After an unfortunate collision with a family of unsuspecting tourists, all of whom thoughtfully assumed responsibility for our poor passed-out gondolier—who would shortly be substantially richer despite the fact that we had no idea how much a gondola cost and he was in no shape to tell us—it took us several minutes to extract ourselves and break away. We made it to Ca Daria with only five minutes to spare.
“How do I look?” Nikki asked, smoothing down her cape.
“You forget, I can’t see in this thing. Not well, anyway.”
“Seems like kind of an idiotic design. You sure you have it on right?”
“I have it on the way Signora Visione put it on.”
“Well, she’s a little short. And old. Maybe she got confused. Here.” She reached out and fussed with my mask, even as I jerked away.
“Maybe you should mind your own—hey,” I said, looking around. I could see much more clearly now. “What’d you do?”
“There’s false eye sockets in that mask. I have no idea why. I simply flipped them up like eyelids.”
I blinked at her through the suddenly unfiltered holes. “You’re kidding me.”
She grinned, then tapped her own mask. “Anything you can do about the mask-phyxia I’ve got going on here?”
“I…” I poked at her mask, marveling at the softness of the sculpted surface. “You can open the mouth from this side.”
“You can?”
“Here.” I pushed at the soft surface of the mask’s mouth, grimacing as its lips parted into a delicate moue. “This feels a little rude.”
“Keep it up, it’s the most action I’ve gotten all da—hey, that does make a difference. I can breathe.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Is it time?”
The question was answered for us as a bell tolled somewhere deep in the heart of Venice, probably at Piazza San Marco.
We moved up to the front step, and the door opened as we approached. No one else was in sight, which once again put my nerves on edge. Who would want us delayed from our appointed time? Only someone who knew when our appointed time was. That cut down the crew of likely suspects to right around…
“Um, how many of these magicians are supposed to be here tonight?” I whispered.
“More than enough, I suspect.” As we moved deeper into Ca Daria, which looked like nothing so much as an ordinary house, no haunting required, a series of motion sensor lights tripped on as soon as we entered their space. It gave the eerie effect that the house was watching our every movement, and I shot Nikki another look. She snickered. She didn’t need to read my mind to be open to belittling the hocus-pocus the magicians of Venice were serving up.
“They’re not motion sensored.” The voice beside us was so unexpected, I jumped sideways, smashing into Nikki, who, fortunately, was solid enough not to go flying.
Valetti stood beside us, masked and caped, but it was definitely him. No one else in Venice could manage to be so fiercely proud and self-effacing at the same time.
“What?” I managed.
“The lights. You must suspect they flicker on and off electronically, but they don’t. We’ve had the wiring checked more times than we can remember. It’s a quirk of the building that it follows guests through their first time. It only happens the first time too. After that, the lights stay dark unless you flip the switch.” He shrugged. “And sometimes they stay dark even if you do flip them on.”
I tried not to stare at him. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. Forgive me for indulging myself in the delight of a new guest. It’s been some time since Ca Daria welcomed a stranger into her midst.”
Valetti moved past us down the corridor. Sure enough, the lights remained dark as he passed them, illuminating only when we drew close.
“He’s gotta have some sort of remote,” I muttered to Nikki.
“Well, you’re the one with the magic eyeballs. What do you see?”
Belatedly, I allowed my third eye to snap open. It was getting a workout tonight, but when it surveyed the hallway in front of me, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Hallway, lights, electric signature of Valetti, Nikki, myself, and some people in a room at the end of the hall. No bright sideways electrical pulses, no Slimer waiting behind a door. “Nada,” I confirmed.
“Huh. I was kind of banking on the remote control idea, myself.”
“Yeah, well.” We quieted as Valetti turned and gestured us into the room, and my stomach tightened as I stepped inside. This room was brightly lit, and though I was completely prepared for a séance, the men sitting around it—assuming they were all men—appeared relatively normal. Not counting the masks, hats, and giant capes, of course.
“Gentlemen and ladies, Magicians all, we welcome you to Carnevale,” said the man at the head of the table—instantly recognizable as the prelate when he spoke—without a trace of irony or self-aggrandizement in his voice. “There’s much to discuss.”
“There’s not much to discuss, at least not yet.” A heavy man’s voice boomed from the body of a diminutive jester, making me blink. “I received one of Butcher Biasio’s book of recipes, and I’m not happy about it. I thought that bastard had been so damaged there wasn’t even enough left of him to haunt this city. Why now?”
“Well, the reason for now is obvious. The influx of magic. But why him?” Another man with a plague doctor mask leaned forward. “There were far stronger magicians in the city than he ever could have hoped to be. If he was practicing today, he’d have been relegated to the side alleys like Balestri.”
