Call of the Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  “In the parlance of the palm readers, it means your death is imminent.”

  Armaeus shared this little bit of news with all the indifference of a scientist charting mouse poop, but I couldn’t help but tense in his grip. “Are you serious?” My palms felt itchy thinking about it. “Will they ever come back?”

  “I’ve never seen this type of healing.” Armaeus turned my hands over, but at least the tops looked normal. I could even see the veins beneath the skin, the tendons stretching and tensing as Armaeus examined my knuckles. “What were you holding that caused the damage?”

  “I thought it was bits and pieces of Gamon.” At Armaeus’s sharp look, I shrugged. “I didn’t know! She was in horrible shape, and her beliefs are not even in the same hemisphere as mine. She told Sells if I held those items, she would recognize me, let me in no matter how crazed her mind was. Sells gave the bits to Nikki, who gave them to me.”

  Armaeus considered that, then, to my surprise, nodded. “That matches Dr. Sells’s account. The woman delivered to her should not have survived her injuries. Sells had to supercool her core to get the original dressings off—and that was after a medical sedative heavily laced with substances that would have killed most mortals, Connected or otherwise. Gamon was barely alive.”

  “I just wanted her healed,” I muttered, flexing my hands. “And I did that. I’m not even convinced she was sane when she turned on me, more a wounded animal lashing out.”

  “Be careful that you do not underestimate Gamon, Miss Wilde. You saved her for a good reason: you believe you need her. And, arguably, you do. The Houses of Magic have not worked in tandem for millennia. If Gamon died without a successor, it could be years before Cups would be poised to assist.”

  “We don’t have years, though, do we?”

  Armaeus let my hands drop. Despite myself, I missed the contact. “We don’t. Hera’s assimilation to our time has been…an education. And not entirely a pleasurable one. Worse, since she’s arrived, there’s been a decided ripple in the veil, as if someone or something else is testing the barrier for weakness, perhaps preparing to make another summons.”

  “The veil is shredded, if Gamon’s fractured mind is anything to go on.” I blinked, then stared at Armaeus. “She went through it, or she tried. She tried to follow…” I frowned. “I’m not calling her Mom. But Tezcat-whatever isn’t right either. That’s just a god she co-opted for Gamon to latch on to. The Denounced isn’t working for me either. Is her name really Vigilance?” It sounded a little too pleasant, to me, like calling a goblin shark a guppy.

  “That, not even Hera knows. She refers to her only as the Denounced.”

  “Also helpful. And the Hermit? Has he shown up yet?” Try as I might, I had a hard time calling Willem of Galt “Dad.” Parent issues, I had them.

  “He has not. His home on the Strip is prepared, warded from interference. But he remains closed to me. I’ve attempted to reach out to him, but he has not responded.”

  “So what’s he doing?”

  “He’s the guardian of the veil.” Armaeus shrugged. “He guards. Despite what Hera may think, he hasn’t abandoned his duties. Or at least, I don’t think so.”

  Comforting. “Then what about Llyr? Hera seemed to think Llyr and whatever, the Denounced, are teaming up for a road show, wherever the veil is weakest. She still holding to that?”

  “She is, and the key element to that concern is where the veil is weakest. It is the question that I have put to Willem, without reply. But with this new testing of the veil…” He let the rest of the sentence go unstated. A weak point positioned in front of two strong, wide-awake gods would be bad, especially if someone was planning a shout-out to either one of them. Very bad. And only the one-time Willem of Galt stood between the gods and their long-awaited homecoming.

  I grimaced. My father, the Hermit, had taken a far less glamorous path to his ascendance than the Devil had. Willem had been a skilled artisan, in his way, but still little more than a serf, a construction worker in the Middle Ages, his hands heavy with the clay that made up some of the most beautiful cathedrals of his day. How he’d managed to go from there to watching the heavens, I didn’t know, but his patience and attention to detail had kept the veil from falling to tatters all these centuries since.

  “Why now?” I muttered aloud. I glanced around. The Devil and Nikki had left. “Why is the veil failing now?”

