by Jen Kirchner
Before he could say more, Luucas and Mikelis burst into the room. Mikelis was at my side in a half second.
Luucas’s eyes were wild and angry. His face was flushed as he turned his full fury on Norayr. “Get out of my house. Now.”
Norayr smiled and looked at me. “Sure. We were finished here anyway, weren’t we?”
Mikelis stiffened. His hands were loose at his sides, ready for an altercation. I grabbed his arm to stop him. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes.
Norayr left the room, strolling back down the hall. “Forty-eight hours,” he called back.
Luucas followed him out, leaving Mikelis and me against the panic room wall.
Chapter Nine
Mikelis and I stood outside of the lab, watching the signals on Death Radar as Luucas walked Immortal Intelligence off of the property and onto the street.
At least, that’s what Mikelis was doing. I was too distracted by my internal panic. The head of Immortal State Intelligence just threatened my life.
From anyone else, I might not have been worried, but Norayr Hakobyan had the means to carry out his threats. A smart person would probably agree to help him—and the Immortal State—to save their skin.
I was probably signing my own death warrant, but I wouldn’t help them start a war. Whatever they wanted me to do would involve excessive force and more deaths.
There had to be another way. I just had to find it.
When Death Radar indicated that Norayr and Ronel were out on the street, walking away from the house, Mikelis turned around and went straight to the panic room door. I stood outside and followed Intelligence’s signals for another three blocks. They were headed away fast.
I didn’t think there was any reason they’d come back tonight. They’d gotten what they’d wanted.
Even before the door to the panic room could fully open, Mikelis was inside with his arms jerking wildly. A thick tornado of smoke nearly obscured him from view while black runes wove into existence over his head like snakes slithering after prey.
Before I could ask what he was doing, the runes winked out. Three of the cardboard boxes buried in the far corner exploded.
I jumped two feet into the air and screamed. Nearby boxes went flying, their contents ricocheting off the walls. Fragments exploded in the air and spilled onto the floor of the lab.
What’s going on? If Kari doesn’t respond in twenty seconds, it means she’s dead.
Kari’s dead? You know what that means: FREEEEEDOOOOOM!
No one will hold us back!
A long, thoughtful pause cut through the knives’ conversation.
How do we get out of this drawer?
Mikelis turned to face me and pointed at the exploded fragments littering the floor. His tone was hostile. “Did you know there were active voodoo spells in these boxes?” He turned away and his voice dropped to a mutter. “I bet Diaco knew.”
I gaped at him, unable to respond. Voodoo magic was aggressive toward necromancers and had nearly killed me multiple times. Why would Dad and Luucas bring it into my house? I was lucky I hadn’t been hurt.
Mikelis waded through the debris toward the nearest unopened box. He ripped open the flimsy cardboard flaps and thrust his hands inside to sift through shrunken heads, dried bones, vials, and other creepy items.
After a few seconds, he removed his hands and tossed the box behind him. It seemed like he was looking for something, but I wasn’t sure what. He moved methodically through the piles, searching, sifting, then discarding, before moving on to the next. He threw down the items with increasing frustration and anger. Though Ruairí O’Bryne was gone, Mikelis’s feelings about him were alive and well.
I stepped over the mess of what had spilled into the lab, noting the bones of animals and humans, figurines of carved wood or twisted straw, stained cloth satchels tied with twine, painted rocks, dried leaves, knife blades with crude carvings on them, weird shriveled things I couldn’t identify, and loose dirt—so much dirt. Why was there so much dirt? Did my dad know about the voodoo spells? He had to. Why would he allow Luucas to bring this crap in here?
“Why didn’t I notice the spells earlier?” I asked. “Why didn’t my knives notice?”
“They probably did, but the spells were weak. Knives typically don’t bother us about something unless they think we’re in danger.”
Longy’s mental voice tingled the sides of my skull.
It’s true. If we had told her about the spells, she would have dug through the boxes looking for them. Not telling her is often best.
