The Wayward Star Read online

  “Stop.” The word was clipped and frosty, and I glanced over at Nigel again. To my surprise, he looked a little ill.

  “Lovers?” he prompted. “That’s not actually what it means, though, correct? It’s all about choices and trials and decisions?”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Usually. But sometimes it can point to a hookup too. Why? Who’d you bang?”

  “Contain yourself. That was a long time ago.”

  “Right.” Hello, Six of Cups. Before I could needle Nigel about his past indiscretions, he downed a good two-thirds of his scotch in one gulp, which, of course, required me to drain my own glass as quickly. I didn’t want him to feel left out.

  Augustine Odermatt took to the microphone, welcoming his guests officially and getting right down to the apparent business of the night. “I know you all share in my excitement for the future and the opportunities which have long been awaited and are now finally coming to fruition.”

  Nearly everyone around us was nodding and smiling, which made me feel like I had missed an email. Opportunities?

  “But tonight is for celebration as well. It’s with utter delight I can share that my wife Marguerite has joined us after all, back a day early from her travels. We’re both thoroughly delighted to welcome you.”

  Nigel may have hissed beside me, but it was buried in a spatter of polite applause. Augustine continued. “We look forward to greeting and speaking with each and every one of you as the evening progresses. Enjoy. My house is your house.”

  Once again, I was particularly glad to hear this last part, and I strained up on my toes to see the wife the main guy was trotting out. As fair as Odermatt, she’d been expensively well preserved, pretty in the expected champagne-and-pearls kind of way, but not particularly interesting.

  I glanced over at Nigel to get the story, only to realize he was no longer at my side. My eyes narrowed as I picked up his movement through the crowd, most of whom were now disbanding after Odermatt’s speech to return to drinking and name-dropping.

  Nigel slipped among them gracefully, and I narrowed my eyes. I kind of doubted that he needed to use the restroom this quickly, so when he turned the corner and glanced my way, I headed out as well. He’d received a tip somehow. From Simon back at the Arcana Council? I didn’t think he was wired, but something had certainly set him off.

  Moving as quickly as I could in my stifling dress, I entered the same hallway less than a minute later. Nigel was nowhere to be found, but there were several people milling through the wide corridor, admiring the artwork hung in heavy frames.

  Fair enough. I was a fan of art as well. I meandered down the lushly carpeted hallway, peeking into rooms as I went. Each chamber was as opulently boring as the last—lots of silk wall hangings, plush coverlets, satin-lined overstuffed chairs on carved wooden legs. But no Nigel. What had lit a fire under his sensible British loafers?

  I finally found him in a large brightly lit room that was clearly a showpiece of the mansion. Small groups were clustered around various cases or admiring tapestries, which shouted Old World Europe with their rich embroidery and florid scenes. Most of it seemed harmless enough, but where Nigel was standing off by himself, the tone of the room took a decidedly grim turn.

  I approached, scanning the cases he was scowling at, then the reason for his chagrin clicked.

  “Nazi gold,” I said. “A lot of it. Not advertised as such, but—Nazi gold all the same.”

  Nigel nodded, tapping the glass. “Take a moment, then observe the picture next to the case, to the left.”

  I did as he asked, only to tighten my jaw. It was a gorgeous oil painting full of explosions and fiery absolution, a turbulent ocean and clear blue sky marred with plumes of smoke and maritime destruction.

  “That’s Pearl Harbor. Right? Has to be.”

  Nigel lifted his head, surveying the painting with a dispassion I couldn’t quite manage. “The battle that brought the United States officially into World War II, yes,” he observed. “A battle that arguably was a success and a failure at the same time.”

  I blinked, but he was right. “Five of Swords,” I said. “The second card. How did you make the connection? Have you been here before?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Once, some time ago. Briefly. I didn’t think it was pertinent to mention.”

  I cocked a brow. “Maybe you could go ahead and mention it now?”

  He waved me off with chilly British disdain. “It was a long time ago.”

