“Yeah, that’s really inspiring.”
“I’ll be on my way, then.” Clasping his hands behind his back, Leandras turned and headed for her bedroom doorway.
Despite how little time she’d actually wanted to spend with the fae leading up to their major victory in the warehouse just hours before, the sight of Leandras turning away to leave her with nothing but his word that he’d come back made the pit of apprehension in Jessica’s gut tighten. She didn’t have to like it, but she’d also be an idiot if she ignored the fact Leandras was the only magical who could help her move forward with any of this.
‘Aw, look at him. Like a scolded puppy told to get out and come back when he’s smarter. I kinda feel sorry for him.’
Jessica rolled her eyes, then forced herself to say what she’d been thinking. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”
Leandras stopped in the doorway and turned halfway to look over his shoulder at her. “Is this an open invitation?”
“No. I just... I mean, your apartment’s destroyed, and it’d be pretty stupid to assume no one else will be looking for you there.”
The fae’s lips twitched in a disconcerted smile. “I’m touched by your concern, Jessica.”
“I’m not—”
“It would also be pretty stupid of me to have spent as long as I have in this world without acquiring more than one property. In more than one name.”
“Right.” She shrugged. “Obviously.”
Of course he’d have multiple properties. Probably giant piles of money horded away somewhere too. And for someone like Jessica, who’d never owned anything in her life until Tabitha Belmont’s death had made her the owner of Winthrop & Dirledge, it was easy to forget not everyone in the world had lived as transient a life as she had.
“You can expect my return tomorrow. Once the Hruandir is cast, though, I think it would be prudent of us if we agreed on my constant presence here with you until the spell’s completion.”
She snorted. “Sure. We’ll have a sleepover.”
The bank cracked up laughing.
Leandras raised an eyebrow, and that knowing, infuriatingly amused smirk crossed his lips again. “What a provocative invitation.”
“That was sarcasm.”
“Of course. I spent five days in that dusty closet downstairs. I’m sure another two will be easy enough to endure.”
‘Unless you wanna scooch over in that tiny bed and offer him somewhere a little more comfortable...’
Shut up.
Leandras shot her a final appraising glance, then nodded and stepped into the hall.
“Hold on.” Jessica hurried across her room to catch him before he descended the staircase that almost hadn’t survived the Gateway’s attempts to destroy this building and everything in it. “Is there anything else I need to know? You know, while you go popping around the city and I have a whole day to seriously reconsider what we’re doing.”
“Business as usual, Jessica.” Leandras didn’t stop or turn around to look at her but moved calmly down the stairs. “Oh, and do try not to fiddle with that rune on your neck. It may prove...temperamental.”
Chapter 2
Jessica’s fingers lifted immediately to the right side of her neck and the tingling buzz there on her flesh. Or maybe it was only the tingle of awareness now that Leandras had brought it up. She jerked her hand away before she could touch the purple glowing rune he’d somehow stamped on her and gritted her teeth.
“Fiddle with it?” Scowling, she raced down the stairs after him. “It’s branded on my neck.”
“Yes. And it was intended to be applied elsewhere.” The fae reached the bottom of the stairs and moved swiftly down the hall toward the lobby, his footsteps whispering across the polished wooden floor. “So don’t be alarmed if you experience minor side effects.”
Was he fucking serious?
“And you’re only telling me this now?” Jessica turned on the first landing, then hopped down the last two stairs and practically jogged down the hall after him. “Leandras!”
The fae paused at the front door when she stumbled into the lobby, and the metal lock slid back beneath his fingers with a thunk.
“What side effects?”
He turned to meet her gaze, then looked up to study the lobby’s ceiling and the bright lights set in sconces along the walls beside all the bookshelves. “Honestly, it could be anything. But you’re far more equipped to handle it now, wouldn’t you say?”
The bell over the front door jingled against the glass when he tugged lightly on the handle.
“Okay, hold on—”
Leandras slipped through the door, which whispered shut behind him with a little bounce and another jingle of the bell.
Jessica glared at the fae’s silhouette through the frosted glass, dark now against the mid-morning light—unseasonably bright for the end of November, but this was Colorado.
Even before his blurred figure outside disappeared, she knew he’d be popping out of existence before she had the chance to catch him.
Because that was just how the Laen’aroth rolled, wasn’t it?
‘Damn. That’s a hell of a way to make an exit.’
“Yeah, no shit.” Flexing her fingers at her sides, she gave herself another ten seconds to stare at the muted light spilling through the frosted-glass pane, then her stomach let out a curdled, squelching rumble.
Jessica grimaced and pointed at the door. Yellow light burst from her fingertip and illuminated on the lock before the bolt slid back into place.
It was a small consolation and probably completely useless if someone was desperate enough and tried hard enough to get through that door. But somehow, locking up and double-checking that the Open sign on the right-hand window was still flipped around to Closed made her feel better.
‘Really? A lock makes you feel safer? Wow. Talk about holding back the credit.’
“It’s symbolic, okay?”
The bank snorted. ‘Yeah, you’re all about symbolism.’
