Lara quickly crossed through the knots of whispering coven members, and though she was moving with speed, our route was not the most straightforward to the open door at the far end of the room. Instead, she made sure that everyone saw her walking with me. By the time we entered the antechamber that appeared to serve as her office, we were drawing almost as many stares as Armaeus.
“Finally,” Lara said, crossing to the bar. The high priestess of the LA coven poured herself a glass of wine, then turned back to me. She didn’t offer me a drink, but I tried not to judge her for that. Much.
“What do you know?” I asked again.
She waved her glass, glaring at me. “You think I’m overstating our problem. I assure you I’m not. As Justice of the Arcana Council, it’s your obligation to intervene.”
That wasn’t exactly the way my job worked, but I was willing to work with it. “Did you know Tammy had been targeted? Richard Zachariah?”
“I told you, Richard Zachariah was a pestilence and a sham,” she sniffed. “His death is nothing but a boon to any serious practitioners of the craft.
“I examined him, Lara. He was no sham. He had real magic within him.” Had being the operative term, but Lara was still hand-waving me off.
“You saw what he worked hard to show the world, whenever he wanted to gain credibility,” she said. “Whatever lingering spell was still in effect to give him the illusion of true power, I do not begrudge him. But he sought to advance without proper training, creating a cult of personality around himself that was an affront. No coven would have him.”
“That didn’t stop him from trying to co-opt the prophecy of Myanya,” I pointed out.
She sniffed again. “Well, now that horrible chapter is put to rest.”
My brows shot up as she took a long swig of wine. “It is?”
“Of course,” Lara said. “With the death of Tammy Butler, our coven will return to its natural state. I had hoped that we would advance sharply with the fulfillment of the Myanya prophecy, but in the end, it remains too much for any one woman to bear. I shouldn’t be surprised. Since Iskra Mikhailova rejected the prophecy in 1962, the magic has never recovered. And, too, we are in much changed times. Perhaps there is no place for such ancient magic anymore.”
“You think Tammy’s death will end Myanya’s claim? Won’t she simply jump to the next witch up?”
“This isn’t a sporting team, Justice Wilde,” Lara said thinly. “The prophecy takes time to establish itself in a witch, to grow. Tammy Butler was not my top candidate, frankly, but she was certainly a candidate, one you had also targeted. With her abrupt demise, there is no possibility that Myanya continues.”
“But the two witches that were our other suspects were sitting right next to Tammy in the car when she died,” I said. “How hard would it be for energy like that to simply transfer?”
“I have questioned both witches quite carefully,” Lara replied dismissively. “They’re still in trauma, understandably. The Magician was kind enough to show me the footage from the debacle in the limousine. I can show you as well, if you would like.”
“I would like that.” I watched as she moved to her desk. She picked up an elegant remote, and a second later, a screen whirred down from the ceiling. With a single click of the remote, an image flickered to life on the screen.
It was the interior of a well-appointed limousine, the video having been shot in bright color. The three witches were clearly visible, with Tammy partially stretched out on the backseat, the other two witches seated along two banquettes that lined the sides of the car. Both Gail and Monica appeared credibly upset, but the real star of the production was Tammy. She clutched her stomach, her face positively green, her lips peeled back. Light flecks of yellow bile stained her lips, and she moaned in genuine distress.
A second later, the scene abruptly changed. Tammy screamed and her head jerked back as a foreign substance coated the camera lens, obscuring the other two women, who lurched back as if they’d been scalded, their mouths open in terror. After that, the car swerved abruptly, clearly being pulled over to the side. The women scrambled for the doors, falling out into the darkness beyond. Meanwhile, the body of Tammy Butler remained completely motionless. I couldn’t see her head anymore, but given the angle of the camera, her hands and feet were flung wide, frozen in an exaggerated pentagram position. Just like RZ.
“Who did this?” I breathed, speaking more to the screen than Lara. Unfortunately, Lara was more than happy to answer.
“None of us, I can assure you,” she said tartly. “One of the oldest and most sacred charges for any of our witches is that the coven reigns supreme. No one makes an attack on one of our own witches. To do so would unravel the very fabric of our organization, and we are nothing if we cannot maintain our core of strength. There is no other alternative than that we are being attacked from the outside. Someone is using our focus on the Myanya prophecy to strike when we are at our weakest.”
