by Jenn Stark
“Look—”
“And then you were found at a rest area by a kindhearted woman and taken in by her, no questions asked, her and her RV community of retirees. Such a good-natured group, and what a stroke of luck when so many other options would have led you down far darker paths.”
By now my blood had iced over. I glared at the man. “How do you know that?” I asked flatly. Very few people in the world knew how I’d spent the intervening five years between my escape from Memphis and my hesitant and mistake-filled return to the world of the Connected, as an artifact hunter for hire. I was pretty sure this guy hadn’t made the short list.
I could tell he felt he’d scored a win by the brightening of his smile, the rustle of energy crackling around him. Without breaking eye contact, I flicked my third eye open and, sure enough, the guy was Connected—or at least he was holding down a fair amount of electrical zippity-do-dah. More to the point, I could feel my own echoing fire kindling along my fingertips as I stared at him, which meant I was no longer trapped in the psychic dead zone of downtown Hamburg. Good to know.
What was also good to know was that this guy wasn’t killer strong, as far as Connecteds went. I pegged his psychic energy signature at around five or six out of ten, and I suspected part of that number was due to augmentation, not inborn abilities. While that didn’t make much difference at a cocktail party, it spoke to the levels of power this guy could access. A natively strong Connected had deeper wells to draw upon than one whose abilities had been gifted to them by drugs or nanotechnology. So while I may have betrayed the weakness of my interest, he was now betraying the weakness of his body.
Then again, with the kind of money I suspected this guy had, he could buy all the psychic muscle he needed.
“Once you left your makeshift family some five years later, you entered a far grimmer period of your life, didn’t you, Ms. Wilde?” he continued as the breeze kicked up around us. “You’d made your name as a gifted child who helped the police find other children, missing children. Children who’d often been abused. It marked you at a very young age, and your work as an artifact hunter forced you to run across more of these children. Dozens. Hundreds. Locked up in cages to be sold at the arcane black market, or left to rot on the side of some mountain pass, the most valuable parts already ripped from their bodies before their blood cooled. It put a damper on your excitement to get rich by selling the trinkets and potions clients sent you after. You could line your pockets for only so long before you felt compelled to make a difference. To save the lives of those who were not strong enough to fight for themselves.”
The man’s voice had moved to a sort of unctuous, patronizing tone, and it was all I could do not to blast his mocking expression from his face. But there was a purpose to all this, and by now, I felt compelled to let it play out.
“Fortunately enough, you found an able companion in this effort in the form of Father Jerome, at least until his death. So tragic. I rather thought it would have a deeper impact on you. A deeper, more personal impact. That you would have struggled more. But you didn’t struggle as much as I expected. That fascinated me, I must admit.”
I didn’t even twitch. I wasn’t going to give this guy the satisfaction of knowing how much his words were cutting me. Because the truth of the matter was, I hadn’t yet begun to truly grieve the death of Father Jerome. A death I’d inadvertently caused for letting him get too close to me, the same way I’d inadvertently caused my foster mother’s death years earlier, and had brought so much harm to so many people. So much harm. Father Jerome had been my only friend for so long during the dark years I’d first worked as an artifact hunter. More than that, he’d given a shape and function to my need to protect the children. After his death…
“But with his passing, there were new challenges for you to tackle, weren’t there?” the man pressed. “The Magician of the Council had finally succeeded in getting you to ascend. How long had he groomed you for the position? How long had he manipulated your emotions, your reactions, your very body to help coerce you to fall in love with him?”
He didn’t wait for me to respond to that, but pushed on. “And here we are, together at last. Months into your tenure as the Justice of the Arcana Council, grappling with powers that you had no idea you possessed within you. Some of which you’ve mastered, some of which you’ve not, some of which you don’t even realize exist, at least not entirely. With the call of the persecuted landing in your office through your gleaming pneumatic tubes. Thump, thump, thump—a siren call for you to give aid. Thump, thump, thump.”
