by Jenn Stark
I nodded. “What is it you need us to do?”
Her smile was resolute. “We need you to do exactly as you have here. Show up. Engage. We know you are loath to fight our battles for us, and we don’t want you to. We remember the stories of the ancients and how the greatest mages waged a war that ended in devastation for the masses. If we are going to go down in flames, we will take that responsibility. We have earned that right. But there is so much you can offer us, much we need. All the centuries of operating in the dark, hiding away, not allowing the influences of outside cultures into our midst. We have played right into the Shadow Court’s hands without even realizing it.”
“And the Shadow Court isn’t the only issue now, is it?” Pendragon said. “There are all sorts of groups out there who don’t have a bit of Connected ability that want to stamp us out. You can bet they’re going to be aligning with the Shadow Court. This won’t be a quick battle to win, that’s for sure. It may very well be one we never stop fighting.”
“But we are going to move forward as if someday we can win it, and that means taking out the things the Shadow Court holds most dear,” Mayah said resolutely. She glanced at me again. “You can assist with that.”
I nodded, thinking of Debra Glenn. “A lot of people can. I have a feeling you’re going to find allies in lots of unexpected places.”
“Allies and petitioners too,” Pendragon said. “This whole Connected thing is going to become more mainstream. Enough people will be talking about it that it’s going to catch the attention of the curious. We’ve already seen some of that with the Neo-Celts in Britain, restlessness within the witches’ covens. A wider understanding is coming, and we’re going to have to craft a response to it. Shape the narrative, as it were.”
I made a face. “I can tell you most sincerely that I have no interest in helping you shape the narrative,” I said. “But there are organizations in place that can help you with that. Four houses of magic who have had the structure for centuries but not the Connected power to do much with it.”
Mayah curled her lip. “You’re talking about the arcane syndicates,” she said. “I thought they weren’t good for much but running technoceutical operations and acquiring powerful artifacts under the table.”
I fought my own smile. I’d helped many of them gain those artifacts. “That used to be the case, certainly. But they’ve also got their hooks into as many organizations as the Shadow Court does, albeit typically at lower levels. They also have stores of cash. Both of those could come in handy in a fight, I would think.”
“They could, and that’s a fact,” Pendragon said thoughtfully.
“Something more,” I said. “There is real magic in some of these houses. Both magic that has been there all along, and magic that’s newly kindled. They’re going to need help bringing that magic along, help for their members to learn to use their psychic abilities to their fullest potential. They need to learn, and you need to teach. That will strengthen the bond between you like nothing else.”
Mayah pursed her lips together, clearly uncertain, but Pendragon nodded again.
“There’s something to that,” he agreed. “I can almost see it.”
“And what would you do?” Mayah asked suddenly, directing the question to the Magician.
“I will serve the needs of magic,” he replied. “The Council is on the move. The Shadow Court may have struck the first blow, and mortals may have fought back, but there are many ways this confrontation can escalate. Many paths the war can take. The fight is far from over. Whether the Shadow Court chooses to strike again or they retreat to plan for another day, we will no longer look away. We will stand and fight.”
“And win?” Mayah challenged, narrowing her eyes at the Magician.
Armaeus offered her an enigmatic smile. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps.”
30
The sun bore down heavily on the Strip as the clock edged toward noon, another record-setting day of heat crackling across the pavement. Nikki and I helped settle the last piece of oversized luggage in the back of the limo, then turned to the trio of women chattering happily on the sidewalk.
“Oh my God, this has been the best weekend ever!” Amy Franks Bucher announced, throwing her arms around Mary and Patty, the three of them folding me into their group hug like an amoeba overtaking a stray bacterium. “We have to do this again soon, not wait another ten years or anything crazy like that.”
“I would totally be up for that!” Mary enthused. “Otherwise, time will pass so fast, and we won’t even see it going. We’ll look up one day, and we’ll be fifty.”
