Call of the Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  This was the reason clubs didn’t open until ten p.m., I decided. It simply took too long to get ready. Nikki had even made me apply my own makeup instead of simply doing it herself, increasing the sensation that I was armored for battle. Granted, she’d ended up redoing my efforts in a fraction of the time with infinitely better results, but she’d had way more practice.

  I longed to let myself wallow in feeling like an idiot, but I understood well enough that that wasn’t going to help anyone. Armaeus thought we would be encountering high rollers, top-shelf gamblers that he thought would be interested in seeing us…possibly in being seen with us. The Magician was the head of the Arcana Council, I was the head of the House of Swords. If these anonymous heavy hitters were Connected, our titles would matter to them. So would our appearance.

  As Nikki and I moved across the floor, though, like salmon swimming upstream, I felt another set of eyes on me. In my line of work, this was generally a bad thing. Then again, I didn’t usually dress like a showgirl. Most women who donned this much reflective wear wanted to be seen—maybe in close proximity to either a pole or a construction site. But the attention I was attracting didn’t feel sensual, exactly. More considering. The kind of attention I drew from people who were toying with the idea of putting a bullet in my head. The kind of attention I’d felt right before my limo had blown up, a move that Ma-Singh had categorically maintained was not a defensive maneuver from the House of Swords, but another hit from my unknown assailant.

  My hands balled into fists at my sides. Maybe coming out tonight hadn’t been a good idea. I hadn’t even read the cards before we left, the touch of anything against my palms still too off-putting. Even washing my hands with warm water made me twitch.

  “Two.” Nikki stopped short and I pulled up behind her, barely avoiding treading on her size thirteen heels. She swept two glasses of champagne off the tray of a passing server and winked at the girl, who either recognized her or didn’t give a damn about who was drinking the champagne. Nikki turned and handed one flute to me. I steeled myself to take it, but the cool glass against my palm wasn’t as bad as I feared. She leaned down and draped one arm over my shoulder, bending intimately close to whisper into my ear.

  Instantly, more eyes seemed to turn our way. Maybe it was just the hungry and the damned paying attention after all.

  “That’s totally the Magician up there, dollface, and he’s looking good enough to suck up with a straw. It’s gotta be the Devil beside him, but he’s done his damnedest not to let me get a clear look. Probably wants to surprise me with his glorious face all at once, the vanity hound.”

  “Anyone else?” I tipped my glass.

  “Nope, and I’m not surprised. Hera’s just gotten to town. If you’d been out of the loop for two millennia, you’d need to work up to this kind of crowd too.” Nikki pulled back, squeezed my shoulder. “Armaeus is scanning the room, but he hasn’t homed in on you yet. He’s not going to know what hit him.” She gave a shrewd glance to the teeming sea of people, then looked back to me. “But keep close. This place is worse than triple card night at Bingo, and there’s something in the air that ain’t perfume.”

  That surprised me. “Pot?” I couldn’t smell anything but sweat and heat, but Nikki topped me by a good foot, especially in those shoes.

  She shook her head. “Anticipation. Like there’s a big act supposed to open, only there’s nothing going on here tonight of that caliber. You feel it?”

  “I feel queasy. Does that count?”

  “You got this, dollface.” She gave me another appraising glance. “You’ve more than got this.”

  I offered her up a smile, then tossed back the rest of the sparkling champagne, handing the flute over to Nikki, who’d also downed hers. With an ease born of long practice, she deposited the glasses lightly on another passing waitress’s tray, and we resumed our trek. We’d just reached the steps to the elevated platform when a woman jostled into us from the right, breaking the light hold I had on Nikki’s hand.

  “Hey!”

  “Oh! Sorry!” The woman turned around to apologize genuinely enough, all honey-blonde curls and show-stopping figure, but her gaze shifted from me to whatever was behind me, her face going suddenly slack, her jaw dropping open. I turned as well, more than half expecting it to be Armaeus, who had exactly that kind of effect on mortals when he wanted…

  Then I froze.

  This wasn’t Armaeus.

