Getting Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  And punched through air.

  The momentum carried me forward into the arms of a man I swear hadn’t been there two seconds before, a man whose arms I’d already experienced once this day, the lingering effects of which were not completely forgotten. “I’ve so missed you already, Sara Wilde.”

  He turned me neatly in his arms, caging me so that I faced out.

  The Magician stood close to me, too close, his hand on Eshe’s shoulder, handling her far less roughly but with the same restraint. “Look at her,” he said.

  “I will not be—”

  “Look at her, Eshe. She has agreed to substitute herself for the oracles. Look at her and tell me she cannot do what you need her to do.”

  “She can barely be trusted to speak in complete sentences.” Eshe flicked a glance at me, then stilled. As usual, I caught on a second too late. By the time I decided to avert my eyes, I couldn’t.

  “What is this you have brought?”

  Her words were almost exactly what I recalled Kreios saying to Armaeus over the phone when we were flying back from Rome, and the odd phrasing caught at me as I held Eshe’s dark-eyed stare. I felt her trying to peer into me, through me, but the twist of her pouty lips told me of her lack of success, before she shrugged off Armaeus. “I can’t reach her mind. She’s useless to me.”

  Armaeus let Eshe go willingly. Kreios did not seem to have the same agenda. His arms remained locked around me, pinning me to his muscular form. His chuckle was low, almost intimate, and it caused Eshe to look sharply at him. “I suppose you have something to add? Since you invariably do?”

  “You don’t need to wrench the visions out of her, Eshe. She will give them to you freely enough.”

  “I will?” I will? The idea of me giving Eshe anything except a hard time was difficult for me to imagine.

  “She will.” It was Armaeus who spoke now, and his lip curled with annoyance, as if he’d finally noticed Kreios’s stranglehold on me. “She won’t allow you to touch the women from Kavala. She knows they would go to you willingly, have already gone with you once before. You would not coerce them. You would not need to.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t,” Eshe sniffed.

  “Accordingly, if she doesn’t want the girls to get anywhere near you, she has to offer something in return. Something only she can do.” He shrugged, eyeing me dispassionately. “And so she will.”

  I struggled against Kreios’s hold a moment more before he let me go, though I could feel the energy of his touch even after he’d released me. I rubbed my arms, sensing his smirk, and irritation lashed through me. I should be more upset, I knew. I should be outraged. But Armaeus was right, and Dr. Sells was right, and Father Jerome, who probably didn’t even know he was going down for this, was right.

  “Fine,” I said, staring daggers at Eshe as she boldly met my gaze. “You want me to look something up from your global Rolodex, I can do that. Until the girls are strong enough to leave the city. And that’s not going to take months.” I scowled at Dr. Sells. “That’s going to take weeks. But if my newfound ability suddenly goes poof, there’s no bothering the girls. I want your word on that.” I wasn’t glaring at Eshe when I made this announcement, but Armaeus. He inclined his head gracefully. “Not your nod, your word.”

  “I give you my word as my bond. You will serve as Eshe’s oracle until such time as the women leave Vegas to continue their recovery.”

  “I’ll need her longer than that.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” I snapped. “By that point, you’ll have broken down the gas you’ve collected from Fitz’s stash into its component parts. You can make your own little hallucinogenic cocktail. You won’t need to crawl around in anyone else’s brain at that point. You can suck down the gas yourself.” I grinned at her horrified expression. “C’mon. Rub elbows with the little people, why don’tcha? Could be fun.”

  “You’re revolting.” She scowled at Armaeus. “How do we even know she can do what you say she can?”

  “Oh for God’s sake.” I waved down her theatrics. “What do you want me to see for you? What past or future do you want to view?”

  “Tell me what really happened when Kreios was stuck in that abbey.”

  Behind me, Kreios stiffened. “That’s hardly relevant.”

  “It’s eminently relevant,” Eshe shot back. “You certainly haven’t been forthcoming, and this is information the council needs to know.”

