“Am I really here?” I poked a series of mathematical symbols flowing past. Cool to the touch, they rippled and shimmered gold before settling back to their normal flow.
“Your body is out there.” She gestured to the pink glow. “But whatever you experience is reflected outside. Cut yourself and you will bleed. Die and, well, you get the picture.”
“No dying. Got it. And you? Are you all right?”
Her smile lit up her violet eyes. I’d never seen their color before, because the data cloud and milky film had prevented me from seeing the likeness.
“Yes.”
“I see the resemblance to your mother now.”
“Gracias. How is Mama? You are with her now, aren’t you? You’re her friend?”
“Friend might be generous. It’s complicated.”
“Everything about my mother is.”
“No kidding. She’s fine. Listen, I’ve given you a drug called Blank that will suppress your magic. Sorry I couldn’t get your consent first.”
“You tried. I heard you. It will help me become lucid enough to decide what I want for my life.” She paced the perimeter of the space, dragging her fingers through a series of German and Italian words which lit up in light colors and a soft melodic chiming. “What if I don’t know?”
“Then this will give you time to figure it out.”
“It would be nice to spend time with Mama again.” She smiled again, and my heart clenched. Years of her life had been stolen from her by her magic and a well-meaning parent. Any path she now chose would be fraught with challenges.
“Do you know anything about my question?” I said.
She closed her eyes briefly. “If it exists, it’s a personal belonging and not something shelved in a library or for public display. That makes it Reference Only. Restricted area.” Her voice had dropped, taking on a slightly robotic quality and I shivered.
“Can you access it?”
“Now that you’re here?” She shook her head. “Not if I want to hold that section of the mind palace intact. Which I must, otherwise your brain will be crushed by the staggering amount of information. The drug is muting my ability and my time is running out. I do have enough magic to get you inside.”
The data cloud turned a stormy gray and the temperature dropped. A thin sheen of ice coated the insides of the words and my breath misted the air.
I hugged myself, trying to keep warm. “But?”
Her violet eyes were large and sorrow-filled. “I won’t be able to extricate you.”
The ground rumbled and pitched, words plummeting around me. I yelped, my armor settling into place and my arms held out for balance while I surfed the tremors.
Isabel stood calmly in the center of the chaos, unruffled and untouched.
“Is there an exit?” I said.
“Yes.” She motioned at my blood armor, sweeping an assessing glance over me. “If you are what I believe you to be, you can free yourself, but you may not survive the onslaught of knowledge.”
The phrase “Carpe Diem” crashed onto my head from the cloud and hit the ground, still intact.
I rolled my eyes. “Do it.”
“Good luck and… best you don’t mention me.” Isabel flicked her fingers.
“Excuse me,” a woman said from behind me in a sharp voice. “You do not have library privileges.”
I turned around and jumped back. “Fuck me.”
The giantess, easily twelve feet high, with red horn-rimmed glasses and blond hair pulled into a tight bun, placed her gnarled hands on her massive hips. Her heels could double as vampire stakes. Because more height was required in this scenario. “You are exceedingly rude.”
“My deepest apologies. I didn’t expect anyone else here.” I offered a hand to shake, sending a near-invisible red ribbon into her when she reluctantly clasped mine. Whoa. Magic was all that held her together. She must have been a construct created by Isabel.
That didn’t make her any less dangerous.
“Where is ‘here,’ exactly?” I said.
She gave a flat-eyed stare at the rows of neatly-stacked bookshelves that blurred into the very far distance. “Guess.”
“We’re in a library. Yeah, I got that much.”
“The bare minimum,” the giantess said. “As your mental faculties meet the requirements for seeing yourself out, I suggest you do precisely that.” She pointed at the exit sign, blinking an insistent red.
“Wait. Please.” I jogged to catch up to her, because one step of hers was two and a half of mine. The enormous ring of keys hanging from her waist jangled as she moved. “Is this the Reference Only section?”