“That’s not true.” I was offended, even though I knew Longy was right.
I’m insanely curious about how magic works—even voodoo magic. I would have ransacked the boxes to find the voodoo spells. Sometimes I’m too curious for my own good.
Mikelis had just finished searching another box when Luucas finally returned. He approached the panic room tentatively, stopping at the edge of the voodoo dirt scattered across the floor. He glanced between Mikelis and me. His voice had an uncharacteristic nervous warble.
“That’s part of an investigation. I’m making sure the bunker is safe before it becomes a historic site.”
Mikelis looked up. He was holding feathers, a worn pouch, and a small bone wrapped in a leather cord. “Really? You told Kari that it’s evidence in a case that’s keeping Henri Boisseau under house arrest. Your story’s changing. Which is it?”
“It’s not what you think. It’s nothing—”
Mikelis silenced him with a cold expression. “It’s nothing? Norayr Hakobyan seemed very interested in whatever he found in your study room. If I went looking through your room, would I find ‘nothing’ or something very interesting?”
Luucas looked away. His gaze bounced around the boxes and discarded items on the floor. His jaw worked like he was thinking of a response, but he didn’t answer.
I knew how Luucas felt. My entire life had been based on lies to cover up my magic. Lies are harder to feed to the people who know you best and love you most.
Mikelis threw down the items in his hands, making both Luucas and me jump. “What in the hell is this, Luucas? Kari’s on trial with the Immortal State. Everyone is terrified of her. Our own people think the Rendons groomed her as a weapon to overthrow our government. You’re connected to her—and this political mess—whether you like it or not.”
He gestured around the room like he was presenting the booby prize behind door number three. “Whatever this is, it’s obviously not helping.”
No one spoke.
Finally, Mikelis shook his head and waded out of the panic room. Discarded bits of voodoo crunched under his boots. He passed us without speaking and stalked down to Luucas’s room. He disappeared inside. The sound of drawers slamming echoed back to us. Luucas and I stared at each other for a brief moment.
“I wish you had been honest and told us what you were doing,” I said.
“I thought you preferred to run away from problems and leave the details to everyone else.”
My mouth fell open and I let out an indignant gasp. Before I could retort, he turned and stormed out of the room.
Oh, no. This wasn’t over.
I chased Luucas down the hall, prepared to give him… what? A piece of my mind? Something inside me hated that Luucas had touched on a humiliating truth.
I followed Luucas inside the room and flipped on the light switch. Two floor lamps turned on, creating a soft, warm glow over the disaster that was Luucas’s apartment.
Dirty clothes covered the floor, empty water bottles littered every surface, and the bed linens were in a giant, tangled ball atop the mattress. The little nook that Luucas had turned into an office barely had room to walk through. Large hardback books were stacked in small towers all over the floor. All of the desk drawers were open, probably from Norayr and Ronel searching through them.
Mikelis stood at the desk holding a book in each hand. As he flipped them over, I caught the titles on their spines: The
Secret Rites of Ancient Shamans and Energy Exchange: The Theory of Soul Ratios to Power Spells. It looked like the other books were all similar in topic.
Mikelis fixed Luucas with an impatient glare. “Okay, what are you looking for?”
I glanced around the room again, surprised. It had never occurred to me that Luucas was looking for something.
Luucas didn’t flinch, but his answer sounded robotic. Prepared in advance. “I’m not looking for anything. I’m simply—”
Mikelis slammed the books down onto the desk, cutting him off. “You can’t lie to me like you can to everyone else. Just tell us what you’re doing with this garbage.” He rubbed his forehead as if he were trying to stave off a massive headache. “Norayr knows who Kari is. It won’t be long before he puts together enough evidence to bring her in, and then I’ll have to…”
His voice trailed off. He shook his head, impatient. “And you know how Ronel is—she won’t let this go. She smells blood.”
