She’d never seen the actual light of life and energy and essence fade around someone as they lost all of it. Now, she knew that was exactly what she was seeing as the final bit of what made Mickey Mickey rose from his chest in a single orb slightly larger than the others. It was pure black. No light. No flicker. Just the void he’d carried inside him until the end.
When the orb finally settled inside the open tin box in Jessica’s hands, Mickey Hargraves’ shell of a body slumped to the floor.
The overhead lights flickered once.
The bank would have told her to prepare for what happened next. But Jessica already knew. She’d been both fearing and longing for it for over a year and a half.
She drew a ragged breath, still trembling from head to toe, and slowly turned the open box around so she could look into the purple glow swirling with black. Her fingers were stiff as she pried them loose from the lid and reached for her magic.
Apparently, that part of her couldn’t wait any longer.
A shimmering black cloud exploded from the box and struck her chest. Jessica gasped, and the tin box clattered to the floor at her feet because the power surging through her now had completely taken over. Her arms jerked out to her sides, and the agonizingly sweet burn of everything she thought she could live without coursed through her.
Black and purple light surged from the open box on the floor, pummeling Jessica over and over in her chest, her throat, her hands.
“What the fuck is going on?” Mel shouted.
It sounded like she’d called out from underground, her voice muffled and not quite right despite being right there behind Jessica. She could feel how close Mel was, and she couldn’t do a thing about it. Not now that she had finally done this.
“Somebody needs to help her,” Mel shrieked. “This isn’t—”
Jessica’s head whipped back on its own, and she screamed.
The last threads of her magic lurched from the box and darted into her open mouth, dampening the sound of her pain and regret and triumph as it settled back into its rightful place within her.
The lights flickered again, then the buzzing hum of overactive electricity filled the warehouse. One by one, the caged lights in the ceiling popped, throwing sparks down on all of them and casting the place into growing darkness.
Deeper shadow.
Exactly where Jessica Northwood belonged.
Exactly where she’d promised herself she’d never be again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jessica’s awareness fully returned with the quivering power of her own magic. Her skin burned. Every inch of her was on fire, but that fire had left a massive hole in her the day she’d snuffed it out.
Now that it was back, she welcomed the raging burn of it. And a small voice in the back of her mind told her to wait just a little longer. She would be free again soon, but not quite yet.
It could have taken a split second or ten minutes to regain feeling in her body and remember where she was, who she was, why she was here. The warehouse was dark and completely silent until someone coughed. Someone else tossed a blazing orb of light into the air to hover above them where the shattered lights had been. When the warehouse illuminated one more time, Jessica drew another shuddering breath and let it out again.
The moan escaping her definitely wasn’t intentional. But the sight of that dented tin box lying at her feet, completely dull and cold, completely empty, was the best thing she’d seen in a long time. Even that, though, wasn’t enough to still her trembling body. She looked down at her hands, which shook just as violently, but they looked like her hands again. The hands that didn’t betray her when it came down to the final moment and she was the only one who could do anything to change the way it all played out.
“Let go of me!” Mel shouted and finally managed to rip herself free of whoever had been holding her back. “And don’t tell me you didn’t just see that.”
Two more bright orbs rose to the ceiling, bringing far more color and depth to the room than the electrical lights. Or maybe that was just Jessica seeing the world one more time in the way she’d forgotten she could.
“Jess.” Mel’s hurried footsteps approached, and Jessica couldn’t bring herself to turn around. So the other witch stepped in front of her and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Jessica. Hey. Say something.”
Mel frantically studied her friend’s face, frowning at the tears still pouring from the corners of the vestrohím’s eyes. She wiped them gingerly from Jessica’s cheek and tucked Jessica’s nearly black hair behind one ear.
“Please.” Mel’s lower lip trembled. “Jess.”
A trembling smile lifted the corners of Jessica’s mouth, and she slowly looked up to meet her friend’s wide, terrified blue eyes. “Now we can finish the rest of it.”
“What?”
Swallowing thickly, Jessica stepped away, and Mel’s hands slipped off her shoulders without an ounce of resistance. She cast a quick glance at the husk that had been Mickey Hargraves before stepping toward the table and scanning the faces of the two dozen Laenmúr members staring at her. Their expressions ranged from mute shock to horror to small, flickering smirks of approval. No one said a word.
“Where’s Leandras?”
“Right here.” The fae man stepped away from the wall of the warehouse and into the much brighter ring of light by which they could now get to work. He didn’t wear the hungry, feral grin that had stirred up more than a small conflicting storm inside her whenever she saw it, but he was smiling. Silver light darted across his wide eyes as he approached her, and his gaze didn’t once leave hers. “That was…far more than I ever imagined.”
Jessica’s breath settled into something close to normal, and while the tears had finally stopped, the last few still slipped in hot lines down her cheeks. “I did what I had to do.”
“Yes. You did. You’re trembling.” He reached toward her face, but she stepped away and shook her head a fraction of an inch, blinking quickly.
“Not now.”
Leandras slowly withdrew his hand, still staring at her, and dipped his head. “I understand.”
