by Stark, Jenn
Nikki drained her glass. “Well, I’ve played enough video games to know that djinn are bad news, and they also can be compelled, much like a regular demon, to perform on behalf of powerful sorcerers. Nobody would accuse ol’ Jarvis of being all that magical, but the dude definitely has connections.” She looked at me. “You think the Shadow Court has got their own djinn?”
“I think they may well want us to believe that. But now you’re telling me we’ve got an entire subgroup of past and present cases that are doing the jig related to demons from the Arabian Peninsula, maybe these djinn things. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“I don’t either, especially since the more recent concerns regarding these attacks also had another line of connection, which I’m afraid I haven’t been able to share with you yet either, Ms. Dawes…” Mrs. French sighed.
Nikki snorted. “It’s okay, sugar plum, I’ve been a little distracted over the past few days. But you’ve got me liquored up now, so hit me.”
Mrs. French smiled a little tightly. “There is a member of the Council who has been involved in some of these complaints. I know it is not our protocol to prosecute members of the Council, or even hold them accountable for transgressions against the Connected, though I’m aware that it happens, of course.”
I grimaced. Council transgressions against innocent Connecteds had been directly responsible for Abigail’s involvement with the Shadow Court a hundred and fifty years ago. I was starting to get a headache.
Apparently, Nikki was too, or could sense my growing tension.
“Well, go ahead and spit it out,” she said. “Was it the Magician? And do you know if he remembers it?”
“Oh no,” Mrs. French said, her eyes going wide. “No, no, it’s not the Magician, or the Devil, though you would ordinarily think that, given the connection to the demons. Or, arguably, the Hierophant would make sense as he is in control of the Syx and therefore would have—”
“Mrs. French,” I interrupted as gently as I could. “You don’t need to tell us everyone it doesn’t involve. Who does it involve?”
“Me.”
The voice was harsh and direct, autocratic without being sophisticated, and it was quite definitely feminine. It preceded its owner through the door from Justice Library, and Mrs. French burst to her feet.
“You’re not allowed in there! No member of the Council is.”
Judgment of the Arcana Council stepped through the door, dressed in her usual garb of a vaguely military-esque long-sleeved shirt and heavy pants, heavy boots, and heavy attitude. Her black hair was pulled back in a thick braid, and her lean, weathered face, with its hint of Israeli heritage in her eyes and skin, evinced not even a shred of dismay at her trespass.
She gave Mrs. French a thin smile. “Yes, well, those rules were made before I was on the Council. And I would like to believe that Abigail Strand doesn’t have as many tricks up her sleeve as I do, and also quite a bit fewer balls in the air. In short—”
I finished for her. “You do what you want.”
She nodded at me, her expression becoming a shade grimmer. “Exactly. If you don’t use the power that you have in this world, you lose it.”
A snatch of an old song played through my mind, the tune hauntingly soft, but my attention refocused abruptly as Mrs. French turned sharply on Gamon. “Well, that’s all well and good, but how do you explain the complaints leveled against your house?”
“Ex-house,” Gamon pointed out. “And I’m aware of them. They’ve stepped out of bounds, running roughshod over the arcane black market supply chain, and harming innocents in the process. It happens.”
“It happens,” Mrs. French steamed. “It happens? And I suppose it also happens that long before you ever ascended to the Council, you yourself summoned a demon to suppress the people of southern India and the Indonesian islands to get what you want?”
“You what?” I asked, genuinely surprised as Nikki reached for more bourbon. “When?”
Gamon shrugged. “A long time ago. But sure. I did use those things. I contracted with a midlevel witch to summon a demon, a very convincing one, I might add, to scare the shit out of the local population. They were mining a particular brand of deep green jade that sold for astronomical prices on the arcane black market. Jade that I needed more than they did.”
She slanted a glance at me. “If you’d been in the game at the time, it’s exactly the kind of thing you would’ve gotten word of, and you would’ve been a real pain in the ass. Fortunately, you were still a baby, so it was a lot easier for me to get things done. And Justice was still MIA, so I didn’t have to deal with any oversight. Win-win.”
