The Lost Queen

by Jenn Stark

  “They being Gail and Monica?”

  “All of them,” Heather said darkly. “Gail and Monica have been allies for decades, and they knew this was coming as well, but they were too far into their own self-importance to make such a sacrifice, even temporarily. That said, they didn’t want someone else to steal the glory. You can see the problem.”

  I couldn’t, really, but I attempted to restate. “They wanted Tammy to be the fall girl, but they were worried that after the prophecy was fulfilled, she would emerge stronger than either of them.”

  “Tammy was already stronger than Monica, but she didn’t have faith in her abilities. She wanted to be a celebrity, wanted to be respected. And she was so beautiful, mixing and mingling with them, so full of power and hope. She’d let me come to all the parties and now…and now she’s—” Heather put her fist to her mouth briefly, then resolutely dropped it again. “She didn’t deserve what they did to her. She didn’t want to take power from anyone. She wanted it all for the coven—everything in her life for the coven. They didn’t have to—”

  This time, Heather did burst into tears, and I let her cry for a bit, handing her some of the linen napkins that had been teased into tiny swan shapes on the table. She dissolved for another minute or so, then looked up. Her makeup was barely streaked, and I was reminded again of how young she felt to me. She’d been well paired with Tammy, by far the youngest of the trifecta of witches caught up in the prophecy.

  “How did they do it?”

  “A spell,” Heather said, sounding utterly defeated. “It’s against coven rules to attack each other, but Tammy seemed to be the only one concerned with coven protocol. When I saw her—the last I saw of her—she had a strange cast to her skin. It didn’t surprise me that she wasn’t feeling well, but I watched her stumble and them both swoop in and—I knew. The poison or bad food or whatever she consumed was enough to weaken her. They did the rest.”

  “Why didn’t you move in to protect her?”

  “Me?” Heather looked at me in disbelief. “I’m not all that good at magic, if you want me to be honest. Tammy was patient, but I…I don’t know what I’m going to do now.” She balled up the napkin in her hand, dropping her eyes to it. “They’ll reassign me to a new mentor. That’s going to be a joy.”

  “We’ll figure that out,” I said, standing. I didn’t know if covens ever traded their initiates, but Danae might know a better place for this girl. “What about the other two initiates? Were they aware of the plot against Tammy?”

  “Them.” Heather shook her head and stood as well, shooting me a grateful smile. “You know, I shouldn’t say anything bad about them. They’re nice, or they try to be. It’s not easy to make friends when you halfway think you should be competing with each other, but they’re fun to talk to. They really like their mentors too, so I try to give them the benefit of the doubt but—I know they were worried about Tammy. That she might be the one, and what that would mean.”

  “Worried in what way?”

  Heather sniffed. “Well, she was…different, you know. She didn’t take shit from anyone, no matter how important they were. She wanted to be an actress, a celebrity, as much as a witch, and did everything on her terms. She even told off Herm Lannister so hard at Comic-Con, he blackballed her.”

  “Really. You know Herm Lannister is dead, right?”

  “I…no.” Heather’s lower lip started to tremble.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s happening?” she mewled, crumpling all over again.

  We moved through the club, Nikki on our heels, but there were no other witches remaining at Lure. The drive to Witch HQ was subdued. The farther we got out of LA, the posher and more high-rolling the estates. When we finally turned off the main thoroughfare, we were near Santa Monica, and I began to catch sight of the ocean.

  “Pretty swank,” I murmured, and that stirred Heather to attention.

  “It’s one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” she said, her focus finally off her hands and onto the countryside as long, well-lit lanes streamed off into the darkness of treed estates behind massive gates. “I don’t know all the details, but the LA coven has a lot of money and even more land. They’ve been sitting on most of it, and whoever rules as the head of the coven gets the house for the duration of her tenure. When she’s replaced, she’s set up in another palace up the coast. There’s, like, a half dozen of them, some of them sitting empty, so there’s never any question of there being enough space.”

