Rites & Desires

by Amanda Cherry

  Plague nodded. He was standing straighter and looking quite official as he reached into his pocket and withdrew the phone she had gotten him. "Are you going to want to press charges?" he asked.

  Ruby’s lip quirked and her eyebrow rose a little. That was the perfect response. The docent seemed horrified and about ready to defend herself when Ruby answered him. "No, no, hardly worth it to clog up the court system when there was no real harm done."

  The docent let out a sigh of relief as Plague nodded. "If that will be all then, ma’am?" he asked.

  Ruby nodded. "You’re dismissed, thank you."

  Plague nodded and moved to put the phone back into his pocket as he began to walk away. He brushed his shoulder against the docent and mumbled a soft, "Excuse me," as he went.

  The docent, clearly still horrified, just nodded and stepped back. Ruby wasn’t sure whether it had been the mention of billions of dollars or the threat of arrest that had gotten to the woman, but either way, she’d been gotten to. That particular peon would almost certainly never put her hands on a strange woman in a Manu Julian dress again.

  Plague strode with purpose back to his earlier position beside Fire, who it seemed had watched the whole episode while suppressing a giggle. Somehow, Plague looked a little less sickly at the moment. Ruby had to wonder if whatever he had done to adversely affect the offending young woman had taken some of the visible sickness away from him for a time.

  She really had no idea how exactly the Blights worked.

  She knew they were each the embodiment of the force after which they were named. And she had some idea, having worked with them for a couple of months now, that they were each endowed with powers connected to their root. They were each both the cause and the effect. It had been explained to her, though, that their genesis was as the effect. What she hadn’t managed to figure out yet was the mechanism by which they could become the cause. She didn’t know if it diminished them in any way. If Plague was at his core the net result of humanity’s collective fear of plague and suffering from plague, then was his giving plague to someone on her request diminishing to him in any way? Were their powers finite? Was there the possibility for any of them to exceed the limits of their own existence and somehow work themselves out of being? She should probably find that out.

  As it was, she was confident enough in humanity’s constant obsession with the things that powered the Blights she was sure they weren’t going anywhere while in her custody. If breaking into that vault at the CCPD hadn’t done anything to damage Decay, then any of them had plenty enough power for her purposes.

  The idea of giving that presumptuous docent something terrible and miserable had lifted her spirits enough that even the presence of Elizabeth Stevens wasn’t going to get her down. And her mood had been even further boosted by having spotted Doubt making her way closer to where Discontent had the other woman engaged in conversation. Doubt’s primary job during the operation today was to make sure the docents and security staff didn’t notice what was going on with Ruin and Decay, but having her put a little energy into making sure that Mrs. Stevens didn’t realize Ruby was in the room was a quite a relief. Ruby hadn’t seen Elizabeth out again since that night at the Pops, and she really preferred to avoid a confrontation if at all possible.

  She heard a buzzing sound coming from her purse and allowed herself to smirk as she pulled her Starphone from her bag again. She had guessed the message would be from Pestilence, letting her know he had gotten her order. But instead she found a message from Jaccob. He had made dinner reservations at Tessien’s and was checking that she would be available to join him. They’d been getting together for dinner most nights since the night of the Pops concert, and it was becoming more and more routine for him to wind up staying over--for at least part of the night.

  Stardust had been awfully busy of late, and as many as half the nights he’d spent with her, he was called away on some super-errand or another in the middle of the night. Ruby had wondered, but hadn’t yet bothered to ask, how much of that business had to do with the Blights and whatever work Loki had them up to while they were in town. It didn’t matter. She actually preferred it when he left in the middle of the night.