  “So you’ve already said. Like the Six of Cups long time ago? Because, lookie here, the Five of Swords.” I jabbed my finger at the painting of Pearl Harbor. “Which leaves the Lovers. I know you’ve got a theory on that too, or you wouldn’t be doing that thing with your face. What is it?”

  Nigel thinned his lips, and I knew I was on to something. While he set about unbunching his British sensibilities, I surveyed the room. We were searching for multiple uranium cubes, each the size of a fist. Nonradioactive, they’d be worth no more than your average paperweight except for their history as propaganda. All we had to do was get the cubes off property without anyone knowing we were the ones who’d lifted the things. From there, the Council could arrange transport.

  Simon had identified a couple of egress points from the mansion, either of which would work. But first we had to find the cubes. I squinted to the left of the case of gold, where an impressive wall hanging draped almost to the floor. Oddly, it hung a good foot away from the wall. I peered behind it.

  “There’s something back here,” I muttered, stepping behind the tapestry.

  I’d worked my way halfway along the wall when another voice cut through the tapestry.

  “Nigel Friedman. How dare you darken my door once more?”

  I froze, my eyes going wide. The voice on the other side of the wall hanging was breathy and sophisticated at once, delighted and outraged, combining the tones of a mature woman with the emotion of someone far younger—someone who remained very much in love.

  “Contessa,” Nigel said, his voice solicitous, even warm. “I confess, I didn’t believe you would be here—Count Odermatt let it be known you were in Egypt.”

  “And you would have preferred that?” she asked, too shrill.

  Nigel’s response was the soul of polite deference. “It is not a matter of my preference. I would never want to cause you any more discomfort than I already have.”

  It was everything I could do not to slap my hand over my mouth and giggle. Nigel had had an affair with Odermatt’s wife? No wonder he’d gotten jittery when the Lovers card had come up. But since it had come up, there was probably a reason for it, a better reason than embarrassing Nigel. Though, on balance, I was okay with it merely embarrassing Nigel. There was far too little of that in my world.

  “If I didn’t know better, I would think that you were here to rob us,” Marguerite continued. “Isn’t that a terrible thing to think about a person? But I know you too well.”

  The contessa’s voice had dropped, but I could still hear her clearly, which meant she had pulled closer to Nigel and the two of them were now trapping me behind the tapestry. The urge to laugh nearly overwhelmed me a second time, but I persevered.

  “If only I had something you still wanted to steal,” she sighed.

  “Your bedroom,” Nigel said tightly. The words were low and absolute, but my eyes nearly bounced straight out of my head as the contessa tittered excitedly.

  “Ten minutes, darling Nigel,” she cooed.

  Then she moved away.

  I’d nearly severed my tongue in two by this point, but I held my peace for another sixty seconds until Nigel indignantly cleared his throat.

  “We now have only nine minutes,” he informed the tapestry coolly. I dutifully stepped out from the shadows, struggling so hard not to laugh, I nearly cried.

  “You think the Nazi cubes are in her room?” I managed at length. “That’s what you’ve concluded from all this?”

  “If they’re not, I�
�m going to take your Tarot deck and set it on fire. Let’s go.”

  2

  We exited the showroom with the next knot of guests, but as they drifted right toward the front of the house where there was music and food, we shifted left.

  “Notice anything?” Nigel asked.

  “There’s no security anymore, blocking the rooms into this area of the house,” I said. “There was when we’d come through here a few minutes ago. You can’t actually trust that, though.”

  “I do not. I do, of course, trust the electronic jammers the Arcana Council provided us with, but I am mostly intrigued by the speed with which the good contessa was able to clear a path for us.”

  I sent him a wary glance. “You think it’s a trap.”

  “I think we would be wise to expect the game for the Council has changed.”

