by Jenn Stark
As if he could read my thoughts, Tesla cleared his throat.
“We can dispense with the formality of a formal welcome, I assume,” he said in his soft aristocratic voice. “Far more important to understand what must be done to combat the challenges facing the Council in the coming war on magic.”
“A war you helped facilitate,” Viktor said pointedly, and Tesla turned to him, his urbane smile undimmed.
“Facilitate? No,” Tesla said, spreading his hands. “I was a nameless, faceless void. A whisper, a thought. Mortals did this, are doing this. The war we face is not only from those who wish to eradicate magic, it’s from those who wish to rule it. Both from the other side of the veil, and from within it.”
This little bomb should have caused at least a nominal gasp of surprise among the Council, but they all simply sat there, looking smug. Max and Nikki had the grace to look startled, at least. Not for the first time, I sent up a cheer for our team.
Tesla continued. “There is much we don’t know—much even I have not been able to see—about the strongest of the mortal Houses.” His gaze shifted to me. “Much to learn.”
I stared back at him, the thread of betrayal curling inside me. What game was he playing? Tesla had been advocating that I throw my lot in with the mortals, not the Council, to help speed their development along. Now he was insinuating that, what, I’d be a Council spy?
“Surely we can discuss that later.” To my surprise, it was the Hierophant who spoke. He stood, moving over toward our small trio at the back of the room, and we all stood a little straighter.
“Maximilian Bertrand, Nikki Dawes.” The Hierophant said the words almost as a benediction. “Sara Wilde. You have sacrificed much for the Council. We are in your debt.”
I widened my eyes. I could totally see us scoring a gold pen out of this.
“With that sacrifice comes loss, however, and the Council is committed to restoring mortals to a place without loss when we cause it. A place of peace,” the Hierophant continued. “I would give you that peace now.”
“Mon Dieu,” Max murmured beside me, but even from a distance of twelve inches, I could sense every cop instinct Nikki possessed bristling beside me. She darted me a look, but I didn’t need the encouragement.
“No,” I said. I turned to the table, all of them watching us with intense curiosity. “We don’t need your peace, and we don’t accept it.”
Viktor moved impatiently. “Oh, please. This is ridiculous, simply—”
I saw his hand move almost imperceptibly, and my reaction was immediate and heartfelt. Electricity crackled inside me, a ball of anger so big, so full that I couldn’t hold it in if I tried. I flung it out toward the table with unrestricted rage, and it raced toward Viktor, the entire table caught by momentary surprise.
“Miss Wilde.”
Armaeus held up a restraining hand, and the electricity winked out, the air now holding a faintly burnt air. Tesla smiled. Eshe and Kreios smirked. The Emperor sat stone-faced, his brows lifted as he glared at me.
The Hierophant stood in front of us, still smiling, apparently also unimpressed. I skewered him with a glare. “You did it anyway,” I muttered, darting a look at Nikki and Max. They were staring at the Hierophant with wonder in their eyes, preternaturally still, fixed in place. Another knot of anger surged within me.
“I cannot combat free will,” the Hierophant said gently. “But their participation was not born of free will, not truly. They each were coerced into this venture because of the love of another. Maximilian for his uncle, whom he idolizes, Nikki because she would die to protect you.”
Even hearing him say the words was a jolt, and I frowned, peering at Nikki. I couldn’t deny the truth of the statement, and the Hierophant continued. “You chose to participate of your own will. It’s irregular, but it has happened. For that choice, you have the unenviable benefit of remembering.” His gaze was kind. “Should you wish to forget, however…”
“No,” I said. I knew why he was doing this, of course, and it wasn’t solely to be Mr. Happy Guy. The Council had worked with humans throughout the millennia, had endangered their lives many times over. But such endangerment couldn’t be shared. Such stories couldn’t be passed down.
“Who did this when you were on sabbatical?” I asked him. “Who was the Council’s designated cleaner?”
His smile was soft, almost sad, and I knew the answer without him saying it. My father, I realized. Willem, the Hermit.
