by Jenn Stark
“Asshats.” I peered up at the seals. They were about the size of my palm, thick chunks of metal with geometric symbols etched into them. The first disk had something that looked like a flower made up of intersecting circles. The second featured a set of intersecting triangles, and the third boasted a complex pattern I was almost sure I’d seen before—a mashup of circles, triangles, and hexagons. “What’s the deal with the symbols?”
Death didn’t get a chance to answer.
A thin high-pitched wail shot through the still air. From the far-off mouth of the corridor, the sound of motorcycles starting noisily flooded back to us. “You weren’t lying to those guys, right? They won’t get hurt?”
“Not if they don’t slow down,” Death said, a little too obliquely for my taste. “But you might want to get this over with. It’s been a long time since these spirits have walked the earth.”
“Noted.” I squinted as I slid the pry bar under the first seal. As Death had said, the seals weren’t hard to dislodge. The rocks were uneven, and the silver disks weren’t deep-set. The first seal came off with the thinnest metallic ping.
I stowed it in my hoodie. “So the final card was the Knight of Swords, pretty much a guy on a horse galloping like mad. Something you’re not telling me?”
Before Death could respond, the earth rumbled beneath my feet, then seemed to drop a good six inches before coming back up again. “What the hell?”
“Rockslide. We need to move.” Death jabbed her flashlight at our targets. The second disk popped out easily. When the third pinged free, however, the ground dipped again and swayed. Rocks tumbled out of the wall. A rushing breeze spewed from the holes, swirling around us, bitterly cold. The howls from deep inside the mountain increased in volume and pitch.
“Give me your vial,” Death ordered as I pocketed the last seal.
I tossed her the tube of silver. She turned and threw it at the nearest hole—not a moment too soon. The vial crackled like a fluorescent light, illuminating a miasma of wraiths apparently desperate to get to the silver inside the vial, but unable to break the glass directly because they didn’t actually have hands. Instead, the whipping gale caused by their frantic movements finally smashed the glass tube against the wall.
A fine stream of silver poured from the vial, and the wraiths screamed with feral delight, all the nearest ones taking clearer form—becoming almost corporeal. There were miners and women dressed in breeches and long tunics, and another woman wearing a long gown, all of them lit from within by an infernal light.
They were focused on the silver, however, and that was what counted. But before I could hightail it out of the mine, Death flattened me against the wall.
Don’t move, she mouthed.
Another roar of motorcycle engines sounded above us, and the wraiths stopped, their eyes glowing bright. My eyes widened, and I instantly understood. All those other silver vials filled to the brim with pure high-grade silver. Death had given them to the riders not as payment—or not only as payment anyway.
They were bait.
Horror knifed through me, but there was no time to protest. In the next breath, the ghosts roared up the passageway.
Death surged forward as soon as the first wave shot past us, pushing and shoving me ahead of her.
“But why?” I gasped. The three silver disks clanged inside my hoodie. “How?”
“Run!” I heard more ghosts following us, but the whoops of men ahead drowned out even the guttural roar of their bikes. We burst out of the hole in time to see the glow of Tom’s taillight bouncing over the rocks, a stream of ghosts hurtling after him and gaining fast. I ran forward to the edge of the tailings, disregarding the shaking mountain beneath me, and peered over the side.
Five bikes raced down the mountain with what looked like thick smoke practically clinging to their back wheels. Death stood beside me, her hands out, her breathing heavy. Muttering a language I’d never heard her speak before but which sounded vaguely familiar, she lifted her hands. The bikes kept roaring away. As I watched, Tom and Chuck peeled off in a dogleg, taking most of the ghosts with them.
Suddenly, the murky stream following the riders stopped, suspended for a long moment. Then it started flowing backward.
“Um…” I said, stiffening.
Death pushed me behind her. “Don’t lose the seals,” she barked.
I clutched the thin disks as the ghosts of centuries past rushed back toward us. More came out of the mountain too. The wraiths ripped over and around me, never touching me, but wave after wave of them slammed into Death’s body, as if she were a lightning rod for the undead.