I blew out a long breath, still studying the video. At this point, the driver of the limo had poked her head into the back of the vehicle and recoiled, but had left the body where it lay. “Well, that’s certainly a possibility,” I said. “But it’s only one of several.”
After all, Heather had been certain of Gail and Monica’s guilt. The girl might be an initiate, but she wasn’t stupid.
Lara didn’t respond right away, but that was okay. I could let her stew for a second as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. “Could you run that feed again for me?”
Lara gasped, and I rolled my eyes. “Look, it’s a reasonable request,” I said, swinging toward her—
Then I bolted forward. I caught Lara as she slumped to the floor, the glass hitting the carpet and spilling red wine all over the creamy pattern. I didn’t wait, but immediately flicked my third eye open, fixing on Lara’s skittering circuits.
If my third eye had sported an eyebrow, it would have shot straight up. Because in this case, there was absolutely no magical attack occurring at all. Lara’s body was compromised, quite heavily so, from a shot of pure poison. There was no question in my mind that said poison had come from the glass of wine she’d just inhaled. Poison, however, was usually an organic compound, and any organic matter was made up of energy. Energy was my game.
I sent a burst of healing power through Lara’s inert body, stripping away the strength of the poison and reinvigorating the muscles and nerves it sought to deaden. It was an extremely fast-acting poison, but I reached Lara’s heart a moment before it did, and her brain was never seriously in danger. In another moment, Lara coughed, and I rolled her over to her side, pulling her hair out of the way as she further damaged her expensive carpet. I was pretty sure that no amount of magic would render that carpet redeemable at this point, but such was the danger of running a coven. Cleaning bills were the least of your problems.
“I’ll go get—”
“No!” To my surprise, Lara staggered to her knees, waving at me frantically. “Don’t tell anyone of this. No one must know.”
I stared at her for a second, my lips curling in a derision I didn’t try to hide. “Look, I get that you don’t want people to know you have a weakness, and I even get that you don’t want people to know you could’ve just been killed. But the fact remains, you could’ve just been killed. You’ve got a big problem on your hands, and unless you’re not telling me something, it’s almost certainly coming from somebody in the next room. Exactly how many enemies do you have?”
“More than I like to think about.” Lara scowled, then took a deep breath. “The doors were open when I left to greet you. Anyone could have come in then—or this wine could have been poisoned weeks ago.”
“True.”
“But you misunderstand me,” Lara continued. “I don’t want you to tell everyone I’ve just been attacked. I want you to tell everyone I’ve just been killed. The attacks—they’re still coming. I want to see who reveals themselves as being behind this little coup.”
She waved at the mess on the floor, then at the bar, then herself. “Please—a towel, napkin. Anything.”
“Right.” I hurried to the bar and ran water over a towel, then brought it back to her, brushing her hands away as I wiped her face. “So you want me to convince the others you’re dead. Keep you hidden away.”
“I’ll need to stay hidden away,” she agreed. “Until we know the truth. But there are witches here who’ve known me a very long time. I’ll need your help in convincing them I’m dead. Starting now.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced this was a good idea, but I nodded, reaching for and creating the same bubble of silence that I’d accessed in Lure. Anything within the bubble still was kicking along, but those outside the bubble…
She lifted her brows. “You’re in here with me too. Your Magician will notice immediately.”
“He’s good at faking it, and we need his reaction to convince the peanut gallery out—”
At that exact moment, the door to Lara’s study blew open, the heavy panels rotating completely on their hinges before smacking into the walls. Armaeus filled the doorway, his eyes wide. “Miss Wilde.”
“Help me!” I managed with a credible amount of sincerity as Lara slumped in my arm. “Close the doors!”
That last was purely for show, but Armaeus complied anyway, slamming the doors shut with a wave of his hands. He advanced into the room more cautiously now, his gaze going from Lara’s grinning face to mine, then to the mess of wine and vomit on the floor. If anyone had seen that, it was only going to improve our story.
“What…is going on?” He reached out and tested the force field I had built, and it was his turn to smile thoughtfully. “You do learn quickly, Miss Wilde.”
