Getting Wilde (2 page)

As we paused in front of the altar, where the light was highest, I reached into the left side of my jacket and pulled out the thick money pouch. I handed it to Jerome. “I’d wanted there to be more. The list grows longer.”
 

“It will always be long.” The priest’s words were a quiet absolution I’d not realized I needed. He reached for the pouch but didn’t take it from me immediately. Instead, his soft, papery hands enveloped mine, his eyes staring up at me. “You are
tired
, Sara. The need will always outstrip those who serve, and we cannot lose you too.”
 

“You won’t lose me.” I pressed the money into his palm and turned away. “It’s thirty thousand. That won’t go very far.”
It will hopefully be many times more than that, soon.
But I couldn’t promise that to Father Jerome. I was done with promises I couldn’t keep.
 

“It will go as far as it must.” It was always this way with him—he was careful, calm, and sure, even as he took risks that would have terrified a man half his age. Risks to protect the youngest and most defenseless members of the psychic community, whose very innocence made them coveted commodities on the arcane black market.
 

Standing in the half-light of the nave, he weighed the package in his hands. “We must make choices, though. The boy in Chartres shows promise—and with promise comes danger. He and his family currently live outside the village in relative safety, but small pilgrimages have begun to bring them food and gifts.”
 

I grimaced. “What did he do?”
 

“The village’s crops had failed two years running. A month ago, he blessed the soil in which they grew.” Jerome chuckled. “Which ordinarily would have bought us more time, except the villagers have already gathered their first harvest, and it is barely spring.”
 

A proven ability to hurry along the growing season? That wasn’t good. “Then he’s the priority. Chartres draws too much attention anyway with its ley line configuration. Someone will notice what’s going on there. The family should be moved before there’s trouble.” I squinted at Jerome. “Only child?” He nodded. Single children were the norm in families like this. “Who else?”
 

“Two other families remain on the watch list,” he said. “In Turin and San Sebastian. Those are established cities, with friends close at hand, and the children are young. So far, whispers of their abilities have been kept to close relatives. The château in Bencan
ç
on has received five more families in the last week, however, and yet another orphan. So whatever is not needed for the boy in Chartres will go there. And the search continues for others. ” He sighed. “The young healer in Linz has not been recovered. The twin girls from Kavala, it has been nearly a month without word. The same with the child from Berlin. Fifteen remain at large, and those are merely the ones we know. ”
 

“Pierre-Charles?” I couldn’t keep the hope out of my voice, but I knew the answer before the old priest shook his head.
 

“He…was found in Nimes. His heart and eyes removed.”
 

I glanced away, knowing the image would haunt me anyway, along with too many others. Pierre-Charles had been a blond, blue-eyed boy of fourteen, his features angelically perfect. But he had not been taken for his fair skin or sweet face.
 

He had been taken for what he saw.
 

Visions of holy fire and retribution, of a scourge of wings that would sweep the earth clean of its filth and degradation. Visions he’d been stupid enough to share with his fellow students at some backward Toulouse boarding school. Word had gotten out too fast for us to intervene. By the time we’d reached Toulouse, Pierre-Charles was gone.
 

Magic was a bloody business these days. True members of the Connected community had value as tools, yes. But also as donors for rituals. Their eyes, their organs, their limbs could all give power to a dark practitioner, or so it was said. And children with such abilities were considered to be especially precious.
 

It was always the children who paid.
 

“Bounty hunters?” I turned back to Father Jerome. “Or scared locals?”
 

“Hunters, we believe. The body was dumped outside the city, the surgery precise.” He shifted in the half-light. “The dark practitioners grow bold.”
 

I nodded. “Something’s bothering them.”
 

I’d met Father Jerome on my second assignment, more than five years ago. He was an acknowledged expert in Roman antiquities. More importantly, he’d actually once seen the trinket I’d been commissioned to find on that particular job.
 

We’d worked well together, then Jerome had hired me to liberate some second-rate reliquary from a cesspool of dark magic. Back then, I didn’t know how deep the underworld had become. Back then, I’d just been on the run, willing to hire out to everyone and anyone with money to spend and artifacts to find.
 

But I’d been lucky. Father Jerome had proven to be an able instructor.
 

I’d found other such instructors along the way too. And with instruction had come awareness, then knowledge, then understanding. And, sure, the occasional betrayal. Eventually, I’d learned about the black market bounty hunters who were being paid top dollar to deliver not
simply artifacts but real-live people as well, gifted psychics who could be used as arcane sacrifices—the younger and more untrained the better.
 

I tried to keep out of it, not get involved. I knew better than to make connections I couldn’t easily walk away from. After that crisp, sunny morning in Memphis ten years ago, when my whole world had gone up in a rush of fire and smoke and pain, I needed to stay as far off the grid as possible.
 

But I couldn’t help myself in the end. Not when children were going missing.
 

Some things never changed.
 

“I should have more for you soon.” A new thought struck me. Maybe Father Jerome would know what the big deal was about my current relic, why it’d suddenly been elevated to Rome’s Most Wanted list. The old priest was an expert on antiquities, and I had a vague recollection that Saint-Germaine-des-Prés had been erected on a Roman shrine of some kind. I reached into my jacket. “Actually,” I began—
 

“A moment, Miss Wilde.”
The sensually familiar voice riffled through my mind, setting me on edge. “
I would rather you not do that.”
 