  The man was tall—ridiculously tall, Magician tall, probably six foot eight without trying, with a body so perfectly proportioned that he didn’t seem like the giant he was. He fairly glowed with sunshine and fresh air, as if he’d been spending too much time on an island, if such a thing were possible. His head was completely bald, his skin deeply tanned and pulled almost too thin over his sharp-cut features—broad, highly defined cheekbones, sharp, slashing eyes, thin lips, heavy chin. He wore a dark suit and white shirt, a tattoo peeking out above his collar looking vaguely tribal. Then again, all tattoos looked tribal to me. He wore no jewelry that I could see.

  Who was this guy?

  The man lifted his hand, and the music seemed to blank, the horde of dancing people writhing around us going still, except myself and the enraptured woman at my hip. I’d seen this kind of effect before, but only with a whole lot of Council magic coursing through the joint.

  And this didn’t feel like Council magic to me.

  “Sara Wilde.” The man spoke with an inflection that struck me at odd angles. The closest I’d heard anyone speak like that had been Hera, newly back on earth after multiple millennia in the cosmos. Was this one of her minions?

  “Do I know you?”

  His smile was so fleeting, it might as well have been vapor. “Not yet. You survived our first overture. It was decided we should meet and take the relationship to the next level.”

  “Your first…”

  What happened next occurred so quickly, I didn’t have time to intellectually react. The man didn’t move as much as transport into my personal space, his fist coming down at me with a speed that defied physics. I got the sense of muscles—big, scary muscles, tightly compacted beneath the fine cloth of his suit.

  I’d already exploded once today, however, and my lizard brain apparently wasn’t taking any more crap.

  I couldn’t move my hands together fast enough to form a ball of magic…so I became a ball of magic. My head exploded into a corona of light, my third eye flashed open, and the world around me instantly transformed into a net of electrical waves. The non-Connecteds in the room manifested as currents running in sparking bursts, the Connecteds were coiling, complex hydras—while Island Giant and I were complete matrices of brilliant stars, showering lights and meteors. Island Giant, me…and the two figures up on the stage. Figures who even now were turning.

  I didn’t have time to parse more details than that. The giant bounced back after connecting with the mass of energy that now passed as my torso, then drove his other hand forward, this one splayed wide. The crowd parted behind us, and we crashed to the floor, rolling in a bitter embrace as I felt bars of cold blocking magic invisibly clang into place around me—two at my sides, one at my back, another—

  “No!” I brought my head forward sharply, squeezing my third eye shut as I smacked into my attacker’s forehead, taking no small measure of delight in his cry of pain. His own third eye clearly hadn’t been expecting that move. Taking advantage of his momentary daze, I locked my hands on his massive shoulders and pressed hard, my fingers digging into those muscles, driving down, down, my mind following along to learn everything about this creature, his wants, his needs, his fears, his—

  “Stop.”

  That was it. It was merely one word, one thought, but a word and a thought I’d recently experienced on an island mired in chaos, on the shores of a boiling sea. Armaeus’s powerful presence was suddenly everywhere, smothering the sound, the light, the danger, and setting everything to right again in o
ne blink of his golden-black eye.

  All at once, the air seemed to suck out of the room, and then I was back on my feet, like a rubber band snapping back into place. Island Giant remained in front of me, but instead of his fist buried in my solar plexus, he was holding out a card, looking slightly dazed. The business card was of heavyweight linen-colored card stock, a single word written on it in a crisp Copperplate font. I couldn’t read the word completely yet, was still trying to breathe, but that didn’t stop me from taking the card. I glanced up.

  “How are you still upright?” I asked, not even bothering to look toward the stage where Armaeus and Kreios had been standing. I didn’t have to check to know they were watching.

  To my surprise, Island Giant merely chuckled. “Because not all the magic in the world resides on the Council, Madame Wilde. As well you know.”

  The man grinned at me fiercely…then disappeared.