Mrs. French huffed, but I merely studied Gamon. “So why are you here now?”
“For two reasons. The first, you sent six dozen or so flapping, squalling creatures to my front doorstep earlier this week, and I wanted to thank you for that inconvenience in person. They’re screeching lunatics with brains the size of pebbles. What exactly did you expect me to do with them?”
I couldn’t help it, I smiled. “What did you do with them?”
“Let’s just say I found them a good home that wasn’t mine. Secondly, there’s been enough swell of chatter in a few of my old stomping grounds that it makes me nervous. Old magic stirring. Really old magic, the kind that people don’t fully understand. The kind that was created when life was a lot cheaper than it is now. I thought you should know, and beyond that, I decided to poke around.”
“In my library. Uninvited.”
“Which shouldn’t even be allowed,” Mrs. French added darkly.
“Yeah, well, be glad I did. I found a few things I wasn’t expecting. Namely, these djinn sightings aren’t new. They’ve been on the rise for a while, but suppressed.”
“Suppressed by whom—or what?” I asked. “The Council?”
“Nope.” She flashed me a hard look. “The houses.”
“What?” That stopped me in my tracks. The houses of magic had a long and twisted relationship with the Council, but they generally spent more time skimming money off magic, not meddling in the true depths of the arcane. I’d had a passing experience with house management, and nothing I’d seen during my time in the trenches had changed my mind about that. “We didn’t have anything to do with the djinn at the House of Swords,” I said.
She shrugged. “When I took over Cups, they already had an ongoing relationship with them. I kept it in place. Any complaints arising from that—and there were some—I quashed before they became a problem.”
“Yes, well.” Mrs. French sniffed. “Quashing was rather one of your specialties.”
Gamon grinned at her. “You’re not wrong. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. But I did tangle with some bad mojo once, well before my time with the Cups. Armaeus was the one who helped me out of that jam. He’ll know more than anyone how you should proceed now.”
“Really?” I scowled. Armaeus had said he was going to do research, and I assumed it was research on the Shadow Court. But now I got the distinct impression he was holding out on me. What was going on?
“So explain to me about the houses,” I said to Gamon. “Why are they suppressing djinn reports?”
“In a word? Access. Djinn magic isn’t tracked by the Council, especially the Hierophant and his merry troop of Syx, and it’s far less challenging than trying to force demons to heel. That makes it very appealing.”
“But I was there—”
“The Swords weren’t much for it, at least during your time. Your predecessor at the House of Swords, a different story. The Cups, though—yes. The House of Pentacles too.”
I thought of the jittery, avaricious Frenchman who headed the House of Pentacles as Gamon continued.
“Wands were kind of out of it, because they didn’t exist for a hella long time,” Gamon continued. “But now they’re back. And they’ll use whatever they can get ahold of.”
“Well, that’s just great.” I looked to Mrs. French. “Are we getting
a lot of complaints about the djinn, then? From the Arabian Peninsula, anyway?”
“Yes…but that’s not all we’re getting.” She pulled one of the canisters free and handed it to me, the curved glass door hanging open. Nestled inside was an envelope of creamy paper, embossed with a symbol I didn’t recognize, an Arabic-looking fiery sun, with Arabic lettering in the center. I took the card out, turning it over in my hand. There was no writing on it.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“That would apparently be an invitation,” Nikki said. “From one Sheikh Alsain Ahmad. You remember him?”
My brows shot up, the image of a primly dressed American woman I’d recently met in New Orleans flashing into my mind. We’d been trying desperately to stop the Shadow Court from targeting unsuspecting Connecteds with poisoned disaster relief materials, and she’d sought me out after the dust had cleared. She’d told me she was the representative of a sheikh who’d wanted to make my acquaintance—and then I’d never heard from her again. That had been weeks ago. “He’s Connected.”
