Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5 (7 page)

“You’re hardly the
average
mortal, Miss Wilde.” Now irritation sharpened his words, as I hoped it would. A cold Armaeus was a guarded one. But piss him off, and things got far more interesting. “That was clear before your family ties were uncovered—part of them, anyhow. Or has Willem told you who your mother was?”

His name drop of dear old Dad—current Hermit of the Arcana Council—was one too many stops along the crazy-train express. I hadn’t even fully processed the fact that my father wasn’t some drunken skirt chaser who’d stuck around Memphis only long enough to knock up my mom before skipping out on her again. No, he was sort of bodyguard of the universe, pledged since the Middle Ages to protect humanity from a magical being bent on our destruction. That still didn’t clear him from missing all my soccer games, but it got him closer.

Either way, the woman who raised me wasn’t even my mom. She was a paid caregiver in the Hermit’s employ. Which pretty much meant my family tree should be clear-cut and turned into pressboard, but that was way beside the point right now.

“You can leave Dad out of it, and I’m not the one answering questions here. Why were you fixated on me? Why me, specifically? Because I know I’m not the strongest Connected out there. Not by a long shot. There are kids I met today who could run magical rings around me.”

Armaeus was watching me intently, and I stared back at him until he shook his head.

“You’re not the strongest Connected on earth right now, no,” he said. “But from the first time I engaged you, your potential was clear.”

“My potential. Right.”

“There’s a reason for dark practitioners craving the blood and bones of innocents, Miss Wilde. The Council is not so different. Many of the higher-level Connecteds available to us had already set their minds and hearts on a path from which they would not be dissuaded. Or they were too young, unable to make their own choices. You”—he spread his hands—“had every choice available to you, but no path.”

“I
have
a path,” I snapped. “One I was walking along quite happily without you.”

“We do not have the luxury of ignoring our obligations anymore. The balance of magic had fallen hopelessly askew. With an Adept Connected also bent to the task of maintaining that balance—”

“A what Connected? Are you even listening to yourself?” I took a few steps forward to see him more clearly. As expected, he improved with proximity. Asshat.

“I’m not working with the Council as an all-you-can-freak buffet,” I said. “You hired me for a job.”

He shrugged, the movement aristocratically elegant. “And you’re worth more than the job for which we hired you.”

“Then why not simply tell me that? What’s with the cloak and dagger?” I pounded my chest with my index finger. “This is me, Armaeus. Is there
anything
about me that suggests to you I couldn’t be bought? My entire livelihood depends on me being willing to trade my time and skills for money. Why lie to me? Why make me think that—”

I broke off too late, but could see instantly that the damage had already been done. I’d strayed dangerously close to revealing the true reason for my sense of betrayal at Armaeus’s cold treatment of me. Not that I could have died, not that I’d been injured in the course of working for the Council. That was to be expected for the amount I was being paid.

But Armaeus had become more than my employer. Much more, I’d thought. And that reality had made me incredibly weak when I most needed to be strong.

His next words confirmed my misstep. “So, is that your issue, then, Miss Wilde?” he asked. He’d somehow moved toward me, or my own traitorous feet had drifted me closer to him, the spider in the center of a glittering web. “You wish to know how I feel about you?”

“I couldn’t give a crap how you feel about me anymore,” I said, but my words were not as convincing as I wanted them to be. “I simply don’t understand why you couldn’t keep it all business. We had an arrangement. A good arrangement. I would have happily taken more money to push my abilities.”

“You would have.” Now Armaeus did move deliberately. As he stepped closer to me, the very air charged with electricity, and my breath seemed to grow thicker in my throat. I couldn’t get enough oxygen, yet every one of my nerve endings was lit on fire with each foot he erased between us.

Then suddenly he was there in front of me, close enough to touch.

“Do you feel this current between us?” he murmured. He lifted his hand, and I flinched reflexively, causing his lips to curve into a cold, hard smile. He drifted his fingers along the side of my face.

Electricity sparked wherever he touched. My heart thundered, my hands went damp and clammy in their bandages, and my knees turned to milk. It was all I could do to stay upright, despite the anger building up inside me.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” I hissed, holding myself perfectly still. “None of this is necessary to accomplish your goals.”

