The Secret Coin (Accessory to Magic Book 3) Page 14

  That’s a promise.

  The hallway lights flickered, and a small tremor ran through the floor and the back wall.

  Jessica braced herself and started to stand.

  ‘No, no. Sorry. Keep sitting. Both you walking, talking magical puppets need some rest.’

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  ‘That was me. I just got…excited. We’re good. Take your time, witch. I’m gonna go…probe the bear. Poke the cage.’

  “The hell are you talking about?”

  ‘Do some research. Come on, it wasn’t that hard to figure out.’

  The glass pendant resting against her chest strobed with blue light until it faded. Not completely. It was still there, but very faint. The same faint, barely visible glow as when Jessica reached the edge of the bank’s range out on the street.

  Wait, did you just go somewhere? Jessica scanned the hallway and the doorway into the narrow kitchen. Bank?

  No reply.

  Okay. That could’ve meant one of two things.

  Either the bank had shipped its consciousness off to who knew where to get cracking on how to aim the deadly effects of undoing the Shattering…

  Or they had way less time than they’d thought before everything completely went to shit.

  Four days later, Jessica was really starting to think it was the latter, that everything really had hit the fan and they’d lost their window of time. Because while she was stuck here giving shelter to a centuries-old fae that felt more like imprisonment—for both of them—the bank hadn’t returned. The faint blue light still remained in the pendant around her neck, but that was literally the only sign that the sentient being behind and within the walls of Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking hadn’t kicked the bucket. If that were even possible.

  For the last four days of the binding, the voice in her head was nonexistent. No blue flashes within the walls. No extra help within the witching vault, though fortunately, only two more clients showed up in those four days—one for a deposit of fifty bundles of sticks, the other for a withdrawal of what looked on the outside like a package of diapers.

  If Jessica had learned anything in her month as the Gateway’s newest Guardian, it was that nothing was what it looked like on the outside.

  Not the bank. Not Leandras. Not herself.

  Leandras had been way too quiet. After she’d blasted him away with her messed-up magic, he spent most of his time shut up in the office. No more coffee and bacon or whatever she had in the kitchen wafting up to her when she came down in the morning. No more sharp, quippy comments about her character the guy seemed to lump into the playful-banter category. No more stepping into her personal bubble and trying to overwhelm her with whatever the hell he’d been trying to do with that just-before-it-rained smell.

  Just silence.

  Jessica might as well have been alone in the bank. Completely alone. And the weekend spent with a fae brooding over his injuries—whether physical or just his pride—without being able to leave because she didn’t trust him was almost more than she could handle.

  While Leandras occasionally puttered around the lobby over the weekend, when he actually decided to come out of his office cell to do…whatever, Jessica pored through Tabitha’s stash of spellbooks. At least her handprint key to open the secret closet in her bedroom still worked, but without the bank’s obnoxious commentary, the whole thing had lost its charm. Even Confucius had made himself scarce, which wouldn’t have bothered her in the least if it hadn’t gone hand in hand with the bank’s sudden prolonged absence.

  The following Monday felt like a complete waste of time. Jessica sat behind the desk, literally twiddling her thumbs because she’d done everything else she could think of to do. Tabitha’s spellbooks had been worthless when it came to information on undoing the Shattering. Jessica hadn’t performed that spell from a book in the first place. Most likely, something like that didn’t even exist in written form.

  She’d cleaned up the scattered mess of spilled items from the chaotic week before and even managed a partially effective repair spell on the shattered shelves. Without the bank’s sentient brainpower behind it, or at least helping it, the shelves still sagged enough in their frames that trying to put all the curious magical artifacts and trinkets back in place only created a heavy mound of them in the center. So Jessica had settled for shoving those extra magical oddities in whatever spaces she could find along the other shelves. Honestly, the lobby had looked better when it was a complete mess and things were still broken.

  At least then, it hadn’t looked like it was trying to be something it wasn’t. Like Jessica wasn’t trying to be something she wasn’t.

  No one stepped through that front door all day, so she tried to busy herself with anything else that didn’t make her think about the bank or Leandras or the vision he’d shown her, or of what the hell would happen in the next ten, five, two hours before the terms of their binding were complete and her agreement with the fae was at an end.

  When four o’clock rolled around, a sharp pain burst in the center of her palm. With a hiss, Jessica stared at the flicker of light racing across the very same place where she’d cut herself open with Tabitha’s ritual knife. The ghost of her blood mingled with Leandras’ appeared for a brief instant on her flesh, and then it was gone.

  The binding was complete, beginning to end. They didn’t owe each other anything anymore.

  Rolling away from the desk in her chair, Jessica stared at the closed office door. Any minute now, the fae would come bursting out of there and demand that she get to work. That she help him do what he said needed to be done. And after four days of way more time to herself than she’d really wanted, she still wasn’t sure if she could trust him. Maybe it would’ve made a difference if he’d continued his relentless pursuit of her consent. But the fact that he hadn’t even tried to talk to her over the last four days made it even harder to hold everything against him.

  How badly had she screwed this up? All of it?

