The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4) Read online

  “I know what went wrong.” Jessica ripped aside the curtain and glared at him. “You put this thing on me in the first place.”

  “We’ve been over that.” Leandras didn’t seem at all affected by the complete lack of privacy here. Instead, he leaned sideways and tried to get a good look at the glowing purple rune on her neck. “It was necessary—”

  “Yeah, so is you getting the hell out of my bathroom.” She pointed harshly at the open doorway before trying to step over the edge of the tub.

  Her aching, trembling legs apparently had other plans, and her foot caught on the raised porcelain before she could stop herself from tumbling forward.

  Leandras was there in an instant, one hand clamping down around her upper arm while the other slinked around her waist to catch her. She practically flopped out of the tub and staggered against him, water pooling at her feet on the thin bath mat.

  Once she’d caught her balance, she looked up at him and forced herself not to shove him away. “I told you to get out.”

  That infuriating smirk flickered across his lips. “And one shudders to think what might have happened if I’d chosen to obey.”

  Obey?

  The last thing she needed was some kind of ancient-fae power struggle while she stood here in nothing but a towel, dripping and shivering.

  “Well I got it now. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He slowly released her, chuckling when she rolled her eyes and tightened her grip on the towel around her chest.

  Her fingers burned now as the feeling came back into them, but at least she could hold up the towel and control her own body again.

  When Leandras didn’t leave, she shot him a pointed look with wide eyes. “Can I help you?”

  “I’d still like to examine that rune.”

  “Do it when I’m dressed. How about that?”

  He looked her up and down, his smirk unwavering. “If you’re taking this as my attempt to relieve you of your dignity, don’t. You may have already done that on your own just now.”

  “Damnit, Leandras. Get out.”

  “I don’t have time for that.” The fae stepped toward her, and when she tried to skirt around him, he grabbed ahold of her cold arm again and forced her to stop. All trace of amusement disappeared when he caught her gaze again, and his low, warning voice was just as suddenly serious. “The last thing either of us needs is for that rune to act up when we’re on the other side. You stood in the shower for three hours under what I can only imagine were shockingly low temperatures.”

  ‘Well, not the whole three hours.’ The bank sniggered. ‘Hot water kicked off at about forty-five minutes.’

  You’re not helping.

  ‘Hey, just because it’s your last day on Earth doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun.’

  Gritting her teeth, Jessica glared up at Leandras.

  The last thing she expected was for the fae to grab her lower jaw in a firm grip and force her head to the side.

  “What the hell are you doing?” She tried to pull away—she would have slapped his hand off her face and then some—but her own hands were occupied with holding up the towel, and his grip was a lot stronger than she’d expected.

  Because of course he’d gotten a full night of sleep, and all she had was two nights of dreamless stupor and shaking legs after standing motionless in a three-hour time warp.

  “Stand still,” he hissed, leaning closer for a better look at her exposed rune. “There may be something I can do to lessen the effects if I understand the aftermath of an episode. And this one...”

  Jessica’s neck burned fiercely beneath his gaze. Or maybe that was just the harsh tingling of the rune itself.

  But it definitely didn’t explain the rest of the burning flush rising up her cheeks and warming her shower-frozen face when Leandras released her arm but not her chin.

  His free hand rose slowly toward her neck, and his eyes widened.

  “Oh, so it’s fine for you to touch it but not me?” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  The tingle in her neck flared hotter and thicker the closer his outstretched fingers approached the rune.

  “I’m merely studying—”

  “I’m not your test subject.” She finally jerked her chin out of his grasp and stepped away. “And this isn’t your own private magical lab.”

  “Jessica, if I can—”

  “No. You said there was nothing either of us could do to lessen the effects.” Clutching the towel to her chest and backing away toward the toilet, she pointed at the bathroom doorway. “So quit trying to study me and let me put on some fucking clothes.”

