by Elise Kova
Chapter 24
A Dangerous Deal
FOR A SECOND time, the recreation room didn’t disappoint. Her whole set-up was there, including new modifications Jo recognized from her time in Paris. She silently thanked the faceless god of the mansion for its intuition in knowing both what she needed and wanted.
Jo assumed her seat and opened a new notepad on the desktop. She pulled her sleeves over her hands and poised them at the ready.
Where to start?
Jo racked her memory for the initial information Snow had given them on the wish. As things came to her, she typed them down. From broad strokes to seemingly insignificant details, it was impossible to know what might prove useful. There was Canada, the nurse who made the wish, the illness. . .
Gathering up as much medical info on the disease was probably a good place to start.
She didn’t waste any time. Jo went straight for the main databases of the centers for disease control in the European Union, Canada, Russia, and Japan, dredging up all the information she could. Their firewalls and safety protocols were mere child’s play. Jo unleashed the full force of every hacking tool she knew, including what she didn’t even fully understand—her magic. She suspended any last, lingering, ingrained skepticism and forced herself to believe with all she was that she did have magic. And if she did, then damn it, she would use it.
At first, she pulled up a wide array of information, but drilling down became more difficult by the moment. She needed more than the encyclopedia basics of the disease. Jo probed deeper. But no matter how many disease research databanks she hacked, she only came away with limited information—nothing she could guarantee would be beneficial.
What made it even more frustrating was the realization that she had no idea where the patient even was. There were 200 research-focused hospitals, fifty that specialized in virology, and ten in this particular disease. But narrowing it down among those ten was nearly impossible. Without knowing the status of the patient, how could she hope to close the gap properly?
Jo also didn’t know how Eslar’s power worked exactly. She assumed he was some kind of healer, but what could and couldn’t he do? It was all guesswork.
What sort of help could she provide if she was missing the most important pieces of the puzzle?
With an aggravated groan, Jo leaned back into her chair and pushed away from the desk, rolling a couple of feet back. Running a hand over her face, she began wracking her brain for something, anything, an idea buried in the ether of her skill or magic that might allow her to help. Something that might close the gap she’d unintentionally widened.
All she managed to dredge up was a big ol’ pile of nothing.
Jo switched to other, more distracting tasks. She’d learned early on in her career that sometimes even an appropriately timed cat video could keep her mind fresh. Focusing on one thing for too long, especially if that thing continued to birth more frustration than success, was only setting herself up for failure.
Lucky for her, she had something far more interesting than cat videos to give her mind a break with this time. Not a long break, of course. Just enough to put her head back in the game fresh after the refreshing challenge of a new puzzle.
With the ease of familiarity, Jo pulled up a handful of websites, both on and off the dark web, as well as some historical databases and birth records. She started with the member of their group who she’d managed not only to get a name and date from, but also an occupation.
Wayne Davis, Great Depression, born 1910, stock broker.
She wasn’t necessarily surprised when no information on such a man came up, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t just a little bit disappointed.
She tried the same tactics with Nico and Takako, the only others about whom she had enough general information to plug into search engines and sift through the unspoken data. Outside of some vague occurrences in their time, she once again managed to dig up nothing of import. There were thousands of Takakos in Japan in the late 1990s, but Jo already knew that none of them were the Takako she was familiar with.
Just like her, it was as though they never existed.
A thought tugged unbidden at the back of Jo’s mind, a bit of information that she felt instantly guilty for the moment she’d entered the name into her slew of scripts currently spidering the databases.
Julia de’Este.
Strangely, despite the sense Jo had gotten that Nico’s fiance had continued to exist post-wish, no sign of her popped up in any records from the 1400s. In fact, the only Julia at all of note that she could find was a mistress to the assassinated Pope Alexander VI in 1504. But then again, perhaps she wasn’t a woman “of note” at all, simply the woman that Nico had loved enough to sacrifice his own existence for. Someone too common to have made the history books and preserved papers of the late fifteenth century, but someone Nico still adored even hundreds of years later.
Really, that kind of love should be the sort of thing put in history books.
Whatever that reason, Jo decided to bring her snooping to an end, letting Nico’s past remain in his now non-existent history. Even if it didn’t much answer her question.
Some love stories were too good to be tainted with logic.
Jo sighed and closed all browsers. It wasn’t her place and she’d had enough of a reprieve. “Back to this stupid fuc—”
“Well someone seems a bit exasperated.”
Jo didn’t even turn. She recognized the interrupting voice and its eerie presence almost immediately. “Pan, what do you want?”
“Don’t be rude.” Pan leaned against the desk, folding her arms. Unlike the first time in Jo’s recreation room, her focus was entirely and overwhelmingly on Jo. The look had an intimidating, cat-like air about it. “I’m here to help.”
“Are you?” Jo pushed away to look at the woman-child.
“Why are you so skeptical of me?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to help you from the start. I warned you of the dangers of meddling in the real world and I was going to involve you in the wish.”