  After five minutes of staring at the door with still no sign that Leandras had even noticed the timer going off on their binding, Jessica stood and walked slowly toward the office.

  “It’s over,” she called. “Which I’m sure you’ve already realized by now. So if you’re ready to make your great escape…”

  No answer.

  “Leandras?”

  A rustle and shuffle came from the other side of the door, though fortunately, there was no strobing light or smell of charred wood and clothing and flesh.

  Grimacing, Jessica approached the door and reached out to give it a light knock. “Hey. Everything okay in there?”

  The fae cleared his throat. “No. Something’s wrong.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Well, shit. The fae might as well have just told her he was dying all over again.

  He probably would have been, if Jessica had hit him four days ago with the full force of her magic instead of this half-baked bullshit. The worst part, though, wasn’t what he’d said but how he’d said it.

  No preamble. No beating around the bush. No trying to talk like some kind of nineteenth-century bureaucrat.

  Just a simple no. Something was wrong. Which really meant something was wrong, and all Jessica’s alarms were blaring in her head now. Her hands itched, whether from the aftereffects of the binding finally reaching its end or the tingle of her magic flaring up again inside her with her concern.

  “This would be an awesome time to tell me what the hell that is.”

  “I agree.” The doorknob slowly turned.

  Jessica suddenly wished the bank had returned already from wherever it had been over the last four days. Or at least its…mind. Slowly turning doorknobs was never a good sign, and now she didn’t even have her backup sidekick.

  Leandras slowly opened the office door and stood in the doorway with his hand hooked distractedly around the knob. He stared at the floor between them, his shoulders hunched, then slowly looked up at her. �
��But for this, I believe I’m the one requiring an explanation.”

  She blinked and took a step back. The fae looked like a wounded animal—unsure, unsteady, pulled into himself. Only she was absolutely positive this time that he wasn’t actually wounded. He’d healed himself with his own re-stolen magic, which was the only thing that had been killing him in the first place.

  Until she’d unintentionally sparked off a warning shot against his hand. But that was four days ago.

  “Well, I really can’t do anything to help you with that until you tell me what the actual problem is.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Leandras let go of the doorknob only to grip his opposite wrist, then he extended that hand toward her. The hand she’d jolted. The hand without any trace of a burn or a scar or what she usually found in her victims—black flakes and most commonly a lack of any hand at all. The fae stared at his hand, his other fingers tightening visibly around his wrist. “I’d assumed it was the binding.”

  “Which is over now, so…”

  “And that’s the problem, Jessica.” The guy looked like he’d just realized his last drink had been poisoned and now he was waiting for the death-effects to kick in. “I’d expected to be dealing with something much more difficult when our agreement reached its end. I’d expected… Well, certainly more than this.”

  Jessica’s gaze flittered back and forth between his perfectly normal palm and his wide, luminously silver eyes. “And you’re upset because you still have your hand?”

  “Yes!” Leandras finally released his wrist and stumbled toward her. “Because if it wasn’t the binding keeping a vestrohím’s magic from eating away at me, the problem lies with the vestrohím’s magic, doesn’t it?”

  Great. He was talking about her in the third person and wouldn’t even use her name. That took his irritation way past “Ms. Northwood” levels.

  She grimaced. “You think maybe you’re blowing this just a little out of proportion?”

  “You are not the first of your kind I’ve dealt with. I’ve seen what that kind of power can do. What it means to use it. I know what you are, Jessica, but I have never seen a vestrohím unleash what they possess without leaving so much as a scratch.”

  “Just chalk it up to all your returned magic, I guess.” Jessica shrugged and started to turn away. “It brought you back from looking like a corpse, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a little more residual—”

  “Don’t! Don’t you dare.” He shook his head, his gaze flickering back and forth across the ground as his breath grew faster and heavier. “I can admit when I’ve pushed too far. The other day, I pushed you too far. Regrettable even if I hadn’t been expecting the loss of my hand right now, if not an entire limb. I shouldn’t have tried to contain you, Jessica. But you haven’t been honest with me.”

  A bark of a laugh escaped her. “Join the fucking club.”

  “What did you do to your magic?” The fae’s startlingly loud roar cracked across the lobby as he stormed toward her. She quickly backed away until she bumped against the side of the desk and had to grip the edges to keep from falling over. “You are supposed to be entirely what you are! Nothing less.”

  “Hey, back the hell up.”

  “Everything I put in place after seeing what you are for the first time is hinging on what you can do!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about whatever you’ve done to yourself that neutralized your own attack on me.” Faster than she could anticipate, he gripped her wrists and jerked them away from the desk so he could examine her hands. “What is it? Some kind of dampening? If that infuriating reptile didn’t complete the full healing, we need to—”

  “You need to stop!” Jessica jerked her wrists out of his hands and shoved him away from her. “I don’t want to have to toss you across this room, but if you touch me again, it’ll happen. And this time, I’m actually giving you a warning.”

  His lip curled up in a sneer as he studied her face. “You’re hiding something.”

  “We’re all hiding something, Leandras. Get over yourself.”

