by Jenn Stark
“Stop it!” I gritted out. I drove my fingers into my thighs hard enough to bruise, and the pain instantly cleared my brain. My vision returned to normal, the room around me settling into place. I didn’t know what exactly was in that Pythene gas Jerry Fitz was so free with, but man, I needed that shit out of my system. But how did you get an oxygen transplant?
And perhaps more importantly… Why had the Magician left that one part of me untouched? Surely while he was performing his oral search and seizure of my various body parts he could have locked lips with me and inhaled or something to suck out the badness. It’s not as if that move hadn’t been chronicled a dozen times already on the SyFy channel. It was clearly a move.
One he hadn’t made.
My feet seemed fairly solid on the carpet, and I risked leaving the bed. At some point, Armaeus or one of his lackeys had come in to check on me. I wore some sort of thin nightgown and decidedly new underwear, the same brand and style as the ones I’d nearly melted off myself during Armaeus’s little foray into playing doctor yesterday. I pulled the gown over my head and left it on the floor as I reached for my more familiar clothing.
I frowned. Other than the boots, the clothes weren’t mine. Similar but not quite, just like the underwear. I shrugged, fingering the thin cotton of the tank, the simple bra. The leggings. It shouldn’t matter that I was in Armaeus’s house, wearing clothes he provided. It shouldn’t make me feel weird.
It did, but it shouldn’t.
I dressed anyway, buckling on my books with the first sense of relief I’d experienced in a while. The Tyet was around my neck again, resting against my chest, but it alone among all my belongings felt foreign to me, like it needed to be recalibrated. My eyes were decidedly gritty, and I turned to leave the room—surely there was a bathroom somewhere.
“Sara.”
I was getting tired of people using the psychic network to check in with me, but this voice sounded urgent. Familiar. I blinked, and my vision blurred again. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. The world around me dissolved into a rushing kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, the soft muted colors of Armaeus’s world changing to the thick concrete shapes of a building I didn’t know, white and gray and blue rushing by me, struggling to take form.
“Sara, dollface, c’mon. If you can hear me, we’ve got a problem.”
The forms and figures all coalesced, and I nearly hurled. “Nikki!”
But Nikki didn’t answer. I was standing in the room with her, the sense of distortion back as it had been when I’d stood inside Fitz’s glass box. I could see what was in front of me, and then what was beyond—the doctors and nurses moving through the corridors, the shuffling patients, the watchful orderlies. All of them shifting and drifting in an endless dance in and out of sterile rooms with blinking monitors.
But here in this room, all I saw was Nikki. And two empty beds.
As Nikki turned to run out of the room, I could see the past stretch out in front of me like an inviolable thread. The furthest back image was that of laughter and bright skies and girls in pretty dresses with long dark hair flowing in the sunlight. Then there was a pool of water—mirror bright—and something seemed to change. The girls’ lives spun more quickly around that pool, they aged faster and they laughed less, but they were ever drawn back to the pool with its flashing brightness as it reflected the sun’s glare and pulled them back over and over to its edge. To what they saw within its surface. To what they thought they saw in each other’s eyes.
Their eyes. Something about their eyes…
The scenes scrolled too quickly then to count. School, friends, strangers in the distance, always out of reach, but never quite gone. Their parents’ faces gradually more careworn, their shoulders drooping. Gifts of gold and whispers of protection. The strangers coming closer. Darkness encroaching on their special, sacred pool of light. Spinning, turning faster. The last day, the lost day, the day they turned the corner and the car was there, the strangers were there, and then—
Panic seized me, clawing up my throat until I gagged.
“Miss Wilde!” This voice was far closer, but I couldn’t shake the thrall of the vision. Not when I heard my name again, more loudly, more forceful. Not when I felt the electric shock of the Magician’s hands clamping on my arms, trying to ground me. I saw the sisters’ violation with eyes that stretched so wide they could see the whole world. I saw them stripped, manhandled. Not raped, thank God. There was at least enough superstition that their virginity was considered necessary to maintain. But abused in other ways. Frightened. Restrained. Separated.
They can’t be separated.
Even their captors recognized this quickly enough, and the comatose women were hustled back toward each other, then shipped on a plane, watched like prized treasure but treated like animals. They clung together, alternating weeping and raving, until Jerry Fitz stepped into the room—
“Miss Wilde.” I swung my gaze toward Armaeus, staring into his eyes. But I didn’t see him, not really. I saw the gilded twin cages that hung high in the rafters of Binion’s, lit up with spotlights so he could put the girls on display. I saw their white fingers interlaced across the narrow space between their perches.
I saw the hookah with its puffing steam, and smelled the desperation and fear. The gas helped and it hurt. It helped and it hurt. It wasn’t of the gods. It wasn’t pure. The things it showed were not for Man to know.
I saw the two women entering on the arms of the bodyguards, and I knew—I knew.
“You have to wake up.”
