasound scanners. It took very little convincing to find someone to help me.”

  “I’m sure,” I murmured. Even for an Italian, he was unreasonably attractive. I suspected a lot of people were happy to help him.

  “In their scans, I saw what I suspect you saw as well. Only, unlike me, you were expecting there to be…animal parts where human parts should be. I would like to know why.”

  I rocked back on my heels, wondering how to play this. I was on this case in my role of Justice, with the task of protecting the Connected community from itself. The police were not supposed to be part of the equation. Nearly everywhere on earth had police, however, and most of the time, I’d be dealing with criminals. How had the previous Justice handled this?

  Then again, Abigail had been certifiable, so her methods were probably less than ideal.

  The detective seemed content to wait and watch me as I worked through the finer points of the problem, but I had a fitting to get to.

  “You want the truth?” I asked abruptly. “I’m inclined to give it to you.”

  “I would find that very…unexpected,” the detective said.

  I plunged ahead. “Greaves and Marrow were magicians, part of an order that meets in your fair city every year at this time. They were targeted for their organs because human organs go very well with the production of magic-based drugs. With me so far?”

  The detective’s face had shut down, but not for the reason I immediately suspected. “Technoceuticals,” he said.

  Okay, so maybe the guy was more than a pretty face. “Yes. Someone wanted these magicians’ parts for a new strain of drug, and they got them. But, being the tidy sort, they cleaned up after they got what they needed. I’m not really sure how they did that, honestly, but there’s a lot of rogue magic running around that we haven’t quite accounted for.”

  The detective let the rogue magic reference pass without comment. Good man. “And you’re here…”

  “To get who did it.”

  “And then?”

  “And then suggest that they turn themselves in to the local authorities,” I said, offering him a winning smile. “I can’t say for sure they’ll be willing to do that, but that’s the plan.”

  “You think I’ll believe you?”

  “I do.” I nodded. “I think you’ll believe me for exactly four more minutes while you walk me outside and let me go. And then I think you’ll remember that the word of a woman who was on Interpol’s most wanted lists not all that long ago is probably not worth anywhere near as much as the proof you have on your medical scanners. Except sharing what’s on your medical scanners will cause you a lot of headaches, because someone will eventually have to acknowledge that organs were taken out of a human being without any visible incisions. So you’ll think, what the heck, maybe I’ll give Sara Wilde the time she needs. And then you’ll quietly put Greaves and Marrow back on ice, and you’ll wait for another, oh, say, seventy-two hours. If within that time period I provide you what you’ll need to get the people who killed these British nationals, without the trouble of explaining everything that happened, specifically, then I’d say we have the makings of a beautiful friendship.”

  The good detective stared at me a long, quiet minute, working out the details. Then he smiled and gave me an exceptionally dismissive Venetian hand wave.

  “I can do that,” he said simply.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Spettacolo was already in full swing by the time Nikki and I showed up at the front door of the Palazzo Mystere. The palazzo occupied an unusually large section of real estate down a winding side canal off the Grand Canal, not appreciably far from the Casino of Spirits. We could see the elegant white stone building rising behind the walls, illuminated with what looked like industrial-strength lights, and we could hear the music from half a block away.

  It sounded like we’d arrived at the circus. The doorman greeting people in front of the imposing iron gates was wearing a suitably staid top hat and tails, but his cravat was bright pink and his waistcoat a garish green. Inside the courtyard, fireworks burst above the walls, and there were cheers and laughter audible over the brightly playing calliope music. By the time we’d reached the front door, there was only one couple in front of us, both of them in identical costumes of dead white, including white tricorn hats and short capes over long body-fitting shifts. They were approximately the same build. They would be impossible to tell apart unless they were standing right next to each other.

  No one would have that difficulty with Nikki and me. She stood in a new pair of platform riding boots, these in crimson red, a color that contrasted dramatically with her deep black robe and black-and-gold mask. Her red hair flowed magnificently beneath her tricorn hat and long crimson satin gloves. I’d traded up as well to a feathered cape of white and silver, my silver hat and white mask making me look like a walking incarnation of the ill-fated invitation that had summoned me here. I’d asked Signora Visione if there was any significance to that, and she’d stared at me like I was a lunatic. Helpful.

  The guardian at the gate didn’t bother asking us who we were, merely checked something off in his ledger book and stood to the side. I wondered at that, and as we walked by, eyed him with my third eye. And blinked.

  His own third eye winked right back at me.

  “C’mon, c’mon, you’re ruining our entrance,” Nikki complained, reaching back to hustle me along. Once through the imposing door, there really wasn’t anywhere else to go but down a long red-carpeted walkway, flanked by tall, skinny vases of sputtering sparklers. The circus theme continued into the surprisingly large courtyard, with colorful tents set up every few feet, the smell of popcorn and cotton candy in the air, and even a straight-up menagerie of animals ringing the space. That part had to be an illusion, but it was a very effective illusion.

  We reached the end of the walkway, and a harlequin dressed in all the colors of the rainbow hustled up, carrying a tray of champagne flutes. “Welcome! Welcome, Benvenuto!” she sang out as we took our glasses, then she twirled off. I noticed several other similarly dressed women and men moving through the crowd, clearly the waitstaff of a supremely indulgent catering group.

  “Justice Wilde, Miss Dawes.”

  I’d seen the prelate enough times to recognize him when he strolled up to us, even though he’d changed his austere attire of the night before last to a midnight-blue cloak and hat that offset his st
ark white plague doctor mask. I glanced around to see if anyone had paid attention to him calling us out by name. Once again, it sort of defeated the purpose of costumes if people knew who you were. But that didn’t stop anybody from wearing costumes, clearly. Even the illusionary menagerie animals wore masks.

  “You honor us with your presence.”

  “I get the impression it’s the most sought-after invitation in town,” I said.

  “We like to think so. I understand you also paid a visit to our local police today, as well. Did you find what you were searching for?”

  I didn’t need to hide my surprise, given the advantage of the mask, but I worked to keep my voice steady. “The magicians don’t have a mark on them,” I said. “I assume you already knew that?”

  “That and, I have come to be informed, they are missing enough of their internal organs to produce an unreasonable supply of Nul Magis.” The prelate nodded. His mask’s mouth was tilted up in a benign smile, belying the darkness of his words. “Valetti informed me of this a short while ago, having recently gotten word himself. He’s…understandably distraught.”

  “Why’s that?” Nikki asked, while I gritted my teeth behind my own mask. Exactly how many Connecteds were working in the morgue today? “From what I could tell, the count didn’t have much use for Greaves and Marrow. And he already knew that they’d been stuffed into wine barrels.”

  “Killing is one thing. Any fool can kill another human. But that these two supposedly low-level magicians were targeted by the butcher raises three issues. The first, the butcher is not only targeting children—perhaps isn’t targeting them at all. The second, Greaves and Marrow were clearly far more advanced than we thought they were for the butcher to make them his target. And three, the butcher is taunting us with his invincibility.” As he spoke, the prelate tilted his head, his dark eyes gazing at me through the mask. “I understand that you were brought here to solve this problem, Justice Wilde. It would seem we need your assistance more than ever. And soon.”

  “With respect, we’d barely gotten off the plane when these magicians were murdered—” Nikki pointed out tartly, not missing the censure in the prelate’s words.