“You know, you should take your act on the road. You’d kill it at open mic night.”
He tilted his head, considering me with his glittering pale blue eyes. “You’re still so sad, Ms. Wilde. With all your great and wonderful powers, with the strength of the Arcana Council at your back, what have you truly accomplished? Are you any closer to saving the most vulnerable members of the Connected community now than you were when you worked with Father Jerome? Does that not gall you, to know there are so many other things you could accomplish if only you were given the guidance you need, the support necessary for you to make true, lasting change?”
And here it was. I lifted my brows, and finally, it was my turn to smile. “Geez, all this for a headhunting position? I could’ve saved you the time. If you really want to recruit from the Council, hit up Viktor Dal. He’s exactly the kind of megalomaniac asshat who’d be perfect for your organization.”
The man wasn’t fazed by my tone. If anything, his smile grew deeper. “Who’s to say I haven’t already had that conversation with the Emperor? Or that he hasn’t been in my employ for years…decades, even? Definitely long enough to convince him to indulge his predilections for the fearmongering and abduction of poor, innocent children in Memphis, Tennessee, perhaps a dozen years ago. Certainly long enough for him to prick the conscience of a shy, unassuming teenager with a penchant for poetry and drawing and—oh, yes—reading the battered Tarot card deck she nearly bought at a used bookstore for three dollars and fifty cents, until the woman behind the counter stopped that transaction from happening and instead gifted the deck to the young girl. You know there’s an old superstition about Tarot cards, don’t you, Ms. Wilde? That your first deck should be a—”
The outrage burst out of me so unexpectedly, it wasn’t even a conscious decision on my part. Hearing this man, this stranger, share a story that’d been so private and personal I’d told no one in my life—not my foster mother, not Brody, not Nikki, not even my dog-eared journals that’d all been blown up in the fire that destroyed my home—completely undid me. It reached into a part of my soul I didn’t know existed and released a firestorm that shot straight from my core along my fingers and out, incinerating the man standing to my right. By the time the wave of fire winked out again, there was nothing but scorched pavement.
While the man was now standing on my left, the stiff breeze barely lifting the edges of his hair.
He chuckled. “If you think I would be so foolish as to toy with the temper of the strongest Connected sorceress on the planet and put myself at personal risk, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. I have nothing but the greatest respect for you, Ms. Wilde. It’s why I arranged this virtual conversation, and why I have been such a fan from the first time I learned about you.”
“Always a pleasure to meet the public,” I gritted out. “Is this where you unveil your evil plan?”
“Not at all,” the impressively life-like hologram said. “This is where I give you a choice to consider. A simple choice, and one which should prove, in the end, to be an easy one for you. The Shadow Court has used its long years in seclusion from the vigilant eye of the Arcana Council to its benefit. We are on the verge of destroying your Council, in fact. It is a battle you simply cannot win.”
“Well, that’s good to know. Anything else?”
“Only that I propose that you do not attempt to destroy the Court in turn, but
work with us. Collaborate. Let us help you accomplish what has seemed virtually impossible to you—the end of the victimization of Connecteds, particularly Connected children. The advent of a new dawn for Connecteds worldwide, where they can grow and thrive and no longer hide in darkness, afraid of being persecuted or killed. There is no reason for our two organizations to work against each other. And every reason for them to work together. Think about it.”
The apparition winked out.
“But don’t think too long.”
The last words of the disembodied voice had barely died away when it was followed by another voice in the stillness, scarcely more than a strangled, halting whisper.
“Miss…Wilde."
Chapter Twenty-One
The smoke that billowed up around me should have generated some alarm given what I’d just experienced, but I recognized it immediately as Armaeus’s particular form of teleportation. While I was all crackling fire and scattered embers, he dissolved into mist. And it was that mist that was pulling at me now, which could mean only one thing: Armaeus wanted me to be with him. I was more than willing to go.
Eventually, I’d ask more questions before I got yanked out of one place and into another, but today was not that day.