  “The world is going through climactic transition,” Armaeus said, as if we were discussing local politics at a coffee shop with patchouli in the air.

  I gave him a withering stare. “There’s been climactic transition throughout history. You don’t think Caesar or Genghis Khan didn’t cause a stir during their reigns? Or that the earth wasn’t going through upheaval during the World Wars? Yet the veil held. But now, all of a sudden, the gods are becoming wakey-wakey? If we don’t know why that’s happening, the best we’re going to be able to do is forestall the inevitable.”

  “Perhaps.” But I could tell from Armaeus’s voice that he was distracted. I looked up to find his gaze fixed on the far end of the dance club. When I turned, however, I couldn’t see anything, the spotlights accompanying the music far too bright. “They’re here.”

  “Who’s here?” I asked, squinting. A moment later, I got the reference. “Oh, right. The high rollers. The ones Brody can’t identify and—what, you can’t either? Simon couldn’t do anything with those photos I sent over?” I thought about the Island Giant I’d met on the dance floor, but he hadn’t matched those pictures either.

  Armaeus grunted something noncommittal, but I still couldn’t see anyone standing out amid the sea of people.

  I squinted. “Sorry, but the glare in this place is out of control.”

  The irritation came through even as the Magician spoke without words, directly into my mind. “Open your eye, Miss Wilde.”

  Oh. Right. I squared myself and took a deep breath, then, for the second time that evening, flickered open my third eye.

  Once again, the room was reduced to nothing but beams of energy, roiling zips and pops of electricity signifying Connecteds and non-Connecteds, and every variation in between. Those who’d been drinking too much shivered and danced erratically, those in pain drooped and sputtered, and those dangerously close to oblivion formed whirling dervishes of light on the dance floor, their flames so chaotically bright, they could not last.

  But that wasn’t where Armaeus was staring. And where he was…

  I swallowed, trying to stay steady, but Armaeus was too closely attuned to me to let me get away with that. “That’s the man who confronted you,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “It was,” I said, fixing on the Island Giant. “He gave me his card.”

  “Where is it?” The question was sharp, too sharp, and I broke out of my reverie, fixing my attention on Armaeus.

  “I passed it to Nikki, why? What’s up with him?”

  The Magician’s reaction was odd for several reasons, not the least of which was that he was immortal, a demigod, for all that he’d originally walked this earth as a straight-up human. There wasn’t much that surprised him, at least not among the ordinary Connecteds of the world. Those, he regarded as his inferiors. Even me, I suspected.

  “Not you.”

  The words rang in my head with such conviction, I blinked, but Armaeus was watching me now, his irritation gone. Instead, it was replaced with a look of patent curiosity.

  “As I told you, the magic he shrouds himself with is very old. What did the card say?”

  Though Armaeus spoke the words aloud, I felt them in every part of my being. The Magician was employing the strange vocal projection that he used to great effect to manipulate those around him into doing whatever he wanted…and that he absolutely didn’t need to use with me.

  “Cut it out, Ar—” I also spoke aloud, but he lifted his hand, cutting my word short. I scowled at him. “You want the answer in code?”
/>   “Miss Wilde.”

  Trident, I thought at him. He was seriously starting to nutter my butters. It was one word. Trident.

  The Magician’s eyes widened, but to my surprise, he merely offered me a bemused smile. And spoke aloud again. “My apologies. I thought… It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

  “It kind of does,” I hedged, keeping my barriers up, my mind blank. “You know who that guy is? Or who he might be?”

  “Who he is? No. Who I feared? That’s a long story, for another day.” He smiled and offered me his hand. “The intrepid Trident, or the head of Trident if it’s an organization, not a person, awaits us. As Kreios and Nikki have become unavoidably detained, it seems a shame to keep our guest waiting.”

