by Jenn Stark
“Don’t,” I warned, but Nikki was already clicking on the connection.
“Well hello, Detective Delish, it’s been way too long since I’ve felt you in my hand,” Nikki cooed. I pursed my lips together and tried not to laugh.
Brody hesitated a long moment, his brain clearly trying to register Nikki’s words. “You know this is why I never put you on speakerphone, Nikki,” he finally muttered.
She grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. But what’s up, sugar lips? I do have you on speakerphone, and I’ve got our girl with me, safe and sound. How goes the home front?”
“Sara?” Brody’s voice was a mix of relief and worry. “You’re good?”
I shot a look at Nikki, and she rolled her eyes, but her expression was affectionate. The problem with knowing someone since you were fourteen years old was that they never truly could move past you being fourteen years old.
“I’m good, Brody,” I said, my own voice a little rustier than I would have wanted it to be. I cleared my throat. “Has Nigel gotten you up to speed? You know that I ran into Hayley Adams?”
“Yes, I do, and I know that her aunt tracked you down to Tokyo and tried to blow up the house where you were staying.” His tone registered dismay but not disbelief. “Someday you’re going to have to explain all that to me, but not today. Part of the reason I’m calling is that I’ve got a bead on the Adams girl, courtesy of the Magician himself.”
That did surprise me, and Nikki’s eyes had also widened. “He knows where she is?” I asked, reaching out to the Magician with my mind. Curiously, though, I couldn’t feel him anymore…though he’d seemed to know we’d landed as well. What had changed?
“Not only that, but he’s got her pinned in place and, apparently, she doesn’t realize it. She’s sleeping off a bender in a very luxurious hotel suite in the Palazzo. Penthouse floor.”
“He got her drunk?”
“He didn’t, no. But Hayley was in the casino on a fake ID, playing slots. He pulled some strings to get her a comped room and a bottle of champagne.”
“That’s totally contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” Nikki sniffed. “He wants to contribute, he’s got my number and my preferred brand of champagne.”
“Yeah, well, apparently, none of you managed to let slip to him the fact that Hayley was in Tokyo and then Nepal. When he asked me how in the hell she managed to do all that, I explained to him about the game company she worked for with Simon.”
Both Nikki and I were making similar faces, our lips pulled back from our teeth, our brows up in exaggerated grimaces of very real pain. Hale had begged me not to say anything to Armaeus, and really, Brody didn’t know much, but had he already said too much? How much damage was done?
We didn’t say anything, however, and a moment later, Brody grunted with exasperation. “Well, thing one, I didn’t know it was a goddamned secret. And thing two, he had every right to be pissed at Simon for getting her involved in his gaming nonsense. Hayley’s still a kid. A very traumatized kid.”
I rubbed my forehead. This wasn’t bad, then. Armaeus still didn’t know the worst by far. “Has he confronted Simon yet?”
“I got the feeling he was waiting for you to come back to tackle that particular piece of crazy,” Brody said. “But I don’t really care how they handle their interoffice politics. I got a teenage girl on my hands, and I can’t interrogate her without parental consent—but no way am I ready to bring the parents in when we don’t even know what’s going on yet with her. Can you meet me there and be the ones who talk to her while I observe?”
I looked at Nikki, who gave me the thumbs-up. “Now?” I asked.
“Assuming she hasn’t flown the coop, now would be good,” he said.
“See you in a few, sugar lips.” Nikki ended the call and turned onto the Strip at the south end.
I glanced up at the soaring shadow structures of the Council’s residences along the glittering boulevard, enormous homes invisible to the naked eye—unless you happened to be Connected. The first was Prime Luxe, the Magician’s domain, a fortress of glass and steel that erupted over the Luxor casino in a forest of angry spires. Then there was the ethereal Hermit’s domain, little more than a platform with a snug little hut, reachable only by two enormous spiraling staircases. I didn’t even know if the Hermit had ever stayed in that residence, but it was there, a symbol of his place on the Council if nothing else. The other residences crowded along the Strip, each more impressive than the last: the Devil’s soaring skyscraper over the Flamingo Hotel, Simon’s Foolscap-shaped domain over Bellagio, the Emperor’s black tower over Paris Casino, and the Hierophant’s white tower over Treasure Island. Then, far down the Strip, was the Hanged Man’s tower over the Stratosphere. The boulevard was getting downright crowded.