  Leandras blinked at her. “I made that claim based on personal experience. But perhaps on someone else—”

  “Well you’re not getting a clinical trial out of me, okay? If it happens again on the other side of the Gateway, we’ll deal with it then.”

  “We have time to deal with it now.” A scowl darkened the fae’s face. “It may be possible to discern a pattern.”

  “There is no pattern.” Jessica pointed at her own neck. “As long as I don’t touch it and you don’t go poking around where you don’t belong, it’s fine.”

  “That’s not what happened yesterday.”

  “Well I guess I’ll just have to pipe up every time a weird itch starts on my neck, and we’ll both have to brace ourselves.”

  His face softened in concern. “Why are you so against this?”

  “Because I haven’t slept since Thursday night!” Her outburst echoed tersely in the bathroom. “I get why. We needed the potion. The Brúkii hasn’t found me yet—”

  “A far as we know.”

  “Jesus, I just got out of bed. Can’t this wait?”

  The fae bit his lip and tilted his head, as if he were holding back a short quip with which he desperately wanted to lash back.

  The bank did it for him instead. ‘Technically, you got out of bed three hours ago.’

  “I need a minute.” Jessica held Leandras’ gaze with all the willpower she could muster. At least she’d finally stopped shivering, but if he didn’t get out of her bathroom and her bedroom right now, she’d probably start trembling all over again. With rage this time.

  “Very well.” He finally dipped his head and turned to head for the open bathroom doorway. “I’ll be downstairs. Come find me when you’re finished. I’d like to go over a few minor details of our impending—”

  A loud, crackling groan came from the hallway, followed by an intensely bright flash of purple light.

  Leandras whipped his head toward the hallway, his eyes widening in surprise.

  Jessica had only seen the light flickering across the side of his face from where she stood. But the implication of it was all too clear.

  Still, she couldn’t help but ask, “What was that?”

  “To put it in your words,” he muttered, shooting her a quick sidelong glance that couldn’t have been anything but surprise, “that was the egg cracking wide open.”

  Shit.

  The Hruandir spell was complete, the Gateway was apparently about to open all on its own, and Jessica Northwood was standing here in a towel with literally no preparation whatsoever.

  Chapter 19

  “You said forty-eight hours,” Jessica hissed.

  “It was an approximation.” Leandras turned to fix her with a frown. “Did you think I’ve attempted this before?”

  “No, but I did think you knew what you were doing.”

  “I do.” He looked her up and down, then hurried out of the bedroom. “Get dressed.”

  “Damnit, that’s what I’ve been trying to do!”

  ‘So what happens now?’

  Like I have a clue.

  Jessica stormed out of the bathroom after Leandras, who did exactly as she expected and didn’t bother to close the door behind him. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll tend to the Gateway.”

  “I thought you needed me for that.”

  “
I need you to open it and cross through with me,” he hissed. “But unless you intend to keep that door closed in nothing but a bath towel, I highly recommend haste and focus.”

  She reached her bedroom door and caught a glimpse of the trailing strands of light across the hallway floor. They pulsed furiously now, almost strobing with brighter light than ever before.

  So far, the Gateway hadn’t officially opened. But that didn’t mean much now, did it?

  Leandras stopped in the middle of the hall to face the dungeon door as the vines of the Hruandir spell flashed with light. When he lifted his hands to aim whatever other magic he had up his sleeve at the anchoring stone embedded in the floor, he noticed her standing there in the doorway. “Now, Jessica!”

  She slammed the door and whirled away toward her dresser.

  ‘Yeah, maybe hurry up a little.’

  “Don’t.” The towel fell in a damp puddle at her feet, and she whipped open one drawer after another to pull out a fresh set of clothes.

  She had absolutely no idea what to wear.

  ‘It’s a last-minute jump through worlds, witch. How hard can it be?’

  “Shut up.”

  The hallway groaned away, followed by the sound of Leandras’ sharp inhale before a slower pulse of silver light slipped beneath the closed door with the urgently strobing purple.