“Obviously not. One doesn’t simply waltz in to—wait.” She stopped so abruptly that I had to backtrack. A massive mace appeared in one hand. “Did she send you?”
I widened my eyes. “She who?”
If she was Isabel’s creation, they were really embracing that Dr. Frankenstein/monster dysfunction.
The giantess tapped the mace against her meaty palm. “Then how do you know about the Reference Only section?” She grimaced. “You’re not one of those, are you?”
“It depends. I might be.” This library was way better stocked than Rafael’s. He was going to cream himself when I told him about this place. I wonder if Isabel would consider giving tours of her mind palace?
“A supplicant,” the giantess said.
I mean, I didn’t particularly want to beg, but I wasn’t entirely averse to it either. “Yes. I am Ashira the Supplicant.”
She pursed her lips. “We’ve never had a Jezebel supplicant before. Your kind tends to keep to themselves.”
“You know about me?” I shook my head. Of course she did if Isabel did. “I am a new kind of Jezebel for a new day and age.”
“How lucky for us all,” she said dryly. She slid behind a massive counter shaped like a U, each side easily fifty feet long and all of it covered in towering piles of books, and stashed the mace underneath. Half-filled library carts were lined up in a row next to one side.
“Let’s jump ahead six or seven sarcastic bits. I have a question, this library might have the answer. How do we connect the two?”
The giantess took a book off the nearest pile, though technically it was several pieces of papyrus bound with a frayed rope. Bet it was a bestseller in its day. She scanned it and set it on a library cart. “First you tell me what you’re looking for and I determine whether or not you meet the criteria.”
I explained about hoping to find proof of Olivia’s money laundering.
The giantess sighed, sounding like a deflating bagpipe, and scanned the last book on the pile. “You would appear to fit.”
“Excellent. For the record, what criteria was that? My insatiable curiosity? My drive and determination?”
“A challenge. Your request is a long shot, but knowledge enjoys a good challenge.” That was a rather fortune cookie pronouncement.
“Then let’s challenge that bitch up.” I clapped my hands together.
Failing to hide her distaste, the giantess opened a drawer and handed me a laminated card with “temporary visitor” stamped on it, along with a barcode. She pointed to a blue door. “Scan this. It will give you access to the Reference Only section where you should find your answer.” She placed a book on the cart. “You won’t survive the onslaught of knowledge.”
Isabel and her creation were really lacking in the faith department. Or they thought I was a half-wit.
“I’ll be fine.”
The scanner turned a friendly green when I used the pass and the door swung open, allowing me to cross into a forest made up of towering redwoods awash in gauzy sunshine. I tilted my face up to the warm light, fighting the urge to take a nap.
I strolled through the clumps of ferns, inhaling the rich scents of earth and rotting moss. The smallest tree was at least one hundred feet high and every single one had an arched opening at its base large enough to drive a car into. I placed a hand on the thick fibrous ba
rk and peered into the arch with a soft gasp.
Inside was rung with books, spiraling up to the very tops. I ran over to examine some other tree interiors—each one was identical. This was wild.
And impossible. There were dozens of trees with thousands of books. How would I ever find the answer?
An owl hooted. Wise old owl. Got it. I followed the sound through the woods, peering up at the branches until I spied the bird perched in one, waiting patiently for me to approach. I entered the archway of this particular redwood. On a podium made of thick twisted vines with a broad leaf fashioned into a platform, was a nondescript black hardcover accounts ledger.
The first few pages were columns of numbers that seemed fairly innocuous, but several pages in, the numbers became some kind of lettered code written in a tiny neat block print. On the final page of code, the lower part of the sheet blurred away. The pages in the rest of the book were filled with more accounting entries.
My phone was with my physical body out in Hedon, so photographing the pages was out. I didn’t want to piss off that librarian by taking something marked Reference Only, but maybe if I showed it to her, she’d know its real-world whereabouts, so we could find it and decipher the code.
