Getting Wilde (4 page)

“A Tyet,” he mused. “It has been some time since I’ve seen one crafted so finely. Where did Nikki Dawes acquire it, do you know?”
 

I ignored the question. I also wasn’t going to beg for my amulet. If anything, Armaeus’s interest in it certainly confirmed its value to me. Now if I could just get the damn thing surgically implanted into my skin, I’d be fine. I sat back in my seat and scowled at him. “You want to keep working together, then you do
not
play mind tricks on me again, you got it? I have my limits, and you’ve definitely crossed them.”
 

A faint gleam of amusement flared in the Magician’s golden eyes. “I merely needed to get you to safety.”  
 

“Then you merely needed to
insist
. Or knock me out. But you don’t
cheat
.”
 

Armaeus’s brows lifted in two graceful arcs. “Your outrage is misplaced, Miss Wilde. I have no interest in harming you. Most would not have noticed the projection.” He nodded to me as if I should be proud of myself, like the horse that’s figured out the purpose of the bit a second after the bridle has been strapped on.
 

“Not helping.” I glared into his beautiful face, gratified to hold on to my fury, if only to distract myself from the way my fingertips kept twitching at the edges of my sleeves, as if taking
off my clothes would be the most natural thing in the world for me to do next. My gaze slid to the Tyet swinging from Armaeus’s fingers.
 

How much was my lack of control around him the result of me no longer wearing the amulet? And how much of it was just a simple lack of control?
 

Toss-up.
 

Armaeus smirked, demonstrating that he was still skulking around in my brain.
 

Asshat,
I thought very clearly.
 

Unlike whatever pyrotechnics he’d thrown at my prince of coins and his goons, however, what Armaeus had used on me was
not
a magic spell, though it’d felt like it. The greatest of the Connected had utilized heightened vocal projection throughout antiquity, a manner of speaking that required both intense training and extreme force of intention, so that the words delivered with the chosen vibration practically resonated within the listener’s bones. In the hands of a master, even stones and sea could be displaced.
 

But while I’d heard of abilities to compel at the level of M. Armaeus Bertrand, I’d never experienced it firsthand. From everything I had read, no one had in almost a thousand years.
 

Bully for him.
 

“You want to tell me what happened back at the church?” I asked,  to keep my focus off my glittering pendant. Then my mind caught up with my words.
Oh no. The church.
I looked around the limo, locating my jacket next to Armaeus. “What did you do with my phone? I need to call Father Jerome.”
 

Armaeus caught the Tyet in the palm of his hand, tucking it into his jacket pocket. Apparently, he was done teasing me with it for the moment. “Father Jerome is unharmed. I have people watching him and the church. Those who are searching for the seal know he doesn’t have it, however. They know you wouldn’t have fled with such a prize inside, not with no one but a
priest to protect it.” His brows lifted in mock censure. “I could have warned you to stay out of the church altogether, and you would have never placed him in danger.”
 

“Uh-huh. And to what do I owe your sudden burst of solicitude? Last we spoke, you weren’t exactly part of my fan club.”
 

“You didn’t deliver the statue in the manner we discussed.” Armaeus’s face clouded over, and he straightened, his mood souring. Good. For the first time since I’d regained consciousness, the constriction in my chest eased and my pulse edged away from jackrabbit. “That caused me a great deal of trouble.”
 

“Take it up with the union.” Still, I had to be sure. “Is anyone hanging around the church I should worry about? Father Jerome made it home okay?”
 

“I have a guard assigned to him for the rest of the week. The priest won’t be harmed.” He grimaced. “It’s not smart for you to work so obviously with him, however. Without protection, he could easily be taken when he travels to Chartres.”
 

I narrowed my eyes. “Chartres is none of your business.”
 

“
You
are my business, Miss Wilde, which makes your ill-advised attempts at playing crusader my business as well. If Father Jerome were to end up missing like one of the children you’re so eager to protect, you would be of no use to me at all.”
 

He had a point. I shrugged. “So?”
 

“So, I have dispatched a team to meet him and the young family you’ve identified in Chartre, to get them to a safe location.”
 

“Awfully nice of you. You must need me pretty bad to put yourself out like that.”  
 

He didn’t bother answering that one either, and I blew out a breath and stretched my legs, my scuffed boots jarringly out of place in the lush limo. “Okay, next topic. Why all the interest in this seal I grabbed tonight? From what I heard, it’s been floating around Europe for the better
part of the last three centuries in private but not particularly inspired collections, before the Louvre picked it up. And they haven’t exactly been treating it special. What changed?”
 

“You said it yourself back at that unfortunate bar, Miss Wilde. The black market of magical artifacts is heating up. What was formerly of little interest now has a greater cachet.”
 

“Which is fine, except that little Roman Frisbee you have in your pocket has no business being treasure of the year. The seals of Ceres were never coveted artifacts, and you know it. They couldn’t enter a Roman temple without tripping over one.”
 

He inclined his head to agree with that. “Perhaps the one you liberated was special?”
 