  “So no real incentive to stay head witch,” Nikki put in. “Seems to me retirement on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in your very own castle would be a pretty graceful way to step out of the limelight.”

  “It would, but that didn’t mean it’s something anyone wants,” Heather said, her voice rueful. “You get a lot of power as the head of a coven, and this is Los Angeles, after all. If you’re not the top dog, you’re pretty easily forgotten. Once you’ve been around the city long enough, it becomes a burning obsession to stay relevant. Witches aren’t that different from movie stars in that respect. At least not here.”

  “Fair enough.” We turned off the road and glided through an enormous white gate carved out of what looked like marble. Instead of proceeding to a mausoleum, however, we coasted along a lane bordered by manicured fruit trees until the lights of the main house emerged as we crested a low rise. Lara Drake’s mansion spread out in front of us, and I whistled.

  “Whoa,” Nikki agreed, leaning forward. “This is where you throw witch parties?”

  “Only for the most important celebrations.” Heather laughed. “I’ve only been here a handful of times. Most of the time, we gather in a central assembly house a few miles away. Still very beautiful, but—not quite as grand.”

  “It’d be hard to find someplace as grand as this,” I said.

  The house looked like something a Rockefeller had built or at least stayed in, a sprawling three-story building with a large entrance atop a sweeping staircase. Additional staircases led to side entrances in the two-story flanking wings, and every room in the place was lit up. Even the curved driveway that nudged up to the central entrance arched gracefully, giving the place the feel of a palace.

  “I do not even want to know how many millions of dollars this cost,” Nikki muttered, and Heather sighed with appreciation as well.

  “It’s been in the coven for so long, and was built by the coven, that I’m sure there’s no official appraisal on the books. The coven has a way of avoiding the kind of taxation questions the way a lot of billionaires do. And then there’s the rumor mill that helps things along too. It doesn’t take much to convince the superstitious to leave alone women suspected to be witches—at least when those women are already in power.” Her voice shaded a little darker. “It takes quite a lot to get to that position of power, unfortunately.”

  “Preach,” Nikki said.

  The car stopped, and we exited, only to be escorted up the stairs by three silent footmen. They weren’t wearing powdered wigs and we weren’t wearing ball gowns, but I still got the eerie impression that we were stepping into a strange and distant place. Only a few weeks ago, I’d attended straight-up costume parties in ancient homes, but Lara’s bungalow put them all to shame. It was both thoroughly modern and thoroughly steeped in history at the same time, leaving you with the sense of being stranded in a parallel reality.

  I was sure this was an illusion Lara was deliberately trying to foster, but that didn’t make it any less successful.

  We reached the grand foyer. It was lit up like a runway, and it was clear that an assembly of some kind was going on in the room to the right.

  “That’s where we have the high celebrations,” Heather confirmed as the footmen bowed away from us at the door. “I’ve never explored beyond this floor and—oh—”

  Heather’s voice broke off abruptly, her eyes going wide. I turned to see what she was looking at. And I totally got why she was stari
ng.

  “Miss Wilde,” Armaeus said from the doorway, Lara on his arm. The high priestess of the LA coven looked ready to faint. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  I blinked, then blinked again, my feet moving forward of their own volition while my heart seemed frozen in place.

  “Sweet Mother Mary on a Vibrator,” Nikki breathed beside me. “What’s gotten into him? And where can I get me some?”

  I understood exactly what she was saying. Standing before us was the Magician, a being I’d known going on two years now, a being who’d shared my bed. Recently, in fact. Yet the man standing in front of me was like nothing I had ever seen before. Armaeus seemed practically on fire with sexual energy, far more like Kreios than the Magician. His deep black hair was swept back from his high cheekbones, his smile easy and expansive. His suit was impeccably tailored, open at the neck, with gleams of platinum silver at his cuffs. The outfit alone was enough to turn heads, but it wasn’t the clothes that made the man in this case. It was the magic.

