The Lost Queen

by Jenn Stark

  Across from Paris and further along the Strip, was the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, and atop it rested a lonely hut on a high platform: the home of the Council’s Hermit. I’d rarely seen Willem of Galt in his humble home, which wasn’t too surprising. First off, he was the caretaker of the veil between the worlds, and secondly…he was my dad. So many unresolved issues there, so little time.

  Then there was the last fortress on the Strip, and by far the most impressive. The Magician’s residence might easily have served as the hall of the mountain king in a Wagnerian opera, all soaring spires and arches and turrets lifting into the heavens. There, buried somewhere deep within that complex labyrinth, was Armaeus Bertrand, the leader of the Arcana Council. There were other Council members, of course. Eshe, the High Priestess, had made her home on the Strip mostly by couch-surfing her way through Armaeus’s million-and-one rooms. Death and Judgment preferred off-campus housing, and the recently ascended Lovers—the one-time gods Zeus and Hera—hadn’t stopped fighting with each other long enough to sign a spectral lease. But right now, the thing that struck me most about the Magician’s abode was the same thing I’d noticed in the other homes of the Arcana Council…namely, how quiet it was.

  When it came to the Council, quiet didn’t necessarily mean good.

  I paid my Lyft driver and made my way into the lobby of the Luxor hotel, struck as I always was by the almost breathtaking level of glitz and kitsch the place maintained. The tourists streaming from the hotel to the casino didn’t seem to pay attention to how over the top the lobby was, barely stopping to look up before disappearing into the wall of noise that marked the casino proper. Old, young, tall, short, every size and every description, some with the earnestness of penny slotters, some with the slick strut of black jack and craps players. Even at two p.m. on a weekday, there were bachelorette parties and early spring breakers, conference attendees sneaking out of sessions and die-hard regulars whose skin had turned the faintest shade of green after a long winter hunched over the machines.

  These were the people who made up Vegas, their belief fully staked on the next turn of the card, the next roll of the dice, the next spin of the roulette wheel, or the next tug on the arm of a slot machine. Their magic was what had pulled the Arcana Council to Las Vegas in the early forties, when the mob was still king and Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo, and their magic was what kept the Council anchored in power today.

  Sometimes, it merely took having enough people who believed in possibility to make all the difference in the world.

  I crossed the lobby of the hotel and easily saw the elevators to the Magician’s domain, Prime Luxe, hidden alongside the bays of the Luxor. No matter how many times I visited the hotel, I never tired of entering the Magician’s lair this way. Though I could now technically scramble my cells long enough to poof into Armaeus’s office with my hair on fire, there was something old world about going up in an elevator cage to meet the most powerful man on the planet.

  The most powerful, and the most inscrutable.

  A few moments later, when the elevator doors snicked open, I knew that the Magician had picked up on my mood. Which was good, since I’d been telegraphing it for that exact purpose. No matter how much I loved the man, he had one fatal flaw. He didn’t share his toys. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t bother me, except when those toys were the information I needed to do my job.

  “Miss Wilde. How good of you to join me.”

  I braced myself for seeing Armaeus, because no matter how many times it happened, it was always a revelation to me. Sometimes, like today, I needed that revelation more than others.

  The Magician of the Arcana Council stood at the far wall of his office, silhouetted by the bright sunshine and surrounded with the view of the sprawling city far below. A city that extended in one direction past towering skyscrapers and the constant movement of the Strip, and in the other, out into what looked from this distance to be a vast and formless desert, where very little lived and even less moved. It was the dichotomy of living in an oasis in the desert, and it suited the man who had lived above it for nearly eighty years…after living elsewhere in the world for going on nine hundred years.

  Armaeus Bertrand was holding up pretty well, I had to say.

  Tall and elegant despite his powerful build, today the Magician wore what passed for him as casual clothes—a tailored blue silk shirt, open at the collar, dark trousers, thousand-dollar loafers. He boasted a heavy platinum watch on one wrist, but otherwise, no jewelry adorned his burnished bronze skin, the rich coloring a testament to his French-Egyptian birth. His dark hair flowed in thick waves past his collar, framing a face distinctive for its chiseled cheekbones and jaw and his flashing, dark, black-gold eyes. The very first time I’d met the Magician, he’d been a voice in my mind. And it was the voice that continued to draw me back, year over year. Our relationship had never been easy, and it hadn’t always been good, but it was powerfully addictive, I had to admit.

  It also wasn’t the point of me being here today, I reminded myself.

  “You’re angry with me.” Armaeus observed mildly as I crossed the room. He’d arranged the chairs in the seating area of his office to invite conversation, but I was too keyed up to sit.

  I sighed. “Angry is perhaps overstating it. Call me…dismayed. Confused. Uncertain. You know what’s going on with this Myanya, this witch prophecy that’s taking over the covens, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “I didn’t know it was happening,” I protested. “How can I ask you about something if you don’t give me a heads-up that it’s even going to be a thing? I’m not you. I don’t sit around and consider the probabilities of every possible situation transitioning into the next situation, time without end.”

