The Wayward Star

by Jenn Stark

  I furrowed my brow, trying to recall faces to go with the names. I didn’t get much back, merely images of bright, laughing girls with shiny hair and trendy clothes—not too trendy, though. And nice. I hadn’t really attracted a lot of attention in high school, and only a few girls had been outright mean to me. But these three girls conjured up only pleasant associations. They’d been kind—not to me, because I hadn’t really sought out their kindness, but to others in the school, I’d noticed. Heck, I think Mary had offered to help me put up fliers for missing kids a couple of times.

  Brody’s reaction was equally ambivalent. “I remember their names, even faces, but those girls didn’t stand out. A couple of the kids did, but not those names. Do you remember them?”

  “Not especially. It’s not like we hung out.”

  “Something that’s going to change,” Nikki declared. “You’re a grown-ass woman, and these individuals are reaching out with an air of goodwill and friendship. You need to do this! There’s even a private Facebook group they put together for it.”

  I made a face. “I am not joining a private Facebook group for a high school reunion.”

  “Not a problem, I’ll join for you. I’ll tell them I’m your sober companion so they don’t think you’re putting on airs by being seen with someone as fabulous as me.”

  “Nikki…” Still, I knew I couldn’t reject the party out of hand. Because I’d received another invitation to it, this one not on cream-colored card stock, but delivered through the pneumatic tubes of Justice Hall. I pushed the slip of paper in front of Brody. “This sound like any of the girls you talked to after I disappeared? And before you ask, pneumatic tube technology erases prints. I learned that a while ago.”

  His brows went up as Nikki fell silent, her manner instantly shifting from teasing to serious.

  “‘You aren’t worthy. You’ve never been worthy,’” Brody recited. “‘I am. The blood price will be paid.’”

  He glanced up at me. “Blood price? That sounds like a threat.”

  “In particular, it sounds like a threat from an over-imaginative teenage girl,” Nikki put in. “Who sent it?”

  I lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. When I first saw the note, I had an impression of shiny brown hair and braces and…well, moon pies. But I can’t place a name with that memory. Still—it does sound like someone with an axe to grind and it definitely feels like a connection to Farraday. Especially with this stupid reunion thing happening.”

  “Not stupid,” Nikki said automatically. “And now you’ve got to go. Blood prices are notoriously difficult to manage unless you’re on-site. There’s nothing else in the note?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, there is. Turn it over.”

  Brody did, and the ink that surfaced hadn’t been there before. It shimmered effervescently for a moment and then disappeared again, but not until all of us could see what it read.

  See you this weekend.

  6

  “Disappearing ink,” Nikki drawled. “Very fancy. This is setting up to be one hell of a party, and we haven’t even gone shoe shopping yet.”

  I took the slip of paper back from Brody, who scowled at me. “What does Armaeus think of all this?” he asked.

  “I haven’t told him. I figured you’d want to be with me when I did, since it potentially could involve civilians on your turf.”

  Brody held up his hands. “Nope. The last time I talked to that guy, I ended up on extended detail at Interpol. I’ll take a pass.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said. “Part of our problem on the Council is we’re not communicating enough, not the way we need to. The Shadow Court has disappeared after we knocked them flat in Hamburg, and we’re all acting like we’ve gotten a break, and we haven’t gotten a break, because it’s not like they’re off someplace relaxing by the pool. Ten to one that entire little gambit was an intentional setup to see how strong we were, and to see if we’d go after them ourselves or work with the authorities. And guess what?”

  “We didn’t wait for Interpol,” Nikki supplied. “We started out with that intention, but ultimately, we didn’t. You offered yourself up as bait. You were attacked, fought back, figured out what was going on, then dismantled the shit out of their little drug operation before the authorities could intervene one way or another.”

  “And said authorities didn’t blink,” I finished. “Not much, anyway. Which to the Shadow Court means—play ball. Nobody’s going to stop the Connected community from going to war with itself, especially if nobody causes much collateral damage.”