  “Oh,” Heather sighed again, and I smiled, looking at her. She was saucer-eyed with appreciation for the Magician’s magician-ness, and once again, I didn’t blame her.

  “I can introduce you?”

  “Please,” she said and she seemed to shiver a little before she turned to me, her eyes starry with awe. “I—I mean I have seen him before. He was talking to Mrs. Drake earlier. But I didn’t notice… I mean he seems so—different here.”

  Nikki snorted. “He’s definitely working it. We can only hope he’s doing it on purpose. Otherwise, God help us all.”

  By now, we’d reached Armaeus, and I greeted an exceptionally distracted Lara, then turned to Heather. Before I could speak, however, Armaeus moved forward and held out his hands. The young woman could do nothing but lift hers to his, her entire body jolting when the Magician squeezed her fingers.

  “It’s been my pleasure to meet all the witches of the LA coven, but I don’t believe I have ever had the pleasure,” Armaeus murmured in his richly rolling lilt.

  “Heather is only an initiate,” Lara said, and I didn’t miss the edge to her voice, or the sudden dimming of Heather’s star. Armaeus, however, didn’t diminish his focus on the young woman.

  “Then you have a lifetime of extraordinary discoveries before you.” He gave her hands another squeeze. Heather brightened again, and I turned to Lara before she could get off another zinger.

  “Can you tell me what you know? What’s happened?” I asked, and she flashed an irritated look at Armaeus before she returned her focus to me, then seemed to re-center herself. I didn’t know why the Magician was pouring on the charm, but as Lara and I entered the assembly room, I could see she wasn’t the only one who’d been affected by it. The other two initiates were staring at Armaeus with open adoration, and so were half the more established witches, male and female alike.

  “Heather, you’ll wait here until the other initiates come for you,” Lara said haughtily. “Then the three of you should head home.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll wait with you,” Armaeus, said, which did an excellent job of convincing Heather to accept Lara’s decree. He curled her arm into his, and moved down the hallway as she stared at him, completely transported.

  “And I’ve got a date with the security guys the Council has rustled up to lock down the house. We’ll make sure no one gets in or out—at least by ordinary means—without us knowing it.” Nikki winked at me. “The rest is up to you.”

  “Very well,” Lara said, then glanced my way. “Justice Wilde, please come with me. I can tell you everything I know. But the only thing I’m sure of is that our coven is under attack.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lara quickly crossed through the knots of whispering coven members, and though she was moving with speed, our route was not the most straightforward to the open door at the far end of the room. Instead, she made sure that everyone saw her walking with me. By the time we entered the antechamber that appeared to serve as her office, we were drawing almost as many stares as Armaeus.

  “Finally,” Lara said, crossing to the bar. The high priestess of the LA coven poured herself a glass of wine, then turned back to me. She didn’t offer me a drink, but I tried not to judge her for that. Much.

  “What do you know?” I asked again.

  She waved her glass, glaring at me. “You think I’m overstating our problem. I assure you I’m not. As Justice of the Arcana Council, it’s your obligation to intervene.”

  That wasn’t exactly the way my job worked, but I was willing to work with it. “Did you know Tammy had been targeted? Richard Zachariah?”

  “I told you, Richard Zachariah was a pestilence and a sham,” she sniffed. “His death is nothing but a boon to any serious practitioners of the craft.

  “I examined him, Lara. He was no sham. He had real magic within him.” Had being the operative term, but Lara was still hand-waving me off.

  “You saw what he worked hard to show the world, whenever he wanted to gain credibility,” she said. “Whatever lingering spell was still in effect to give him the illusion of true power, I do not begrudge him. But he sought to advance without proper training, creating a cult of personality around himself that was an affront. No coven would have him.”

  “That didn’t stop him from trying to co-opt the prophecy of Myanya,” I pointed out.

  She sniffed again. “Well, now that horrible chapter is put to rest.”

  My brows shot up as she took a long swig of wine. “It is?”

