I stood in front of the door to my office in Las Vegas a few mornings later, catching myself as I lifted my hand to knock. I didn’t need to knock, this was my space. My very own proper place in the world.
The door opened in front of me anyway.
“Come in, ma’am!” One of the young librarians stood there beaming, his bright eyes dancing. “I’m Tobey, and we saw you coming all the way down the hall!”
“You did?” I glanced at the door, which looked no different than it had the last time I’d seen it, but as I entered the room, I saw a new station set up to the side of the entrance lobby. Two additional boys manned that desk, peering at a screen about half the size they were. They seemed so engrossed in their work, I felt a twinge of nerves at my first task of the day.
“Is Mrs. French in?” I asked, watching Tobey scamper back to the desk as well, whispering and nudging his fellows to change the view. Another boy came out of the library, snatching off his cap when he saw me.
“Right here!” came the brisk British voice from the office, and a second later, two other boys trotted into the lobby from that doorway, touching their caps before they headed for the library.
“Wait,” I shouted, and that stopped them short. “Is this all of you? Can you tell me your names again?”
There were six boys in the room, and they looked at each other, then back at me, grinning. I lifted my hands slightly to my sides, not enough to alarm them, but to balance the moment, preserve it in my mind. My right hand throbbed with the extra effort, but not quite enough to hurt.
“’Tis all of us accounted for, Justice Wilde. I’m Bobby, Bobby Haymoor,” began the first. Then each of the boys chattered off their names, the sound of their young voices pinging around the room. When they were done, I dropped my hands, and they pushed and shoved and went on their way—four of them disappearing into the library, two still manning the desk like impish guard dogs.
I shook my head, stifling a laugh, for all that my heart was inexplicably heavy. By the time I reached the entry to my inner office, Mrs. French was halfway across the room toward me. She saw my face and stopped.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said quickly, but I tossed my bag on the couch and stood there, immediately unsure. This was exactly why I’d never had employees before. I had no capacity for crucial conversations. “Well, that’s not true. Something’s wrong. A lot of somethings. Starting with them.”
I gestured toward the main lobby, and Mrs. French stiffened. She nodded once, sharply, then moved forward toward the door, closing it quietly before turning around. “Would you like some tea? Scotch?”
“No.” I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets, wishing I was anywhere but here—then catching myself as I felt my cells start to destabilize. Poofing out of existence wasn’t going to solve this issue, as tempting as it was.
I launched in. “I want some answers, Mrs. French. Why are those boys still here? Surely someone could have set them free a long time ago. They should be free, and they should be living a normal life.”
She blinked at me. Whatever she’d expected me to say, that wasn’t it. “The boys,” she repeated.
“For starters, yeah. In nearly two hundred years, you mean to tell me you never once asked Armaeus or even Death to look into reversing whatever spell Abigail’s boss laid on them? Because I don’t believe they wouldn’t have helped.”
“What makes you think the boys wanted such help?” Mrs. French asked staunchly.
“Nothing. But it doesn’t matter what they want. They’re ten-year-old boys—perpetual ten-year-old boys. You knew better than to keep them in the library. What happens when you die? That will happen, eventually, right? You’re not immortal.”
“I’m not.” For just a moment, Mrs. French looked like she was going to stiffen to the point of her spine splintering, staring at me across the room. Then something shifted in her eyes, a look of inexpressible sadness, and I knew I had her.
I didn’t feel good about it, but I had her.
“You know what I am,” she said, her voice resigned.
“A Revenant. A very long-lived one. Gamon’s the only Revenant I know all that well, but she’s only been around about eighty years.”
“She is a scary one, I’ll grant you that,” Mrs. French said, but the stuffing had gone out of her. “But barely a child. And now that she’s on the Council, she won’t have to worry about aging at all.”
I nodded, watching her closely. “But you do.”
“I do,” she said, her voice wan. She moved over to a straight-back chair and sat on the very edge of it, all that she could reasonably manage with her bustle. She folded her hands in her lap. “You have me dead to rights, Justice,” she said. “I could have—should have—taken the boys straightaway to the Magician for his help. I had no right to keep them with me all these years when they didn’t know anything of the world beyond this library, whereas I knew all too well what it held.”
“You wanted to protect them.”
“Oh, of course, but that’s not the whole of it, as you well know. I wanted their company. It was no good for me on the outside, not once I saw what…” She swallowed. “Well, there’s no matter the why of it. It was wrong, plain as day.”