But we stopped just past the Hierophant’s white monstrosity, pulling into the parking circle at the Palazzo. “Valet?” Nikki asked.
“Probably a good idea. I’d still like to get to Simon’s if we can before Armaeus catches up to him.” We exited the car, and Nikki handed over the keys to the valet, then gave a brief, unexpected laugh as we mounted the steps to the hotel.
“You think Kreios is going to be able to pull off getting Sariah here? And more to the point, what will Detective Hottie do if he does?”
“Personally, I think his head will explode,” I said. “He’ll start second-guessing every conversation he’s ever had with me, before and after I ran away. And then he won’t know how to handle Sariah, which may not go so well for her, since she’s had nothing to do but think about the guy for the last ten years.”
“Oh, I’d give her a little more credit than that,” Nikki said. “She may be sweet on Officer Sugar Lips, I mean, who wouldn’t be? But she’s also a tough cookie. She won’t let herself look like a fool.”
“But what’s her education been like? I mean, I remember myself when I was her age. There was so much I didn’t know. So much I didn’t need to know, granted, but still.”
Nikki snorted. “Yeah, I can’t think knowing the quadratic equation would’ve been super useful to you as you embarked on a life of crime.”
“Exactly. But I did pick up the basics as I went along. What teachers has Sariah had to explain how the world works?”
“Well, gee, lemme think,” Nikki said drolly. “Seems to me there’d be a pretty diverse group of instructors in Hell to help show her the ropes.” She nudged my arm. “She’ll be okay. You were, without her. And I kind of think you could have used some of her edge when you were trying to make your way as a seventeen-year-old all on your own.
“Yeah.” I hadn’t been completely on my own, of course. I’d gotten lucky—very lucky. Still, Nikki wasn’t wrong. Sariah might be a little unsure when she took her first wobbly steps back in the real world, but I had no doubt she’d regain her feet quickly.
Now I needed to focus on another young woman regaining her feet. I hustled through the lobby with Nikki, my steps naturally taking me over to the guard by the suite elevators. I’d lived at the Palazzo Hotel for a short while when I’d first come to Las Vegas, long enough that in many ways, it was where I felt most at home—despite the clanging of the slot machines and the constant buzz of canned music streaming out from the casino.
Today, the energy felt off, though, a slide of electricity not quite in keeping with the rush and tumble of the hotel’s natural vibrations, and I found myself looking over my shoulder as we entered the elevator bay and punched the Up button.
Nikki must have felt it too. “Can’t be Interpol,” she muttered. “Those asshats are about as Connected as my left stiletto.”
“Yeah, but something’s up,” I muttered. “Something just feels—”
“Come quickly, Miss Wilde. We have a problem.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brody called a moment later.
“What’s happening?” Nikki barked as she connected the call.
“Hayley’s having some kind of seizure.”
“Well
, isn’t the Magician right freaking there?” she demanded, saving me the trouble as we piled into the elevator and pounded the button for the penthouse floor a dozen more times than necessary.
“That’s—part of the problem. He can’t touch her. Where the hell are you?”
Can’t?
“Almost there.” Nikki soothed as we began the slow climb upward. By the time we reached the top of the building, the tension was almost at a fever pitch—physically palpable as we exited the elevator.
“What the hell is this?” I grumbled.
Nikki shook her head. “This is something new to me, for sure. And I’m not big into new right now.”
A door clicked open down the hallway, and Brody stepped out, his face tense and set. “What do we have?” I asked as we ran toward him.
“What’s going on?” Nikki demanded for good measure.
“She’s reacting big-time to Bertrand, but he can’t get close enough to help her, and he can’t leave. He’s caught in some kind of stasis, and meanwhile, something bad is going on with Hayley.”
“When did it start?” I entered the room, taking it in with a quick sweep. “Armaeus!”
