by Jenn Stark
Eshe waited out Brody’s diatribe with remarkable patience. When he finished, she inclined her head graciously. “There were times when it was not prudent for a querent to reveal his identity to the oracle,” she said as if this was perfectly reasonable. “Nobody knew who the power was behind the smoke. There were legitimate concerns that military action would be brought against anyone asking the wrong question. People had to be careful.”
He made a rolling gesture with his hand. “And? So what was the question?”
“Depending on the specific mixture of herbs and psychotropic drugs, the smoke would change its consistency, color, and scent. With a sensitive-enough reader, you understood the question with remarkable specificity.”
More hand rolling. “And?”
To my surprise, it was not Eshe who answered but Lainie. She remained off to the side, her head canted as if she was using every sense but sight to see the scene in front of her.
“It is a summons,” she said. “An ancient summons for a higher power to act. A beckoning of the star to shine down upon the people and guide them.” Her voice was high and strange, but there was a beauty to it, a resonance that made everyone around us stop and glance over, even if they couldn’t hear what she was saying. In that moment, Lainie appeared as regal as the High Priestess, despite her youth.
“A star?” I shot a look at Eshe. “We don’t have a Star on the Arcana Council, do we? Has that seat been filled without me knowing it?”
She shook her head, appearing genuinely surprised. Apparently, Lainie hadn’t already dropped this part of the message on her.
“There has never been a Star on the Arcana Council, just as there has never been the Sun or the Moon.”
“Yeah?” asked Brody. “Why is that? I mean you people have Death on the Council. How hard would it be to have somebody represent the Star?”
“The energies of the cards dedicated to the heavens are different,” Eshe said, as if that explained everything. “Not an energy that is meant to be held within a single person, but—”
“Whoa!”
The scene techs nearest to the metal container scrambled back as, without warning, the ashes in the salver erupted again without any outside interference. A billowing plume of smoke shot skyward, purple, red, and blue flames crackling to life and spilling out over the sides of the container. People screamed, Brody started barking, and within seconds, the firemen were back with their portable extinguishers. The fire was out almost as soon as it had erupted, but beneath the cloud of toxic smoke, the damage was done.
Eshe and Lainie lay sprawled on the ground, their faces black with soot, their hands blistered.
I surged forward and realized I wasn’t alone. As I knelt down, another figure appeared beside me—as in literally appeared. The Magician of the Arcana Council.
His presence struck me like a visceral punch. Armaeus Bertrand looked every inch the demigod he was, his French and Egyptian heritage shining forth in his deeply tanned skin, dark wavy hair, and impossibly elegant features. His lean body was corded with muscle, currently draped in what was probably a five-thousand-dollar suit, or what passed as casual summer wear for the Magician. Ordinarily, seeing him would send me into a cartwheel of emotions, especially of late, but there was no time.
“Together, Miss Wilde,” he said. We reached out and covered the faces of both Eshe and Lainie in one movement, pumping them both full of healing energy that was a thousand times more potent because we worked together. In another breath, the smoke cleared. The two women still lay on the ground, but Armaeus was gone.
That was…weird.
“Dollface!” Nikki gasped as I turned toward her, then she blinked. Her hands went out and brushed my hair away from my face, her cool fingers a welcome balm to my skin. “You became scorched, burned like them, but now…” She shook her head. “You’re okay. You’re all okay.”
I staggered back a step, blinking as the EMTs rushed up and immediately went to work on the two women who remained unconscious, though their skin and hands once more resembled flesh and not fried bologna.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Exactly what you think happened,” Brody said. “Fire out of nowhere, tons of smoke, Eshe and Lainie go down, you’re all over them, the smoke clears, and here we are.”
“And—you didn’t see anyone else?” I asked, blinking any residual haze away. Why had the Magician left again so quickly? Was he seriously working that hard on his upcoming PowerPoint presentation for the Council staff meeting that he couldn’t have hung around for a quick chat?
“Negative. What happened here?” He directed this last question toward the firefighters, who appeared as perplexed as he was, and an immediate argument ensued. Next to me, Nikki scowled down at Eshe and Lainie.
“Are they going to be okay?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I didn’t know how I could handle both of them at once, but…” I stop talking, the sudden compulsion to stay silent nearly overwhelming me. Nikki didn’t seem to notice and instead patted me on the shoulder reassuringly, then she stopped.
Her head swiveled my way. “Dollface?”
I grimaced. It was tough to keep secrets from your best friend when she could read your memories every time she touched you.
“Yo, Armaeus wasn’t here,” Nikki continued, her voice far quieter now. “It was all you. I was standing right here, and the guy didn’t show up.”
“Really.” I scrubbed my face, trying to work through that possibility. I believed he had shown up, and that had helped me feel comfortable about putting forth as much energy as I had into healing Eshe and Lainie, emptying myself out for them. Did it matter that Armaeus wasn’t actually here?
Probably. But we could work out those details later.
Brody stepped back over, waving his phone at me.
