by Jenn Stark
“Let’s go, people,” she ordered. And pointing to Kreios, she flicked her finger toward one of the other limos. “I got a particular challenge for you over there. New in town and kind of a fan. It’s sweet, really. Her name’s Wendy, and she’s truly looking to fly.”
It was everything I could do not to turn my head on a swivel, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw a stunning redhead in thigh-high boots beneath her mini-skirted suit. Once I had attuned to her, I could feel her nerves.
“Ah, yes. Wendy Gray,” Kreios said, not looking Wendy’s way either. “I do believe she works for me. You can be safely assured that her wish is my fondest command.”
He bowed again to Nikki, and she sighed with a little giggle, then shooed him on his way. When she turned to me however, her eyes had a steeliness I didn’t miss.
“In the car, dollface. We’ve got to talk.”
There had been a time when Nikki had been my driver when I’d come to deliver arcane artifacts to the Arcana Council. Now she was my best friend. There was absolutely no need for her to drive my car anymore; she just liked to do it.
We got in the limo, and I slid into the back seat as Nikki adjusted the rearview mirror so she could easily meet my gaze. She put the car in gear, then glanced up at me.
“Self-driving car, courtesy of Simon, but I still don’t trust this shit.”
“I’m not sure I would either,” I agreed, though I sat back in the leather seat with a heartfelt sigh. That particular flight from Jersey had been a little extra. “What’s going on?”
“What isn’t?” Nikki countered. “We’ve got calls for Justice coming in from all over the world, some referencing current issues, of course, but more referencing past complaints than I care for. It’s as if someone leaked that you had a cold case archive and they wanted to make sure their issue had its day in the sun.”
I groaned and leaned back farther into the seat. The role of Justice of the Arcana Council had gone unfilled since my predecessor vacated the position in the mid-1800s. There had been a shot at a replacement in the 1920s, but that hadn’t taken, and ergo entire generations of requests for Justice had fallen on not necessarily deaf ears, but definitely idle hands. Mrs. French, the caretaker of the library of Justice Hall, had diligently filed each and every case, in a library room with stacks that wound around for acres, it seemed. I would never get through all those cases. People had to know that. Even the cold cases that had surfaced as a result of current investigations had taken time to sort out. There were just too many wrongs in the world, and there always would be.
“How’s Mrs. French doing?” I asked.
“She’s holding her own, but she would be the first to tell you that there’s something hinky with this latest flow of demands. I’ll let her explain that part of it, but things are weird in other ways too.”
“I figured,” I said. “The Council?”
To my surprise, Nikki shook her head. “Actually, no. They’ve been pretty quiet since we got back from our last big adventure. The Sun is outfitting his residence and trying to get the lay of the land. The rest of the crew is doing their best to accommodate him. There hasn’t been a Sun on the Arcana Council in a hella long time, and everyone’s going at him in their own way. It’s like they just introduced chicken nuggets to the school lunch line.”
I smiled. The Arcana Council had recently added a djinn to its ranks, and of course, I already suspected the Magician had been tinkering with all our magical limits. But if it wasn’t the Council that was bothering Nikki…
She didn’t make me wait any longer.
“We’ve started getting some personal correspondence over the transom for you, some of it more personal than others.” She reached out to something on the seat beside her and lifted a small burlap pouch, handing it over the back of the seat.
“This came for you about three days ago, best we can tell, but it was part of a flood of new canisters, so it took us a minute to sort everything. But it’s not addressed to the Arcana Council…it’s not addressed to Justice…it’s addressed to Sara Wilde, and it’s apparently from somebody you know. Or knew, anyway, from your artifact-hunting days. I asked Nigel about the name, and he got all squirrelly and announced he was heading straight for us, so I figured it was probably somebody legit.”