  “It’s no good for another reason,” I said, carefully pitching my tone to be nonchalant. Nevertheless, if Kreios wanted his secret kept, it was easy enough for me to do it. And if ever there was someone I wanted to owe me a favor, it was the Devil. “I was there, Eshe. I showed up about ten minutes after Kreios went underground, so I was privy to just about everything that happened to him. Not exactly useful as an oracular test. You’re going to have to ask me something else.”

  “Fine,” she snapped “Tell me something about myself that no one in this room could possibly know but me. That will serve.”

  I stared at her, but only partially in disgust. The other part rushed up too quickly, filling my mouth with words and thoughts and plans and expectations. I shook my head, but the pressure to speak grew almost unbearable. Finally I breathed out a long, ragged sigh. I swung my gaze back around to Eshe, and I could tell by her expression that she was surprised. Maybe a little worried?

  Worked for me. “You killed to take your—”

  “Stop—that’s enough!” Eshe snapped, shock suffusing her face.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” the Devil drawled. “There are so many ways that sentence could end, and all of them completely entertaining. Do go on, Sara.”

  “And I said no. What she’s said is sufficient. I can use her for my research.” She folded her hands demurely. “You’ll remain with me in my domain until I have need of you.”

  I bristled. “I’m not your chew toy, Eshe. I’ll work for you the same way I work for Armaeus. On my own hours, and not until you’ve paid me a retainer fee.”

  “Unacceptable. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been without—”

  “And do you really want to push me? You’ve already agreed to leave me alone the moment my senses return to normal. That could happen in the next thirty minutes if you’re not careful. And thirty minutes is about all the patience I have for this science experiment right now. So you want a piece of me, then let’s go. But I’m out of here after that.”

  “Out of here.” She smirked. “You reek of Armaeus’s touch. I don’t think he’s going to be letting you go anytime soon.”

  “Not your problem.” I didn’t miss Armaeus’s cold stare at my profile. I couldn’t figure him out. He’d just put me back together like Humpty Dumpty after the fall, then extorted me to work in this city for God only knew how long. Not for the first time, I began to suspect he had an end game that I wasn’t going to like. Also, not for the first time, the itch to flee became overwhelming.

  Flee this man, flee this city, flee this life.

  Then my gaze flicked past Eshe’s sneer and into the room next door. Once again, I was seeing the oracles of Kavala behind glass, like they were circus animals on display. That would have been their future with Jerry Fitz without question, and my heart twisted into a hard little knot. The girls were fully awake, their faces luminous with youth and frailty. Away from the smoke and filmy costumes, they looked like ordinary girls. Girls with a future. Girls with hope.

  Like the little girls and boys whose pictures still haunted me. The ones I wasn’t able to save when I’d been barely more a kid myself.

  And they were staring out into the observation room, their eyes filled with wonder, as if they were viewing an actual goddess in their midst. Or a savior. Or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

  But they weren’t looking at Eshe. They were looking at me.

  I sighed, then glared again at the High Priestess. “Let’s get this done.”

  “Of course,” she purred, putting out her hand to draw me tow
ard her. “This will only hurt a little.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I had to handle it to the council. When they wanted to put on a show, they put it on with style.

  We stood in an antechamber, waiting to be ushered into the council’s grand meeting hall. I was edgy, ready to go, since Armaeus had spent the last few hours annoying the crap out of me with delays. First I had to shower, then eat, then sit in a quiet room to “meditate.” Read: “fall asleep.” He’d finally shown up again, with a new set of clothes that apparently had been ordered up by Sister Fashionista. I was now wearing designer trousers over my boots, and my tank was covered by a shimmery white shirt with long sleeves. I looked like a receptionist at a high-end art gallery. Eshe had wanted me in a toga, but even I had my limits.

  In the meantime, Armaeus had provided me with access to his computer. I’d declined his offer of a new phone. The entire point of a burner device was that it wouldn’t be LoJacked by the council, after all. Kind of defeated the purpose for them to make a gift of one to me.

