by Jenn Stark
I reached for my hoodie, but Jiao Peng stayed my hand. “Madame Wilde,” she said softly, pointing to a long, slender pair of pants, and a flowing tunic with cutaway sleeves.
“That’s…really not me.”
“There are deep pockets in the trousers for your Tarot cards.”
“Well, that’s…more me,” I conceded.
“Try it for this moment,” Jiao Peng said, pushing the clothes into my arms. “For what you must do with Gamon, you will need your strength.”
I took the clothes.
Chapter Nine
Three of us sat in the conference room twenty minutes later. Me, a very keyed-up Nikki, and an exceptionally unhappy Mongolian.
“I do not approve of this,” Ma-Singh said flatly.
“Suck it up, Buttercup,” Nikki shot back. She remained in her Florence Nightingale getup, appropriately enough, but had ditched the cape. She laid the small pouch of Gamon’s, uh, effects on the table in front of me, and I nodded, trying to work myself up for what was to come. “Don’t you think Sara looks nice? Tell the little lady she looks nice.”
“You can stop that any time, Nikki.” Since I’d showered and changed into Jiao Peng’s outfit, however, I did feel different. I always did when I wore a costume, so that wasn’t a big surprise, but this lightweight, flowing outfit somehow managed to feel functional and unfussy despite not being made out of denim or jersey knit. I’d opted against the hidden holster for the time being, but I’d tried it on anyway and…it would work. I could wear this sort of thing on a regular basis and be just fine.
To be honest, that idea scared me a lot more than my date with Gamon.
Ma-Singh’s glower didn’t lessen as he stared at me. “This is dangerous, and Gamon is not worth it.”
“Wrong answer,” I said. “Like it or not, Gamon’s the head of a House.”
“Which she stole.”
“You could say the same about me.” I did glance up now as I spoke, because the energy in the room was at hard angles now and only getting worse. Nikki was practically shaking, and Ma-Singh sat with his fists clenched. “What’s the latest on the Cup generals? You’ve spoken to them since we transported Gamon?”
He made a face, but the redirection did its job. “I have.”
“And?”
“The House of Cups is a splinter group of the original Templars, as we suspected. They are also protected by SANCTUS.” Cups, Templars. It made sense. And given the religious overtones of the Templars, it also made sense that SANCTUS was involved. That group was loosely bolted to the Holy See, a few of its nuts looser than others.
“So the Pope’s claimed an alliance with the House of Cups?”
“He has not. Nor, it should be noted, have their more mainstream Templar brothers. It appears they’ve stayed hidden precisely because no one will claim them. Except SANCTUS.”
“And now Gamon.” That also wasn’t a huge leap. Gamon had joined forces with SANCTUS while Soo was still alive. And then, in ruthless Gamon style, she’d attacked their allies and overpowered them. “Who’d she kill to take over?”
Ma-Singh’s glower returned. “There was not enough of the body to recover, and the generals refuse to speak the individual’s name. From fifth-party accounts, the former head was a retired cardinal assigned from the ranks of SANCTUS. The House of Cups did not act in any sort of official capacity, however, and have not for years. They are not tied to the drug trade that we can tell, they are not active in international politics or military alliances, and they conduct no religious practices.”
“They had to have been doing something. Otherwise Gamon wouldn’t have been interested in leading them.”
“She wasn’t interested, if you recall. She wanted to take over the House of Swords.” Ma-Singh grinned then, baring a hard white flash of teeth. “She failed.”
“Fair enough.” I didn’t like any of this either, but for different reasons than Ma-Singh, I suspected. The House of Cups, Templar or not, SANCTUS or not, was one of the original four Houses of Magic. Or it had been, back in the day. It should number Connecteds among its top-ranking members.
Then again, outside of myself and Nikki, the House of Swords was about as Connected as a Magic 8-Ball. And the House of Pentacles, run by the Frenchman Jean-Claude Mercault, was also far more practical than mystical. “There’s no magic left,” I muttered, “even in the Houses. We let it go fallow.”
