I danced a pen over my knuckles. I’d hit a wall investigating Deepa. For now, my best bet was to find the Kiss of Death.
If the amulet was a powerful Asherah artifact, then maybe the Gigis were a good place to start. Who were these people, anyway? Why had Lux been willing to let innocent people die to bring Asherah back? If she was power mad, then she wouldn’t have become almost sycophantic upon learning who I was, but if she was desperate for the goddess’s presence, what was driving her?
It didn’t take long to find the answer in a photo from last year’s Lung Cancer Foundation’s Black and White Ball. The caption read: Breast cancer survivor Emma McIntyre with her wife, Eileen “Lux” Emmerson, feeling strong and looking dazzling in white.
There were no photos of them at the gala I’d attended a couple months ago.
I made a note to speak with Lux right after this meeting with Levi.
Hating myself that I cared enough to be petty, I took a shower, picked out a cute shirt and pants, and scrunched my hair into a riot of wavy curls. I even applied light makeup and lipstick, turning side to side to regard myself in the mirror.
Mrs. Hudson barked approvingly.
“Right?” I said. “Let them see what they’re missing. Remember that if things go sideways with you and Pinky.”
And now I was validating the toy cow as a life partner. Pull yourself together, Cohen.
I grabbed a jean jacket and the puppy’s leash, and settled both of us in Moriarty. Driving through east Vancouver, I looped past Science World, a shining bright silver globe in the sunlight, with all the Dragon Boat racers slicing through the waters of False Creek beyond. I spared them the briefest glance, busy running through scenarios of this meeting and how I would keep my cool in each circumstance.
Shoppers bustled along West Fourth Avenue, darting into the many cafés and restaurants to rest their weary feet or socialize with friends. I passed Jericho Park, a huge green space that hosted the Vancouver Folk Festival every year, and took the turn-off down to Northwest Marine Drive, following the two-lane curving road along the waterfront.
Give Vancouverites a sunny day, no matter how brisk the weather, and they’d turn out in droves to jog and cycle or get out on the water, sailing and paddle boarding. Today was no exception, starting at Jericho, the first of the string of beaches that lay at the foot of the University of British Columbia.
I belonged to the other class of citizens in our fair city: the ones who enjoyed the après activities like patio sitting and drinking without all the mess and fuss of actual exercise.
There were only a handful of cars parked in the lot at Spanish Banks. Levi sat on the hood of his Tesla facing the water, his face obscured by a fedora pulled low and aviator shades preventing me from seeing his eyes.
This was not going to be an “exist in the moment” visit.
Mrs. Hudson practically dragged me along behind her.
“We’re going for dignified here, dog,” I said. “Conduct yourself appropriately.”
She farted and waddled faster.
Levi looked up at our approach and slid off the car. “Want to walk?”
If having my still-beating heart ripped from my body wasn’t an option, then sure. Oh wait, this visit might amount to the same thing. That other Levi was a delusion. It was over and I needed to move on because I’d been stuck in this limbo for two months.
“Walking is good,” I said.
We headed away from the crowded area around the concession stand and beach volleyball courts.
“Miles said I had to speak to you about getting a dose of Blank for the Bookworm.” Steady voice, not too much eye contact as I spoke, but not too little either, as if I was avoiding him. Gold star, Ash.
“You found the Bookworm?”
“Yes, but there are some lucidity issues.” Also some Queen of Hearts imprisonment issues, but we were starting at the shallow end of the pool before moving into the deep.
“I’ll get the Chemist to make more and deliver it to you. It might take a few days.”
He didn’t even want me coming to the House to retrieve it in person? Would he have me escorted out if I showed up on the premises? Or would I be allowed in the building, but enjoy an awkward handout from some random operative?
I should have trusted in the two of us. I’ve missed you so much.
“That concludes my business,” I said a mite sharply, “so why don’t you spit out whatever you wanted to say and we can both get on with our lives?”
“You mean our day.”
“Do I?” I said sweetly.
