When I left the precinct house, Brody still needed to talk with the Jones brothers about the source of all the blood on Malachi, and Nikki was in a heated discussion over whatever had happened on TV to one of the celebrities she followed. I didn’t know if the terrible car wreck depicted on the screen was real life or reality TV, but apparently, that didn’t seem to matter—to either Nikki or the cops on duty.
Strange days, indeed.
I hailed a car and gave the driver the destination of the Luxor Casino, allowing myself a rare minute to sit back and simply watch the Vegas skyline pass by as the car turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard all the way at the end of the Strip, near the Stratosphere. The great casinos of Vegas soared into view within a few stoplights, and I leaned forward, looking up—and up still farther. These were the residences that would never appear on a postcard but were as much a part of the landscape as the strip shows and carnie barkers luring people through casino doors into a world of glittering lights.
Las Vegas was the home of the Arcana Council, the most powerful wielders of magic on the planet.
First up was the Stratosphere, which served as home to the most mercurial of Council members, Nikola Tesla, or the Hanged Man. His residence, not surprisingly, had evolved into a complex blend of intricate geometric shapes, along which electrical currents zipped and skittered twenty-four hours a day. Several blocks up was my own domain, Justice Hall, which looked exactly like its inspiration from the DC comic books, complete with the impressive domed façade. The fact that I didn’t live in my ethereal residence notwithstanding, I was glad to have some official real estate on Arcana Alley. Across the street from me, soaring atop Treasure Island, was the thick white monolith that marked the tower of Michael the Archangel, or the Hierophant. Like Tesla, Michael was the kind of guy who annoyed you more the longer you got to know him. Both of them could stay inside their respective towers for the next decade for all I cared.
Then came Caesar’s Palace, with its empty stone fortress. To my knowledge, none of the Council members lived there, yet it refused to dissolve into glitter like a good little abandoned residence. I’d thought potentially Gamon would choose it as her home on the Strip, but she didn’t appear to be a fan, either.
The next inhabited pair of casino-topping residences pulled more of a smile from me: the Foolscap glass menagerie atop glittering Bellagio Casino, and the sensually spinning lava lamp of a residence atop the legendary Vegas hotel, the Flamingo. Simon, the Fool of the Arcana Council, lived above Bellagio with his troupe of Mongolian bodyguards, while the Flamingo’s skyway was the home of Aleksander Kreios, aka the Devil. The last I’d seen of the Devil was in Venice a few weeks ago. Since then, crickets. I know I’d been busy, yet…nevertheless.
Next up was yet another study in asshat-ery, the Emperor, Viktor Dal, who lived atop Paris Casino in a jet-black tower that pulsed with energy, day and night. I wasn’t a fan of the Emperor either, and the animosity was mutual. Some might say our differences were water under the bridge, but it was particularly toxic water and the bridge had been blown up. Fortunately, Viktor was keeping a fairly low profile of late. I frowned. Actually, most of the Arcana Council was keeping a low profile, it seemed. Was that on purpose? Or had I missed a committee meeting already?
Across from Paris and further along the Strip, was the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, and atop it rested a lonely hut on a high platform: the home of the Council’s Hermit. I’d rarely seen Willem of Galt in his humble home, which wasn’t too surprising. First off, he was the caretaker of the veil between the worlds, and secondly…he was my dad. So many unresolved issues there, so little time.
Then there was the last fortress on the Strip, and by far the most impressive. The Magician’s residence might easily have served as the hall of the mountain king in a Wagnerian opera, all soaring spires and arches and turrets lifting into the heavens. There, buried somewhere deep within that complex labyrinth, was Armaeus Bertrand, the leader of the Arcana Council. There were other Council members, of course. Eshe, the High Priestess, had made her home on the Strip mostly by couch-surfing her way through Armaeus’s million-and-one rooms. Death and Judgment preferred off-campus housing, and the recently ascended Lovers—the one-time gods Zeus and Hera—hadn’t stopped fighting with each other long enough to sign a spectral lease. But right now, the thing that struck me most about the Magician’s abode was the same thing I’d noticed in the other homes of the Arcana Council…namely, how quiet it was.
When it came to the Council, quiet didn’t necessarily mean good.
I paid my Lyft driver and made my way into the lobby of the Luxor hotel, struck as I always was by the almost breathtaking level of glitz and kitsch the place maintained. The tourists streaming from the hotel to the casino didn’t seem to pay attention to how over the top the lobby was, barely stopping to look up before disappearing into the wall of noise that marked the casino proper. Old, young, tall, short, every size and every description, some with the earnestness of penny slotters, some with the slick strut of black jack and craps players. Even at two p.m. on a weekday, there were bachelorette parties and early spring breakers, conference attendees sneaking out of sessions and die-hard regulars whose skin had turned the faintest shade of green after a long winter hunched over the machines.