My reaction was immediate and visceral, every nerve seeming to fire at once. First there was relief at seeing him—his beautiful face, his dark eyes, his rigid jaw—then sheer panic overwhelmed me as I realized his hands were flung wide, his body held impossibly taut. Something was very wrong here. “What’s happening?”
“I’m fine,” he said tersely, his glance cutting away to the center of the room. “She is not.”
I tore my gaze away from him and realized that Hayley was on the bed, a clammy version of her former calm, cool, and collected self. She was rigid and trembling slightly, her eyes open but unseeing, her hands clenched.
Armaeus’s words were low and measured. “Miss Adams awoke approximately thirty minutes ago and immediately asked for me.”
“Asked for you?” I turned to him and frowned. “You were here?”
“I was not. I was en route to the Bellagio.”
To see Simon, I knew without him saying it. Instantly, I regretted not telling him earlier about everything I’d learned in Nepal, never mind my promise to Hale. And now Hale was on the bed and Armaeus was frozen in place for fear of harming her. “So you came here instead.”
“Immediately. And her response was as you see it. When I attempted to assist, she cried out in pain. When I attempted to leave, her—magnetic tension increased.”
I scowled down at the girl on the bed. “Magnetic tension. That sounds totally fake.”
“Allow me to demonstrate.” Armaeus moved toward the door, and Hayley’s body arced up as if she’d been electrocuted. Chairs, electronics, plants shifted in their bases, all tugging toward her. When the Magician stopped, Hayley slumped again.
“I can, of course, ignore the reaction, but I’m unsure as to the ramifications of that.”
“Who’s strong enough to do this?” Brody snapped. “Other than either of you?”
I wasn’t at all sure that I could do what was happening here, practically levitating a body from a distance and zapping it with an electrical charge, but on the Council, there were several options.
“Tesla,” I said, staring at the girl’s trembling body. There was something strange about her, though, something…almost impermanent. “Where has he been? Do we have eyes on him?”
Nikolai Tesla was the Hanged Man of the Arcana Council, the twentieth-century master of electricity who had used his intelligence and his exceptionally advanced Connected abilities to create some of the most amazing inventions that modern man had ever seen. He’d been far ahead of his time in the true sense of the word, attempting to use existing early 1900s-era components to bring his visions to life, and failing miserably, to his own deep chagrin and to the denigration of his legacy. The Council had taken notice, however, and even as he was at his zenith of popularity, they’d worked behind the scenes to ensure that Tesla shared only so much with the world—and nothing more. His ideas of free electricity were a hair’s breadth away from free magic, a cause he still advocated for, no matter the cost. I didn’t necessarily like the guy, but he hadn’t proven himself to be my enemy. At least not yet.
I stared at the young woman on the bed. Had the Hanged Man somehow gotten to Hale remotely? And if so, why?
Nikki’s strident voice cut in on my thoughts. “From everything we can tell, Tesla has not left his domain above the Stratosphere. But there’s no telling what he’s doing in there. My money’s on both him and Viktor being behind this. And Simon, I guess, though I hate to believe it.”
The Magician shifted again, and Hayley cried out in pain. Armaeus scowled. “I’m stopping this,” he growled. “I will not be used as a pawn.”
“Well, hang on there, love chop,” Nikki said, raising her hands in alarm. “How do you know that’s not exactly what they want you to do?”
As she spoke, though, I looked more closely at Hayley’s trembling form. She wasn’t merely pale and glassy, she was almost transparent. If I stared hard enough, I could see the outline of the pillow beneath her head. I glanced up, looking around the room. “How long has she been here? Did she have a guard?”
“No more than two hours,” Armaeus said calmly, regaining his cool façade. “No guard. The room was warded—”
“Warded against what? Me? You? The Council? We’re not looking at run-of-the-mill threats here, Armaeus, we’re looking at an attack from the inside.”
Without warning, I lurched to the side, throwing myself over Hayley’s body. As I suspected, she screamed bloody murder, but there was nothing there. As soon as I hit the electrical field, however, it shorted out, the hologram or projection or whatever the hell it was dissolving into a myriad sparks.