  What was she dressing for? Freezing temperatures colder than Colorado at its worst during the winter? The fiery heat of some desert landscape?

  ‘Try a world decimated by dark magic and more bodies than you’ll ever wrack up in your lifetime.’

  “Not helpful.”

  ‘Just pick something and move on!’

  Jessica scrambled into her clothes, moving faster when she heard the low mutter of yet another spell in some otherworldly language rising from the fae man just outside.

  ‘Oh, hey! You need to call the stand-in.’

  “What?”

  ‘Ben! Come on, we had a plan!’

  Shit. Ben Cready.

  She’d told him she’d call when it was time for the poor guy to get here and take up his post as the bank’s honorary Guardian—or at least its steward—while she was gone. She still had no more clue now as to how long that might be than she’d had when she’d popped the question.

  Now they probably didn’t even have enough time for that.

  In a loose pair of black jeans and a gray long-sleeved shirt, Jessica raced across her room to dig her phone out of the pile of clothes she hadn’t bothered to clean up over the last few days.

  Sure, she liked to keep things neat. Apparently, her personal preferences had been tossed to the bottom of her priority list when everything else came barreling into her daily life one after the next. Two months of this shit, and she didn’t know how much more she could take.

  ‘This isn’t the time to clean up, witch!’

  “I’m not.” She finally found her phone in the back pocket of yesterday’s jeans and fumbled to unlock the home screen.

  ‘Wait. Hold on. I think—’

  A heavy pounding came from outside her door—not on it but somewhere else close by.

  With a grunt of frustration, Jessica jammed her feet into her gray Converses, snatched up her brown leather jacket from the pile on the floor where the coatrack had fallen in her dreamscape destruction of her own room, then jerked open the bedroom door.

  “Jessica,” Leandra growled, his hands pulsing with that slow, methodical silver glow now washing over the anchoring stone, the glowing purple vines of magic, and the still-closed Gateway, “I understand you have a duty to your clients in this establishment, but now is not the time.”

  “What?”

  The pounding came again, though this time she recognized it as coming from downstairs.

  “Don’t answer it,” he warned.

  ‘Ignore him. It’s Ben.’

  “What?”

  Jeeze, way to be a broken record.

  Why didn’t you tell me that before?

  ‘Because I’m telling you now.’

  “How long can you hold that off?” She jammed her phone into her back pocket and pulled her wet hair out from beneath the collar of her shirt.

  “Long enough, but—” The fae snarled when he noticed her racing not toward their looming exit from this world but toward the stairs. “I said not to answer the door!”

  “Will it ruin the spell?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Will it?”

  He fully returned his attention to holding the Gateway closed. “No, but we don’t have time to entertain guests.”

  “He’s not a guest. I’ll be right back.”

  “Jessica!”

  “Two minutes, Leandras.”

  ‘Hold on. Maybe I can help.’

  With what?

  She hadn’t gotten down four stairs before the electric-blue light of the bank’s magic flared through the hallway behind her. Jessica turned over her shoulder to see a bolt of blue energy leaping from the wall to crack against Leandras’ hand.

  The fae man shouted in surprise, his spell cut off entirely as a shimmering wall of blue light flared up between the Gateway door and the anchoring stone, filling the space from floor to ceiling and the hallway like a translucent storm door.

  ‘There. That should hold it for a while.’

  “Jessica, if we miss our window—”

  “We won’t.” She wasn’t actually certain about any of it, but the urgent knocking coming from the front door downstairs had to be dealt with first, and she needed Leandras to quit distracting her.

  ‘Go ahead and tell him you’re sure,’ the bank suggested. ‘I am.’

  “It’ll hold, Leandras.” She raced down the stairs.

  “On whose authority?” he seethed, eyeing the Gateway warily before stepping toward the top of the stairs to glare down after her.