I frowned. British-born artifact hunter Nigel Friedman and I had met while we’d been doing similar work, hunting down magical treasures for the highest bidder. Occasionally, we’d also steal those artifacts out from underneath each other after a successful hunt, in the time-honored practice of thieves for hire everywhere. But while Nigel and I had remained on relatively good terms throughout our years in the business, he was definitely in the minority. I hadn’t made too many attachments when I was hunting. I assumed, and rightly so, that anyone who was out in the field with me was a competitor. Given the money that each of our artifacts earned us, competition was fierce.
I slid the papers from the burlap sack. The message was rolled in a tight sheath. As soon as I flattened the top one, though, my brows went up. “Roland Franklin?” I asked. “I didn’t know he was still hunting.”
I leaned in closer, holding the pages up to the sun streaming into the window. The handwriting was spidery, thin, cramped together. The top sheet looked as if it had been torn from a notebook, while the pages beneath were older, crumbling. Giving up on trying to read the older man’s handwriting, I flipped through the other pages. “Where is this? Peru? What’s he doing down there?”
“I took the liberty of deciphering his scrawl and putting together a more complete dossier. That’s waiting for you back at Justice Hall on a screen. I wanted you to handle the delivery yourself, though, see if you picked up anything from the package.”
I glanced up at her, half expecting her to be pulling my leg, but when our gazes connected in the rearview mirror, I saw she was deadly serious. “I can’t always feel magic that strongly. It’s not how I work. You know that.”
“Wait for it,” she said, then barked out a curse as she snapped her gaze back to the street and barely avoided a car running a red light through an intersection. As we swerved, I could hear something knocking around in the base of the pouch. I poured the rest of its contents into my hand. A ring fell out. A large central opal framed by three small moonstones and a burst of diamonds to either side had been set into a silver band thick enough to make any high school graduate from the 1980s proud. Or maybe someone who’d just won the Super Bowl.
I scowled down at it. “Roland sent this to Justice Hall? Why?”
“An excellent question, but there was no residual magic on the ring I could find,” Nikki returned. “I tried it on. It only fit on my pinky, natch, but it made me feel all fluttery inside, not gonna lie. Kinda made me wonder what it would do for you.”
I studied the ring more closely. “I’m not in the habit of triggering magic artifacts without any provocation.”
“Oh right, and I’m not in the habit of wearing glitter to church. You gotta admit, it’s a pretty hunk of tin.”
“It is that,” I agreed. I held up the ring to the sun, admiring it for another long moment, then I slid it on my finger. The response was harsh, immediate—and about blew right through my eardrums.
“Miss Wilde,” the Magician bellowed in my mind. “No!”
9
The Magician’s rebuke was so intense that I yanked the ring off and, for good measure, threw it across the limo. It banged against the far door, and before it could land on the leather seat, a hand appeared to snatch it out of thin air—followed by a cuff-linked white shirt, a charcoal-gray suit sleeve, and then the full length of the elegant Magician materializing in the back seat next to me. He held the ring between his thumb and forefinger like it was fine liquor in a cordial glass, and he sat absolutely still.
“See, I knew there was a way I could get the Great and Powerful Oz into my cab,” Nikki cracked. Though her words were light, her tone was steady, laced with an edge I didn’t normally feel from
her. Not anger, but fear. “So, what’s going on with the Cracker Jack prize?”
Armaeus breathed out, his manner focused, but fear didn’t mark his features, only curiosity. I thought immediately of what Nikki had said about the other members of the Council, welcoming the Sun with open arms merely because they were bored. Here was the smartest man in the world, entranced by a tiny bauble whose provenance he could not immediately ascertain. There was something dangerous in this, I knew. But Armaeus’s next words scattered my thoughts.
“Swear not by the moon,” he murmured, peering intently at the ring. “The inconstant moon…”
I exchanged a nervous glance with Nikki, but Armaeus said nothing further.
“You’re quoting Shakespeare to me now?” I prompted, as much to break the spell on the Magician as to calm my own tightening nerves. Either way, it seemed to do the trick.
