The Shadow Court

by Stark, Jenn

  “I’m sorry you don’t approve of my methods.”

  “What I don’t approve of is you playing fast and loose with institutions you don’t plan on taking care of when shit goes south.” Brody looked around the room, his gaze resting worriedly on me. He clearly knew the same thing Nikki did, whatever it was, but he jabbed his finger at the Fool. “And this guy is a federal investigation waiting to happen, and wayyyy too lax with his security protocols, you ask me. Which means you guys want people to know what you’re up to.”

  “Okay, time out,” I said. I didn’t say it particularly loudly, but there was a weird shimmy to the walls, and everyone looked at me, none more sharply than the Magician. I was beginning to have a weird “outside” voice crop up when I got angry, and I really hoped I wouldn’t start spewing demons from my mouth by the time this was done. “What do you all know that I don’t—and don’t start,” I said warningly to Nikki, who snapped her mouth shut and winked at me, clearly deciding whatever quip she had loaded in response to that question wasn’t worth it given the tension in the room.

  No one else stepped into the sudden silence, so I fixed my gaze on Kreios. “Spill.”

  The Devil was perhaps one of the Arcana Council’s most striking members, both in his appearance and the sheer joy he took in his job. Unlike Nikki, he hadn’t modified his usual appearance to acknowledge his arrival in one of the fashion capitals of the world. Then again, it would be difficult to improve upon his everyday appearance. Tall, tawny, and sleekly muscular, Aleksander Kreios looked like a Mediterranean surf god just in from the beach. He wore his usual long linen shirt, worn khakis, and heavy sandals, but somehow still managed to look like he should be on the cover of Forbes Magazine. Or at least GQ.

  “It’s been a busy twenty-four hours, you could say,” he allowed. “When you sent across the image of the young woman’s tattoo, it set off a cascade of events that grew ever more intriguing with each new development. Armaeus, as he’s no doubt shared with you, recognized the symbol immediately and, with the opening of that doorway, gained the awareness of a certain lapse in his memory that he had heretofore not recognized.”

  “Yeah, we covered that part.”

  Kreios nodded. “Further investigation of said symbol took us quite quickly and unexpectedly to the arcane black market, and a rich—yet exclusively oral—tradition of an organization so powerful that it left no record of its transactions, yea, though they were many, since its incarnation in 1850—or reincarnation, I should say. The Shadow Court.”

  “The Shadow Court.” I narrowed my eyes. “I played in the arcane black market for a very long time, Kreios, and I didn’t recognize that name when Armaeus mentioned it to me. You want to explain that?”

  “You’re not alone,” Simon put in. The newest member of the Arcana Council before me, he had ascended to his position in the 1980s, and his attire matched it. A close-fitting skullcap topped his messy dark hair, and his pale skin practically glowed with the blue computer light that comprised most of the radiation he got on any given day. He was the Arcana Council’s resident computer geek, hacker, tech guru, and infrastructure whiz, and he had his fingers in every network that spanned the globe—the internet, dark web, and arcane web included. “I found nothing online or in any kind of archive, and the organization has assiduously worked its collective ass off to keep people from naming it. From what we were able to glean from the oral record, though, the heretofore unnamed Shadow Court has most recently been in operation since the mid eighteen hundreds and presents a credible threat.”

  “Threat to whom?” I asked.

  “Everyone who crosses their path,” Kreios said, taking up the story. “But the spell that quite literally took them out of circulation—important wording there, if I do say so—was powerful. Those members of the Arcana Council who should have recalled them because they were present during their early development, the High Priestess, the Hierophant, Death—have no recollection, much like Armaeus. There’s only one way that’s possible.”

  “Someone was working from the inside,” I said. “But someone stronger than all of you combined? There’s no way.” My head was spinning. “Abigail Strand wasn’t powerful enough to generate that kind of spell.”