He didn’t, though. Not really. How could he? He’d never done anything close to what Jessica had just accomplished. The fae hadn’t just wrapped up everything from his past in one agonizingly tight bow before destroying it. This wasn’t just about her magic. If he had any idea what it had taken for her to do what she’d just done, knowing what she might do now and in the future if she wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t be looking at her like that.
“You saw that. You saw what she did.” Mel’s voice rose in pitch and volume—the sound of someone losing their shit because they couldn’t reconcile what they’d seen with what they thought they knew of the world. Or their friends. “It’s Mickey…”
“Shh.” Cedrick wrapped his arms around her and tried to pull her away. “Mel, come on.”
“Don’t tell me to come on! This doesn’t make sense.” She shoved him away from her and stared at Mickey’s body, taking quick, ragged breaths. “She shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
“But she did. Babe, we can talk about this later—”
“Why was he here?” Mel screamed at Jessica, throwing her hand out toward the dark hallway. “Why would you bring that asshole to our front door right before we have to cast this spell? We were free of him, Jessica!”
“I wasn’t.” Jessica lifted her chin and knew exactly how disconnected she was from her own emotions, from seeing her best friend—and whatever else Mel had been to her—shaking, in tears, and desperately wanting answers while Jessica herself didn’t feel a thing.
Just part of the price, wasn’t it?
She spread her arms. “And now we’re all free.”
“But like this? Really, Jessica?” Mel stormed toward her and gestured sharply toward Mickey’s body. “Like this? What did you even do?”
“I played my last card so we could get this done.” She turned away from her friend to focus on the t
able and the spell reagents laid out there instead. “Which is why we’re all here, right?”
Leandras dipped his head, then raised a hand, signaling to everyone else that they were ready to begin.
“You won’t even look at me.” Mel swallowed. “Why won’t you look at me?”
“Seriously, Mel.” Cedrick grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the table. “We had time earlier, but now we really don’t.”
Jessica shot her friends a sidelong glance and reached into her jacket pocket. “We can talk about it afterward. If you want.”
“Goddamnit.” Mel jerked away from Cedrick’s grasp again and paced along the far wall of the warehouse, looking back and forth between Jessica and the body of their ex-boss.
The son of a bitch who couldn’t touch any of them ever again.
Even the rage that filled her every time she thought of Mickey was dampened now beneath the full force of her magic. That was what mattered the most now—that Jessica was whole again. Or maybe she didn’t feel much at all for the Matahg because she’d literally obliterated everything that existed of him but his physical shell.
When she withdrew the white box from her jacket pocket, Leandras sucked in a sharp breath.
“We’re ready,” he muttered, staring at her hand.
“I know.” She removed the lid and dropped it on the floor. The giant gold coin glinted at her in the bright light of the glowing spheres overhead. It didn’t thrum and bounce around in the box like so many other times before. It didn’t float up out of her hand to hover there in midair. The coin, she realized, finally understood who would be using it. That this was how they completed the next phase of the reckoning to do what had to be done. Whether that meant opening the Gateway and abandoning first rights so the Dalu’Rázj could be stopped still remained to be seen. But now Jessica had everything she needed to make the choice without getting killed for it.
Or at least she had an astronomically higher chance of surviving.
She’d have to make that decision later. When they weren’t so pressed for time.
Once her fingers closed around the coin and its quivering energy raced up her hand before dissipating, Leandras pointed at the other Laenmúr magicals. “Places. We do this now, before anything else stands in the way.”
The two dozen members of an old supporting faction from a different world gathered around the table in two concentric rings. They placed Jessica and Leandras in the center, and when the fae didn’t say anything about Jessica taking her place, she assumed she already had.
Mel and Cedrick stood together in the outer circle. His green-tinted face was pale, and he stared at the table as if he expected that to be their next obstacle. Mel just glared at Jessica, her eyes red-rimmed and her jaw clenching over and over.
If Mel wanted to hear the full story after all this, fine. Jessica clearly didn’t have anything to hide anymore. But if anyone in this room wasn’t ready to do this—wasn’t committed—Jessica had no idea what the consequences would be. So she nodded slowly at her friend, waiting for the small sign of Mel’s rage subsiding. The other witch finally grunted in aggravation and broke their staring contest.
That was all Jessica needed. Mel would suck it up for now so they could get this done.
Whatever this was.
She returned her attention to the gold coin in her hand. “What do I have to do?”
“You are the Guardian, Jessica,” Leandras muttered. He leaned toward her until his lips almost brushed against her ear. “The Gateway responds to you alone. We will cast the spell. You will channel it. Understood?”
“Yeah.”
Channeling everyone else’s magic wasn’t anything new. She’d done it for almost all the major jobs with Corpus that required a little extra juice, and she’d done it outside Leandras’ own apartment to help Damian take down the wards. Though this time, Jessica wouldn’t stagger around like an idiot who’d removed the best parts of herself to keep playing martyr a little longer. This time, she could handle it. And so much more.