“Someone just laced Lara’s wine with a straight shot of poison. I thought it was—” I frowned, looking at the spot where the guard had stood, but didn’t much feel like biting into that cupcake of crazy right now. “Someone in the next room. Either way, it’s probably someone close.”
“It could be anyone,” Lara groaned. “We held a ceremony here two nights ago, on the full moon. The entire coven was in attendance. Slipping into my office with a hypodermic filled with poison would have been child’s play for half of them. It was merely a matter of waiting for me to drink it.”
“Right,” I said. “Especially with that in mind, Lara’s convinced me that she’s better off dead.”
The tide of conversation was rising in the room outside, and Lara nodded. “If I’m dead, there must be a successor to lead the coven. Ordinarily, that successor is chosen in a naming ceremony within these very walls, one that can be called by even the newest of our number—which is why I don’t often hold celebrations here, nor have witches for centuries, other than the ones in which we are very strong.”
“The death of Tammy Butler,” Armaeus said. “The gathering here.”
“It can’t be a coincidence. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have seen it, but I felt absolutely no threat,” Lara insisted. “It was only natural for me to gather my strongest witches close to reassure them. That level of reassurance is best achieved here, not in the Assembly House, especially after the ceremony earlier this week. We wouldn’t have another reason to meet here for weeks. I also believed—would still like to believe—the threat comes from outside the coven, not inside it. But now…”
“Yeah, probably not. Nevertheless.” I withdrew my arms from her, and she sat up, smoothing her hair. “We can’t keep you here.”
“I can transport her,” Armaeus said. “She’ll be safe. You’ll need to stay here, however, Miss Wilde. Nikki’s still on the grounds, and I’ll alert her to keep the perimeter closed. But if there’s going to be some sort of claim to power, your magic is most closely attuned to the coven’s.”
“Well, you seemed to be dialing yours in quite nicely too,” I teased, and Lara watched us with patent curiosity, her gaze shifting like a rabid tennis fan’s as each of us spoke.
“I was working on my own theory, as it happens.” Armaeus smiled as he spoke the words, the curious pink-gold light flaring in the depths of his black gaze. Something was ratcheting up his alien DNA, without question. “The witches of the LA coven, like many organizations worldwide, know the Arcana Council only tangentially. That’s been by design, of course. There’s been no advantage to advertise our strength, especially when we weren’t as strong as we now are. As a result, a certain measure of mystery has grown up around the Council. Mystery can be useful. Ignorance is not. And a lack of respect least of all.”
The dots connected in my mind. “They know you’re the Magician, and they know—knew—remembered—or thought they once heard something about your magic being born of Enochian sex magick. You were playing them.”
“Not exactly playing them.” His lips curled into a sultry smile. “My strength is born of sexual mastery, yes. However, it’s a very, very old variant of the practice, one that predates what is now known as modern sex magick by several thousand years. None of that is as relevant as me giving the impression of power to a group that was…perhaps unaware of or, more troubling, unimpressed with that power.”
“Uh-huh. For any particular reason? Or did you simply want to get your rocks off while you passed the time waiting for something more interesting to happen?”
Armaeus laughed, and the sound ricocheted around the room, the effect on both Lara and myself immediate and visceral.
“Please tell me that wasn’t felt by anyone outside the force field,” I muttered, glad I was leaning against Lara’s desk. Lara looked equally happy she was already on the floor.
“It wasn’t,” Armaeus said, eminently pleased at the impact he was having on us, and no doubt riding the same high of sexual response from the witches in the room beyond. “And primarily, it was an academic exercise. What I found, however, is that half the witches in the room were trying desperately to be noticed for their abilities, half of them were trying desperately to advance their abilities, and a very small subset—whom I could not identify—were trying desperately to mask their abilities. I was very close to identifying who when…your energy shifted.
“Interesting,” I said, stepping away as Armaeus stooped to pick up Lara in his arms. “Well—take her and…I’ll see if I can pick up where you left off.”
“Agreed.” The Magician nodded to me, his voice dropping to a distinctively low Austrian bass, channeling Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator. “I’ll be—”
“Stop,” I growled warningly as Armaeus disappeared, the hint of his laughter lingering on the unnaturally still air.
I stood there for a moment longer, considering all my options, barely hearing the whisper of gears. The sound was so faint, I almost dismissed it—
Then the floor dropped out beneath me.