“In more ways than one,” Nikki said. “He’s not only got a shack in Bahrain, but outside Dubai too. And in Qatar. The guy is loaded, and he apparently wants to chat with you.”
Gamon scowled at me. “You should be careful. I know Sheikh Ahmad by reputation only. He’s extremely reclusive and extremely powerful—even I wasn’t able to penetrate his security. If he wishes to see you, he’s likely playing a very complicated game.”
“With the Shadow Court? Or against them?”
She shrugged. “It could be both. Or neither. I’m willing to tell you what I know, but my information on the man is old. Potentially useless.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Nikki drawled. “We could prolly learn a few things, if you’re game to be interviewed.”
“I’m afraid there’s something else, Justice Wilde,” Mrs. French said, speaking over Nikki. “Something we found in the stacks. A reference, you could say, to an associate of the Council who doesn’t seem to still be, ah, active.”
We all turned and looked at Mrs. French. “What do you mean?” I didn’t know all the Council members, but there were only about half of them currently seated.
“Who do we have left?” Nikki put in. “We never did properly seat the Empress again, and then there’s Strength, the Chariot—”
“No, no, no,” Mrs. French said. “This person isn’t a Council member, exactly. She supposedly works with Justice, but not, ah, officially. There were several references to her in the archives, well before Justice Abigail’s time. They called her the night witch.”
A hissing burst of air blasted from the library, and the door to the stacks slammed shut, making us all jump. I glared at Gamon, but she lifted her hands in disavowal.
“First I’ve heard of her,” she said, her expression intrigued, but guileless. “Who is she?”
“I’m not sure. It sounds like I need to make her acquaintance, though.” I thought of Eshe and her milk-white eyes. She’d uttered that title to me right before she disappeared. But what did it mean?
“What have you uncovered so far?” I asked Mrs. French, but she only twisted her fingers together and sighed.
“Not very much at all, I’m afraid. There are several requests for her aid, in lieu of Justice’s response—pleading requests, really. Begging. But no record of who she actually was, or what she did, other than an indication that wherever she went, death and destruction followed.”
“Sounds like my kind of woman,” Gamon put in, and I passed a hand over my brow. This was just getting better and better.
“Well, keep digging,” I said. “I want every reference you can find, no matter how small. What she did, how she got her abilities, what her job description was—anything.”
“I have looked, Justice Wilde—”
“I know. But look again.” I couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding the idea of a mysterious vigilante on Justice’s payroll stirred up in me. Was she actually Justice in disguise, or simply a trusted enforcer? And if so…how far had she gone to protect the Connected?
Before I could parse those thoughts further, I felt a new pressure, light and unnerving, skate across my mind.
“Miss Wilde,” the Magician murmured, his words sliding through my thoughts like a silken thread. “My apologies for not sharing more earlier. Timing, as you’ll see, is everything. And now—it’s finally time. I would see you, if you can break free.”
“Perfect timing,” I said, as I met Gamon’s gaze, then Mrs. French’s again. “Thanks for the heads-up, both of you. Keep looking for the night witch.”
8
I exited back into the corridor outside Justice Hall, not quite ready to catch myself on fire, though I knew that was the fastest way to get to Armaeus. As expected, demon gore no longer stained the floors and walls of the Palazzo Hotel’s top floor, but my mind still churned as I stalked down the hushed, luxuriously appointed hallway.
We needed information, stat. Fortunately, Gamon was a willing informant in this situation, and Nikki was an epic interrogator, even without her Connected skills. I suspected there was far more that Gamon knew than she even realized. The more details we could get about the djinn and this Sheikh Ahmad, the better.
Then there was the issue of this night witch character. Eshe’s words had gone clean out of my head in the midst of my battle with the bat-winged creatures in Pompeii, and now I struggled to remember exactly what she’d said. Something about darkness and light?
