The Wayward Star

by Jenn Stark

  “Yet you’re still here,” the Devil murmured, his voice so soothing, so assured that it almost made me want to answer on Viktor’s behalf just to gain his approval.

  Viktor’s eyes shifted to Kreios again. “I am still here. Do you want to know why?”

  “They didn’t respect you this time,” Armaeus said. “They didn’t understand what you truly had to offer.”

  Viktor’s lip curled. “They did not. They believed I could play only a supporting role.”

  My eyes widened. That was a serious miscalculation by anyone wanting to work with Viktor Dal. There were no depths to which the man wouldn’t stoop, but he had a profound and abiding need to be respected. Surely, anyone watching him would know that. Then again, this was a guy who’d dedicated his support to Hitler back in the day. So maybe the people who were making the offer rocked the same megalomania as their one-time leader.

  “So you stayed within the Council. And told them no.”

  Viktor smiled. It was a cold smile. “I stayed. But I told them yes. I could help them. I would help them. They had only one requirement for me to prove my worth.”

  “Bullshit,” Brody hissed beside me as if he couldn’t help himself. I shot my hand out to grab his arm, but the near-soundless word only did partial damage. Viktor blinked, then turned away from Kreios to stare at Eshe. She remained still and silent, her eyes unfocused, but I could feel her energy increase, bathing Viktor with a sense of well-being, respect, even awe.

  “What a sacrifice,” she murmured, and I didn’t miss the flush of pride darken Viktor’s cheeks.

  He refocused on Kreios. “The Shadow Court revealed only a sliver of its true power in Hamburg. You need to understand that. They fully intend to manipulate the psychic abilities of the key government advisors, military leaders, and national rulers. It’s already begun.”

  “What did they want of you?” Kreios murmured.

  What they have always wanted,” Viktor said. “The blood price for admission into the High Court. The death of a Council member at my hands.”

  Nobody spoke, nobody breathed, and I could do nothing but gape. Blood price, he said, the same words used in the taunting note I’d received at Justice Hall. Blood price. My mind started racing, wondering at the game Viktor was playing. The game he played now—the game he played over a decade ago, in Memphis, Tennessee. How long had he been working with the Shadow Court, and doing what?

  And why had he been in Memphis?

  “Whose death, Viktor?” Kreios pressed, his question whisper-soft. “Speak your truth.”

  Viktor smiled and lifted his hand. A gun materialized in his elegant grasp.

  He aimed it at Simon and fired.

  8

  It was a testament to Nikki and Brody’s cop training and my own relative lack of coffee that we all didn’t completely freak. Instead, everybody froze for a hot second. The gun disappeared from Viktor’s hand, and the Magician breathed out a single word.

  “Eshe.”

  The High Priestess turned to Viktor, and I realized her aura had changed, fading back to a lavender gold.

  “Speak, Emperor,” she entreated, and Viktor seemed to shake himself, his smile growing stronger, his air of cockiness resurfacing, the color returning to his skin. Then, as we sat and watched, spellbound, he began the same story all over again…

  But with critical differences.

  “Three weeks ago, I was approached by members of the Shadow Court,” he said, outrage and disdain dripping from his words. “There’s no question in my mind that’s who they were. They knew of Armaeus’s challenges, but they did not know I had taken his place along with the Devil as the head of the Council. They sought to make me a turncoat. A traitor. They advised me that I needed only take out a member of the Council to prove my worth.”

  Viktor’s disgust was palpable as he spoke, and if I’d not just witnessed a very different rendition of the story, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. As it was, I kept quiet and so did everyone around me. There was something about witnessing full-on crazy right in front of you that proved as mesmerizing as the High Priestess’s aura.

  “I informed them I had no desire to go to a court that did not understand how to conduct itself,” Viktor said haughtily, gesturing to Simon, who remained remarkably chill, given he’d just been shadow shot. “But you all need to know. They could approach any one of us, some more subtly than others. And they were ghosts. I asked Simon to track them down, and there were no names or faces in the system that matched. They were completely off the grid.”

  The Magician spoke next, his words pitched at a conversational tone, but so loud in the absolutely silent room, we all jumped.

  “That appears to be the modus operandi for the Shadow Court. Impressive to have so many people unable to be tracked.”

  “Unlikely too, given today’s surveillance capabilities,” Simon put in. My eyes stayed on Viktor as he shook off the residual effects of the High Priestess’s energy, and she squeezed his hand with apparent reassurance. I only managed to transfer my gaze to Simon a second before Viktor felt me staring at him, and I could sense his gaze on me in the next breath as my brain scrambled to catch up with what I’d witnessed.

  Which story was true? And what, exactly, was the relationship between the Emperor and the High Priestess? Viktor had handed us a confession of guilt, hadn’t he? Right before he’d handed us some fairy tale about him being the noble leader of the Arcana Council. But nobody else on the Council was reacting to his bombshell, while Nikki, Brody, and I were strangled by our own confusion.