  Fair enough. Wincing against the jolt of contact, I slipped my hand onto Armaeus’s arm, and together we moved around the upper deck of the XS lounge. Through it all, I kept my third eye open, the electrical signature of the man at the far end never wavering. I steeled myself and knotted my gut as we approached, but as we finally drew level with him, I allowed my third eye to blink closed and used my regular eyes.

  Then scowled.

  The man standing opposite Armaeus was handsome, yes, but he wasn’t anywhere close to looking like Island Giant. This guy was an ascetically thin black man who, even standing still, gave the impression he was a professional dancer, all grace and long lines and wiry strength. His amber eyes tracked the Magician and me carefully as his mouth worked into a soft smile.

  “My name is Kido,” he said, nodding deferentially first to Armaeus, then to me. “I work for the organization Trident. You have met our leader already, I believe. Rangi. He speaks highly of you.”

  For some reason, I didn’t want to let the Magician’s arm go, didn’t want to extend my hand to this man. I sensed the deep well of Connected ability in him, so deep it seemed impossible that I’d never met him before this night. Him or his leader…or their organization. What was Trident, and why had it come to the Strip?

  Armaeus appeared to have no such worries about Kido. He also didn’t seem to mind that this wasn’t Rangi, whom we’d clearly seen across the room, and who’d also just tried to level me.

  “Welcome to Las Vegas,” the Magician said intently, reaching out a hand.

  And that’s when the screaming started.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “She’s dead—she’s dead!”

  How the shrill voice managed to be louder than the music, considering it was coming from the front of the club, was beyond me. Then again, most of the partiers didn’t appear to notice the screech at first. Armaeus and I were already halfway across the room before awareness seemed to fully penetrate the dancers closest to us, and the rising swell of panic was almost a tangible thing.

  “Armaeus—” I began.

  “Not now. There are too many eyes watching our response to this diversion—perhaps this Trident group most of all.”

  That thought spawned a million questions in my mind, but by then, it didn’t so much matter. We burst through a stationary knot of staring people, and I immediately saw the issue. On the wide veranda of XS’s poolside bar area lay a body surrounded by white-shirted employees who were bent over her in furious activity.

  “She just, she just, she was laughing and happy and having fun, and she dropped! She freaking dropped, right there on the ground like she was, like she was—”

  The woman standing at the side of her fallen comrade was dressed in a skintight bandage dress and high-heeled, strap-up sandals, her hair down around her shoulders in wild but beautiful disarray. The party ended at her face, however. Thick streams of mascara ran down her cheeks, and her bright lips were garish against her skin’s unnatural pallor. “She was fine! She was fine, and then she collapsed!”

  “Miss Wilde.” Armaeus’s voice was urgent, tight. “The woman on the concrete is Connected. Her partner is as well.”

  On it.

  Armaeus and I split apart. He moved forward to the crumpled woman, striding with an otherworldly authority that had the advantage of capturing everyone’s attention. “I’m a doctor,” he announced loudly. “A doctor.” The club staffers gladly peeled away from the unconscious woman, and Armaeus knelt.

  I didn’t take the time to secure an immediate update, however, as I had my own charge. My third eye steadfastly open, I narrowed my gaze on the incredibly drunk Connected tottering in front of me, focusing on her aura.

  Her aura was a nightmare.

  Fortunately, the momentum of my stride carried me into the girl’s sphere before my concern fully registered in my brain. I grabbed hold of her hands—empty now of any alcohol, but that clearly hadn’t been the case for most of the night—and jerked her toward me. “Pull it together!” I snapped as her startled eyes met mine. She froze.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Her words were barely a squeak now, and she began shaking uncontrollably, her fear at whatever she saw in me apparently overriding what was happening to her friend. “We were just dancing, having a good time, they said we’d only have fun—only fun!”

  “Miss Wilde. The police have been summoned.”

  “Who said?” I shook the woman once, dimly aware of Nikki’s strident voice in the background, ordering everyone back in her pitch-perfect cop bark. “What did you take, pills? A shot? How much.”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know!” she pleaded, her eyes going wild again. Suddenly, she was clutching my hands. “Is Cindy going to die? Are we both going to die?”