“Perish the thought.” Patty laughed, waving her right hand. “Besides, we have these tattoos that don’t seem to want to come off. If they won’t budge, we’ll definitely always remember Vegas.”
I winced as they broke apart, but even to my eyes, it was going to take more than baby oil to get those tattoos off their hands, especially Amy’s. Hopefully, they’d fade in time, but I wasn’t holding my breath. There had been a lot of energy flowing through those stars.
Mary swung toward me. “Thanks for getting us this limo, Sara. It’s so nice to be able to leave Vegas in style, though I flat-out can’t believe how lucky we were at slots last night—all three of us! It was insane. You should’ve been there.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. I was well aware of how house rules worked in Vegas. “Where did you guys play, at MGM?”
“Not even close,” Amy said. “We met the hottest guy at the reunion party the other night, and he said he had an in with the Flamingo. He gave us his card, and when we got there we, like, gave it to one of the managers, and he set us up with free drinks all night. He even gave us some tips on which slots were…I guess loose is the term?”
Beside me, Nikki snorted. “That is absolutely the term. So you guys got lucky at the Flamingo?”
“Absolutely, unreasonably lucky,” Amy confirmed. “My husband would’ve killed me if I’d lost money that we had earmarked for student loans. Instead, he’s going to faint. It was like we had a guardian angel watching out for us.”
“An…angel,” I said, forcing myself to keep my voice neutral.
“Absolutely.” Patty nodded. “We actually had to make an oath not to tell each other how much we won, for, what did we say, three weeks? Just so nobody got upset.”
“I can’t stand it already!” Mary said, bouncing in her flats. “I can’t, I’m sorry. I won ten thousand dollars! Flat-out and for reals!”
Patty and Amy turned to her and stared.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Amy breathed. “I won the exact same amount. How could that possibly happen? That is nuts!”
Patty just stared, her hands slapped over her mouth, and nodded rapidly. “Me too!” she wheezed.
Nikki grinned. “I guess you guys really are meant to be best friends forever,” she said. “With a lucky streak like that, you’ve got to keep the gang together.”
By now, the girls were screaming together in high-pitched squeals I hadn’t heard since high school. I laughed with them and couldn’t help getting a little misty-eyed at the same time.
“Kreios is good people,” I said to Nikki as the girls hugged each other until tears rolled down their faces.
“He definitely is that,” she sighed.
We got the girls into the limo and waved them off. Another vehicle rolled up, this one Nikki’s preferred dove-gray Mercedes.
“Right on time.” She winked, straightening her chauffeur’s cap.
Less than two minutes later, another woman emerged from the MGM Grand, this one pulling a small, well-used rolling case behind her. Rhonda Madsen.
“Oh,” she said, clearly startled to see us. “I ordered a cab. I didn’t realize you would be here. I can cancel it? My plane isn’t for another three hours or something crazy like that, but I get so nervous, I like to get to the airport early.”
“No worries, sweetheart,” Nikki said, taking her bag. “We are your ride. We j
ust have to pick up one more passenger and we’ll be good to go.”
“Oh wow! That’s great. Thank you so much,” Rhonda said. “I saw Bill this morning. He was checking out when I walked by to go for a last walk along the Strip. He looks so much better than he did the other night. I’m so glad he was okay. Did they ever find who jumped him? I mean, gosh, Melanie is still in the hospital.”
“They’re still working on that,” I said. Melanie was proving to be a complicated problem. Since she’d returned from Gamon’s care and was installed in the hospital, she’d been the subject of no fewer than three attempts on her life. The Shadow Court was apparently eager to clean up loose ends, which begged the question…why? What did Melanie know that we still hadn’t figured out? Or was the Shadow Court simply that ruthless, willing to assassinate a failed applicant as a warning to any who might have similar ambitions?
Sadly, my bet was on the latter. “She’ll be okay,” I said, needing the reminder as much as Rhonda did.
“I sure hope so. That’s so scary, you know? Anything could happen to anyone when you least expect it.”
