“Extraction from a guy’s apartment,” Cedrick muttered. “A friend of hers. Things got a little messy, but we made it out okay.”
When he met Jessica’s gaze, she swallowed. Sure, the others had made it out just fine. And none of them knew she’d almost died that night—that she hadn’t been able to heal herself like she used to and that Leandras had almost used up everything they needed right now to do it himself.
“Yeah.” She clenched her jaw and had to look away from him. “We got it done.”
“I’d love to know who this friend is,” Mel said, jerking her chin up at Jessica. “You know, seeing as I can’t keep anything to myself anymore but you two are already on the same page.”
“She didn’t tell us.” Cedrick said it so softly, it was almost inaudible.
Not trusting herself to say anything that wouldn’t dig the hole even deeper while flooding it with the truth, Jessica nodded at the center table again.
Mel scoffed. “Fine. If you’re not gonna tell me, I…” She stopped, cast a confused glance at the table, and widened her eyes. “Leandras?”
Cedrick snorted. “No way.”
Jessica shrugged. “You can believe whatever you want.”
“You broke into that fae’s apartment to steal from him?” Mel whispered harshly. “Are you out of your mind?”
“We stole for him,” Jessica hissed. “And saved his life. And I kept you out of it because out of all of us, I didn’t want you pulled back into this. Guess I wasted a whole lot of energy on that for no reason, huh?”
“I…” Mel blinked harshly, looked slowly from Jessica to Cedrick, then turned away. “I can’t do this.”
Cedrick headed after her. “Mel—”
“Fuck off. I need a minute.” She stormed quickly across the warehouse, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets, and went to join a group of Laenmúr magicals huddling together and drawing up their own plans.
Or secrets.
Jessica and Cedrick stood there just inside the circle of dim light and watched Mel in a tense and admittedly very awkward silence.
“Shit.” He puffed out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “Jess—”
“I get it.” She stared blankly across the warehouse. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“Yeah, but I want to. And this time, you’re not bleeding out in my car, so I’m going to.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “It just happened.”
“Great.”
“And it had nothing to do with you, okay? We were all torn up about what Mickey did to you. To all of us. And about Rufus.”
Jessica clenched her eyes shut and grimaced. He had to bring up Rufus…
“We had to call it off, Jess,” Cedrick continued. “All of it. Corpus. The jobs. Everything we had when you were around because you were gone.”
“I didn’t die.”
“I know.” He cleared his throat. “Then Mel and I met up. She was freaking out about what Mickey might do to the rest of us. And I… What was I supposed to do, Jess?”
“Whatever you wanted, Cedrick. That was the point of me going to prison.”
“It wasn’t a thing before you got popped. We just—”
“Yeah, I know how grief works. Thanks.” Finally, she turned to look at him and shrugged. “Whatever happened between Mel and me is over. It was probably over with Rufus anyway, so quit carrying around something that isn’t yours, okay? I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He looked her up and down and tilted his head. “Looks like you’re carrying something that doesn’t belong to you either.”
She snorted. “I’m the fucking Guardian. Comes with the job.”
“Yeah, that’s gonna take some getting used to.”
“Welcome to my life for the last few months.”
The changeling closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you.”
Jessica shook her head and stuck one hand in her jacket pockets, feeling the sharp edges of the small white box there with that damn coin inside. Her other arm curled protectively around the tin box. “She was trying to protect you.”
“From what? You?” He huffed out a laugh. “No offense, Jess, but your powers of destruction don’t really stand up to a whole lot these days. Which actually kinda blew my mind last week. Is that what they did to you?”
“Who?”
“Prison.”
She grinned—a tight, humorless, possibly slightly mad-looking grin—because this whole thing was just too ridiculous. “No, man. I did it to myself.”
“Wait…”
“Secrets all out on the table, right?” She shrugged. “I cast the Shattering before I went to prison.”
“On yourself?” Cedrick backed away from her, his eyes wide and his head jerking back like she’d just blown his mind all over again. She probably had. “Why would do that?”
“Come on. You can put two and two together. It’s not that hard to come up with…I don’t know. Three big reasons at least.”
“Jess, you didn’t have to—”
“I thought I did at the time, okay? And no way in hell did I expect to be dragged into this. So now you know.”
He stared at her, then blinked in realization and rubbed the back of his neck. “Jesus. That’s why you didn’t step in at the penthouse. That’s why the whole thing went to shit and you didn’t heal.”
“Yeah, that was a fun lesson to learn. And feel free to pass it all along to Mel. Maybe giving her inside info will help patch it up between you guys.”
“Jess, listen to me.” Cedrick set a hand on her shoulder, dipping his head to better meet her gaze. “What we’re about to do this morning? You won’t last five seconds channeling that kinda power if you’re not whole.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He must have seen something in her eyes he really didn’t like, because he removed his hand and scowled back at her. “I’m gonna fix it, Cedrick. Like right now.”
“You’re willing to risk all that?”
Jessica’s smile returned, and she stepped away from him. “It’s not a risk. That’s why we’re waiting for one more asshole to show up. That’s what he’s for.”