They didn’t travel through her, though. There was no portal into the light that I could see, no sparkly absolution. Instead, Death seemed to internalize the spirits’ very essence, her body a sail blown full by a thousand winds. My own hair thrashed around in a frenzy, my clothes battering and snapping. I hugged the disks to me, staggering against the tide of surging, screeching ghosts. Around and around, then into Death, pummeling her back and forth, spinning her sideways—
Then there was nothing but silence.
Beside me, Death exhaled a long breath, stumbling forward a step.
“Been a while,” she gritted out.
Even her voice sounded hollow. I turned back toward the mountain, gazing at the mine’s yawning entry, expecting to see another round of spirits waiting to attack. Instead, the steep slope appeared to have slid down on itself once again, blocking off the entry to the upper mine.
“Um, where’d they go?” I chattered the question, my entire body still shaking with adrenaline. “And don’t tell me you ate their souls. Because that’s gross.”
Death snorted, but I’d never seen her so spent. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” she rasped. She lurched away, coughing white smoke. “And don’t watch this part.”
Something in her voice convinced me not to pry. I swung my gaze back out over the darkening mountain and braced myself for whatever would come next.
Far below us, the Montana Maniacs streaked away in a stream of winking lights, the faintest whoops of their laughter lifting on the wind.
Chapter Two
It took us another three hours to make our own way down the mountain without our guides and to a different airstrip. This one appeared to have been constructed for the personal use of a cattleman. A low-slung building squatted at the near end. Two planes rested on the runway, both of them puddle jumpers, neither of them inscribed with the Arcana Council’s distinctive logo.
Death cut the engine to the motorcycle as the building’s door opened. A few men strode out and split off toward the two aircraft. I looked from one airplane to the other, then back to Death. She wasn’t looking so hot.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She pulled a heavy cloth bag from her jacket pocket. Without needing to ask the question, I retrieved my prize as well, the three silver seals. Their etching caught the overhead lights of the runway, the effect almost that of an electric current running through the disks.
“When you access your phone, you’ll see you’ve received a message from Father Jerome in Paris,” she said. Once I slipped the seals inside the bag, she pulled the top string taut, then folded the cloth over the disks again for good measure before placing the packet inside her jacket. “Simon was monitoring the line and let me know. The plane on the left will take you to Great Falls, where you’ll find a private jet to get you the rest of the way.”
“Why?” I asked flatly. “What’s wrong with Father Jerome?”
The last I’d seen the priest, he was ensconced in one of his safe houses in Paris, rebuilding after a Molotov cocktail had been tossed through a window. No one was hurt—the attack had been a message more than anything, from a woman who clearly cared enough to send the very best. But I hadn’t heard anything from Father Jerome since the attack, and my adrenaline jacked at the idea that he’d been targeted again.
Death shook
her head. “He’s safe, the children are safe. You should still go there.”
I had no reason not to trust Death, but still, that hinky feeling had never quite gone away. “Armaeus is behind this recovery job, right? He asked you to do it. And for me to do it.”
She blinked at me. “Of course,” she said, her manner fully authentic.
“And he knows you’re sending me off to Paris rather than bringing me back?”
Death shrugged, still authentic. “He does not. He’ll have to cool his heels for a few days waiting for you, but that’s not a problem. You’re needed in Paris more than Armaeus needs you to deliver these seals.”
Something about her answer rubbed me the wrong way. “Why?”
Death tilted her head as she gazed at me. It wasn’t my imagination. She looked older than she had when we’d left for this job, older by a lot.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked bluntly. “Did you eat those things after all?”
She snorted. “I didn’t. And even if I had, that’s not for you to understand. You’re not a Council member. You’re the head of the very mortal House of Swords. You should focus on that.”
Her redirection was more irritating than it should have been, but I couldn’t help myself. On a need-to-know basis, I always needed to know. “You don’t have to get all secret decoder ring on me. I was just curious.”