Ma-Singh had nothing to say to that. What could he say? Annika had been a very low-level Connected, her abilities augmented by enchanted jewels or other external forces. Mercault, same story, though he at least had a glimmer of natural ability. This Cups leader who Gamon stamped out might have had a similar level of Connectedness, but clearly not enough to stand in her way. And as to the House of Wands…who the hell knew what they were about. Like Cups, they’d apparently not just worked in the shadows, they’d fallen completely off the grid. Unlike the Cups, they were still in the wind.
“We have to bring Gamon back.” I said this part aloud but could tell that Ma-Singh would have been just as happy if I’d kept the thought to myself. “She’s a high-level Connected. So am I. That’s what should be leading these Houses, not journeymen mercenaries.” I cut him a glance. “No disrespect to Madame Soo.”
He dipped his head. Ma-Singh’s loyalty to his former employer was surpassed only by his loyalty to me. Would that every leader be so lucky.
“And Mercault?” the general prompted. “How will he make the adjustment in his psychic skills to be your equal?”
Beside me, Nikki snorted. “That ain’t never going to happen, dollface. You can give up that idea right now.”
I shrugged. “His family was killed by SANCTUS. I’m not sure where he’s pulling his help from now, but Mercault is no idiot. He’ll seek out Connecteds of power. He tried an alliance with Gamon, and that didn’t go so well. He’ll want to shore up his strength from the inside.”
Ma-Singh caught the undertone in my voice. “He remains a threat.”
“Until he becomes an ally, yeah. And probably even after.” I blew out a long breath. “But it’s the alliance with Gamon we need to secure, currently. For that, we need her alive.”
And…boom. Ma-Singh was back to glowering. “I do not approve of this. It’s far too intimate a risk.”
I made a face. “Relax. This is not astral travel, exactly.”
“You will attempt to heal her.”
“Yes.”
“To do that, you’ll need to connect with her mentally.”
“Well, yes.”
Now it was his turn to make a face. “You forget, Madame Wilde, I am very familiar with that act from the receiving side.”
I lifted my brows, but Ma-Singh was right. It seemed like a thousand years ago, but it had been merely weeks. The memory of the general’s enormous hulking form weighing heavily on me as he took a series of bullets in the back to protect me still, well, weighed heavily on me. On him as well, apparently. “Then you know it’s no big deal,” I said, swiveling a little in my conference chair. All Sword conference room chairs should swivel, I decided.
He shook his head, his mood not lightening. “It is, in fact, a big deal. A very big deal, one that had deep and profound repercussions within me. What complicates the matter is that I was not Connected. Gamon is. She is perhaps one of the most powerful Connecteds alive.” He jabbed a finger at the now-silent video monitor, where we’d seen evidence of Gamon’s sort of half life. “It’s the only reason she survived her attempt to follow the goddess Vigilance as she made her escape through the caverns of the Pyramid of the Sun. From the accounts of her generals closest to her, she remained in the goddess’s thrall for several days before returning to them. They found her incinerated body a mile from their base in Argentina. Crawling.”
I shuddered. “Where had she been?”
“She appeared to be—”
“No.” I jerked upright in my chair in sudden realization
as Ma-Singh broke off his explanation, startled. “She made it all the way outside the veil, didn’t she? She came back like I came back—um, the first time. When I astral traveled.” I swung my gaze to Nikki, who’d begun to look a little queasy. She’d been there for that initial attempt. “And I had Armaeus.”
“But he’s not helping you here,” Ma-Singh said.
“No, he isn’t.” I didn’t want to think too much about that. Logically, I reasoned, Armaeus was pushing me to explore more of my abilities. But was there more to it? Was there some kind of weird Council reason why he wasn’t extending aid to another Connected when he’d apparently had no problem extending it to me or Nikki? Then again, we were on his payroll—or we had been at one time. We had a history with Armaeus. Gamon did not.
And I’d just proven I could go beyond the veil and back again bodily, without damage. While Gamon, arguably one of the strongest Connecteds on the planet who wasn’t already on the Council…had nearly been incinerated making the attempt.