“I can’t even pretend to understand.” Cedrick swallowed thickly. “But you look a hell of a lot more sure of things than you did last week, so…I got your back.”
“I know.” She nodded, then left him for the opposite end of the warehouse, farther from Mel who also needed her space. Staring at the dust-covered concrete beneath her feet, she toed the line between the overhead lights’ dim glow and the edge of the dark shadows lining the room.
Hell of a metaphor for literally everything in her life right now, wasn’t it? Toeing the line between light and shadow. Past and future. Being who she was and who she wished she could be.
But she couldn’t change what she was. No one could, no matter how many stupid things she’d done along the way in trying to force it.
“Jessica.” Leandras’ voice carried crisply through the warehouse, and she spun on her heels to face the table. The fae set whatever powerful reagent he’d been studying on the table and stepped away. “He’s here.”
Fuck.
Okay. Show time.
Or death and destruction for them all, but at least they had a chance.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jessica practically jogged toward the center of the warehouse. “How much time do we have?”
Leandras dipped his head. “He just pulled up in front of the building. So I’d say minutes. Most likely seconds.”
“Okay. And you can hold him off long enough for this?”
A smile twitched across the fae’s lips.
“Yeah, you can hold him off.”
“Keep your mind clear, Jessica. Stay focused.” He set a hand on her shoulder, but she slapped it away.
“I can cast a spell. How do you think I did it the first time?” Taking a deep breath, she turned to face the open doorway into the dark hall be
yond. The tin box buzzed in both her hands now, more powerful than anything she’d felt from the reagents or the coin in her pocket or pretty much everything since she’d stepped through the front door of Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking.
Her magic knew it was time.
She couldn’t fuck this up.
“He knows where you are, right?”
“Don’t concern yourself with the minor details.” Leandras faced the hallway and stepped slowly in front of her, so the first thing Mickey saw when he stepped into the room would be the fae he’d come to meet. “I’ve taken care of everything else.”
“Well your plans haven’t exactly worked out perfectly in the past, so you’ll have to forgive me for being a little skeptical.”
He chuckled and slipped his hands into the pockets of his suit pants.
A different suit this time. Charcoal-gray with barely visible stripes of silver.
Seconds away from finally doing the one thing she’d sworn to herself she’d never do, and her single line of thought had to do with his change of outfit?
“What’s going on?” Mel approached the table, a low tremble of fear in her voice. “Are we starting already?”
“Get back,” Jessica muttered, positioning one hand on the lid of her magic-box while the other held it steady.
“This wasn’t part of the plan—”
“Mel!” Jessica shouted. “This is my plan, and when it’s over, we’ll get to yours, okay?”
“Come on.” That was Steve, but Jessica didn’t turn around to see what he was doing. She could hear their footsteps fading away behind her.
“What’s going on?” Mel whispered.
“The only thing I know is Leandras said it’s important,” he told her quietly, though somehow it sounded incredibly loud to Jessica. “So we stand back and wait.”
Jessica’s pulse pounded in her ears when a door at the end of the dark hall opened and shut with an echoing bang. Footsteps followed. Slow. Confident. Full of shit.
Mickey was here. This was really happening.
And how in the world had Jessica let herself get caught up in this? Was she really about to murder someone right here in this warehouse, with dozens of witnesses, just to undo one stupid decision?
She had to. Because Mickey had been a murderer first. He’d turned her into one when she’d had nowhere else to go, and he’d done the unthinkable. This wasn’t just about getting even for framing her and shipping her off to prison for his crimes. This was for Corpus too. For Rufus. For everything.
The tin box trembled in her hands, and she took a deep breath as Mickey’s footsteps drew closer. The warehouse had filled with a deathly silence now. No one moved.
Jessica had stopped breathing.
The footsteps stopped, then Mickey’s deep, perpetually amused voice filled the air. “So here we are, Laen’aroth. I have a plane to catch. Where’s the sigil?”
She blinked at Leandras’ back and let her mind go blank, like she’d spent weeks practicing.
“Just here,” the fae replied.
The rest of it happened in slow motion, as if Jessica were outside herself and looking in on the whole thing with the speed dialed down to a crawl. As soon as Leandras’ body shifted in preparation to step away, Jessica’s lips moved in a fast whisper. The words of the undoing she’d branded into her memory flowed through her, as if clearing her mind had left so much more room for the spell to fill it entirely.
The fae man disappeared from her vision, and she found herself staring at Mickey Hargraves standing just beyond the mouth of the hallway. The smirk on the Matahg’s human illusion disappeared. A furious sneer replaced it, and the red aura of his disappearing illusion flickered around his body. He raised a hand toward her and hissed.
“Teliithia, múrg!” Leandras bellowed. The force of his magic burst from both hands, crossing Jessica’s vision to enshroud Mickey in a flaring bubble of silver light. White and purple sparks zapped across the field of magic holding Mickey at bay.
Jessica muttered the spell, moving through the words in their various iterations the way she’d taught herself. Her voice had risen from a whisper now—or at least it felt like it had—but the crackle and snap of Leandras’ magic buzzing around Mickey and slowly shoving the Matahg’s hand back down by his side overwhelmed every other sound.