  Ruby liked Jaccob. She liked him a lot. And when they were both awake, she genuinely enjoyed his company in a way she did with very few people. But he had a tendency to be clingy in his sleep; it was an affectation she neither enjoyed nor appreciated. She’d gotten better over the weeks at wriggling out of his embrace after he’d fallen asleep, but the sex had improved enough in that time that it usually left her quite tuckered, so waiting for him to pass out so she could get comfortable was annoying. Adding the fact that he would almost always curl up with her again if he awoke in the middle of the night, and her sleep was suffering more than she would have liked to admit. So the nights when he was called away were not so much a problem for her. The fact that Jaccob just saw her lack of moping at his taking leave at odd hours as her being supportive and agreeable was just icing on the proverbial cake.

  She texted Jaccob back immediately, agreeing to dinner and adding a wicked double entendre at the end of the message so he understood she had intentions for after dinner as well. He texted her back a smiley face emoji and Ruby couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Never before in her life had she known a man his age who communicated via emoji, much less the CEO of an international tech firm. Her laughter rang out a little louder in the marble-walled, dome-ceilinged room than she meant it to, and Elizabeth Stevens looked straight up at her. The tall woman frowned, and Ruby pretended not to have seen her there. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elizabeth shake her head and turn her attention back to whatever conversation she’d been engaged in with Doubt and the others.

  Pestilence caught her gaze then and gave Ruby a stern nod, at which moment she surreptitiously turned her attention back to Jaccob’s wife. Her gaze arrived just as a large black fly, and then another, and then another began to swarm around Elizabeth’s face. Ruby was able to contain her laughter, but only just, as the three flies quickly became a swarm of a dozen or more. For minutes, no matter how she swatted and flailed, the flies enveloped Elizabeth’s whole head until she covered her face with her hands and ran from the room, the flies in hot pursuit. Ruby wasn’t sure how long Pestilence would be able to keep the swarm going--yet another bit about the powers of the Blights that she really ought to learn more about--but even if they dispersed the moment they were out of his sight, that had been lovely.

  And as an added bonus: the bizarre incident of the flies swarming Mrs. Stevens had taken the attention of all in the room away from where Ruin and Decay were still at work reading from the scrolls. Ruby had to keep from laughing too loud, and she covered her mouth as though she were shocked rather than amused at the scene. But she was most certainly amused. In fact, she found the whole thing quite hilarious. It was enough to keep her laughing until Ruin and Decay gave her the signal that they had finished their task.

  Flies swarming around the head of Elizabeth Stevens, a reservation for the chef’s table at Tessien’s with Jaccob, and the words to the ritual that could permanently endow her with the power of the Eye of Africa--this had been a very, very good day.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There was perhaps nothing in the life of a magic user more tedious than preparing for a ritual. And the ritual from the Scrolls of Solomon was more exacting than most. It made sense; a ritual to access something as powerful as the magic anchored in the Eye of Africa needed to be protected. No one but the most studied, most prepared, and most fastidious custodian of the item should be able to access its power.

  But the work was nonetheless taxing and difficult.

  The preparation was made all the more taxing and difficult by everything else on Ruby’s schedule. Not only was her relationship with Jaccob getting more and more serious and taking up larger and larger chucks of her time, but she was still responsible for the day-to-day operation of Goblin Records. There were things
she could blow off and let slide, and there were things she could delegate. Often she was able to assign a task to surrogates who were pleased and honored to be assigned a task directly by Ruby herself. She could trust her underlings, at least the ones she’d hired personally, so she wasn’t too worried about giving them work she might ordinarily have done herself.

  She also knew there was no small amount of talk among her staff about her relationship with Jaccob Stevens. And if they wanted to think these "chances to prove themselves" were acts of benevolence coming from a woman who was suddenly happy, she was going to let them go right ahead and think that. All the better to have their cooperation in giving her as much free time as possible.

  There remained, however, the frustrating matter of things she could not delegate. When certain pieces of her business needed her attention, she had to give them her attention. There was still the ongoing battle with the insurance company over the Metalcholy shoot. The second day of production on the damned video, two of the rollergirls had been doing what they do, and one of them had wound up taking out a lighting instrument. This was, of course, exactly the kind of thing the insurance men had been nervous about in the first place. She’d wound up running all over town herself to see to it the deductible got paid and production stayed on schedule, which had cost her almost an entire day.

