Wicked And Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 4 (22 page)

“Okay, fine.” I wasn’t big on philosophical throw downs, and we were so close to leaving, I could taste it. I could humor Mr. Hard Line if it meant us getting out of here faster. “I’m against SANCTUS.”

“You would kill the leaders of SANCTUS.”

I grimaced, and Michael persisted. “They would kill you, correct?”

“Yeah, probably.” Something heavy shifted in me. I glanced to Armaeus, but the Magician remained quiet beside us. “What’s your point?”

“And these dark practitioners,” Michael continued. “You would kill them, yes? You oppose them in this war.”

“I oppose their actions,” I said. “There are some who…” I trailed off. The Las Vegas dark mages had tried to bury me in cement to keep me in Hell, at the direction of Gamon. They hadn’t tried to kill me at the Stratosphere, though. They got some points for that. “They go too far in their pursuit of power. Too far is a subjective judgment, though I would argue it remains a basic human judgment. The dark practitioners at the far end of crazy use the organs and limbs of other psychics in their spells, and subject those they don’t outright sacrifice to human trafficking. Those people, yeah, I’m against. If I happen to kill them in the course of saving the people they were oppressing, then I do.”

Michael nodded. “So the war is not merely SANCTUS against all psychics, but the Connected community against itself in this small segment. You lead those Connecteds who do
not
engage in the practice of exploiting their own. The ‘straight-up’ Connecteds, I believe you called them.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded too—big, somehow. Too much. I didn’t lead anything. I was simply part of the fight. But Michael was nodding, and his grasp on the situation was close enough, as uncomfortable as it made me. Then his brow furrowed. “You came to Hell to…help the dark practioners, though.”

A strange sliver of shame wormed through me. He was correct, and yet… “Yeah, well. I told you, it’s a series of gray decisions.” I blew out a breath. “I helped a syndicate owner, Annika Soo, recover an item that a far worse person stole from her family. And in exchange for information about this place from a small sect of dark practitioners in Las Vegas, I agreed to recover this.”

I pulled out the compass and tossed the box to Armaeus. He caught it easily, his brows lifting. “This is third century BC,” he murmured before he opened the case. “Where did you find it?”

“Near the River Styx, or something that seemed very Styx-like anyway. Is it authentic? It guided me safely through a series of traps, but those traps led me to a worse one.” I grimaced. “I’ve experienced way too many bad turns down here, I can tell you that.”

Something in my words seemed to affect Armaeus. His answering smile was stark. Weary. “It will bear analysis,” he said. He glanced to the Hierophant. “I’ll be but a few moments.”

Without another word to me, he strode off, a solitary and grim figure all of a sudden, hunched over a trinket.

Michael watched him go. “He grieves,” he murmured, his own voice aching with sadness. “You saw as much.”

The unexpected statement squeezed my heart, and my voice was harsher than I intended as I responded. “What exactly are your superpowers, just so we’re straight?”

That surprised him, and he regarded me with interest. “Superpowers?”

“First off, we’re going to get you cable and an Internet hookup as soon as you get back. And you should plan on routine visits with the Fool until you’ve gotten caught up on the last century.” Michael lifted his brows, and I pushed on. “You’re the Hierophant, that’s the card of orthodoxy and structure, traditional and established patterns. Stretched more broadly, it’s the card of religious or spiritual force but also of blessing. I get how your very nature shows us divinity on earth, but how does that translate to the mortal realm? Besides making people cry, what can you do?”

He thought about that, gazing at the leafy bower that stretched over us. In the warm dappled sunlight, his albino features were already becoming familiar to me, his eyes less pale, his superfair skin and white hair seeming almost elven instead of ghostly. Was this his doing or mine? Either way, it made him easier to bear.

Then he spoke again, and his voice carried that peculiar resonance it had before. So yeah, he had work to do on that whole “otherworldly” issue. “I can read a person’s path to this point, and know its future if he takes the next step,” he said. “Like a map of very limited scope, but a detailed history of how his journey had gotten him here. Does that make sense?”

“Not at all.”

“Take you, for example—”

“No, thanks,” I said, raising my hand. “We just met. Let’s take Armaeus.”

“Very well.” I tried not to let my excitement show as Michael considered the question. I should have known better than to think I was going to enjoy what I heard. This was Hell, after all. Land of eternal regret.

