The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4)

by Kathrin Hutson

  “What?”

  The phone buzzed again in Jessica’s hand, and she looked down in disbelief at the stacked notifications piling up on the screen. Two missed calls. Five unopened texts. And another came through from Mel the second Jessica unlocked the screen.

  I’m serious, Jess. This can’t wait. If you don’t call me back, I’m coming to you.

  What the hell?

  Only then did she look at the time on her phone—1:02 p.m.

  “No.” Jessica flipped through her list of missed calls. The first one she’d gotten from Mel after the shower—the one she’d almost answered just two minutes ago—was timestamped at10:58 a.m. The second call she’d missed completely was from ten minutes ago, when Mel’s four missed and unread texts spaced out almost exactly thirty minutes apart had gone unanswered.

  We need to talk.

  Answer your phone, Jess. It’s important.

  Okay, I’m starting to get worried.

  I get it. You’re tired. Maybe you don’t want anything to do with me right now, and that’s fine. But this is definitely a 911.

  “What the fuck just happened?”

  ‘Okay, here’s the thing.’ The bank cleared its nonexistent throat and took another five seconds to say anything else. ‘Yeah, I got nothin’. You blanked out.’

  “I was right here the whole time!” She’d grabbed her phone, had seen Mel’s call, had gotten ready to answer it, and then that damn rune on her neck had... “Oh, come on.”

  ‘He did mention side effects.’

  “Not losing two damn hours of my day!” Closing out of her texts, Jessica pulled up Mel’s number one more time and made an outgoing call.

  In no universe could any of this be considered good. She was supposed to have had some time to herself—to decompress and have one single moment where the deadly timer wasn’t ticking away to some impending catastrophic horror racing toward Jessica or Winthrop & Dirledge or the Gateway or any of the other magicals in her life who’d gotten caught up in this impossible web.

  ‘I guess it depends on how you define “one single moment,”’ the bank muttered. ‘I mean, technically, you had two hours...’

  “Shut up.” Jessica gritted her teeth as the line rang once, twice, then cut off with a soft click.

  “Jess! Thank god.”

  “Hey, Mel—”

  “What the hell were you doing? I called you twice.”

  “I know. I’m—”

  “Didn’t you get my texts? Jesus, I still have to threaten you with hunting you down just to talk to me when it’s important.”

  “Well don’t...drop everything and hunt me down, okay? I’m fine. I’m here.”

  Mel let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “Yeah, I know how much you like your personal space.”

  Jessica swallowed and glared at the blank wall beside her dresser. “I just saw everything two seconds ago, okay? Called you as soon as I could.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” A small tremble carried through Mel’s voice. She was scared.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I was just...napping.”

  ‘Yeah, good idea. Keep up the lies.’

  Jessica scowled. “And then I hopped in the shower.”

  ‘Oh, yeah. Flavor it with the truth. Okay.’

  Zip it.

  “What’s going on?” Jessica asked.

  Mel took a deep breath and slowly let it out in a shaky sigh. “We have a problem.”

  “Yeah, I kinda picked that up from your texts.” Slowly making her way toward the couch, Jessica raced through all the things this call could have been about. There were too many possibilities to settle on just one. “Mel?”

  “Sorry. Hold on.” There was a faint rustling, probably of the phone being pressed against Mel’s shirt, before the murmur of multiple low, muffled voices came over the line.

  Great. Cedrick was probably standing right there, listening to the entire conversation. Comforting Mel in her freak-out because Jessica hadn’t picked up her phone or answered her texts in two hours.

  Two hours she’d lost in the blink of an eye—or the sting of a last-minute warded rune.

  Finally, the phone rustled again, and Mel heaved another sigh. “Okay, Jess. I’m putting you on speaker phone.”

  “Can’t you just tell me—”

  “Hey, Jess.” Yep. It was Cedrick.

  “Hey. What’s going on?”

  “Where are you?”

  She sank into the couch and glanced around the circular bedroom. “I’m home.”