They had security wards around the front of the bank. That was part of Jessica’s half-cocked plans to protect herself and the sentient voice in her head from the Requiem members who’d been stupid enough to try their hand at a little breaking and entering. Way back when she’d had absolutely no idea what she was doing, what she would do, and how far she would go to keep this place safe.
‘You say it like it’s been years.’
“Feels like years.”
Jessica looked down at her hands—the hands that had performed the Shattering on herself over a year and a half ago; that had undone that desperate mistake with Mickey Hargraves as sacrifice and fuel for the deadly spell; that had completed the second phase of the reckoning and whipped the Gateway back into shape before the golden coin that had started this mess burst apart into oblivion.
Her magic was restored. Jessica Northwood was whole. The world had far less to hang over her head now than ever before.
And everything had changed in the last two months.
A thin whisp of black smoke emerged from her palm to writhe across her flesh like a playful worm.
The bank sniggered. ‘Yeah. Playful and deadly. But hey, playing with death is kinda your thing, isn’t it?’
Jessica clenched her hand into a quick fist, and the black smoke dissipated.
“I didn’t do this so I could keep murdering people who get in my way.”
‘Of course not. That’s just an added bonus—’
“Are you trying to get me riled up?”
‘Hey, I’m just working with what’s already in your head. So if you don’t wanna talk about how much you’re enjoying this, maybe think about something else.’
Her stomach growled again, and she turned toward the back hallway and the kitchen behind the witching vault. “What do we have to eat?”
‘We don’t eat. That’s a disgusting necessity for meat-sacks only.’
“Well if I don’t eat, you don’t exist.”
The ban
k’s instant silence felt a lot like realization in her mind. ‘Ramen and Ritz crackers in the pantry. Three frozen dinners in the freezer. Cheese, bread, peanut butter... Hey. If you hadn’t tossed out that mayonnaise, you could make a cheese and mayo sandwich. That was Tabitha’s favorite.’
“Besides Pop-Tarts.” Jessica wrinkled her nose at the memory of her first day here for what she couldn’t have possibly known was more than day one of training as the scryer’s apprentice—Tabitha’s half-eaten cheese and mayo sandwich that had sat open on a plate in the fridge for who knew how long. “I hate mayonnaise.”
‘Then hurry up and make something. You had to bring up nonexistence, and I’m not about to give up the ghost just because you took too long to take care of yourself.’
“You don’t have a ghost.”
‘You don’t know that...’
Jessica opened the fridge, wrinkling her nose in disappointment as she studied its diminished contents.
‘Want me to make a grocery run?’
“And stock the kitchen three days before I leave with the fae to step into a dying world?”
‘It’s not like I run out of money.’
“It’s not like you’d clean up after whatever goes past the expiration date, either.” She snatched up the half-empty bag of sliced wheat bread and the jar of peanut butter, then shut the door. “And once we’re in that other world, who knows how long it’ll take Leandras to get everything he...”
Shit. Of course she’d completely forgotten to ask about that part before she’d agreed to chaperone the fae through a world she hadn’t known existed until almost two weeks ago. Knowing him, it could take anywhere from a day to a month. Or longer.
‘Can’t help you with that one.’ The bank sighed. ‘But you better stay on him like peanut butter on that bread, witch. I don’t like being alone.’
Turning slowly toward the stove, Jessica moved on auto-pilot through the motions of making herself peanut-butter toast. “Have you ever even been alone?”
‘Not really. I mean, there was this one Guardian who refused to put on that pendant when I offered it. Talk about toxic masculinity.’
Jessica snorted out a laugh. “What?”
‘He thought it was too girly. Took me a year of terrorizing him to get the damn thing on so I could explain.’ The bank giggled. ‘That was fun. You know what? I can’t even remember his name...’
The toaster clicked as she shoved down the lever to start heating the bread. “Sounds like the Guardians don’t leave that much of an impression on a sentient bank.”
‘Totally untrue. Just the extraordinarily dull ones. Trust me, there are a lot more of those than there are Guardians I’ll never forget.’
“Yeah?” Jessica grabbed a knife from the drawer and unscrewed the peanut butter lid. “Like who?”
‘Oh, man.’ The bank let out a throaty, unrestrained laugh that made Jessica’s eyelids flutter. ‘This one time, when I was a saloon...’
She forced back a laugh and pulled a plate down from the cabinet.
‘I had one Guardian for most of that little stretch.’
“And you went bankrupt as a saloon, so you figured you’d try your hand at actual banking?”
‘What? No. We were successful as hell. Almost two hundred years, but hey. Times change.’
Jessica jumped when the toaster dinged and the sliced bread popped out with it. “You said a little stretch.”
‘Hey, look. You can repeat my words verbatim.’
The toast clattered onto Jessica’s plate, and she got to work slathering it with peanut butter.
‘Her name was Blanche. Elf lady. And she was...whew! Talk about headstrong. She wouldn’t let me tell her about anything I saw on the second floor when the customers got comfy in the bedrooms and the ladies did their thing—’
“Stop.” Jessica tossed the knife into the sink with a loud clang. “You were a brothel?”
‘Uh...no. A respectable saloon that offered a well-rounded selection of goods and services for the travel-weary magicals stumbling through my door. Don’t be rude.’