“Armaeus came into his powers unwillingly, leaving behind a woman of singular grace that he was to marry,” Michael said. “His decision to leave her scarred every decision thereafter.”

“What do you mean, scarred?”

“He became ruthless in his adherence to the strictures of the position. He did not love, he did not engage. His powerful adherence to the values of balance and study contributed to his sense of isolation, and he withdrew over the centuries into the man he is today. He has come to terms with his loss, but not fully.”

Unreasonable disappointment winged through me. “He still misses her.”

“No.” Michael’s smile was gentle. “He misses who he was when he was with her. He—”

“Miss Wilde.” I jumped, certain that Armaeus could see the guilt on my face for prying into his personal business. Michael’s face remained untroubled.

But Armaeus didn’t seem upset. “A moment, please.” He held up the compass and gestured for me to join him.

“You don’t lie, do you?” I asked Michael before I left him. “The Devil doesn’t because it amuses him not to, but you simply…don’t.”

Michael smiled. “I have not met the incarnation of the Devil who currently sits on the Council. I shall enjoy that. But I do not lie. I do not have to.”

My lips twisted. The Devil had said much the same thing. “The truth is often far worse, he contends. He has a point.”

“It is the same with reversals of the Tarot.” Michael gestured to the small pouch hanging at my neck. “There are already enough nuances in the truth, there is no need to twist it further.”

I blew out a breath. “Fair enough.” I’d used reversals when I’d first started reading, and I still did if I was doing a typical carnival read versus using the cards for my work. The reversals could offer hints as to timing, a lesser effect of the upright card, or some sort of block or outside agency influencing the results—all fascinating stuff, unless you were running for your life. In that case, upright interpretations were challenging enough.

I walked over to where Armaeus was standing, unsurprised to see that he’d paused on another bridge over another series of ponds. He stared into the water. “You’ve suffered in this place,” he said quietly.

That surprised me. “Suffered? That’s maybe overstating it. I’ve…” I hesitated as I went over the past few days—weeks. Months, even, when I thought I’d lived out a life that never existed. “Okay. Sure. I’ve suffered.”

“You’ve aged.”

I snorted. “Well, you have—” And then I caught myself. Because of course Armaeus hadn’t. He hadn’t been that man who’d held me night after night under the starlit sky. He hadn’t woken next to me in the morning nor walked with me in the sun. He’d done none of those things, never mind that each of those days was as bright and crystal hard in my memory as if they’d truly happened. As if our love had existed, had stretched into the weeks and months and possibly years, our skin weathering and our hair thinning, our eyes growing clearer with each passing season.

He was watching me too closely, and I shrugged. “Um, so…you’re not actually sick, right?”

“Sick?” His confusion was clear. “What do you mean?”

“Sick like ill, under the weather, like I don’t know, dying?” His expression was all the answer I needed. “So that wasn’t real.” I nodded, too relieved to censor my words. “Too bad the rest wasn’t either.”

As soon as I spoke, I winced. Classy, I wasn’t. But it’d been a hard few days.

Armaeus stiffened, and his gaze snapped hard to mine. “You speak of Mirabel. How do you know of her?”

I hadn’t been speaking of Mirabel, necessarily. I could have gone another lifetime without speaking about her, but okay. I could be the mature one of the two of us. I could handle this. “I—saw her, I guess you would say. There was a corridor of windows set into stone, and one showed a fire, a village.” I shrugged. “You were there, so I went after you. I didn’t know it was the past.”

Not remotely true, but it had enough elements of the truth that it sounded good, at least to my ears. Armaeus said something in French, but I didn’t press for a translation. The sorrow in his voice was enough.

“She—” He began, then he swallowed, and no further words would come. I put a hand on his arm. The zing of connection was there, but it seemed twisted and dirty now, corrupted.

“I don’t need to know, Armaeus. Your sacrifice doesn’t require an explanation. Especially not to me.” Words seemed to pile up inside me, too fast, too full, spilling out before I could rationally consider their impact. “It’s not my place to see your past. It’s not who I am. Or who you are, now, all these centuries later. Or who we are.”