  Granted, what I’d seen on his computer had satisfied me. It wasn’t my account, but his, with the transaction of $20,000 going out to my digits. I could find a whole lot of kids for twenty grand.

  “Each time you agree to serve as Eshe’s oracle, to provide her the answers she seeks, that amount will be transferred, Armaeus said. “You can make your arrangements with your own bank from this terminal as well—”

  “I’ll do it tonight.” I shook my head. “On my own.”

  He didn’t roll his eyes, but he might as well have. “There is very little about you I couldn’t find out if I didn’t want to, Sara. You really think I don’t have an intimate understanding of how much money you have and where you spend it? How do you think I found you in the first place?”

  “Boundaries, Armaeus.” I waved a hand at him. “You want me to work with your little freak-show harem, you at least give me the illusion that you respect my limits. Otherwise, I’ll walk.”

  “You won’t walk.” His smug smile couldn’t have been curved more perfectly to piss me off. “You have the girls in Las Vegas Medical to protect. The phone calls have already been placed to their family, so you have them to protect as well. And as you pointed out yourself, the city is potentially about to be overrun by curious agents of SANCTUS, wondering how, exactly, Jerry Fitz managed to explode himself while wearing a cuff that bore their symbols. A cuff which, miraculously, survived the blast and made it into police custody.”

  I scowled at him. “There weren’t two pieces left of that thing larger than a dime,” I said. “I saw it, Armaeus. I half thought SANCTUS had detonated it.”

  “You’re correct. But you weren’t the only one to see it. And your compatriot, Miss Dawes, is not so careful with shielding her mind. We were able to create a reasonable facsimile and leave it at the bomb site. Queries are being made through the highest channels at the Vatican, and we’ve started slight ripples at Interpol. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to serve as some well-placed thorns. It won’t take them long to come investigating.”

  I stared at him. “You want them to come here. I thought you were all about noninterference.”

  “You mistake the role of the council in the affairs of magic.” Armaeus shook his head. “You’ll have the opportunity to correct that error during your extended stay with us.”

  “Not with you.” How many times did I have to make this point? “I’m not floating around in hyperspace while I’m here. I don’t care where you stick me. Put me up at a casino, buy me a house, I don’t care. But I’m not staying here.” He looked ready to argue, and I held up a hand. “I’m more useful to you out there than I am here, other than when Eshe wants to play Psychic Scavenger Hunt.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “You can’t keep me here against my will.” This too was something else I had figured out in the intervening hours between our little standoff in the hospital room and now. I may not know all the ins and outs of the council, but I wasn’t a complete idiot. That had been a carefully orchestrated scene by Armaeus. Down to the last impossible choice. “You had to get me to agree to stay on as your little windows on the world of my own free will. The girls had already agreed to it, and apparently even hallucinating yesses count as yesses in your book. But I hadn’t. Why the hangup? What happens if someone says no?”

  “We’ve not had to deal with that for so long, I wouldn’t know.”

  The light, clear sound of a gong interrupted us, and the doors swung open. Without saying another word, Armaeus gestured me inside.

  I went.

  The great hall of the council looked a lot like…a conference room. Fancier, of course, with a long center slab of marble instead of particleboard with cherry veneer, and throne-like seats in place of rollaway chairs. But the general effect was the same. Darkness hung heavy on either side of the table, which was illuminated by a bright central light, cast in such a way that everything seemed limned with gold.

  “You guys are the best. Someday you’re really going to have to tell me who does your decorating.”

  Eshe stood at the front of the table, but to my surprise, Kreios sat next to her. Sat, or more like sprawled, in one of the opulent chairs. He stared at me as I approached, clearly not a fan of my outfit. He wasn’t the only one. Armaeus had been angling for the toga as well. Not going to happen.

  Eshe pursed her lips as I approached. “You should be kneeling.”

  “A lot tougher to walk that way.”

  “You should—”

  “The oracles that Fitz used were cooped up in a glass chamber, and they were able to respond, Eshe.” Armaeus’s voice was firm. “Miss Wilde can sit or stand. Whatever is her preference.”

