She’d seen them before, but they weren’t hers.
‘Hey. Those are Tabitha’s.’
“Yeah, I know. What are they doing in there?”
The bank’s thoughtful hum filled her head. ‘You know, I’m just gonna write it off as “vault magic” and call it good.’
“So you have no idea.”
‘Nailed it.’
“Please tell me this isn’t more accidental safety-measures magic you can’t control.” Jessica gazed up at the darkness of the vault and the invisible ceiling above her. “Because if I can’t use this box or any of them, I have no idea where to stash these…other boxes.”
The overnight bag thrummed in her hands.
‘Well, I’m still here talking to you. Didn’t get kicked out. And it doesn’t look like the floor’s coming up for another round of Toss the Witch, so…’
Taking a deep breath, Jessica lifted the bag over the side of her open drawer and gently set it down beside Tabitha’s ridiculously decorated flip-flops. When the bag left her hand, the whisper of paper and not plastic sliding across the bottom of the open drawer caught her attention.
Not just a pair of sandals she’d never wear waiting for her, then.
‘Huh. And you didn’t put paper in there.’
“I haven’t put anything in here until two seconds ago.” She pulled the edges of the flip-flops out from under the bag, and beneath them was a folded piece of paper with her name written across the top. “And I don’t sign secret messages to myself, either.”
‘I mean, that would be cool, though. Also probably a sign that you’re going insane.’
Yeah, the thought had crossed her mind.
But she knew she wasn’t losing it completely, because she recognized Tabitha’s handwriting. And the last time the scryer witch had left her a message, it came with a pre-recorded projection of Tabitha speaking to the future before Jessica started hearing a sentient building’s voice in her head.
‘So…you’re gonna open it, right?’
“I guess I’d be pretty stupid not to.” She started to unfold the paper but stopped when the open vault box shuddered and slid back into the wall with a startlingly loud bang. “Hey! I thought I had to close the thing—”
‘Yeah, well I did it for you. ’Cause the fae’s messing with the desk.’
“What?” Jessica spun around as a loud hiss came from the front of the bank. At this point, it could’ve been Leandras or Confucius, but a hiss from anyone was never a good sign. “That lying bastard.”
Crumpling Tabitha’s note in her hand, she darted toward the door of the witching vault. It swung open before she reached it and slammed itself shut again when she skidded into the hall.
“Leandras!”
The bell over the door jingled and clacked against the glass, but when she raced out of the hall, the lobby was empty. Except for Confucius standing on top of the desk and turning toward her to offer another alarmingly loud hiss.
‘Huh. Okay, maybe I overreacted.’
“Not even a little.” She darted toward the desk, making the lizard skitter backward across its surface when she slammed a hand down on the chipped wood and stared at the lock she’d welded shut with what little magic she’d had at her disposal.
The lock was still intact. Or at least it was undisturbed from the way she’d left it.
“What did he do?” She frantically ran her hands along the underside of the center drawer, searching for cracks or a sign that the bastard she’d finally let herself trust just a little had pulled the wool right over her eyes. That he’d broken into the desk and gotten his hands on the one thing everyone else had tried to kill her to get.
‘Yeah, you should definitely calm down.’
“Are you crazy?”
‘Probably.’
Even when she dropped to her knees and studied the underside of the desk, there was nothing there. No attempted entry. No splintered wood. Then the coin inside the white box in that center drawer bumped around and let out three quick flashes of golden light.
Jessica started, lost her balance, and went from kneeling to sitting there on her ass like she’d just been tossed around by whatever force didn’t want her looking too closely. Again.
“Jesus.” Breathing quickly, she stared at the fading golden light spilling through the slats of the center drawer and brushed her hair out of her face.
‘See? All safe and sound.’
“Except he still tried to take it.”
‘About that…’
“There’s nothing to talk about. You said he was messing with the desk!”
Confucius let out a series of clicks and tapped one long black claw against the outside of the top right-hand drawer.
“Yeah, I know. You were here to save the day again. Thanks a lot. I’m a little more concerned by the fact that he just…”
She stopped when the lizard tapped the drawer again and she realized it wasn’t completely shut. Pushing herself to her feet, Jessica stared at the open drawer. “He only went for that one, didn’t he?”
Confucius swayed side to side before rolling over onto his back. His long tail thumped on the top of the desk before sliding away to dangle over the edge, and now he gazed at her upside down with those yellow eyes, his mouth still hanging wide open.
“Okay. Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought, but I’m still not giving you a belly rub or anything.”
‘Sorry, witch. False alarm, I guess.’
“You realize how much room we don’t have for false alarms, right?”
‘I panicked. You panicked. The lizard kept his cool. We’re fine.’
Jessica pulled open the drawer all the way and studied its contents. At least six different envelopes of various sizes all shoved one on top of the other blocked sight of everything else. She jerked up the proposals for first rights she really didn’t even want to touch and rifled through what was left beneath them. Loose paperclips, the one abandoned emerald-green receipt from the magical with a mountain of gems and a fondness for trash heaps, Tabitha’s ritual knife, two loose shoelaces—one white, the other neon-orange and nearly twice as long—and a rusting fork.