We got into the vehicle and drove up the Strip, Rhonda not realizing that we were heading away from the airport. Not noticing much of anything really, until we turned into the entry of the Luxor.
“I didn’t think we had any classmates who are staying here,” she said. “I’ve never been inside.”
I smiled. “Well, we have time. Why don’t we check it out?”
We exited the vehicle, leaving it in the capable hands of the valet team who once again fell all over themselves to assure Nikki that it would be well cared for, and entered the building. We steered Rhonda toward the bank of elevators, chatting the whole while, and she didn’t notice that we chose the bay that was a deep onyx, not flashy gold like the rest.
It wasn’t until we reached Armaeus’s floor that she peered around curiously, her eyes lighting up as the elevator doors swished open.
“Where are we—”
She broke off suddenly, staring. “Janet?” And then she blinked again. “Linda?”
“Rhonda?” A woman I didn’t recognize had turned in her chair when the elevator doors opened and now nearly leapt up from it, running across the deep pile carpeting to envelope Rhonda in a wild embrace.
“Rhonda! Oh, my God, you’re actually here. You’re here. I can’t even believe you came here to find help. I didn’t think anyone really believed me, after all the stupid things I’ve done in my life—but of course I should’ve known that you would. Of course you would. No matter what, you would. You and Linda both.”
She was crying now, and Rhonda was crying too, and as they turned and stumbled their way over to where Linda was and folded her into the hug, I frowned fiercely as my own eyes began to burn.
“Of course I do. But—but I don’t understand. Why are you here?” Rhonda’s voice broke on a sob, and Janet pulled away from her and Linda with shining eyes.
“Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, giving Rhonda a look that pierced the veil of sadness that had hung over Rhonda like a cowl since I’d first met her. “These people—they’re going to help me. They gave me medicine to make me normal again. Or—abnormal, I guess.” She laughed unsteadily. “Even if it doesn’t work, just knowing that you care…both of you…I can’t thank you enough.”
Linda’s mouth, tightly shut this whole time, now trembled as she fought back a sob. “I’m just so glad you’re both o-okay,” she finally managed.
“Imma gonna go out on a limb here and say Janet’s medicine’s going to work,” Nikki murmured beside me.
Janet finally noticed that Rhonda hadn’t arrived alone, and she glanced our way, then stiffened, her eyes flaring wide. “Oh my gosh. Sariah? Is that you?”
“Sort of,” I said, nodding with a wry smile of my own. “It’s kind of a long story.”
Armaeus spoke then. “Janet has agreed to try the anti-vaccination serum, which we administered a short while ago. We wanted you all here as part of that process, though, because without you, Miss Madsen, we would not have known what happened to Janet. And without you, Miss Simms, we would not have been alerted to find Miss Madsen. And finally, Miss Wilde, your healing powers are, as always, beneficial to the process.”
“You’ve already taken something?” Rhonda asked worriedly, as across the room, Armaeus lifted a lazy hand.
I echoed the movement, my focus on Janet, infusing her body with a holistic energy that sought to do nothing more than restore what had been there before…well, perhaps a little more than that. A warm, unreasonably affectionate tide of energy rolled across the room from Armaeus, and I caught that energy and directed that into Janet as well. She seemed to lift a little on her toes, her lips parting in a soft intake of breath, one of her hands breaking free of Rhonda’s but the other holding fast to her cousin, her friend, her lifelong supporter. Meanwhile, Linda stood to the side, her hands up, worried, caring…and in the end, hoping.
Not surprisingly, it was Rhonda who gasped first as the energy flowed from Janet to her, waking up her own nascent Connectedness, dormant but still very much there. Rhonda was a generous soul with a nearly endless supply of compassion and curiosity, and all those who lived with such attributes as their guides were Connected at their core. Now that energy was simply brought…a little more forward.
“I can see a light around you,” Rhonda whispered, as the swell of energy lifted from her and expanded to include Linda, too. “I can see…”
“You do?” Janet asked, turning toward her as the flow of energy from me whispered to an end. The question was almost plaintive, once again edged with tears. How long had she lived her life with ridicule and shame at seeing things that others did not, being blamed not only for her impetuous choices but for the conflicting reality her own eyes presented? “Really?”