And where was Eshe, anyway? Was she really hanging out in Dubai, living large with the Shadow Court? I didn’t know much about the Arabian Peninsula, either Ahmad’s home island of Bahrain or the UAE, where the Court was apparently headed. I’d only been to Thaj once, which was north of Bahrain on the Saudi Arabian mainland, to pick up some overlooked stones inscribed with arcane spells for a client interested in the architectural dig there. Another client had insisted I go—twice!—to the coast of Oman during its flash rainforest season, insisting the rainy season phenomenon was the result of an ancient promise between a god and his beloved human. The client believed there was treasure detectable only beneath certain flowers that grew during the rainforest period. As it turned out, he’d been right.
All three excursions to the peninsula had ended quite successfully, but I hadn’t taken the time to appreciate the local color. Now I wondered if that was about to change.
I reached the end of the hallway and lifted my hand to punch the elevator button, then sighed. Like it or not, I didn’t have time for another stroll down the Strip. Because I knew Armaeus’s fortress better than any place in Vegas, I could return there without collecting too much char on my extremities.
“Stop being such a sissy,” I muttered.
Focusing on his office, I lit up with a bare minimum of pain as my body incinerated into nothingness. I seriously needed to come up with a better transpo system.
I rematerialized in Armaeus’s chambers. The sumptuous office had been redecorated to match the theme of our newest challenge, with Persian rugs stretching nearly the length of the room. The Magician’s desk and the small seating arrangement that normally dominated the space had been replaced by low cushions draped in rich, jewel-toned fabrics, while the walls were now hung with a shimmery material parted to reveal the glittering skyline of the Las Vegas Strip. It was going on three in the morning at this point, but Vegas did its best work at night. The Magician stood with his back to me, staring out over the grand expanse.
“The city at night serves much the same purpose as an oasis in the desert, and was, in fact, built around that premise back in the 1930s,” he said as I approached. “A lure to those who needed a respite in the night, a place to relax and spend their money.”
“Spend it or lose it, either way,” I countered. I took the opportunity of Armaeus’s attention being on the glittering expanse to study him more closely. He remained dressed in his dark tuxedo from earlier in the evening, his sleek ebony hair brushed ba
ck to curl over his collar. He didn’t look over to me, though his mouth quirked as my gaze roamed the elegant planes of his face, the features holding a hint of mystery and danger, as well as the exotic lure of his heritage. What would it have been like to have been born during the Crusades to a soldier and…
Armaeus chuckled softly. “A soldier and a witch,” he filled in for me. “A priestess, more exactly, who served an ancient goddess. Much has changed since that time, but one thing has remained constant. Man has an endless appetite for knowledge of the arcane and for learning the mysteries that exist beyond the realm of mortal understanding.”
Well, there it was, my opening. As much as I would rather have remained focused on Armaeus’s sensual gorgeousness, I saw no point in avoiding the reason I was here. He was the one who’d sent for me, after all. “And that’s what is happening here? With these demons or djinn or whatever they are?”
He folded his arms over his chest, looking like the world’s hottest lawyer as he considered the question. “Demons do not rise up of their own accord. They are summoned. They are tools and levers, called into the night, then banished back into their holes as quickly as possible. With the distinct exception of the Syx, they are in almost all cases beyond redemption, good only to serve the needs of those sorcerers stronger than they are.”
“Okay…” All super interesting, yet not super helpful. I tried again, this time leaving the subject of the djinn to cool its heels. “So…someone is calling up a mess of demons for reasons of their own?”
“Yes. I had sensed a shift in the play of magic, but that play had not originally been pinpointed to a specific location, or I would have been better prepared for the adventures you encountered in Italy. That has changed over the last twenty-four hours, since Eshe disappeared after the Pompeii Stratosfaire. While the cries of the afflicted have increased only slightly, the use of magic on the Arabian Peninsula has expanded tenfold. If this is the Shadow Court’s work, it is a new gambit for them. Since I first ran afoul of the organization in the mid-1500s, they have always been largely a European syndicate. Old World money that used the rest of the world to fund their exploits, without deigning to mix with any societies outside their own. For them to be establishing a base in the Arabian Peninsula, if that is what they are doing, is…concerning.”