I landed with less of a clatter and more of a decided “oof” as I crunched into a rock floor in the middle of absolute darkness. I fumbled with Nikki’s phone to generate light, but that function seemed to be out of order. Fortunately, my hands didn’t rely on such delicate tech, and I lit up my fingertips a second later.
And saw…absolutely nothing. I appeared to be in a concrete or stone passageway, which fortunately had ample oxygen, because the path stretched before and behind me, both options curving into the darkness beyond the glow from my fingertips. There was the faintest sound of rustling behind the stone, but nothing coherent. It sounded more like scurrying animals than human feet, and I knew immediately where I was. Or at least I dreaded immediately where I was. The In Between. The series of arcane highways and byways that stretched between this world and the next plane, mapped only in part, but networked across the globe. I’d been in these passageways a few weeks ago, and I hadn’t been in a hurry to return anytime soon. The Magician clearly had other plans.
“Armaeus?” I asked into the darkness, but there was no response. That was weird. He’d summoned me. If he couldn’t summon me directly to where he was, what did that mean? Had he simply summoned me to where he thought he was? That didn’t bode well either. It spoke to either a lapse in memory, of which I’d already had my fill, or to Armaeus having blacked out during his time in the In Between. And where were Simon and Death?
“Miss Wilde.” The voice came again, weaker this time, and I immediately set off down the path, not at all sure that I was supposed to go down instead of up. But it felt better to be moving, and as I walked, I swept the walls of the corridor with my light, looking for any indication of where I was.
I was destined to be disappointed. Whoever did the signage down here needed to be fired.
Fortunately, I didn’t have far to go. I hadn’t walked more than fifty feet when a flash of something bright caught my eye around the next corner, and I instantly doused my own light, letting it gutter out as I moved forward more quickly. As I approached, I could see the glow ahead of me wasn’t firelight but a weird radiance spilling out of a body. I fully expected it to be the Magician’s body, right up until I saw that the guy on the ground was wearing a skull cap.
“Simon?” Something moved beside him, and my hands came up in immediate defense, only to recognize the pale face staring back at me through a creepy hooded shroud. Death. Looking like, well, Death.
“Simon!” I gasped again, rushing forward. Death rocked back on her heels, finally speaking as I knelt beside them.
“Why are you here?” she growled.
I blinked at her. “Armaeus summoned me. I mean, I think he summoned me. There was smoke, and I heard my name and…um, where’s Armaeus?”
“I wish I knew,” Death said bitterly. “I knew this was a mistake the moment he fixed on All Hallows by the Tower, especially since he now knows the language of the angels. He was too weak to make this attempt, his mind too disorganized from the lore he uncovered in that blasted book. Once he’d gotten a taste of what he’d lost, he was so determined to recapture all his memories that he leapt at the chance to learn more.”
“But where is he now?” I asked again. “I thought Simon came down with him. “
“He did. I found Simon in this cocoon when I got here. He’s unconscious and appears stable, but I didn’t want to take him out of the In Between and leave the Magician here alone. There’s too much in these halls that are set against him.”
Uh… “That doesn’t sound good.”
She glanced at me with hard eyes. “The Magician has been in his role for centuries, but the man you know is not the man he always was. I’ve long suspected that his decisions to strip away pieces of his knowledge also allowed him to strip away elements of his personality that were not conducive to what he perceived his role to be. It takes a very strong man to shut down his own demons on a daily basis, and the Magician’s job was difficult enough without him having to constrain himself as well.”
“His quest for balance.” I didn’t always agree with Armaeus’s interpretation of balance, but I understood his need to strive for it. I’d experienced a similar push-pull between the flawed, earnest, moderately skilled, and highly resourceful human I’d been and the equally flawed but Great-and-Powerful-Oz-ified Council member I’d become. Some days, I wasn’t sure who was better equipped to fight this battle, but I didn’t have that choice anymore. I had to use the tools I’d forged.