  Armaeus regarded me speculatively as I neared him, and I tried not to let that rattle me either. As much as I knew the Magician cared for me, it didn’t stop him from being endlessly intrigued by my progression in my Connected abilities. If he were forced to choose between a relationship with me and continued study…I might not like the answer he’d give.

  His lips quirked. The Magician also had the ability to read my thoughts unless I carefully shielded them from him. At this moment, if he really wanted to shuffle around in my mental file cabinet, I didn’t care what he saw.

  He tilted his head, his eyes gleaming more darkly, and the tiniest frisson of apprehension skated across my nerves. Okay, so I mostly didn’t care what he saw. The Magician had a way of taking everything I was willing to give the moment I gave it, before I could change my mind.

  “You acknowledge that I’ve been alive for hundreds of years, but you don’t truly understand what that means, Miss Wilde. I assure you, it changes your perspective. The study of your emerging power is a far more potent and compelling topic than you give yourself credit for.”

  “Uh-huh,” I smiled. “So what you’re telling me is, you’re dating me for my mind?”

  “Far from it. In fact, that’s something I need to speak to you about—later.”

  At the deep, rolling insinuation in his voice, every one of my nerve endings perked up and turned Armaeus’s way. “Later as in when?” I prompted.

  “That depends on what information you have to share with me regarding the return of Myanya. I have been distracted with my own studies these past several days and only realized the prophecy had been triggered when I picked up your thoughts today.”

  That surprised me, and maybe mollified me a little too. Maybe I needed to stop assuming the worst when it came to the Magician holding out on me. Despite his tendency to throw me into the fire and assume he could heal my scorch marks later. “You were that deep in the Fortress of Solitude?” I took a moment to look a little more closely at Armaeus, but I couldn’t see anything different about him. Devastatingly gorgeous? Check. Insufferably arrogant? Check. Practically steaming with magic? Check. “What gives with that?”

  “There is a season to al
l things, Miss Wilde, including for me,” Armaeus said, dismissing my question. Another small tremor of concern skated across my awareness.

  He kept going. “But no, I wasn’t aware the spirit of Myanya had returned. Her last known incursion was in 1934, and she made another attempt in 1962, which failed, as it was a time of great unrest among the covens. The energy she brought was not well received, for all that it would eventually strengthen the coven who harbored the scarred warrior queen.”

  I screwed my face up, because I could feel a math coming on. “So, that would have brought her back—when? 1990? I think Danae mentioned that date.”

  “Perfect numbers.” Armaeus nodded. “We have no record of the prophecy being fulfilled in 1990, or even attempted. That year, my focus wasn’t on the covens as heavily, but on events of a decidedly more mundane nature.”

  I lifted my brows. “I don’t remember anyone mentioning you at the Berlin Wall.”

  Armaeus flicked his gaze over my shoulder, fixing on a distant spot in the universe where he stored his imaginary calculator. “Earlier this year, I considered the possibility of her return, but discarded it as there was no data to be found that the prophecy had been fulfilled in 1990. With the prophecy going unfulfilled twice, it would have taken an act of the covens working in concert to resurrect Myanya’s energy, which was unlikely given the negative consequences to the witch in question. Like so many other prophecies, it should have been consigned to ash. But here we are.”

  “Clearly. So where is she?”

  Armaeus blinked, his eyes once more sharpening their focus on me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Myanya’s starting to issue invites to wannabe oppressors, only she’s flipping the tables. Big-time. According to the complaints that have come into Justice Hall, I’ve got three dead guys already, another guy who should be dead except for his fast-thinking brother, and an impaled descendent of Dracula who insists Myanya simply needs to give him another chance. I’m laying that one at her doorstep too, and I have a feeling there are others. According to Danae, a bunch of dead guys is not at all the way the prophecy is supposed to start.”

  “It’s not how it’s transpired in the past, but—the spirit evolves. Myanya evolves.” Armaeus frowned pensively. “The secrets for her success now likely lie in the evidence of her failure in the past.”

  “We don’t even know where she made the attempt in 1990, or if she did,” I said. “That’s not going to help us.”

  “Not in 1990, no,” Armaeus said. “But 1962 was a different story. The failed attempt of the scarred warrior prophecy took place in Moscow, Russia, in the shadow of St. Basil’s Cathedral.”

  “A cathedral. In Moscow. Not exactly where I would expect a coven of witches to hang out.”

  Armaeus smiled. “You should never underestimate the power of true believers.”

  “Okay, great,” I said, making a “give it to me” gesture. “So what happened? Myanya killed her vessel witch? Or did she simply ice her suitors like she’s doing now?”

  “Neither. The vessel witch who Myanya had chosen to fulfill the prophecy allowed her to take hold—and then banished her. The prophecy cycle ended almost as soon as it started.”

  I frowned. The Jones brothers had said…then again, I needed to consider the source of that particular piece of intel. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Ordinarily, it isn’t. And it wasn’t without great cost to the vessel witch in question.”

  Something about this wasn’t tracking, but I was willing to go along. “Okay, so where and when did that happen, and should I head there now? Or is it something we need to see together?”