No wonder the man looked so old.
Suddenly, my phone jangled in my pocket. I didn’t care if it was someone selling aluminum siding, it was a good enough summons for me. I touched Nikki’s arm, and she blinked, her expression confused for a moment until she registered me.
“Our cue to leave,” I said, and Max turned as well. He beamed at the Hierophant, the table of Council members, then his uncle. The reserved pride in his gaze was so guileless, it made my heart hurt, but as I gestured to the door, Armaeus’s words stopped me once more.
“Maximilian, I’d be honored to have you remain at Prime Luxe as my guest during your stay in the city,” the Magician said. Max visibly stiffened, and even I stared at Armaeus. He’d never had much use for his nephew. He’d been irritated beyond measure that I’d helped Max begin to understand his true capabilities. And now, what, he was going to let the kid couch surf?
Despite my concerns about everything the Magician ever did or said, my heart gave up another little cheer.
Max was stammering out a reply when an older woman appeared at the doorway to the conference room, someone I hadn’t seen before. She looked capable of guiding Max to his room, however. He looked at me, his eyes wide, his smile unfeigned, and I didn’t bother to hide my return smile. This moment of grace from his uncle would be a memory far more valuable than getting his brain electrocuted in downtown Nashville, I supposed.
Nikki and I left immediately after, but neither of us spoke as we whooshed down several hundred floors and strode out into the lobby of the Luxor, its glorious gold-plated kitsch in direct contrast to the icy-black and steel angles of Prime Luxe, the two of them slightly overlaid so that even while staring at one, the other lurked, right at the edge of your vision.
Then we were out of the building and into the warm, dry night.
My phone buzzed again. Nikki glanced at me but I held her off another minute, scanning the taxi line. I didn’t have to look far. As I watched, a pearl-gray limo slid out of its waiting space and glided forward, purring up beside us.
“Whoa,” Nikki said as I opened the door. “This is new. I thought Armaeus preferred black.”
“He does,” I said. “This isn’t Armaeus’s limo.”
We slid into the plushly appointed seating area of the vehicle, and the intercom hissed with a faint crackle. An automated voice spoke. “Where to?”
I pulled out my phone, checked the screen. “Las Vegas Valley Medical,” I said.
Nikki’s eyes widened as she stared at the panel separating the front seat from our area. “Self-driving car?” she snorted. “Tesla. I should have known.”
She swung back to me and frowned, catching the intensity of my gaze. “What?”
I blew out a breath. “I need you to see something, Nikki,” I said. “Even though if I was a better friend, I probably wouldn’t. But you need to know something that happened. Something you were a part of, something—”
“Hold it right there, dollface.” To my surprise, Nikki lifted her hand, waving off my concern. “Give me a little more credit.”
I blinked at her, and she grinned.
“You and me, babe, we’re too tight for the Hierophant’s low-level love tap to do much damage. Max was snowed under, but his abilities are different. My head, it’s built to see what’s in other people’s heads—what they saw, what they think they saw. I knew from the way Angel boy was looking at us that I didn’t stand a chance, but you weren’t going to put up with that. So I just locked on to your vision, your memory. For whate
ver he was looking to wipe out of my head, I focused on how your memory was different. Didn’t last that long, and in the end, your memories were way better.” She lifted her brows, waggling them at me. “A thought projector, for real? That’s some seriously cool tech.”
“You saw all that?” I asked, and she grimaced.
“Didn’t mean to pry, but I had to take it all, whole parcel. Apparently, by extension, what happened for reals in that courtyard were that the seals…failed?”
“They didn’t fail,” I said. “They were a trap, simply not the trap Armaeus had in mind. Instead of stopping the Hanged Man, they stopped—temporarily—you and Max. By the time the power blasted my seal, it was already sailing toward Tesla, and he had to double down, using the mojo he had left to put the temporary freeze on Armaeus, leaving himself corporeal. All that said, you and Max were a little too singed for comfort, on top of being held in stasis.” I sighed. “I didn’t know the seals would work like that.”
