Lure of the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  “Oh, stop.” Gemma laughed, swatting at his cheek.

  “But he’s right,” Lillian added. She smoothed long fingers over her chignon, tucking in tendrils that didn’t need tucking. Nerves.

  Phin sobered. “Mother, what can we do?”

  “I’ve had the staff informed to keep watch for anything out of the ordinary,” she replied. Her elegant mouth twisted. “At my request, security has begun a thorough study of the in-house feeds.”

  “What about the secret halls?” Phin straightened, frowning. “Joel knows about them, as does the extraction team, but we’ve been careful.”

  “Nobody else knows about the secret halls,” Gemma assured him. “The blueprints were destroyed shortly after the building was finished.”

  “As far as we know,” Lillian murmured. But the tension slowly eased out of her. Inch by inch. “Mr. Barker is thorough and has proved to be more than discreet.”

  Phin nodded. “Does he have help?”

  “Yes, however, none of the temporary staff is involved.” Lillian smiled halfheartedly. “I know you mean well by these people you’re rescuing, Phin, but this is too delicate a situation to allow them to meddle in.”

  He winced. “They wouldn’t meddle,” he began, and subsided when Gemma’s fingers tightened at his wrists. He dropped his chin to her hair again. Rubbed it gently back and forth.

  She smelled like the lavender she used to scent the soaps for the spa. It calmed him enough to say mildly, “Okay, that’s fine. No temporary help. We’ve already cut down to a bare crew of them anyway, and we can’t rush the refugees any faster than we have to. Any undue suspicion now will alert the gate guards and bring the Church on our heads worse than it may be already.”

  “All right.” Lillian rubbed the back of her neck with stiff fingers. “I am so proud of what you do, Phin, we both are. I want you to know that.”

  Warmth bloomed in his chest. Adoration, gratitude. Love.

  And suspicion. The set of her expression warned him there was more. “But,” he prompted.

  “No buts,” Gemma interjected. She stepped out from his embrace, shaking her head. “Just that. We’re proud of you. There are entire families who wouldn’t be where they are without your help. You’ve given them hope, found them homes out where everyone was so sure there’d be none.”

  “People are industrious,” Phin replied simply. “The accused we help are willing to work hard. They’ll make it.”

  “And they do,” Gemma said earnestly. “I just know they’re out there happy and well.”

  Jaw working, Lillian fell silent.

  Phin crossed the room, ignored her perfect polish to wrap his arms around her shoulders. “I love you, too.”

  “Oh, Phin.” Lillian’s hands splayed over his back, rubbed gently. “Just be careful,” she said into his chest. “Gemma isn’t the only mother with a concern.”

  Gemma threw her arms around them both, and Phin shifted to let her into the circle. Holding the most important women in the world, he breathed in their mingled scents and perfume, wrapped himself in the warmth of their love, and wished to hell he was the only one up at night.

  Worrying was what this family did best.

  Pressing a kiss to each warm cheek, Phin promised, “I’ll be careful, and I’ll keep an ear to the ground.” He looked down at them both, met hazel eyes and sweet brown. “Promise me that neither of you will do anything rash.”

  “Of course,” Lillian said, amusement like a spark of gold in her suddenly crinkled gaze. “Have I ever done anything rash?”

  “Never.” Phin gave them both a final squeeze, stepped away. “I’ll get to work on the underground now. If you need me, I’m in comm reach.”

  Gemma smiled ruefully. “You always are. In the meantime, keep a close eye on Naomi, all right?”

  Lillian’s smile went crooked. “Is that for our safety or his interests?”

  “Mother,” Phin groaned, and waved both hands in surrender. “Fine, I’ll stay close by her.”

  “Like it’d kill him.” Gemma chuckled as he turned away.

  Phin left them, good-natured aggravation melting into too many logistics, too many problems, and a rapidly sinking sensation that time was slipping away. He had a cargo of people to move out too soon after the last, and he’d have to do it without raising eyebrows.

  Behind him, the women watched the door click shut. For a long moment, neither spoke.