“Once you saw what?” I asked. “What happened to Abigail, Mrs. French? What is it that happened that made you stay locked up in the library with the boys for almost two centuries?”
“Abigail…” Mrs. French’s smile was inexpressibly sad. “It wasn’t like what you think. She did nothing to harm me or the boys. But she suffered for her job, Justice Wilde. She suffered mightily every time she encountered the dangerous men and women she needed to bring to Judgment. And, worse, Judgment wasn’t as absolute back then.”
I frowned, surprised. “In what way?”
“In the way that resulted in some of the marked being released back into the population. Poor Abigail would go out not knowing if she’d be faced with an angry Connected who was more prepared than she was for their second altercation. She was strong, she had her scales and the weight of most of the Council behind her, but she couldn’t be prepared for everything.”
“Judgment didn’t have her back?” I could hardly believe it.
“Not always,” Mrs. French said. “Not enough. And he said—he said that if she pushed too hard, he’d let all her secrets out. He knew, of course. Knew everything about her. You can’t stand in front of Judgment without him knowing your every sin.”
“Really.” I thought about what Gamon would be able to judge me for, but I didn’t think that particular issue was going to be a problem between us. “And she cared about that?”
“She cared about us. The boys. Me. She cared about our safety and the safety of her family, black sheep though they were. She knew where she came from and she knew what she’d done, and it ate at her day and night. The cases were added pressure, but nothing compared to the pressure she put on herself.”
I lifted a hand and rubbed my brow, trying to keep everything Mrs. French was saying straight. “Abigail ascended to the Council even though she was a dark practitioner.”
“Her family was. Not her.”
“Right, her family. But she was broken from that, from that and from what her employer had done to her. Her employer, whom she murdered.”
“While rescuing someone else!”
“Another young woman.”
Mrs. French bit her lip. “Yes. When the Magician interrupted Abigail, she was truly distraught and truly powerful. He told me once that he knew he needed to elevate her or kill her, there was really no other option. And he was in desperate need of Council members in that time period. Your Devil hadn’t ascended yet, nor the Emperor, or the Hanged Man, or—”
“I get the picture. But Abigail was deeply and irretrievably broken. Surely he knew that too.”
She shook her head. “At first, he knew only what she allowed him to know. Which was only what she allowed herself to know when she was with him. Her employer thought her a sleepwalker, but that…that wasn’t truly her affliction.”
I stared at Mrs. French. “And you know what it was?”
“I surely do. I saw it right away. It helped that I had seen it before.” She gave me another rueful smile. “My family may have been Revenants, but that didn’t mean they were the nicest people. They disapproved of my choices. When I became pregnant by a young man who wasn’t of my kind, they took the baby and—” She cleared her throat. “Incarcerated me at a public institution. It was only supposed to be for a short while, but a short while in a Revenant’s life is a far different thing, you see. I saw…a great many things in that place. It had been built for the pauper insane.”
I felt like ice was running through my veins. How had I not known this? How hadn’t I guessed? “You were harmed?”
“Not irredeemably, no. I had the advantage over most of the inmates and a fair number of the keepers in that I was in full possession of my faculties. I made sure I was a favorite of the superintendent. He was a kind man, and there were far too few of those. Eventually, however, I was treated by a visiting psychiatrist, and, well…” She lifted her chin. “He was not a kind man. And he knew there was something…different about me, as Connecteds often do.”
All the dots didn’t merely connect, they lit up like the Strip. “It was Abigail’s employer. You were the girl she saved.”
“When Abigail visited that night, it wasn’t merely that she was in a trance. She was in a different mind altogether. One of thirteen alternates who would surface as time needed, some less manageable than others.”
“But if you knew this, surely the Magician knew it as well.” I thought back to what he had said, that Abigail wasn’t damaged because of her job, that he’d thought she’d be uniquely suited for it. “She had dissociative identity disorder, and he thought she was perfect for the role of Justice?”
“Before Abigail, the role had gone vacant for seven hundred years,” Mrs. French said simply. “You can do the math.”
I blinked at her. “Armaeus didn’t know anything about what the job took.”
“He didn’t know. And when he did finally learn the truth about Abigail’s condition, she appeared to be thriving. Anything one alter experienced, the others covered over, and of course, there were so many other jobs to manage, ad hoc cases that weren’t as dangerous in the main. But one day, she simply couldn’t face it anymore. And when she went…” Mrs. French shrugged. “By then, I had a purpose and a place. I had the boys to care for and so much shelving to do. The Council fed and clothed us and gave us anything we wanted. It wasn’t a bad life.” She glanced up at me. “But you can take me to Judgment now, Justice Wilde. I do understand.”