“Do you know so little about me, then, that you truly believe that?” Armaeus dipped his head so his eyes were nearly even with mine, and I couldn’t break contact with their smoking depths. “My magic is born of the physical, Miss Wilde. The heat and electrical connections between two people is the most natural wellspring to fire it. And I needed it to be fired to understand you.”

He leaned closer, so close that when he spoke, the whorls of his breath caressed my skin, teasing and tempting. My mouth opened of its own volition, and though I told myself it was merely to prepare to scream, I knew better.

I wanted Armaeus Bertrand. I wanted him with every fiber of my being. I’d somehow been exactly calibrated to match his frequency, so that when he was this close, everything within me hummed.

“You feel it,” he murmured, and there was a roughness in his voice that skittered through me, flipping every switch to go. “That’s what I needed, in order to build you up and tear you down and lay you open for my understanding. None of my research would have been possible without it.”

“You could have simply asked,” I said miserably, the desire racing through my veins impossible to ignore, the heat soaking through me as real as life itself. “You didn’t have to trick me.”

“If I’d asked, I never could have had this,” he murmured.

Then he leaned the final few inches and brushed his lips against mine.

Chapter Six

There was no denying the hot, electrical surge that jolted through me, setting my nerve endings on fire. There was also no denying the anger that erupted on its heels.

“So you used me!” I shoved the Magician back with both hands, as much to create distance between us as to emphasize my point. “You used my attraction to you, whatever this thing is between us, as a means to get you information, to figure out how I could drag ever more complicated crap back to home base. First the artifacts, then people— For criminy’s sake, I went to Atlantis for you!”

“You went to Atlantis for yourself,” Armaeus corrected me. “I merely told you where to find the weapons you needed, and Death showed you the path.”

“Yeah, well, did she know you were jacking me up on purpose? Were you guys all sitting around comparing notes?” I put my hands to my temples. “Sweet Christmas, Eshe. That pompous windbag crawled around inside my head, Armaeus. She—”

“Eshe and I do not discuss the progress of my work with mortals.”

If he’d meant those words to reassure me, he was in for a shock. “Your
work with mortals.
Are you for real?” I stared at him, so unreasonably irate I could feel my split ends sizzle. “I…goddamnit, Armaeus. I thought—I mean, you said—”

I stuffed the words back into Pandora’s Box as quickly as I could, but once again the Magician’s entire body went tense, like a pointer closing in on a bird.

“I said what, Miss Wilde?”

I could feel the vocal projection shifting through me, but not even the magic of the Arcana Council could outweigh the survival instincts of a woman so totally scorned.

“You didn’t say anything at all,” I snapped, weighing my words with a healthy dose of self-disgust that was not remotely feigned. “I heard something in my head that I wanted to hear. But that’s over—we’ve gotten that out of the way. From now on, though, you need something, you ask. Don’t play games with me simply because it’s a shortcut. It’s not necessary.” I rubbed my hands over my eyes, wincing as my flayed palms chafed against their bandages, but glad for the pain to steady myself. “Whether you need me to go to Atlantis again or astral travel or find stuff—whatever it is”—I passed a hand over my brow—“for the right price, I’ll do it.”

Armaeus watched me for a long moment before nodding. “Very well,” he said, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Annika Soo has charged you with taking over the House of Swords.”

“I know, I know—”

“Decline that invitation.”

I pulled my hands away from my head. “Wait, what?”

“It’s a simple enough request, Miss Wilde. It’s not your place to become the head of the House of Swords. Decline it.”

“Oh, geez—what
is
it with you people?” I demanded. “First, Father Jerome is on my case, then you? Him at least I can understand—he doesn’t want me to get dead all that soon. But what do you care about the House of Swords?”

“It’s a task that others are better suited to do. Moreover, it’s beneath you. Your skills are such that you are made for greater things than an earthbound House.”

I scowled at him. Something wasn’t adding up here. “An earthbound House that you couldn’t learn anything about until it practically fell into your lap thanks to me,” I said. “But now you want me to step down?”