  Then Gemma shifted back into Lillian’s embrace. “Nothing rash,” she said, lacing her fingers loosely at her wife’s hip. “Besides defying your glitterati family and eloping with a mid-city whor—”

  Lillian seized Gemma’s mouth in her fingers, pinching her lips closed with a frown as unbending as steel. “Don’t you dare, Gemma Clarke,” she said fiercely. “Those were their words, never mine. Never, ever yours.”

  Gemma’s lips moved. Curved upward as she pressed a kiss to Lillian’s fingertips. “I love you,” she murmured. “I wouldn’t change anything for the world.”

  “Neither would I, Gem.” Lillian allowed herself to sink against Gemma’s supporting embrace, into the soft curves of the body she was so fortunate to hold every night. To admire every morning. “Two aging women. What will the world do with us?”

  “Screw the world,” Gemma said smartly, and Lillian laughed. “Everything will be fine, love.” Smoothing one hand over Lillian’s long, slender back, Gemma nuzzled her hair. “We’re safe here. Phin is strong and capable—”

  “He takes after his mother.”

  “Both of them.” Gemma captured the other woman’s chin in her fingers, tilted Lillian’s face up, and smiled with everything that was so classically Gemma. Adoration. Warmth. Love.

  The light of the world.

  “Timeless will stand long after we’re gone, Lily.” Gemma touched her mouth to hers, a kiss as sweet and gentle as summer sunshine. Lillian’s skin warmed. Her heart swelled.

  It almost drowned the worries feasting at her soul. Almost.

  “Will Timeless matter?” Lillian reached up, threaded her fingers tightly with Gemma’s. “When you’re gone, will it matter?”

  “I don’t know.” Her grip tight in Lillian’s, Gemma’s smile widened. “But I’m in no hurry to find out.”

  “Thank God. I don’t know what we’d do without you, anyway.”

  Chapter Eight

  Bzzzt!

  Blood faded to moonlight, dreams to wide-eyed consciousness as the comm unit buzzed a warning in her slack hand. Naomi braced herself on one arm, already fumbling with the earpiece before her brain kicked in.

  “What?” she growled, her voice thick and heavy with sleep. “What the hell time is it?”

  There was a pause. A muffled cough. “It’s only ten.”

  “Fuck.” She dropped face-first back into the pillow, inhaled lavender and detergent, and threw herself off the mattress. She landed on her feet, barely, but she had to catch herself on the nightstand. It rattled, its lone lamp teetering dangerously. “Fuck! What? Do you want?”

  “Grumpy.”

  “Jonas,” Naomi snapped, catching the porcelain lamp with one splayed hand. “I will kill you. Do you hear me? I will break your skull like a—” She frowned. “Where’s Eckhart?”

  “Hunting down leads.”

  “For me?”

  “No, unrelated. Different case entirely. Or it’s a lie to visit some chick,” he added with brief, clipped amusement. Over a comm line, Jonas Stone’s voice was impossible to mistake. Nobody else pulled as clear a tenor.

  Or as lighthearted a check-in.

  She rubbed the sleep grit from her eyes, rough gouges that did nothing to pull the remnants of nightmares from her mind. “Great,” she muttered, knowing she sounded bitchy and unable to care. “Why are you calling me?”

  “Why are you sleeping?”

  Because she was a goddamn coward. Naomi’s mouth curled. “Because I spent all day being pretty.”

  “Uh.” The line hummed with a short, cha
rged silence. “What?”

  “Never mind.” Naomi turned, studying the dimly lit room through slitted, burning eyes. “I came up here to change and must have passed out. I was tired.”

  “Hey?” A cautious question. Gentle. “Are you all right in there?”

  Damn.

  Of all the people at the Mission, of the missionaries who spent more time going than coming, Jonas Stone saw more than he needed to. Knew more than he should have.

  It pissed her the hell off. She’d always felt as if he . . . handled her. He was the one confined to crutches for life, and he handled her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, assurance clipped. “I was just tired. Now that you’ve gotten me up, I can get back to work.”

  “How about a report, then?”

  Naomi fought the urge to drop her face into the nearest pillow and stay there. A week sounded good. “Fine,” she muttered, and told him about Alexandra Applegate.

