When I came to again, I wasn’t in the circus setting of the Palazzo Mystere, I was sitting on a very well-appointed terrace that was quite noticeably not Count Valetti’s. Calliope music still played far too close, and I was by no means alone.
“Whoa,” I said, sitting back. “Please tell me you didn’t call out the cavalry on my account.”
Sitting, standing, and lounging around the elegant teak furniture of the palazzo rooftop were more of the Arcana Council than I’d seen assembled since the world had caught on fire. The Devil sat nearest to me, all Mediterranean chic with his flowing sun-kissed hair, deeply tanned skin, and an open-necked white shirt over his trademark ragged-hemmed khakis and beach sandals—never mind that it was February. His casual pose was ruined, however, by the tension in his clenched hands. Opposite him but all the way across the terrace was the Magician, dressed impeccably in a four-thousand-dollar ebony suit and what were probably eight-thousand-dollar loafers. Two females rounded out the Council. Death perched on the short terrace wall in a muscle shirt, jeans, and combat boots, her stark white-blonde hair shaved close to her skull on one side, and spiked high on the other. The High Priestess lounged in a nearby chair, regally nonchalant in her toga-styled gown, accessorized by a whole lot of amethyst jewelry. I hadn’t seen her in amethyst before, I realized, my brain tugging hard at the sight of it. What was important about amethyst?
Then I noticed the other person on the terrace, sitting stock-still in a cushioned teak chair, his back straight, his eyes wide, his hands white-knuckling his mask. Signore Samuele Budin, looking like he was about to pass out. Again.
“Where’s Nikki?” I asked.
“Still downstairs at the party,” Armaeus said, his voice clipped. “We were able to get you out without anyone noticing, but she was too far away to not be a distraction. She’s stripped off her gloves and is doing what she can to see who might have blown the dart that struck you.”
Everything came crashing back in my memory, and it was my turn to stiffen—and by stiffen, I meant propel myself backward and almost over the couch cushions, my headlong reaction stopped only by Kreios’s sudden grip on my shoulders.
“You’re safe, you’re here,” he snapped. “You’re healed.”
“Healed?” The thundering of my heart refused to abate, the blood in my arteries jackhammered against my cells. I dragged in a heavy breath as adrenaline jacked and whirled through me, racing around like a crowd of first graders on the last day of school with no way to get out of the building. “What happened?”
Armaeus moved then, so quickly I couldn’t fully process it. He caught both of my hands and brought them down, pulling the right one slightly forward. I glanced down at it.
“My hand,” I said dully.
“You caught a dart intended for Budin,” Armaeus confirmed. “The dart was laced with Nul Magis. It hit your system and…” He gave me a soft but undeniably fascinated smile. “You summoned us. All of us.”
“I what?”
“Believe me, no one was more surprised than I was,” the High Priestess said, her tone laced with condescension. “I was dead asleep.”
I scowled in her direction. “That’s what you wear when you’re sleeping?”
“Be glad of it,” she said, lifting up one arm bedecked with amethyst bracelets. “You drew upon the healing strength of these stones before I fully appeared on this terrace. You pulled everyone to you, except Kreios, who was helpfully on scene when you were struck.”
“He g-grabbed me, pulled me with you, brought me here,” stammered Budin, a breath before his mouth slammed shut and his eyes widened, as if he was shocked he’d said anything aloud. He swiveled his head around, taking in the luminaries that surrounded him. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“You didn’t hurt her. Don’t take on karma you didn’t earn.” Death slid off the terrace wall and stood, walking over to Budin, who seemed to shrink into himself at her approach. I didn’t blame him. Death had that effect on people. Though she’d served on the Council since ascending around the start of the Common Era, she’d made it a point to blend in with whatever the current version of badassery was. Right now, when she wasn’t doing her part to shepherd souls into the next life or keeping demons from hurrying that process along for mortals, she was known as Blue, a famed tattoo artist and airbrush virtuoso who was a regular feature on the international auto circuit. Her torn clothing and sleeve of tattoos took nothing away from the harsh, otherworldly beauty of her sharply cut features and pale eyes, but as she got down in Budin’s face, I could practically see the man’s hair turning gray.
“What you have done, however, is a little on the stupid side. You’re not a cat, Samuele Budin, with nine lives to waste. Regardless of what happens to you on the other side of this one, you need to live this existence to the fullest. That’s not going to be possible if you keep hitting Black Elixir.”