“You’re far more than that,” Death said. “You’re immortal now, and it’s changed you beyond your physical form. As part of that change, you’ll become increasingly fixated on members of the Council—what we do, what we think, how we decide. The act of seeking out, of learning, becomes a drug. There’s a good reason for this. The Council always needs members, whether at the highest level or as foot soldiers to the greater cause. So there are built-in attractions to lure those who might best fill such roles.”
I hadn’t known that. Then again, I hadn’t exactly gotten the owner’s manual after Armaeus’s little magic trick a few days ago. I’d kept meaning to hit him up for an explanation of what it really meant to be immortal, but sleeping eighteen hours a day had seemed like a far better decision. And besides…
“I’m not going to be staying this way long,” I said. It was simply too weird, this whole immortal thing. I wasn’t a Council member, but I wasn’t a straight-up Connected anymore either. Instead I was a stranger in my own skin, feeling constantly on the outside, looking in. I didn’t like it. “Even Armaeus wants me to change back.”
Death’s expression betrayed her skepticism. “The Magician no longer knows what he wants, and that’s also dangerous.” She pointed at my neck. “You’re not wearing Annika Soo’s jade necklace anymore. Why?”
I shrugged, forcing myself not to lift a defensive hand to my collarbone. “I gave it to Jiao Peng for analysis.” The aunt of the former leader of the House of Swords had reacted with the same sour expression on her face that Death now wore, but I simply didn’t feel right holding on to the necklace. It wasn’t mine.
“It belongs to the House of Swords, of which you’re the leader,” Death said reprovingly, as if she could read my mind. Could she? Needed to double-check that. “It contains powerful magic.”
“Which she’s testing out with a high-ranking Connected team right now, to identify what properties the necklace has. I’m not going to wear something I don’t understand. I tried that once with leg warmers. It didn’t work out so well.”
Death waved me to the second plane. “Go to Paris. Armaeus will still be here when you’re ready to come back. And take these.” She fished in her pockets and pulled out a small plastic bag. Inside were two capsules.
“What are they?” I asked, peering at the bag as I took it. I wasn’t a prude, but I had my limits. “I don’t do technoceuticals.”
“You’ll do these, if you’re smart,” she said. “The mixture is mostly silver, and you’re going to wish you had it in your system if things go down the way I expect them to.” She tapped her jacket where the seals were now safely stowed. “Up there on the mountain, you were carrying enough high-grade silver on your body to serve as an effective ward. But you’ll need something else now.”
“Gotcha.” She turned away before I could ask why, specifically, I needed to up my silver RDA. She headed toward her own plane, while I was left with the second. I stowed the pills in my hoodie as I walked, wondering where I could get them tested. I had no intention of taking pharmaceutical advice from someone who’d just sucked down souls.
Over the course of the next few hours, I had to acknowledge that at least Death had done an excellent job on the flight arrangements. I boarded a Council jet in Great Falls, then transferred once more at JFK before landing in Charles de Gaulle at a private airstrip. I’d expected to see Max Bertrand, Father Jerome’s current right-hand man and my favorite chauffeur in Europe, waiting for me there. Instead, a different but no less familiar figure stood beside the stretch limo: Nigel Friedman.
“Madame Wilde,” he said, with impeccable British formality.
The Ace of Swords looked ever so stylish in his navy-blue suit, rep tie, pocket square, and enameled cuff links. Even his side-swept blond hair resisted the tug of the light evening breeze, as if it was too well-bred to ruffle.
To almost every other member of the female persuasion, the former British special forces agent was premium eye candy. To me, Nigel was my prime competition, always trying to out-heist me in our pursuit of artifacts for sale on the arcane black market. Except now, he worked for me.
“I don’t need a bodyguard here, Nigel. I need Uber.” I zipped my worn hoodie against the early morning chill. A thick fog held the City of Light in muted shadows, waiting for the late summer sun to burn it away. The stink of petrol and fumes hung in the air around me, the acrid smell still preferable to the canned air I’d been breathing for the past several hours.