  “Nevertheless, Abigail Strand was Justice of the Arcana Council from 1850 to 1853. There is no mention of the Shadow Court even among the dead after that time,” Kreios said.

  “Among the dead,” I echoed.

  “I’m telling you, we tapped every network out there,” Simon offered helpfully. “Whoever said dead men tell no tales was, you know, wrong.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Brody groaned. “I don’t even know how you people can live with half the shit you do.”

  Armaeus took up the story. “But the accounts of the deceased prior to 1852 were fairly uniform in their description of the organization. Much like any of the dozens of syndicates that sprang up during the Middle Ages or well before, the Shadow Court had its own assassins’ guild, deep financial pockets, and dark machinations, rites, and protocols. From what we have been able to infer, the Arcana Council, including myself, were aware but not particularly bothered by the Shadow Court, except when they became too powerful for their own good and attempted to meddle in our affairs.”

  “Oh, just then,” I said drily.

  “It was less often than you might think,” countered Armaeus. “For most of their existence in this newest incarnation, the Shadow Court had no specific agenda against the Arcana Council, but merely wanted to advance the interests of the Connected, particularly the wealthiest Connected. This was not an especially distinguishing feature.”

  “So why go to the trouble of erasing themselves from everybody’s memory banks?”

  “A very intriguing question.” Armaeus nodded. “And one that proves even more interesting given they have only just come to light now. I can’t imagine it was part of their plan to be discovered.”

  I scowled. “Gotta say, I kind of disagree with you on that. Not too many people knew I was in Paris. Nobody outside the Council, I’m thinking, and you guys had only the most basic information. Checking out Armaeus’s digs here was a side trip for me, not the goal.”

  “And what did you learn in Paris?” Armaeus asked. “Specifically.”

  I eyed him. I’d managed to escape any deeper inquiry regarding Mercault only because the Magician was obsessing so heavily with his own lost memories. But while I could keep him from reading my personal memories, there was nothing to stop him from systematically blowing through the city of Paris and identifying anyone with a recollection of me. Mercault wasn’t a strong Connected either. It would take Armaeus about twenty seconds to discover the truth. So I went ahead and gave him the rest of the story. “I told you that Mercault’s family has records of two of your memory lapses. Apparently, you were a changed man afterward. When you removed your memories, your personality received an upgrade as well.”

  “An…upgrade,” Armaeus said thoughtfully.

  I didn’t elaborate. “Mercault also knew someone was following me, but not who, exactly. He needed the guise of a financial transaction between us in order to share all this intel with me, by the way—it apparently was the kind of honesty that only money could buy.”

  Kreios smiled widely, leaning forward. “My favorite kind.”

  “Wait a minute,” Brody said. “Why’d you need to bribe Mercault for the truth? I thought he was on your team.”

  “Ah, there are teams, and then there are teams, Detective Brody,” Kreios answered for me. “Mercault is at heart a dealer of rare antiquities and artifacts, and there is nothing worth more than information for which he’s been paid to keep quiet. It would take a very impressive lever to pry it away from him.”

  “Or you could have blasted it out of him,” Brody countered.

  “Not without consequences.” The Magician was now eyeing me again, and I could almost hear the well-developed gears in his mind turning. Either that or he was once again going to tell
me I was too weak to blast anything more than a bottle cap. “You wanted to provide him with a legitimate higher bid. What was it?”

  “What it always is,” I said dismissively, though the hurricane goddess icon now hanging around my neck felt impossibly heavy. “An artifact and some gold. And in return, he gave me the information I was seeking, which corroborated what I feared. Someone’s hunting me down. And by me, I mean us.”

  “The Shadow Court?” Nikki asked.

  “It’s the only new player we’ve discovered out there, and I know all the usual players,” I said. “But they moved quickly after I left Mercault’s. I hadn’t gotten halfway across the arrondissement before I picked up a tail, and there were more of them waiting for me in the Jardin du Luxembourg. They would have needed time to get set up there, time and information.”