I felt the pull of the Magician’s words. I sensed his touch more clearly. The vision began to fracture around the edges—no! It couldn’t. I was too close! The woman—me—and her ragged clothes and hard face and lost eyes. Eyes that were too quickly clouded over with the Sight, something wrong with that, something bad—
Another noise assaulted me, but I batted it away. The burst of light and sound made me cringe as if I was reliving the explosion, watching the world shatter into fire and dust. Then there was movement and the sunlight—how long it had been since I’d seen the sunlight! And the cold, concrete place with its rasping white sheets and squeaking wheels and wailing, squawking monitors and so. Much. Noise.
And then she was there.
Quiet, soft hands. Loving hands. Loving voice. A mother’s voice.
“Miss Wilde. I have Dr. Sells with me. I know you can hear me. We can’t let you stay where you are. You have to come back.”
Quiet, soothing hands. Caring hands. Caring voice. A teacher’s voice.
“You’re going into shock, Sara. You have to break the connection.”
Quiet, steady hands. Blessed hands. Blessed voice. A goddess’s—
Son of a bi—
“Clear!” A blast of electricity came out of nowhere, and I jolted as if I’d experienced a full-body Tase. My skin practically sizzled for a second, and I whipped my head around, my eyes hot, my mouth full of words too impossible to speak.
Vertigo descended on me again, then I was on my knees, gasping and struggling not to retch, my body racked with deep, rolling coughs and my need to vomit so violent and present that I was crying again, crying and shaking and unable to fight off the hands that clasped me. Hands that didn’t hurt, hands that didn’t pull, hands that—
My head came up. Dr. Sells stared back at me. “Hello, Sara. I’m Dr. Sells. Do you remember me?”
I opened my mouth. I knew where the girls had disappeared to. I knew.
Her smile faltered, but not in fear or shock, merely concern. “What is it, Sara? You need to sit down now. Why don’t we sit down?” Her words twisted and tumbled in my ears. I swung back toward Armaeus. He watched me, leaning up against the doorjamb now, missing nothing, as if I was his own personal hunting dog, his own prized pet. His own little finder to bring to his doorstep trinkets for the council to play with.
“Where is she?” I managed. My voice sounded strained, garbled, the words foreign in my ears.
&n
bsp; “Where is who?” To his credit, Armaeus truly did look confused at my question.
Dr. Sells was fussing at my side again, and I wheeled back, batting away her hand with its syringe.
“Get away from me.”
“I need to take your blood, Sara.” She grabbed my arm and steadied it. “The toxins in your system are not going to dissolve on their own. Until they do, you’re going to be at the mercy of those visions you’re having, not knowing what’s real and what’s not. You want to see a video of what just transpired in this room, you’re welcome to it. Trust me when I tell you it’s not a performance you’d want to repeat down on the street.”
That quieted me long enough for her to plunge the needle into my arm. It didn’t hurt. The electrical pulses chittering along my skin crackled and popped, but I couldn’t feel the pain of a pricking needle. “Why don’t I feel that?”
“Your nervous system is currently overloaded. That’s the only thing keeping you upright.” The Magician’s words were almost curious, like a boy enthralled with his latest lab project. I narrowed my eyes at him.
“You shocked the crap out of me. With your hands.”
“Who is it you wanted me to take you to, Miss Wilde? You said ‘Where is she?’ She, who?”
The urgency of my vision came back to me. I wrenched out of Dr. Sell’s grasp and stalked toward him. With the cocktail of gas and electricity racing through my system, I suddenly felt invincible. “Eshe, Armaeus. The High Priestess. I know she’s taken the girls from Kavala out of the hospital. Where are they?”
He lifted an eyebrow, patently unimpressed with my show of anger. “You really think a hospital is where those girls most needed to be?”
“Well, they sure as hell don’t need to be with her. They think she’s a goddess, Armaeus. An Apollonite high priestess for real. Jesus.”
“I think you’re mixing your metaphors.”
“This isn’t a game. And we’re not your pawns.” I dropped my hand from my face. “I don’t know what it is you’re trying to do here, but the girls are not part of it.”
“Are you, then?” His words were low, dangerous, and I could instantly sense the peril here, though I didn’t fully understand it. “Are you willing to stand in their place, for whatever the council needs?”
I stilled. “What do you mean?”
“I just watched you.” Armaeus was calm, intrigued even. “You reached back into those young women’s minds and pulled out their pasts, their present—things you couldn’t possibly have known. You barely had seen them yourself before the explosion in Binion’s. You certainly hadn’t touched them. And yet you were able to pinpoint them, to see what must be seen.” He leveled his gaze at me. “That’s a very useful talent. And as you’re so fond of pointing out, you’re already on the payroll. With your additional ability, we wouldn’t need the young women.”
“They’re not yours to ‘need’ at all, Armaeus.”
“Magic is the province of the council.”
“These are human beings, not specimens.” I shook my hand irritably. “Take me to the goddamned High Priestess. Those girls need to go home.”
He shrugged. “As you wish.”
“Fine.”
He turned on his heel, and I followed. That all…seemed a little too easy.
I should have known that was bad.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The room Armaeus brought me to was definitely part of his complex. I figured we were probably hanging out somewhere over Las Vegas Boulevard, easy for anyone to spot with their Transient Dimension setting turned to “on.” If I was planning to spend any significant time in Vegas, I needed to get square with the whole displacement of time and space, but I had bigger fish to fry right now.