That was it.
After slowly crunching down the first-rights proposals back inside, she pushed the door closed and took a deep breath. “He took his phone.”
‘Whew. That was a close one, huh?’
“No more crying emergency if you don’t have proof of an actual emergency, okay?” Jessica grabbed the rolling office chair and pulled it toward her before slumping down into it. No, she didn’t like the idea of Leandras going through any of her drawers, either down here or up in her room. But he hadn’t technically done anything wrong. Not beyond freaking out the bank and pissing her off because she’d actually thought she’d just been duped by the guy who was supposed to finally be on her side.
‘Now what?’
“Now it’s time for bed.” Pulling her phone from her back pocket, Jessica pointed at the front door with the other hand, and the bolt slid into place with a flash of yellow light. It was just after 11:00 p.m. Meaning she had plenty of time to decompress from one of the weirder days of the last month before the really weird shit went down tomorrow.
Confucius wiggled on his back and leg out more creaking clicks from his wide-open mouth.
With a tired smile, Jessica gave the lizard’s exposed belly a quick scratch. “I have no idea what you are or why you’ve stuck around, but I guess I should still officially thank you for…you know. Not letting me die before I can finish this.”
The reptile’s golden eyes slowly closed.
The bank sniffed. ‘Man, if I had eyes or tear ducts or, like…any of the things…’
“Don’t even start.”
‘Really. It’s sweet.’
Rolling her eyes, Jessica snatched up the wadded ball of Tabitha’s surprise note and left Confucius in a puddle of well-earned comfort before heading for the back hallway.
The reagents were safe in the wit
ching vault. Leandras was out of her bank and her home—for how long didn’t really matter after being shut up in here with him for five days. And she was finally, finally starting to feel like she had a handle on things. At least until the next bomb got dropped.
‘If everything goes the way it’s supposed to tomorrow, there won’t be any bombs. I think.’
“Not until we finish that gigantic spell and get to phase two. Then who knows what’s coming next?”
‘Can’t get any worse than what’s already happened, right?’
Jessica wasn’t so sure about that, and she didn’t want to jinx it by having the conversation. Not right now.
‘Hey, don’t forget about the leftovers.’
Pausing beside the doorway into the narrow kitchen, she eyed the scuffed off-white fridge and swallowed. “I’m good on Chinese food for a while.”
Once she’d settled down in her room for the night—all while trying not think about the fae who’d knelt in front of her on the couch, or who’d taken his sweet time in her shower, or who’d tacked her to the ground in the hallway—Jessica sat cross-legged on her bed and finally unraveled the crumpled ball of Tabitha’s note.
The writing was cramped and slightly difficult to make out, but eventually she got the gist of it:
I know everything feels like your skin just got turned inside out right now, girl. Trust me, the feeling was never a stranger to me, either. And honestly, it probably won’t go away. But here’s the thing. Take the fae at his word, no matter how ludicrous it sounds. He’s a pain in the ass, but at least he’s easy on the eyes. If you’re reading this, you’re closer than I ever got to making it through the craziest parts. As long as you don’t screw up. Yeah, you’ve got the reckoning to deal with, blah, blah, blah. But that’s not the end. It’s only just the beginning.
I knew from the very first time I saw your face that you’d be getting this far. I think that was somewhere in Kansas, maybe. Who knows? Time and space get a little funky when you see as much as I do.
So here’s my advice. Think fast and act faster. Especially when there’s no time to do either. Don’t listen to the gossip. The fae tried his damnedest to pull one over on me, but I saw what he was about a long time ago. Don’t hold him to the same standards you’ve already set for yourself. Unless, of course, those change first. And for the love of the goddess, girl, if you’re not gonna wear those flip-flops, toss them the hell out.
Try not to get yourself killed. I kinda liked you.
—T
Two more times, Jessica read over the letter that both sounded just like Tabitha and was oddly sentimental. At least for the scryer. Then she folded it back up into a neat square and stuck it in the drawer of her nightstand.
‘Huh. You think the old bird had a crush on the fae too?’
“I don’t have a— Whatever.” She huffed out a laugh and crawled beneath the sheets and the weight of the gray comforter. “I’m more interested in what she meant by the gossip.”
‘Eh…probably all the things everyone’s saying about you right now. You know, that you’re clueless. The wrong Guardian for the job. That you won’t make it past the second phase. That you’re the Laen’aroth’s puppet—’
“What?”
‘Yeah, that last one’s just me guessing.’
“I’m not anyone’s puppet.”
‘Sure. Yeah. Of course.’ The bank sniggered as Jessica rolled over and dropped her head onto the pillow. ‘Except for when I’m taking over.’
Well that wouldn’t happen again anytime soon. Because when Leandras returned tomorrow, whenever that happened to be, and took her out to meet these Laenmúr magicals and kick off two seriously intense and dangerous spells, the bank would still be here.
Jessica couldn’t depend on Winthrop & Dirledge to help her out of another mess if she screwed up this time. So her only option was to keep trusting the fae as much as she could and hope it was enough.
Until then, she could finally sleep without trying to listen for sounds of Leandras breaking the terms of their binding or getting up to something he definitely shouldn’t have. All that was over.