“Doubtful.” I shook my head, though the idea of hiding a valuable artifact amidst a pile of worthless trinkets was exactly the kind of subterfuge the Romans would have enjoyed. “Because here’s the thing. The Louvre assigned it to an
infant
to carry across the city. If that seal was actually worth something, the museum would have had stricter transport protocols in place. And for those keeping score, there were
two
parties after the thing. My client and the Swiss Guard, or whoever they were. Who somehow managed to bug the pouch without ever tracking it.” A bug which I’d missed in my careful inspection, so that was some Grade-A tech. “Why?”
 

Armaeus shot back a question of his own. “Why did your client say he wanted the seal? Or do you continue to insist on not asking even the most reasonable questions before you take on a job?”
 

Another sore point with us. “I ask the pertinent questions. Like what and for how much. I don’t worry myself with the why, at least not through any official channels.”
 

“And what did your unofficial channels say?”
 

His words were offhand, but his manner had sharpened ever so slightly. As the Magician, Armaeus didn’t usually have to interrogate someone. He could simply rifle through their
thoughts. With me, however, he could only go so far. I’d somehow thrown up barriers without realizing it. Which was a total bonus ninety-five percent of the time.
 

In this case, though, I didn’t care enough to keep the information from him. “My client’s family wanted it for leverage, is what I’d heard. Obviously, since they asked specifically for me, I figured there was some arcane connection, but I figured it was the typical goddess-veneration stuff. Lot of that going around these days.”
 

“And you don’t think that anymore?”
 

“Gee, I don’t know. I’ve been playing hot potato with it for the past five hours, and now we’re racing away toward your secret lair in the woods.” I rolled my eyes. It’s a particular skill of mine. “You say those ninjas weren’t the Swiss Guard, but I think you’re wrong. One of them definitely had the papal seal tatted on his neck, so they had something to do with the man upstairs.”
 

Armaeus appeared unimpressed with my ocular gymnastics. “Your assumption about their provenance was not an unreasonable one,” he said. “And not far off the mark. But I will leave that discussion for later this evening. The arrival of their squadron on scene is interesting, but not any more than your client’s interest in the seal.” His jaw twitched. “Who was it?”
 

I sensed the pressure of his touch against my mind, my own lips thinned. So he wasn’t fooling around on this question. Once again, however, I didn’t want to find out how good my blocks were, not for something so basic. “The Mercault family. Specifically the patriarch, Jean-Claude.”
 

Armaeus leaned back in his seat. Not to be outdone, I leaned forward. “And for the record, the council had better have restitution in mind, or you can kiss any further work from me good-bye. I could have gotten eighty thousand euros for that little hunk of gold, especially with the ninjas in the hunt.”
 

He nodded. “That amount will be delivered to Father Jerome at Saint-Germaine-Des-Prés upon his return from Chartres. If”—he raised a finger as I perked up
—“
you take on a new assignment immediately. And reconsider my offer to permanently relocate to Las Vegas.”
 

I hesitated, sensing a tidal wave of crazy coming my way. I was developing a sixth sense for it. There was no way I was going to dignify Armaeus’s Vegas offer with a response, but the first part… “A new assignment doing what? And for how much?”
 

“Back to the pertinent questions, I see. You should take better care. If I hadn’t been there tonight, you would have been trapped.”
 

I resisted rolling my eyes a second time, but it was a close thing. “In case you haven’t noticed, I was doing this for quite a few years before you showed up. I expect to be doing it for quite a few years after our little arrangement has ceased to provide any value.” Which was going to be sooner rather than later, if he didn’t back off. “You want to keep me on retainer, you’re going to have to put up a lot more cash than what you have been.”
 

He lifted a long, lazy brow. “That’s all it would take, Miss Wilde? Money?”
 

“It’d be a heck of a start.”
 

“And with the money, you think you might have reached the young boy in Toulouse more quickly, I suspect?” His words dripped mockery, and I stiffened.  
 

“You…knew about him? You knew about him and you didn’t do anything to stop it?”
 

“If you took even the slightest amount of time to understand the council’s work—”
 

“Don’t talk to me about your
work
, Armaeus. You’ve got more money than God. You apparently also know everything that’s going on in the world, because it’s not like the killers
advertised
the fact that they abducted an innocent little boy and gutted him for spare parts. How could you know that was happening and sit back and let it happen? What is
wrong
with you and your precious council?”
 

The car abruptly slowed, swerving around a bend into a path flooded with bright lights. I barely caught a glimpse of enormous stone lions on either side of the drive as we plunged into a richer shade of darkness. Armaeus dismissed my concern with a flick of his fingers.
 

“Your crusade, laudable though it may be, is not the crusade of the Arcanans.”
 

“Well, it should be! Kids are out there dying every day, which you apparently know with your all-seeing Eye of Sauron. All to give some shit-kicking dark priest a new spleen to stir into his cauldron. The whole underworld is going batshit crazy these days. Everyone is hyped up—everyone is stressed. And finally your holier-than-God council is choosing to take an interest, and all you care about is ridiculous gold seals and idols and trinkets? Why don’t you start worrying about the people who are
collecting
these trinkets, Armaeus? That’s where the real trouble lies.”
 

Beside me, Armaeus’s teeth glinted in the shadows.
 

“In that, I couldn’t agree with you more, Miss Wilde.”
 

We swept up the driveway into a deep thicket of trees. Within a minute or so, however, I could see lights ahead. A lot of lights. “You’re taking me to Disneyworld?”