She coughed a short laugh. “I don’t think anyone did, except Tesla, and he built the damned things over a hundred years ago. That’s some forward thinking. Bottom line, though, I’m good. I know what went down, even if from a slightly different perspective.” Her smile wobbled only slightly. “You’re not alone, dollface. I’ve got you.”
I nodded quickly and jumped as my phone buzzed again.
“Brody?” she asked.
“Yeah, but he already told me to come to the hospital. I don’t know what his glitch is now.” I pulled my phone out of my hoodie and swiped it on, and Brody’s texts filled the screen.
My eyes went wide. “You remember the shooter from the MedTech building? He’s awake.”
“Excellent!” Nikki said. “Because I would like to know why in God’s name he took a crack at you.”
“That’s what Brody’s texting me,” I said. “The guy’s spilling his guts all over the place. Only, he’s not the only cop who’s interested in hearing about it.”
That quieted Nikki down. “What are you talking about?”
“This morning, the LVMPD received word that their request for assistance on the case was approved, according to Brody. They got reinforcements in. Big-time reinforcements.”
“But…who?”
I showed her the text stream on my phone. “Marguerite Dupree and Roland Fiat,” I said. “They’re at Las Vegas Valley Medical now.”
Chapter Thirty
Nikki and I reached the fifth floor of the hospital without anyone giving us a second look, despite her getup. Ah, Vegas. Brody was waiting for us to the left of the elevator. Without speaking, he pointed us into the nearest room.
“Spill,” he said, glaring at me.
I blinked back guilelessly. “Can you be more specific?”
“Okay, let me see if I can lay it out for you. Three days ago, there’s a shooting in front of a medical testing building. Twelve shots fired from the gun, six rounds recovered. No other sign of the bullets, no blood, no victim.”
“Tidy,” Nikki drawled, earning her a glare. Brody kept going.
“This afternoon, two agents of Interpol show up on our doorstep, with documentation that indicates LVMPD brass contacted them, only the case we’ve tripped into is so sensitive, they can’t relay information electronically, only in person. Those same two sat in the hospital room of our recently awakened shooter for a couple of hours earlier today, and he started babbling to them.”
“Did the agents smell a little singed?” Nikki asked, but my question covered hers.
“Anything good?”
“Nothing coherent,” Brody said. “Nothing the two suits could make sense of, if that’s what you’re wondering. But plenty that I personally found quite interesting, I gotta say.” He narrowed his gaze on me. “He once more, while no longer under heavy meds, said a woman in a gray hoodie and black tights accosted him, survived getting shot a half-dozen times, then damn near beat the shit out of him. As I may have mentioned, we happen to be missing a half-dozen rounds from that crime scene.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, life is full of strange coincidences.”
To my surprise, all the anger went out of Brody at that response. He shook his head, and he didn’t look irritated anymore. He looked worn. More than anything, he looked scared.
“Sara, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
Despite myself, I couldn’t help thinking about Tesla’s movie reel. The distant figures in the shadows watching over me, keeping me safe. Brody had tried to keep me safe too, when I’d been too young to protect myself. Still would, if I’d let him. Maybe I could return the favor.
“Were you going to raid MedTech?” I asked, peering at him. “That afternoon, were you on your way to shake the place down?”
He frowned. “No. I told Dixie that, but I don’t think she believed me. MedTech was a bust. Exclusively a sleep study location right now, and while that’s creepy in its own way, it doesn’t signify anything special with our missing Connecteds.”
I frowned. “Sleep study?”
“Yeah. It’s an important detail, because our shooter is saying that the dreams he had when he finally fell asleep told him a woman would be coming, that she was dangerous, and to fire first, ask questions later.”
I blinked. “What?”
“That was my reaction as well. We’re talking with the study designers now, to see what if anything gets pumped into people taking the test, but this guy—he’s not a Connected. He’s just a guy.”
