by Stark, Jenn
“Wait, she’s still in a coma?” I demanded, sharply enough that Armaeus finally glanced at me. “Why aren’t you with her?”
“She’s recovering.” Once again, it was Kreios who spoke. “She, like you, simply needed to be reminded of the dangers of going too deep into herself. Sometimes the body is smarter than the brain. Not often, granted, but sometimes.”
“You shocked her awake.” I cast a wild look around the room, my skin icing up when I saw the paddles. “You gave me an electrical shock.”
“You had fallen so deep, so quickly,” Armaeus said. “Too deep. My first instinct was to go deep as well to bring you back, and I did. And that helped, but I am healthy and whole. When you turned to Nikki to heal her, you compromised yourself further without realizing it.”
“So I didn’t help her,” I said flatly. “But she’d responded, she came to, she seemed fine. I had no idea she was even still sick. Maybe a little dizzy…” A wave of queasiness swept over me, and I glanced to the side, biting my lip.
“You did help her. You saved her life, in fact. But she is not healed yet. Again, this toxin was working well below the level of discernible energy. You wouldn’t even have noticed it lingering. I only found it this time because I knew what I was looking for, and even then…” He thinned his lips. “It should not have resisted my magic. It should not have blocked me so effectively.”
“But it didn’t matter in the end,” I said, trying to understand. “You revived me with a set of shock paddles, like I was having a heart attack.”
“My idea,” Kreios put in again, with such obvious pride my lips quirked.
“It doesn’t change the fact that we don’t know who made the attempt on your life, poisoning your ale at an open-air festival,” Armaeus said. “How was it slipped into the drink without you realizing it?”
“It wasn’t the ale.” I shook my head. “We would have noticed that. I bet it was the misters we walked under when we went into the spectral warrior section. Those bastards did that to us and then had the nerve to ask for help.” My blood ran like ice through my veins. “I’m going to kill that old man.”
“Both good guesses, and you’re both wrong,” Dr. Sells said. “For the toxin to work this thoroughly, it needed time to sink into the skin, particularly considering how little exposed skin you have available. Ingesting it with beer would work, but you absolutely would have tasted it at the concentration needed. Most likely, this toxin would’ve needed to be injected. Nikki had several cuts and abrasions on her—they could have served as the entry point for any of the toxins. You heal so quickly, I can’t tell when you received any of your injuries, so I…” She sighed. “I’m simply not sure.”
“So when could I have picked it up? When I was healing her?”
“Possibly.” She swung her gaze to Armaeus. “What are your readings indicating?”
“The toxin entered my system exactly twelve seconds after I held Miss Wilde’s hands,” he said. “Because I was waiting for it, I isolated it immediately and it did not spread. But the entry point was definitely skin-to-skin contact. I know you say that it could not have traveled so quickly through such basic contact, but that doesn’t change the reality of the data.”
“Okay, then, who else did you touch?” Dr. Sells asked me.
“I mean, God only knows,” I protested. “I was in and out of easily a dozen trinket shops even before I headed to the spectral warrior section. And then there was that little kid with his stack of cards…”
“Cards?” Armaeus prompted.
I obligingly pulled out the card advertising the tent of Mistress Malificorem. As I offered it, Armaeus reeled back, his hands coming up automatically to ward me off.
Dr. Sells stepped forward and pulled the card from my hands. I notice that hers were encased in gloves. She dropped the card into a plastic bag and sealed it. “Was the boy Connected?”
“I…I have no idea. He said he was handing out cards for Sariah—well, for Mistress Malificorem. He said she had stacks of these back at her tent.” I frowned. “Wait a minute. Sariah touched me too. Why wasn’t she affected?”
Armaeus’s brows shot up, and he scowled. “That is…curious,” he allowed. “Did she touch your hands?”
“No. But Nikki touched the card too.” I looked down at my fingers, which strangely didn't look like the appendages of evil.“Anyone got any bleach?”
“Let me take a look at that postcard,” Brody said. He peered at the postcard, then shook his head. “Wrong tent for Sariah. And since when has Sariah ever needed help promoting herself? I don’t know who sent that kid around, but he clearly thought you knew Sariah, and he clearly wanted to get this card in your hands.”
I made a face. “I don’t even know what that little boy’s name is. What if he’s also in a coma?”
“Let me check on that,” Brody said, turning to the door. “There’s too much about this that isn’t making sense. It’s way too organized…” He left the room, still muttering.
“Where’s Nikki?” I asked.
To my surprise, it was Armaeus who answered with a short, bitter sigh. He seemed to be taking her ongoing fragility personally. “Resting, as you should be. But not for long, I’m afraid. This attack on the Council cannot go answered.”
“Attack on the Council? That’s maybe overstating it.” I swung my gaze from his face to Kreios’s, but they both looked equally grim. “It was just somebody taking a potshot at me. Or, I guess Nikki, since she’s worse off.” Someone was going to get blasted beyond the veil for that, I decided. There wouldn’t be anything left of them but smoke.
Kreios’s smile was weary. “Like it or not, you are the Council now, Sara Wilde. Welcome to the show.”