Luucas’s gaze flickered to me, to the objects littering his desk, and then to Mikelis. “Okay, I…” He cleared his throat. Folded his arms across his chest. “Okay. Here’s what I think.” He looked down and readjusted his feet. Mikelis and I exchanged a quick look. “Didn’t the organization of Ruairí O’Bryne’s operation seem odd to you?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah. He spent six centuries hunting down necromancers. He had a drawer full of Mikelis’s personal effects like a bromance gone wrong. I’m lucky I wasn’t killed.”
Luucas waved a hand dismissively, then tucked it back under his armpit. “I don’t mean like that. I know you two don’t want to think about Ruairí anymore, but consider this: He organized the voodoo community and led them for centuries. He even came up with a sophisticated way to siphon raw power from The Floor, just so he could sacrifice more necromancers and not blow himself up during the transfer.
“Yet the guy had two opposing magics coursing through him. He was so strung out and his brain was so fried from it that he didn’t know where he was half the time.” He looked to Mikelis and then to me, as if looking for confirmation.
Mikelis just frowned. I got the feeling he hadn’t expected this bizarre conversation from Luucas. It was true that Ruairí was crazy, and it was amazing the guy could string two sentences together, but I had no idea where Luucas was going with this.
“Maybe everyone really liked him in charge,” I said.
Luucas shook his head. “It’s not about liking someone when they’re leading a hate movement, it’s about what the leader can give to their followers. His organization was dedicated to power—overpowering and eradicating necromancers and rising up as the true ultimate magic users. But Ruairí had nothing to offer as a leader.”
“So what?” Mikelis snapped.
“So, someone else was probably in charge.”
Mikelis clapped a hand over his eyes and groaned. “Come on, Luucas. Don’t do this.”
Luucas threw up his hands in exasperation. “Am I really the only person who thinks the whole magic-siphoning plan was beyond his capability? It was so obscure! I can’t find a record of that voodoo spell anywhere. Someone else must have been guiding him.” Luucas turned to me, his eyes wide and imploring. He must have mistaken the stunned look on my face for indecision, because he plunged forward. “It makes perfect sense. Something in that bunker is going to lead me to that person, and we need to find it.”
We? What was this we business? Luucas must have been losing his mind because this had to be the craziest thing I’d ever heard.
Mikelis let his hand fall from his face. He stared at Luucas, his expression impassive. It seemed to take Mikelis a lot of effort to keep his voice restrained. “And who do you think is the person behind Ruairí?”
“With that kind of money and power, it’s got to be someone on the Immortal Council,” Luucas said.
Mikelis said nothing. His expression was back to extra neutral.
I kept my voice slow and enunciated every word to make sure Luucas’s brain damage didn’t confuse my message. “I don’t need more trouble with the Council right now.”
“I’m going to prove it to you,” Luucas said. “There’s more going on here. You have to believe that. Three months ago, Isadora Rendon predicted that ‘the end is not to end.’ This isn’t over. She told me the truth would be in the bunker.”
I reared back. She’d given the prediction to me three months ago on my birthday. But she’d been talking about Ruairí O’Bryne, who is now gone. As far as I was concerned, her prophecy no longer applied.
In fact, no one should be trying to get any prophecies from my mother for a long, long while. The prophecy she’d given on my birthday had almost killed her. Anything spoken now would definitely kill her.
I felt my face get hot. My hands clenched into fists. “You talked to my mother?”
“At the bunker,” Luucas said. “I asked her. She said the key to the person behind Ruairí—”
“You had my mom use her Seeing gifts?” I was shouting, and I didn’t care. I didn’t have a lot of friends and family. The ones I had, I needed to keep safe—no matter the cost. “Three months ago, she used her gifts to save me, and it almost killed her. Has her condition improved since then? You tell me.”
His volume jacked up to meet mine, and was fueled by adrenaline and frustration. “If someone was behind him, don’t you want to know who it is?”