These were the people who made up Vegas, their belief fully staked on the next turn of the card, the next roll of the dice, the next spin of the roulette wheel, or the next tug on the arm of a slot machine. Their magic was what had pulled the Arcana Council to Las Vegas in the early forties, when the mob was still king and Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo, and their magic was what kept the Council anchored in power today.
Sometimes, it merely took having enough people who believed in possibility to make all the difference in the world.
I crossed the lobby of the hotel and easily saw the elevators to the Magician’s domain, Prime Luxe, hidden alongside the bays of the Luxor. No matter how many times I visited the hotel, I never tired of entering the Magician’s lair this way. Though I could now technically scramble my cells long enough to poof into Armaeus’s office with my hair on fire, there was something old world about going up in an elevator cage to meet the most powerful man on the planet.
The most powerful, and the most inscrutable.
A few moments later, when the elevator doors snicked open, I knew that the Magician had picked up on my mood. Which was good, since I’d been telegraphing it for that exact purpose. No matter how much I loved the man, he had one fatal flaw. He didn’t share his toys. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t bother me, except when those toys were the information I needed to do my job.
“Miss Wilde. How good of you to join me.”
I braced myself for seeing Armaeus, because no matter how many times it happened, it was always a revelation to me. Sometimes, like today, I needed that revelation more than others.
The Magician of the Arcana Council stood at the far wall of his office, silhouetted by the bright sunshine and surrounded with the view of the sprawling city far below. A city that extended in one direction past towering skyscrapers and the constant movement of the Strip, and in the other, out into what looked from this distance to be a vast and formless desert, where very little lived and even less moved. It was the dichotomy of living in an oasis in the desert, and it suited the man who had lived above it for nearly eighty years…after living elsewhere in the world for going on nine hundred years.
Armaeus Bertrand was holding up pretty well, I had to say.
Tall and elegant despite his powerful build, today the Magician wore what passed for him as casual clothes—a tailored blue silk shirt, open at the collar, dark trousers, thousand-dollar loafers. He boasted a heavy platinum watch on one wrist, but otherwise, no jewelry adorned his burnished bronze skin, the rich coloring a testament to his French-Egyptian birth. His dark hair flowed in thick waves past his collar, framing a face distinctive for its chiseled cheekbones and jaw and his flashing, dark, black-gold eyes. The very first time I’d met the Magician, he’d been a voice in my mind. And it was the voice that continued to draw me back, year over year. Our relationship had never been easy, and it hadn’t always been good, but it was powerfully addictive, I had to admit.
It also wasn’t the point of me being here today, I reminded myself.
“You’re angry with me.” Armaeus observed mildly as I crossed the room. He’d arranged the chairs in the seating area of his office to invite conversation, but I was too keyed up to sit.
I sighed. “Angry is perhaps overstating it. Call me…dismayed. Confused. Uncertain. You know what’s going on with this Myanya, this witch prophecy that’s taking over the covens, and you didn’t tell me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I didn’t know it was happening,” I protested. “How can I ask you about something if you don’t give me a heads-up that it’s even going to be a thing? I’m not you. I don’t sit around and consider the probabilities of every possible situation transitioning into the next situation, time without end.”
Armaeus regarded me speculatively as I neared him, and I tried not to let that rattle me either. As much as I knew the Magician cared for me, it didn’t stop him from being endlessly intrigued by my progression in my Connected abilities. If he were forced to choose between a relationship with me and continued study…I might not like the answer he’d give.
His lips quirked. The Magician also had the ability to read my thoughts unless I carefully shielded them from him. At this moment, if he really wanted to shuffle around in my mental file cabinet, I didn’t care what he saw.
He tilted his head, his eyes gleaming more darkly, and the tiniest frisson of apprehension skated across my nerves. Okay, so I mostly didn’t care what he saw. The Magician had a way of taking everything I was willing to give the moment I gave it, before I could change my mind.
“You acknowledge that I’ve been alive for hundreds of years, but you don’t truly understand what that means, Miss Wilde. I assure you, it changes your perspective. The study of your emerging power is a far more potent and compelling topic than you give yourself credit for.”
“Uh-huh,” I smiled. “So what you’re telling me is, you’re dating me for my mind?”
“Far from it. In fact, that’s something I need to speak to you about—later.”
At the deep, rolling insinuation in his voice, every one of my nerve endings perked up and turned Armaeus’s way. “Later as in when?” I prompted.
“That depends on what information you have to share with me regarding the return of Myanya. I have been distracted with my own studies these past several days and only realized the prophecy had been triggered when I picked up your thoughts today.”