  “At the bank?” Mel asked.

  “Yeah, Mel. Right where you dropped me off. They’re the same thing.”

  Cedrick cleared his throat. “And you haven’t noticed anything...weird?”

  Jessica rolled her eyes. “Literally everything in my life right now falls under that category, man. You have to be a little more specific.”

  ‘Aw, thanks...’

  She ignored the bank and pressed the phone tighter against her ear.

  “Has anyone showed up since we dropped you off?” Mel added. “Anyone trying to get inside? To get to the...you know.”

  “The Gateway?”

  “Yeah.”

  How the hell was Jessica supposed to know that when she’d apparently been standing in the center of her bedroom for two hours without realizing it?

  ‘Not a peep from downstairs, if that’s what you wanna know,’ the bank offered. ‘For now, we’re apparently obsolete.’

  “No.” She ran a hand through her hair—which had still been damp what felt like five minutes ago—and found it completely dry albeit tangled. “Nobody’s come by.”

  “What about the Gateway?” Cedrick asked. “Anything weird happening there?”

  “Literally every minute of the last two months,” Jessica snapped. “But currently? No, there’s nothing weird.”

  “What about the coin, Jess?” Mel sucked in a sharp breath. “We looked all over the warehouse for it. The other reagents were there when everyone else finished cleaning up, but the coin—”

  “The coin’s gone.”

  The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.

  “Jess, please tell us you actually have it,” Mel whispered. “You do have it, right?”

  “Well I did.”

  “So what do you mean by it’s gone?” Cedrick asked slowly, enunciating every syllable as if he thought Jessica had suddenly lost her fluency in English. “Not like you gave it away—”

  “No, I mean gone. Nonexistent.”

  “What?” her friends practically shouted it in unison.

  “How is that even possible?”

  Puffing out a sigh, Jessica leaned farther back against the couch and lifted one leg to stretch it out on the cushions beside her. “It’s possible because I had that damn— Because Leandras came here and helped me with a spell. Some kind of dormancy thing on the Gateway or whatever. I don’t know. It worked, but it destroyed the coin. So it’s gone.”

  “Um...”

  She could so clearly envision both of her friends frowning in stupefaction, maybe looking up at each other in concern and complete bafflement as Mel held the phone between them. Probably sharing some kind of secret glance that only couples shared.

  ‘Okay, I get that you’re still a little freaked out by...whatever this weird love-triangle thing is, but shouldn’t we focus on whatever this emergency call was supposed to be?’

  Right.

  “Are you guys gonna tell me what’s going on now, or do we have to start a new round of Twenty Questions?”

  Cedrick chuckled, though it didn’t sound anything like his normally lighthearted laugh. It sounded bitter. “So the coin’s gone.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No chance anyone could ever get their hands on it?”

  “I mean, unless there’s a way to draw a bajillion microscopic specks out of the air and glue them back together again, probably not.”

  “So no first rights?” Mel asked.

&nbs
p; “Oh, jeeze.” Jessica rolled her eyes. “Please don’t tell me you guys were hoping to make me some kind of offer. Because it’s just been done over and over.”

  “No, Jess. That has nothing to do with—Wait. Hold on.” There was another muffled rustle and the sound of a door opening with a low creak before Cedrick came back on. “You got offers already?”

  “Yeah, they started weeks ago. Seriously, guys, what’s going on?”

  “She relinquished them?” The man’s voice was faint and barely audible.

  Jessica recognized it but somehow couldn’t quite place where she’d heard it before. “Hey, who’s that?”

  “Yeah, come here,” Mel muttered.

  “Guys?”

  “Jessica, it’s Steve.”

  Steve the warlock. Steve the Laenmúr member who’d introduced himself before anyone else in the warehouse. Steve, who knew more about the reckoning phases than Mel or Cedrick or even Jessica. She hoped.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her voice low and hesitant.

  “You said the sigil’s destroyed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “By you specifically?”

  “Yes.”

