by Jenn Stark
I lifted a hand and rubbed my brow, trying to keep everything Mrs. French was saying straight. “Abigail ascended to the Council even though she was a dark practitioner.”
“Her family was. Not her.”
“Right, her family. But she was broken from that, from that and from what her employer had done to her. Her employer, whom she murdered.”
“While rescuing someone else!”
“Another young woman.”
Mrs. French bit her lip. “Yes. When the Magician interrupted Abigail, she was truly distraught and truly powerful. He told me once that he knew he needed to elevate her or kill her, there was really no other option. And he was in desperate need of Council members in that time period. Your Devil hadn’t ascended yet, nor the Emperor, or the Hanged Man, or—”
“I get the picture. But Abigail was deeply and irretrievably broken. Surely he knew that too.”
She shook her head. “At first, he knew only what she allowed him to know. Which was only what she allowed herself to know when she was with him. Her employer thought her a sleepwalker, but that…that wasn’t truly her affliction.”
I stared at Mrs. French. “And you know what it was?”
“I surely do. I saw it right away. It helped that I had seen it before.” She gave me another rueful smile. “My family may have been Revenants, but that didn’t mean they were the nicest people. They disapproved of my choices. When I became pregnant by a young man who wasn’t of my kind, they took the baby and—” She cleared her throat. “Incarcerated me at a public institution. It was only supposed to be for a short while, but a short while in a Revenant’s life is a far different thing, you see. I saw…a great many things in that place. It had been built for the pauper insane.”
I felt like ice was running through my veins. How had I not known this? How hadn’t I guessed? “You were harmed?”
“Not irredeemably, no. I had the advantage over most of the inmates and a fair number of the keepers in that I was in full possession of my faculties. I made sure I was a favorite of the superintendent. He was a kind man, and there were far too few of those. Eventually, however, I was treated by a visiting psychiatrist, and, well…” She lifted her chin. “He was not a kind man. And he knew there was something…different about me, as Connecteds often do.”
All the dots didn’t merely connect, they lit up like the Strip. “It was Abigail’s employer. You were the girl she saved.”
“When Abigail visited that night, it wasn’t merely that she was in a trance. She was in a different mind altogether. One of thirteen alternates who would surface as time needed, some less manageable than others.”
“But if you knew this, surely the Magician knew it as well.” I thought back to what he had said, that Abigail wasn’t damaged because of her job, that he’d thought she’d be uniquely suited for it. “She had dissociative identity disorder, and he thought she was perfect for the role of Justice?”
“Before Abigail, the role had gone vacant for seven hundred years,” Mrs. French said simply. “You can do the math.”
I blinked at her. “Armaeus didn’t know anything about what the job took.”
“He didn’t know. And when he did finally learn the truth about Abigail’s condition, she appeared to be thriving. Anything one alter experienced, the others covered over, and of course, there were so many other jobs to manage, ad hoc cases that weren’t as dangerous in the main. But one day, she simply couldn’t face it anymore. And when she went…” Mrs. French shrugged. “By then, I had a purpose and a place. I had the boys to care for and so much shelving to do. The Council fed and clothed us and gave us anything we wanted. It wasn’t a bad life.” She glanced up at me. “But you can take me to Judgment now, Justice Wilde. I do understand.”
“Judgment!” I blinked, but there was no slash of silver at Mrs. French’s temple. All her misery and self-recrimination was internally driven, and always had been, I suspected. “No. That’s not what this is about. I just think the boys need a chance to grow up, is all. Children aren’t meant to stay children.”
“But…” Mrs. French’s eyes filled, and her words, when they came, were barely audible. “They’ll leave.”
I nodded, more gently this time. “They’ll leave, hopefully. Once they get a little older. They’ll leave, and they’ll find friends and maybe eventually make families of their own. Being a gifted Connected doesn’t mean you have to stay alone your whole life, after all. Not everyone out in the world is an asshat.”
She gave me a watery smile. “Most of them are. I’ve had a long time to study this.”
“Most of them are,” I agreed.
“Very well, then,” she said heavily. “You tell me what I need to tell them, what I need to do, and I’ll do it, Justice. And if you don’t want me to stay, I understand. Of course I understand. I couldn’t possibly not understand—”
“You’ll be staying as long as you’d like, Mrs. French. And there’s nothing at all you need to do. At least not about the boys.”
I turned away from her startled face, and moved to the desk. Fully thirteen canisters, unopened, lined the sleek black surface. “Is this everything that’s shown up since I’ve been gone?” I asked, and she gave a rueful chuckle, quickly wiping her tears away.
“Not at all. That’s everything that’s shown up since we cleared away the overnight deliveries. Since you left for Venice, we’ve received one hundred and seventeen cases.”
I jerked my gaze to her, staring. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m afraid not. Granted, a full fifty-three of those were grudges and family disputes, and another twelve were poppycock, bits of stuff and nothing created to draw you out on false pretenses, but the remaining fifty-two appear to be quite legitimate. They’ve been categorized and prioritized, and except for a few that you might consider addressing immediately, they’ve all been shelved.”
“Fifty…two. And it’s only the legitimate cases that were the problem.”