Armaeus blinked, then dropped his hand to rest atop his right thigh, still holding the ring gingerly. When he lifted his gaze to mine, I went still. I was used to the Magician having lava-lamp eyes. It was part of his charm. They could turn from gold to black in a heartbeat, sometimes shot through with a little red to make things interesting, but most of the time, they were gold rimmed in black. When he was feeling his magic deeply, however, they would go all black, with only the barest hint of gold at the edges. Life was all about optics, after all.
But now the Magician’s eyes had taken on a ghostly white pallor, as milky and full of glittering lights as the opal ring in his hand.
“Worship of the moon is a time-honored practice, as old and venerated as worship of the sun,” he murmured. This Wiki-lite assessment was not for my benefit, I decided, as much as it was helping to draw Armaeus back from the churning pit of his thoughts. His eyes cleared slightly as he continued. “Typically presenting as a female in goddess form, the moon ruled the tides, the exposure of hidden secrets, the arts, feminine wiles, and all things in the shadows.”
“And werewolves,” Nikki put in brightly. “You can’t forget that one.”
Her attempt at distraction proved more effective than mine.
Armaeus blinked. He glanced around the back seat of the limo as if surprised to find himself there. Then his gaze dropped again to the ring, and his winged brows shot up. “The goddess Hecate blessed these stones,” he murmured with some surprise before holding the ring up to me. “Where did you get this?”
I didn’t need Nikki’s sharp glance to me to play it safe, and I prayed that she’d warded herself against the Magician’s mental touch as well. I suspected she had. She’d lasted too long in the shadows of such powerful sorcerers not to have wards in place on her person—probably even from me. But I could feel Armaeus pressing against my mind, unconsciously seeking the information he wanted to know. I wasn’t going to give it to him, not completely. Not until I understood it more myself.
“It came into Justice Hall,” I said. “I don’t know the details yet. All we have is the ring.”
“It didn’t accompany a request for help?”
I shrugged. “Unclear at present. Could be the ring is its own cry for help. Maybe someone doesn’t want us to know where it came from, or they’re trying to lure us to wherever it did come from.”
“Hmmm…” The Magician considered that. “Though the stones have Hecate’s touch, I have never seen this exact jewelry design, which is saying something. It would be around the turn of the Common Era, perhaps far earlier. But the silversmith skills are exceptional and speak to influences in South America, despite the use of opals in the setting. And of course, moon worship was much less common than sun worship among the indigenous peoples of that continent, though it did exist.” He roused himself to look at me. “You say you don’t know where this came from?”
“Not yet,” Nikki answered for me. “We’re tracking that down now.”
“I will as well.” With that, he opened his other palm to reveal a second ring, as beautiful as the first, identical in every way down to the shimmer of magic that floated off it.
I lifted my brows. “That’s a pretty neat trick. Are you keeping the original or the fake?”
He chuckled. “What is original and what is fake?” he challenged drolly. “But I think I will use the created version, while you will pursue this request for your services to its ultimate end. You should have the original artifact, in case someone is looking closely.”
“I haven’t decided to do anything with it,” I pointed out.
Armaeus only smiled slightly and shook his head. “Even if I counseled you against it, which I don’t in this case, you would be hard-pressed not to respond. Given that we are searching for missing Council members as we attempt to stave off a war against the power behind the Shadow Court—or at least be prepared for it—an opal arriving at Justice Hall signifies the Moon. Worse, we suspect the Moon is aligning against the Arcana Council, along with the Star—possibly in league with whoever is secretly running the Shadow Court. With this, it would appear our suspicions are correct.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can’t you people ever just pick up the phone and talk to each other? Do you have to make everything some elaborate game?”
He offered the ring in his right hand to me; presumably, the original ring. “You are definitely being toyed with, Miss Wilde, but it may be a game worth playing.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just some low-level Connected who needs help.”