  Steve puffed out a sigh. “Then that’s a relief.”

  Jessica lowered her phone from her ear to shoot another exasperated glance at the blank wall. She expected the vague bullshit from Leandras but not from her friends. “If no one’s just gonna come out and say what the hell this call is about, I’m hanging up—”

  “Wait, don’t,” Mel almost shrieked.

  In the background, Cedrick muttered some kind of soft reassurance Jessica didn’t catch.

  “Jessica, this is important,” Steve added. “Did Leandras talk to you about crossing through?”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. She couldn’t even sit with that secret for longer than half an hour before everyone else in the magical world knew what was going on.

  ‘Two and a half hours, actually. Don’t forget your time-blip.’

  Whatever.

  Jessica closed her eyes. “Yeah. We talked about it. Are you about to tell me it’s on the list of things to definitely not do?”

  “Not at all.” The warlock sounded a lot like he was smiling now. Or at least the tension in whatever room they occupied on the other end of the line had drastically lessened. “It was actually on the list of things I’d worried about for you. When we couldn’t find the coin...”

  “Leandras took it and brought it to me.”

  Yeah, that was one way to sum it up in an incredibly glossed-over way.

  “And you relinquished first rights.”

  “Yes, Steve. Is there anyone else who needs to get in on this conversation? Because I feel like we’re going in circles.”

  “No, it’s just us.” Apparently, her frustrated sarcasm was lost on the guy. “It’s good you’ve already had that conversation, then. I know it’s only been a few hours since...well, everything that happened this morning. And I’m sure you’ll want some time, which is completely understandable. But for what it’s worth, I hope you’ll take my advice.”

  Jessica waited for him to continue, then realized the group on the other end of this phone call was doing the exact same thing. “Advice about what?”

  “About taking that journey. To the other side.”

  “The advice comes from all of us, Jess,” Mel added cautiously.

  “Oh...” She sagged against the couch. “Did you guys get together for an intervention call? Like, what? ‘Jessica must be completely over all this now, but we still need her, so let’s show her a united front so she can do this one more thing?’”

  Cedrick snorted and muttered, “I told you it should’ve been just one of us.”

  “We’re all in this together,” Mel snapped back. There was another rustle as the phone was set down, then both their voices faded, like they’d crossed to the other side of the room. Steve didn’t make a sound.

  All in this together, huh? No, Jessica and Leandras wouldn’t have managed to kick off phase two of the reckoning without the two dozen Laenmúr members in that warehouse for the spell, but that was where the teamwork stopped. At least for Jessica’s friends. They weren’t Guardians. They didn’t own Winthrop & Dirledge and hear its voice in their mind. They didn’t have the all-access pass through the Gateway to ferry other magicals back and forth between worlds.

  ‘They’re trying so hard to be relevant, though.’

  They only know half the equation.

  ‘Probably a lot less than that, honestly.’

  She waited another minute before the sound of Mel and Cedrick arguing in the background just grew too much to handle. “Steve?”

  “Yeah?” He sounded severely uncomfortable.

  “We’re going in three days.”

  There was a slight pause. “I’m sorry, you said...”

  “Leandras and I. Three days. He’s getting whatever we need for this Hruandir Influence spell, then it takes two days to...incubate or whatever. I don’t know. But after that, we’re going through.”

  The warlock barked out a laugh. “Cedrick. Come here.”

  “...not telling you to do everything I say, Mel. Christ. But when we both know who we’re talking to—”

  “Oh, you think you know her better than I do?”

  “That’s not—”

  “Hey!” Steve shouted. Jessica pulled the phone away from her ear, but at least the fighting had stopped. “She’s doing it.”

  “Oh, shit.” The phone rustled again, then Cedrick’s voice came through like he was shouting in her ear. “You’re doing it? You’re actually going?”

  “Yeah. Listen, you guys really don’t need to check up on me like this. I know this morning was weird, but I’m good. And Leandras and I have a plan.”

