by Jenn Stark
Chapter Two
“Sara, it’s only the fireworks! They’re harmless!”
Father Jerome’s words didn’t slow me down. The lightshow outside was definitely fireworks, yes.
But harmless? Not exactly.
With a shiver of premonition icing my skin, I exited the building and plunged back into the milling crowd of jazz fans before turning around to stare up at the sky along with everyone else. The night exploded once again, this time in an electric shower of blues and reds and greens. Starkly outlined against the night sky, the main tower of Saint-Germaine-Des-Prés was silhouetted by a burst of falling fire.
It looked identical to the Tower card I’d drawn at Le Stube not thirty minutes earlier.
Of course, I’d also drawn the Magician, the Devil, and Death in that reading. And now, here was the Magician standing not two feet from me, smelling of fire and heavy spices, of books and mystery and wonders untold, a genie uncorked from his bottle.
Man, he always smelled good. It was one of his finest attributes.
“What are you doing in Paris?” I asked, my gaze still pinned on the sky.
“I could ask you the same thing, but…” M. Armaeus Bertrand’s richly intoned words lingered in the air, leaving no doubt that he’d been following me this whole time. Asshat. I should have known better than to hook up with a guy who’d been around longer than the Arc de Triomphe.
Nevertheless, it was time for a refresher course on boundaries. “This isn’t your job, Armaeus.”
“I’ve taken an unexpected interest.”
“Then I hope you’ve taken out an unexpected loan. Because if not, we’re done here.” I turned to him, praying that the newest talisman I’d purchased to blunt his effect on me would do its job.
Not even close.
Half-French, half-Egyptian, M. Armaeus Bertrand was a sleekly muscled male of rare and exceptional beauty. A male what, exactly, I still wasn’t quite sure. He stood well over six feet, though I didn’t think of him as tall so much as…overwhelming. Rich, ebony hair hung in thick waves to his shoulders, and his face was starkly beautiful, all bronzed skin and elegant eyebrows and sculpted cheekbones that angled down to that lushly sensual mouth.
For tonight’s rendezvous, he’d paired an clearly expensive black suit with a royal blue silk shirt, open at the neck to reveal another swath of rich caramel skin. Everything about the man screamed money, power, and danger.
Most especially danger.
Now his pale gold eyes were more than a little amused as he watched me struggle to focus again. I randomly found two brain cells that remained firing and linked them together, rekindling my ability for speech. “So what kind of interest do you have in my relic?”
“An intensely…personal interest.” He spread his hands, his French blood ensuring that his merest shrug sparked carnal desires. Images suddenly scored through my mind—Armaeus naked and predatory, all that magnificent strength and intensity focused solely on me, his fingers sparking fire on my skin, his gaze locked on mine, his mouth—I blinked rapidly, realizing that all the oxygen had somehow been sucked out of my lungs.
Which was, admittedly, making it tough to breathe.
“Quit that,” I grated out, taking a sharp step back. Annoyed, I worked the hematite bracelet from my right wrist and let it fall to the cobblestones. Yet another charm that had failed the test.
Armaeus chuckled softly. “It is pointless to ward yourself against me, Miss Wilde. You will tire of this game long before I do.”
“So you keep saying.” I straightened, willing myself not to touch the one trinket that had worked against this man, an ornate knot on a long silver chain I’d purchased after consulting a carnie-level Connected on the south side of the Vegas Strip.
The Tyet had cost me half a year’s wages, but it had been worth it. Sadly, Nikki the Seer had warned me straight up that the amulet’s purpose was specifically to prevent actual sex. I didn’t want to think about all the crazy that left up for grabs, especially not with a guy old enough to have survived the Plague. Mu
“Cut to the chase, Armaeus,” I said instead. “I’ve got work to do. What is this ‘personal’ interest? And how much are you willing to pay?”
His golden eyes regarded me steadily. “The seal is intact?”