“I was frightened,” he whispered, staring Death in the eye. We all sat riveted, watching this play out. I didn’t know much about Death, but I realized that I’d rarely seen her interact with a human for more than a passing comment. Now she held Budin’s full attention, his eyes almost glassy with shock. “They were coming for me.”
“I know,” Death said. “But we’ve figured out that Black Elixir’s so strong because it is made with the blood of demons. That’s why the premonitions worked so well, and that’s why people die so quickly.”
I stiffened in horror at this revelation, but Budin seemed focused on something entirely different.
“But I won’t take the fifth hit,” he said, shaking his head to emphasize his sincerity. “I know better. I just needed to see—to see. To protect myself.”
“Your senate of magicians is supposed to protect you,” Death said. “They didn’t, and I’m sorry about that. But you can’t keep that demon blood inside you. Not as a magician of your strength.”
Budin blinked at her. “My strength?”
He looked so forlornly hopeful, my heart lurched sideways. Thank God, Gamon wasn’t here, or I wouldn’t hear the end of it.
“Yup.” Keeping her gaze hard on him, Death reached behind her, and only then did I see the long, wicked-looking tattoo needle sticking out of the back of her jeans, the tip shiny and cruel in the moonlight. “Your strength. You told Sara you were the strongest of the senate of magicians, and you’re not far off. We need strong magicians. We don’t need demon hybrid magicians.”
She moved so quickly that I jerked in Armaeus’s hands, only vaguely realizing that it took both the Devil and the Magician to keep me on the cushions. Before Budin could react, Death whipped the tattoo needle around and plunged it into the side of his neck. His scream ended quickly on a garble as Death lifted her other hand, seeming to catch something that shimmered in the night air above Budin’s head.
Meanwhile, a spout of black goop arced out from Budin’s neck where Death had punctured him, splattering to the floor. I flinched back, and I wasn’t alone. No wonder everyone was standing so far away from the poor guy.
As the geyser lost strength, Blue tossed the tattoo needle down and caught Budin’s sagging shoulders with her right arm. Laying him down on the couch with a gentleness I wouldn’t have expected, she cupped her left hand back over his eyes, and whispered words I couldn’t hear.
Budin convulsed, let out a horrified gasp, then slumped on the couch once more…the steady rasp of his breath the only indication of life. But he was definitely alive.
Blue straightened. “Humans,” she muttered, and she flicked something at the goop on the floor. It must’ve been a match, because the whole mess of it caught fire and burned with white-hot heat for the space of a heartbeat before evaporating into a thick dark smoke.
“If that stench remains in this toga, I’m stiffing you with the cleaning bill,” Eshe, the High Priestess, flapped the hem of her toga and wrinkled her nose.
Death snorted. “What’re you going to do? Fieldwork is messy.”
“Are you serious with the world’s slowest—dollface.” Nikki Dawes came out onto the terrace, the wave of her focused attention hitting me full force even at twenty paces. She’d lost the mask and hat, but her unadorned face was stark with concern. “You’re fine? You’re…” She blinked, her thoughts clearly catching up with my memories, memories I hadn’t fully been able to process yet. “You’re fine,” she said, more firmly this time. “What was in that dart?”
Kreios lifted a lazy hand and drew a small barb out of his jacket. “Nul Magis,” he said. “Shot from a high-powered gun, it appears, with a sniper’s level of proficiency. Nobody at the party could have shot the device, because the trajectory didn’t work. In order for it to reach its target, it had to be coming from a position above the courtyard walls.
I frowned, looking out. “One of the other palazzos?”
“Given the specific direction, undoubtedly the palazzo directly opposite ours, which is owned by the head of police. This, unfortunately, does not narrow anything down. After the briefest of searches, well before any of this unpleasantness, Simon ascertained that three-fifths of the magicians’ senate here in Venice is in one way or another in collusion with the local constabulary.”
“But why would anyone want to hurt Budin?”
“There are several reasons,” Armaeus said. He released my hands with the slightest squeeze, then stood again, strolling over toward the terrace wall. Below him, the party continued apace. “First, Budin had made his anger with the magicians’ senate quite plain over these past several weeks. He wanted to be given due credit for his improved abilities, and no one wanted to give him the forum he needed to perform.”
“He does seem like kind of a needy dude,” Nikki said.