  Brody grunted. “Mercault sold you out ahead of time.”

  “Probably.” I nodded. “But he also probably needed to do so, to keep his own reputation intact. And his betrayal was pretty minor. Most likely he let it be known I was asking questions and that he would do what was needed to get me to Paris. He did that, but while he was up, he tipped me off to what would be waiting for me.”

  “Both ends against the middle,” Nikki said.

  I nodded. “He’s been playing this game for a long time.”

  “We’ve got extra eyes on him now,” Simon put in. “So far there’s been no trouble, but we’re looking inside and out. Mercault wakes up dead tomorrow, we’ll know about it before he does.”

  “Which takes us to the next step in this plan,” Kreios said. “It appears that our good friends at Interpol are not quite so helpless as they would lead us to believe. There is a splinter group within the organization now tracking the activities of the Connected technoceutical trade more assiduously than we anticipated. This group is gearing up for a more active role in pursuing those Connecteds on whom they can hang a drug charge. As it so happens, they stumbled on just the man they were looking for to join their team: the illustrious Detective Rooks.”

  I blinked, swiveling my head to stare at Brody. “You joined Interpol?”

  He grimaced. “I did not join Interpol.”

  The doorbell rang. “Who the hell is that?” Brody asked, exasperated.

  “Interpol,” Armaeus said succinctly. “Your new team.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “That’s our cue to bounce,” Nikki announced, linking her arm in mine and steering me toward the rear of the house. “Sara’s track record with Interpol isn’t great, and I’ll just distract the poor dears. This place have a back door?”

  “You’re not just going to leave me here to deal with these—” Brody began, then broke off, sputtering. “I hate it when you do that.”

  I turned to see what distracted him, only to find a very officious-looking man in a crisp dark suit straightening his cuff links where the Devil had been standing not ten seconds before.

  “You’ll find it can work to your advantage more often than not,” Kreios advised Brody, still speaking in his indolent Mediterranean drawl. “In case you’re wondering, I am the special assistant of the US ambassador to France. All the proper notifications have been made to put you into your advisory position for the agency. I must tell you that the pay is less than adequate, but the perks can be well worth it.”

  “How is this even happening?” Brody groaned. “There simply have to be processes for this kind of thing.”

  “Oh, there are, Detective Rooks,” Kreios assured him as Nikki and I stepped out of the foyer and into the cool confines of the long, art-lined hallway. “We’ve merely sidestepped them.”

  “Poor Detective Delish,” Nikki chortled in a low voice beside me, sounding completely unrepentant. “He doesn’t know what’s about to hit him.”

  I eyed her. “And you do?”

  “That’s part of what I needed to talk about, but only part. How far back does this house go, anyway? We need to get outside and stat, and I don’t want you utilizing Crispy Express to get us there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we don’t know who’s watching us anymore. If these Shadow Court people are as big-time as we fear, Simon says they’ll notice spikes of magic anywhere that’s unwarded. Here we go.” Nikki and I had reached the back porch where Armaeus and I had resolutely not eaten breakfast only a few minutes before. She released my arm long enough to grab a couple of napkin-wrapped croissants and eyed the coffee service longingly. “Who in the world uses real china anymore? He seriously needs a to-go cup service.”

  Almost before she finished speaking, two large recyclable cups with lids appeared next to the complicated-looking coffeepot. Despite myself, I felt a little thrill of pleasure at the gesture, minor as it was. No matter what was going on at the front of the house, Armaeus had been listening into our conversation. That felt right. That felt normal.

  “Now that’s what I call a smart house,” Nikki quipped, handing the croissants to me while she scooped up the coffee cups. Gesturing me down the gracious stairs into the manicured garden, she kept up a steady clip even as she swapped the topmost croissant for one of the cups. The coffee was hot, rich, and laden with cream. Not how I usually took it, but delicious all the same.

  “So since we’re doing this the hard way, lay it on me,” Nikki said. “I take it there’s no breakthrough in Armaeus’s memory regarding you?”