  “Dollface?” A set of large silver-tipped fingers flapped in front of my face, and I blinked, startled to see Nikki before me again. The non-Connected woman to my right hadn’t moved, though. I turned to her, lifted the card. It had one word on it. TRIDENT. “You saw that, right?” I asked when the woman didn’t react.

  “Where…” The club bunny’s voice sounded like that of a little girl’s, and when she finally turned to me, her eyes were on the brink of tears.

  Uh oh.

  “Where—where did he go?” she demanded, her lower lip beginning to quiver. “What did you do to send him away?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” My hands came up again, this time purely in defense.

  The music was now crashing around us again, but that didn’t stop the bouncer from hearing Nikki’s piercing whistle. Apparently, this wasn’t her first time at the club, and two guys in black T-shirts and an impressive array of muscles had already begun fighting their way through the crowd when the blonde bombshell in front of me dissolved into a full meltdown.

  “Where did he gooooo!” she wailed again, even as Bouncer #1 reached our tiny group, and Bouncer #2 circled around, which was good because the pixie started throwing punches almost immediately, her untutored moves still getting props for enthusiasm. “What did you do?”

  The T-shirted twosome carried off the woman without even raising the eyebrows of the nearest dancers. Apparently, XS was used to this sort of thing.

  “Uh, did I miss something? Again?” Nikki asked, as I turned the card over in my hand.

  “What’d you see, feel, hear, exactly, just now?”

  “Our hands broke apart, I turned back, you were staring at a card, the girl was on the brink of losing it.”

  “How much time?”

  She considered that. “Five seconds?”

  “Armaeus?”

  Her neck craned around. “He’s watching us, if that’s what you mean. Then again, we look fabulous. Half the room is watching us.”

  I nodded. I knew Armaeus could turn back a short period of time, but apparently that skill was more common than I thought. Then again, the entire fight had taken less than thirty seconds, so maybe Island Giant was still learning how to do it. Either way, worth looking into. I handed the card to her. “Put this somewhere safe. We’ll want to follow up on whoever Trident is later.”

  Her brows went up as I belatedly tried to pat my hair back into place—only to realize the power of Nikki’s styling tools. My hair might as well have been a perfectly tousled helmet.

  “Trident?” Nikki asked. “As in Aquaman’s weapon of choice or the minty fresh gum? Because I’ve seen the new Aquaman, and I’m totally voting for that.”

  When I didn’t respond she obligingly slid the rectangular card into her bra, then turned me around. “I’m pretty sure I can keep the Magician from asking about the card, but ain’t nobody is missing how he’s eyeing you now, dollface. So I’d suggest, if you’ve got any more secrets to hide, you start hiding them, pronto.”

  We started up the steps, and once again, the crowd seemed to split in front of us, more quickly this time. Given that my fingers still felt like they were sparking, I kept my hands tightly clenched and away from any flammables.

  I glanced down as Nikki fumbled to a stop.

  “Sweet Mother Mary in a muumuu,” she breathed beside me. “I’ve totally died and gone to Hell.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Surprisingly enough, most of the demigods who made up the Arcana Council were not all larger-than-life miracles of immortal perfection. The Magician and the Devil made up for all the shortcomings of the rest of the Council combined.

  As we approached, Armaeus watched me with an emotion I couldn’t immediately put my finger on—he’d just saved my tail out there on the dance floor, or at least helped ensure I didn’t have to save it all by myself. But there was no question as to the type and level of interest our arrival was generating in the Devil.

  Pure, carnal joy.

  Aleksander Kreios had ascended to his position with the Arcana Council from the shores of Constantinople, before it took on its present-day name of Istanbul. He could appear as any man or woman—or multiples of the same—young or old, healthy or infirm. But his most persistent glamour was that of a billionaire beach bum newly emerged from the shores of Greece, tall, lithe, and breathtakingly beautiful. His eyes were most often green, as they were tonight, and his cheekbones were high and exquisitely chiseled. His full, sensual mouth stopped just short of feeling out of place on the masculine face, but the overall effect was a creature made for sin.

  His entire focus was now bent on Nikki.