Exiting the tree, I held up the ledger for the bird who waited on the ground nearby. “Thanks, Wise Old Owl. You wouldn’t know where this is hidden, would you?”
“Reference Only!” The owl screeched, swiveled its head like the Exorcist baby, and puffed up to twice my size, its shadow blanketing the forest.
I looked way up past the owl’s very sharp beak and into its beady eyes. “Knowledge?”
The owl stabbed down at me. I narrowly rolled out of the way, the book flying to land in a pile of leaves. The bird’s beak cracked my armor and the patch protecting my left calf crumbled away. Mind palace, different rules on how my magic behaved.
The owl thwacked me into a redwood with a backhand—backwing?—that Serena Williams would have envied, followed by a swipe of its talons that shredded my remaining protective wear.
Pro tip: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a massive fucking Knowledge is fatal.
I clubbed the symbol of wisdom with a magically created mace until it was a bloody mess, allowing me to then destroy the library’s foundational magic and wake up in the bedroom, once more in my physical body. I was covered in owl guts and feathers.
I bolted upright, having been left rather unceremoniously on the carpet. I didn’t have the ledger, but this was still a win; seeing it was proof it existed.
“That is not a good look for you,” the Queen said.
There was no sign of Moran.
I flung off a sticky glob that dangled from my elbow. “I dunno. It might have a certain caché with the baby seal clubbing crowd.”
Isabel lay curled up groggily on the canopy bed with her head in her mother’s lap. The faintest hint of the data cloud swirled around her. “I see you found Knowledge.”
“Capital K. Hilarious. You are so her daughter. Who might your other parent be? Any Russian in your family tree?”
Isabel smiled sleepily and closed her eyes, while the Queen stared at me impassively.
I had to ask.
“No problems with the drug?” I whispered.
“No.” The Queen stroked her hand over Isabel’s hair and the final wisp of data cloud blew away. The drug had fully kicked in. “You got your answer, blanquita?”
“Yup.” I spat a downy feather out of my mouth.
“Then go home. And Ashira?”
“Yes?”
“There is nothing I won’t do to protect my daughter. Remember that.”
I wasn’t likely to forget.
Chapter 15
After the world’s most-deserved shower and a good night’s sleep, Mrs. Hudson and I paid a visit to Lux. Her texted directions took us to a pharmaceutical company downtown.
On the way, I put Miles on speaker to discuss the results of my Bookworm expedition, such as they were. He agreed with me that if Isabel’s magic produced a coded ledger in answer to my question, chances were, this was Olivia’s insurance policy. Since the Allegra Group did all their accounting digitally and Arkady hadn’t come across any archived paper records in his search of the premises, I suggested Miles look for a storage facility where they housed their old documents.
Wrapping up the call, I gave my name to reception at Lux’s work and settled into the bright corporate lobby to wait.
The goddess groupie exited the elevators clad in a white lab coat, with a lanyard slung around her neck. Her head was still partially shaved, but she’d dyed the electric purple a deep blue.
I crossed the floor to meet her, the pug’s claws clicking against the tiles. Lux suggested a coffee place around the corner, so I waited until we were settled on the patio with our drinks and a bowl of water for the dog to dive into the matter at hand.
“Your daytime look is surprising,” I said.
She toyed with her lanyard. “Did you imagine me doing crystal readings in my time off or fashioning post-apocalyptic jewelry?”
“Either would have beat this. You’re a medical researcher?” I stirred milk into my coffee.
“Ph.D. in Chemistry. Lots of student debt and Big Pharma pays well. Even if my soul shrivels a little more each day.” She pulled the lid off her café latte and blew on it. “I’m really sorry about your friend.” Lux shifted in her seat, the epitome of contrite.
Too contrite.