“You’ve not even begun to step up.”

“Semantics. I would’ve thought you of all people would be into this side job. What better way for you to find out about this House that’s eluded your grasp for lo, these past thousand years? And not only that one, but the others besides.”

“A worthy consideration, but shortsighted. Now that the House of Swords has been definitely revealed to me and the Council, there are other agents who can be assigned to learn more about its inner workings and personnel.” His glare bored into me. “And it is
not
a side job, as I suspect you well know. House leadership belongs in the hands of someone ruthless and unforgiving, and one willing to spend her every waking hour dedicated to action and self-protection.”

“Maybe you missed the geisha brigade at the Bellagio when Gamon came to attack Soo,” I said dryly. “Trust me, I’ve got self-protection covered.”

He shook his head. “You’re missing the key point of my objection. You’re meant for more than House command, Miss Wilde.”

“Yeah? So what color parachute have you picked out for me, then?” I waved off his confused expression. “Cut to the chase, Armaeus. You got that much work lined up that you’re going to put me on retainer?”

Inexplicably, Armaeus’s face lightened. “Retainer…” He pursed his lips.

Whoops, bad idea. “Never mind, it’s not an option. What is it you need me to do?”

His lips flattened again. “It’s not so much a matter of you doing something, it’s you
being
something. You’re an asset to the Council.”

“And I’m mortal, and the Council isn’t. So forgive me for wanting to ally myself with the home team a bit more.”

“The Council is not arrayed against the Connecteds.”

“You don’t have a stellar track record of protecting them either. I’ve seen what the dark practitioners are doing to those kids, Armaeus. Adults too who’re particularly gifted. If all that magic gets stamped out, you and your precious Council won’t have anything left to balance, remember? So why shouldn’t I get involved?”

“Perhaps because you could be operating at the position of puppet master, versus the doll dangling from a string.”

I rolled my eyes. “Once again, you’re not listening. I don’t
want
to be a puppet master, Armaeus, I want to be down on the stage with everyone else. These people are
my
people. The Connecteds have a place in society that is determined by their own sense of what’s right and wrong, even if that sense doesn’t agree with what you think they should be doing. They deserve better than to be used as tools, whether by the dark practitioners or frightened organizations like SANCTUS trying to stamp out magic, or even by the Council. If they want to form an army, great—they can go to war. If most of them prefer to hide in the shadows, to protect themselves or their spouses and children, also great. There will always be those who are willing to fight.”

“And since when are you one of those people?”

Since two wide-eyed Connected girls told me to pick up my sword and save the world
. “What I do now or in the future is none of your concern, Armaeus. You can sit back and watch like the rest of the Council, and—”

“No!” Armaeus’s outburst was so violent that the chairs on the stone veranda jumped, though he hadn’t pounded a wall or stamped his feet. Still, the energy in the air turned crystalline, heat glazed by the intensity of his emotion. “
That
is where you are wrong, Miss Wilde. You’ve spent so long protesting your right to do whatever you want that you neglect to see what is right before you. The game has changed.
I
have changed. And I will no longer be satisfied with sitting by and observing, as you so succinctly put it. I have done that quite enough.”

I’d snapped my mouth shut in surprise, but Armaeus didn’t need any encouragement to continue. “Allow me to share with you what I saw in Hell, when I wasn’t trying to keep you and your depraved twin soul from twisting events to your own despicable ends.”

I winced. That was totally unfair, but now didn’t seem the time to cry foul.

Armaeus barreled on. “The woman you saw in that plane was not a mirage or a memory, Miss Wilde. She was the woman I’d pledged my life to love and protect. And then the needs of the Council grew too great, and I did not return one fall as I had intended to. That year, the winter was particularly harsh. Though Mirabel had money and retainers, she could not outrun the sickness that ravaged the land. She came into contact with a stricken man at breakfast and was dead by dinner, as the saying goes. I was told weeks after her body was cold in the ground. Cold! Here I was, the Magician of the Arcana Council, able to move from state to state, plane to plane, and I could not protect the only woman I’d ever loved.”