“His quest for balance,” Death agreed. “As you may have already figured out, the Magician is not nearly as balanced as he would like everyone to believe. He was reborn in a cauldron of fire when he ascended to the role, and his magic is deep, primal, and base. None of those things lead naturally to balance.”
“So when he found arcane lore that he wanted to keep out of human hands, he wrapped it up in a package of his own bad habits and poofed it out of existence.” Mercault had mentioned this too, and Armaeus certainly hadn’t denied it.
“Apparently so. And he was at peace with those decisions for centuries. But something changed.” Death smoothed a lock of Simon’s hair away from his face.
“He saw the design of that tattoo.”
“No. No, something else. He wasn’t driven to seek out the truth about the Shadow Court until he saw the tattoo and it triggered a recognition that he quite naturally resolved to track down.” Death studied me with hollow, haunted eyes. “But his forgetting of you, Sara, was tied up with something else. A third piece of information or knowledge that he willfully thrust away from his mind violently, taking you with it. There could only be two reasons for that. One, he sought to forget you. I don’t think either one of us believes that for a second. The Magician may have a core of surprising darkness, but his love for you knows no bounds.”
“Ahh…yeah. Of course.” I couldn’t stop my cheeks from flushing at the unexpected comment, but the rest of Death’s words only increased my anxiety. “What’s the other option?”
“That he learned something during his last trial with the Fae that was both too big for him to handle in the moment and impossible for him to ignore. He needed you to be the one to find this knowledge on his behalf. For you to take on its burden. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
I stared at her. No way would the Magician’s ego allow for that to be the case. No way. “What could I possibly handle that he couldn’t?”
“What was the last thing he said to you?” Death countered. “The last thing you can remember, before he awakened without memory of you?”
I scoured my memories, trying to recall, but it was mostly a blur made worse by the deluge of emotion that followed.
“He—um, he told me he loved me,” I f
inally said. “Only it was prettier than that. Fancier.”
“See if you can remember the exact words. It’s important.”
I tried for only a second longer, then shook my head. “I’m sure it will come to me, but not right now. And it doesn’t matter. I’m not here to find whatever mystical magical MacGuffin Armaeus was after. I’m here to find him. He summoned me, and he sounded distraught. He must be in trouble of some sort.”
“In trouble, or he’s found what he blasted into the In Between for, and he’d like your help to manage it. That’s more likely.” Death watched me as I rolled to my feet. “He pulled you to him once. He’ll pull you to him again. Just start walking. I get the feeling he’s close, in any event. I don’t think he intended to leave Simon for long.”
“Agreed.” With no clear sense of what direction to choose, I peered down the corridor. As I considered my options, Death resumed her muttering over Simon’s body. Whatever was wrong with the Fool, I suspected it was more than what she was letting on.
I glanced down at her. “Ah…how long do you think you’ve been down here?”
She shrugged, looking up at me. “I don’t know, about a half hour?”
“Yeah, no. Try a few days. Which is kind of crazy, frankly. In Ireland, it didn’t seem so bad.”
Death gave me a wry smile, completely unperturbed. “The In Between works differently at different places. Some places are closer to the veil, some places are farther away. We are apparently farther away, which, frankly, I didn’t know. But that means the danger here is far greater. Be careful.”
“Right.” I continued down the corridor with my fingertips set to a muted glow. The pathway twisted, then twisted again, and within only a few minutes, it felt as if I’d been lost in this dark and quiet place for centuries. Even the chittering in the rocks had ceased, and Armaeus had not reached out again. Maybe he couldn’t? Maybe he was being cautious? Or maybe…
I sighed, struggling to come to terms with what I suspected was the truth. That perhaps I needed to help the Magician reach me more quickly. Armaeus always seemed to have a sense for being able to know whenever I dropped the barriers on my mind, given how intrigued he was at the idea of anyone being able to bar their thoughts from him. So here, so close to where I knew he must be, if I only eased the barriers open the slightest bit…