Whatever that meant, it was the wrong thing to say. Armaeus’s face shuttered, and I could feel him withdraw. Well, bully for him. I wanted to withdraw as well. He hadn’t lived a lifetime of warmth and possibility only to learn it was a lie. He hadn’t heard an anguished scream of love and loss that had nothing to do with him. He hadn’t—

“What else have you seen in your travels here?” he asked coldly.

“You know, I think we can save the debriefing for after we get home,” I said. Even the word “home” sounded facile in my mind. Vegas was not my home, Armaeus was not my family. They were both way stations on this effed-up trip, not the destination themselves. “I got Soo’s amulet. You knew she’d send me for it.”

He gripped the compass box too hard, but I couldn’t read his emotions, and I didn’t much care to try. He nodded. “She could be an ally in the coming conflict.”

“Right.” I blew out a breath, glad to be focusing on something—anything—less painful. “She could also cheat and undercut us—the Council, I mean,” I amended when he flicked his gaze to me. “She’s running her own game, Armaeus. She wants money and power and control, not balance. Why do you support her?”

His regard turned stony. “I don’t support any one faction over another, Miss Wilde. I seek balance. You know that.”

“But balance against what? We are already working with Mercault. Soo is the next strongest kingpin, and she has SANCTUS in her back pocket. What’s out there that I’m not seeing?”

His response was tight-lipped disapproval, and I stared at him, unfamiliar with the anger surging up inside me, but drawing from its strength all the same. “You know, if you really want me to take a greater part in this, you’re going to have to clue me in, Armaeus. You know something that I need to know, then spill it. If not, go grieve on your own time. It’s not as if I don’t have enough of that on my own to manage.”

He glared at me. “We are leaving,” he growled, shoving the compass box at me. “Soon enough.”

“Right.” I took the box as a thousand ridiculous comebacks came to mind, but all of them soured in my stomach. “Well, don’t take too long with your good-byes. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Chapter Nineteen

“That went well.”

“I’ve had about enough of you.” I scowled into nothingness. My alternate self sat down noisily beside me. I was back on the hill above the grotto, with the wide sea below me, but I was lying with my back flat on the ground, my arm flung over my eyes. I doubted I’d be able to look at the ocean ever again without the agony of a life never lived, merely imagined.

“I don’t think you’ve had nearly enough. There’s still work to be done, and you’re not doing it.”

I groaned, in no mood to ask her what work. I was fetching Armaeus back; that was enough. I didn’t have to do more. Not now.

Not yet.

“You’re pathetic,” Sariah groaned, though I hadn’t said anything. “Either way, you’re not out of here yet. Despite all this walking down memory lane, there’s someone you’re forgetting.”

That caused me to pull my arm down from my face. I squinted up at her. “Don’t say Mom. I know she’s not here.”

Sariah made a face. “Then who’s that?”

I shifted my gaze to where she pointed.
It is an illusion
, I told myself. But I couldn’t help but stiffen as I took in the woman standing at the promontory, staring out over the ocean. She seemed…smaller than I remembered her. More frail.

“I can’t do this,” I whispered.

My alternate self snorted. “Oh, right. You’re going to make Armaeus face his past, but you can’t? That’s real mature. How is it you think you get out of here, anyway? You think you were gonna simply click your heels together and think of Nikki? Give me a break.” She flapped her hand at me. “And don’t bore me with the fact that that woman over there wasn’t really your mother. She was the closest thing you had to anyone giving a shit about you for the first seventeen years of your life. You owe her for that. You owe her big.”

I scowled at her. “I have to face her before I can leave?”

She shrugged. “You don’t have to, technically, but it’s the fastest ticket out. Not an easy ride, though. Dear old Mom didn’t plan on ending her life quite so soon.”

Another bolt of guilt riddled through me. “I didn’t know she was out there that day. I didn’t know it until I saw it on the news.”

“I’m not the one you need to tell. Go ahead, I’ll wait here. Faster you make your peace, faster you go home.”

“Great.” I got to my feet. Kreios hadn’t told me this, but he
had
gotten squirrelly at the end about how, specifically, I would be leaving Hell. Furthermore, it did make a certain sort of sense that facing my own past would be the quickest and cleanest way to leave. I shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets as I stomped through the high grass. Perhaps that was what was really behind the Magician’s desire to see Mirabel one last time. Letting go of his past.