“On my signal, Jessica.” The fae’s breath ruffled through her hair by her ear, sending a shiver down her spine she didn’t bother trying to push away. “Place the coin in the center of the runes on the table when I say. That will be the end of it.”
“For now.” She met his gaze and smirked. “I can put a coin on a table, Leandras. We’re good.”
“Good. Then we begin.” His silver-tinted eyes remained fixated on the golden coin in her hand as he backed away from her to take his place in the inner circle. He took a deep breath and started the incantation in one long, drawn-out note. For the first few lines, it was just his voice echoing through the warehouse. Then the others joined in one by one.
The coin thrummed in Jessica’s hand. With each new voice lending its power to the ritual, the buzz of energy around her grew thicker. It swam through her head, bringing a light wave of dizziness with it that made her chuckle.
Hell of a way to get a good buzz going. And no hangover afterward. Hopefully.
She turned to look at each of the magicals surrounding her in the circles, and when her gaze fell on Mel again, her friend just glared right back. Mel’s lips were pressed tightly together, unmoving. Cedrick hadn’t noticed; he was too busy staring at the reagents on the table and focusing on the words echoed by everyone else in the room.
Jessica raised a warning eyebrow at her friend. Mel had to join in. That was part of the deal. A much smaller deal for Mel but a part of the greater whole just the same.
It felt like they stared at each other for hours before Mel finally added her voice to the incantation.
The second she did, a stronger surge of energy swarmed around Jessica, invisible but just as real as the dust-covered cement beneath her feet or the solid table in front of her. She gasped, fighting to keep down the insane urge to laugh because now she was tripling her power. Hell, quadrupling it. All the magical intention behind two dozen voices chanting in a single tone, like they were calling her name and not just reciting a spell, made its way into her like her own breath.
The coin flashed in her hand. Jessica glanced at Leandras, but the fae had his sights set intently on the coin itself and not her. He raised his voice, and every voice around him followed suit.
Jessica puffed out quick exhales, steadying herself against more magic than she’d ever felt in one place. If this went on much longer, she wouldn’t be able to control herself. There was too much here. Too much calling her to just let go and do what she’d always been so good at doing. To unleash herself.
The low rumble of car engines came from the other side of the warehouse. Car doors opened and shut. Footsteps moved across pavement. Lots of footsteps.
She focused on the slash in the wall from Mickey’s attack, where the rising morning light spilled through to illuminate the dust and floating specks in the musty air. The light winked out briefly, then reappeared. It happened again, and again, and Jessica spun toward Leandras. “Someone’s here.”
The fae man met her gaze but didn’t say a word. Instead, he lifted his chin and chanted even louder.
The Laenmúr magicals joined him, but those closest to the hole in the wall had clearly picked up on the disturbance outside. They shifted nervously in their circles, glancing over their shoulders to see the morning light blinking rapidly now as who knew how many unwanted guests headed across the parking lot toward the warehouse entrance.
Of course. Every goddamn thing Jessica ever tried to do had to be interrupted by someone thinking they could do it better.
She returned her attention to the table and found the reagents glowing with their own internal light. A small bone. An emerald jewel. A jar of red-stained dirt. A feather blacker even than the last of Mickey’s essence. And a copper ring. All arranged at the five points of a star. All glowing and humming with their own rising energy.
The door at the end of the long dark hall creaked open but didn’t shut. Footsteps hurried toward them.
Jessica g
ritted her teeth against the magical pressure intensifying from every direction on the outside and from every part of her on the inside.
How long was this supposed to take?
“Don’t move,” Leandras warned before taking up the chant one more time.
The hallway echoed madly with what had to be dozens of shoes. Multiple dozens. It sounded like more than their own numbers gathered around the table, and based on everything Leandras had told her, they couldn’t spare a single one to fight off whoever was in that hall.
The coin vibrated intensely now, flickering in and out of existence like an Umbál. But her grip held firm as the reagents on the table shuddered. Their lights blinked, brightened, and strobed so fast, she wondered if they’d gotten something wrong.
A blast of green fire shot through the warehouse and barely missed a Laenmúr member’s head. The elf man ducked the attack and glared at the intruder who’d thrown it.
“Hold!” Leandras shouted.
There was no way they’d be able to hold. They’d be picked off one by one, and the assholes barging in on the ritual wouldn’t have anyone to stand against them.
Except for Jessica.
She slipped the coin into her jacket pocket and raised her hands.
“Jessica, no!” Leandras hissed.
His warning came much too late.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Four years she’d spent with Corpus perfecting her ability to channel the magic of those around her—to direct it at security wards, the extraction target, the idiots who thought they could stop a heist halfway through. The only difference between now and then was that the stakes were much higher for all of them.
And when they succeeded, Mickey wouldn’t be around to take his cut.
The dumbass wizard who’d tossed the green fireball seemed to realize this the second after Leandras had shouted for Jessica to stop. He stared in dumb shock at the Matahg’s body on the floor in front of the table, which left him with no time to see what was coming for him.
The Secret Coin (Accessory to Magic Book 3) Page 25