  “That would be negative. He doesn’t know anything except for what I’m willing to show him.”

  Her eyes widened. “You let him read your mind?”

  “Only for an account of what happened in Dublin—and believe me, that was enough. Best I can tell, the moment I let my guard down, he sponged up enough of my memories and the emotions I’d attached to them to make some educated guesses about our relationship. But he doesn’t know anything on his own.” Which broke my heart a little, frankly, to know that Armaeus’s first thought was to try to grasp something—anything—that he could from me, to try to understand the emotions he was feeling for a woman he couldn’t remember. In some ways, that almost meant more than him remembering outright.

  Sighing, I glanced around the park. “This is still part of his property, isn’t it? How do we know he’s not listening in right now?”

  “Technically, we don’t. He could have the trees bugged. But I believe he’ll have his hands full with the Interpol agents.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since we discovered the little tattoo you found, or the edge of the tattoo, whatever it is, and I drew it freehand for Brody to see clearly. Apparently, that design has shown up in an unnerving number of places. Specifically, on the personal belongings of agents, executives, government heads, multinational organization flunkies, cops, doctors, spies, hairdressers, you name it.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I am not. Once we knew what we were looking for, it was everywhere—and still nowhere, because nobody was looking but us. We got the information we did because of Simon’s technology and the Magician’s super laser vision, but no one would have been able to see it ordinarily. No one would be looking for it.”

  “I saw it.” I shook my head. “I still don’t know how I caught it on my phone, though. There’s no third-eye filter on my camera, and she works for the Shadow Court. I mean, shouldn’t she have wards?”

  “She probably did.” She waved her croissant. “But you decked her.”

  She took a large bite, chewing enthusiastically as I frowned. “Well, yes, I decked her. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Right hand or left? It was right, amiright?”

  I had to think about that. “Yes. My left hand was pinned. I’m also right-handed, so it would almost certainly be my right hand.”

  “Well, there you go.” She finished her croissant and took a long swig of her coffee. “That Nul Magis shard you have in your right hand dropped the woman’s cover long enough for you to get that snap. She was rocking a kind of glamour that ordinarily would not
have been displaced, except your Tinker Toys are better than hers. As they should be.”

  “I…I guess that makes sense.” I munched on my own pastry. “The symbol’s there, but no one sees it. I wouldn’t have seen it except that I temporarily displaced her glamour, and even then, the pic itself looks like no big deal except to a high-level Connected. But after I catch sight of it, Armaeus recognizes it and then he goes looking and we find it’s everywhere, all over the world. Even in Interpol.”

  “Especially in Interpol. It’s like they have a mini cabal inside an agency that most people treat as an afterthought, to put it kindly. But their anonymity is part of the problem.”

  “Interpol agents have access wherever they want…”

  “They do, and they’re everywhere and nowhere. Always on the fringes, never in the action. There’s been some noise about upping their relevance, but that never comes to anything. They’re ghosts.”

  I grimaced. There seemed to be all sorts of ghosts in the world these days. “So Armaeus wants someone on the inside.”

  “Armaeus wants more than that. The double whammy of you being out of the country and Armaeus not operating at full speed has given me a lot more one-on-one time with Kreios. Since Armaeus’s memory lapse, he’s been looking at everyone and everything with a fresh eye, including Officer Hotness.”

  “Why? Brody isn’t Connected. Much.” It was true, and no one should know more than me. I’d known the man since I was fourteen years old. He’d been a rookie in the Memphis police department, and I’d been a kid with a deck of cards who wanted to help find a string of missing children who’d made the local news. He’d been stuck with me—and we found the kids. Most of them. Now, nearly fourteen years later, he was still working with the local psychics. Which was awesome of him, but…

  “Wait a minute,” I said, looking at her. “Armaeus thinks Brody’s some kind of psychic whisperer? That’s why he wants him in Interpol?”