“For Abigail, yes,” Mrs. French said. “But there’s nothing that says they will affect you the same way. You are two very different people.”
I grimaced. Armaeus had said much the same thing. “How much do you know of the cases she worked on? And is there a list? Maybe if I went back through them, see where maybe she got tripped up…”
Mrs. French straightened. “There most certainly is a list!” she said brightly. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Maybe it’s not a question of any cases being the issues, but the cases she happened to choose.”
“Maybe…” I still remembered the sloshing-brains reaction I’d had to opening Mak’rep’s box. I wasn’t too sure how much I believed my own theory. “Worth a try.”
“Absolutely.” Mrs. French bounded up. “I’ll go ask. I mean…” She paused, looking uncertainly at the closed door. “The boys,” she said. “What shall I say to the boys?”
“It’s already handled,” I assured her.
“But—how?”
“By these,” I said, wiggling my fingers in the air. Mrs. French’s eyes widened.
“You are a very different person from Justice Abigail,” she allowed.
“Well, they’ll simply start growing older now, bit by bit. When they come to you with questions, you can tell them it’s because there’s a new Justice, and that they can stay as long as they like.”
She clenched her hands together in front of her, managing another shaky breath. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
I smiled, shrugged. “Then it’s a good thing you don’t have to say anything.”
Mrs. French left, and I stared at the desk, unseeing for a long moment. Gradually, with only the slightest wince, I pulled my hands back together. There, in the palm of my right hand, remained the tiny core of power I had most unexpectedly kept from my experience in Venice. The Nul Magis. Not enough to kill a bona fide sorcerer, not enough to destroy their magic. At least I didn’t think so.
But enough to break
a spell that had lasted for nearly two hundred years?
That, it seemed, I could do.
And if I could do that…
Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, I reached for the nearest glass canister to me and opened my next case.
~ ~ ~
Thank you so much for reading THE RED KING! If you're ready to join Sara on a hunt to unravel an ancient prophecy, then THE LOST QUEEN is ready for you!
Not all who wander are lost.
As Justice of the Arcana Council and an experienced artifact hunter, Tarot-reading Sara Wilde prefers to track down the missing on her own. With her latest case, unfortunately, everyone’s dying to help her out.
Determined to locate the Lost Queen, a witch destined to fulfill a dark and twisted prophecy, Sara finds herself corpse-blocked at every turn. Not even the electric, provocative, and deeply powerful Magician of the Arcana Council–whose newest arcane pursuits test Sara’s emotional and sensual boundaries–can help her find her mark...
~ ~ ~
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THE LOST QUEEN: Chapter One
Huddling in my parka on the relentlessly well-kept sidewalk in the heart of Budapest, next to a building painted the color of buttercream, I questioned my life choices. I was Justice of the Arcana Council, wielder of magic great and small…and I was about to be fleeced of seven dollars and at least a good hour of my time weaving through a tourist trap so stupid, my teeth were grinding.
A hipster about three groups ahead of me elbowed one of his friends, apparently in indignation. “Blade was the best,” he insisted. “Christopher Lee was a joke.” He was a thin, reedy American twenty-something, his skin pale as chalk.
“And you’re an idiot,” his friend assured him, barely looking up from his phone. The other two guys muttered something about Bela Lugosi. At least their discussion explained why they were here, standing in front of an attraction that promised a peek into the dark history of the original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler. They were doomed to be disappointed. No matter what the placard beneath the ornamental archway said, Vlad had been imprisoned more than a half mile away in the caves below Buda Castle—nowhere near here.
Unfortunately, those caves were now playing host to some creepoid illusionist trying to resurrect the glory days of the Castle Hill labyrinth, in all its bloody detail. There’d been two deaths so far, and I wasn’t about to allow a third. From my intel, the illusionist had holed up in the warren of caves below Castle Buda, readying himself for his next kill.
In order to get there, however, I had to start here.
“Dude, Herm Lannister bit it. There goes the next Fantastic Four reboot.”
A coarse round of snickers and wisecracks followed this touching obituary, and I watched as the other three members of the Gen Z coalition whipped out their cell phones to pay their final respects to whoever Herm Lannister was. Then the four of them crowded inside the door of the attraction, screens glowing, ignoring the glares of the Australian family directly behind them.
“Lantern?” A portly man in an eighteenth-century powdered wig held up a small electric lantern, its bulb casting a cheerful glow. I’d heard him repeat the same spiel five times already. “There are signs below…but do be careful,” he intoned as he took my cash. Then he handed over the lamp.
I muttered my thanks and stepped into the darkened doorway, feeling dumber by the second. The cave system started almost immediately, right after we were treated with the most hysterically useless wall map—a diagram of the maze so bad, it wasn’t even handed out. Well-lit arrows apparently would show folks the way around below, but I wasn’t interested in the main attractions of the labyrinth. I simply had to get far enough into it to take a detour to the deeper cavern system.