“Balestri who’s dead, it should be noted. Why bother?”
I listened, spellbound by the callousness of the voices, and my mind couldn’t help but stray to Armaeus. He was a magician, the only real magician I’d known since I’d started working on the Arcana Council. He was a little on the calculating side, but he still didn’t seem quite as cold as these people. Granted, I didn’t exactly know what a magician was supposed to do to qualify for the senate in Venice, now that I thought about it.
“Marrow and Greaves planned to visit him, I heard,” another voice, equally callous. “They’ve not been located.”
That made me sit up a little straighter. These were the two missing magicians Valetti had mentioned earlier. News apparently traveled fast in the senate.
“Still low-level,” Valetti said, his suddenly cold voice jarring me. How could these men turn from such genteel hosts to, well—asshats? And was one of these guys the Red King?
Beside me, Nikki shifted. I wasn’t shielding my mind from her. It suddenly occurred to me…should I be shielding it from the rest of the room?
“Only if you wish, Miss Wilde. You’re a member of the Arcana Council, which is several steps higher on the evolutionary scale than the magicians’ senate. It accords you certain…protections that might not be otherwise available to the average magician.”
I’d been working long enough with the Magician that I didn’t jump, but it was a near thing. But his presence in my mind gave me the chance to ask—
And…then he was gone.
Of course.
I refocused on the group. They were listing other magicians who’d not yet arrived for Carnevale, apparently waiting to see if anyone else had died. Another subset of the sorcerers were making what sounded like a gentleman’s wager on who the most likely next targets were, based on who had already gone. Suffice to say, it wasn’t anyone in the room.
After this went on for some time, the prelate delicately cleared his throat. The soft sound had the effect of a sonic boom, and everyone shut up. I found my brows lifting as I watched the clear respect accorded to Alfonse. Though he wasn’t a high-level magician, he clearly made the other members of this senate nervous. Why? Maybe the man had more in his library of arcana than I’d given him credit for…and maybe I’d have to return to it to see for myself.
“Magicians all,” the prelate boomed. “We have not been idle as this threat has brushed up against our most sacred of celebrations. Through the good graces of a colleague, we welcome a member of the Arcana Council to our midst.”
With a flutter of noise and movement, the magicians turned to their fellows, trying to seek out who was who. Enough of them hadn’t spoken yet, and so, arguably, they were still in the running.
“You?” a man on the other side of Nikki said, his voice faint. “You’re on the Arcana Council?”
“Not in this lifetime, love chop,” Nikki said, her loud, wry voice once again striking the group mute. I allowed my third eye to slide open as I spoke.
“We’re not going to take up much of your time,” I said. “We’d like to see this matter ended as quickly as—”
“Justice!” blurted a man on the opposite side of the room. So far, this really was turning into an all-male revue. “I’d heard there was a new Justice on the Arcana Council. But true magicians are exempt from that role.”
My eyebrows shot up, an effect sadly diminished by the fact that I was wearing a mask. Exempt? Was there no end to what I hadn’t been told about my new job?
“Always have been,” harrumphed another man who heretofore had been silent. From the jerk to attention of the costumed figures on either side of him, he was someone of importance. So, what, they didn’t think I could make magic? My fingers started itching a little.
“Always will be.” My attention shifted to the far end of the table, where a slender figure in a cape of obsidian feathers and a traditional bauta mask inclined her head toward me. Definitely a her. I racked my brain, trying to place a female magician at any time during my six years as an artifact hunter or a purveyor of stolen goods on the arcane black market. But I had nothing.
“I appreciate the Arcana Council giving this matter the focus it deserves,” the woman continued haughtily. “We have long been far too isolated in our work within the magicians’ senate, and their emissary has been more than lacking these past several decades. Sharing of our resources would be better…at least with actual magicians.”
“To be fair, this is a very specific situation in which I—we—thought an outsider would see things that perhaps we would miss.” Valetti’s words sped up toward the end of his sentence, his slip about his specific involvement in my recruitment curious to me. Was it intentional? Did he want people to know he was behind this potentially game-changing addition to their team? Or was he still uncertain how it was all going to play out?”
“So neither of the women can conjure,” came another scoffing voice. “We’ve opened up our ranks, risked our exposure, to people who aren’t even magicians.”
“Do you think they can’t conjure?” A new voice broke through the ranks, and the men turned once again, clearly rethinking the idea of showing up in masks in the midst of so much turmoil. “Are you calling for a demonstration?”
The voice was silky, smooth, and…vaguely familiar, emanating from behind a mask in the shape of a lion’s head. The man’s hat and cape were also shaded a light, tawny gold. And he seemed hell-bent on causing chaos in an already untenable situation.
I scowled behind my mask. Kreios?
