The Wayward Star

by Jenn Stark

  The Council might not be able to blast demons back beyond the veil, but we definitely could keep them busy for a bit.

  I threw two bolts of fire into the nearest cluster of the horde, exploding them in a splatter of black goop as they winked out of existence, only to appear again at the far side of the room. After another round of screams, this one from the demons themselves, the Council swung into action. Their job was the demons, while I had to get to the Farraday grads, to stop the strange sucking energy that seemed to be drawing down not only on their scant Connected abilities, but any creative spark within them too. Was this also part of the Shadow Court’s plan? To eradicate even the possibility of Connected energy in non-Connected humans as well?

  Not on my watch. I reached Mary at the same time Tiffany did, and found Patty and Amy right next to her and her captor, their faces white with terror as Shadow Court minions wrenched at their shoulders, their arms, while their mouths opened in screams they could not release.

  Without giving myself any time to think about it, I decked the asshat holding Mary, then yanked her hand up to her face, where the temporary tattoo of the tiny spray of stars curved around the arc of her index finger and thumb.

  “Mary,” I shouted, and she turned, her eyes wide and panicked, clarity returning as she focused on the temporary tattoo. “You’ve got to help me. Lift your hand high—higher! All of you.”

  Mary’s eyes flared with a different sort of shock, but she lifted her hand, shoving it in the air.

  “Farraday forever,” she shouted, like it was some kind of talisman, loud enough for Tiffany and Patty to also hear. Batting back their captors with renewed energy, they lifted their hands high as well. They joined in the chorus, then other classmates followed suit, and I realized to my shock that Mary had distributed the temporary tattoos to damned near everyone at the reunion.

  Worked for me.

  The wide-eyed minions of the Shadow Court surged forward, and I struck. My arms spread wide, I directed my full attention to the tiny spray of stars adhered to the skin of so many of my former classmates. A tracery of energy arced through the room, and I reached along it with my own blue fire, kindling to life the tiny flares of Connected energy these humans possessed. They might not be highly Connected, but every living creature had a force, a spark, that distantly recalled the stars from which they’d first sprung all those millennia ago. That was the energy I tapped into now.

  “Now,” I shouted and pushed my wave of bright fire forward, staggering a little under the weight of its force as it arced through the room, an explosion of blue-white electricity that illuminated my classmates from the inside out. With no further direction needed from me, the good souls of Farraday High took the battle into their own hands. They turned on the Shadow Court minions who had them by the throat, by the hand, by the shoulder, focused solely on their mission of drawing down their victims’ energy. Only now there was far more energy within those victims, energy synced up to their own innate power. It rendered them equal to their attackers—it made them strong.

  The battle turned on a dime, then Farraday High took the lead.

  No sooner had I started feeling good about myself, however, when a heavy force shoved into me from behind, sending me sprawling down a ten-foot-long slippery slide of black goop. I flopped around to see Gamon take on four demons that had converged on my location, her hands black with their blood as she wielded two curved daggers with blinding speed. Apparently, she hadn’t wanted to miss this particular party.

  “Gamon,” I gasped as I struggled up, sprawled again, and this time crashed into a pair of heavy black boots. A hand reached down to pull me to my feet, and I came face-to-face with a creature who was not entirely human, but no longer entirely demonic either.

  Warrick of the Syx stood in front of me, head of the elite team of demon enforcers—a group who could blast any demons across the veil for good.

  “About time you guys summoned us,” he barked. “Your Council can keep sending these guys back to where they came from, but they just flow—” He broke off as I flailed at him. I knew all this. “You want us to clean it up for you?” he continued.

  “Please,” I gasped. “Yes—go.”

  “We go!” Warrick shouted, a deep feral gold gleaming in the pits of his dark eyes. He turned, and I saw behind him three more demon enforcers, Sebastian, Finn, and Hugh, laughing with unabashed delight as they launched forward, all of them diving into the center of the mass of demons, fists flying with gusto.

