I looked at her sharply. “That sigh sounded less than ideal.”
“Well, there’s a lot about you that’s less than ideal,” Danae replied, “and by that I mean—dangerous. You’ve escalated in your abilities every time you’ve faced a new and different challenge—the Council, the gods and goddesses you encountered in the war on magic—”
“Mommy Dearest,” Nikki put in.
“And then the senate of magicians in Venice. Nikki told me about how your body assimilated the toxin of Nul Magis.”
I shot Nikki a dirty look. “Seriously?”
“I worry,” she protested. “Magic and spells are not really my thing, but they are Danae’s.”
“And if Armaeus hasn’t already told you this, you shouldn’t have been able to hold the Nul Magis within you as a living toxin. It should have either withered to nothing within you or been forcibly removed by one of the members of the Council.”
I pulled my right hand into a fist, the Nul Magis a tiny speck in my palm, but not an inanimate one. It pulsed in indignation at Danae’s words. “I tried to heal myself,” I grumbled. “It wouldn’t take.”
“It didn’t take because you were meant to keep that power. You leveled up to accommodate it, and you don’t even understand what you have accepted into your energy field.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“The point is this: I am concerned that any confrontation you have with Myanya will result in a similar power crisis.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think I’m the one having the crisis here.”
“You know what I mean,” Danae said coldly. “You rush into situations without any preparation. You make decisions on the fly based on little more than how you feel in the moment or, worse, the turn of a Tarot card—”
“I’ll have you know I trust my cards more than I trust most people,” I shot back. “I’m not getting the underlying concern here. Are you worried about me? Because if I haven’t proven it ably enough, I can take care of myself.”
I didn’t speak the words calmly, though I wanted to. But the truth was, Danae was seriously cheddaring my cheese. I hadn’t asked for the abilities I was manifesting and developing. Nevertheless, they were mine. Still, I was getting doubters. I’d had my abilities dismissed when I’d been an artifact hunter, when I’d unexpectedly become the head of the House of Swords, and when I’d commanded a team of the other heads of the Houses—who would never have come together except for me. Now, I was Justice of the Arcana Council, and I still had my doubters.
Danae was watching me closely, and I didn’t like the look in her eyes. She lifted a hand as another surge of irritation rippled through me.
“I am not one of your doubters, Sara.”
My brows lifted. Could Danae read my mind? Or was I that transparent? Probably the latter.
She kept going. “The respect you crave is closer than you think, but it doesn’t start in the world around you.”
“That’s beautiful,” I said drily. “Since taking this job, I’ve had enough self-improvement mumbo jumbo to fill a dozen Tony Robbins seminars. I’ve got it. Think positively, manifest what you want, be the you that you most want to become. I’ve got all that.”
“I’m afraid my warning is a little more specific than that,” Danae said, not losing her calm demeanor. “You need to be more cognizant not only of the abilities you can currently manifest, but of your propensity to sponge up the abilities of those around you.”
“Except my exceptional sense of style,” Nikki pointed out.
Danae inclined her head gracefully. “Except for that. Otherwise, you are at risk of absorbing more magic than you can completely process in a given moment.”
“And that’s bad why?”
She shrugged. “I said you’re not exactly like a witch, yet you display many of the same characteristics of a witch coming into the full flush of her powers. A witch in that state who becomes overwhelmed, goes into stasis. She freezes, in a sense, until she can absorb the spell being cast or the influx of power. If you find yourself opposite Myanya, know that she has been working with witches since the dawn of recorded history. You cannot afford that sort of stasis.”
I considered her words, then glanced at Nikki. “I’m not asking this out of cockiness but genuine curiosity. Have you ever seen me freeze up?”
Nikki tilted her head, her gaze scanning the ceiling. “You’ve been hurt bad. You’ve been legit frozen,” she said, as if she was ticking off a To-Do list. “You’ve caught fire more times than I can count. Oh—there was that time when the Gods’ Nails pierced your hands. Whatever happened to them?”
“Focus, Nikki.”
“Right…okay, you’ve been electrocuted, skewered by the weapons of Atlantis… That sucked. Nearly drowned on a couple of occasions, and you kind of exploded that one time. But—no. I don’t actually remember you not being able to function when magic hit you. You always seemed to, I don’t know, already have the magic there. It was simply sort of flipped on.”
“Flipped on,” Danae murmured. “I can see that.”
“So is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Nikki pressed, but Danae shook her head.
“It’s neither and both. It’s merely something to be aware of. If you freeze, she is a powerful spirit, and she will use that weakness to take you.”
“Yeah?” I cracked. “I’d like to see her try.”
Danae remained serious. “You may well get your chance.”
“Back to the issue at hand.” Nikki rapped the whiteboard. “What covens do we have in the Americas we should be worried about?”
“The Peruvian and Guatemalan covens are currently at war with each other, or they’d be more of a concern,” Danae said thoughtfully, “although the energy of war might well attract Myanya.”
