Rise of the Magi (9 page)

“So what do I do? How do we get in?” I asked.

A little tremble caught
Brígh. “Just walk up to the dude. When his hand comes out of the painting, you grab it. We both have to be touching you when he does, though.”

“Tell me you’re joking. I have to … to touch it … that … thing?” The idea of touching the grey, elephant-skinned blacked-clawed thing injected me with a wicked case of the heebie-jeebies.

“I’m starting to feel better about being such a wuss if it bothers you this much,” Cas said, edging closer to me, “considering you don’t seem to be afraid of much. I’m just glad I went to the bathroom before I came here so I didn’t piss myself.”

I patted his cheek, managing a chuckle at his level of unease.

Brígh grabbed my arm while scanning the ground. “Freakin’ hell, where’d Arianne go?”

Shit.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out which direction she would have gone, what with her having the patience of a gnat. Heart drumming a death march, my focus landed on the little girl who’d waddled down the hill when we weren’t looking, just as the putrid hand extended from the painting toward her. The world erupted in a deafening cacophony of screams and shouts from my company. Running wouldn’t have gotten me there in time, so I burst into a flaming ball of energy and flew at her. All fear of the creature disappeared, replaced by a deadly instinct to protect Arianne.

“Lila, no!” Brígh screamed. “Wait!”

My hand wrapped around Arianne’s ankle as her fingers slid against black clawed ones. The horizon melted. By the liquid feeling in my flesh, I must have, too.

8

Ripples distorted my view as my body returned to flesh and bone. Flames crackled in a stone fireplace that took up one entire wall. Some sort of metal table claimed the center of the room, supported by what appeared to be bird’s legs. Rows and rows of old tomes nestled in tidy rows on ancient-looking wooden bookshelves. Dried herbs and flowers hung in bunches from the rafters, filling the space with the stench of incense and old crone.

Arianne tilted up at me from where she knelt by my feet, smiling as if quite proud of her wayward adventure. She must have made a detour from Brígh’s original vision. Hard to predict a baby’s mind, I supposed, especially one with the attention span of a hyped-up humming bird.

“Kid, you are in so much trouble.” I crouched and pulled her against me. “The others are probably outside having a fit.” Could they not come through after us? Or was it a one-time shot? Where did the horned guy get off to? Wherever he’d gone, I hoped he stayed there.

Along with the perfume of flowers and spices, dampness thickened the air. Were we underground? In a swamp somewhere? Memories of the creepy farm cellar where Rourke had electrocuted me came back and sent a shiver through me. I waited and listened as Arianne struggled to get out of my grasp, saying “Go, go, go,” but hearing nothing else.

I’d have forced my will on her, but doing that to a baby seemed so wrong.

Arianne’s sudden stillness turned my muscles to stone. Head tilted left, she paused. Listening, I figured, her pigtails shifting the other direction.

“What is it, little one?” I whispered against her ear. I sensed no minds anywhere other than the two of us.

“Coming.” She jabbed a finger toward the fire, but her body language didn’t relay any fear, only subtle excitement.

“Who’s coming? The Overseers?”

Her head bobbed, and she craned it around, staring at me, smiling even brighter. “Afraid of Lila.”

They’re afraid of me?
I could deal with that.

Willing myself into a relaxed state, I stood and tucked Arianne between my feet. “Don’t you dare run off on me again, you hear me? Maybe if you stay quiet, they’ll forget you’re here.”

She gave me a thumbs-up and a conspiratorial grin. Someone needed to teach that kid about caution and danger. I didn’t like that she was braver than me.

The fire flashed blue. Zapping sounds, like arcing electricity, careened into the room as three forms emerged from the flames, flickering, brightening until they solidified. I called my energy, but kept it swirling in my center in case I needed to explode a few heads in a hurry.

The first Overseer appeared as I’d envisioned, with long, white hair and enough wrinkles to make a sun-wizened apple jealous. Her floor-length dress started white at the top and ended black, showing every shade of gray in between as if she’d stood in tar and it had slowly seeped up the fabric.

The other two, however, appeared to have just stepped off the cover of one of those glossy fashion magazines—when there used to be any before Parthalan screwed the powers of the world into destroying one another for his amusement.