Mickey roared, and a burst of red and black light exploded around his body, fighting against the fae’s. His mad, inhuman grin sliced across his face from ear to ear. The horns splitting from his skull flickered with dark energy, and the claws extending from all four hands twitched once with a casting gesture she’d never seen him use.
The blinding silver of Leandras’ spell burst into glittering fragments, and for a moment, Mickey was free.
His hand lashed out toward Jessica and sent a spear of red light toward her head.
She ducked and stepped aside at the last moment, her hands clenched tightly around the box. The words of her spell never stopped, even when the Matahg’s attack sliced through the far wall of the warehouse and let a sliver of pale morning light into the room.
Leandras stepped forward and whipped his hand out toward the Matahg. A cord of silver light lashed from his fingertips and coiled around Mickey, pinning the guy’s muscular and still ridiculously long arms at his sides. Mickey staggered backward before his hulking form cracked against the doorway of the hall and broke off a huge chunk of drywall and plaster, denting the steel frame beneath.
“You’re finished!” he roared. “Both of you!”
“Jessica,” Leandras growled as he jerked tighter on his energetic cord and wrapped it one more time around his own hand. “I do hope you’re almost finished.”
“What the hell is this?” Mel shrieked. “You guys have no idea who—”
“And by the power I invoked to Shatter what was,” Jessica screamed, her fingers fumbling with the lid of the box, “I now call it to return!”
“Jessica!”
“Get her out of here,” Leandras shouted.
No one else shouted or struggled. Or maybe they did, and Jessica just couldn’t hear it.
“The blood-price must be paid,” she continued.
Mickey screamed with the next flash of blood-red light encapsulating his body. The first wave of it visibly ate away at Leandras’ cord tethering him to the spot.
“I have chosen.” Jessica’s throat burned with the force of shouting the final lines. “What debt is owed will be paid by Mickey Hargraves. And may we be bound by his sacrifice!”
Despite the tight pit in her gut, the power of the magic in that box burning into her arms with so much force that her fingers were numb, and the stinging tears welling in her eyes, Jessica opened the lid.
Mickey’s next flickering wave of destructive crimson light burned through the rest of Leandras’ spell. The silver cord snapped and disappeared. A barrage of deadly red spikes flung from the Matahg’s outstretched claw not toward the vestrohím who’d claimed him but at the fae man.
Whether his attack had hit home, Jessica had no idea. She couldn’t look away from her old boss, her old prisoner, the magical who’d taken her in and shown her a better way than she’d been living before he showed her just how much worse it could get.
Snarling, he turned toward her and stepped forward. “I should have killed you, Jessica.”
For a moment, as he stalked toward her and raised his hand for another swiping attack that could have done anything to her at this point, she thought she’d failed.
He clearly wasn’t dead. Her magic clearly hadn’t left the box; the purple and black glow of it pulsed around the edges of the hinged lid, making her tear-filled vision fracture in halos of light. And Mickey just kept coming at her.
“And now I will.” He threw a single black orb at her. It launched from his red-tipped claw but didn’t make it halfway before shattering midair. And the glittering particles of his attack coalesced into a stream of fluttering darkness snaking quickly into the open tin box in J
essica’s hands.
“What?” If his natural form had had eyes, they would have widened. Instead, the Matahg cocked his head and lifted his arms away from his sides, breathing heavily. “You can’t.”
Jessica looked up from her box in disbelief a second before Mickey flung another shard of unstoppable red light at her. It burst before it ever reached her, though she felt the heat of it that had torn through her spine the last time they’d met face to face. Red magic like a spray of blood seeped into her open box. The burning strength of her own magic tore through her arms, but it still wasn’t working.
Roaring so loud a layer of dust shivered down from the warehouse ceiling, Mickey launched everything he had at her. Attack after attack in all their horrifying forms sprayed from the Matahg’s claws as he stormed toward her. Each one of them disintegrated and filled more of Jessica’s magic-box. The unearthly grin splitting his marred face contracted in either pain or surprise, his razor-sharp teeth gnashing together within a face that looked more like a nightmare than any nightmare Jessica had had.
Then he choked and dropped to one knee no less than three feet in front of her, still fighting the hold of her spell. She stepped backward around the table only when he slashed wildly at her with a clawed hand. The red aura bursting around him snaked into her box.
The miss sent him crashing to his other knee, and he reared back, sucking in a dry, rattling breath. Mickey’s second pair of arms shuddered and crumpled in on themselves. He swayed there on his knees, arms lifted away from his sides, and tilted his head back. Maybe he was looking at her. Maybe he saw nothing with the eyeless sight of a Matahg. But his chest jerked, another rattling breath slowly filled his lungs, and he whispered, “I always knew you had it in you.”
Beads of red magic and colorless light bloomed on Mickey’s flesh, drawn out of him like sweat from his pores as one by one they floated away from his body and converged together in a dark stream. That stream moved right into the box in Jessica’s hand. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her entire body trembling as her mentor and her abuser let out his last shuddering breath.
The Secret Coin (Accessory to Magic Book 3) Page 24