  And the next day she’d spent consumed with development meetings. Normally, she’d have found a way to blow those off when she had something else she’d rather be doing. In fact, she’d oftentimes sent an assignee in her stead for reasons far less pressing than preparing for a ritual. But this month’s slate of developing artists included Mike Stevens. She couldn’t miss that one. Jaccob had mentioned that Mike seemed pleased with the trajectory he was on, but he wasn’t really into sharing details. Ruby, of course, had promised to spy on the young musician for his father. But she knew she couldn’t be seen playing favorites. If she was going to be in one of the development meetings, she’d have to take all of them.

  They had at least been good meetings; she was encouraged by the growth of the Goblin Records stable. It was very likely that most, if not all, of them were going to make her a great deal of money. And she was more than pleased to learn that Mike Stevens was actually a very talented musician. It would have been no fun to have had to tell Jaccob otherwise. That one had been a particularly good meeting. She’d happily make good on her offer to include him in the White House concert lineup.

  It had been a good day of meetings, but Ruby would rather have spent the day preparing for the ritual. Prather’s concert she could practically arrange in her sleep, but the Ritual of the Scrolls was a different animal altogether. There was a lot to be done in order to prepare for a ritual of this magnitude, and the first thing she absolutely needed to do was to find a way to understand it.

  She had sent the Blights back into the studio on the forty-seventh floor to work on the recordings Ruin and Decay had made at the museum. Both of them had managed a reasonably thorough job of reading the Scrolls. Apparently the parchment had been through enough of both the requisite stressors to make them accessible to the twin Blights. Ruin and Decay had merged their recordings via the state-of-the-art audio suite in the Goblin Records digital studio, and had set to recreating the text, both in the original Phoenician writing and in a transliterated form more readily accessible for reading aloud. It had taken days for them to finish this process, but in the meantime, Ruby had been sent the raw audio from the museum to listen to. She’d loaded the tracks onto her private Starphone and had done her level best to listen to them between meetings. But after Jaccob had picked up her phone and accidentally caused it to start playing, prompting a panicked explanation of why a dead language was playing from her device, she’d decided to delete the recordings and wait for the Blights to finish their work.

  For once, she was glad for Prather. He had been all but pestering her since their first meeting in her office, and he’d invited her to meet him at the White House ostensibly to discuss the upcoming concert. So what if it was Loki he really wanted to talk about, and so what if she had absolutely nothing to tell him? The photo ops would be priceless. Prather’s personal cadre of White House photographers had done an admirable job of making even his despicable face look good in pictures; her impeccable makeup and smart summer suit would likely photograph extremely well. And if not, she’d surely have veto power over the shots by virtue of the fact that the President was begging her favor. At the very least, fielding his calls and planning her visit to Washington was helping to distract her from how slowly her progress toward regaining her powers was going.

  She didn’t need powers to assert her will over Prather. For that she had leverage, which she’d found throughout her life to be nearly as useful as magic for handling such concerns.

  She’d given some thought to what Jaccob had said about not wanting to be associated with this administration. This regime as he’d called it. But it had been easy to dismiss his concerns. Surely he meant well, but there was a lot of information he didn’t have. If he knew just how beholden the sitting President would be to her when this was all said and done, he’d understand. At least that’s what she kept telling herself. Because, deep down, there was still a fear that maybe he wouldn’t.

  Jaccob was a Good Guy--a little too good sometimes if Ruby stopped to think about it. And maybe having the President, or anyone else in power, feeling like they owed you something wasn’t something he’d be interested in. That was certainly a possibility. After all, the man had been saving Cobalt City for going on two decades, and she couldn’t think of a time when he’d called in any of the favors the city owed him for that.