“That’s why you transported us, wasn’t it? I’ll bet the actual location that was illusioned up to look like the Colosseum was somewhere nice and secluded. You’re not sorry my friend was hurt, you’re sorry you didn’t get away with it.” The brew was too bitter so I dumped in a liberal amount of sugar.
Her eyes flashed, her spine tempered steel. “We spent months planning to bring our goddess back and you ruined everything.”
You kids and your meddling pug. Her actions were foolish, but her motivation hadn’t been.
“I’m sorry about your wife’s cancer,” I said. “How is she?”
Lux coughed on the sip she’d taken. “You know?”
I nodded.
She sighed, her eyes bleak. “Not good. It’s metastasized to her liver.”
Shit. That made it terminal. “Can Nightingales do anything? There’s a talented one on staff with House Pacifica. I could speak to Levi.”
“Even Nightingales don’t have good odds when it comes to curing cancer.”
“That’s why you wanted Asherah to appear, isn’t it?” With enough sugar, my drink was hot and delicious. I considered getting a second one.
“I’d prayed and prayed. I thought if I could summon her with a gift, she’d be inclined to help Emma.” Lux unraveled the rim of the cup.
“There wasn’t a less extreme way of going about it?” I said gently.
Lux shot me a look of disdain. “You think I didn’t try? When we learned that the cancer had spread to Emma’s liver, I asked Gavriella to help.”
“You did?” Mrs. Hudson had gotten herself tangled up in the table leg, so I redirected the puppy and loosened the leash. “What did she say?”
“That there was no way to summon Asherah and not to do anything stupid that would call attention to myself or else I’d have her to deal with.” Lux sneered. “You Jezebels are all the same, thinking you’re better than those of us who actually believe in the goddess, and threatening to keep us in line.”
“I didn’t even know you people existed until about ten minutes before I met you. I had no opinion of you one way or the other.”
“No? You don’t call us Goddess Groupies?”
Damn it, Rafael. You were supposed to be subtle. My mind evaded my attempts at a good reply. “I, uh…”
“Where do you think the first Jezebel came from? She was a Gigi, as you so charmingly put it.” Lux shredded her napkin into smaller and smaller pieces. “Did you really think you were the only one out there serving Asherah? Our faith keeps
her alive. Do you even believe in her? Most of your kind don’t anymore. Not really. Not the way we do. You just lucked into being her Chosen One.”
“‘Lucked into’ is debatable, but I get your point, and you’re right. I was short-sighted and narrow-minded, and while Gavriella handled her interaction with you poorly, she didn’t lie about not being able to call the goddess. If I could get her to show up and help, I would.”
“To destroy the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh.”
“How much do you know?” I said.
“Jezebels’ origin story has been passed down orally amongst the goddess’s believers. I don’t know where things stand between you and Chariot at this moment, but I understand that Gavriella wanted to keep us off their radar. She just shouldn’t have assumed I was ignorant of the situation and threatened me like a little kid so I wouldn’t act stupid.”
I pulled Mrs. Hudson away from a cigarette butt. “No, she shouldn’t have. I wish there was something I could do for Emma, and I hate asking after all this, but do you know anything about the Kiss of Death?”
Lux tapped the rim of her destroyed cup, pensive. “I mean, we’ve all heard rumors. Nothing concrete.”
That was too bad, but it wasn’t the real reason I’d come today. “What can you tell me about the magic you used on the golem?”
Lux had no insights on why the combo magic hadn’t affected me the same way, but she did have a suggestion on how to help Rafael. “You have to filter the Nefesh magic out,” she said.
“How? It’s almost indistinguishable and I can’t catch hold of it.”
“Same principle as basic filtration of a homogeneous solution.”
“And the explanation for someone who didn’t take Chem?”
“Like salt in water. You can filter the mineral back out. These two types of magic can’t be untangled on their own, but when you put them through the correct filter, one will go through and the other won’t.”
“How do I find that filter?”
Revenge & Rapture: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 4) Page 15