That surprised me, and maybe mollified me a little too. Maybe I needed to stop assuming the worst when it came to the Magician holding out on me. Despite his tendency to throw me into the fire and assume he could heal my scorch marks later. “You were that deep in the Fortress of Solitude?” I took a moment to look a little more closely at Armaeus, but I couldn’t see anything different about him. Devastatingly gorgeous? Check. Insufferably arrogant? Check. Practically steaming with magic? Check. “What gives with that?”
“There is a season to all things, Miss Wilde, including for me,” Armaeus said, dismissing my question. Another small tremor of concern skated across my awareness.
He kept going. “But no, I wasn’t aware the spirit of Myanya had returned. Her last known incursion was in 1934, and she made another attempt in 1962, which failed, as it was a time of great unrest among the covens. The energy she brought was not well received, for all that it would eventually strengthen the coven who harbored the scarred warrior queen.”
I screwed my face up, because I could feel a math coming on. “So, that would have brought her back—when? 1990? I think Danae mentioned that date.”
“Perfect numbers.” Armaeus nodded. “We have no record of the prophecy being fulfilled in 1990, or even attempted. That year, my focus wasn’t on the covens as heavily, but on events of a decidedly more mundane nature.”
I lifted my brows. “I don’t remember anyone mentioning you at the Berlin Wall.”
Armaeus flicked his gaze over my shoulder, fixing on a distant spot in the universe where he stored his imaginary calculator. “Earlier this year, I considered the possibility of her return, but discarded it as there was no data to be found that the prophecy had been fulfilled in 1990. With the prophecy going unfulfilled twice, it would have taken an act of the covens working in concert to resurrect Myanya’s energy, which was unlikely given the negative consequences to the witch in question. Like so many other prophecies, it should have been consigned to ash. But here we are.”
“Clearly. So where is she?”
Armaeus blinked, his eyes once more sharpening their focus on me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Myanya’s starting to issue invites to wannabe oppressors, only she’s flipping the tables. Big-time. According to the complaints that have come into Justice Hall, I’ve got three dead guys already, another guy who should be dead except for his fast-thinking brother, and an impaled descendent of Dracula who insists Myanya simply needs to give him another chance. I’m laying that one at her doorstep too, and I have a feeling there are others. According to Danae, a bunch of dead guys is not at all the way the prophecy is supposed to start.”
“It’s not how it’s transpired in the past, but—the spirit evolves. Myanya evolves.” Armaeus frowned pensively. “The secrets for her success now likely lie in the evidence of her failure in the past.”
“We don’t even know where she made the attempt in 1990, or if she did,” I said. “That’s not going to help us.”
“Not in 1990, no,” Armaeus said. “But 1962 was a different story. The failed attempt of the scarred warrior prophecy took place in Moscow, Russia, in the shadow of St. Basil’s Cathedral.”
“A cathedral. In Moscow. Not exactly where I would expect a coven of witches to hang out.”
Armaeus smiled. “You should never underestimate the power of true believers.”
“Okay, great,” I said, making a “give it to me” gesture. “So what happened? Myanya killed her vessel witch? Or did she simply ice her suitors like she’s doing now?”
“Neither. The vessel witch who Myanya had chosen to fulfill the prophecy allowed her to take hold—and then banished her. The prophecy cycle ended almost as soon as it started.”
I frowned. The Jones brothers had said…then again, I needed to consider the source of that particular piece of intel. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Ordinarily, it isn’t. And it wasn’t without great cost to the vessel witch in question.”
Something about this wasn’t tracking, but I was willing to go along. “Okay, so where and when did that happen, and should I head there now? Or is it something we need to see together?”
A strange shadow passed over Armaeus’s face. “You will need to see it in person, but I can’t go with you. I can’t leave here, in fact. Not yet. There’s still…too much to be done.”
My brows lifted. “Is there something going on with the Council I need to be aware of?” I asked, but Armaeus shook his head.
“No. But time is of the essence now. I suggest you collect the inimitable Miss Dawes and be on your way.”
I thought of Nikki in the streets of Moscow and couldn’t help but smile as well. But I also could tell Armaeus was giving me the brush-off. “And what about you?”
“Your focus should be only on the lost queen, Miss Wilde. And defeating her.” The Magician’s beautiful lips quirked up in a half smile. “It’s important for you to close this case.”
I frowned at him. “Why? In case you didn’t notice, I’m lousy with cases back at the office. Why does this one matter any more than they do?”
“When you answer that, you’ll be much further down the path toward unraveling the mystery of the lost queen, my dear Miss Wilde…and many other mysteries as well.”
Then he disappeared in a shatter of smoke.