Rites & Desires Page 9

  "Good," she commented. And it was good. Mike Stevens had just had a very promising meeting with Goblin Records Artist Development, and there was absolutely no doubt in Ruby’s mind he would want to talk about little else. Jaccob would spend all day tomorrow hearing about her and thinking about her, and she didn’t have to do anything but sit back and let his son sing her praises. That was fantastic timing. Her smile in that moment was genuine, even if it wasn’t so supportive and magnanimous as she hoped Jaccob would presume.

  "I’ll call you," he said, although it seemed he was struggling with the idea.

  She nodded, trying to keep her smile up as she bade him farewell. Ruby closed the door behind him as he reached for his StarBoard to head back across the narrow expanse to his own penthouse.

  As she made her way back across the sitting room, she glowered at the reflective blackness of the powered-down television. That had been a setback, but how serious a setback remained to be seen. Still, she was frustrated and, if she was being completely honest with herself, a little bit sad. She shook her fist at the news anchors, even though they were no longer visible on the overlarge screen. As her gaze shifted to her laptop, still sitting where she’d set it when Jaccob had arrived, she set her jaw.

  Moments like this one made her all the more determined to crack the secrets of the Eye of Africa. With magic like that, she needn’t care that Elizabeth Stevens existed. She’d have Jaccob, and whatever else she wanted, just as soon as she had the magic of the Eye. She was bent over the back of the sofa, reaching for the machine, when she heard another knock on the glass. When she turned her head toward the sound, she was surprised to see Jaccob once again standing at her door. She had no idea what he was doing there, but rushed across the room--as quickly as she could while maintaining decorum--and pulled open the door.

  Jaccob had an odd look on his face: something between sentimental and remorseful, if Ruby had to guess. Her magic would have told her precisely, but her perception was likely close enough. "I’ll call you Monday morning," he said. His voice was firm, convicted; it wasn’t at all the noncommittal tone he’d taken just a moment ago.

  Ruby smiled. "I’ll look forward to it."

  "Good," Jaccob replied. He surprised her then. Leaning into the doorway where she stood, he kissed her. Lightly, barely, he let his lips touch hers before he stepped back and bid her farewell again.

  Ruby tried to appear neither too shocked nor too thrilled. She stood in the doorway and watched him fly home on his StarBoard, grinning as sweetly as she could. She waved at him on his balcony before stepping back inside her penthouse.

  Glass walls meant any excessive celebration would likely be noticed, and jumping up and down like a giddy schoolgirl really wasn’t her style. But as she crossed back to where her laptop and her research awaited, she wore a very self-satisfied grin.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Knowing Jaccob would be spending all day Sunday with his adult children gave Ruby the perfect opportunity to go back to the house and do some more work on cracking the wards around the Eye. He’d already said he would call her on Monday morning, which meant there was no chance she’d miss him trying to reach her if she spent all day Sunday in her basement with no cell reception.

  She left early, trying to time her drive across town so the church crowd would be sitting in church and not on the road at the same time she was. With the top down and the radio on, Ruby couldn’t help but smile as she cruised through the city streets. It was a warm June morning, she was on her way to put her hands back on the most powerful magical item she had ever encountered, and every time she turned the station, her car’s radio seemed to be playing a song that was making her money. She felt charmed.

  There was rain in the forecast, so Ruby took the moment to put the roof back on her car in the driveway. On her way to the door, she used her business-only Starphone to make a call to the line on the forty-seventh floor she knew the Blights would answer. She and Doubt had already had the conversation that any calls coming in on that line after hours or on the weekend would need to be answered. She needed the Blights at the house today. There was research to be done if she was ever going to get to the heart of the power of the Eye, and she greatly preferred the idea of having them be the ones to do it. It wasn’t that she was averse to research; she actually rather enjoyed delving into the whys and the hows of the magic she accessed. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have amassed nearly as large an arcane library as she had.

  Technically, Ruby had three libraries in her mansion in Regency Heights. Her large library was a social space, its walls lined with shelves housing everything from the classics to the latest issues of Rolling Stone. She often entertained artists, clients, and potential business partners there. Her private library was adjacent to her bedroom and sitting room and housed a more curated collection of favorites. Books about music and history, some more easily obtained volumes of magical understanding, and more than one unauthorized biography of Stardust could be found within. It was a rare occasion when anyone was invited into that room. And her secret library was just that: a secret. It was in her basement, adjacent to but not in communication with her ritual space. Before today, no one else had been allowed in.

  But today she needed the help. There were still things she had yet to try that she knew might get her closer to unlocking the power of the Eye, and spending half the day up to her eyebrows in books didn’t feel like a profitable use of her time. Then again, if there was something in her collection that could lead her to getting to the right thing faster, it felt like a waste of time not to have someone looking. The Blights were technically in her service, which meant they wouldn’t be able to use any knowledge gained in her library against her--a fact she’d checked through multiple sources before trusting them with any of her magical knowledge. And besides, it was high time she got them off the forty-seventh floor and into hiding someplace else. The studios were starting to get some regular use, and she wasn’t sure how long their cover as a new band in development was going to fly. Better she move them out to the house where they’d be better hidden.