“What do you want?” the redhead asked, glancing down toward Arianne with the same regard I’d give a butterfly in a room full of vampire bats. Red arranged her royal blue pencil skirt around pale legs as she rested one hip on the table.

“Nice to meet you, too, red. In my version of civilization, this is how we greet someone new.” I extended my hand. “I’m Lila Gray, and you are?”

She sniffed, or maybe laughed, I didn’t know which. The action stuck her nose even higher if that was possible. “Miranda Loch.” A nod indicated the midnight-haired woman to her right. “Deirdre Renauld.” Another jut of her chin directed me to the shriveled prune. “Tameryn Olivier.”

Deirdre crossed her arms over a white dress shirt with a mandarin collar, dark eyes roving over me as if looking for something that should have been there but wasn’t. A shift of her body moved her weight from her left stiletto heel to her right, jeans swishing with the motion. “We will not disturb the timeline any further than your aide has already done, so leave.”

I scratched a tickle from my nose so I wouldn’t sneeze with the stench of incense. “Your warm welcome for your queen is overwhelming, ladies.”

“You are not our queen in authority.” Tameryn wove strands of her hair into a braid.

Nervous?

“The only power we recognize is that of our Goddess.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” My snarky smile faded, chased away by the sudden spurt of anger at their attitudes. “Do you really think the Goddess means for her children to destroy everything? I mean, how can you sit here in your little magical fishbowl when you could be helping? The elves didn’t have to die like that.” My power swelled in equal proportion to my desire to tear one of their arms off and beat them to death with it.

“If it comes to pass, then it is the will of the Goddess. It is not our place to question,” Tameryn said.

I tossed up a hand and let it smack down against my hip. “Then, why give you the gift of Seeing in the first place? For what purpose? If you can’t tell anyone what it is you See, then I can’t see that it has one.”

Deirdre’s brow jacked up, and Miranda pointed a worried glance at Tameryn, but none of them gave me an answer. Clearly, the old one was the leader of the bitch brigade, and I got the feeling I had the most chance of getting through to the redheaded Miranda than the other two.

“And what do you suppose is going to happen to the three of you when the rest of us are eaten by trees?” I met all of their gazes, noting the beginnings of fear radiating from the two younger ones. “How will you eat? Certainly even all-knowing Seers need food now and then, and this place doesn’t look big enough to hold a lot, which means, eventually, you’ll have to go out and become lunch along with the rest of us. And what will you have left to See other than pain and suffering, then nothing at all? Will you just wither away in here, alone, without the touch of your people? Without the fae, Iress will lose its power. I imagine you’ve thought of that, though, and have a plan so you won’t become mortal.”

More shifting of feet, and Miranda plopped down in a chair at the table as if her ass had grown too heavy for her legs to support.

Taking advantage of their uneasiness, I said, “Quite frankly, I don’t give a lily-white damn what the three of you do, but you will tell me a few things before I leave today, like how long in advance did you know what would happen to the elves? And what did you do to Marla, whoever she is? And even more importantly, who’s next on the Magi’s agenda?”

“No. We will tell you nothing,” Tameryn said.

I tried to take a step forward and stopped when Arianne’s weight on my foot reminded me of her presence. “Tell me, or—”

“Or what?” Deirdre asked, eyeing me the way a gazelle would do to a salivating lion. “Your
cumhacht
has no effect on the Overseers. As we said, you have no power over us, no authority to order us around like you do everyone else.” Her tone suggested she wasn’t sure of that. That she kept darting glances at her fearless leader didn’t help her attempt at confidence any.

I narrowed my eyes, tracing a path from one to the other, realizing she probably told the truth. Even if I couldn’t affect their will directly, for whatever reason, I could still control their stuff. As a test, I gathered up my energy, sent it through the floor, and exploded the chair next to Miranda. She jumped up, squealing, as I said, “I might not be able to affect your will, ladies, but I can certainly affect your environment. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that you all bleed as well as the rest of us. Tell me what I want to know, and I won’t have to test my hypothesis.”

A sweep of Tameryn’s arm had the other two scrambling toward the fire.

When I tried to move toward them, I ran face-first into a ward I hadn’t noticed, completely invisible to the eyes and senses. It hadn’t affected my energy, only my body. “Come back here!”

As the younger two stepped into the flames, the old one smiled at me. “Tell Brígh to report to us tomorrow to face the consequences of her betrayal.”