There was no response to my mental door knock. For the moment, it appeared the Devil would be a dumb spirit.
In the ensuing silence, I lifted my hands. “I’m not here to impress you with magic tricks. I’ve been asked to rout out a threat to the, ah, senate. If I can do that, I will.”
“How?” It was the woman who spoke now, and as she did, she moved sinuously around the room for all that she wore a blank mask and a shapeless smock of feathers. She passed Valetti, who steadfastly refused to look at her, and stopped by the prelate. My eyes narrowed behind my mask as I observed the room react to this rearrangement of players—because there definitely was a reaction. It seemed everything that was done in this room had a timing and purpose to it, and I grimaced. I hadn’t spent much time in high school when I’d been growing up, but it’d felt a hell of a lot like this. And right now, I was looking at the council’s self-appointed Homecoming King and Queen.
But the female magician knew that she’d captured the room’s attention, and she wasn’t about to let it go.
“I have learned a little about you, Justice Wilde,” she said, shifting forward slightly. As she did, her back did a weird arching thing that positioned her closer to the prelate without her technically moving. I never knew how women did that. Maybe they taught that move in magician school. “I understand you use Tarot cards to find your marks. No one knows Venice better than we do, however. We can help you.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again, a move made infinitely easier by the fact that I was wearing a mask. Despite how sensually she made the observation, the femme magicale had a point. And I did have my cards on me, under all these feathers.
“I can do a reading now,” I said, and I could feel the tremor of anticipation in the room. Rolling my eyes was also much easier from behind a mask.
“You could do that,” drawled the caped man I suspected was the Devil. “But what if the perpetrator is someone in this room? Surely that would be…inconvenient.”
“I’m afraid you have us at a disadvantage, sir.” It was the prelate who spoke, which surprised me. His tone was laced with ice, though, and I amended my opinion of him. “I am eager to ensure that each of our members is accorded the proper respect, but you, sir…I don’t remember welcoming you at the front door.”
“Nor do I,” said Valetti gravely, almost apologetically.
“You didn’t welcome me,” the man said. He raised a hand, and the lights in the electric sconces flickered—as if they were actual candlelight. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not a favored guest here. The Palazzo D’Aria has long been a favorite haunt of mine, for all that I have very little occasion to occupy it when you do.”
“What sort of devilry is this?” muttered the diminutive man across the table, costumed as a jester complete with the floppy harlequin hat, despite the admonition that we were all supposed to wear tricorn headgear. Even the female magician tilted her head, her mask doing a credible job of looking perplexed.
The lion’s mask turned in a lazy arc as the man I suspected was the Devil focused on the jester. “There are only so many meetings that I can keep up with, and these simply don’t rate—except, of course the Magicians’ Ball. But as to this bit of, well, cloak and dagger, the charm of it is already wearing thin.”
The room of magicians shifted with indignation.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t need to listen to your watercooler fights. I’ll find your butcher or, more likely, whoever is styling himself as your butcher.” I couldn’t help but remember the words that had tumbled out of Balestri’s mouth, taunting me about the Red King. That hadn’t been an illusion by an untrained hand. Someone with real strength was behind the butcher’s attack, and someone knowledgeable enough to transform garden-variety Black Elixir—deadly enough in its own right—into the instantly lethal Nul Magis toxin. That took a pretty impressive magician. Was it one of the ones assembled here? “And I’m going to start that search now.”
They all watched as I reached into the slitted pocket carefully concealed in the seam of my cloak and felt along my body for my cards. Without preamble, still focusing far too much on the tension in the room, I drew three cards. I stepped quickly toward the table as I drew them out and flipped them on the table.
Everyone froze.
Except Nikki. Who snickered.
“Oh, for the love of Christmas,” I grumbled.
“What?” the jester half shouted, moving forward. “What is it?”
“The cards pick up your energy, and believe it or not, your energy isn’t on the murderer who may or may not be in your midst, it’s on the chess match you’re all playing to one-up each other.” I pointed to the Five of Wands. “You don’t want to work together, that’s your problem, so this is the last reading I’m going to be doing anywhere near you people. Second is the Hermit—which is the search for knowledge. It could have been the Moon, but there’s no mystery here.” I reached down to gather my cards. “I’m wasting my time.”
“But the last card,” the jester all but moaned. “What does it mean?”
The tawny caped figure stepped forward and reached across the table, his elegant fingers picking up the card to study it before I could sweep it away.
“Old man Waite never could take a joke.” The Devil of the Arcana Council sighed, surveying the claw-footed, goat-headed, fat-bellied image on the card. “If my predecessor hadn’t upset the pompous fool so much, my life would have been so much easier.”
Kreios’s cloak and mask disappeared into curls of smoke, and the senate exploded into a fury of sound and magic.