“We’ve got another fucking fire,” he growled, even as Lainie and Eshe stirred. “This one is over at Harrah’s, another culty trash can thing, this one spewing different smoke. Half the crowd scattered into the streets, screaming terrorist attack. The other half assumed it was a gimmick put on by the hotel. But this time around, we got yellow smoke shot through with freaking green…”
“Yellow and green?” Eshe sat up straight, then scrambled to her feet. “No, that cannot be!”
She whirled and yanked the still-groggy Lainie to her feet, and together, they started running.
5
It’s a testament to life on the Strip that the sight of a woman in a toga racing down the street at 11:00 a.m. like her hair was on fire didn’t cause much of a reaction among the tourists flowing in and out of the casinos. Then again, like most of the members of the Arcana Council, Eshe could motor when she wanted to. I’d simply never seen her in action. Hell, I’d never seen her do much more than admire her manicure.
Despite two near-death experiences with traffic on the boulevard, we reached Harrah’s less than five minutes later. This time, the firefighters had done a better job blasting the metal container with foam, and there was no evidence of anything left over but muck. That didn’t stop Eshe, however. She and Lainie knelt beside the container as Eshe raked her hands through the remaining ashes, seeming to pay no mind to the sodden mess she was making of her designer toga. The firefighters stood around her, clearly unhappy with her mucking up the scene, but they weren’t making any attempt to stop her either. That was the beauty of being Eshe.
Brody apparently recognized one of them and made a beeline in that direction. “What do we have here?”
The man, short, wiry with close-cropped brown hair and a weathered face, scowled at him. “Who the hell is this woman you said I needed to accommodate?” he asked, his emphasis on the word accommodate clear and unimpressed.
“Paranormal forensic analyst,” Brody said without missing a beat. “So what are we dealing with?”
“Same as the other,” the fireman said, shaking his head. He returned his gaze to where Eshe was smearing the sodden ashes on the pa
vement. “We haven’t checked out the camera footage yet, but I’m betting that’s the same deal too. One second, nothing was there. The next, we got a bucket filled with smoke. After that, kaboom. Yellow and green smoke everywhere. It looked enough like a prop not to scare the living shit out of everyone, though it should have.”
“Anyone harmed?”
“Negative. After the fire at Caesars, we hit it pretty fast. The fire immediately went out, smoke dissipated. Basically, it was nothing more than a mess in a bucket at that point until Wonder Woman here showed up.”
Beside me, Nikki snickered, and the fireman landed a glance at her. She was still rocking her dangerous-lawyer outfit, and there was no doubting the quick shot of interest that kindled in the man’s eyes. “Who are you?” he asked, far less caustically.
“Someone with a very healthy appreciation of a man in uniform,” she informed him with a wink. “Do you have any other reports of these fires, or do you think we’re done here?”
“This seems to be it for the moment,” Brody answered for the man. The detective’s eyes were still on Eshe, and he broke away now to crouch beside her, his voice low and concerned as he murmured something to her. She glanced up, startled, then they both turned to Lainie. The young seer was kneeling perfectly straight, her chin up, her shoulders square, the sphinx overseeing her kingdom. Eshe, for her part, immediately rocked back on her heels, then stood.
“We’re done here,” she informed nobody in particular, though everyone seemed willing to take her at her word. They stood back another step as she moved over to Lainie, helping the younger woman up with a solicitude that seemed faintly alarming to me, though I didn’t know why. The two of them turned and left without another word.
“What was that about?” I asked as Brody returned to us.
He squinted after the two women. “That was Lainie apparently dropping into a waking trance. Or, put another way, the latest round of crazy in a morning that hasn’t had nearly enough caffeine to offset it.”
“I heartily agree,” Nikki announced. “Let’s do something about that, shall we?”
The relentlessly cheerful tone to her voice put me on my guard, but I wasn’t going to stand in the way of coffee. We entered the nearest casino doors and made our way around the perimeter of flashing lights and beeping machines until we reached a restaurant. Within a few short minutes, we each had a steaming mug in front of us, while Nikki’s expensive portfolio lay on the table in a little too prominent a position, the cream-colored envelope peeking jauntily out its top.
She couldn’t be serious. I quickly turned to Brody, hoping to head off a runaway train.
“What are you hearing about these fires?” I asked. “Was there any advance chatter that made you expect them, or was this out of the blue?”
He sighed. “Not exactly out of the blue. We were expecting something. We just didn’t know what. There’s been an unreasonable amount of what I would categorize as anxiety of late in the Connected community. Nerves. Tension. Like that. It doesn’t really make sense, honestly. There hasn’t been that much that’s changed over the summer. But everyone seems to be on edge.”
He looked at Nikki. “Are you getting the same thing?”
Fortunately, Nikki seemed more than willing to be distracted by this legitimate line of inquiry. “Everybody’s got amped-up energy, that’s for damn sure. I haven’t been hitting the clubs like usual, but from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot more Connecteds out rocking it like the party’s not going to last that much longer. There’s a mania to the community that makes me nervous.”
“Agreed,” said Brody. “It’s summer, of course. We’ve had an uptick in crime in all the regular places, domestic disturbances, disrupting the peace, indecent exposure, alcohol-related nonsense, all on the standard side of the blotter, totally consistent with anytime the heat ticks up. But among the Connected community, it’s a different vibe. Nobody’s committing any crimes, but everybody’s on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“What shoe?” I asked. “Anybody talking?”