  “I’ll stay on my feet.” From Eshe’s little half smirk, I got the feeling I wouldn’t be upright for long, but I was feeling lucky.

  “Then we will begin.”

  Her words made me tense up, and I fixed my eyes on her, suddenly uneasy. With that short sentence, her voice had dropped several octaves, far past bass into something so elemental it seemed like the very murmuring of the rocks and earth. The lights dimmed over the table, and I vaguely had a sense of Armaeus seating himself beside Kreios. The High Priestess’s gaze was locked on her hands. Despite myself, I glanced there as well.

  And was caught.

  A ball of fire had erupted between Eshe’s palms, but not like any fire I’d ever seen. It crackled with blue and purple veins, green and gold and red, and it seemed to expand to fill my whole world.

  “Are you ready to see and share all that may be seen?” Eshe’s words were so quiet, they were almost subvocalized, but I felt myself nodding. Though whatever she asked me next, I couldn’t have said.

  Because there was the tiny problem of my brain exploding.

  Without warning, pain radiated through my system, my body jolting into a tight arch of pain, breath crystallizing in my lungs. I wanted to vomit, but my bile was fire in my throat, burning through my esophagus. My blood vessels swelled to six times their normal size, my pulse racing like traffic fleeing a storm after the roadblocks failed. I twisted away, desperate to escape, to find Armaeus, Kreios, anyone who could help.

  Something sounded in my ears again, demanding my attention, and I realized my eyes weren’t seeing. I reached up to tear away the obstruction, and pain lacerated my face.

  Before me sat a group of men at a table, leaning close. Not just men—women too, all of them robed for surgery. The room didn’t look like a surgical suite, though. More like a room in a cheap hotel. Not abandoned, not some sort of crack house, but a tired, beat-down room with cheap polyester comforters and old, faded carpet and tan walls that maybe once had been white.

  They had a body stretched out on the table—not a bed, a table, like a portable gurney. A drip was attached to a pole, and the body was white, too white, too small, the legs and ankles protruding to the edge of the table but not quite reaching. A child? A teen? There was no way to tell unti
l a knife slashed and the feet convulsed, and I realized this child was awake! Awake!

  Another impossible pressure weighed on my brain, and I moved closer, closer when all I wanted to do was leave. I placed my hand against the shoulder of a man, and he shrugged me off, shivering, but the movement shuffled him to the side, and I saw the small form on the table. Not a child, but not quite a man yet either, judging by the sharp planes of his collarbone. His chin jutted up in a paroxysm of pain. Without thinking, I placed my hand on the boy’s leg, and his pain became mine, suffusing me with a new wave of sharp horror that buckled me at the knees.

  The boy on the table relaxed, and the men around me spoke in words I didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, but they passed into me and through me as I focused on the boy, sending him all my strength and taking all the pain that I could, watching with dead eyes as I saw the implantation of the device into his chest cavity, low and deep, up against his solar plexus, the center of his energy, I knew. I could feel the boy’s power stirring, waking, an eye fluttering open that saw too much. It would see me!

  Instantly, I was pulled almost physically from the scene, twisting away, and then I was in another place, another hellhole. There was only one person here. A woman, bound to a wall. I was forced toward her by unseen hands, though I could smell the rankness of her death. She was gone, but recently, her life spirit still heavy in the air. I lifted her head, brushing her lank hair out from her face, and my stomach turned over again. Her eyes were gouged out, her tongue cut away. The sweat was not yet dry on her face, though. Her captors were close—close.

  Pushing against the compulsion to leave this place entirely, I turned and raced through the corridors, slipping in and between the bars that kept this woman trapped underground. It didn’t take me long. The men were hunched over their spoils, like pirates with looted treasure, and they didn’t see me come upon them until I was already past. I whirled to face them, my eyes peeling open wide, and they blanched as they walked through me. But I saw their faces. Saw and remembered. Saw and reported.