His fingers twitched, then he jammed them in his pockets. “I made my mother cry.”
I whistled and kicked a twig down the sidewalk ahead of us. “Wow, sounds like an asshole thing to do. What happened?”
His shoulder hitched in a careless shrug, but his expression was tight. “Does it matter?”
“I guess not.”
We walked in silence for a bit. Had he called me for comfort? Absolution? I kept my eyes firmly on the ground and my lips clamped tight against the blackness rising inside me.
“I was needlessly cruel. Like him,” Levi said. He slid off his glasses to glance at me, but my throat was choked with anger leaving no room for words. “I got mad and yelled at her about waiting until now to speak up.” His mouth twisted in a sneer. “I demanded to know how bad it was and why she’d come to you and not me? Her own son. Pretty good, huh?” He stepped off the path and sat down on a bench.
I took a seat on the opposite end, gripping the armrest so tightly that I mangled the fancy wrought-iron.
Mrs. Hudson kept trying to go to him, but Levi was in no mood to play with her, so I gave her some bacon treats and attempted to fix the armrest. It went from a broken stick to more of an overall blob.
“Interesting design aesthetic,” he said. “Very minimalist.”
I fixed him with a cold stare. “I’m not your emotional therapy dog, Levi.”
He gave me a placating smile. “No, we established you’re the wolf.”
“This isn’t a joking matter. You can’t use me when it suits you and then throw me away. Especially when you don’t even want to keep up your end of our business arrangement anymore.” Not ripping this bench out of the ground and braining him with it was the single greatest mitzvah I’d ever done.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’d just accused me of being that little kid scared of my father and I was pissed at you. I’d spent years convincing myself I was invulnerable, and you forced me to see that my fortress was built on quicksand.”
A little girl in a bright red helmet tore past on her bike, her father running after her and yelling to slow down.
Levi watched them with a small smile that faded as they got farther away. “Who taught you how to ride a bicycle?”
“My dad.”
“Mine too.” He wove a brief illusion of a very young version of himself wearing an ear-splitting grin, wobbling to a stop on a bike and receiving a high five from his father. “Isaac had his moments. Had his bad ones too, though I never suspected how bad. If my own father could hide being part of Chariot and worse, live with Adam’s blood on his hands for all these years, does that same deceptive evil lurk inside me as well? Hell, the whole world thinks he’s this great guy, even when he’s publicly opposing his only son with heinous legal measures.” His blue eyes turned dark and troubled. “Illusions are my stock and trade. What if it doesn’t stop with my magic? What if I’m exactly like him? For fuck’s sake, I made my mother cry.”
“So apologize. My dad was a Charmer who could rip away a person’s free will, like I can rip away magic. That doesn’t mean you and I have some factory default set to bad. Stop thinking in terms of fortresses and start thinking in terms of choices.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “Anyways, I’m not the person to talk to about this anymore.”
His expression grew pensive, his focus once more out at sea. “Yeah.”
My phone blew up with buzzes.
Dobby: Chariot
Dobby: Library
Dobby: Help
I shoved the leash at Levi. “Can you take Mrs. Hudson to Priya?”
The moment he took hold of it, the pug hopped about, her tail wagging so enthusiastically, orgasmic rapture wasn’t far behind. He glanced at my phone quizzically, but all he said was, “Of course. Just… be safe.”
Distracted, I nodded, slid the wooden ring on, and vanished, realizing that he’d never said if our business arrangement was still a go or not.
The library was in shambles, with books and manuscripts knocked off shelves and furniture overturned. A chair lay smashed into kindling by a wall.
My heart leapt into my throat. Had Chariot actually found us? The pillars were intact, with four still illuminated and one dark, so they hadn’t gotten the scrolls. “Rafael?”
A low growl came from the shadows under the table. I crouched down, keeping out of lunging range, my magic dancing under my skin, and gasped.
Red-flecked eyes glowed back at me.
“Ba’al?”