“And the kids? Uh, Dixie said there were kids there.”
“Daycare on-site—only time some of these moms get any sleep at all, from what the MedTech staff said. It’s practically a public service institution, and they nailed down a grant last year from the university to make it happen. Researchers are more than happy to look after the kids because they’re studying impact of sleep patterns on home care. They interview the kids while they’re on-site, parents get sleep, they track the improvement. Win-win.”
“And…boring as shit,” Nikki put in.
Brody snorted. “Pretty much. Despite the fact that a fire broke out the same damned day. We’re still looking into that.” He shifted his gaze to me. “So it was you there. Getting shot at. Right? Because the guy in that room is pretty sure you’re some sort of devil.”
I opened my mouth, but he made an angry slanting gesture with his hand. “Don’t bullshit me, Sara, and don’t make me bring you down to the station for a lineup. I don’t have that many hoodies.”
“You really think I’d be sitting here if I had six bullet holes in me?”
The look he sent me was pained. “Anymore, Sara, I don’t know what to think. All I know is I got Connecteds disappearing, Dixie acting erratically, you ending up as the chief suspect in a citizen assault, and now two Interpol agents up in my grill, asking a whole lot of questions about a kind of drug trafficking that’s not officially on anybody’s radar screen. I don’t like being the only one in the room who doesn’t know what’s going on.”
I wanted to tell Brody the truth, I did. I trusted the man with my life. But even as I tried to form the words, I kept coming back to Dixie. Dixie, who’d drawn us to that building under false pretenses, Dixie, who was taking technoceuticals to augment her Connectedness—even though she’d already built a solid practice using her innate abilities. Why did it bother me so much that she used? I didn’t want to examine that too closely. There were a lot of things I didn’t want to examine too closely.
Brody was waiting for an answer, though. I had to give him something.
“The House of Swords is involved in the technoceutical trade,” I said, the words sounding harsh and awkward in the sterile non-silence of the hospital room. “It’s not illegal, technically, because these drugs aren’t classified, but it’s into them pretty deeply. Interpol has caught wind of the traffic, arguably was tipped off to it by Soo herself for Soo’s own reasons, and they’re investigating.”
“Investigating isn’t their job,�
� Brody said automatically. “They’re supposed to work with local law enforcement, not advance cases on their own.”
“Yet here they are.” I spread my hands. “Maybe they are operating with Interpol sanction, maybe not. They haven’t pinned a target on anyone yet, but they want to.” A chill skated down my spine at that statement, yet it was only the truth. “As to the disappearance of local Connecteds, I don’t know how it’s linked, or if it’s linked. Connecteds have a way of disappearing.”
“That’s for sure,” Nikki said mildly, and I sensed her gaze on me. “Too many though, in too short a time.”
“Agreed, and I don’t know why. Could be a planned exodus, but there’s still no good reason for it. If it’s happening here, however, it could be happening in other cities too.”
Brody rolled his eyes. “I can only deal with one town’s worth of crazy at a time,” he grumbled. Still, my words had obviously struck home. This possibility was at least worth exploring, no matter where it led.
I continued on. “As to the guy in the hospital here, yeah, he shot me. I got lucky though. He may have thought he hit me, but he was running, I was running, and he missed.”
“He…missed.”
“Yup. And the faster he remembers that, the safer he’ll be.”
I didn’t plan on the words coming out as a threat. They hung between us anyhow, vague and ominous.
Brody’s gaze had hardened slightly, but not from anger, exactly. Instead, I’d triggered his cop instincts, his intuition that saw behind the best of smokescreens. “He’ll be safer or you will?” he asked quietly. “I’m going to ask you again, Sara. What’s going on?”
The tension was broken by a knock on the doorframe.
“Detective Rooks.”
We turned to see a cop filling the doorway, looking solid and steady, his gaze slanting sharply to Nikki in her sequined minidress before refocusing on Brody. “Mr. Gil has awoken again, wants to talk to the police. Thought you should have some time with him before I find the other agents.”