  I considered that as we moved through the hushed and opulent halls. Nigel was right. The Council for which we both worked had long held a primacy of place among the ultra-exclusive psychic syndicates of the world. Thing one, very few people knew about it, so it had been easy to operate at the fringe of awareness of the general public. Thing two, frankly, there hadn’t been a lot of competition. The Arcana Council had assembled the strongest psychic powers in history, and there were now nearly a dozen members. I was arguably one of its stronger additions, and I hadn’t even begun to tap my full potential, to hear everyone talk. So it was fair to say we’d come into the Magician Fantasy Draft with a team of top contenders.

  But things had shifted of late, with the emergence of the Shadow Court. We’d already linked the syndicate to illicit drug dealing on an international level—specifically drugs that affected psychic abilities, known as technoceuticals. The Arcana Council had won our first skirmish with the Shadow Court, but that was by no means the war—and here was Jarvis tonight, boldly recruiting reinforcements. I thought about “Madame LeGrieux,” whom he’d been summoned to chat up. Was she someone important, someone I should follow up on as a potential link to their organization?

  Probably. Ditto the technoceutical drug company, the disaster-aid guy, and the time-share I’d seen on those video screens. I couldn’t afford to ignore any information that pertained to Jarvis Fuggeren.

  Watch, listen and learn. Check, check, check. Don’t engage. Reluctant check.

  I turned my attention to our current problem.

  “Does wifey-poo know why we’re here?” I asked Nigel as we turned the corner and faced a large elegant staircase. Nigel immediately started trotting up.

  He answered without sparing me a glance. “Unlikely. The contessa is not psychic, and while Herr Odermatt is a mid-level psychic, Marguerite’s Connected abilities are constrained solely to the effort of attaching herself to the richest man in the room.”

  “Then how’d she hook up with you?”

  Unsurprisingly, Nigel didn’t respond to that either. We reach the second floor, this one hung with creamy champagne-colored wallpaper that flowed down to meet a similarly hued carpet. Small gilded tables lined the wall at regular intervals, and all the doors were shut. The entire space fairly dripped with money.

  “What is this, the service wing?”

  “The contessa’s private rooms. The entire floor.” Nigel ticked off descriptions as we strolled down the hallway. “Conservatory, library, sitting room, spa, guest lounge—”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Bedroom,” he said finally as we reached the double doors at the end of the corridor.

  Here, he didn’t hesitate. He reached out and opened the doors, which of course were unlocked. They swung open silently, and we stepped into a room that could have been any multimillionaire contessa’s bedroom…as long as she lived during the Middle Ages. And owned a unicorn.

  “Wow,” I managed as Nigel closed the doors behind us.

  “I confess, I thought the same thing when I first saw it.”

  The room was massive, with heavy plank flooring and a woven mat of some kind, over which had been strewn honest-to-God rushes. I didn’t know if they were organic or man-made, but the unmistakable scent of lavender and sage rustled with our every step across the room. The walls, unlike the soft and muted wallpaper of the hallway, were made of stone, or a covering that looked enough like stone not to matter, and lit sconces flared merrily from all sides. The fireplace that dominated the far wall was also lit, giving the room a cheerful glow. The fire crackled, but once again, I sensed this was more for effect than actual reality. There was no real wood being consumed in the grate.

  “You want to explain this?”

  Nigel snorted. “I do not. The contessa is a complicated woman.”

  “You got that right.” I focused on the room more closely. There were chests of drawers and armoires positioned all around the space, clearly used. One chest had a large mirror atop it and a full-length mirror beside it, along with a desk that was littered with feminine accoutrements: bottles of perfume, tubs of powder, jeweled hairbrushes, and about eight million hairpins.

  I glanced around critically. “Where’s her jewelry box?”

  Nigel waved his hand dismissively. “She wouldn’t store anything of value there. Beyond that, the cubes would be too big to fit in a conventional box. And heavy.”

  “Okay… but we’ve got about six minutes left up here before your little reunion, so we should probably figure out something.”

