by Jenn Stark
Nikki’s strong hand under my arm was the only thing keeping me moving. I didn’t remember her coming back into the room. I didn’t remember us leaving the room. I did remember that Armaeus had been gone when I’d awoken. Disappeared. That I’d been huddled on the floor alone next to the fire in his library, wrapped tightly in the Magician’s cloak, before Nikki had come bounding toward me. I didn’t know where Armaeus had gone…and I didn’t understand what had happened to me. I only knew that something definitely had happened.
Now Nikki was practically carrying me to the elevator but I—I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave this place of power, no matter how thick my head felt or how confused I was.
It was as if my eyes had been opened and couldn’t shut again, and I’d seen the truth of the war coming as I surged back up from the blackness of Armaeus’s power. That was the imagery that had greeted me. Not the sense of any changes to my own body, not the reconnection with the man who had given me this incredible gift and curse of power. But the clear, undeniable urgency that I needed to warn the Houses of Magic of what was hurtling toward us. That I needed to bind them to me, their strength and their resolve. That I needed to warn them, to prepare them. To let them know what would be demanded of them. What I knew and still didn’t know of the coming assault on our world.
And I needed to do it now.
“What’s in there?” I asked, and Nikki glanced over.
“There would be a wall…oh. Well, now it’s a door. Sweet Jesus, this place is a pain in the ass.”
“Please…take me in there.”
Clearly against her better judgment, Nikki complied. The room proved to be an ornately decorated sitting room, complete with two wingback chairs and a fainting couch. I eyed the latter dourly. “Funny guy,” I muttered. Of course, Armaeus had known what I would do in the wake of accessing so much magic, before I’d even known it myself.
Nikki followed my glance and took in the couch. It didn’t take a genius for her to figure out what might make me faint twice in one afternoon.
“Oh no, dollface. No. I don’t know what just happened to you in there, but I do know that this would not be an ideal time for you to go mind-jumping across the world. Especially not with me being the only one to catch you.”
I drew in a shaky breath. “We’ve done it before.”
“Yes. Yes, we have done it before, which is why I can speak with some authority that this is not going to go well when you pretty much already have smoke pouring from your ears, and, unless I miss my guess, you’re straight up bleeding from the eyeballs.”
I lifted a hand to dash away the bit of moisture there, and sure enough, my fingers came away tinged with pink. “I didn’t think that was a thing.”
“It’s not a thing among normal people, or at least among normal people who haven’t had their brains scrambled. Normally, I would only see it looking at a dead body on a gurney, as a matter of fact.”
I winced as she helped me into one of the deeply cushioned wingback chairs. “You know, your bedside manner needs some work.”
“I couldn’t agree more. In fact, why don’t we start practicing it now by getting you into an actual bed.” Even as she continued grousing, however, Nikki dragged the other wingback chair over and positioned it beside me. She was going to help me. Of course she was going to help me. Beyond being an Ace of my House, she was my best friend.
I grinned up at her, then sobered as she visibly blanched. “What?”
“Um…so not trying to pry or anything, but what exactly did you do back there in Dumbledore’s study?”
“I…” I frowned. “I can’t really remember. That’s happened before. My mind shuts down if it gets too overwhelmed with…magic and stuff.”
She cocked an eye at me. “He tried to put the moves on you again?”
I half laughed, half coughed, lifting my brows at the smoke that wafted up from my lips. Shakily, I waved it away. “No, no, nothing like that. I needed to be stronger, he said. He was worried that in the wake of his most recent increase of abilities, I wouldn’t be able to keep pace with him.”
“Uh-huh,” Nikki said drily. “He said that. With a straight face.”
“I…” I frowned, trying to remember the sequence of events. But they slipped and rolled around like a scatter of marbles, never in the same place. “I believed him. Or, believed him enough to want to increase my abilities. So maybe it doesn’t matter so much if he was being honest with me. He opened the door, and I willingly walked through it.”