“Of course it’s intact.” I didn’t ask how he knew about the seal. I didn’t need to. To the rest of the world, M. Armaeus Bertrand was a reclusive Vegas-based hotelier and casino owner. To me, and to other Connected who were, well, connected, he was the Magician. As in the Original Alchemist, the Trickster of the Tarot, the Cobbler…and the leader of the Arcanan Council that was—quite naturally, I suppose—currently based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Keeping the world safe for all things magical.
I’d never heard of M. Armaeus Bertrand before he’d hired me for my first job with the council about a year ago, after an epic night in Rio de Janeiro surrounding a highly coveted fertility idol. A new client materializing out of thin air hadn’t fazed me so much at the time. I was used to anonymous players hitting the scene. And while my little knot of carnie psychics and magical artifact diggers was chatty, we couldn’t keep up with every flush nut job who trolled the circuit jonesing for some lost amulet or sacred tome.
So to me, M. Armaeus Bertrand had been no different, at least at first. And after the dust had cleared in Rio, he’d commissioned me to track down a dubious-sounding “Atlantean bowl” owned by an even more dubious-sounding Sicilian.
I’d found the bowl, of course, though it’d looked no more Atlantean than I did. The next day, a pile of cash had shown up in my account…along with M. Armaeus Bertrand’s personal invitation to take on a second job.
At that point, of course, I had tried to do a background check on the guy. Sadly, my Google Fu was not strong. After I’d hit a few dozen sites listing the man’s Vegas creds but no photos, no rap sheet, and no Facebook page, I’d gotten distracted by a before-and-after article on celebrity plastic surgery gone terribly wrong. And that was that. My usual sources had nothing on the guy, and my unusual sources weren’t talking.
Either way, the man and his council paid very well. Two jobs had led to three. Three to four.
Armaeus had insinuated himself into my dreams and more than his share of hallucinations from our very first contact, which had been a little intrusive, but it had its upsides. All the excitement, none of the tedious pillow talk. He’d wanted more, I hadn’t, and we’d adopted a grudging détente.
Unfortunately, he was a persistent pain in the ass. After my third job for the council, he’d begun insisting I meet with him in person. By the fifth, he’d gotten me to show up in Vegas for longer than thirty minutes at a time.
By the seventh assignment, after a night of too much absinthe and too little sleep, I’d taken him to bed. Totally better than a gold pen, I’d thought at the time.
Fool me once.
Since then, Nikki’s Tyet had kept my virtue intact, and for whatever reason, the Magician hadn’t been super successful to date crawling around in my mind. We could talk, but he couldn’t compel me—usually.
But now Armaeus was here…and he wanted the seal?
I considered that. My contact back at Le Stube wasn’t exactly going to be announcing his Mensa candidacy anytime soon, but he had figured out that I’d scored his Roman party favor. How pissed off would the king of coins be to find out I’d not merely flummoxed his flunky, but I’d pawned off said artifact not thirty minutes later?
Then again, I’d stated my new price, and Monkey-Boy hadn’t been willing to pay. So how was this my fault?
“Is there a problem?” Armaeus hadn’t seen fit to disappear into a puff of smoke during my mental gymnastics, but his attention wasn’t solely on me, but on whatever was behind me. “Other than the fact that you are being followed?”
I scowled at the men I’d also just noticed—dark uniforms, black berets. Not these guys again.
“How’d you even see them? They’re directly behind you.
And what is up with the Swiss Guard tonight, anyway? Since when does the pope care this much about pagan gold?”
“Those men are not quite the Swiss Guard, Miss Wilde.”
“I beg to differ,” I differed, my gaze trained on the stylish soldiers of death. “Maybe you didn’t see them? Tall, dark, enthusiastic? Snappy berets?” It certainly was the Swiss Guard.
True, they were all sporting black ninja gear, and their berets looked more special forces than ceremonial snap caps, but even at fifteen feet, I could see one of them had a papal seal tattoo right behind his ear: crossed keys, mantle, rope, pope hat. Vatican City all the way. That must have been what’d tipped me off when I’d seen them the first time, in the Paris Metro station—right before I’d swiped the golden seal from the museum courier, then nearly took my own life running along the tracks. Totally the same guys. Swiss Guard.