  I didn’t spare a glance to where Armaeus was crouched, but it seemed like he’d been hovering over the woman for an awfully long time. Then again, if she was still alive, he’d probably need her to remain convincingly messed up if he didn’t want to become embroiled with the local police.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I said, and the woman blinked at me, clearly struggling to focus. “What’s your name?”

  “Lori,” she said, nearly gasping the word. She’d begun to shake now, maybe about to go into shock. I didn’t think I could save a housefly at this point, as depleted as I still was.

  “You’re psychic. What’s your ability?”

  “How did you—” The question seemed to pull the woman together, however, and she made a face. “Cards, dice, tea leaves, whatever. I read things. I’m not that good, just starting, but—”

  “How long have you been taking drugs, and which ones?”

  “What?” She attempted to jerk away from me, but I held fast. “I’m not taking drugs. Are you crazy?”

  “You did tonight.”

  “That’s…” Her eyes widened, and she half turned. “I didn’t, I didn’t take what Cindy did. I chickened out—they gave me a drink, just a drink, said they’d be back once I saw, once I understood, once I—” Her words were a babbling run-on now, and I gave up, pulling her back to where Nikki was standing.

  She looked at me, then the girl. “Blue in two, dollface. We should prolly roll.”

  “Someone approached them, gave them both—something.” I thrust the girl at Nikki, whose face instantly registered her understanding. Understanding, then alarm, as her hands closed around the shaking girl’s shoulder.

  “Here you go, girlfriend, I got you. It’s Lori, right? That’s right, Lori, that’s right. You just have a good cry. Never mind that this dress cost more than I used to make in a month, that’s my girl.” As she comforted the now-sobbing girl, Nikki’s eyes connected with mine.

  We gotta go, she mouthed, and I nodded.

  My phone buzzed in my bra, the movement so unexpected I leapt back, nearly toppling in my heels. “I knew putting it there was a dumb idea!” I growled, pulling out the device. I grimaced as I recognized the caller. Just freaking great.

  I put the phone to my ear. “Look, I had nothing to do—”

  “Where are you?” Brody’s voice was low, intense, and strangely muffled, like he was holding his hand over the phone. “You close to the Strip?”
>
  “Uh…” I swung my gaze toward the cops breaking through the crowd. The pool had been cleared, the patio cordoned off, but the party was still going strong inside. On the concrete by the pool, the girl was now sitting up, so the crisis was apparently averted for the moment. Armaeus was nowhere to be found. “Yeah, I’m close. What’s up?”

  “Can you get to Paris like, right now? Dixie’s here, but…” The hesitation in his voice was unsettling. “I don’t know. I think it’s Dixie. But something seems so off about her, and I am not fully up on all this Connected shit. Can you come?”

  “On my way.” I clicked off and signaled to Nikki. She’d already largely disentangled herself from the girl and was handing her off to one of the white-shirted men, who apparently wanted to reunite her with her friend.

  “Problem?” Nikki asked, and I nodded, turning away for a moment to flash back into third-eye view. The electricity was jumping on the main dance floor, Connected and non-Connected, young and old, just like before. With one important difference.

  “They’ve gone. Armaeus and Kreios,” I said.

  “Kreios for sure,” Nikki said, jerking her thumb to a side entrance. “We can get out that way. He split the moment the screaming started, left me practically poolside while he was at it, which is how I got here so fast. Magician…” She cast a look backward. “I thought he was with the girl.”

  “He was.” I set my jaw as we opened the door, the cacophony of sound hitting us full in the face again. The Council members weren’t the only ones pulling a disappearing trick. The second man I’d met tonight was definitely one of the men Brody had sent me, and he and the Island Giant could very well have doped those unsuspecting Connecteds and who knew how many others. But now they were also gone. Had they left with Armaeus? Had the collapsed girl been merely a display of power, like the attacks? If so, to what end? Did the high rollers even have anything to do with the drugging, or was this just going to be another night of chaos on the Strip?