  “Interpol definitely didn’t blink,” Brody grudgingly agreed. “They didn’t care. They’re so overwhelmed with all the ordinary drug wars, they were more than willing to leave the psychic drug wars to you.”

  “So Interpol has become allies of the Council out of necessity?” Nikki asked. “That could be interesting.”

  Brody shrugged. “I wouldn’t call them allies. I also wouldn’t call them enemies. Right now, I’d say they were keeping their options open, especially since the Council seems to be walking on the side of angels and not causing more trouble than it’s worth. The moment that changes or the moment that the higher-ups decide that it’s changing, Interpol won’t have any problem with dropping the hammer on the Council. Until then, they’re happy to be bystanders.”

  “Where does that leave things with you?”

  “Hopefully, here. I’ve got enough to handle in Vegas. Don’t think that I’m happy about our little firebug choosing the Strip to make his message known. I’ve been waiting for a while for this place to become ground zero for some sort of magical throwdown with the Council. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.”

  “Yet another reason we need you with us when we talk to Armaeus,” I said, the soul of reason. “If there’s something building up that’s going to become a problem for Las Vegas specifically, not just the Council, everyone needs to be prepared. There’s a whole lot of psychics that are drawn to this area. It could very quickly become a lightning rod for the supernatural. That’s…problematic.”

  Brody snorted. “That’s one way of saying it. We’ve also got our share of straight-up crime that has nothing to do with the supernatural. If you think for one second that’s not going to ramp up as well in the middle of a Connected conflict, think again. A lot of these guys have their feet on both sides of the trade, both technoceutical-related dealers and straight-up dirtbags. They go where the money goes. They don’t care about the product.”

  “So we need to talk to Armaeus, is what you’re saying,” I drawled.

  Brody pushed angrily away from the table. “He is not sending me back to Interpol.”

  We cashed out and headed for the street, where Nikki had her car called for us. But I was still chewing on Brody’s assessment of the current strain of drug dealers dabbling in the technoceutical market.

  “They don’t care about the product, you said. Do they actually understand the product?”

  Brody grunted something noncommittal. “I’ll let you know when we nail one.”

  It surprised me I’d never really thought of this before. I’d been so immersed in the arcane aspects of the technoceutical drug trade, and its uniquely Connected clientele, that it never occurred to me to consider other players in the game who weren’t Connected. That, of course, put me in exactly the same category as the Magician. The Arcana Council had been created to manage Connected concerns. We had developed our entire ethos based on this tiny subset of humanity in isolation from its non-psychic counterparts.

  But what was the reality? Was there a lot more cross-pollination between Connected and non-Connected criminals than we’d considered?

  Obviously, the lower-level players, the drug pushers in the arcane market, might well not be Connected, because, as Brody said, they would take their money however it came, but what about the master players? I’d always assumed that high-level Connecteds wouldn’t deign to deal with non-Connecteds because they considered non-Connecteds inferio
r. When you had psychic abilities, that kind of trumped anything an ordinary mortal could do, no matter how rich they were. But maybe I was looking at this entirely the wrong way. Maybe I had always looked at it the wrong way. Maybe I was letting my own prejudice get the better of me.

  How much better did that make me than the asshats at the Odermatts’ little soirée of superficiality? I felt a little sick to my stomach considering it.

  We piled into the car with Nikki at the wheel and headed off down the Strip. It wasn’t a long drive by any means, but in the million-and-one-degree heat, it wasn’t a journey we were going to venture on foot.

  As we drove, I found my attention turning to the soaring shadowy homes of the Arcana Council that shimmered high above the tops of the man-made casinos, spectral visions unable to be seen by anybody but the most powerful Connecteds. The gorgeous glass fool’s cap over the Bellagio, which was the Fool’s home. The twisting lava lamp of a night club that shot high above the Flamingo, home to the Devil. The tiny cottage on a simple platform that lifted precariously above Excalibur that was the Hermit’s home. The black monolith that shot up from Paris casino, stern and unforgiving—much like its owner, the Emperor.

