The Secret Coin (Accessory to Magic Book 3) Page 6

  The bank didn’t even let her get that far. The lock slid open with a heavy metallic thunk, and the door blazed with electric-blue light before swinging open into the lobby.

  Jessica sucked in a sharp breath as she stumbled forward, but her body wasn’t capable anymore of correcting itself. She hit the ground hard. The bundle of her leather jacket flew from her arms and toppled across the floor, unraveling itself along the way until the glass-like casing of Leandras’ magic bounced with a harsh ping against the hardwood.

  The door slammed shut and locked itself once more behind her, and a hiss came from the far end of the room.

  ‘Took you long enough. Holy shit, witch. You look like something I chewed up and spit back out again.’

  Yes, it was a relief to hear the bank’s voice in her mind again. At least Leandras hadn’t managed to screw anything else up while she was out stealing stuff from his apartment and saving his life.

  Maybe at the expense of her own.

  Jessica couldn’t move.

  Chapter Six

  “Jessica?” Leandras’ voice sounded very far away. Much farther than the surprisingly intense cold of the hardwood floor beneath her cheek. “I really do hope that’s you.”

  She wanted to be a smartass and ask him who the hell else the bank would open the front door for like this at almost 2:00 a.m., but all she managed was a strangled groan.

  Wood scooted against wood, and the faint rustle of fabric preceded slow, staggering footsteps heading toward her.

  So he was awake, then.

  ‘He wasn’t before you literally fell through that door,’ the bank muttered. ‘Why aren’t you moving?’

  I can’t.

  Jessica could only think it, because now the burning heat in her chest felt like she was melting from the inside out. Mix that up with a fresh knife wound that had missed her kidney by inches and the immense drain of using her most powerful magic at only half-mast, and she had a serious problem now.

  ‘I told you you couldn’t go running around stealing a fae’s crap for him when you’re running on empty.’

  And there it was. The first I-told-you-so.

  Something’s wrong.

  ‘No shit. You need to get off the floor.’

  Jessica coughed and tried to at least push herself up off the floor so she could see more than the wavy grain of the wood beneath her face. Why? Is it uncomfortable for you?

  ‘No, because that emaciated fae over there has eyes on that magic-box of his, and I have no idea what he’s gonna do with it when he realizes you can’t fight back. Or stand.’

  Shit.

  Mustering her strength, Jessica pushed herself up on shaky arms and tried to rise into a sitting position that didn’t make her hip and lower back feel like someone was sawing off her leg. She paused when she saw Leandras, who’d stopped almost in the center of the lobby and stood completely still. The fae stared at the unwrapped glass case lying on the floor, only partially still hidden beneath one sleeve of her leather jacket. The rest of the gúlmai was fully exposed, filling the lobby with the buzzing glow of purple and silver light that had somehow seemed perfectly suitable within his penthouse apartment. Here, in her bank, it was just wrong.

  ‘Yeah, tell me about it. This bank only has room enough for one source of disembodied magic, and now we have three.’

  Leandras’ eyes—still completely silver after his failed attempt to use his own magic he didn’t have—widened, reflecting the purple glow of his own magic pulsing back up at him from the floor. He sucked in another harsh breath, and Jessica realized she’d heard him hissing when she’d fallen through the door. Not Confucius.

  ‘Hey, don’t blame me. I told that scaley airbag to stick to his post, but he skittered off somewhere about half an hour ago. So much for a guard lizard, huh?’

  Whatever the immortal reptile was doing now, Jessica couldn’t care less. Her biggest concerns were the agony racing through her body and the fae standing in the middle of the bank who looked as crazed and unstable as he had the day he’d withdrawn that stupid gold coin from the witching vault and unboxed it right there in front of her. Maybe more.

  She cleared her throat and finally managed to croak out, “I could use a little help first.”