She wasn’t wrong. So why did Jo feel so uneasy still? Jo took a deep breath and tried to let it inflate her lungs enough to be the bigger person. “Sorry. I’m just trying—”
“Trying to help? Time is ticking.” She tapped at her wrist and it was then that Jo noticed there was no watch there. A pocket watch, perhaps, like Nico’s? “Say, how about we make a deal?”
“Of what kind?” Jo asked cautiously.
“I’ll give you information if you show me your magic.”
“Didn’t you say you’d already seen it when I was working in here before?”
“Glimpses.” Pan continued before Jo could press how “glimpses” had made Pan confident enough to go to the group in her absence. “I want to see it in full.”
“What kind of information?”
“Anything you want.”
Jo glanced back at the monitors. It wasn’t as if she was getting very far on her own. She still only understood the ten-thousand-foot overview of what the Society did. Then, there was the current wish itself. If no one else was going to help her, what choice did she have?
“What do you say?” Pan prodded, holding a hand out in Jo’s direction when she didn’t answer quickly enough.
Something still felt off, like signing off on a business transaction without first getting all of the details. But Jo was a slave to curiosity, and, before she could talk herself out of it, she took Pan’s hand and shook it firmly once.
“Sure. But I want the information first.”
Chapter 25
Cold Hands
JO PULLED HER hand back, running it along her jeans. She thought her hands felt. . . cold.
Pan’s were icy, like they were coated in a thin layer of frost that melted at Jo’s living touch. She wondered if it was some kind of residual magic, her mind instantly going back to Wayne. She really shouldn’t go making deals with magical people without first knowing what type of magic they had.
The young woman situated herself on the opposite desk, folding her ankles and leaning back nonchalantly. “What do you want to know?”
Jo already knew that “everything” would be too broad, and that Pan was likely on a timer for how much information she’d give. Jo chewed over how to phrase the question for a moment, trying to decide what was broad enough that she’d get the most information possible. “How did I affect the Severity of Exchange so much with my actions involving the Black Bank?”
“I’d think it’s obvious.”
“Maybe I’m stupid.”
“I doubt that.” Pan smiled thinly.
“Will you answer or not?”
The woman-child hummed and leaned back. “Well, the first thing you must understand is how the Severity of Exchange works.” Pan held up her thumb and pointer finger, peeking through them like a tiny window. “If it’s a little wish, like a wish made with a drawn circle, then Snow can grant it immediately.”
“A drawn circle?” The memory of something popped its nose up in the back of Jo’s mind. She couldn’t remember if it was something Abuelita had mentioned, or something she’d read online. “You mean, the circle that’s used to cast the wish?”
“You got it!” Pan clapped her hands, but the excitement felt distinctly condescending. “There are four levels. Circles that are drawn are for very simple wishes. Then there are circles made of non-living things, but still items of importance. Above that are those made with foliage and once-living things.”
“That can’t be right.” Pan seemed startled at Jo’s sudden interjection. She quickly clarified, “I drew my circle.”
“Yes, but with what?” The way Pan asked the question, it was almost as if she already knew the answer.
Jo bristled. The memory of Yuusuke was assaulting, oddly superimposed over her most recent sight of him. The pain of losing him was quickly replaced with frustration at his renewed determination to hack the Black Bank. “Blood.”
“And that’s the fourth level. A circle of blood, or death.”
“So, Snow can make wishes happen without extra help if they’re the first level?”
Pan nodded.
“What’s his power, really, then?” It sounded impressive, to be able to do such things in only a blink.
“To grant wishes.” Pan’s hand fell back to the desk and her mouth curled in a thin smile. Jo had to stop herself from sighing; that much about his power was obvious. Luckily, Pan didn’t take long to continue. “He’s got a very rare, very old, and very powerful magic. One of the originals, actually.” She paused, her eyes drifting back to Jo. They felt like cross-hairs. “Though, you already know that. You’re here, after all. . .” Her expression shifted again, resuming her perpetually amused smirk. “But that magic isn’t free. Nothing is, not even wishes.”
“Everything comes at a price,” Jo rephrased. It was an idea she was well acquainted with. “He feeds on worlds of possibilities.”
“Oh-ho, you’ve already learned that?” Pan smiled, almost in approval. “Yes, to feed that insatiable magic of his and grant wishes, he destroys and feeds on worlds.”
“How does he consume them?”
Pan merely shrugged.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s magic.” She smirked at Jo.
“Does he kill people?” Like he did with me?
“One, or thousands. It all depends on how you look at it.”
Her throat ran dry. Jo swallowed, but it felt scratchy, the attempt getting lodging back behind her tongue. The icy air of the room had been filtered through the computer fans too many times. There wasn’t any speck of humidity left in what seemed to be increasingly frigid air.
“If a wish doesn’t fall into a close enough margin, then he has to draw more power. The world has to make a bigger jump. Such a shift can be. . . violent.”
“Violent, how?”
“Violent in a not good way.” It wasn’t an answer but Jo knew she wouldn’t get anything more.