Chapter Seven
Over Dr. Sells’s strident objections, I checked myself out of the clinic a few hours later after looking in on Nikki. She was still asleep, but it was a natural sleep, Sells assured me, not one that was medically induced. Progress.
Once outside, my first thought was to return to the festival, but that felt foolish at best. If anyone recognized me…
Then again, screw that. If anyone recognized me, they’d know their little attempt to shut me down had failed. That seemed far more important than managing my own safety.
“You could also disguise yourself, Miss Wilde.”
Also a good point. Carefully restoring my mental shields to allow for communication but not random thought rifflage, I focused on the general direction of the Magician, but spoke aloud. “So, I’m good to travel? The goop is out of me?”
His response was not as quick as I would have liked, but it was still a response. “You are good to travel. The poison that struck your system was made with a combination of technoceuticals and microorganisms—a combination Dr. Sells is now researching as quickly as possible. We anticipate data soon.”
“Microorganisms.” I made a face to the sky. “You mean bugs.”
“Superbugs,” Armaeus said. “If my hypothesis is correct, and there is a 99.875% likelihood that it is, you were poisoned with a substance that is, in fact, in developing usage among the spectral opposition warriors to counteract the effects of magic. But they clearly are not the only ones experimenting with the formulation.”
“Well, that’s encouraging. Is Sariah okay?”
Another pause, this one more annoying. “What?” I demanded.
“You forget, Miss Wilde, that your sister, for lack of a less disturbing word, was formed of the same stuff and stubbornness that you were. This means that she has many of your same strengths, though in far more rudimentary, truncated forms.”
“She can also pickpocket other Connecteds’ abilities. How come I was never able to do that?”
Armaeus’s return thoughts were wry. “Another aspect to your sister’s personality is her willingness to eagerly take that which isn’t hers. While you have a hard time taking even that which is thrust upon you.”
“Could you not judge me for just ten seconds here?” I reto
rted, but my lips twitched at the familiar gibe. It suddenly occurred to me that nobody on this earth knew me as well as Armaeus did. Even people I’d worked with longer knew parts of me, but only Armaeus had the unique perspective of having crawled around inside my neural circuitry and lived to tell the tale. Of course, that level of insight was not without its liabilities. “So what you’re saying is that Sariah is blocking you. You can’t track her because she’s putting up the same kind of mental barriers I am, only she’s better at it.”
“Not better,”> Armaeus corrected immediately. “More stubborn, perhaps. More desperate. Sariah has spent a very long time avoiding beings who sought to control or dominate her. The idea of allowing anyone, even a benevolent searcher, to find her is likely anathema to her.”>
“So I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“It would be wise. What would also be wise is what you will find in your pocket.”
I frowned but put my hand into my jacket pocket, drawing out a small metallic device. I rolled it around in my fingers. “This is a tracking device.”
“The council is also not without its resources,” Armaeus said. “The subject of Sariah has been vexing me, but the most likely manner of tracking her is one recommended by the Fool, of all people.”
I grinned. The Fool of the Arcana Council had many skills, but one of the most important was his ability with technology. Simon had gotten me out of difficult scrapes on more than a few occasions, so often I could almost forgive him the occasions where he’d gotten me into even worse scrapes.
I squinted at the small device. “He thinks that Sariah won’t notice this?”
“He believes, based on limited experience that he has with your sister, that she won’t even think to look. Another thing the two of you share is a sense of personal recklessness, particularly when it comes to anything regarding your own safety. While it is not one of your most charming attributes, it is one that we can put to good use in this case.”
“Hey,” I protested. “I’m standing right here.”
“Which is another point of curiosity,” the Magician observed. “I would have thought you already well on your way back to the festival.”
I gritted my teeth. “You know it’s not as easy for me as it is for you. I got this whole firebomb thing I’ve got to go through first. Maybe you and Simon should put your heads together and come up with a solution for that.”
The Magician, however, was already gone. Rolling my eyes, I destabilized, the familiar burn almost welcome as it confirmed my powers hadn’t been irreparably damaged by the poison someone had so rudely insinuated into my person. I reappeared at the festival at the same place where Nikki and I had first claimed our beers a few hours earlier. If anything, the place had gotten more crowded. From the looks of it in that quadrant of the festival grounds, the spectral opposition warrior group was putting on some kind of demonstration involving glittering lights. I turned myself in the other direction without hesitation. I’d had enough of them for one day. I was all for people protecting themselves against the Connected, but I preferred to believe that most Connected weren’t out to hurt each other. Dare to dream.
I found Sariah’s tent without too much difficulty. It was lit from within, casting a cheerful glow out into the walkway. There was no one waiting at the door, so I ducked my head inside—only to find no one there. I moved to the back of the tent and noticed that a seam had been sliced into the fabric. Sliced by Sariah or by somebody else?
Given that there was no signs of struggle, my money was on Sariah.
Which meant she’d known I was coming.
I scanned the space, flicking open my third eye, and rocked back slightly on my heels. The Connected energy here was…an absolute mess. I could almost see—I thought I could see—Sariah beneath all of it. But whatever was Sariah was completely buried beneath a mass of conflicting circuits, some barely glowing, some flaring with angry sparks, glittering even as they faded with her departure. In any event, Sariah hadn’t left long ago. If I ducked through this same slit in the tent…
“Mistress Malificorem?”