“Oh, my god,” gasped Linda. “I can too. I can too!”
Crying and laughing at the same time, the three women hugged again, more fiercely, and Nikki cleared her throat. “I’ll see them both to the airport,” she said, her voice a little strangled.
“Janet and Linda have rooms here for another night, at the Luxor,” Armaeus countered. “I took the liberty of changing Ms. Madsen’s flight and scheduling some construction at her school. There will be no school tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
Rhonda stared from me, to him, and back again, gaping. “You can do that? Seriously? What am I saying! After all this? You can do anything.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Not quite anything. But it is my pleasure to do this. Believing in someone is perhaps the greatest gift you can give them, Miss Madsen. And it is a gift you gave freely. Thank you for that.”
“Oh my God, yes. Thank you,” Janet said, her voice once more dangerously close to a sob.
Nikki turned to the elevator and gestured to the three women to follow her. “If you’re going to be staying in Vegas for another day, well…I’ve got some recommendations. Because Janet, that glow you’re now rocking definitely deserves some tender loving care before you head back home. Let’s see what we can do.”
They disappeared into the elevators, leaving me with Armaeus.
He studied me as I moved toward him, and I realized I wasn’t as nervous as I’d recently become, being alone with him in this room. It felt almost normal.
“That was an awfully nice thing you did there,” I said, sliding into the same chair that Janet had occupied. The chair I’d sat in dozens, maybe hundreds, of times as the Magician’s artifact hunter, and more recently as Justice.
“It wasn’t me,” he countered, surprising me. “You believed it was, as you’ve believed for your last several attempts that I was contributing to your efforts to heal the afflicted. But you don’t need me to heal others, Miss Wilde. You haven’t for some time, I suspect. You have the ability deep within you, and it is enough. You are enough. You are, once and ever more, worthy.”
He said the words almost gently, so off-handedly, I was caught off guard. Warmth rose u
p within me, unexpected tears sparking behind my eyes. I didn’t know if I should be embarrassed or vindicated, but I mostly felt awkward. “Oh. Well—great, then. I don’t know what changed.”
“You simply decided you had to do what you needed to do, whether or not I was there with you. Though I must confess, I prefer it when we work together. And perhaps there is a speed or finesse that our collaboration affords us, not quite attainable on our own. I’d like to think that as well.”
If anything, that made me blush harder. “I like it when we work together too,” I managed, and instantly wanted to roll my eyes. Clearly, hanging out with my high school classmates wasn’t doing wonders for my conversational ability.
I cleared my throat. “So what’s next? Have you learned anything more about the Shadow Court?”
“We’re starting to,” he said. “The list in Eloise Beauchamp’s book has given us a place to begin, and that matched up with the chatter we uncovered at both Burning Man and the Global Disaster Recovery Summit. We’ve identified several families worth investigating. Intriguingly, we’re also seeing some families who used to be affiliated with the Shadow Court and are now no longer. The sheik mentioned by Debra Glenn, Alsain Ahmad, is exceptionally private and exceptionally rich. He lives in Bahrain, but he has a company with offices in Dubai, where he is seen more often. He might be worth a visit, given Ms. Glenn’s message to us.”
“And do you think he’s friend or foe?”
“At this point, I think we should consider even our friends potential foes…yet there are signs of hope. The resurgence of magic is taking hold in ways I didn’t at first anticipate, ways that continue to surprise me. Eshe’s reengagement in the plight of mortals casts a far different light on what the Council can do. Your own continued work in Justice Hall—with Gamon by your side—gives a powerful defense to the Connected community. With Dr. Rindon and Dr. Khatri still hospitalized, we won’t gain any further intelligence about the Shadow Court, but the recent investigations prompted by Interpol won’t sit well with our enemies. They’ll strike again, and likely harder, if only as a show of strength.”