  “Ordinarily, I would say they were using some sort of masking technology, but that doesn’t hold water since the assassin that Sara confronted in Paris and in Hamburg had the same face both times,” Simon said. “She could see him, and her camera could pick him up—that was an independent camera on our private satellite network. But official cameras, going through ordinary cell towers, nada.”

  Brody stiffened and glanced hard at Simon. This at least was something he could understand.

  “You mean to tell me that the Shadow Court has its hooks into global communications companies and international law enforcement? And nobody realizes it?”

  Simon nodded, positively giddy. “The code isn’t as intrusive as you might think, and keep in mind, they don’t have to use it for a lot of people. Basically, it’s sort of a reverse facial recognition protocol. Everybody gets fed into the system except for these, what, thirty, fifty, a hundred operatives. Anytime they show up, they don’t get recognized on the feed.”

  “Their whole bodies or just their faces?” Brody pressed. “Because if one of them is attacking someone else, do you just get the person who gets knocked down, or do you see anything of the aggressor?”

  “Excellent question, my man.” Simon finger-gunned him approvingly. “You definitely get the body and you get a face, but it’s a synthesis of all the faces in the room. An overlay you don’t even really see is happening unless you look really close, and it doesn’t happen a lot regardless, because most of the time, these guys are good at keeping their heads down and away from any likely camera angles. They’re careful, but on top of being careful, they’ve got a lot of help.”

  “And you found no evidence of a man who spoke with me,” Viktor said. His voice set my nerves on edge. Did he sound anxious? Accusing? Relieved? Once again, which Viktor and which story was I supposed to focus on?

  “Negatory,” Simon said. “You were in the public part of the casino, where there was only traditional surveillance, so we got nothing. Like you called it, they were ghosts in the machine. I didn’t even pick up when their eyes did that white-out thing.”

  That caught my attention. I turned to Viktor, forcing myself to focus on him as if he wasn’t a traitor in our midst. It was the only way this was going to work. “Their eyes went white? When they spoke to you? Did their voices change too?”

  I had run into a similar situation in Paris with an assailant who had clearly been c
ontrolled psychically from a distance. To my surprise, however, Viktor shook his head.

  “Their eyes went white, but they didn’t speak in a different voice. Their faces remained the same, and their message did as well. They may have been transferring someone else’s message, but I didn’t get the sense that they were bystanders appropriated out of convenience. They felt like part of the organization.”

  “I really hate these guys,” Nikki muttered.

  Viktor leaned forward. “But you can see that we need to act. The time for standing on the sidelines is at an end. These people have a hundred-and-fifty-year head start on us infiltrating governments, multinational organizations, some of the richest families in the world—Connected or otherwise. It’s well past time that the Arcana Council go to war with them. Or there will be no magic left to balance.”

  “What about the Houses of Magic?” Brody asked, referring to the four mortal organizations of magic loosely affiliated with the Arcana Council, one of which I’d briefly led. Swords, Cups, Wands, Pentacles, each organization had been founded to give mortals a chance to combine their magic against the Council, against any magical threat, if the situation ever demanded it. “Isn’t that their whole point, to fight their own battles?”

  It was a good question, but I already knew the answer to it. I’d gone over this a thousand times in my own mind since ascending to the Council. “The Houses of Magic may have started out as assemblies of magic, but that’s not what they are now,” I said. “Over the centuries, they’ve primarily become syndicates that enrich themselves on the arcane black market, either buying and selling psychically enhanced goods or simply using their abilities to interact with non-Connected markets. Some of them, like the House of Wands, could fight tomorrow. The House of Swords as well. But Cups and Pentacles? No. And none of them are staffed with enough true psychic power to make much of a difference in an all-out war against an organized opponent. That’s why the Shadow Court hasn’t gone after them yet. They don’t need to. They’re going for more dangerous, more hidden prey. The kind of psychics who would never be caught dead joining a House, even if they should.”

  “Justice Wilde has put it most succinctly,” the Magician conceded. “The ancient families of magic have started reaching out to us, but make no mistake, they will not wait for our aid for long. And despite their innate magical strength, they aren’t prepared to face this challenge. They haven’t been tested in centuries—millennia, in some cases. We can’t allow them to be compromised.”

  “They will not be compromised,” the Devil agreed. “But our efforts on their behalf must be elegantly executed. This is not the time for a blunt show of force.”

  At the head of the table, Alexander Kreios sat at his ease, with his fingers steepled. He regarded Viktor for a long moment, and once again, I was thrown back into confusion over what had truly happened between Viktor and the agents who visited him. Eshe had returned to appearing more or less normal, the fugue of her oracular trance fading away. But the oracle of the ancients was notoriously inscrutable. She had given us two answers. Which was the right one? Or was Viktor’s truth something else again?

  And why had he been in Memphis?

  Kreios continued. “For the duration of this crisis, this task force gathered here will operate separately from the Council as a whole. The strength of the Council will remain, no matter what happens to us. In the event that we don’t succeed and don’t return to our former strength, Death will take leadership of the Council.”

  I blinked. “She agreed to that?”

  The Devil smiled. “She did not. But she will have no choice if it becomes necessary. However, her parting words on the subject were succinct. She expects us not to fail.”