  Amid the clatter of Jonas’s quick typing, he whistled. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Care to explain why no one told me the bishop’s grandmother was in here?” she growled. “Pertinent fucking information, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sorry, that was my fault.” The remorse in his voice effectively stomped on her roiling temper. She grimaced. “But I swear to God, Nai, I didn’t know she was there. I can’t get to the guest files.”

  “Why?”

  Jonas sighed. “The whole block is on its own closed loop. Nothing in, nothing out. Timeless doesn’t even tap into the city feeds.”

  “Fuck, really?” She jammed a thumb into her left eye and rubbed until the ache in her head faded to a dull roar. “This operation is the shittiest . . .” She paused. A glint of light pierced the bedroom window, the faintest flicker. “Hang on.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Shut it.” Naomi approached the window quietly, well aware that she was a few hundred feet above anything that could see her through reflective glass. Still, she sidled in at an angle, her shoulders pressed back against the wall as she bent to scan the ground seventeen stories below.

  She squinted. “The city elevator is moving.”

  Computer keys tapped rapidly over the line. “Which one?”

  “Main line. It’s the showy one that links the place to the city streets.” She leaned close to the glass and hissed out a curse.

  “What?”

  “I can’t see worth shit up here. Jonas, damn it, tell me someone packed me some binoculars.”

  “I’ll do you one better.” Pride licked through the comm. “Check the patchwork purse.”

  “What?”

  “Your bags, Nai. Look for a multicolored purse in your luggage.”

  “The rainbow one,” she said, and grimaced when he hummed assent.

  Naomi backtracked quickly, stumbling over clothes and discarded shoes she hadn’t gotten around to putting away yet. Neither had anyone else. Aside from one overly competent witch, Timeless took privacy seriously.

  She skidded on something silky, slipped and caught herself on one hand and both knees. She grunted.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” She searched through piles of useless shit for the big, chunky purse that she’d sworn she wasn’t taking anywhere. The thing practically glowed, bright patches of gleaming, metallic material. Easy to find in the dark, too.

  Naomi swiped it up from its nest of carelessly discarded luggage, yanked open the snap, and searched the inside.

  Wallet of some kind, silk scarves, sunglasses— Jesus, how many sunglasses did one woman need? And underneath it all, a small, solid case. “What, this?”

  Amusement colored his tone as he replied, “Given I’m not with you, Naomi, I’m going to assume you know what binoculars are.”

  Naomi snapped the case open and frowned. “They’re tiny.”

  “They’re interchangeable between light and night vision,” he retorted, “and they’re reticule-sized.”

  “They’re what-sized?”

  “Hell on toast, woman, just try them.”

  She hurried back to the window. Praying she wasn’t too late, Naomi lifted the binoculars to her eyes. The world slammed into sudden, razor-sharp clarity. “No shit!”

  “Great, aren’t they?”

  Naomi couldn’t help but grin fiercely as she picked out every last detail on the ground beneath her. Visual cues flashed; stark green contours that shifted around each identifiable object as she changed targets. Text scrolled past the bottom of her vision, each shape and focal point neatly cataloged within the lenses.

  “Its processing is fairly limited, but the onboard chip’ll recognize most basic shapes,” Jonas explained smugly. “Who loves you, babe?”

  “Everyone.” His snort echoed in Naomi’s earpiece as she trained the lenses on the ground. The elevator doors slid open, easing wide as the locking panels lifted.

  “What are you seeing?”

  Her grin faded. A skinny figure clambered out of the elevator, two heavy bags over his shoulders.

  “Naomi?”

  “The boy that runs the elevator,” she said slowly. “Nice kid. He’s carrying bags.”

  Jonas clicked his tongue. “Sounds like a late-night guest.”

  “Looks like it.” Naomi watched, adjusting the piece in her ear with one finger. “Listen, this op is a hell of a lot more complicated than we thought.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  Anger sizzled over her skin as she muttered, “Witches.”