I’d been worried that Armaeus would walk me into some kind of Roman temple, given the whole “High Priestess” thing Eshe was working. Thankfully, I’d gotten that wrong.
What I saw was bad enough.
A full-on hospital suite had been set up at the end of a long hallway, the girls ensconced in matching adjustable twin beds, both of them dead to the world. Sure enough, Dr. Sells split away from us and went over to the monitors, and I eyed her with more than a little betrayal. She was supposed to be on my side, based on our very meaningful fifteen minutes together. Where was girl power when you needed it?
On this side of the glass, staring through it, stood the High Priestess herself. Eshe.
I’d seen her only once before, when Armaeus had agreed to meet me in public in Vegas, the first time I’d come to the city. I’d been nervous, on edge. I’d done the research, I knew where people lived.
But I was like the kid cutting school who was absolutely certain that the principal would be able to pick him out of a crowded club. Eshe had shown up, expecting to be introduced to Armaeus’s “little courier,” and my eternal enmity for the woman had been born.
There was no denying that she was patently stunning, though. It’d been months since I’d seen her, and she still appeared the same: long and lithe, with a waterfall of lustrous black hair tumbling down her back. Even standing in Armaeus’s makeshift hospital room, she oozed power and influence, along with a curious sense of entitlement, as if all the world owed her its every adulation. Lean and mysterious, otherworldly and arch, she turned to glance at me with impatient authority, her strappy silver gown’s fluttering sleeves revealing gold arm bracelets to go along with the silver and gold wrist cuffs, jeweled rings, diamond pendant necklace, and swooping earrings.
“Kind of overdressed, don’t you think?”
“I suppose I should thank you. If these women recover, they’ll be the finest oracles to serve for over five hundred years.”
“They weren’t on the delivery order.” I slanted a look at Armaeus. He didn’t seem impressed. “They’re not staying.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Eshe turned around and scowled at Armaeus. “We need these women. I need them.”
“For what? I thought you didn’t interfere with the actions of the mortal realm. What could the visions of two seers possibly tell you that would be of any use to you?”
She kept her gaze on Armaeus. “Is there a reason why she’s still talking?”
“Look, duckface—”
“Wake.” Armaeus’s voice echoed out through the room. Beyond the glass, the women stirred, rousing to wakefulness. Eshe caught the movement and whipped back around. “How are their numbers?” she demanded.
“Thready,” Dr. Sells said severely. “They should not be here. They should be in a fully functioning facility. With medical specialists.” She scowled at her monitors, never glancing in our direction. I didn’t know if I liked the woman, but I liked her attitude at the moment, anyway.
“I don’t trust those facilities. Too many walls.” Eshe’s tone had turned petulant. “You should have everything you need here.”
“I do, for life support.” Dr. Sells flicked her hand across the screen, and the picture changed. “And congratulations, these two young women are going to survive. But I can’t even determine the true impact of this Pythene gas on Sara right now, and she only inhaled it for about an hour. These women have been sucking down that concoction for the past several weeks. There’s no telling the long-term neurological damage it’s inflicted, let alone the state of their pulmonary systems. They should be under observation for weeks to be safe.”
“Weeks?” It was my turn to be petulant. “I need to get them back to their families.”
“Broken and incapacitated?” Dr. Sells looked at me through the glass. “If you truly feel that their systems in their home countries can outstrip what the council’s money and connections can provide them here, then I suppose that’s a wise choice.”
Son of a bitch. My opinion of Dr. Sells took a nosedive, but I couldn’t fault the woman’s logic. I felt Armaeus’s smug glance at me. He was behind this, somehow. I couldn’t quite believe that he’d orchestrated these women coming here—even I wasn’t that paranoid—but he sure as hel
l would benefit from me being stuck in the city for a while.
“Fine,” I muttered. “Then they get out of this hole in the sky and onto the actual earth, so if their parents want to come here, they can. I want them protected, but I don’t want them hidden. There’s too much of that as it is in the Connected community.”
“What—again, why is the courier allowed to speak? The oracles go nowhere but here. If we need these specialists”—she said the word with a flick of her fingers—“then we bring the specialists here. We’ve done it before.”
“Not negotiable.”
“And I told you to be silent.” Eshe moved with such a languorous grace that a lesser person wouldn’t have seen her attack coming. But I’d been working the back alleys of the black market for going on five years now. I knew the difference between someone working the grift and a sorcerer with real talent. Eshe, for all her bad manners, was the latter.
I dropped to the floor.
The wave of power surged over me, lighting up my nerve endings that were still in full-twitch from the Magician’s electroshock therapy. The blast slammed into the back wall, getting absorbed harmlessly into whatever substance made up this structure. Somehow I didn’t think it drywall.
I rolled to my feet and danced to the side of another blast, not missing the fact that Armaeus stood aside, watching us both with keen interest but no apparent concern. Screw. That.
I didn’t have magical powers, but I had something Eshe didn’t, I was willing to bet.
A good right hook.
She rushed me, and I pivoted left, readying my body and tightening my core as she screamed in frustration, her hand coming up to throw some reinforced spell at me point-blank. I brought my fist up—