  “My beautiful Nikki Dawes, where have you been hiding yourself?” he practically purred, his voice somehow snaking around us despite the pounding bass of the sound system. Nikki, for her part, completely lost her game the way she always did when Aleksander Kreios singled her out. Then again, the Devil of the Tarot deck was all about the loosening of inhibitions, the amping of sensations, and chains. Lots and lots of chains. I could practically hear Nikki’s eyes dilate as she stared back at him. She apparently didn’t trust herself to speak, but she didn’t need to, as the Devil swept her into an embrace that would have put the Cirque du Soleil into a tailspin. I was pretty sure there were way more arms and legs happening there than was humanly possible, but their distraction allowed me to focus on the Magician.

  Armaeus’s eyes fairly smoldered as they raked over me, the gold almost completely subsumed by the black.

  “You’ve been working magic,” I said.

  “So have you.” His brows drew together, and he frowned down at my hands. “Who assaulted you? I’ve not encountered magic like that in more than two hundred years. It’s…very old.”

  I shivered at the memory, and Armaeus gestured to a passing waitress. A moment later, I was lofting another flute of champagne, Armaeus gracefully palming his own glass as he regarded me steadily.

  “You want the long explanation, or just to crawl around in my brain?” I asked.

  I didn’t miss the surge of interest in his gaze, but to his credit, he merely gestured to me. “Words will suffice. That way you can keep track of what you’ve told me.”

  The rueful response served its purpose, and I stiffened my spine, taking a long sip of the champagne as I reordered my thoughts. Armaeus was both more and less than a friend to me, I needed to remember. He’d held my heart in those long-fingered hands and he’d freely admitted to fearing he would eventually rip said organ to shreds, quite deliberately, if it meant preserving the balance of magic in the world.

  Our relationship was…complicated.

  “First things first. Gamon is healed,” I said, gulping down another hit of champagne. I paused. “I think.”

  “She is,” he confirmed, the trace of a smile making his face even more preternaturally beautiful. “Dr. Sells was kind enough to provide an update earlier this evening. Gamon is sleeping under heavy sedation, moved to a specialized room where she cannot wield her magic.”

  “You found some kry
ptonite?”

  “Metals mixed with nonconducting materials to draw but then hold any energy she would redirect. She’s quite skilled at channeling energy, according to Sells.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that.” I grimaced. “I couldn’t heal her the way you work with me. My energies and hers aren’t in sync that way.”

  “Creation and destruction cycles.” He nodded. “They can blend, but usually at great personal cost to one or both parties.”

  “Probably would have been better if I’d known that going in.” Another sip of champagne. “Anyway, I healed her just enough for her to flip out on me, and she—” I shrugged. “Well, she sort of blew my hands off.”

  The Magician scowled, then pointed abruptly, a passing waitress jerking to a stop and wheeling toward us to accept our empty glasses, her eyes in a panic for another moment until she blinked at her tray, clearly wondering where the flutes had come from.

  Armaeus, however, was already focused on my hands. He picked them up gingerly, turned them over. “Blank,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know. Ma-Singh is ready to skip in small circles, says my new lack of fingerprints will make it difficult for anyone to find me.” A memory was triggered, and I stiffened. “That reminds me. Interpol looks like they’re gearing up for a manhunt with me as the focus. You know anything about them creating a Blue Notice on me?”

  Armaeus ignored the question. “It’s not only your fingerprints, Miss Wilde,” he said, his voice laden with curiosity.

  I glanced down, and immediately understood what he was saying. It wasn’t merely my finger pads that had come back smooth as porcelain—no telltale whorls or waves, no ridges or dips or dents. My palms were blank as well. There was no heart line, no health line, no inset cuts for the number of babies I might have or embedded triangles or cross hatches to indicate whether I was born to be a creative genius, or an accountant, or if I was doomed to die before I hit fifty. I hadn’t noticed before, but I might as well be wearing latex gloves for all the secrets my palms now gave away. “Whoa. I seem to recall having no lines is kind of a bad thing.”