  Technically, both the Devil and the Emperor had been running the Arcana Council for the past several weeks, but the Devil had become the de facto leader as Armaeus had not stepped up to take his rightful role. Instead, the Magician had retreated to his own fortress, which we approached now, a shimmering tower of glass, metal, and stone with a thousand pointed turrets, as ghostly as the wispy clouds it soared above. Prime Luxe, the Magician’s fortress.

  “So, what’s the plan here?” Nikki asked pragmatically as she eased the car into the valet station. Even if the attendants didn’t recognize the car, the moment Nikki stepped out, the entire valet squad brightened. Two different guys came scurrying over, ready to assure her of their undivided attention and solicitude while taking care of her vehicle. We waited until they had driven off with the silver Mercedes, then entered the building.

  “Honestly? We go right at it. Something’s going on that Armaeus isn’t sharing, and we need to know what it is,” I said as we approached the elevator banks for the Luxor. The entire place gleamed with kitsch, fake gold, and cheap brass-and-glass fixtures, but there was one elevator bank that stood out from the rest, at least to me.

  Brody couldn’t see it, or at least he never let on that he could, though he had some Connected ability. You couldn’t hang around the Council for terribly long without some of the crazy rubbing off on you. His ability was augmented when he was with us, which was something else that pricked at me, another jagged piece that poked my intuition, though I couldn’t quite understand why. We entered the jet-black elevator bay after its doors swished open, and I waited for them to close again before continuing.

  “I haven’t seen the High Priestess out of one of her hallowed silos in I don’t even know how long. Today, she was not only circulating with the great unwashed, she had an intern with her. And she got dirty.” I thought about that, the desperation with which the normally fastidious High Priestess had pawed through the churning ashes in front of Harrah’s.

  “She did seem legit freaked out,” Nikki agreed. “That’s not her usual MO. I didn’t like it.”

  “No new incidences of fires, though,” Brody said. “But why set the blazes in the first place? It’s almost got to be a warning.”

  “Not a warning. More of an invitation.”

  The Magician’s voice that greeted us as the doors snicked open was cool and controlled, and no longer held the contemptuous edge that had defined it so much of the time I’d heard him speak, particularly during explanations. Then again, a lot had changed recently. Namely, as the result of a spell he’d orchestrated himself, Armaeus had forgotten every memory he had of me.

  All of them.

  While nobody likes to be forgotten, it’s particularly hard when you’ve been forgotten by the only man you’ve ever loved…and the only man who’d ever loved you.

  Irritation sparked as I fought back the pang of loss. The Magician and I were working through our issues. I needed to look forward, not back.

  We stepped out of the elevator, and to my surprise, we were not in Armaeus’s main office, with its miles of plush carpeting and ornate, oversized desk. Instead, we were in his library. Rosewood floor-to-ceiling shelves stretched as far as I could see. I knew from past experience that beyond those shelves lay study tools that went a little beyond your normal academic library, like arcane torture devices and fiery conflagrations and pits of darkness that had no bottom.

  Fortunately, the Magician had set up a temporary workstation at the front of the library, clearing out some of the shelves of books and transferring many of them to the floor around his heavy wooden desk and large chair. Candles lit the room, as well as a radiance that seemed to shimmer from the bookcases of its own volition. The master was in residence and the occupants approved.

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Brody said, getting right to business. “Invitation to what? And have you already responded to it?”

  The Magician gestured, and while before there’d been no seating other than his own, three chairs now appeared in front of his desk. We moved forward and dropped into them, while Armaeus continued speaking. He didn’t look at me, but I was okay with that.