  “Keep down,” Warrick growled as he left my side. He didn’t have to tell me twice, though the floor was not the most appetizing place to be. Then I saw Mary and Patty bending over someone now sprawled on the ground, and my gut tightened again. I made my way across the dance floor, shocked to see that it was Amy down this time—and that she was turning blue.

  “What happened?” I demanded as I pushed Patty out of the way.

  “She was so bright all of a sudden,” someone blurted. “She got so bright, and then she fell and—”

  I wasn’t sure who was speaking, but as I laid my hand on Amy’s shoulder, I realized the problem. Unlike most of the other members of Farraday High, Amy Franks did have real magic within her. More magic than she probably realized. She was a true low-level Connected, and when I’d sent my current flowing through her, it had overloaded her system, too much for her heart and her brain to handle.

  But it was not too much for me to bring her back. I knew that now. I bent forward with the same intensity I had applied to Bill, but more confidently, more certain this time that I could kindle Amy’s inner fire and coax it to life again, to heal what had been broken. A second later, Amy convulsed, and Mary cried out excitedly.

  “She’s back, she’s ba—” Her voice cut off sharply.

  I jerked my head up, realizing that in that moment, the room had gone absolutely silent. Preternaturally so. At opposite ends of the room, Armaeus and Kreios held their hands aloft. In the center, four strong, the warriors of the Syx stood ankle-deep in black goop. No more demons remained, while the revelers from Farraday High and the Shadow Court stooges who’d sought to harm them were all frozen solid.

  Armaeus called out. “Thank you, Warrick of the Syx, for coming to our aid. Your timing is appreciated.”

  Warrick nodded. “The Emperor called, the Syx responded.” I blinked in surprise as he put his fist to his heart. Then he looked up and grimaced, as if focusing on a new, unseen problem.

  “Time to go.” He and the other three demon enforcers vanished.

  The Emperor? I turned to see Viktor Dal near the virtual reality consoles, standing near the High Priestess. He looked satisfied. Happy, even. What was going on here?

  “I couldn’t bring them in too soon. I needed it to look like one of the students called them,” Viktor offered, speaking to Armaeus apologetically. Almost like he was a decent one-time human being and not an unmitigated asshat.

  Kreios chuckled. “I’d say your timing was perfect.”

  Across the room, Brody righted the nearest barstool, then gestured around angrily at the still-frozen bar and the black goop covering nearly every surface. “How am I supposed to explain this, exactly?” he demanded. “Seriously? You couldn’t have tidied up?”

  The Magician merely grinned. “I believe you’ll find everything set to rights in…but a moment.”

  He and Kreios dropped their hands, and instantly, the room shifted. The black goop covering the floor disappeared, the minions of the Shadow Court were gathered in a corner with the High Priestess and Viktor, the lights came up, the music blared, and I found myself surrounded once more by the dancing, laughing figures of the good people of Farraday High.

  I glanced over to see that the woman at the front desk was no longer there, and neither was Gamon. Between her and the Council’s interrogation of the Shadow Court minions, maybe we would finally get some information.

  “Oh my God, Sara, Sariah, whoever you want to be called, this is the best,” Mary shou
ted, recalling my attention to her. She lifted her hand high in the air, and Amy and Patty lifted theirs as well. Together, their hands formed a triangle of stars, an uninterrupted circuit of energy zipping through tattoos that seemed to stand out a little more brightly than before.

  “Farraday forever,” they all cried, their voices filled with laughter and the unmitigated joy of simply being alive.

  Watching their giddy abandon, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Farraday forever,” I agreed.

  23

  “If you’re not going to eat your beignets, at least have the decency to hand them over to someone who knows what to do with them,” Nikki said.

  We were in New Orleans a day early, the Global Disaster Recovery Summit not due to start until the following morning. But for obvious reasons, I’d been more than ready to get out of Vegas.