Jessica snorted and lifted a piece of toast dripping with melted peanut butter. “That explains a lot.”
‘I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but feel free to get your head out of the gutter. Because...’
The satisfyingly loud crunch of toast drowned out most of what the bank said next, and Jessica smiled through her mouthful.
How convenient.
The bank waited for her to swallow. ‘Aren’t you the one advocating for not judging somebody by what they’ve done?’
“I’m not judging.”
‘Don’t forget I can read your—’
She took another crunching bite and chewed noisily, knowing full well the bank could read her mind and that it saw how much she enjoyed being able to shut it up.
‘You’re impossible.’
“And you’re an ex-whorehouse.”
‘Just changing with the centuries, witch. Never thought this one would give me as much trouble as it has.’
“You’re enough trouble on your own.” Jessica ripped a piece of paper towel off the roll to wipe her mouth. Then she paused.
She could barely comprehend what it must have been like to stick around for centuries, changing with the centuries, and watching one Guardian after another do their job time and time again before they reached the end of their short lives and scrambled to find a replacement.
‘It is what it is,’ the bank said gently. ‘Tabitha was the only one who didn’t actually scramble. She knew exactly what was coming.’
“And she still handed you over to me.”
‘Yeah. Funny how that works, right? And now we’re here. You in the long line of Guardians doing their jobs before they kicked the bucket. Your predecessor didn’t screw around, and neither do you. That’s why I like you.’
The bank didn’t offer compliments without underhanded insults very often. But the sentiment wasn’t worth much when Jessica’s lifespan as the Gateway Guardian had a high probability of being a lot shorter than the others.
‘But you have your magic back. So worrying about what anyone could do to you in here is about as useful as trying to feed me some of that toast.’
True. But it wasn’t the magicals on this side of the Gateway that worried Jessica. She’d already handled those ones—without her magic, and fairly well, all things considered. It was what waited for her on the other side of that door she’d be traveling through in three days that bothered her. She had no idea what she’d be stepping into, but once she did, she would be at the complete mercy of her own magic without restraint and an infuriating fae who enjoyed toying with her.
The bank hummed in thought. ‘Maybe not completely.’
“There’s no way you’ll be able to talk to me once I’m on the other side. I mean, I might not even be able to walk through with this thing around my neck.” Jessica fingered the blue-glowing pendant against her chest. “Not a lot you can do to help me in a different world.”
‘But I can do a few things to protect you. Maybe. I’ll work on it.’
Puffing out a sigh, Jessica grabbed her second piece of toast, took a massive bite, then left the rest of it on the plate and headed for the stairs.
‘I thought you were against wasting food.’
“I’m leaving it there for later.”
Right now, Jessica needed a shower and what was sure to be her last few hours of complete solitude. She hadn’t had much of it since inheriting Winthrop & Dirledge in a binding contract that changed at will. And she certainly wouldn’t have it when Leandras returned with whatever he needed to gather for this Hruandir spell.
For two days after that, she’d be stuck here with him one more time while they cast the spell and waited for its timer to go off and pop open the Gateway like a microwave door. And then?
Then she’d be in another world for who knew how long, following the fae man around through the death and destruction he’d shown h
er from within his own mind. Jessica had no doubt that vision had been real. But she still couldn’t shake the feeling that Leandras hadn’t shown her everything. That some darkness still lurked behind the fae’s intentions, just like it lurked beneath the surface of Jessica’s skin at any given moment.
She could handle not being able to escape that darkness within herself. But knowing she couldn’t escape Leandras while they traipsed through Xahar’áhsh didn’t make her feel any better.
‘I mean, you could run away from him. But you probably wouldn’t make it half an hour on your own.’
“Wow. Way to pep-talk.”
‘You know I’m right.’
She did. Which made the impending trip through a portal that much more dangerous.
Chapter 3
The blissful moment to herself without any desperate interruptions or urgent demands on her time lasted about as long as it took Jessica to shower and get into a fresh set of clean clothes. As she pulled her cell phone from the back pocket of the blood-and-gore splattered jeans she’d worn that morning, an incoming call buzzed in her hand.
It was Mel.
With a heavy sigh, Jessica stared at her friend’s name lit up on the screen and actually considered not answering. She’d earned a little downtime at the very least, hadn’t she?
‘Does your friend know that?’
“Probably not.” She was about to answer the call, but then a sharp sting raced through the side of her neck like she’d just been slapped.
Probably because it was the exact same spot where Leandras had slapped the warded rune onto her skin so the Gateway didn’t explode and blow up the whole world with it.
Hissing in discomfort, she jerked her head to the side and tentatively raised her fingers to the fading sting on her neck. “Side effects, huh?”
‘Jesus, I thought I was gonna have to answer that phone myself!’ The bank sounded uncharacteristically rattled. ‘But good luck trying to talk to a desperate witch on the other line when I have no mouth!’
“Hey. Chill out.”
‘Chill out? Hey, I was chill for the first ten minutes. The next ten had me a little worried, sure, but when you’ve been standing here like a damn statue for the last two hours, I’m entitled to a little freak-out!’
The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4) Page 2