  The bank scoffed. ‘If you call having no plan an actual plan, then sure.’

  She cocked her head and ignored the commentary. “So there’s really nothing else you guys need to do until we’re back.”

  “Then I’ll wait to hear from Leandras.” Steve cleared his throat. “The next three days may be a little more of an issue than we’d thought.”

  Mel and Cedrick whispered harshly at each other again, and Jessica had to force herself not to unleash her magic on her own phone. “Hey! Just tell me whatever the fuck you have to tell me and quit whispering!”

  “Jess, it’s about Mickey.”

  No.

  Jessica’s mouth ran suddenly dry. She’d ended the Matahg just over six hours ago. She’d watched his literal essence—or what some might have called a soul, if Mickey Hargraves had ever had one—slither right into that insufferable box of her magic to return everything that made her Jessica Northwood the vestrohím. To put it all back where it belonged.

  No fucking way could any issue ever be about Mickey again.

  Chapter 4

  “Mel...” Jessica’s lips felt swollen and stiff, like she was trying to speak with her face submerged in a bowl of syrup. “Mickey’s dead.”

  “Jesus, of course he is,” Cedrick replied quickly. “That was absolutely the wrong way to say it—”

  “Excuse me?” Mel snapped.

  Apparently finished with engaging his girlfriend in another argument, Cedrick must have leaned closer to the phone or even pressed it to his ear, because even when he spoke in a low voice, it was louder than any of their conversation so far. “It’s not about Mickey. Just what he left behind.”

  “What?”

  “He was trying to get out of the country, Jess,” Mel added. “But that didn’t mean he hadn’t set something up to cover his tracks if...something went wrong.”

  “Oh, Christ.” An intense wave of nausea and guilt flooded through Jessica’s gut, and she leaned forward between her thighs to force it back down. “Who?”

  “Rebecca,” Cedrick said. “Whoever it was probably figured she’d be easiest—”

  “’Cause a woman at home alone is always the easiest, right?” Mel spat.

  “
Is she okay?” Jessica asked.

  “Yeah, she’s fine. The guy was a complete idiot and thought he could take her on his own. She called us as a warning. If Mickey’s friends are acting out some final revenge cleanup—”

  “Yeah, then they’d be coming for all of us. Shit.” With a heavy sigh, Jessica managed to contain the urge to hurl right there on the couch.

  At least Rebecca was safe, and the rest of what used to be Corpus would know by now both about Mickey being wiped off the face of the Earth and about his hired thugs—friends or otherwise—who would now be trying to make examples of them all.

  “Guys, I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to be dragged back into all this—”

  “We were already a part of this in one way or another,” Mel said. “We just spent too much time not talking about any of it before all the pieces were set into play.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” Cedrick added. “It’s Mickey’s. But we wanted to make sure no one had come for you there. Where you are. So just keep an eye out, huh?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Steve forced a loud cough. “Sorry to interrupt the reunion, but I actually had no idea this was another factor.”

  The bank burst out laughing in Jessica’s mind, and she bolted upright on the couch.

  ‘So close! Everyone’s so close to having all the same information, but you just can’t get there. Your brains are too small and empty and separated—’

  I’ll separate you if you don’t cut it out.

  “What are you talking about, then?” she asked, steeling herself for another dark and highly unhelpful revelation.

  “The potential fallout from you having relinquished first rights.” The guy sounded a lot less uncomfortable now and way more down-to-business. “Whoever made their offers most likely doesn’t know all bets are off the table at this point. And now that the second phase is in effect, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a lot more visitors looking for the sigil.”

  “Of course. It’s always the coin.”

  “Which you no longer have, so it really shouldn’t be an issue.”

  “Okay, great.” Jessica ran a hand through her hair again and gave up when the unbrushed and air-dried tangles made it less of a habit and just more work. “I’m guessing everyone else who wants the stupid coin is gonna somehow find out about the thing being destroyed eventually, right? Just like they all found out it had been opened up and phase number one kicked off?”