Shadow's Fall (31 page)

She was still brooding when Jacob returned. “Oh dear,” he said. “You have that look.”

Cora blinked. “Look, my Lord?”

“The sort of look Vràna gets when she’s on the scent of a particularly fat and tasty rabbit … or perhaps the look of a Queen on the verge of knowing too much.”

She chuckled. “Perish the thought.”

He waited, and finally she said, “I was thinking about Hart, my Lord … his obsession with the Southern United States is unlike him.”

Jacob looked surprised for a moment but nodded. “And you suspect there’s a larger game afoot.”

“I cannot imagine what it could be. What would he have to gain by destroying them? There is no territory to annex, no riches to steal. He is possessed of a foolish pride, true, but the risks he is taking are extreme.”

“I agree,” Jacob said, knocking for the driver to resume the trip home. “My experience with Hart in the political arena is that he’d rather work behind the scenes and make life miserable for them than try to go after Miranda’s career publicly. The leak to the media last year—that’s Hart. Having her shot was pushing it. Making a play in Council seemed like an impulsive last-ditch effort. David’s not going to go to war over something like this, so Hart’s going to have to let the matter drop … but like you, I keep thinking there’s something else he’s trying to accomplish, or that his actions were a smokescreen for something else.”

Cora sighed. “Jonathan told me he thinks something is coming … that Miranda becoming Queen was like a stone
falling into a still pond, and that things are going to change for all of us. I have a feeling he is right.”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure we’re safe for now,” Jacob assured her, brushing hair from her eyes. “Things have been peaceful here for centuries.”

“I just wish I knew …” Cora trailed off as Vràna’s head jerked upward, the Hound’s teeth suddenly bared with a low growl.

Jacob started visibly. “Good Lord, Vràna, you have more dreams than any two-legged person I’ve ever—what is it?”

Cora’s stomach had lurched, and she felt cold all over, then hot, then cold again. Her heart clawed up into her throat. Something … something was not right …

“Jan, stop the car,” Jacob said. “Cora—”

An image flashed in Cora’s mind: a small metal disk, the smell of exhaust, a beep … fire …

“Out,” she gasped. “Get out of the car!”

Without asking a single question, Jacob seized Cora’s arm with one hand and Vràna’s collar with the other.

Cora felt the world spinning out of her view, and before she could even take a breath to cry out, her face slammed into a snowbank.

The cold jolted her out of the reflexive nausea that accompanied a Mist; she’d done it only a few times and usually with far more preparation. Jacob had tandem-Misted with her before, but he’d never brought the dog along.

As she lifted her head, she heard a roar and felt the air vibrate with blistering heat. She was grabbed again, hauled sideways underneath her Prime, who held her down until the blast was over. Cora screamed into his shoulder, feeling something impact with his back. She heard Vràna barking in panic from near her head.

Moments later the shaking stopped, and the smell of burning flesh assaulted her nose. Cora whimpered, clinging to Jacob, terrified for a second that he was dead, but he made a pained noise and shifted off her, allowing a large
furry shadow to insert itself between them and start licking Cora fiercely on the face.

“Enough, Vràna,” she croaked. “I’m fine.”

She could count on one hand the times in the last three years she had heard her Prime curse, and this was one of them.

Cora forced herself out of the fetal position and tried to understand what she was seeing, but her mind had frozen—until she saw the blood.

Nausea gripped her. She might have passed out, but Jacob’s voice intruded: “Cora, I need your help.”

Cora admonished herself sternly in a mental voice that she noticed sounded much like Miranda:
Get ahold of yourself, Queen.

“Yes,” she said. “Hold still.”

There was a large piece of black metal sticking out of Jacob’s back just out of his reach; it wasn’t very deep in, and nowhere near his heart. Relieved, she gripped it with both hands and pulled.

“Mother of Christ.” Jacob shook himself and asked, “Are you hurt? I didn’t feel anything hit you.”

“No,” she said. “What … what did I see? Metal and fire? I do not—”

“A bomb,” Jacob replied, pulling his phone out of his coat pocket.

Cora turned her head toward the source of the heat and stench, the still-smoldering hulk of their car. She could hear sirens in the distance as she stared at the scene, unbelieving. Jacob put his arm around her and pulled her close while he called the Haven, the police, and a variety of other people. She wasn’t really listening.