  Satisfied they were on their way over, Ruby made her way inside and went immediately to work with the Eye. She would find a way into this thing today or die trying.

  It seemed to be waiting for her when she arrived. Surrounded by a circle she’d cast around it, laying on a square of crimson silk atop a mound of pink and gray salt in the center of the prepared space, the Eye was almost visibly pulsing with power. She’d left it the way she had in hopes the magic she’d cast would contain the power of the thing. Knowing intimately how this additional layer of containment operated, she’d posited, would be enough to allow her, once inside of it, to finally touch the magic of the Eye. Once she had a more experiential understanding of the flavor of magic attached to the mysterious item, she would be better able to tailor her attempts at gaining full access to it.

  It was a visceral experience reaching for it then. The air within the circle seemed to crackle with static electricity. Her fingers tingled as she gingerly brushed them against the metallic sheath encasing the opal. The magic was heady when she had the Eye in her grasp. She hadn’t feared it--hadn’t been concerned the thing might harm or overwhelm her upon contact--a decision which, on hindsight, had perhaps not been the most prudent approach.

  Ruby had never been struck by lightning, nor had she ever stuck her finger in a light socket, but she guessed the feeling overtaking her as she grabbed hold of the opal itself must be akin to that experience. Her hair stood on end and her breath caught in her throat. Her chest was tight, and her eyes suddenly felt twice their normal size, as though they no longer fit in their sockets or beneath their lids. She felt a cry leave her throat, but no sound escaped her lips. It was at the same time exhilarating and terrifying. She knew she must be touching magic more powerful than any she had ever encountered. There was nothing in her experience nor in her knowledge base to have prepared her for this. Intense sensations came at her; the feeli
ngs overwhelmed her as her land lay across the gem.

  Ruby wasn’t sure if there was actual light flickering, flecks of magic being thrown in the air, or whether she was perhaps hallucinating. She was sure the thrumming sound causing her head to pound was a combination of the blood rushing through her ears and the presence of magic disrupting the air around her. She was trembling, her heart was pounding, and she had trouble keeping on her feet.

  It took an unusual amount of care for Ruby to come to her knees before the Eye. It wasn’t a preferred position of hers, but she had so little control over her body at the moment she was pleased enough not to have collapsed entirely. Whatever she had done here had been, by several measures, successful. But Ruby wasn’t convinced it was a success she was prepared for.

  That was the thing about dallying with magic you didn’t know enough about--it was dangerous. Ruby had known that. She had in her possession an item far more powerful than anything she had ever dealt with previously. And she knew there was danger in trifling with magics that weren’t your own, particularly when the magics were contained within items powerful enough to have frightened custodians for generations.

  Ruby was not frightened. That was not an emotion native to her, and she found herself unencumbered by fear even as the edges of her consciousness closed in around her. If this thing was about to kill her, then she had gone out in her prime. But her danger sense had always been as keen as her musical ear. She realized in that moment that as uncomfortable as she was, she sensed no real peril when handling the gem. The moment felt not unlike the first time she’d taken her car to its top speed on the freeway. Whatever was happening to her body may have been foreign, uninvited, and almost wholly unpleasant, but somewhere deep in her core, she felt in control.

  It was odd, she figured, as she knelt there on the floor of her sanctuary, stray grains of salt digging painfully into her bare knees as her body convulsed, that she felt in control and unafraid. But that was the thing with magic--it didn’t always make sense at first. She was determined to make sense of it. Her mind swirled as she willed her fingers to close around the opal, drawing it out of the salt and out of the circle. She had no idea what the result of that action would be, but she knew this was the best chance she had to connect to the Eye on her own terms--while it was already connected to her.

  She realized, as the room began to spin and she felt the surety she was about to faint, that perhaps that hadn’t been the best idea.

  When Ruby awoke, she had no idea what time it was. She had no idea whether hours or minutes had passed. And she had no idea what had caused her to black out.

  It hadn’t been sleep; she was sure of that. There had been times in her history of using very powerful magic when the rites and rituals had drained her. There was nothing like magical drain. It was a bone-level exhaustion that could take days to recover from. But this had not been that. Ruby knew from the moment she awoke that whatever had knocked her out was thoroughly unfamiliar, and she was wary of trying to move too fast. And although she was displeased by the indignity of finding herself prostrate on her sanctuary floor, having no concept of what the hell was going on, she thought better of trying to scramble to her feet.

  Ruby sat up slowly, still clutching the Eye in her right hand, and made the concerted effort she found necessary to draw in a deep breath. She felt strange, her head at the same time foggy and light. It was, the best she could tell, analogous to the feeling of a buzz diminishing as a hangover loomed following an evening of too much wine. And yet, she became vaguely aware as she got slowly to her feet, this sensation was entirely the inverse.

  The more she moved about, the better she felt. Her mind settled into a state not unlike the heady rush of a third glass of champagne after closing a million-dollar deal. It was blissful. It was orgasmic. And it took Ruby a moment of reveling in it to be able to catch a normal breath and emerge for a moment from her sanctuary.