I glanced smugly at Armaeus, in case he’d missed my obvious smackdown. He stared stonily back at me and shook his head. Some people just couldn’t concede the point.
“I did note the presence of those men, yes. They are not your initial concern, however.”
Then, without warning, Armaeus pulled me up against his body, hard. My pulse jacked, my sight dimmed, and everything froze up in shocked and shivering pleasure—except my mouth.
Naturally.
“Hey!” I hissed. “What are you—”
“Shh.” Armaeus’s whisper was right at my ear. “In addition to your not-quite Swiss Guard, the men to whom I am referring entered the crowd a few moments after you. They have since been joined by a fourth gentleman. They lost you when you entered the church, then re-grouped once you stepped outside again. One of them has a newly-bandaged neck. Yes.” Armaeus noted my flinch. “I suspected that was your doing. Give me the seal, Miss Wilde.”
“But how’d they find me?” Without answering, Armaeus abruptly turned deeper into the crowd, towing me along with him. Then, with a movement so fast I had no hope of stopping it, he reached into my jacket and slid the Ceres seal free.
Something inside me deflated a little, as I realized I’d been violated without even getting dinner first. Pungent or not, my prince of coins back at Le Stube had been on the hook for at least eighty thousand euros for this little snatch and pitch, and I really, really hated to see that money go. “You’re paying for that, you know. And for the record, it’s gotten really expensive.”
“Keep moving.” Without breaking stride, Armaeus opened the velvet bag and withdrew the heavy gold disk, slipping it into an interior pocket of his own jacket. He then tucked the seal’s pouch into the pack of an oblivious passing tourist. I saw the young man plow energetically into the crowd, and didn’t miss how half the Swiss Guards’ heads swiveled to watch him go. The pouch had been bugged? By the guards? How did that make any sense?
Armaeus steered me into a side street, but it was too late. The crush of tourists rapidly dwindled, and I could hear the boots of multiple men striding into the street behind us. Even if the Swiss had LoJacked the seal, my prince and his buddies were following us by sight alone. My brain bumped back online. “Hey,” I protested. “Hang on a second. Those guys might actually be here to make good on this job. I need to talk with them.”
“They are not interested in talking, Miss Wilde. Or in paying you.”
Irritation flared, and I stopped short. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. And that money is import—shit!”
A sudden flare of semiautomatic rifle fire peppered the brick wall over our shoulders as Armaeus ducked low and pulled me into a side street that was little more than an alley, but at least it was heading in the right direction: away from the crazy men with guns.
“Three streets over,” Armaeus said, his words unrushed over the clatter of my thrift-store boots and his million-dollar loafers. “A driver will transport us to safety.” Behind us, I again detected the dulcet tones of my contact as he snarled something in French. Armaeus glanced back, his teeth glinting white as he grinned. Then I heard my contact’s cry of confusion.
It was the last sound he ever made.
A second round of gunfire punctuated the night, the sound of the silenced weapons like the breathy popping of balloons, overtaken by the shouts of pain and the crunch of bodies falling to the ground. The Swiss Guard flowed into the street behind us, and Armaeus yanked me close. Every one of my nerve endings lit up like a neon sign at his touch, but I knew better than to resist this time. The man could move. And sure enough, with each of his strides now, the pavement shot beneath us like a rushing torrent.
The Swiss Guards’ angry Italian dwindled into the distance, and the buildings around us blurred. Trapped in that strange cocoon of movement, however, my mind refocused my cards. It always came back to the cards, and the cards had predicted Death. Now, Death was all around me, shimmering in the night.
The cards had been right on the money, in fact—first the exploding Tower, then the Magician, then Death. All of them appearing in rapid succession, each more alarming than the last. The only card left was—the Devil.
What did the Devil card mean this night? More lies, more deceit? Or was its appearance simply a marker, a warning that I was about to head into the underbelly of society, down the well-trod rabbit hole of crime, prostitution, drugs, and death?
Or maybe I’d soon be enjoying Devil’s Food cake.
I voted for Option B.