“No.” Raspiness had almost distorted the voice, but the British accent was unmistakable. “Chariot found the library. Tried to have a Weaver disable the wards, but he wasn’t good enough. Couldn’t get in.”
They’d had a level-five Weaver in their employ but she’d been killed. I felt bad for being grateful about that.
“How many were there?”
“I don’t know. I stayed inside shoring up the wards, but… the stress or adrenaline… I’m… oh God.”
“Can you—come out, okay?” I backed up.
Two small horns nestled in short brown hair emerged first, followed by broad shoulders with tattered strips of argyle hanging off him like ribbons.
My hand flew to my mouth.
Rafael stood up. He’d gained height, but his face hadn’t transformed into a goat’s, nor were his eyes vertical slits. Yet.
My brain stuttered over a million questions but all I managed was, “What happened?”
He shot me a flat stare.
“Impossible. I checked you for residual magic from when Ba’al impaled you. There wasn’t any.”
He pulled his glasses with their bent and stretched-out frames off his face. “There was. There is. You, me, the Nightingale, we all missed it.” He crushed them, the lenses dusting the ground in glittery powder.
“How? The Gigis created Fake Ba’al with one hundred percent Nefesh magic.”
“Various types that were fused together, including Weaver magic.” Pain flashed across his features. “It’s knitting to my Asherah magic to become virtually undetectable.” He gripped his head and bellowed, the sound punching into me.
I held my ground, refusing to call up my armor or any weapons until I absolutely had to. This was my friend. He was in pain, scared, and totally fucked. If the Nefesh magic had become indistinguishable from his Asherah powers, how was I going to help him?
He bent double, his body twisting as a shudder racked through him and gnashed his teeth together. “I can’t hold on.”
I forced myself to step closer. “Now that I know what the deal is, let me see what I can do.”
I didn’t think I’d be able to do shit, but the universe owed me a break, and I had to try. I gripped his biceps, which felt like two small boulders, and sent a ribbon of red silky magic inside him. On the face of it, only Rafael’s Asherah-based powers appeared. They felt very similar to Nefesh magic, but if the two were siblings, the goddess-bestowed powers were the older, stronger ones who could easily sit on you and make you cry uncle. There was a profundity to ours, like a still-water pool of unfathomable depth. Only when I sank my magic deeper did I feel a faint disturbance in that calm, measured power. Fine muddy threads swam through it, impossible to fish out from the larger body.
I tried to snag one in a forked branch, but it drifted continually out of reach as if carried away by the tide.
Rafael roared and flipped me over, smashing me to the ground before my brain had time to process that I’d even moved and my magic snapped free of his. While I lay there, gasping and winded, Rafael dropped to one knee.
“You hurt me,” he snarled. “Why didn’t you prevent this?!”
A torrent of magic poured into me. Rafael’s powers were based in serving and protecting me, but those same abilities used to heal could be perverted to cause maximum damage.
My right arm grew hotter and hotter, and an intense pressure squeezed my humerus, bearing down as if to snap it. I couldn’t get my armor into place because Rafael’s magic was holding it at bay. Useful if you had an injured Jezebel fighting your attempts to heal her, very much the opposite in this situation.
I kicked him off me, flinging him into the wall. Thankfully, my strength still worked fine.
He cracked the drywall, one of his stubby horns embedded there. After a brief struggle, he pulled free, sending down a cascade of fine dust.
Rafael stalked toward me, his face devoid of all recognition.
I danced between the pillars, weaving around and through them to keep obstacles between us, while I got hold of my armor magic and locked it down nice and securely.
Rafael feigned left, then leapt over the dark pillar, tackling me.
I screamed, knocking into the ground. A satisfied flicker danced through his eyes, now solid red, and my armor disappeared once more.
His magic jumped to my lower right abdomen and my stomach began to swell.
“Rafael,” I whimpered. “Stop.” If he burst my appendix, I could die before it was treated.
Deranged laughter burst out of him and the pressure increased.