  He grimaced but didn’t say anything further, and I scanned the room a second time. Even with the benefit of my third eye, I wasn’t picking up much. Random chests and dressers, the Barbie hair station, the enormous bed with thick wooden pedestals for feet. The bed itself was unusually high, boasting a two-tiered flounced skirt all around, woven with thick brocade and velvet tassels. I thought about the contessa, who was by no means an Amazon. She would need to take a running leap to get into a bed like this.

  “You take the desk, I’ll take the armoires,” Nigel suggested, saving me from imagining that for too long.

  We’d been at it for only thirty seconds when the sound of the door handle turning caught us up short. Nigel and I had both been caught in enough compromising positions—fortunately, never with each other—that we acted instinctively. He vaulted across the room onto the bed while I dove beneath the skirts, praying the space wasn’t jammed with boxes.

  It wasn’t. I scrambled beneath the bed with the enhanced speed that was one of my most useful skills. I’d barely tucked my knees up tight when the contessa’s oddly girlish voice sounded across the room.

  “Oh, Nigel. What a delightful surprise!”

  Nigel, situated atop the bed, though hopefully not already ensconced beneath its covers, merely drawled in his crisp British voice, “Contessa.”

  I rolled my eyes hard enough to give me brain damage as Marguerite Odermatt crossed the room, rushes rustling. Beneath the heavy brocade bed skirts, the heavy planks and carved base of the massive bed looked like they’d been hewn from a single oak tree. Taking in the impressive craftsmanship, I was surprised that I could see as well as I could, given, you know, that I was under a bed. Then I glanced to the right and realized what I was seeing.

  A four-inch by four-inch metal cube, propping up the contessa’s princess-in-a-tower bed.

  My jaw would’ve dropped if there’d been any place for it to go, but with my face smashed against the floor, I didn’t have that luxury. Instead, resolutely ignoring the low conversation above me, I army-crawled over to the nearest bedpost. Sure enough, set neatly inside a thick metal casing beneath the original leg of the bed was one of the Nazi cubes we’d come to find, its glow growing ever so slightly brighter now that I was focusing on it. That energy was muted, probably because of the casing, but there definitely was some woo going on here. More to the point, this bad boy was holding up a bed that probably weighed north of a ton. Who in their right mind would use a Nazi artifact for a bed stand, let alone one that was possibly radioactive? People never failed to amaze me.

  I shot a glance across the sp
ace and down, and sure enough, all four bed posts were supported in the same fashion. The cubes hadn’t been set into the posts permanently, thank heavens. They’d apparently been serving their purpose as a prop of a very real sort for decades.

  Above me, the contessa trilled with laughter, and then her and Nigel’s conversation was muffled, I suspected by canoodling. There was nothing I wanted to be part of less than Nigel canoodling. But how was I going to get the cubes?

  My hand stretched out toward the nearest one, my energy following the natural path of my mind. To my surprise, the energy crackling around me seemed to increase. As if I was waving a metal rod in front of a hypercharged magnet. Apparently, the cubes and I operated on the same frequency.

  Interesting. Could I simply pop the cubes free?

  To test my theory, I stretched my hand toward a second cube, and there was no missing the shift of the artifact as well. The cube on the other side of the bed nearest me also moved, the change enough that above me, the contessa let out a delighted giggle.

  “What was that?” she asked girlishly. “Or was that just you?”

  I grimaced, glad to have something else to focus on besides the diorama above me. But the problem still remained. Now that these cubes were becoming polarized to my energy, it seemed almost likely that I could yank them all out from underneath the bed, but how could I do that without causing a very messy scene? It didn’t seem possible. Actually, nothing about this situation seemed destined to be anything but messy. How well did Nigel actually know the contessa, anyway…and, more importantly, how well did her current husband know Nigel?

  For the first time, it occurred to me that a formal invitation has been extended to me under the auspices of the Arcana Council, and I was in the bedroom of the host’s wife, with a man who, from the sounds of things, was doing a damn fine job making all her dreams come true. Was all this a setup of an entirely different kind? Who was playing whom, exactly?