  “Of course,” Lara said. “With the death of Tammy Butler, our coven will return to its natural state. I had hoped that we would advance sharply with the fulfillment of the Myanya prophecy, but in the end, it remains too much for any one woman to bear. I shouldn’t be surprised. Since Iskra Mikhailova rejected the prophecy in 1962, the magic has never recovered. And, too, we are in much changed times. Perhaps there is no place for such ancient magic anymore.”

  “You think Tammy’s death will end Myanya’s claim? Won’t she simply jump to the next witch up?”

  “This isn’t a sporting team, Justice Wilde,” Lara said thinly. “The prophecy takes time to establish itself in a witch, to grow. Tammy Butler was not my top candidate, frankly, but she was certainly a candidate, one you had also targeted. With her abrupt demise, there is no possibility that Myanya continues.”

  “But the two witches that were our other suspects were sitting right next to Tammy in the car when she died,” I said. “How hard would it be for energy like that to simply transfer?”

  “I have questioned both witches quite carefully,” Lara replied dismissively. “They’re still in trauma, understandably. The Magician was kind enough to show me the footage from the debacle in the limousine. I can show you as well, if you would like.”

  “I would like that.” I watched as she moved to her desk. She picked up an elegant remote, and a second later, a screen whirred down from the ceiling. With a single click of the remote, an image flickered to life on the screen.

  It was the interior of a well-appointed limousine, the video having been shot in bright color. The three witches were clearly visible, with Tammy partially stretched out on the backseat, the other two witches seated along two banquettes that lined the sides of the car. Both Gail and Monica appeared credibly upset, but the real star of the production was Tammy. She clutched her stomach, her face positively green, her lips peeled back. Light flecks of yellow bile stained her lips, and she moaned in genuine distress.

  A second later, the scene abruptly changed. Tammy screamed and her head jerked back as a foreign substance coated the camera lens, obscuring the other two women, who lurched back as if they’d been scalded, their mouths open in terror. After that, the car swerved abruptly, clearly being pulled over to the side. The women scrambled for the doors, falling out into the darkness beyond. Meanwhile, the body of Tammy Butler remained completely motionless. I couldn’t see her head anym
ore, but given the angle of the camera, her hands and feet were flung wide, frozen in an exaggerated pentagram position. Just like RZ.

  “Who did this?” I breathed, speaking more to the screen than Lara. Unfortunately, Lara was more than happy to answer.

  “None of us, I can assure you,” she said tartly. “One of the oldest and most sacred charges for any of our witches is that the coven reigns supreme. No one makes an attack on one of our own witches. To do so would unravel the very fabric of our organization, and we are nothing if we cannot maintain our core of strength. There is no other alternative than that we are being attacked from the outside. Someone is using our focus on the Myanya prophecy to strike when we are at our weakest.”

  I blew out a long breath, still studying the video. At this point, the driver of the limo had poked her head into the back of the vehicle and recoiled, but had left the body where it lay. “Well, that’s certainly a possibility,” I said. “But it’s only one of several.”

  After all, Heather had been certain of Gail and Monica’s guilt. The girl might be an initiate, but she wasn’t stupid.

  Lara didn’t respond right away, but that was okay. I could let her stew for a second as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. “Could you run that feed again for me?”

  Lara gasped, and I rolled my eyes. “Look, it’s a reasonable request,” I said, swinging toward her—

  Then I bolted forward. I caught Lara as she slumped to the floor, the glass hitting the carpet and spilling red wine all over the creamy pattern. I didn’t wait, but immediately flicked my third eye open, fixing on Lara’s skittering circuits.

  If my third eye had sported an eyebrow, it would have shot straight up. Because in this case, there was absolutely no magical attack occurring at all. Lara’s body was compromised, quite heavily so, from a shot of pure poison. There was no question in my mind that said poison had come from the glass of wine she’d just inhaled. Poison, however, was usually an organic compound, and any organic matter was made up of energy. Energy was my game.