“But war doesn’t allow you a lot of downtime.” I made a mental note to do some research on the South American covens. Witches at war didn’t seem like a really great idea, ancient prophecy or no.
“What about closer to home?” Nikki asked. “Mexico? The US? Um… Are there covens in Canada?”
“There are,” Danae said. “And they get healthcare.”
A clattering noise sounded from the inner office, the sound of a case about to shoot through one of the pneumatic tubes no doubt, and Mrs. French perked up. The woman was truly never happier than when she could do her job. I admired that in her. I admired that in anyone, honestly, which might explain my issues with interpersonal relationships.
“I’ll get that,” she said cheerfully, picking up a stray plate and extra napkins. I didn’t miss the fact that the plate contained a completely untouched bear claw. Mrs. French might not eat a donut in front of us, but even she was not proof against their magic.
“In the US, there are fewer covens of power than you’d expect. Many of them are underground, especially in the Midwest and South, while those in the major cities must walk the line between who they truly are and who the media makes them out to be. Most of the time, the media treatment is a lot more exciting than reality, though not always. Nevertheless, far too many witches today are more easily found clubbing than paying attention to the ancient rites.”
“Do you tell them to get off your lawn too?” Nikki deadpanned. When Danae flicked an irritated glance in her direction, Nikki rapped the board. “Coven locations, Danae. In the US.”
“Los Angeles, Memphis, New York. Chicago, of course, but we haven’t been targeted.”
“As far as you know,” I said, which earned me a stink eye from Danae. She gave excellent stink eye.
“As far as I know,” she conceded. “The New Orleans coven went dark with Katrina, and by dark, I don’t mean radio silent. If they’re the target of Myanya’s prophecy…that would be bad.”
“Right,” Nikki said. She wrote down the name and underlined it. “I always did like New Orleans. Maybe we head there first.”
“One more thought, it can’t hurt to check the Istanbul covens,” Danae said. “The 1906 crime indicated among your cases would be a matter of record, though I’m sure no one would have laid it at the feet of a witch. There are two primary covens currently remaining in Istanbul, but again, this was over a hundred years ago. Whoever is in power now is not necessarily from the coven who was in power then. I’ll need to do the research to see what covens were in existence when Myanya last arose.” She shrugged, gazing at the whiteboard. “But it honestly could be any of them.”
“So that leaves us where?” I asked. “I mean, do we know for sure that this current energy spike truly is Myanya? Wouldn’t there be other indications?”
A second rumbling sounded in the inner office, and Mrs. French squeaked. I hid my smile. When it rained in pneumatic tube land, it usually poured.
“There are always signs,” Danae admitted. “Nigel said the pentagram in the cave was girded by a circle, both of them filled with salt?”
“Yep. Which is why my first thought was demon.”
“But it was a female figure who came through, and human in nature, not animal-like, clawed, snouted?”
I shook my head. “It looked like a woman—long hair, elongated body, arms with hands at the end, not paws or claws. She reacted to Vlad’s voice as if she knew him.”
“The descendant of Vlad the Impaler,” Danae said thoughtfully. “As I said, he would have the lineage to declare his right to be her consort.”
“Yeah, he was all sorts of full of himself. I don’t have the full, ah, report on his recovery either. But I think his wounds were self-inflicted—his own trap went south.”
“Not necessarily his fault,” Danae said. “The trap could have been sprung by Myanya. Even within the pentagram, she wields great power. She couldn’t harm him directly, but if she knew the trap was there, ready to be sprung, she could weaken its restraints, prime it to drop.”
“Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of a pentagram?”
Danae’s smile was cold. “Not for a male witch wise to the ways of a warrior queen. For an ignorant one? Well, he gets what he gets.”
Another banging racket sounded from the office, and Nikki stood, brushing crumbs from her costume. “I think maybe we should—”
“Justice Wilde!” Mrs. French appeared at the door, her arms full of containers that were carefully wrapped in the same linens she’d served with the donut and coffee. “We… I don’t think we need to worry too much about where to find Myanya.” She held the pneumatic canisters higher. “We’ve now four different unfortunate souls summoning you who’ve found her for us.”
“Where?”
Mrs. French’s expression faltered. “Well, that’s where it starts to get tricky. The first is Cairo, the second, London. The third is Bangkok, and the fourth…” She held up a canister. “Well, it’s here.”
Nikki scowled. “That’s one hell of a remote this Myanya has a hold of.”
“It’s more than that,” Danae said, sitting straighter. “These attacks are far too close together to be a mistake. This is no ingénue crippled by the power growing within her. It’s someone channeling that power to create as much destruction as possible before she’s sucked into the next stage of her journey. This lost queen isn’t trying to be found.”
“Well, she’s throwing a party on the wrong turf,” I took the canister with the local case and cracked it open, then scanned the topmost page. “You want to tag along? Because it looks like someone’s luck just ran out in Vegas.”