“Jiao Peng disagreed,” Nigel said, opening the back door to the limo. “You did give her the right to run the House of Swords as she saw fit. Especially given your refusal to wear Madame Soo’s necklace, she saw fit to ensure your protection.”
“Uh-huh.” I’d slept most of the flight, but I was still unreasonably tired. Immortality, apparently, doubled as Ambien. “Then why’d she stick me with you?”
Nigel snorted, but he didn’t relinquish the door, and I obligingly entered the sedan. There was no barrier between the front and back seat, so I’d be trapped into speaking with Nigel whether I wanted to or not.
The Brit wasted no time getting right to it. “Your summons from Father Jerome pinged the switchboard at the House’s Vegas operation when it came in late last night,” he said. “It didn’t take long for us to realize you weren’t in the city.” He flicked his gaze to me in the rearview mirror. “As an aside, you should do a better job of informing us of your whereabouts.”
“You clearly figured it out,” I said, though the defensive edge in my voice was mainly there because Nigel was right. Technically, I was the head of the House of Swords now, one of four Houses of mortal mysticism that had survived behind the scenes for centuries, but were now getting drawn back into the war on magic. Though I’d quickly installed Jiao Peng to run administrative duties and the Mongolian general Ma-Singh to cover things on the security side, I couldn’t simply walk away. I had obligations.
I also had irritations. “How’d you know about Father Jerome texting me? Is everyone tapping my phone?”
“We are, of course. Since you arrived in Paris via a Council-chartered plane, it appears they are as well. Otherwise, I suspect it is secure. But, more importantly, we know things the Council doesn’t.”
Ooo. That sounded good. I straightened against the leather seat. “Like what things?”
“Like it wasn’t Father Jerome who texted you,” Nigel said. He shook his head as alarm spiked through me. “The good father is fine. The children are safe. I’ve been in conversation with him this morning to confirm. But the message drawing you to Paris was not sent by him, despite what the Council�
�and Jiao Peng as well, at first—thought.”
“So who sent it?” I swallowed a yawn as I looked out the window. “And where are we going? Not to any of the safe houses.”
“No,” Nigel said. “I was thinking the Musée d’Orsay.” He continued as I glanced back sharply to him. “It’s clear someone wants you in Paris—Paris, not Rome, London, Munich. Chances are, that means they are French. Call it nationalist hubris, but Luc agrees.”
“Luc Banon. Mercault’s man,” I said, identifying the only other active Ace I knew who was still alive. The role of House mercenary had its benefits. Job security wasn’t one of them. “He’s in on this?”
“I contacted him,” Nigel said. “There was always the chance that Mercault wanted to chat because he wants to continue negotiations between the House of Pentacles and Swords, regarding the technoceutical trade in Beijing. Swords has held control of Asia for the past five years, but Soo had begun negotiations with Mercault to give him a piece of the action. With the headquarters of Swords transferring to Las Vegas, now would be an opportune time for him to finalize that agreement.”
I considered that. Mercault was a good egg—albeit a sneaky, often ruthless one. He’d been a generous employer from my earliest days as an artifact hunter. I ordinarily wouldn’t have minded dining with the man. He always picked up the check. But I didn’t have it in me this morning to parse words with another cutthroat syndicate head.
Nigel grimaced. “For the record, however, it wasn’t Mercault. According to Luc, he’s still distracted with the diamond mining in Nigeria.”
I snorted. “Thank heavens for small favors.”
“Don’t count on his distraction lasting. The biggest money is by far in technoceuticals.” Nigel flashed me a look over the backseat. “You’ll have to deal with that eventually.”
“I’ve had the job for twelve seconds. I’m working on it.” Nigel was right, though. Annika Soo had led the House of Swords to unprecedented financial success—in part, it appeared, because of her enthusiastic trafficking of designer drugs to the arcane black market. I’d stayed away from that little rat trap of House business so far, but I couldn’t for long.