  The South Vietnamese gymnastics team had been reunited with their coach, who had been beside herself with confusion as to how the athletes could have been spirited out of the Mexican restaurant while she’d been paying the bill, right under the noses of their chaperones, and set loose to attack us in the fitness center of the MGM Grand. Melanie’s gifts apparently included both illusion and manipulation, which I supposed shouldn’t have surprised me, given her track record in high school.

  After a full check-up by Dr. Sells, Bill had been returned safely to his room, complete with a new set of clothes. With Dr. Sells’ memory-fogging drugs in his system, he didn’t remember too much of his assault, only that he’d been mugged and had sent the guy to the hospital. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed that but he was willing to go with it. He’d mainly wanted to sack out and give his talk the following morning. Because that was Bill.

  The other students from Farraday High had partied well into the wee hours, and had all been safely chaperoned to their rooms, with no memories of any attack, as far as we could tell. Even the MGM Grand’s cameras had been wiped of any trace of a disturbance, either in the bar or in the spa’s locker rooms. The members of the Council could be a pain sometimes, but they did have their charms.

  And Viktor, apparently, was a hero…or at least not completely irredeemable. By summoning the Syx to the MGM Grand when he had, he’d quite possibly saved Amy’s life, since I hadn’t picked up on her buried psychic abilities until they were literally choking her to death. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable recommending Viktor for sainthood, but…he had helped last night. And I had needed his help, more than I realized.

  “They know everywhere I am,” I murmured now, staring into my coffee. “They knew I would sense a threat to Bill and go after him, which is when they made their move on all the reunion people, and they set the bar pretty high for Melanie to get into their little club. Their little demonstration was perfectly coordinated to take out my entire freaking class, one way or another.”

  “Gamon hasn’t finished with Melanie yet, apparently?”

  “Not yet. She released the receptionist pretty quickly—she’d been a follower of Melanie’s from way back, and not a very nice person, so she’d been happy to help Melanie out in exchange for reflected glory. Gamon terrorized her for awhile, but she didn’t know anything. The minions the Shadow Court recruited are useless too, totally clueless as to what they did. And Melanie…is slower going.”

  I had a hard time accepting that, frankly, but I suspected the delay was not because Gamon was going too hard on Melanie, but that Melanie was just that unhinged. From what we could tell so far, she’d only become interested in the occult in the last few years, mildly alarming her parents and her husband. Her husband who still remained blissfully unaware that anything had gone awry with Melanie’s little reunion trip to Vegas. As far as anyone knew, she was sleeping off a hard drunk in our hotel room. Gamon, flush with satisfaction at getting to take out a half-dozen demons, even if only temporarily, had promised to return Melanie more or less unharmed. That likely explained her unusual restraint, as well.

  So, we’d come to New Orleans.

  Rather than taking rooms at the hotel next to the conference center, we had opted for a boutique hotel in downtown New Orleans, the location chosen in part because of its lovely Old World architecture and its age, and in part because of its proximity to one of Nikki’s favorite donut shops in the city. Despite the fact that it was well past noon, I peered down at the white powdered-sugar-coated morsels in front of me with bemusement.

  “They’re kind of more like puffs than donuts,” I said.

  “They’re not supposed to be like donuts. Donuts are their own magical pastry. These possess an entirely different superpower. How can you not know that?”

  I refocused on my coffee. “What have we heard about the families?” The families were now our blanket term for the dozens of ancient Connected microsocieties we’d so recently discovered, some of whom—like Marin and Arden—had carefully crept out of hiding in advance of this summit. It surprised me, really. They knew the threat, and this was a group of people used to hiding in the shadows. Yet they were willing to come out in public to confront a man who could be deadly to them? I didn’t like it. I felt like there was something I was missing.

  Nikki’s response surprised me. “Enough to know that they’re on the move, and some of them are reaching out. We’ve got a meet-up in a little over an hour with a family that Armaeus hasn’t interacted with for a long time—but one he does remember—who contacted him with intel. They live here in New Orleans and have since its founding, early seventeen hundreds.”