My hair flew up in a current of my power, whipping above me. “You do anything to her, lay a finger on a single hair, harm her in any way, and I will not hesitate to kill all of you. Slowly.”

A blast of light knocked me on my ass. I blinked, half blinded by the brightness above me.

“Christ!” Cas hovered over me, plum hair dangling in my face. “We couldn’t get in. That grey thing just disappeared after you went through.”

“It’s okay.” I rubbed the back of my skull where it had smacked against the ground, and he helped me to my feet. “Well, that went well.”

“You were supposed to wait for me!” Brígh jammed her foot down.

“Yeah, tell it to that one.” I directed her to the pony-tailed avenger, once again sitting on my feet, who clapped her hands and grinned. “Again,” she said. “Again, again!”

“Find out what you need to know?” Neve asked while her gaze remained vigilant.

I shook my head and brushed dirt off of my butt. “Nope. The only thing I found out is that they’re afraid of me, and they haven’t given much thought to the outcome of their tidy little delusions.”

“Ah.” Cas laughed with little humor. “Like, if they keep dicking us around, they’ll be just as dead as we are?”

“Pretty much.”

“So, what do we do now?” Brígh glared lasers at me. “How do we know who’s in danger next, or if anyone is for that matter? I’ve tried to See, but it’s just not coming.”

“You can never See when you get this worked up.” Cas gave a tentative tug on one of her ringlets as if needing to touch but afraid she’d unravel in his hands. “It’ll come eventually. It always does.”

Brígh scrubbed her eyes, the tremor coursing up from her toes warning of an oncoming verbal explosion. “We don’t have time for eventually. We need to know now!”

Arianne yanked on my pant leg.

“Not now, little one.” A sigh escaped me in a slow hiss. “I guess we just warn everyone who comes to the council, then try again with the fae cities.”

Another yank from the ball of cute.

“I know, I know,” I said. “Just a second, already.”

Arianne spread her arms wide and closed her eyes. A blurry image appeared on the grass in front of us. It took me a minute to process that, A: it had come from the cheeky bundle of terror, and B: that we were looking at an underwater scene of the kelp performing a slow dance with the current.

“Oh, yes! This kid rocks!” Brígh squealed and jumped in a circle. “Arianne picked it out of the old bat’s head while you distracted her, and she probably doesn’t even know.”

I nodded with enthusiasm, keeping my eyes fixed on the scene as vines raced along the bottom, coming upon a group of seals. Not just any seals, either. Giant ones. I’d have known Willa anywhere in either form, with her sable coat and giant brown eyes. The one spiralling around her in playful circles had to be Quinn.

When my brain made the connection, my arms flew up to wrap my head.
Oh!
Why did the Magi want the selkies dead?
They’re in the sea for eff sakes!
Were those bitches just trying to piss me off?

The image disappeared.

“How long? We have to warn them now.” To Cas, I said, “Go tell Gallagher.”

“Done.” He loped off toward the castle.

Arianne hugged herself. “No more see.” A shiver travelled her body as if whatever scene she’d been broadcasting continued within her mind.

“It’s okay. We don’t need to see any more.” I scooped her up, smoothing her cotton shirt over her back. “I’m sure Gallagher can warn them to get out of the water in time to save them. You are one amazing kid, you know that?”

She sniffled and fisted tears at her eyes. “I help?”

I laughed. “You really did.” It wasn’t much, but a tiny bit of hope was better than a kick in the yoga pants. I didn’t imagine the Overseers would be allowing me into their realm any time soon, so the rest we’d have to take care of ourselves. Hopefully we’d bought ourselves a little time to send out word, though where everyone could go to be safe eluded me. I wouldn’t have dreamed the oceans would be at risk, too. Mountains? Caves? Deserts? Where on the earth could we send the masses where the Magi’s fingers couldn’t reach?

Turning to the pink sisters, I said, “Be ready and meet us at Seven Gates at ten minutes to show time.”

“Even me?” Brígh’s bottom lip threatened to puff out in a pout.

As I considered, Tameryn’s demand rang in my ears. “They wanted you to go there to accept your punishment tomorrow, but I basically told them I’d kill them all if they touched you. I’m not leaving you here so close to them without me here, and you’re not to be left alone for a second.”