Shifting my gaze back to normal sight, I turned at the hesitant voice, not at all expecting the young woman it belonged to. She was a tall, slender black woman with tight, curly hair cropped close to her scalp, her fine brows arched, her striking face devoid of makeup from the tips of her long lashes to the fullness of her lips. She stood at the front of my tent looking straight at me, but she couldn’t see me. Her eyes were clouded over, hazy, and she clutched the harness lead of a muscular, white-muzzled German shephard.
“Um, well—”
“Oh, good,” she said, her shoulders dropping into a near boneless slump. My third eye flipped open without prompting, and I watched her energy jump again, more powerful by far than it should be. “The little boy said you would be in and out, and I’ve already stopped by a few times. I was here just a minute ago and I thought you were here, but you didn’t say anything, and—”
She waved a hand in front of her face, and my heart clenched. Dammit, Sariah. My guts twisting, I stepped around Sariah’s small table and crossed the short distance.
“How can I help you?” I asked.
She smiled nervously, the faintest blush darkening her cheeks. “Thank you. My name is Lainie Grant, and the boy—I mean, he was just a boy, so it’s possible he really had no idea… Now I feel a little silly.”
I reached for her hand, helping her toward the seat. “He, ah, didn’t give you any cards, did he?”
“What? Oh no.” She shook her head. “He just talked to me. I think he liked my dog.”
“I can understand why.” I smiled, trying to swallow my apprehension. I could sense the problem with her eyes—she wasn’t born with the affliction, and I was pretty sure it’d been caused recently. The fact that she was still clutching the harness of her dog meant she hadn’t had him for a long time, and she didn’t have the ease of movement of a long-term blind person. I tugged on her hand, and she came forward, her face moving up and to the wrong direction until I guided her to the folding chair. Then I scooted around to the other side and sat, drawing in a deep breath.
Sariah, of course, had left no cards behind, but I wasn’t without my resources. I pulled my own tattered deck out of my hoodie pocket and set them on the table, squaring the edges. I glanced over to the dog, who was watching me with his soulful doggy eyes.
I’ll do the best I can, buddy.
He bobbed his head up and down, and I gave him a grim smile. Did dogs do that, like, randomly? Or had I seriously just talked to a dog?
The young woman had begun visibly trembling, and I loudly shuffled the cards on the table.
“So, Lainie, would you like a reading?” I began gently. “Or how can I help you today?”
“I—I think I would like a reading,” she said softly. “I mainly want to know how…like, how I can fix what happened to me. Or if I even should.”
Oh, honey. I lifted my hand and simultaneously opened my third eye again. There was a veil over Lainie’s eyes, but the eyeballs themselves were also damaged, severely damaged. Beyond those destroyed eyes, however, that deep well of psychic ability loomed.
“Can you tell me how it happened? I can read the cards without that information, but it helps to have as much context as possible.”
This sounded like a cheat, and probably was a cheat for some of the people who’d set up shop at this festival. But the truth was, it was easier for me to direct a reading if I knew specifically what the querent wanted to know. The cards were equal opportunity servers—I could pull the exact same reading for a love question as I could for a reading about a job search or whether or not someone would find their lost wedding ring. But knowing what particular circumstances were driving the reading always helped.
“Sure. I…so, I work, well I worked at the Mt. Potosi Observatory. Do you know it? It’s not far from the city.”
“I’ve heard of it, yes.” I hadn’t, but the answer seem
ed to please her.
“It’s really great. One of the best observatories out there, and such good people. Anyway, I was doing some research for a college paper several weeks ago, and—well, there was the strangest constellation pattern in the sky. It didn’t make sense. So I…” She hesitated as she colored, but my stomach was already sinking. I knew where this was going.
“I b-broke the rules of the observatory and recalibrated the scope to see more clearly. I’ve done that before, and it’s never been a problem. But this time when I looked, there was a sudden bright surge, and—” Lainie looked away, a tear snaking down her cheek.
“And you were blinded,” I said, as gently as I could.
She nodded quickly. “At first, I didn’t realize it. I fell back and hit my head. I passed out, apparently, and someone heard the commotion and sent for an ambulance. But when I came to, they told me the news. I was blind.”
I winced, and the need to reach out across the table, to heal this woman, suddenly overwhelmed me.
“Miss Wilde.” The Magician’s voice sounded in my mind instantaneously, his tone careful and soothing, but firm.
I know, I know. Armaeus and I had discussed this many times—that I couldn’t go around healing people indiscriminately. I’d done it before, though, and it hadn’t come back to bite me…well, not really. Most of the people I’d helped were in dire circumstances, not literally walk-ons off the street. But you know what she was looking at.
“Yes. She was looking at you, or what you created. But this may well be the path she came into this world to follow. Who are you to decide to alter that path?”
I’m the woman who altered it the first time by blasting her retinas into the back of her head? I could anticipate his quelling response, so I turned down the volume on Armaeus Radio and refocused on the young woman. “What happened after that?”