Cora jumped a mile as her pocket began to vibrate; the last thing she’d been expecting was a phone call. Hands numb from shock and cold, she dug it out and answered it with chattering teeth while trying to focus enough to raise her body temperature from the inside.

“What the hell just happened?”
came a familiar voice.
“Are you all right?”

“I think someone just tried to kill us,” she said. “Did you have a vision?”

Jonathan let out his breath audibly.
“Not exactly—I woke up from a dead sleep with my hand already on the phone to call you. What happened?”

Jacob gestured to her, and Cora hit the button to switch the phone to speaker mode. “The car blew up,” he said a bit tersely. “Are you sure you weren’t aware of it in advance?”

“Good God, Jacob, if I’d seen something like that, I would have warned you,”
Jonathan replied.
“Deven and I both sat bolt upright at the same time—we felt something happening.”

“I don’t suppose you felt who did it,” Jacob said. He was, as usual, keeping his head, though Cora had the urge to dig a hole in the snow and hide, or possibly throw up.

“What can you tell us?”
Another voice joined in: Deven.

Jacob eyed the scene. “It looks like it originated near the front seat,” he said, frowning. “The back is still mostly intact. That’s a bit odd.”

“Why?” Cora asked.

Jacob got to his feet. “We were in the back. So is the gas tank. I’m going to have a closer look—the fire’s mostly out, and the police will be here in a few minutes.” Cora grabbed his arm to stop him, but he gave her a smile. “I’ll be fine. I just want to see what I can before the authorities arrive and disturb the scene.”

“I’m coming with you, then.” She struggled up in the snow until he took her arm and helped her get her balance. Vràna kept close as they picked their way past bits of the car’s chassis and motor-type things, the stinking remains of a tire … an arm.

“Jan,” Cora said softly. “Poor Jan.”

Jacob’s phone rang shrilly. This time they both jumped. “Janousek.
Prosím
,” he said, then smiled wryly. “Ah, David. Lovely to hear from you.” He glanced over at Cora, who was still holding her phone up where the West could hear. “No, we’re all right … a bomb, as far as I can tell.
We’ve got Elite en route as well as inspectors … yes, if you wish. Let me call you back.”

The approaching fire trucks and police cars were drowning out conversation, so Cora said, “We have to go now, Jonathan—we will call you later with more information.”

“As long as you’re all right,”
the Consort said.

“We are. Don’t worry.”

“Right. Of course not. People try to blow up my friends every day.”
Jonathan sounded uncharacteristically morose as he hung up, and she felt a pang of worry for him as well.

Cora joined Jacob nearer the wreck, where he was staring into the driver’s seat. She was reluctant to see what might remain of Jan—and despite the obviousness of the answer, she asked, “Is he dead?”

Jacob sighed. “Spectacularly. We’ll have to notify his family.” He was taking pictures with his phone. “For David,” he said to her.

“Did he have a ‘feeling’ about the bomb, too?” she asked.

“He said Miranda woke up in a fit and demanded he call immediately.”

Cora bit her lip and, suddenly aware of how tired she was, sank down on the low stone wall that ran alongside the road. “Jonathan said he and Deven both knew something was wrong at the same time.”

Jacob joined her, taking her hand. “Four Signets having the same premonition … Is it strange that I find that more worrisome than the fact that we were just blown up?”

She met his eyes. “So do I.”

Together, with Vràna standing guard, they waited in the frigid night for the cavalry to arrive.

Stella wished fervently that she had been born with healing talent instead of Sight.

Sunlight glared through the front windows of Revelry, revealing every speck of dust on the inventory and
elevating her headache from vicious-and-pounding to purely murderous.

She leaned on her elbows on the counter and rubbed her temples. Of all the stupid times to have a day shift.

“Hey, do you have any more red pillar candles?”

Stella cracked one eye at the woman with orangey-red dyed hair and a saucer-sized pentagram necklace. “Do you see any on the shelf?”

The woman made a noise of irritation and turned away, muttering.