“Well, that I like better, then. That’s okay. Ain’t nothing that says a girl can’t juice her powers if that’s what she wants. But…” Now it was Nikki’s turn to wave away a tendril of smoke. “You sure this was what you wanted?”
I wasn’t sure at all, now that it was done. I certainly didn’t feel right. Still, we were here, we were safe for the moment, and I needed to take care of something while the Magician’s information was still fresh in my mind…and while the heady impact of his source magic was still rich in my blood.
“I need to travel,” I said.
“I picked up on that. You got a specific location in mind?”
I thought of my fellow House leaders. They’d scattered to the four winds after the last time we’d needed to push the gods around, but if what Armaeus had told me was true, I’d need their help and soon. And above and beyond all that, they needed to understand what was coming their way, what might already be in their way, in the form of the demons that Llyr had set free on humanity.
“Mercault, to start,” I said to Nikki. “He’ll be the easiest. Then Rangi, then…” I paused.
“Oh, great,” Nikki muttered. “That’s exactly what you need right now, an audience with Cruella de Vil. Gamon has been running her drugs through Europe for the past few weeks like Armageddon is around the corner and she wants to make sure everyone is dead before it hits. You know that, right? She’s not going to be happy with you trying to schedule a House reunion, even if there’s pie.”
I pulled myself a little higher against the cushions, sinking back into the corner of the chair. “Other than me, she’s the strongest non-Council Connected in the world right now. If we don’t have her help, none of this is going to work.”
“You understand what you just said there, right? You two are the strongest Connecteds in the world. I’m not so sure that’s a good distinction to have, when we’ve got people running around targeting said Connecteds, up to and including your boyfriend.”
I chuckled. I knew what Nikki was doing. Trying to pull me out of my own head, out of whatever horrors I’d seen in Armaeus’s study. She’d been my faithful companion in more astral travel experiences than I cared to count, and there was no one I trusted more to be here to catch me when I came back. But she was right: astral travel was difficult on my best days, and this was not one of those days.
“I’m going to be okay, Nikki. I just need a second.”
“And I need a drink. So hold that thought.” She stood and strode away toward the bar I hadn’t noticed in the room, her hands moving suspiciously to her own eyes as she angrily brushed her hair back. Was she crying? I blinked, somewhat dazedly, trying to parse that out. What had I said to make Nikki cry? Nothing I could think of.
Another thought struck me as she pulled a bottle of brown liquor from the bar and splashed a healthy pour into a cut-glass crystal. Why were there always bars set up in every room in Armaeus’s house? Was that his doing…or mine?
In this case, it appeared to be a good thing. Nikki braced herself on the counter, as if girding her loins for battle. Either that or she was having a scowling competition with the bottle of whiskey. When she turned back and stalked back across the room, her face was resolute.
“Okay,” she said, sitting in the chair beside me. “You ready?”
I nodded, my head still slightly wobbly on my neck. I opened my mouth to thank her, but she immediately launched into the sacred words that we’d heard first from the Council itself, words that
could lift a person out of their own body and fling them toward—
I slumped in the chair.
Astral traveling from Prime Luxe had become such a habit for me, I was surprised I’d never gotten around to signing up for frequent-flyer miles. I burst free of the Magician’s tower of steel and glass, soaring over the sun-baked streets of Las Vegas, picking up speed as I went. As usual, my sight was not a singularity but a thousand different views, like a sky full of satellites all turned to the same location. I ripped across the wide plains and lush river valleys, then hit the Smoky Mountains and struck out across the wide ocean. By the time I reached the rolling countryside of France, it almost felt like coming home. Oddly, I glanced to the north, and Paris, but I had no time to visit old friends on this trip. I needed to secure the oaths of unreliable people.