  She didn’t want to leave. Neither did she wish to lay down the Eye at this moment of marvelous rapture (for which she was certain its magic was responsible), nor did she wish to bring such a powerful item out from the protection of the earth, salt, and lead that shielded it from the world at large. The Eye could easily be a beacon if brought out into normal space, leading anyone who knew how to look directly to its location, and to her. Ruby knew there was every chance the CCPD had gotten their act together and had magic-using experts working with them in trying to locate the gem. And that was without even considering the possibility of one of the city’s many magically aware superheroes getting involved, which they inevitably would if they hadn’t already. Knowing also that there was a young woman somewhere in this town who could commune with spirits was a serious additional concern. None of the spirits in this town owed Ruby any fealty, and she was sure they could detect the magical energy of the Eye without difficulty, which meant she ought to be doubly careful.

  But she needed to check in with reality. She needed to know what time it was, what day it was even. She had literally no clue how long she had been out cold. She needed to eat something and to drink something, to empty her bladder, and to check her phone for messages. Just because Jaccob was going to be out of touch while with his kids all day didn’t mean there was no chance of messages coming in. Maybe he was unlikely to have reached out to her, but she still had business to conduct. And even if it was still Sunday, her business needed some minding.

  She also needed to check in with the Blights. The longer she had been out, the more time they’d had to do the research she’d asked them to do. Now that she had most certainly touched the power of the Eye, she was that much more anxious to find out anything and everything she could about how its magic might be used. Ruby knew she was several stages away from truly being able to fully harness the power in the gem. But she was absolutely sure she’d just made some incredible progress. Whatever confluence of magics had caused this breakthrough, it had been a breakthrough all the same, and Ruby was positively itching to exploit it.

  As difficult as she occasionally found prudence to be, Ruby allowed it to win out for the moment. She resisted the urge to slip the Eye into her pocket before heading upstairs. She carefully replaced it on the pallet of silk and salt within her cast circle, wiped her sweaty palms against her navy-blue cotton skirt, and left the room before she could change her mind.

  Ruby gave full credit to the warm buzz left over from her contact with the Eye for the fact she didn’t immediately erupt in a litany of swear words upon reaching the top of her basement stairs. The Blights were not in the library. They were in the kitchen. Doubt was rifling through the cabinets, Plague was standing beside Fire, who was toying with the stove. Pestilence was sitting alone at the zinc-topped breakfast bar trying not to touch anything, while Ruin and Decay sat at the small table by the balcony doors helping themselves to the fruit in the decorative bowl. Ruby hadn’t ever been sure whether the fruit in that bowl was real or wax, so seeing it gobbled up by her otherworldly house guests was, to say the least, a peculiar sight.

  "What the hell is going on in here?" Ruby asked the group of them, her voice oddly pleasant despite her words.

  Doubt poked her head out of the pantry cabinet and frowned. "We got hungry," she declared.

  Ruby rolled her eyes. She honestly hadn’t thought about that. Truly, she hadn’t had any inkling the Blights actually ate. She had sent them to stay on the forty-seventh floor without means of sustenance, and this was the first she was hearing of this particular complaint. She hadn’t really spared a thought for their corporeal needs since they’d been in her custody. They were thought-made-flesh (or so it had been explained to her), but Loki had not passed along any care and feeding instructions when he’d sent them to do her bidding. She wasn’t sure just who to be mad at for this one, so she let it go. Better not to sully the euphoria from the Eye by caring that her minions were eating food the household staff would have to deal with replacing.

  "Just don’t burn the house down," she said to t
he bunch of them, concentrating her gaze on Fire, who was doing things to the stove that Ruby had to admit she didn’t understand. She was fantastic in a lot of rooms. The boardroom, the recording studio, the concert hall, the legislature, the bedroom--these were places her talents could be applied to an end she found beneficial. The kitchen was not among them. Whatever the Blights were doing in her kitchen was beyond her expertise, and she decided it would be in her best interest not to give a damn.

  And anyway, the thing that mattered was what they had done in her library. Ruby glanced at the clock on the wall, and was surprised to find it was mid-afternoon. Knowing the Blights were cooking reminded her she should probably eat something herself. She crossed to her narrow, silver refrigerator as she asked, "Have you found anything?" She pulled open the refrigerator doors and brought out a small ceramic bowl full of raspberries. When she stepped back from the refrigerator, she found the group of them all pointing her toward a book she had somehow failed to notice sitting on the small table near the stairs she’d come up.

  It was an old book, leather bound with embossing that had once been gold leaf but was now just a series of unintelligible indentations. Ruby wasn’t sure what the book was, but she was sure it hadn’t ever been written in English. There was a slip of modern-looking white paper marking a page near its middle. Her business line Starphone sat in its charging cradle on the same small table, and she spared a glance at the screen as she took a seat on an adjacent stool and flipped open the book. There were no emails, no text messages, and no missed calls--no alerts at all. This was good, she figured. No one was looking for her, and no one was waiting for her to return their call. What that meant in practical terms was she could dive headfirst into this book and not worry that business concerns were going to need her attention. Careful to touch the book with only her left hand and the raspberries solely with her right, she eased open the aged volume, slowly turning to the page that had been marked.