Both Brody and Nikki shook their heads.
“It would be a lot easier if they did, but if you’re asking about whether people are nervous about the Shadow Court specifically, I’m going to have to say no,” Brody said. “I haven’t heard that name once in all this. They’re still ghosts.”
Nikki leaned back in her booth seat. “Well, they are a predominantly European organization. That’s where the roots are, so maybe they haven’t fully moved across the pond? Or, if they have, maybe their locations are in cities that have a little bit more of a European connection than, you know, Vegas. I’m thinking New York, New Orleans, maybe Miami?”
“Could be.” I nodded, once more rolling the problem of the Shadow Court around in my mind. We had no names, no locations other than the one we’d already uncovered in Hamburg, Germany, no operatives, and no apparent activity. Something had to be going on, though, because to all appearances, the Shadow Court was flush with cash. That kind of money implied commerce of some sort. And the Shadow Court had already been proven to be players in the arcane black market’s drug industry, pushing technoceuticals hard. Worse, the Shadow Court had been around almost as long as the Arcana Council had, and presumably, its powers ran equally deep.
“What does anyone know about them?” I murmured the question aloud. “Even by another name? There’s got to be something under another name.”
“Simon get us anything?” Brody asked.
I took another draw on my coffee mug. “Not a lot, and the information is all old. The Shadow Court vanished pretty quickly from everyone’s memories back in the 1850s, and they’ve done a good job of covering their tracks since then. Now Simon’s searching for anomalies and trends and patterns, basically trying to see the little man behind the curtain. But it’s slow going when he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Granted, along the way he’s uncovering a hell of a lot of other illegal operations, which could be useful down the line, but nothing specific to the Shadow Court.”
“Pretty sure I don’t want to know anything about that,” Brody drawled. He’d been cut loose from Interpol to return to his duties as a Las Vegas detective since the international stage had gone so quiet, at least as it pertained to the Shadow Court. He preferred it in Vegas, and I didn’t blame him. Interpol could be a pain in the ass. “But keep me posted. I don’t wanna be caught off guard when it’s information I rightfully should be the one to share.”
I nodded, momentarily distracted by the waitress as she refilled our mugs. I’d taken a long draw on my mug when Nikki pounced.
“So, Brody, what are you doing Saturday night? Because Sara here needs a date.”
I barely avoided spitting my coffee across the booth at her, but spluttered all the same, “I do not need a date.”
“A date for what?” Brody asked immediately. “This isn’t going to be trouble, is it?”
“No,” I said firmly.
“Yes,” Nikki said at the same time, “or at least I damn well hope it is. Sara’s been invited to her high school reunion.”
“Farraday High?” Brody said, turning to me in surprise. “You didn’t actually graduate, did you?”
“Hey, now. I got my GED.” I couldn’t help the flare of embarrassment as I said the words. But when your house gets blown up by a dragon when you’re seventeen, it’s kind of tough to show up for finals. “I took the test, passed it, and Farraday sent me a diploma. They felt pretty bad about everything that had happened to me, even though it had nothing to do with them. They were good people.”
“Apparently, it is an unofficial reunion of several of the students from Sara’s class, and they thought she might want to join them because hello, she’s a Vegas local.”
“That’s a bad idea,” Brody said. “We don’t need Grosse Pointe Blank with magic happening here.”
Nikki snorted. “That would be amazing, and you know it. But you’ve got to go, Sara. They reached out to you several time
s this summer, according to the little note they tucked inside the invitation, and they really want you to show up.”
I scowled. So far as I knew, the invitation she’d opened in front of me this morning was the first I’d received, but nobody would accuse me of keeping up with my junk mail. I had enough difficulty keeping up with the mail that came in through pneumatic tubes.
Speaking of which…
I reluctantly withdrew the slip of paper I’d shoved into my hoodie pocket after we’d gotten Brody’s call. “They’re coming to town this weekend?” I asked.
“The party’s this weekend, but folks are arriving throughout the week,” Nikki corrected me. She flipped open her portfolio and picked up the heavy cream envelope with completely undeserved reverence.
“Pretty fancy for Farraday High, don’t you think?” Brody drawled. “Are there any names attached to this invitation?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Nikki grinned. “Sara was, what, seventeen when she split town? I don’t suppose you had any interaction with the Young and the Restless of good ol’ Farraday High after that?”
The unexpected question refocused me, and so did Brody’s flush. My eyes shot wide. “Oh, geez, I didn’t even think about that. Of course you would have interviewed the kids in my class.”
“After the disappearance of a student who’d been helping the police find missing kids? You think?” Brody returned, a new edge to his voice. “I talked to every damned student in that school, it felt like. You had exactly zero close friends.”
I rolled my eyes. “And this comes as a surprise?”
“Hey, hey,” Nikki said, raising a quelling hand. “Let’s focus on the friends who have come to the fore. A Mary Clemson Strand is the primary coordinator of the festivities, with two other girls—I guess women now—mentioned here, a Patricia McGee and an Amy Franks Bucher.”