“So, me, and everyone else in the Society. . . we prevent these violent shifts?”
“Exactly.” Pan clapped her hands. “You’re there to make sure that Snow isn’t using his magic to force too big of a jump, therefore preventing any unexpected outcomes.”
Jo made note of the words, “unexpected outcomes.” Even if Pan was partly explaining things she already knew, there was new information here, things worth remembering. “What happens if we don’t close the gap enough in the Severity of Exchange?”
“That hasn’t happened yet. So, I guess it’s not really something to worry about. . . unless you just caused it with your little antics in the mortal world.”
There it was, that nasty, nagging feeling nudging at the back of her mind. Jo examined the woman head to toe. “That’s not an answer.” Why had her voice dropped to a whisper? Guilt. It was the guilt that threatened to drown her.
Pan’s smile widened, like a cat that had finally found its mouse. “Why? Are you scared?”
“What will happen?” Jo asked again.
“The magic is made up elsewhere.” Pan pushed herself off the desk, standing once more. “Don’t worry so much! The world is safe. There’s seven of us under our dear Snow now. You’re part of a long line of defense against magic going awry.”
“How do you know all this?” Maybe if she asked enough questions, one would elicit a satisfactory enough answer, one that might assuage the concern that was still gnawing on the vertebrae in her neck.
“Snow and I are very close. I’m practically his righthand man. Or, woman, rather,” she corrected with a giggle.
“Eslar isn’t?” Everyone, the man included, had made it seem like Eslar was the most senior member of the group. The elf had a sort of mothering air about him that seemed to affirm the idea of his role among them.
“Eslar?” Pan repeated, as if surprised. Jo wondered just how much time the woman really spent with the rest of them. “Why would he be? I’m the one who’s been with Snow the longest.”
Well, that threw out a significant chunk of what Jo thought she knew about the group. “What is the Society, really?”
“I think you’ve stopped asking the right questions,” Pan said with a tilt of her head.
“Back to Severity of Exchange then. . .” Jo reluctantly agreed. “How do I help lessen the Severity of Exchange for this wish?”
“For that—” Pan paused, the door taking her attention. “I think he’ll be able to help you.”
“Who?”
There was a knock. The door cracked open and Eslar poked his narrow nose through. “Am I interrupting?” His eyes darted from Pan to Jo.
“Nope.” Pan opened the door the rest of the way. “I was just leaving.”
Jo was distracted by a sudden smell: cinnamon-sugar, baked dough. It was familiar, so familiar that it made her chest ache, like being assaulted by the aromatic representation of home.
“Some other time, you’ll show me your magic,” Pan said, summoning back Jo’s focus. “Don’t forget our deal.”
The girl was gone before Jo could say anything further, leaving her alone with the elf and his familiar plate of pastries.
Chapter 26
A Bribe Named “Sopapilla”
“WHAT DEAL?” ESLAR asked as he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him while balancing a plate of sopapillas. Jo instantly recognized them and the accompanying honey jar that rested at the center of the dish.
Her stomach fought with her brain on what to say and it all kind of mushed together. “She wanted to see my magic, was telling me about the Society in exchange. . . Where did you get those?” As soon as the question left her mouth, Jo’s brain mustered the answer. There was only one when something appeared out of nowhere in the mansion. “Did Samson make these?”
“Just so.” Eslar smiled, an expression that Jo hadn’t ever quite seen cross his features. It was filled with fondness and. . . sorrow? Longing? “I had them made to Wayne’s specificat
ions.” He paused. “Well, almost. I had to look up my own specifications and assure Samson that they were not actually constructed from soap.”
Jo laughed, remembering Wayne’s reaction when he had taken her to her home in Texas. He was either an admirable joker, or lovingly dumb; either way, the quality had stolen a soft, squishy corner of her heart.
Eslar deposited the Hispanic pastry on the desk before her. Jo wasted no time, immediately ripping through the thin top layer of crisp, light brown dough. The minute she had access to the hollow center, she took to filling it with honey, chest clenching at the memories flooding her mind and heart. As she took a generous bite, some honey dribbled down her chin that she mopped up with a finger, popping it back in her mouth to savor.
“I’m fairly sure my actions have not earned my being gifted fresh sopapilla.” Jo spoke over her food, still enough of a lady to cover her mouth with her free hand. The words were a bitter contrast to the bright sweetness of the dish.
“It is a bribe.”
Something about the direct and deadpan delivery gave her a chuckle. “All right, I appreciate the candor. Hit me.”
“I am interested in what you had to say in the briefing room.”
Jo’s eating stalled.
“You seemed to believe you could fix your error.”
“I can,” Jo affirmed, wiping her palms on her jeans. “If I have the right information.”
“What information is that?”
“Everything you can tell me.” Jo continued, “I need details. I need to know the hospital, the patient, everything. What can you give me?”
“I shall impart to you all I know. . .” Eslar leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and began listing off details that she had been hungry for not an hour ago.