Armaeus turned again, and he finally let me go, our racing footsteps slowing to a fast stride. I blew out a sharp breath, and forced myself to focus. No streetlamps cut the gloom of this dark street, but Armaeus had definitely relaxed.
Squinting into the darkness, I saw why.
A low, sleek limousine purred ahead of us in the shadows, double-parked on the street. Without speaking, Armaeus guided me to the car, but given that the danger was past, all the familiar panic alarms were going off inside me. Dealing with the Magician was hard enough when I could maintain my own personal space. Being stuck in the tight confines of a limousine with the guy was something else again. I honestly didn’t know how far I could push my Tyet, and I wasn’t in the mood to figure that out tonight.
“You know, I can pretty much disappear on my own,” I said, taking a step back. “Just wire me the money for the seal as usual, and we’re solid.”
Armaeus scowled at me. “I have presented distractions to the men who follow you, not barriers, Miss Wilde. Get in the car.”
“No, really, I’m good,” I hedged. “Besides, they’re not after me anymore. You’ve got what they want. So I head left, you head right, and all’s well with the world. Easy peasy.”
But Armaeus wasn’t looking at me. He turned toward the darkened Parisian street behind us as if he could pierce the stone buildings, measuring the footfalls of our pursuers, gauging their beating hearts. Then he flicked his gaze back to me, and his golden eyes sent a chill right through my bones. “Oh no,” I said, backing up. “No, no, no. Do not even think about it.”
“Nma,” the Magician whispered.
Blackness flowed around me and swallowed me whole.
Chapter Three
“Miss Wilde.”
Armaeus’s words seemed to emanate from somewhere inside me, followed immediately by my brain’s residual protest of DANGER! But it was all so far away, so insignificant, especially when all I wanted to do was curl up under the heavy blanket and sleep under the warm, softly muted amber lights.
I frowned. Wait. Amber?
My world swerved precariously in a way that normal sleeping worlds do not move, and I shot upright, thrusting the sumptuously thick flannel blanket off me as I tried to lurch to my feet—only to practically bisect myself on a safety belt. I sucked in a deep breath and wrenched the thing off as I got my bearings, confirming what my sense of vertigo had already suggested. “Where the hell are we? Where are we going?”
Armaeus scowled at me. “To a friend’s.” .
I scowled right back. “I didn’t think you had friends.”
“I’ll take my chances on that.” I squinted out the tinted windows, watching the lights flicker by. We definitely weren’t in downtown Paris anymore. The homes in this area were larger and spaced significantly far apart, and there were no block-like housing communities. Probably right at the edge of Île-de-France, where the suburbs began to give way to charming cottages and overblown estates. “How long was I out?”
Armaeus didn’t answer me at first. A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I glanced back at him. He sat across from me on a thickly padded leather seat, his legs crossed, his manner contemplative. A glint of silver hung from a chain in his hand. I froze.
“A Tyet,” he mused. “It has been some time since I’ve seen one crafted so finely. Where did Nikki Dawes acquire it, do you know?”
I ignored the question. I also wasn’t going to beg for my amulet. If anything, Armaeus’s interest in it certainly confirmed its value to me. Now if I could just get the damn thing surgically implanted into my skin, I’d be fine. I sat back in my seat and scowled at him. “You want to keep working together, then you do not play mind tricks on me again, you got it? I have my limits, and you’ve definitely crossed them.”
A faint gleam of amusement flared in the Magician’s golden eyes. “I merely needed to get you to safety.”
“Then you merely needed to insist. Or knock me out. But you don’t cheat.”
Armaeus’s brows lifted in two graceful arcs. “Your outrage is misplaced, Miss Wilde. I have no interest in harming you. Most would not have noticed the projection.” He nodded to me as if I should be proud of myself, like the horse that’s figured out the purpose of the bit a second after the bridle has been strapped on.
“Not helping.” I glared into his beautiful face, gratified to hold on to my fury, if only to distract myself from the way my fingertips kept twitching at the edges of my sleeves, as if taking off my clothes would be the most natural thing in the world for me to do next. My gaze slid to the Tyet swinging from Armaeus’s fingers.