  It jolted Leandras out of his greedy contemplation over his own magic, and he jerked his head up toward the front door. A frown flickered across his eyebrows until he looked down and realized that the bank owner was in fact lying sprawled out inside the bank and not standing at its entrance. “Jessica.”

  He ignored his magic-box for the time being and staggered toward her instead, looking hollow and gaunt and like some kind of god-faced specter in a nightmare—beautiful and terrifying and unpredictable.

  Why the hell was she thinking that?

  The bank chuckled wryly. ‘I was about to ask you the same thing, witch. You sure you didn’t hit your head before you walked inside?’

  Jessica took a deep breath and pushed herself up even more. She just needed rest. And something to heal all the damage she’d taken in the last two days.

  ‘You need your magic, Jessica.’

  Shut up.

  “What happened?” Leandras stopped in front of her and bent down to offer her a hand up.

  When she took his hand, it was cold and clammy and felt like grabbing a dead fish. But at least it was strong enough to help her to her feet. “Exactly what it looks like. I broke into your apartment and stole your magic for you.”

  She swayed on her feet and almost dropped again right then and there.

  Leandras moved faster than he should have been able to, if he really was at death’s door waiting for a vestrohím with half her magic intact to bring him what he needed. He wrapped his arms around her as her knees buckled, and she cried out at the blazing contact of his hand against the bandages above her hip, reflexively lurching away from him.

  He caught her again, fortunately without stabbing his fingers into the knife wound, and growled. “I was referring to you in your physical state. What—”

  “I need to sit down.” She nodded toward the single, lonely-looking armchair on the right beside the coffee table, and the fae guided her laboriously toward it, scowling at her the whole time.

  ‘Wait, wait. Hold on. Don’t sit yet. You’re gonna—’ The bank groaned when Jessica’s failing body lowered into the tattered cushions. ‘—get blood all over the upholstery…’

  She ignored the bank’s harping and leaned back in the chair, gritting her teeth. “Thanks.”

  Leandras stood over her, and though the lights were off in the lobby and the gúlmai glowed purple behind him, his silver eyes cast enough eerie light of their own to see the firm, thin set of his lips as he scowled down at her. He opened his mouth, and the bank chose that exact moment to switch on all the bright lights set in sconces along the walls between the sets of floor-to-ceiling shelves.

  Jessica winced and clenched her eyes shut. The fae man hissed again and turned to shoot the lights a scathing glance.

  ‘Hey, I’m just trying to help.’

  Got any healing magic tucked away in your walls? ’Cause that would be a hell of a lot more helpful than blinding us.

  “I believe now would be the time to…” Leandras slowly lifted his hand and looked down at it, rubbing his fingers together. They were smeared with blood. “…tell me exactly what occurred in my home.”

  “Well.” Jessica blinked away the double vision of her blood on his fingers before it disappeared behind another handkerchief Leandras pulled from his pocket to attempt wiping them clean. How many of those things did he carry around with him?

  ‘At least three,’ the bank said matter-of-factly. ‘I saw him use another one while you were gone. Huh. Or maybe that was the same one.’

  She didn’t actually care how many handkerchiefs the fae kept in his highly expensive and now magically destroyed suit jackets.

  “Jessica?” Leandras practically growled.

  “It went pretty much li
ke we expected it to go. Got in, fought through the lunatics performing some kind of ritual in your living room—”

  “Ritual?” The fae started to sit, then remembered the second armchair was now at the back of the lobby behind the desk. So he straightened again with as much dignity as he could muster. Which wasn’t much at the moment.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry. It was interrupted pretty much right away.” There was literally no comfortable way to sit in a tattered armchair with a half-healed knife wound in her hip.

  ‘Eh, I wouldn’t even call it half healed… But it’s something.’

  I know you can read my mind for everything that happened, but the fae can’t. So please, bank, give the commentary a rest so I can finish this.

  The bank said nothing.

  “What kind of ritual?” Leandras’ silver eyes blazed with curiosity and anger.