  “I told you everything you wanted to know about the Gateway. Answered all your questions.”

  “And I hid you in that office for five days while who knows how many mob bosses or whatever the hell they are came bursting through that door looking for you. Telling me what I have to do. Threatening everything I have left.”

  “That’s not—”

  “It’s all because of you. This never would’ve happened if you hadn’t taken that stupid fucking coin out of the vault and started the reckoning. I saved your life. Twice!” She stepped toward him and stabbed a finger at his face. “And I’ll give you one for showing up before Mickey could rip me to pieces. But I don’t owe you a goddamn thing. The binding’s over. I stole your stupid magic-box for you so you wouldn’t die, and whatever answers you think you’ve given me haven’t even come close to what I need to know. So we’re done. Get out!”

  “Magic-box…” Leandras blinked furiously and snarled. “The one you didn’t name.”

  “The fuck are you talking about?”

  He actually nudged her aside before stomping past her toward the back hallway.

  “Don’t even think about it. Hey!” With a quick glance at the bank’s front door, Jessica hissed and pointed at the open sign. It lit up with yellow light and flipped itself over to Closed, followed by the door’s heavy metal bolt sliding into place.

  Sure, she was closing up shop a few hours early, but the rest of the world could suck it up and fucking deal with it.

  She darted toward the hallway. “Leandras!”

  “You have no idea how much hinges on your ability to do what has to be done.”

  “You mean like blast you into a million pieces before you make a serious mistake?” When she entered the hall, he’d already made it to the back and now climbed the stairs two at a time. Her immediate reaction was to blast a churning fireball at him, wooden staircase and banister be damned.

  The fae tossed a flippant hand toward her attack, which bounced off a shield of bursting silver light before it ricocheted into the back wall. A huge chunk of plaster and a puff of decades-old wall dust hit the floor.

  She almost slipped on the thick layer of fine dust before slamming a hand against the wall to stop the rest of her from hitting it. Then she raced up the first landing. “You can’t go up there!”

  “The binding’s over, Jessica,” Leandras growled. “And we both know you can’t stop me.”

  Fuck. He couldn’t actually be serious about this now, could he? After all the bullshit he’d fed her about the reckoning phases and needing her help and having to do this together, he wouldn’t really try to open that damn door on his own. He was stubborn and maddening but not a complete idiot.

  “Leandras!” Jessica’s footsteps pounded on the creaking stairs, each of them shuddering beneath her like they were on the verge of caving in beneath her weight. “If you touch that fucking door, I’ll kill you.”

  “You can’t. Knowing that from the start would have saved us both from the farce you’ve made of everything.” He reached the top of the staircase and paused, staring at the studded iron door at the end of the short hall.

  “Don’t!” When she reached the top behind him, the only thing she could think to do was throw herself at the fae’s back.

  Her chin collided awkwardly with his shoulder blade, and he stumbled forward with a grunt before she could get her arms around him to throw him against the wall like she’d wanted. Or even back down the stairs.

  But instead of turning to fight her off, instead of lunging forward for the Gateway door that didn’t even have a handle or a doorknob, Leandras slipped away from Jessica’s next desperate pounce and headed for the door to her bedroom.

  She staggered sideways and glared at him. “What—”

  The hallway trembled beneath her, and a low, furious g
rowl rose from the dungeon door. From very far away, she heard the creak of her bedroom door opening, the whisper of Leandras’ footsteps across the only private space she had in her possession, the fae’s low mutter in words she couldn’t comprehend.

  But none of it really made sense. None of it mattered at all, because Jessica’s entire being was pulled now toward the Gateway. The growl grew louder, and the eerie green light burst from behind every seam of the door, outlining it in a brilliant rectangular glow.

  Her feet moved of their own accord. One slow step toward the Gateway. Then another.

  She couldn’t get away. Couldn’t snap out of it, no matter how hard she tried to fight that bodiless force tugging at her core.

  “Open the door, Guardian.”

  The voice came from behind the Gateway. From another world. Jessica had come to know that voice very well over the last month, but knowing who that voice belonged to didn’t matter. The words washed over her and through her, puffing her own body against her will.

  “You have everything you need. Reach out. Open. Do it.”

  Bank!

  She could only scream for the sentient being in her mind, because her mouth wouldn’t open. Her jaw ached with how tightly shut it was clenched.

  Wherever you are, if you don’t get back here right now, we’re fucked.

  Her clenched fists trembled at her sides.

  Leandras’ aggravated hiss came from her open bedroom doorway, now behind her as she took one painstaking step after the other against her will. Whatever he said, Jessica couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t do anything.

  Jesus Christ, if this was the end, she’d really screwed up. She should’ve listened to the bank. She should’ve undone the Shattering when she still had the chance. It would’ve sucked to know someone else in the world—maybe even two someones, who knew?—would meet their end as the price of Jessica’s stupidity. But it wouldn’t have sucked nearly as much as this. Walking right into the mouth of some darkly chuckling horror behind that green light, without being able to lift a finger to fight back. To save herself.