This felt like a little bit of normalcy.
‘Don’t get used to it. It’s only the beginning. Tabitha’s words, not mine.’
Fine. The beginning can start in the morning…
Jessica’s eyelids fluttered closed, and her body sank into a warm, way more relaxed weightlessness than she’d felt since she found herself in this bank. With a portal right outside her room. And two worlds waiting for her to pull off something completely crazy without getting herself killed in the process.
She wasn’t entirely sure that was even possible. But out of all the options she had left, not trying wasn’t on the table.
The obnoxious blare of her phone’s robotic ringtone pulled her back out of sleep. Jessica rolled over with a grunt and tried to drown out the sound. Eventually, it stopped ringing, and she slipped back into oblivion.
Whoever it was called again. And again. Until all her chances of ever dozing off again were completely obliterated.
Groaning, she nearly threw herself off the bed in an attempt to grab her phone off the nightstand and didn’t bother trying to read the name on the screen. She accepted the call and flopped onto her back with the phone smashed up against the side of her head. “What?”
“The timeline’s been moved up.”
She clenched her eyes shut and cleared her throat. “Leandras?”
“Get dressed, Jessica. Retrieve the reagents and wait for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Wait, wait. Hold on…” When she tried to reach for the bedside lamp and failed to get anywhere close, the bank switched it on for her, and she flinched away again. “Jeeze. Okay. What’s going on?”
“A slight change of plans,” the fae muttered into the phone. If she hadn’t still been half asleep, she would have thought he sounded worried. Maybe even as desperate as the day he’d stormed into the lobby and demanded his withdrawal. “It won’t make things impossible, but if we don’t hurry, we’ll lose our window.”
“Okay, um…why?”
“I’ve just been informed that your Matahg is leaving town on a ten o’clock flight. One-way. I’d really hate to miss him on the way out.”
“My Matahg…”
‘Mickey. He’s talking about Mickey, witch. Get up!’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jessica’s eyes flew open, and she bolted upright in bed. “He’s leaving?”
“You have twenty minutes, tops. Assuming you still want to be successful with any of our plans, I strongly suggest you get moving.” There was a sharp click, and the line went dead.
“Shit.” She tossed off the covers and swung her feet over the edge of the bed.
Mickey was trying to get out. Get away from Denver, from the bank, and most likely from Leandras. Either the fae had failed in his role as her ex-boss’ bait—and Mickey knew what was coming for him—or the Matahg had gotten wind of the coming changes and just decided to split last-minute.
Which one was it?
‘Does it matter? Get a move on.’
“Of course it matters.” She stumbled out of bed and squinted at her phone. Six hours. That was all the sleep she’d gotten before she had to get up even earlier than usual to do the impossible. “He said a ten o’clock flight, right?”
‘Five hours from now. That’s way less time than a whole day, witch.’
An unseen force shoved Jessica from behind and propelled her across the floor toward her dresser.
“Hey!”
‘Get packin’. And I swear to whoever and whatever made me that if you don’t grab that dinky little box out of that drawer, I’ll be driving the Jessica Northwood puppet until the fae gets here. Move it.’
She slammed her phone down on the top of the dresser harder than she meant to and pulled open the top drawer. The box was there, buried beneath her underwear again but still intact. And finally ready to be opened
again for real.
When her fingers closed around the cold metal, Jessica paused.
This was really it. It was all happening, right now, and she’d just gotten a wakeup call from the one guy who’d actually helped her put everything together.
How had he gotten her number?
‘Literally the most useless question to ask right now!’
Jessica flinched under the bank’s yelling in her head and slammed her box down on the dresser beside her phone. “Okay! I’m going. Just…give me a second.”
‘I’m counting down, witch. You have sixteen minutes.’
The drawers jerked open and slammed shut as Jessica whipped out a new set of clothes she hardly had time to look at before tugging them on. Then she slipped her phone into her back pocket, snatched up her tin box, and scrambled around the room looking for her shoes.
“It’s way too early for this.”
‘In thirteen minutes, it’s gonna be way too late.’
“Shut up. I’m moving.”
With her feet stuffed uncomfortably into her gray Converses, she stalked toward the bedroom door and whisked it open. Before she could get an inch through the doorway, a blaze of green light flared around the outline of the dungeon door, and the entire hallway trembled.
“Oh, come on.”
‘Get the hell downstairs!’
“What—”
The door slammed shut behind her, shoving her into the hall as the roar of whatever force existed on the other side of the Gateway grew louder by the second. Agonizingly loud.
She stumbled forward as the floorboards creaked and groaned, shuddering and sending up intermittent puffs of dust from below. “What’s happening?”
‘You being an idiot. Move!’
“It’s just the—”
No. It wasn’t just the creepy dungeon door acting like its creepy dungeon-door self anymore. It hadn’t been since it had sucked her into a trap she couldn’t have escaped on her own yesterday. And now the green smoke snaking out from beneath the bottom of the Gateway curled and elongated and looked a hell of a lot like it was trying to reach her.
The Secret Coin (Accessory to Magic Book 3) Page 21