Stella heaved a sigh and reached down into the drawer under the counter, rummaging for the bottle of Advil she was pretty sure Foxglove had stashed there. She groped past an assortment of office supplies and what felt like a bundle of dried sage until her fingers closed around the bottle; meanwhile, her other hand grabbed her coffee cup.

“Aw, hell,” she said, realizing the cup was empty, just as the bell jangled to announce another customer. The sound sent a snarl of pain through her head.

“Here.”

A take-out coffee cup appeared on the counter, and Stella seized it with a groan and popped four pills with a swallow of the blessedly hot liquid. “Perfect timing.”

Lark looked about how Stella felt. She, too, was clinging to a giant cup as if her life depended on it. “Figured you had a hangover as nasty as mine. How drunk
were
we?”

Stella stared at her friend, taking in the dark circles under her eyes and her marginally groomed appearance. “You don’t remember anything?”

“I remember we went to that fetish club. Where did we go after that?”

Stella found herself staring at Lark’s neck, where there was a faint gummy-looking residue. “Did you hurt yourself?”

Lark reached up and touched the spot. “I dunno. I found a Band-Aid there, but there’s nothing under it but a bug bite. What do you remember?”

“About the same.” Stella drank her coffee, looking out
over the store at the handful of customers, most of whom were regulars. “Look, Lark … I’m sorry I got us into all that crap. It was stupid.”

“Wait … you mean you aren’t going to keep looking? I thought you were dying to know … that thing you wanted to know.”

Stella shook her head. “That was before you got hurt.”

“I’m not hurt, Stell, I’m hung-the-fuck-over. That happens at least once a week. Come on, there’s got to be more to this—don’t you want to find out?”

“I’m done, Lark. This whole thing is just insane.”

Lark stared at her. “You’re serious.”

“Yeah. I’m serious. I’m done.”

The look on Lark’s face said she clearly didn’t believe Stella, but she said, “Well … okay, if that’s what you want. But if you change your mind after your hangover goes away, I’m up for another try.”

Stella managed a smile. “Thanks for sticking with me through this. You’re a good friend.”

“And you, sweetie, are a certifiable nutbar. But I love you anyway.” Lark leaned over and bestowed a kiss on Stella’s forehead. “I’ve got to split—I’ve got class. I’ll call you later, okay? We can go for falafel.”

“Sure, sounds good.”

Despite Lark’s condition, as she left Stella heard her singing softly:

I have no fear of heights,

No fear of the deep blue sea …

Stella didn’t breathe freely again until Lark had gone. She needed time to think, without worrying what her best friend might hare off and do impulsively on her behalf. Stella glanced, for the tenth time that day, at the paper-wrapped volume sitting on the shelf below, and as luck would have it, when she looked back up, the bell was jangling again to announce the arrival of a certain wizard-looking fellow.

“Young Mistress Maguire,” Gandalf said with a bow as he approached the counter. “I hear that you have another package for me—from Genoa, I believe.”

Stella nodded and retrieved the book, setting it carefully on the counter between them but leaving her hands on it for a second.

Gandalf peered at her curiously. “Are you well, Miss Stella? You look rather, as my uncle Larry would have said, ‘rode hard and hung up wet.’”

Stella grinned. “I’m hungover, Master Gandalf. Majorly. But I’ll be okay. Actually … there’s something I want to ask you.”

He frowned. “You’re not still poking about in places angels like you should know better than to tread, are you?”

She held his eyes for a minute, then wordlessly reached up to her shirt collar and pulled it aside, showing him the very, very faint pink marks on her neck. At the rate they were healing, they’d be gone by nightfall, but she knew he could see them, because his eyes widened and his face paled a shade.

“Gandalf,” she said softly, “I need you to tell me what you know about the Signets.”

Faith did not like the way her boss was looking at her.

In fact, if they hadn’t been in an elevator with nowhere to run, she probably would have backed away slowly.

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?” he asked, with that calmness in his voice that she had learned, after years of serving him, placed her on dangerous ground.

“I was going to,” she insisted. “I was. But the incident with Maguire’s girl distracted me, and there were the bodies to deal with afterward, and then this evening we were waiting for news from Janousek—”

“You should have come to me the minute you left the hotel,” David cut her off. “What if we had already gone to pick up the Stone from the lab and one of us put it on? You could have put us both in danger, Faith.”