“Not if it means losing my mother,” I snapped back.
The cords in Luucas’s neck strained and his face flushed with fury. “I would never endanger a citizen in my charge. I asked Isadora one question, one time.”
“Do you have any idea what could happen if she keeps using her gifts and thwarting the Seer’s Curse?” I threw up my hands in frustration and fury. “She doesn’t know what timeline she’s in, Luucas. The hints she’s giving you might not even apply in our reality. She could be sending you off a cliff—and you could be pulling along everyone around you.”
“That’s just a theory!”
“Oh, you need proof? The head of Immortal Intelligence just gave me forty-eight hours to decide whether I want to become a weapon of the State or die.”
Luucas ran his hands through his hair and tugged at the ends. “How can you let this go? If there’s a mastermind out there responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of people, we need to bring them to justice.”
His mouth opened to continue, but Mikelis stepped between us. His low, stern voice cut through the argument and brought our verbal combat to an end. “That’s enough, Luucas.”
“It’s not enough. It’s—”
“It’s over!” Mikelis shouted back. He gestured at the discarded array of junk from the voodoo bunker. He lowered his voice again. “None of this is going to bring back your dead son.”
Luucas’s mouth snapped shut. Uneasy silence settled over the room. The only sound was the creaking of the house settling. I was so uncomfortable that I couldn’t even look at Luucas. I turned away, staring at the stacks of magic research books on the desk. The Dark Evolution of Western Voodoo. That sounded like a weird and interesting read.
Finally, Luucas’s face relaxed into an expressionless mask. Whatever he was thinking now, it was guarded behind a wall. “Are we finished?”
Mikelis nodded and looked down at the floor. Although he’d effectively ended this mess, he sounded like he’d lost. “Yeah.”
Without another word, Luucas turned and left the room, heading for the garage. A minute later, his signal departed the driveway.
Chapter Ten
I woke up alone on the couch with my phone alarm going off and a yellow Post-it note stuck to my forehead. The scribble on the note was barely legible, but I’d learned to decipher Mikelis’s handwriting over the years: Getting coffee and breakfast. Be back soon. Don’t go anywhere without me. -M
Luucas didn’t return after last night’s confrontation, so Mikelis stayed with me. We didn’t think Intelligence would return so
soon, but neither of us wanted me alone without an access spell. After we’d cleaned up the panic room, we’d curled up on the couch to watch a movie. I’d already had one hell of a day and I was exhausted. I didn’t even make it through the opening credits.
I checked the time. I was going to be late for our band meeting.
I rushed through my morning routine and overdid it on the makeup. By the time I was done, I felt even less in control about the monumental disaster that my life was trying to become.
I wished I could talk to my family and get their help, but I hadn’t been able to reach them. Both times I’d tried my bracelet with the telepath device, Dad hadn’t been on the other end. And Brad was still in hiding.
I looked myself over. The protection spell was still active around me, but what would I do if it came off somehow? I needed a copy of the spell as backup just in case something happened to this one.
I grabbed my keys and went down to the lab. I opened the drawer where I kept bandages and grabbed the box—
Empty, save for the single pink bandage that had the Midas Touch spell imbued on it.
Right. I’d used all of my bandages while I was working on the secret spells for Brad, and I didn’t have time to replenish my stock before we went on tour. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to buy more now. I stuck the box in my purse as a reminder to buy more later.
The only other way for me to cast a spell required the use of my knives, but I rarely took them outside. It was too dangerous—not for me, but for everyone else. Only necromancers could understand a knife’s telepathic speech. Everyone else heard a siren’s song and had a chance of becoming mesmerized. Sacrificial knives were dangerous for the general public.
Then again, the situation was pretty dangerous for me. Norayr Hakobyan had given me forty-eight hours to make a decision. I had about forty-two hours left. But what if Norayr decided to advance his timeline and turn me into the Immortal State’s evil, world-dominating device of doom tonight?