  A strange shadow passed over Armaeus’s face. “You will need to see it in person, but I can’t go with you. I can’t leave here, in fact. Not yet. There’s still…too much to be done.”

  My brows lifted. “Is there something going on with the Council I need to be aware of?” I asked, but Armaeus shook his head.

  “No. But time is of the essence now. I suggest you collect the inimitable Miss Dawes and be on your way.”

  I thought of Nikki in the streets of Moscow and couldn’t help but smile as well. But I also could tell Armaeus was giving me the brush-off. “And what about you?”

  “Your focus should be only on the lost queen, Miss Wilde. And defeating her.” The Magician’s beautiful lips quirked up in a half smile. “It’s important for you to close this case.”

  I frowned at him. “Why? In case you didn’t notice, I’m lousy with cases back at the office. Why does this one matter any more than they do?”

  “When you answer that, you’ll be much further down the path toward unraveling the mystery of the lost queen, my dear Miss Wilde…and many other mysteries as well.”

  Then he disappeared in a shatter of smoke.

  Chapter Eleven

  It only took me the length of the elevator ride down from Armaeus’s penthouse to decide I wasn’t going to play the game his way anymore. Something was going on with the Magician, something important, and I needed to understand it. I couldn’t keep getting angry at him withholding information from me if I wasn’t willing to go after that information myself. If Armaeus wanted to keep something from me, he would. If he was willing to let me see it with my own eyes if I sought it out…

  Then I needed to take my own action.

  “Figure it out, Sara,” I muttered, striding out once again into the lobby of the Luxor. There were almost the same people there that had been wandering the space every time I’d visited—different clothes, different hairstyles, even different skin color, but the same people.

  I wasn’t the same person, though. I had changed these past several weeks and months. It was time for me to start acting like it.

  Stopping in front of the gift shop, I stared hard at the window, my gaze running mindlessly over the trinkets that lined the shelves. There were faux gold statues of every description, miniature King Tuts and Queen Nefertiti masks, and ankhs in sterling silver and pewter along with the gold plate. Not for the first time, I considered the poetic justice of Armaeus living above a pyramid-shaped homage to his mother’s native land, when he’d barely ever returned to Egypt while I’d known him. And when he had hit the land of the pharaohs, it hadn’t gone so well for him. The ancient crypts lying beneath the shifting sands had been a trap designed to ensnare him, and, being the Magician, he’d at least had some inkling of the possibility that such an eventuality could…

  Happen.

  I frowned more fiercely, staring at nothing. Armaeus was the Magician, arguably one of the most powerful one-time humans on the planet, and he’d said more than once that I was potentially going to grow in strength to rival him—or even surpass him. Was that what was going on here? Was he trying to level himself up to prepare for me?

  Or was it something else? Time and time again, when the Magician had seemed to thrust me into danger without concern for how damaged I might end up, he’d done so knowing that he’d be there to catch me when and if I stumbled. That he could always take care of me, always protect me.

  Or, failing that, he could always heal me after the worst had been done.

  But what about now? I was Justice of the Arcana Council, and I’d already learned that some of my abilities had transferred, some were brand-new, and others had vanished, never mind that they’d been the most useful ones. Had the dynamic between Armaeus and me changed as well? He’d appeared to love me as much as or more than he always had, but upstairs just now, our vibe had seemed completely different.

  I scowled into the plateglass window, hard enough it began to vibrate. Was I seriously one of no less than a hundred other women in the city at this exact moment, standing alone in the lobby of a Vegas casino, wondering if my boyfriend simply wasn’t that into me?

  I dissolved into my own crackling hiss of smoke. I knew Armaeus’s domain, dammit. I didn’t need a freaking road map to find him.

  A few seconds later,
I flared back into existence, surrounded by shelves as large and looming as the ones in the library of Justice, but decidedly neater. Now, however, I looked at Armaeus’s library with new eyes.

  “The Mystere Arcanum,” I murmured, remembering what the Jones brothers called it, Malachi and Mordechai. The repository for all that was mystic and magical, the grimoires of ancient magicians.

  I’d known Armaeus had amassed this library, at least tangentially. When I’d first started working for him as an artifact hunter, a good quarter of the items he’d wanted me to find were exclusively so that he could store them away in his own little museum, hidden from the prying eyes of mortals who didn’t understand the artifacts’ power or potential. And I was more than a little bit convinced that he’d been the guy behind the burning of the Library of Alexandria, an act of vandalism so breathtakingly awful, I hadn’t wanted to examine it too much. But the Magician had long been more about the balance of magic on Earth than about the preservation of magic itself. It wasn’t completely unbelievable that he’d set fire to the greatest compendium of knowledge in the ancient world.

  I looked around the shelves, each of them stacked floor to ceiling with ancient, dusty tomes and scroll cases and boxes. It also wasn’t completely unbelievable that Armaeus had stolen what he needed from the Library of Alexandria, then merely set what was left on fire.

  A sound from the back of the room drew my attention. Not because it was subtle either. It was a two-parter. The first the hissing sound of something moving through the still air at great speed, then connecting with something soft and fleshy.