  He was a good guy. And a Good Guy. And occasionally, it got to be a little much. He hadn’t given her too much grief about her trip to Washington, but he hadn’t asked her how it had gone, either. Maybe he’d have wanted to talk more about it over dinner. But maybe not--they tended to steer clear of contentious topics when they were out together. Their relationship had an ease to it, and Ruby credited that in part to their choosing to avoid talking about anything that might lead to a quarrel.

  Whether Jaccob might have wanted to talk about her afternoon in D.C., Ruby decided she was better served canceling their plans in order to stay home and work on the ritual. Claiming she’d come back from her meeting swamped with new concerns over preparations for the White House concert, she’d politely made her excuses. Jaccob had tempered his obvious disappointment with characteristic understanding. That was certainly a perk of her lover having no clue about the entertainment business--between that and his natural tendency toward honesty and steadfast belief in the goodness of others, he always took her word on things like that. She’d spent the evening on her balcony, working with the first pieces of the transliteration the Blights had presented her with.

  It was a chore to figure out just how much she could say at a time--too much and she might call forth magic she wasn’t yet equipped to deal with. And a failure of a ritual of this magnitude could very well corrupt the magic forever and shut down the possibility of her ever succeeding, making this whole undertaking for naught. Ruby wanted to make damned sure that wasn’t going to happen. But she had to get her mouth around these words.

  Ruby had always been gifted with languages. She’d done her fair share of operatic study in French, Italian, and German until she had decided, in her teens, that opera wasn’t her calling. As good as she’d been at hitting high notes and pronouncing foreign lyrics, she had never really enjoyed it, save for the applause and the impressed looks from her audience. And no opera singer had ever made anyone’s list of the Top however-many Richest People. These days Ruby was on several of those lists. As an entertainment CEO, she’d used her penchant for languages to recruit and develop pop and rock artists from around the globe. These days she used her talents to make money.

  And to make magic.

  The magic in the Scrolls of Solomon was some of the most powerful she’d ever dealt with. Ruby
had suspected as much from the outset, but she’d been sure of it as soon as the first syllables had crossed her tongue. Her usual practice when needing to rehearse the words of a ritual was to read them silently, in order, dozens of times. She would speak one phrase aloud with each read-thru, careful as she did to skip around in the passage so as to avoid unintentionally saying too many magic-wielding words in a row. And tonight, on the first time through, when she’d spoken the first lines of the rite, she had immediately felt the force of its power.

  An hour into the process and she was tingling with it. Even in fits and starts of out-of-order phrases this magic was affecting Ruby hardily. It felt like the best wine buzz she’d ever had, topped off with a bump of coke and the additional ecstasy from the sudden start of a long-forgotten favorite song. She was blissful as she stood on her terrace, practically dancing in the summer breeze as the ancient words spun round and round in her head. It was unusually warm for Cobalt City, with the July nights well into the 70s. In her white linen lounge pants and sleeveless silk blouse, she cavorted with the winds, laughing and dancing as a few words at a time sprung from her lips in an ever-improving Phoenician.

  She was amid a twirl she might normally have thought a bit ridiculous when she registered the familiar sound of rockets in the distance. She stopped her dancing and chanting as she dashed to the glass railing of the terrace and searched the skies for the source of the rumbling. It was only a moment before she spotted Stardust in the distance. He was coming in from the west and would have to pass her building to get home. Ruby waited until she was sure he would see her to smile and wave in his direction.

  Stardust waved back immediately, diverting his course to land on her balcony instead of his own. Ruby was positively beaming as he came in for his landing. She doubted he (or maybe anyone save Loki) had ever seen her smiling so brightly. She moved to embrace him immediately. She may not have been in the mood to abide his goodness or to make polite conversation, but with the magic enthralling her entire body, there was something else she was definitely in the mood for. If Stardust was looking to have a good time tonight, then he had certainly landed in the right place.