  On the ground, another figure left the elevator. A woman, Naomi realized, with a scarf around her head and sunglasses as large as her face perched on her nose, even in the dark. She swept down the walk, and Naomi grimaced as she recognized the attitude that swept right beside her.

  A guest, all right. One of the so important elite.

  “Wait a second,” Jonas was saying in her ear. “Witches? Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.” The word edged out of her chest, a disgusted sigh. “Someone was waiting for me when I got here. Sneaked in behind me and laid in with magic before I’d even settled.”

  “Carson?”

  “Nope. Different guy,” Naomi said, raising the binoculars again, “He should have killed me.”

  “Man, don’t say that.”

  “Mmm.” Naomi’s eyes narrowed as she tracked the woman’s attendants. Four more men stepped out of the elevator, three of them carrying two or more bags.

  And they thought Naomi had baggage.

  “So you got him?” Jonas prodded.

  “No,” she replied. “I had him dead to rights and he pretty much went balls out. By the time I got off the floor, he’d made a clean getaway.”

  He sucked in a breath.

  Her smile clipped, Naomi redirected the binoculars to the end of the path, aiming them toward the wide doors that welcomed guests to the lobby. The light spilling out of the building formed a corona of neon radiance, but she picked out the silhouette of someone waiting. A concierge, maybe. Another woman.

  “How do you zoom in on this thing?” she asked, ignoring the strangled sound of Jonas’s impatience. “I need to see who’s at the door.”

  “Holy crow, Naomi,” he said tightly. “There’s a witch in there and you let him get away?”

  She hesitated. “For now,” she admitted. “He caught me off guard, but he won’t stay hidden for long. Zoom?”

  “There’s a toggle on the top. Seriously,” he urged quietly. “No shitting me, here. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Under her searching forefinger, a bit of metal shifted. The device thrummed soundlessly, and in the space of a heartbeat, the concierge’s face filled the lenses. Naomi committed her to memory. Blond, tall, elegantly suited, and smiling.

  She rolled her shoulder, but it didn’t ease the pinch of tension in her neck. “The seal did its thing, but he got in close enough to almost lay me out. It’s just a knot on the back of my head. Sloppy as hell. So, did Eckhart tell you about my gun?”<
br />
  Jonas’s teeth clicked together; all too familiar a sound on the end of her comm feed. “Naomi—”

  She jerked her head, glaring at the comm she’d left on the bed. “I’m still a missionary, Stone,” she said tersely.

  Over the earpiece, he took a breath. Then, sighing, he gave in. “Yeah, Alan told me. I’ll see what we can do. We can’t get in there, so you’ll have to get out to retrieve it.”

  “I can get you in.”

  “Nope. We’ve got our orders.”

  “Shitfuck,” she muttered. Politics. “Fine, I’ll manage something.” Below, as the woman stepped into the light pouring from the open door, she watched the concierge greet her warmly, take both her hands, and kiss the air beside each cheek.

  She hated that fucking affectation. It was the first thing she’d ever learned from a mother too petrified a dirty child would smear her makeup.

  “You’re so ladylike,” Jonas drawled. “Have you made any other progress?”

  “No.” She wasn’t going to go into detail about the ghost in the locker room. Not until she had details to give. Distracted, she watched as neon green lines traced each figure below. Like a constantly shifting computer screen, visual patterns flared and vanished from her sight. Lowering the device shut off the processor.

  She raised the binoculars again and blinked at the terminology suddenly flashing in the lower right of her vision. “Couldn’t you come up with a better term than life form?”

  “It seemed only right.”

  “Christ, you’re a nerd. Jonas, why the hell am I— Shit.” Amusement leached out of her as a fist of sudden adrenaline spiked through her chest. “Where did he go?”

  “Who?”

  “Three porters.” Naomi straightened, bracing one hand on the glass as she swung the binoculars back along the lit walkway. “Three, god damn it, where’s the fourth?”

  “Naomi? What are you talking about?”

  A flicker of movement at the northeast corner of the rocky courtyard had her swearing as a door she’d never noticed before eased shut, sealing in a thin seam of light. “This place,” she gritted out between clenched teeth. “I hate this fucking place. There’s hidden doors built into the goddamn wall.”