  “The vestrohím Guardian’s authority. And the bank’s. Just don’t mess with it!”

  The bank chuckled as she hurried down the stairs. ‘Way to step into your power, right?’

  If it gets him to shut up, it’s worth saying out loud.

  In all honesty, calling out a command like that actually felt pretty good.

  ‘Because you’re right. Now let the poor bastard inside so we can give him a crash-course in not destroying me while you’re gone.’

  Jessica jogged down the hall and across the lobby toward the front door. The overhead lights and those resting in the sconces along the walls flared to life on their own. She slammed one hand against the door to brace herself and found no need to search for the keys when the heavy lock slid away with a brief flash of blue light. Then she jerked open the door and found Ben standing there on the other side.

  “You know, I’d ask why you’re here before I even called, but your timing’s perfect.”

  His eyes widened. “What happened to you?”

  She grabbed his wrist and hauled him into the bank before quickly shutting the door. The bank locked up again behind her without having to be asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Jessica headed across the lobby again toward the hallway. A low hum interspersed with crackling snaps came from upstairs. “We’re on a time crunch. I’m guessing you don’t actually need a tour of the place, right?”

  “Not really, but... Wait. Time crunch?” He hurried after her. “Jessica, wait.”

  “Can’t, actually.” She spun around to see him moving like a snail across the lobby. “Ben!”

  “What?” he almost shrieked, and his blue-eyed gaze settled on her with uncertainty.

  “Look alive, okay? It’s happening.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah. Right now. We were supposed to have a few more hours, but apparently that plan got shot to shit.”

  “Wait, you mean...”

  Rolling her eyes, she backtracked to set a hand on his shoulder and guided him urgently toward the hall. “Yep. Look, I wish I had the time to tell you everything you never wanted to k
now about this place, but that time just doesn’t exist. This whole thing is way beyond my paygrade and definitely yours too. Sorry.”

  Ben didn’t offer any resistance as he let himself be jostled down the hall toward the stairs. Waves of blue and purple light shimmered against the wall at the bottom of the first landing. “I’m getting...paid?”

  Is he? she asked the bank as they headed up the stairs.

  ‘Well yeah. If he wants it. Easy enough to swap out a name on a credit card here and there.’

  Jessica puffed out a sigh. “Yeah, you’ll get paid.”

  “Like...hourly? Or for the whole thing?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever you want.”

  “You didn’t tell me that part.” His voice was flattened by terror and overwhelm, and he climbed the stairs as if in a dream. “I mean, that’s a bonus, I guess. How much, exactly?”

  “Trust me, Ben. Not nearly enough.”

  Hearing those words from her own lips made her pause halfway up the stairs.

  “I don’t...” Ben stopped beside her, his gaze flickering back and forth between her face and the magical lightshow coming from the top of the stairs. “I’m not sure I like the way that sounds.”

  Neither did she.

  She’d literally just told him exactly what Tabitha had said on Jessica’s very first day, before she’d had any idea that asking for twenty dollars an hour was a joke compared to what waited for her in her future as the owner of Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking and the Guardian of the Gateway.

  Jesus, this whole thing sounded and felt like exactly what her predecessor had thrust upon her in the beginning.

  ‘It’s not a bad thing.’

  It’s not really a good thing, either.

  ‘He’ll be fine. Just like you were.’

  That knocked her out of her moment of stunned disbelief.

  She grabbed Ben’s upper arm just hard enough to make him look at her and nodded. “Forget how weirdly ominous that sounds, okay? You can use whatever money you need. There’s plenty, and you have access to it all.”

  If he didn’t already, he soon would. Probably the minute that dungeon door closed behind her, hopefully not permanently.

  After guiding him up the rest of the staircase, Jessica stopped to turn toward the stunned blond godson of Tabitha Belmont and added, “We’re counting on you for this, okay? Just to keep an eye on the place. As long as you listen to the bank and don’t try to fight it at every turn, you’ll be fine.”