“Yes?” Jerome frowned at me as I stiffened. “What is it, Sara?”
 

Dammit, Armaeus.
“Just…Give me a minute.”
 

I turned and strode down the long central corridor of the church, the world falling silent around me.
 

Then, with a flash of shockingly white light through the soaring stained glass windows, the sky rained down with fire.
 

“Sara, it’s only the fireworks! They’re harmless!”
 

Father Jerome’s words didn’t slow me down. The lightshow outside was definitely fireworks, yes.
 

But harmless? Not exactly.
 

With a shiver of premonition icing my skin, I exited the building and plunged back into the milling crowd of jazz fans before turning around to stare up at the sky along with everyone else. The night exploded once again, this time in an electric shower of blues and reds and greens. Starkly outlined against the night sky, the main tower of Saint-Germaine-Des-Prés was silhouetted by a burst of falling fire.
 

It looked
identical
to the Tower card I’d drawn at Le Stube not thirty minutes earlier.
 

Of course, I’d also drawn the Magician, the Devil, and Death in that reading. And now, here was the Magician standing not two feet from me
,
smelling
of fire and heavy spices, of books and mystery and wonders untold, a genie uncorked from his bottle.
 
 

Man, he always smelled good. It was one of his finest attributes.
 

“What are you doing in Paris?” I asked, my gaze still pinned on the sky.
 

“I could ask you the same thing, but…” M. Armaeus Bertrand’s richly intoned words lingered in the air, leaving no doubt that he’d been following me this whole time.
Asshat.
I should have known better than to hook up with a guy who’d been around longer than the Arc de Triomphe.   
 

Nevertheless, it was time for a refresher course on boundaries. “This isn’t your job, Armaeus.”
 

“I’ve taken an unexpected interest.”    
 
 

“Then I hope you’ve taken out an unexpected loan. Because if not, we’re done here.” I turned to him, praying that the newest talisman I’d purchased to blunt his effect on me would do its job.  
 

Not even close.
 

Half-French, half-Egyptian, M. Armaeus Bertrand was a sleekly muscled male of rare and exceptional beauty. A male
what
, exactly, I still wasn’t quite sure. He stood well over six feet, though I didn’t think of him as tall so much as…overwhelming. Rich, ebony hair hung in thick waves to his shoulders, and his face was starkly beautiful, all bronzed skin and elegant eyebrows and sculpted cheekbones that angled down to that lushly sensual mouth.
 

For tonight’s rendezvous, he’d paired an clearly expensive black suit with a royal blue silk shirt, open at the neck to reveal another swath of rich caramel skin. Everything about the man screamed money, power, and danger.  
 

Most especially danger.
 

Now his pale gold eyes were more than a little amused as he watched me struggle to focus again. I randomly found two brain cells that remained firing and linked them together, rekindling my ability for speech. “So what kind of interest do you have in my relic?”  
 

“An intensely…personal interest.” He spread his hands, his French blood ensuring that his merest shrug sparked carnal desires. Images suddenly scored through my mind—
Armaeus naked and predatory, all that magnificent strength and intensity focused solely on me, his fingers sparking fire on my skin, his gaze locked on mine, his mouth
—I blinked rapidly, realizing that all the oxygen had somehow been sucked out of my lungs.
 

Which was, admittedly, making it tough to breathe.
 

“
Quit
that,” I grated out, taking a sharp step back. Annoyed, I worked the hematite bracelet from my right wrist and let it fall to the cobblestones. Yet another charm that had failed the test.
 

Armaeus chuckled softly. “It is pointless to ward yourself against me, Miss Wilde. You will tire of this game long before I do.”
 

“So you keep saying.” I straightened, willing myself not to touch the one trinket that
had
worked against this man, an ornate knot on a long silver chain I’d purchased after consulting a carnie-level Connected on the south side of the Vegas Strip.
 

The Tyet had cost me half a year’s wages, but it had been worth it. Sadly, Nikki the Seer had warned me straight up that the amulet’s purpose was specifically to prevent actual sex. I didn’t want to think about all the crazy that left up for grabs, especially not with a guy old enough to have survived the Plague. Mu
 

“Cut to the chase, Armaeus,” I said instead. “I’ve got work to do. What is this ‘personal’ interest? And how much are you willing to pay?”
 

His golden eyes regarded me steadily. “The seal is intact?”
 

“Of course it’s intact.” I didn’t ask how he knew about the seal. I didn’t need to. To the rest of the world,
M. Armaeus Bertrand was a reclusive Vegas-based hotelier and casino owner. To me, and to other Connected who were, well, connected, he was the Magician. As in the
Original Alchemist, the Trickster of the Tarot, the Cobbler…and the leader of the Arcanan Council that was—quite naturally, I suppose—currently based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Keeping the world safe for all things magical.
 

I’d never heard of M. Armaeus Bertrand before he’d hired me for my first job with the council about a year ago, after an epic night in Rio de Janeiro surrounding a highly coveted fertility idol. A new client materializing out of thin air hadn’t fazed me so much at the time. I was used to anonymous players hitting the scene. And while my little knot of carnie psychics and magical artifact diggers was chatty, we couldn’t keep up with every flush nut job who trolled the circuit jonesing for some lost amulet or sacred tome.