Karen Chance - Tempt the Stars

“It happened shortly after you left us,” Jonas said. “We only managed to obtain the images a few moments ago.”

I tried to look like I was paying attention as he said something else I didn’t hear. His voice was fading in and out, like a distant loudspeaker in a high wind. And even when I could hear the words, they sometimes didn’t make sense.

Like the scenes in my head.

I shoved Rosier away and grabbed the too-limp body. Pritkin’s head dropped back, the short blond strands falling against my arm, soft, too soft without whatever product he usually used on them. Wrong. Like the body, so horribly still, or the face, lacking wit or anger or those weird flashes of humor—

Or anything.

“No.” I felt my skin ice over.

“It was a bomb, obviously,” Jonas said. “Likely a number of them. The wards had been tampered with. We’re still searching for the exact cause.”

Time rippled around us and Rosier stuttered, like a figure on an old TV screen flooded with static. But my power didn’t work right in the Shadowland; it never had. The time distortion fizzled out after only a few seconds, leaving Caleb and me staring at each other.

Jonas was looking at me, so I nodded. I’d seen the mansion that housed the Pythian Court once before. Mircea had taken me there to get a glimpse of my mother when she was still the heir. It had been a beautiful Georgian building, lit up for the party that had been taking place that night, the creamy white columns and elegant brick facade bathed in a warm golden glow.

It looked a little different now.

It was raining in London, which is where the images of the court were coming from, via some spell I didn’t care about, but which had turned the French doors to my balcony into a strangely chopped-up movie screen. It didn’t matter. The scene rippling across the beveled glass panes and luxe door pulls wasn’t one I wanted to see any better.

Jonas was watching the salvage efforts, looking strangely calm. I didn’t know if that was because he’d seen it all in his long decades with the Circle, and another crime scene just didn’t faze him. Or if he was trying to shield me.

Either way, I wished I had his detachment.

But the rain-soaked, fire-gutted building was hard to take. Although not nearly as much as the body bags, so many and so small, laid out on the sidewalk. They were getting wet, rain beading and then running off the plastic coverings, although there wasn’t any choice. There were too many of them to be taken away all at once, with more being drawn out of the wreckage all the time. It had been big, this court I’d never seen, these girls, sworn to my service, who I’d never even met. It had been . . . big . .

“Help him!” I told Caleb, who was already muttering something that surged over both of us, making my skin crawl from the power behind it.

But that’s all it did.

Caleb cursed, and jerked Pritkin away, shoving me back when I would have grabbed him again. He pushed him down to the floor and put a hand to Pritkin’s chest, snarling something that made the too-still body shudder, almost like he was coming around. Until the magic faded and Pritkin fell back against the lobby’s beige carpet again, unmoving.

“Turn it off,” Marco said gruffly. He wasn’t looking at the scene, although I doubted it affected him any more than it did Jonas. Marco had seen things through the years that would make a veteran war mage blanch; a bunch of anonymous bodies already zipped away in bags weren’t likely to turn his stomach.

No, as usual, he was looking out for me. Or trying to. And I appreciated it, but I didn’t want it.

I wanted to see this.

“Where did it start?” I asked hoarsely, trying to identify one part of the wreckage that looked worse than the others, something that might indicate an origin point. But the building was hardly a building anymore, with a blackened crater in the center that still steamed despite the gentle rain. There were pieces across the street, pieces stabbed through surrounding buildings, and so much broken glass in the road that the emergency vehicles had been forced to park well away, to avoid blowing out their tires.

The whole thing looked like the origin point.

No wonder nobody had gotten out.

A human word, savage and angry. Another incantation, strong enough to raise Pritkin’s limp body half a foot off the floor, to outline it in pale blue fire. And then another expletive, because that hadn’t worked, either.

“Caleb—” I breathed.

“A major curse,” Casanova muttered. “I saw it land—”

“Caleb!”

“He isn’t responding.” Caleb looked up, eyes dark with the same emotions flooding through me.

“Then try something else!”

“I’ve already put enough magic through him to lift a dozen curses!”

“Cassie?”

I looked up, and realized I’d missed Jonas’ answer. And based on his expression, whatever question he had asked after. “What?”

“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she needs to rest?” Rhea, I thought vaguely, seemed to have come out of her shell. Her eyes were snapping at Jonas as she handed me some coffee. I guess she’d figured out how to use the pods. Not too surprising; she looked completely unlike the frightened girl I’d come across in the kitchen.

“She will,” Jonas said calmly. “But first I must know.”

“Know . . . what?” I asked. My lips felt numb.

They were bringing out smaller body bags now, ridiculously small. They couldn’t have belonged to initiates. They looked like they’d barely fit a child of five.

“The nursery,” Rhea snarled, and okay. Timid girl was definitely MIA. She was gripping the mug so tightly I was afraid she was going to break it and spill scalding coffee all over herself. It didn’t look like she’d have cared. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a purer form of hate on any face.

Well, maybe one.

“Where do you think you’re taking him?”

“Away from you!” Rosier snarled, his face white with grief. If I’d ever wondered if he loved his son, I didn’t now. “Away from you, where he should have stayed!”

“Cassie!” Jonas’ voice had sharpened. “I really must know if you’ve seen anything, anything at all, that might help us.”

“About this?” I shook my head. “No—”

“Not about this. About Ares .”

“What?” I looked up, confused, and tried to remember what we’d been talking about. But it didn’t matter, since the answer was the same. “I haven’t had a vision about anything.”

“Even in the tarot?”

“No. That is, the Star card showed up, but . . ”

“But . . . ?”

“It lied.”

“How can this be the will of the council?” Caleb demanded. “Did you hear nothing Artemis said?”

But the council was already leaving, the guards holding us back. They did not explain themselves to mere mortals. They’d killed him, and they wouldn’t even tell us why.

“Answer me!” Caleb said, because no one had ever said he lacked courage.

And then one hesitated, and slowly turned. The very last one I’d have expected. The one Mother had called Adra.

The one who had killed him.

“They heard,” Adra said quietly. “More than you, war mage.”

“Meaning what?”

The demon’s eyes found mine. “They heard the final gambit in a great game.”

“Goddamnit, Jonas!” That hadn’t been Marco or the girl, but rather the tall witch with the short gray hair, whose name I’d forgotten.

At least, I had until Jonas looked up, frowning. “Do you know, Evelyn, I really do not need—”