  “I have no clue. Wasn’t exactly paying attention to anything other than your magic-box in the middle of everything. And by the way, it’s super creepy that you put that thing on display front-and-center in your living room. Like a personal shrine to yourself.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Is it, now?”

  “Just figured you needed someone to tell you that.”

  ‘Jessica, you should really take a look at all the crap you’ve done to your body over the last—’

  I said quit talking!

  ‘Jeeze, okay. I thought you were done. There’s more?’

  Was there? Maybe. Maybe not. The rest of what had happened could pretty much be read in the proof of the gúlmai lying on the floor and Jessica being in such ridiculously bad shape. It kind of was ridiculous, when she really thought about it. A chuckle escaped her.

  Yeah, maybe the pain was starting to drive her insane.

  “I fail to see how any of this is funny,” Leandras muttered, looking her up and down. “How many were there?”

  “Don’t tell me I missed a few things on my way out. ’Cause I am not going back in—”

  “How many Requiem members, Jessica? How many disgruntled…acquaintances lying in wait for me?”

  She scowled at him as he clasped his hands behind his back and turned to walk across the lobby. It took way more energy than it should have just to keep her head up over her crippling slouch. “I didn’t realize you wanted a running inventory.”

  “Take a guess.”

  “No idea how many belonged to how many gangs. But altogether, about two dozen. You know, give or take the odd orc zapped to smithereens by your magic and a troll stabbing me in the back.”

  ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t have seen either of those coming, either.’

  Leandras spun around again and raised an eyebrow. “Did the troll have a line of tattoos down his lower lip, just here?”

  The fae traced a line from his own lip to his chin, and Jessica snorted out a laugh that made every muscle of her body clench. “Did you miss the part about him stabbing me in the back?”

  “Not at all.”

  Was this guy serious? Interrogating her like this without a thank you? Hell, she’d even take an “attagirl” from the fae and call it good. But he didn’t even look happy about what she’d done for him.

  Disappointed. He looked disappointed.

  ‘Okay, serious time now, witch. You really need to get upstairs.’

  Not gonna happen right now.

  ‘You’re not gonna happen if you spend much more time wallowing in your pain and self-pity. He’s grateful, okay? Of course he is. Move on, and move your ass upstairs.’

  Jessica pushed the warning aside and swallowed as the heat in her chest went from heating-pad levels to “the water was almost boiling before someone poured it on her skin.” “No, I didn’t see a tattoo. He was behind me, and then I melted his face off.”

  A flash of silver light burst from Leandras’ eyes when they widened. “I see. And you eliminated twenty-four high-level Hakal practitioners on your own? Give or take, of course.”

  Damnit. She wasn’t supposed to get her friends involved. Not any more than she already had. Time to get upstairs before he asked for the ex-Corpus members’ names and numbers, too, and she blurted them out just to end the Q&A.

  ‘Thank you. Up you go.’

  “Actually, no.” Gripping the armrests, she pushed herself out of the chair and took a dangerously unsteady step forward. “I had to contract some help.”

  “Oh? I do hope you paid them well.”

  Yeah, with a bloody witch laid out on Cedrick’s couch. No way was she going to tell him she’d called in friends for a favor. That opened way too many doors.

  “That’s none of your business,” she said through her teeth. “But I got you what you needed, so let’s just…call it a night.”

  “Did any of the intruders in my home survive the encounter?”

  Really? He had to keep going with this crap?

  “Nope.” She gave him a two-second thumbs-up before she couldn’t hold her arm up any longer. “They’re all right there where we left ’em.”

  “Hmm.” When he looked up from the glowing gúlmai on the ground, his deep contemplation shattered, and his voice became an urgent hiss. “Where are you going?”

  “Upstairs, Leandras. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little—” Jessica’s legs buckled, and she dropped to the floor again. For the second time that night, all the wind was knocked out of her, and she found herself in a close-up staring contest with polished hardwood.

  “You’re too stubborn to know when to stop is what you are.”