  “Oh, we are totally not going to fail,” Simon said. His eyes were bright, his knees bouncing. “It’s like, completely not an option.”

  “Until we eradicate the Shadow Court yet again,” Kreios said, with emphasis on the last word, “I will run the Council, the Emperor will be in charge of tactical operations, and Armaeus will be in the field as our primary agent, supported by Sara, Eshe, and Simon.”

  To my surprise, Viktor didn’t seem to blink at the usurpation of his role by the Devil. What did that mean? Was he secretly happy to be in charge of tactical operations because it was better for his buddies in the Shadow Court? Or did he feel like this task force was doomed to fail and that he could do more from the middle of the pack than the head of it?

  My head was starting to spin as I struggled to parse it all out. I felt eyes on me and glanced over to see the Magician staring at me with an intent I couldn’t decipher because my mental barriers were locked down tight. With as much confusion as I had swirling through my brain, there was no way I was going to let myself be vulnerable to anyone on the Council trying to poke around in my gray matter. Not yet.

  Still, I took Armaeus’s glare in the spirit in which it was intended and schooled my expression to one of neutrality.

  The Devil turned to my side of the table. “We will need additional help on the ground. Detective Rooks, you have already proved your worth at Interpol.”

  “Not going to happen,” Brody said briskly. “I just got back. You can’t be shuttling me off again.”

  The Devil raised his brows. “You’ve had two months to get through your work detail, and I know for a fact your Connected caseload is lighter. You’ve slept two out of the past seven days, after all.”

  If anything, that made Brody’s scowl deepen. “You guys are seriously creepy assholes.”

  “I don’t ask for your involvement lightly, either of you,” he said, his gaze lingering on Nikki. I had to smile as the blush rose in her cheeks. Their relationship was complicated, but apparently ongoing. “Sara’s role in this will be a challenge, and she will need you.”

  The Magician’s attention sharpened. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Emperor is the castle, you are the sword, Eshe is the oracle, as Eshe always is. But there must be the fire in the darkness that draws the attention of all sides,” Kreios explained. “Those who would fight with us and for us, and those who would lay us low. That fire can only be Sara Wilde. We are being called to act—and, at long last, we will act. Sara will be the focal point of that action.”

  I could feel the rush of power sizzle through the room as the Magician drew himself up straight, the intensity of his anger and denial so thick in the air, you could almost taste it, or at least I could almost taste it. It tasted a little bit like jelly beans. But it passed as quickly as it came, and he nodded, his glittering dark gaze returning to me.

  “He’s right. There are more than seventy-two thousand three hundred likely outcomes I am currently aware of, and the greatest percentage of success lies with this construct.”

  “Well then, we probably better go with those odds,” I said drily. I wasn’t interested in knowing what the percentage of success actually was. I’d learned I never liked the answers to those questions.

  “We will draw up the plan of action in the next few days, or more likely the plan of action will be given to us,” Kreios continued. “The Shadow Court is on the move and ready to act. So too are the ancient families. Neither will take long to show themselves in an attempt to draw us out. They may have already done so, and we simply weren’t paying attention. But we must act, and soon, if we want to maintain control.”

  “Agreed,” Viktor said quickly. Too quickly? Was he eager to get back to his Shadow Court cronies to tell them that they could set the game in motion? Doubt was eating me from the inside.

  “So what do we do in the meantime?” Brody asked. “Business as usual?”

  The Devil nodded. “Business as usual. Again, it is likely that the Shadow Court has already put things in motion to force a confrontation.” He glanced at me. “Has anything interesting come up for you at Justice Hall that has struck you as odd or unlikely?”

  Nikki pounced out of nowhere. “What, you mean like the fact that her freaking high schoo
l reunion, which is happening right here on the Strip this weekend, happens to coincide with one of her former classmates sending in a threat via pneumatic tube warning us that super bad magic shit will be going down at the party? Odd or unlikely like that?”

  For a hot second, everyone gaped at me. Eshe spoke first. “You had friends in high school?”

  “Hey,” I protested. But Simon was already talking.

  “Dude! I totally went to the first two high school reunions of my old gang. After that, you know, everybody started getting old and fat, and I started looking a little out of place, but for reals, it was a blast while it lasted! This is what, like, your ten-year reunion? So everybody’s still gonna be pretty skinny and stressed out. Some of them will have kids, but most probably will be doing the whole existential angst thing of their mid-twenties. You totally need to plan on getting drunk.”

  “I am not going to my high school reunion. It’s not even a real reunion—”

  “On the contrary, I would think it would be fascinating to see what childhood friends are seeking you out,” the Magician cut in, his face taking on a dangerously distracted air. “Especially if one of them is a Connected and plans on doing harm to others.”

  “Agreed,” the Devil said, leaning forward with undeniable interest. “Beyond that, I should think the childhood friends of Sara Wilde would be a delectable study.”

  “No, nope, no. Not going to happen,” I countered, beginning to sound like Brody when he spoke to the Council. “Neither of you is going to get anywhere near an assembly of my old classmates. That would be about the worst possible thing I could imagine.”