  I regarded her with surprise. “Which family?”

  There were three families in New Orleans that’d had interactions with the Council over the past two centuries that I knew of, and Nikki named the most powerful of the three. “Madame Eloise Beauchamp will be delighted to receive us at her family home at two p.m., only a few blocks from here. We’ve got absolutely no intelligence on her other than she’s a local high society hotshot, and she apparently had a crush on Armaeus at some point when she was far younger. Like, way younger. Best I can tell, that was shortly after the Arcana Council came to Las Vegas.”

  “Huh,” I said. “You think her crush is relevant to her wanting to see us?”

  “I think having a crush on the Magician would be a difficult thing to get over,” Nikki allowed. “She may be interested in sharing for old time’s sake, or she may just want to see his new squeeze. Either way, it was an invitation he couldn’t refuse.”

  This afternoon, Nikki’s ensemble was the demurest I’d ever seen her wear. She’d donned a summer-weight gray jersey dress, black-and-white spectator pumps, and a black-and-white-checkered neckcloth that fluttered jauntily in the breeze. Her cherry-red ringlets were now caught up into a graceful chignon, and her lips and nails sported the same red color as her coiffure.

  “When does the rest of the Council arrive?” I asked.

  “Brody is already on-site at the hotel near the conference room, only slightly mollified by the fact that there’s a pub where he can drown his sorrows. He’ll give us an update on the attendees as they start rolling in. The Magician gave no indication as to when he would be down, but indicated he did not want to be on hand for today’s conversation with Madame Beauchamp.”

  That surprised me. “So there is bad blood there?”

  Nikki shrugged. “According to her communique, Madame Beauchamp has met the Magician several times over and does not need to do so again, whereas you are still an unknown factor, and therefore vastly more interesting.”

  I snorted. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. If I’m reading between the lines accurately, this particular magical madame may still be crushing on the Magician, but she doesn’t trust him all that much. From what the Devil told me, she’s always held him at arm’s length, at least since he declined her invitation to canoodle. But she’s also very, very old, and—maybe she’s willing to let bygones be bygones, though without the added insult of seeing Armaeus so young and healthy when she is not.”

>   I nodded. I didn’t usually have to consider the Magician’s immortality as a logistical concern, but in this case, it was easy to see how it could affect things. “How far away from us is she?”

  Nikki eyed the plate in front of her. “After about four more beignets and another cup of coffee, we should be good to go.”

  I sighed and finally caved. There was only so long one could resist a New Orleans beignet.

  The home of Madame Eloise Beauchamp was everything you would expect from either old New Orleans money—or a vampire residence. Three stories high, fronting one of New Orleans’ most picturesque side streets, it boasted hanging flower baskets that spilled over with blooms, a deeply recessed front porch that cast the main entrance to the home in shadows, and a tree-lined yard that felt like something out of another century. While not as color coordinating as Nikki, I felt I’d dressed my part in long loose slacks, a flowing tank top, and long duster-style jacket, all in neutral cream tones. Even my boots were polished, though I wasn’t sure how that happened.

  I also had the cutest chunky barrette at my temple, equipped with a few very special features. It was the latest in Arcana Council wearable tech, and situated as it was directly above my ear, the tiny camera at its tip saw whatever my eyes saw while a mic picked up anything spoken within a four-foot radius. Somewhere on the other side, Simon would be tracking any intel we uncovered from this little visit. I hoped it would be worth it.

  Moments later, the quintessential butler appeared at the front door of the Beauchamp residence, with everything but the requisite frostiness. Instead, he was all smiles, full of warm Southern bonhomie as he opened the door wide.

  “Madame Beauchamp is so looking forward to your visit,” he said in a perfectly buttery Louisiana drawl. “She’s talked of nothing else all morning. Thank you so much for accommodating her schedule. She knows you must be very busy.”