“Judgment!” I blinked, but there was no slash of silver at Mrs. French’s temple. All her misery and self-recrimination was internally driven, and always had been, I suspected. “No. That’s not what this is about. I just think the boys need a chance to grow up, is all. Children aren’t meant to stay children.”
“But…” Mrs. French’s eyes filled, and her words, when they came, were barely audible. “They’ll leave.”
I nodded, more gently this time. “They’ll leave, hopefully. Once they get a little older. They’ll leave, and they’ll find friends and maybe eventually make families of their own. Being a gifted Connected doesn’t mean you have to stay alone your whole life, after all. Not everyone out in the world is an asshat.”
She gave me a watery smile. “Most of them are. I’ve had a long time to study this.”
“Most of them are,” I agreed.
“Very well, then,” she said heavily. “You tell me what I need to tell them, what I need to do, and I’ll do it, Justice. And if you don’t want me to stay, I understand. Of course I understand. I couldn’t possibly not understand—”
“You’ll be staying as long as you’d like, Mrs. French. And there’s nothing at all you need to do. At least not about the boys.”
I turned away from her startled face, and moved to the desk. Fully thirteen canisters, unopened, lined the sleek black surface. “Is this everything that’s shown up since I’ve been gone?” I asked, and she gave a rueful chuckle, quickly wiping her tears away.
“Not at all. That’s everything that’s shown up since we cleared away the overnight deliveries. Since you left for Venice, we’ve received one hundred and seventeen cases.”
I jerked my gaze to her, staring. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m afraid not. Granted, a full fifty-three of those were grudges and family disputes, and another twelve were poppycock, bits of stuff and nothing created to draw you out on false pretenses, but the remaining fifty-two appear to be quite legitimate. They’ve been categorized and prioritized, and except for a few that you might consider addressing immediately, they’ve all been shelved.”
“Fifty…two. And it’s only the legitimate cases that were the problem.”
“For Abigail, yes,” Mrs. French said. “But there’s nothing that says they will affect you the same way. You are two very different people.”
I grimaced. Armaeus had said much the same thing. “How much do you know of the cases she worked on? And is there a list? Maybe if I went back through them, see where maybe she got tripped up…”
Mrs. French straightened. “There most certainly is a list!” she said brightly. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Maybe it’s not a question of any cases being the issues, but the cases she happened to choose.”
“Maybe…” I still remembered the sloshing-brains reaction I’d had to opening Mak’rep’s box. I wasn’t too sure how much I believed my own theory. “Worth a try.”
“Absolutely.” Mrs. French bounded up. “I’ll go ask. I mean…” She paused, looking uncertainly at the closed door. “The boys,” she said. “What shall I say to the boys?”
“It’s already handled,” I assured her.
“But—how?”
“By these,” I said, wiggling my fingers in the air. Mrs. French’s eyes widened.
“You are a very different person from Justice Abigail,” she allowed.
“Well, they’ll simply start growing older now, bit by bit. When they come to you with questions, you can tell them it’s because there’s a new Justice, and that they can stay as long as they like.”
She clenched her hands together in front of her, managing another shaky breath. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
I smiled, shrugged. “Then it’s a good thing you don’t have to say anything.”
Mrs. French left, and I stared at the desk, unseeing for a long moment. Gradually, with only the slightest wince, I pulled my hands back together. There, in the palm of my right hand, remained the tiny core of power I had most unexpectedly kept from my experience in Venice. The Nul Magis. Not enough to kill a bona fide sorcerer, not enough to destroy their magic. At least I didn’t think so.
But enough to break a spell that had lasted for nearly two hundred years?
That, it seemed, I could do.
And if I could do that…
Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, I reached for the nearest glass canister to me and opened my next case.
~ ~ ~
Thank you so much for reading THE RED KING! If you're ready to join Sara on a hunt to unravel an ancient prophecy, then THE LOST QUEEN is ready for you!
Not all who wander are lost.
As Justice of the Arcana Council and an experienced artifact hunter, Tarot-reading Sara Wilde prefers to track down the missing on her own. With her latest case, unfortunately, everyone’s dying to help her out.
Determined to locate the Lost Queen, a witch destined to fulfill a dark and twisted prophecy, Sara finds herself corpse-blocked at every turn. Not even the electric, provocative, and deeply powerful Magician of the Arcana Council–whose newest arcane pursuits test Sara’s emotional and sensual boundaries–can help her find her mark...
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