Shoving back the sudden twinge of misgiving at that thought, I refocused on the gris-gris bag in front of me. “She said this would help?”
“More than help.” Nikki squared her own chair to the table. “Gamon said she wouldn’t let you in without that on your person. She wouldn’t be able to recognize you otherwise.”
I shuddered again, remembering the wild eyes on the camera, the inestimable pain. Gamon had been like that since her return, it seemed, too broken to heal, too stubborn to die. I couldn’t let her continue like that. I wouldn’t.
“This is how this is going to work,” I said, and whether it was something in my voice or the fact that I didn’t look at either of them, merely stayed focused on the bag, they both went still. “I’m going under like a typical astral travel sequence, but once I’ve started, I’ll need the contents of this bag in my hand. I need to stay in the chair, with my hand holding these items. I think if I drop them, it’ll be bad.”
“You think?” Ma-Singh’s voice radiated dismay and more than a little disgust.
“Don’t let me drop them.” I blew out a long breath, and glanced to Nikki. “You good?”
She nodded and pulled the bag closer to her. “I’ll do the honors. Lily over here doesn’t have the stomach.”
Ma-Singh leaned forward and placed one hand on my shoulder, the other on the table. “You will not fall, and you will not drop the…anything,” he growled.
“Agreed. But just to be sure…” I tucked my hand into the pocket of the long flowing jacket Soo had outfitted me with, instantly feeling the reassuring touch of the cards. Trying to quell my own nerves, I drew three cards, then pulled them free of my pocket. I placed them face up on the table.
Nikki and Ma-Singh leaned forward, both of their faces bleak. “Well, that doesn’t look like any fun,” Nikki muttered.
I pushed the cards farther out on the table, one at a time. “Four of Swords, no surprise there. I’m visiting an invalid.”
“Or you could become one,” Ma-Singh said darkly.
I shook my head. “Not an outcome card. This one is more problematic.” I tapped the Seven of Swords thoughtfully. “Could mean deceit, trickery.”
“Betrayal?” offered Nikki.
“That’s more the province of the Ten of Swords. This…this feels more like I need to stay on my toes. To look back over my shoulder, be careful.” I grimaced. “If Gamon wasn’t next to dead, I’d be more worried, but as it is…” I shrugged.
“And the card with dead people falling out of the building?” Nikki asked dryly.
“The Tower.” I sighed, considering the card. It was rarely a positive one. Probably why it showed up in my readings so often. “Well, something is going to go bang, or we’re going to be awfully surprised by a turn of events. But there’s no way Armaeus would let me wade in solo on this one if there was anything to worry about. You both know that.”
“I know only that the Magician is convinced he can heal you. That is not at all the same thing,” Ma-Singh grumbled.
“Then let’s get on with it.” I put my hands together on the table, palms up, the two of them making a cup. “I’m ready if…scratch that. I’m ready.”
Nikki’s voice, when it came, seemed almost like a benediction. She’d sent me out via astral travel more times recently than Armaeus had, and there was something indefinably more stable with her manning the chair than the Magician. Often, he and Eshe, the other Council member most involved with my astral travel, would spend their time arguing while I was banging around the planet. Nikki mostly seemed to talk to me.
But first she spoke the ancient chant she’d learned from the Council, one of the few crumbs of arcane lore we’d been able to wrest from their jealous hands. I allowed myself to slip under as quickly as I could, feeling myself rise up and out of the chair, my gaze momentarily raking over Ma-Singh, Nikki, and my own slumped form, my hands stretched out in front of me. Then Nikki lifted the gris-gris bag and tilted it toward my hands.
I shot out of the room, through the ceiling, and into the harshly bright desert sky. I didn’t like watching myself get a shot, I didn’t like watching myself get hit—I definitely didn’t have any interest in seeing myself receive the charred bits of Gamon into my palms.