As expected, Mercault was in his study, a glass of wine at his side, his laptop open to streams of scrolling financial data. As the leader of the House of Pentacles, he had honed the accumulation of money into a fine art form. Though he lived in luxury more than ostentation, he was perhaps the richest man I knew after the Magician. And Mercault had made most of his money in his own lifetime. Beyond a healthy dose of avarice, that made him cunning, cutthroat, and even deadly.
He also wasn’t a fool.
I settled into the chair in front of his desk, and it took only a second for him to realize the shift in energy. He glanced up, then froze.
“Madame Wilde?” he asked in a slightly strained voice. “You are…you are here but not?”
Mercault was the weakest of all the house leaders when it came to innate psychic ability, but he did his best with every opportunity he received to augment his Connected skills. I suspected he was a technoceutical user, but right now, I didn’t care how he got his strength, as long as it was there when we needed it.
“I need your oath, Mercault,” I said without preamble. “The time is drawing close where I will call all the leaders of the Houses together to act. I need to know that I can count you on my side.”
His smile was wry. “On your side, or simply not on the side of Gamon’s as she allies against you?”
“Gamon will join us. What is coming is bigger than our differences. A lot bigger.”
“The war.” Mercault raised his hands as if to ward off my explanation. “I have heard enough of it for a lifetime. If you’re telling me it is at our doorstep, I rejoice, because I am tired of waiting for it to knock. But I am a simple man, Madame Wilde, with simple abilities.” His fingers tensed on his desk. “Unless…do you need money?”
Even in my incorporeal form, I managed a snort. “I won’t take your money, Mercault. I merely need you and your people when I call upon you. Can you do that?”
He frowned. “Need us to do what? As I say, I do not count Connecteds among my people, not nearly enough, eh? So we will be of limited help.” He lifted his hands as I bristled. “But, but, I do not wish to raise objections where they are not needed.”
“Good. Because it’s not just the gods from the sky we have to worry about anymore. There are now a scourge of demons running around. I suspect a lot of them. So there’s going to be some cleanup needed sooner rather than later.”
Mercault frowned. “Demons. There has been talk…but there is always talk.”
“Yeah, well, start listening to it. Once we shove the gods back to wherever it is they’ll stick, I suspect our problems will only be starting.”
That earned me a long, woebegone sigh as the head of the House of Pents settled back in his chair. “There are always problems, yes? Always. First it is production, then it is supply chain, then it is point of sale. Adding an overreach of demons to the mix? Bah.” He flicked his fingers. “It is nothing. We will handle it.”
“Good,” I began, shifting to stand up again, but Mercault wasn’t finished.
“You say Gamon will agree as well? That is good. That is very good. She is a dangerous enemy.”
I made a face. “She’s not all that great as an ally either.”
“Ah, but she is if she sees the value of the alliance, strength to strength.” He eyed me keenly. “You show her that strength, your strength, yes. You make it personal. She will not ally with the Houses of Magic. They are a means to an end. A stepping stone. She will not ally with the Council. She, like Rangi, loathes them. But you…” He pursed his lips and puffed out a breath in a way only the French could pull off. “That is different, eh? That…has possibilities. But since we are talking terms of alliance, in return for my aid, I expect that you—”
I was gone before he could finish. Mercault was in no place to bargain with me, and my own head was still heavy with the weight of Armaeus’s magic. The less time I spent with each of the House leaders, the better.
Still, as I angled to the south, I couldn’t help running Mercault’s words through my mind. The Frenchman had allied with Gamon and been double-crossed by her more times than I could count. But by his own admission, he didn’t have the one thing Gamon valued, deep within her twisted soul: strength. And though I didn’t know exactly what to do with it yet, courtesy of Armaeus, I had plenty of strength. Perhaps…
Pushing the thought to the background, I began the flight south to Rangi’s island home. It didn’t take me long to reach it, and despite the fact that I was a bodiless wraith, I could tell things were really heating up with the House of Wands.
As in the sun was nearly baking it into a biscuit.