Unfortunately, instead of those sparks losing form, they intensified around me, binding me in Twizzlers of pain. I couldn’t get my hands close enough together to create my own ball of fire, and I definitely couldn’t reach inside my pack to grab the wands of life and darkness—not that I wanted to. Much. Instead, I flopped around like a salmon leaping upstream.
Sadly, it was almost impossible to focus with the ropes of sizzling fire lashing around me, whipping in all directions. I heard shouts, demands even, but as I flailed under the weight of the fire, I couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing. It was as if there were two rooms, both the one I was looking at, and another room altogether, a room in a rude sort of shopkeeper’s hut, with armor and mail shirts and helmets lining the shelves. I’d seen a room like this before, I realized. When I’d been looking over Katya’s shoulder as she’d raced through the Mongol Horde game. And while Hayley wasn’t in the hotel suite, she was in this game chamber, staring at me, her eyes wide as she tried to shout something at me I couldn’t hear. But she was whole, she was safe, she was alive—at least for the moment. Only I was the one writhing in pain, trapped on the bed in the snare some minion of evil had laid for me.
“It’s a gateway—a gateway to the Mongol Horde game, I think,” I screamed, or tried to scream, but I couldn’t get beyond the fiery conflagration of my bindings. Dimly I realized that the hotel suite around me was catching on fire. Nikki was screaming, Brody was shouting something, and Armaeus…
Armaeus simply moved.
In a leap that seemed to take no time at all to complete, the Magician bounded across the room and caught me up, electrical net and all. He shifted me hard to the right, directly through the wall of the Palazzo suite. There was a burst of pain, an almost suffocating drop—and then we were in another place altogether…a place I immediately recognized.
The grotto from my dream.
***
“This is real?” I managed, looking around. I stood in my same clothes, but my pack with the artifacts hadn’t made it into this space. I prayed the suite back in Vegas hadn’t really caught on fire. “Hayley was never in that room after all?”
“This is real,” Armaeus said. He looked intense, feral
, and brutally angry. “And Hayley Adams was in that room. But she’s there no longer. In my hubris…”
He whirled around, stalking off a few yards to stare into the shadows beyond the trees. “I should have known that she would not have the power to connect directly to me, to reach out to me so clearly. I was drawn to that room to hold me there. Then endured my own weakness being used against me.”
He turned back to me, but there was no remorse on his face. Only cold certainty. “It is a weakness I cannot afford, nor one I’m willing to repeat.”
I stared at him. “What weakness do you mean, specifically?” I asked. I’d seen the Magician angry before, I’d seen him desperate, I’d even seen him racked with grief. This was different. This was the look of a man who had been pushed beyond his limits, almost without expecting to be. Like the final smallest pebble that set the avalanche in motion.
Kreios had mentioned this weakness of the Magician’s, though. Death had as well. Neither of them had thought he could push past it. Apparently, that concern was weighing heavily on Armaeus’s mind too.
“Viktor has long said that I am too soft on humanity, too gentle in my attempts to coax them along the path of balance.” The Magician’s words were low and hard, but irritation shot through me as I saw the direction he was heading.
“So, what, now you’ve decided to listen to a sociopath as opposed to your own higher self? Since when did Viktor become a counselor you value?”
“Since I became trapped in my own inaction,” Armaeus said, and again, his voice was strangely calm, his demeanor glacial.
“But Hayley is—”
“I don’t care about Hayley,” he snapped. Then he laughed abruptly, a sound that chilled me more than I could have imagined. “Hayley was not who was just harmed by me.”
“But I’m fine—” I protested.
“You are, because I acted. Finally. But not before you were burned by those electrical charges, not before I stopped, frozen by my desire to work with mortals in the way I have trained myself to. The way you would. When I entered that suite, I could have advanced on Hayley immediately, but she cried out, and I am a fool. I wanted you there. You are still more human than not, and the child had already been irrevocably harmed by the Council. And so I waited to learn, to see how you would wish me to proceed with the human child. But I cannot afford such hesitation. And it’s time I, too, owned who I really am.”