I aimed for the clinic at the edge of the city where Sells was keeping Gamon, but all my speed didn’t matter. The moment Nikki dropped the contents of the pouch into my hand and the rough, gritty weight of Gamon’s pain swamped me, I plummeted through the air like I was weighed down with the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Hang in there—Hang in—”
Nikki’s panicked shout was cut off as I tore through the ceiling of Sells’s clinic, dropping through the first three stories and past one, then a second subterranean floor. When I finally reached Gamon’s cavernous chamber, I knew instantly I was in the right place. Sells stood beside her, half-turned, her entire body wrapped in surgical gear, gloves, and mask. Gamon, for her part, lay under a mass of tubes and protective gauze. Even though I normally didn’t feel fluctuations of temperature when I was in this form, I could sense the utter chill of the room, as if someone had tanked the AC low enough to freeze water.
Sells could see me, I realized with some surprise, but she didn’t block me. She knew why I was here.
Gamon was another story.
She blinked, the sound a harsh click that made me shudder, and I felt a pressure on my hands, the sensation of them being curled over and held fast impossible to ignore. I approached, and Gamon watched me steadily. There was fury in her gaze, even more than the pain, fury and another emotion far more devastating. But the natural barriers of her mind were still on fire.
“You have to let me in, Gamon,” I gritted out, and her eyes flared wide, wild, rolling around in their charred socket, panic now surging to the fore.
I edged closer, drifting in my incorporeal form, and as I did, I could feel heat now supplanting the frigid canned air. When I’d come back from my own interstellar cookout, my insides had been charred through. Armaeus had healed me, but this…
Gamon’s wildly rolling eyes skittered back toward me. More panic, but also urgency, the wrappings below her eyes shifting as she strained.
“Sara…” The voice wasn’t Nikki’s, it was Dr. Sells’s, and it was freighted with worry as she stared first at Gamon, then her controls.
A hissing, rasping noise sounded beneath the wraps, and Sells darted a skilled hand forward, lifting the uppermost wrap.
I cringed back, I couldn’t help myself, as I glimpsed the ruin of Gamon’s mouth. The pain her body was enduring as it struggled to stay alive minute by minute radiated in all directions. Her mind had been reduced to a tiny kernel of survival, all her psychic abilities and whatever was left of her enhancements focused inward in a desperate struggle to keep from shutting down. Agony flowed out from her in waves, and the tears that hung on my lashes even in an incorporeal state evaporated in the incredible heat she was generating.
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br /> “I want to help you, Gamon,” I said, though I suspected her mind was far beyond hearing at this point, far beyond even a shred of rational thought. How had she communicated to Sells what needed to go into the gris-gris bag? Had they somehow connected psychically?
Then Gamon surprised me.
“Help—” she whispered, and for the barest of moments, the fires of her mind split apart.
Without hesitation, I burst forward, diving into her body the way I had blasted through so many assailants, leaving them confused as to what just happened. But this time, I didn’t punch through skin and muscle and bone to free myself on the other side. This time I stayed.
“Hold it tighter,” Nikki yelled, somewhere far away. But I couldn’t respond to her, couldn’t do anything but…expand.
I twisted in a matrix of charred ruin—not bones and sinew at all, but a thousand interconnected stars, all their lights burnt out. Somewhere I could hear weeping, but the utter loss of that emotion spurred me on, my hands stretching out to sweep across that broken universe, brushing away the darkness. Where I touched, there was the faintest flicker of light once more, where I focused, that light grew stronger. I felt pressure, incredible pressure bearing down, but I couldn’t focus on anything but this small space of lights.
Gamon’s mind was too far gone for me to reach, her thoughts a rapid, gabbling mess, but I spoke to her anyway, soothing nonsense that she was improving, she was healing, she was becoming whole once more. The lights grew larger and brighter, and larger and brighter still, until sparks arced away in four streams, five—and I continued pushing the energy forth, into Gamon’s arms, her legs, up the long column of her spine toward her brain. As I did this work, the complex energy of her body burst into life, and I stared, thunderstruck, unable to process what I was seeing, unable to do anything but push, to brighten, to cool, to—