I arrowed down from the sky to settle beside Rangi on the overlook of his island keep, his gaze never leaving the men who fought below him with sticks and swords, their bodies drenched in sweat and in the mist from a dozen giant turbines that coated the training ground in cool water. He didn’t bother glancing over at me.
“Seriously?” I asked. “Swordplay in the shower?”
“We live in dangerous times,” he said. “If you have no gun, you must still defend yourself. And the mist is necessary to keep the warriors from dying on their feet. If we must fight under a malevolent sun, we will. But we can only train so long beneath it before the senses dull and the mind wanders.”
“Fair enough.” I drew in a long breath, ready to repeat my pitch. “I’m going to need your help again, Rangi. Soon.”
His lips curled. “Council work,” he said, sneering. “They have you trained like their lapdog.”
Or maybe screw the pitch and cut to the chase. “Like it or not, they’re the strongest group of Connecteds we have, and war is upon us. There’s not enough magic in the world for us to combat the gods on our own.”
“And that is exactly the problem,” Rangi spat in reply. “Because of the Council, the Connecteds of this world have grown weak. Frail. The Council would keep us in their thrall for an eternity if they had their way.”
I couldn’t argue with that, but it was beside the point. “The veil is tearing,” I said bluntly. “Demons have been set free.”
He stiffened. “I know. And the sun…” He waved to the sky, and I felt the supercharged star’s heat even as a traveler. “It grows angry, fierce. It will not be long.” He turned to me, his face dark. “I will fight with you, and my House will stand with yours, Madame Wilde. Not forever, not if you continue to ally yourself with a Council that would keep the magic of the world a weak and puny thing. But you have my bond for now.”
Our eyes locked, and I saw the resolution behind Rangi’s eyes. It was enough. “That’s all I can ask,” I said.
As I soared away from Rangi’s stronghold, however, I also considered the threat in his words. I did not want to consider a world where Rangi and I were allied against each other. For all that his was the newest House of Magic to make itself known, he had run his House since the gods last walked the earth. His anger and enmity for the gods and the Council ran deep and true, and it was well-founded.
If we survived this war…if we intended to survive whatever came after this war…the strength of the entire Connected community must be assured, even if—especially if—the Cou
ncil disagreed.
The final leader of the Houses of Magic was waiting for me in a most unlikely place: the base of the statue of Christ the Redeemer, on a high mountain above Rio de Janeiro. I found her only through her energy signature, and knew as I approached that she, like me, was not actually here. She’d astral traveled.
Gamon noted my ill-concealed dismay.
“You’re not the only skilled Connected in this plane,” she said, her face flush with triumph at my surprise. “How do you think I bested your precious Annika Soo?”
“Gamon,” I said, struggling not to rise to her bait. Gamon wasn’t my equal in strength, even before the Magician’s tune-up, but she more than surpassed me in ambition and gall. One day, that combination might prove to be more powerful than Connected skill alone.
But not this day, I decided. As she stared at me, I let the roil of magic, of pure bottomless power, play across my expression, like smoke stealing across a mirror.
Gamon’s eyes widened, and there was no denying her sharpening interest. “What is this?” she asked warily, and, unbidden, Mercault’s words sprang to mind. It was worth the roll of the dice, I thought. However I could bind Gamon to me, if it meant I could trust her, I was all for it.
“This is power, Gamon,” I said evenly. “Strength. Pure source. I’ve tapped it.”
I expected her lips to twist, her response to be a snarl. Instead, her eyes merely narrowed. “You have tapped it,” she said, nodding slowly. “I didn’t think you would. Your mother told me you wouldn’t, in fact, and I believed her. But then, I believed many things she said.”
This wasn’t the time to unravel that particular knot of pain between us. What was a little blood sacrifice among allies, after all? Instead, I pushed on, certain I had her attention.
“I need you to stand with me in the war to come. And that war is not months or years away, but days. It’s happening now.”
“Of course it is,” she said. “The sun is too strong, the heat too great. But the fools who look to the sky see only the weather, not the hands that push the stars around.”