  We’d been trying to work through our relationship as normally as possible, given that only one of us remembered it. But it had proven a little overwhelming for me. Part of the reason I’d spent so much time in my office was that I couldn’t handle the intense emotional reaction I had to Armaeus every time I saw him. I loved him. I always would, even though he was a fundamentally different person now after his most recent trials. And he definitely cared for me too. To him, since he’d lost his memories of me—of us—our relationship was fresh, new, undiscovered. Whenever he glanced my way, I felt the thrill of his intense interest, the heady rush of his intellect, curiosity, and desire focused solely on me, like I was the most important person in his entire world. It was flattering, in its way. Exciting.

  But this new Magician also scared me, frankly. It wasn’t a negative fear by any means, but that didn’t make it any less real. The yawning abyss of possibility that our future now held was far more alarming with the Magician’s eager support than it had been when I’d been flailing around trying to figure out things on my own.

  “The High Priestess was with me when the first report of the summoning fires came through,” Armaeus said, giving me a blessed reprieve to focus on this more pressing issue. “She left immediately, as you saw, but not before she conveyed to me the gravity of what she believed was happening. It takes a very deep and old magic to summon the High Priestess, and a very determined summoner. Her belief is that the remnants of several of Earth’s most ancient Connected societies have been awakened. It is something that we considered as a possibility during the confrontation with the gods this past winter, but after the initial flare of awareness, we saw no other signs of activity that would indicate that we’d disturbed the old guard unduly. It appears we were incorrect.”

  “Uh-huh,” Brody said. Sadly, he was echoing my own thoughts. “Once again for the cheap seats?”

  To my surprise, the Magician turned toward me. As if I had any of the answers.

  Then, suddenly, I did. Not so much the words, but the feelings, the emotions, the pleas that had been surfacing across my desk for the past several weeks coalesced in my mind. I’d reached out to find any magic-related artifacts that Connecteds had been willing to contribute to the Arcana Council for study and possible use in a coming Connected conflict. But I’d gotten so much more back in the notes that had accompanied those artifacts, I now realized. New rumors and concerns, even hints of danger. And threaded through it all was a growing sense of fear. Something was threatening the Connecteds, and they didn’t know what it was. The Shadow Court? Worse? Whatever it was, they wanted help in facing it. Guidance.

  Something.


  “Last winter, we tried to keep the gods from breaching the veil to Earth, and we succeeded, but along the way, we let loose new magic into the world, both positive and, well, demonic,” I said, studying Armaeus thoughtfully. The scourge of demons we’d unwittingly released continued to be a problem, but I didn’t think that’s what the Magician was focusing on, here. “What I didn’t realize was that we’d also awakened old magic that had gone dormant for centuries, even millennia. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  He nodded. “In some cases, it is not even the original magic itself, but descended family lines that have been activated. Awakened, you could say, to the power they have held for millennia. Some, like the magicians in Venice, even the witches coven in Los Angeles and certainly the New Celts in Ireland, understood what was happening and acted on it as quickly as possible. Others took a more cautious path and are only now emerging, in part because they are now paying attention to the threat that has come to their doorstep. Because of our recent conflict, the stakes have been made clearer to them.”

  “The Shadow Court,” Nikki put in. “You think they’ve made themselves known to these other pockets of Connecteds who are realizing their abilities?”

  “I do, in part,” Armaeus said. “I believe the Shadow Court reached out, and some Connecteds responded. Some didn’t. Instead, they either fled, sheltered in place, or turned to us. The Arcana Council, whose millennia-long dedication to remaining separate and apart is now being called into question.”

  Don’t engage. I felt a thrill of excitement as Brody held up his hands.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “I thought you guys were here to balance magic. Policing it, at a stretch, but nothing more than that. Actively shifting that balance of power isn’t your job.”

  “It isn’t our job,” Armaeus said. “Or perhaps, put more plainly, it wasn’t our job. Now we are faced with a different possibility,” he said. “The possibility of taking an active role in a war that is not between Earth and the gods, but between different factions of magic. We’ve never before taken sides in mortal conflicts, so this is not something we should enter into lightly.”