Setting down the lamp at my first opportunity, I followed the group right in front of me for a good five minutes until they stopped, all of them gawping at what looked like the headpiece of a column that had apparently been wrested from the local history museum and transferred here. We hadn’t yet come to the weirder elements of the place—wax figures dressed like the Phantom of the Opera, with canned music floating through the mist—but that was up ahead, I could sense it. If anyone had seen me entering this ridiculous, outrageous, idiotic—
“You always manage to end up in the most interesting locations.”
The voice was British, slightly mocking, and so obnoxiously familiar, I pivoted in instinctive reaction, my right hand coming up to deliver a throat punch that’d leave the man choking on his Weetabix for days. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough. Nigel Friedman ducked out of the way, pulling me by my parka deeper into the mouth of the next corridor before almost immediately taking a hard right into a section blocked off by a velvet barricade.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, ignoring Nigel’s obvious attempts to be silent. Nigel had been my top bodyguard in my most recent position prior to Justice, when I’d been, albeit briefly, the head of a clandestine quasi-military, quasi-magical syndicate known as the House of Swords. Before that, he’d been one of my top competitors in the artifact hunting trade. So we had history. A lot of history. Which was the only reason I suffered him to be gripping my puffy, down-filled elbow as he felt along the wall with his other hand. He stopped about five yards up as something old and musty gave way.
“I was nearby,” he finally answered me.
“Nearby. To Budapest.”
“Near enough.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “I got word your newest case involved Vlad the Impaler, and I thought it was a good time for a holiday.”
“You don’t need to protect me anymore,” I said, but in the darkness, I couldn’t help but smile. It was kind of nice, inspiring Nigel’s higher instincts.
“I’m not protecting you,” he said, his tone still genial. “I’m making sure you don’t steal something for the Council that should be in the hands of the House of Swords.”
My smile faltered. What?
Nigel didn’t respond, so I tried the same question out loud. “What?”
He let go of my elbow and waved at me. “A little light would be useful. Just a little.”
Scowling, I lifted a hand, and a sputtering marble of fire appeared between my fingers. Way better than a crappy electric lantern, but I’d needed to grab one to keep up appearances. This was one of the many bits of magical ability I’d cobbled together over the past year, most notably when I’d started working with the Arcana Council, a group of powerful Connecteds with a mission to keep Earth’s magic in balance. Those abilities were currently in flux, but I could still be counted on to produce a fantastic glow ball.
With its assistance, I could see the Brit more easily. Medium, blonde, and deceptively wiry, Nigel Friedman was an ex-special forces operative of varied and highly useful talents. Now he was grinning at me as he turned sideways and half disappeared into a crack in the cave wall.
Through it, I could hear the haunting melodies of an eighteenth-century concerto starting up, tinny over distant speakers. “You’re taking us to the Phantom room?” I asked derisively. “I could’ve made it there on my own.”
“Behind it. The exit to this corridor isn’t well marked.”
I shrugged, patting my quilted pocket. “That’s why I have the cards.”
“Oh, we’ll be using those soon enough. One more turn, and my intel runs out.”
“And here I thought it ran out several years ago.”
Still, I followed Nigel into the seam of the wall. The cavern system here was markedly warmer and smelled faintly of sulfur. I was pretty sure I’d read somewhere that the entirety of Castle Hill was riddled with caves that extended all the way down to the Danube River, a subterranean system that had been created by the relen
tless flow of underground hot springs, and I could believe it. I tugged on my parka, rethinking its usefulness.
“I wondered why you dressed like the Michelin Man,” Nigel observed quietly. “We’ll go along through here…”
His voice trailed off as we slid through the narrow confines of the corridor, the music on the other side of the wall growing louder, then fainter again as we passed by. I thought about the American boy and his friends, could almost hear his mocking derision. “This place is a joke,” I muttered.
“A joke with a very specific purpose.” Nigel pulled up short beside me, then made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Ditch the coat. You’ll get stuck in some of the narrower passages.”
Frowning, I pulled the jacket off. “I’m not going to leave it here. It’s cold outside.”
“It’s not that cold. But no, you’re not going to leave it here. Incinerate it.”
“You know, I’m not a butane lighter you can activate on demand.”
“Sara—”
“Fine.” With a silent sigh of apology for the perfectly serviceable jacket. I touched my glow marble to it and pulsed the energy to fever pitch. The coat combusted to ash, and the plastic fastenings melted. Nigel kicked the debris aside, spreading it across the floor and beneath a stone ledge.
“Good.” He was about to keep moving when I held out a hand. Conveniently, the one pulsing with magic.
“Spill it, Nigel. Why are you really here?”
“We don’t really have time—”
“I think we do. I don’t know where you got your information, but I’m not here to steal an artifact. I don’t do that anymore. You may have missed the memo.”
Something in my voice caught him up short, and he turned back to me. His face was wary but curious. “You really expect me to believe you’re not here for the Sultan’s Cup?”
“I’m not.” That said, what the hell was the Sultan’s Cup? It sounded way more interesting than the jackwit I was after, for all that he was a particularly deadly jackwit. “I look for people now, Nigel. Not things. Vlad the Impaler is rumored to have returned to this hellhole, using it as a base of operations where he drags unwitting Connecteds into the deep, drains them of their blood, then skewers them. They’ve been ending up in the Danube with spike holes.”