Reaching deep inside me, I fought past the pain enough to call up a dagger, which I plunged into his side.
He leapt off of me, blood streaming down his hip.
“What have I done?” Rafael looked at his hands, now tipped with claws. A look of horror crossed his face and he ran at the wall.
Where there had been none before, a door shimmered into existence. Rafael grabbed the knob, chest heaving, and fled into the night.
Chapter 12
I sat up, sweat-drenched. My appendix had been spared, but my entire right side felt like I’d been rammed by a bull. I took a moment to check myself for the complex magic that the Gigis had brought into being, but I was in the clear. Nor had I suffered from the headaches that had been a precursor to Rafael’s change. Either I’d been lucky or my powers had withstood the effects. I forced myself upright, choosing not to question this stroke of good fortune, and hobbled outside, every step firing a wave of red-hot agony through me.
The evening was drizzly and cool and I shivered in my ripped jean jacket. Wherever this was, it was in a later time zone than Vancouver.
The library door slammed shut. It was located in a small warehouse with Broughton Manufacturing written on it, so we were in an English-speaking country. This perfectly ordinary rectangular building had loading bay doors and small, high-set windows studded with bars. Interesting, since the library was a much smaller, round, windowless room.
I hit the perimeter of the property and a tingle of magic tickled my skin. Glancing back, my eyes slid over the warehouse, and the strongest urge to busy myself elsewhere washed over me, immediately fading and then returning again a moment later. Rafael had built some kind of “don’t look here” spell into whatever wards laced the grounds, but that specific protection must have been partially undone by Chariot, otherwise the spell wouldn’t have wavered.
To my left down the road was a cluster of well-lit warehouses that made up the rest of this industrial park. I rejected that as the direction that Rafael had taken and headed the other way, to an undeveloped area.
I moved as quickly as I could, listening for any tell-tale sounds of his whereabouts. When the Gigis had infused the clay golem sculpture with all that magic, they’d treated it like any artifact and woven it into the inanimate object.
Then the Ba’al manifestation had stabbed Rafael, t
ransferring his magic into my Attendant. Thanks to the Weaver magic at the base of the creature, that mix of powers was weaving itself to Rafael. Tragically, the situation was complicated by my Attendant possessing his own other magic type that wasn’t even Nefesh.
I couldn’t simply undo it as I had with the puppies since I couldn’t even grab hold of the multifaceted Nefesh magic. It was part of that still pool now. I had to separate the two types of magic again in order to destroy the Nefesh ones, but how?
And how long could Rafael withstand this before he either lost himself entirely or it killed him?
The sound of smashed glass pierced the silence, coming from a single dilapidated building on a large plot of land bordered by a chain link fence. I squinted for a clear picture of what lay beyond. This wasn’t another warehouse, but a former showroom for a development company. A weathered and partially rotted wooden development application was affixed to the fence, made out to the ward of St. Bonafice in the City of Winnipeg for a long-bygone date.
Our library was in Manitoba, one of Canada’s prairie provinces. Not an obvious location, but that was the point. Wiping away some loose dirt on the sign stating that the site was to be developed to house Laurier Mall, I grabbed an edge of torn chain link and pulled it aside, but before I ducked through, the French on the sign caught my eye. “Futur Emplacement des Galaries Laurier.”
“Futur” without an e. Talia’s blackmailer wasn’t illiterate.
They were French.
I sucked in a breath, information suddenly tying itself into a beautiful, terrible web. Montreal. Arkady’s lie.
You son of a bitch. I dug my heel into the ground. You might not be behind it, but I’d bet anything you knew who was.
More smashing glass rent the night, followed by a long, mournful bellow. I pursed my lips, let out a long shaky breath, and headed off onto the abandoned property. Arkady wasn’t my priority right now, but that didn’t mean he’d receive any less fury when I finally got to him. First, I had to stop Rafael from destroying whatever it was he was in the process of destroying.
Revenge & Rapture: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 4) Page 11