Even as I suggested that alternative explanation, I had a hard time believing it. Roland Franklin, the artifact hunter who’d supposedly sent the message, had been no great friend when I’d been in the business. He’d been at the end of his career while I had just been beginning mine. We weren’t enemies, but we ran in different circles. The idea of him working for some shadowy organization, playing on an old relationship that maybe he embellished a little to curry favor with his new employers, wasn’t all that surprising.
The Magician continued watching me, and I held out my hand for the ring, wincing only a little as he dropped the heavy bauble into my hand. “I’ll look into it,” I said. “You’ll know what I discover the moment I do.”
“For now,” the Magician agreed. “For now.”
He disappeared in a swirling mist, but not before a slight pressure drifted across my lips, as intimate as it was invisible.
To Nikki’s credit, she kept her eyes on the road and waited another two beats before she blew out a shaky breath. “I truly do love that man. But that freaked me out, I’m not gonna lie.”
“Sort of defeats the purpose of having a ring if you can’t wear it.” I sat back in my seat, eyeing the heavy band. I had no desire to put the giant rock back on my finger. Even in the brief moment it’d touched my skin, it had felt like the weight of the universe had pressed in on me.
“Kind of interesting that it created such a hair-trigger response in our Magic Man too,” Nikki agreed. “Whatever juju he’s into these days, it’s made him a little sensitive, wouldn’t you say?”
I sighed. She didn’t even know the whole story. “I’m nervous about what he’s getting into, you want to know the truth,” I said. “I think he’s getting reckless. I think he’s found something new, bright, and shiny and just like every other member of the Council, he doesn’t know what to do with it.”
“You know, that’s an interesting observation,” Nikki said. “What is with these guys? I wouldn’t put that kind of onus on Death, would you? And can you imagine the Hierophant getting excited about anything?”
I shook my head, bringing the image of Michael the Archangel into focus. I couldn’t see anything piercing his unflappable calm, Nikki was right. But was there a reason for that?
We turned onto the Strip, and I settled back, taking in the view. Despite the bright sunshine, it was easy to see the soaring magical structures that made up the homes of the Arcana Council. From the Magician’s mighty fortress of Prime Luxe that dominated the Luxor Casino, all the way to the Hanged Man’s rooftop aerie above the Stratosp
here, the Arcana Council crowded the Strip with their shadow casinos. The Devil’s lava-lamp-animated tower above the Flamingo, the Hermit’s tiny cottage on its platform above Excalibur, the Fool’s glass jester’s hat above the Bellagio, the Emperor’s black tower above Paris, and the Hierophant’s gleaming white tower above Treasure Island. If only someone had locked the Council into an HOA when they’d first gotten to Vegas, the Strip would never go broke again.
As we approached my own humble abode, Justice Hall, perched atop the Palazzo casino, my gaze went inexorably toward the newest Council residence on the strip, the Sun’s palace. Floating above the casino once again known as the Sahara, which perhaps was the most obvious location for an Arcana Council member who was a djinn. Still, it was a breathtaking study in gold. Its soaring ramparts captured the sun’s rays this bright day, making the residence look like a tented city. I hadn’t visited the Sun in his shadow casino, but I suspected there would be lots of pools to reflect the glittering magnificence.
Nikki parked beneath the Palazzo, and we took the elevators to the main part of the casino, then switched over to the residential section. Unlike in most of the Council’s residences, ordinary mortals could reach the office of Justice Hall by going to the top floor of the hotel, though few ever did. Most of them were content to toss their requests for my assistance from afar, perhaps unsure of how they would land.
Nikki and I rode up the residential elevator in silence, the weight of the giant opal ring heavy in my pocket. And when the doors swished open, I blinked.
I didn’t know what I had been expecting to greet me on the plush expanse of carpeting that ran the length of the hallway to my office, but it definitely wasn’t Nigel Friedman bleeding out against the wall.
10
“Nigel!” I shouted, while Nikki rushed ahead of me, barely breaking stride as she leaned over to scoop up the muscular Brit.