“Secondly, Budin knew more than anyone suspected about Greaves and Marrow,” I put in. “He shared that information with an outsider. Me. That might not have gone over so well, though I don’t think it’d be worth killing a man.”
“It might not have been, but then he got caught up with the Black Elixir.” Death made a face. “Stupid of me not to have figured this out before that sample you gathered from the drug dealer, but I’d only seen the effects on the dead, not the living. And I hadn’t seen it at all in its pure form.”
I turned to her. “Is that really possible, that it’s demon blood?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Nikki waved her hands in front of her, and locked eyes with me. Two heartbeats later, she grimaced. “Gotcha. So Black Elixir is black because of demon blood. That’s just gross. And how exactly do you get a demon to donate its blood?”
“That’s an entirely different problem,” Death said, her lips twisting. “But, at least we know this technoceutical is definitely not the result of someone preying on children. I wouldn’t even mind the hit the demons are taking, except for how badly it jacks up humans, who will simply never leave well enough alone.”
I raised my own mental barriers carefully to keep my thoughts to myself, at least for the moment. I still had Lorenzo the dark practitioner’s offer to process, and I didn’t quite know how to present that yet. And there was also the problem of what the High Priestess had intimated.
“How many of you were in Venice already?” I asked. “I didn’t summon you from across the globe.”
“You didn’t,” Armaeus said. “Though I do believe you could have. We were staying…locally enough.”
“Locally.” Suddenly, I remembered the golden circuits I’d seen among the guests. “You were here. Like, here, here. In costume.”
“I was not in costume,” Eshe advised frostily. “I was asleep.”
“It is customary for a quorum of the Arcana Council to attend the Magicians’ Ball that marks the announcement of the magicians’ alliance.” Armaeus tugged his cuffs. “Normally we come in exclusively for that event, but given the unusual circumstances surrounding this year’s event…we came early.”
I stared at him, suddenly remembering the menagerie. Specifically, the skill with which the illusion had been rendered. “This palazzo is yours?”
“It’s one of several properties the Council holds here,” Armaeus said. “Rarely used, but it comes in handy when we need it.”
“No wonder the prelate hasn’t had access to it for so many years,” I mused. “And that explains why he was able to get it at a moment’s notice this year.”
“He thought it best if no one knew the precise method of his acquisition of such a prime location. I thought it expedient to cater to his pride.”
I swung my gaze back to the High Priestess, unable to let her comments go. “So let me get this straight. You were asleep when the, um, summons came. My summons.”
“I was.”
“Wearing amethysts.”
The flash in her eyes betrayed her. “Not all of us require demon’s blood to read the future,” she said, her chin high, and suddenly, the dots connected for me. Before her ascension to the role of High Priestess, Eshe had been a Greek oracle of high renown, quite possibly the actual Oracle of Delphi, though she’d never a hundred percent come clean on that. And she’d apparently read the future…and seen me.
“You knew I was going to be injured?”
“I knew you were going to rashly put yourself in danger to save a human who was beneath your dignity,” Eshe sniffed. “I decided I should probably be prepared. I was. When you arrived on the terrace, Kreios was able to lay you down on a bed of amethysts to draw the poison out of your system. Armaeus was able to hold the darkness of the Nul Magis toxin at bay until you could accept healing.”
“And Death?”
Eshe sniffed. “She was here specifically for the human. She hates parties.”
“I’m going to need to go back down there,” I said.
“You are,” Armaeus said. “Budin, for his sake, would be better served spending the rest of the night out of sight, and ideally the next two days. He believes most sincerely that a specter has moved into his home, and I am inclined to believe him. We are dealing with a magician of great strength, and unfortunately, a magician that we currently have no way to identify. There are simply too many people who have been exposed to the influx of magic to know how it affected any one person.”
“Uh-huh.” I sighed, sitting back in my chair. And how are we going to figure that out in time for the Magicians’ Ball? That’s only two days away.”
“We aren’t, my dear Miss Wilde.” Armaeus arched a winged brow. “You are. As Justice of the Arcana Council, you are our righteous hand. We may support you, but we cannot replace you. Both for the sake of the position and the sake of your personal safety, it has to be you.”
I stared at him, then cut my glance around the terrace. Four sets of serious eyes stared back at me, while Nikki’s eyes were filled with pride and more than a little worry.
I stared at my hand, the one that’d taken a blow dart full of souped-up demon’s blood. “I’m so asking for a raise.”