  Jessica gasped for breath on the floor, her body igniting in bursts of hot and cold and the stabbing pain in her lower back. She couldn’t breathe. Again.

  What’s happening?

  ‘I told you to get upstairs so we could check this out.’

  “I’d offer to help you upstairs, but I have sworn a binding not to,” Leandras added dully. “I’m sure you’ll be feeling like yourself again in no time.”

  ‘Man, he really has no idea what’s going on. Jessica. Listen.’

  She finally drew in a breath and coughed, her body shutting down. That had to be what this was. She was dying.

  ‘Well, almost. Hey, I’m only gonna say this one more time. You need your magic—’

  “No!” It sure sounded like the last scream of a dying animal ripping through her own throat.

  ‘See? You can’t even think straight. That’s what I’m going with. Hang on a sec.’

  “No?” Leandras took a step toward her, his frown deepening. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not—” Jessica let out another wheezing cough and tried to push herself off the floor. She failed miserably. Instead, she snaked her hand up toward her throat and tapped it. Or maybe she was clawing at it; she couldn’t tell. “I can’t—”

  “Vinjít.” Leandras hissed, then he was at her side in an instant, kneeling on the floor beside her. The scent of charred fabric and something else—something like rain—overwhelmed her as dark spots danced in her vision.

  Shit, was this really the end?

  Chapter Seven

  Jessica lay on the floor, gasping for breath, and wondered why in the world she had to spend her last moments in a sentient bank with a gaunt, emaciated fae looming over her.

  Leandras passed his hands over Jessica’s back, and she only knew he was doing it because she felt something emanating from him. Something that made her skin crawl beyond the heat and the agony of her lungs.

  “You should be improving, not getting worse,” he growled.

  ‘Yeah, no shit. Oh, sure. Now the stupid lizard’s nowhere to be found.’

  “Jessica, why aren’t you healing?” He grabbed her opposite shoulder and hip and rolled her toward him until she flopped onto her back.

  She cried out at the blast of pain shooting through her and realized she could actually breathe again lying like this. “I—”

  “Something’s not right,” he muttered.

  “I know,” she managed to spit out
. “It’s my chest…”

  Her hand flopped weakly onto her chest, and Leandras met her gaze briefly before letting himself study the collar of her tank top.

  “Excuse me.” Then he yanked down the collar of her shirt with one long, slender finger and hissed. “How long has this been here?”

  “I don’t know. Two days?”

  “What did you do?”

  And here she was, lying on the floor of the bank lobby with a fae man staring down her shirt. If there had ever been the exact opposite of a romantic interaction with literally anyone, this would be it. With her chest all but on fire and her back blazing with shooting pain and the hot-and-cold chills wracking through her, it was amazing she had the capacity to think anything at all.

  “I didn’t…do this, Leandras,” she growled, sucking in breath after raw, gasping breath. “I just—”

  A flash of dull gray dropped straight down from the ceiling and clattered to the floor between them. Impeccable aim on the bank’s part for not hitting either of them with projectiles falling through the ceiling.

  The fae glanced at the ceiling, then snatched the thing the bank had dropped. “What is this?”

  Now Jessica felt like she was about to hurl. She slapped at his hand, and the dented tin box containing her most powerful, disembodied magic flew from his fingers and tumbled across the room again. “Not for you.”

  ‘You really are an idiot, you know that?’

  I’m not touching it, bank. What are you thinking?

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Just pondering my own demise and the destruction of two worlds if you don’t get your head out of your ass. Because you’re dying!’

  Jessica gritted her teeth. “I need—”

  “You need healing. Yes, Jessica, that’s perfectly clear.” The fae rocked back on his heels to stand, and his gaze trailed down to what she could only guess were the darker, angrier, longer streaks of red magical burn marks streaking up toward her neck. Then he met her gaze, his lips twitching in a wan smile. “Allow me to remind you that if you die on me, Ms. Northwood, you break the terms of our binding.”