Chapter 25
Calista’s eyes widened with surprise, and her red lips parted. It was the first genuine reaction Nigel had seen on her face all night, almost as genuine as the look of shocked horror he’d glimpsed that long-ago day, when she’d bit into the almond pastry and realized her deadly mistake.
She took a moment to regather herself, painting her features with a mild, heavy-lidded coyness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nigel rested an elbow on the counter and leaned toward her in much the same manner she had leaned at him, only with less bosom involved.
“I wondered at first,” he said, “who could have constructed that detection spell today. It was quite a confusing bit of craftsmanship—worked by a sorcerer of tremendous power but very little honed skill. Like someone had excelled in all her undergrad studies, but never gone on to delve into Deep Magic beyond, perhaps, a cursory familiarity with the theory.” He raised an eyebrow.
“Do your Ladies of Moral Authority Against the Uncanny know that you are still a practicing sorceress, Mrs. Anguish? Or have you found being a leading figure in the l’mauvas effective cover for whatever you’ve been up to all these years? ”
Calista swiped her glass from the bar and drained the remains in a quick gulp.
“Are you with the Brotherhood?” Nigel pressed, his voice dropping an octave.
She sneered. “The Brotherhood is a pack of mangy dogs, always finding some dry old bone to fight over. They none of them know how to organize.”
Nigel swirled his disgusting tea. “Well, that’s always been the way of it with Dark Sorcerers. We’re a solitary bunch and loathe no one so much as we loathe each other.”
“What they needed,” Calista continued, swirling the pieces of ice remaining in her glass, “was a little leadership. And that’s what I’m good at.
I’ve also got access, which none of those idiots have.
They’re all too well-known, too public with their displays of magic and menace.
Nowadays, most of them dare not show their faces out of hiding.
Not since Jastira’s fall.” She chuckled—not the expensive, practiced laugh of earlier, but a real, bitter sound.
“I’ve had to provide disguises for them time and again.
They simply cannot seem to keep a low profile. ”
“And where did you and Monte Fairfax source your fayfane blossoms?” Nigel asked.
She turned another startled glance his way. “Oh, so you know about that little operation?”
“I’ve heard rumors.” He leaned back in his barstool then, looking at her fully with neither admiration nor intimidation. Something his younger self couldn’t have imagined. “You never fully gave up sorcery after undergrad, did you?”
Calista shrugged. “I kept in practice, making my own sorcerous cosmetics. Once a girl gets used to having them, it’s hard to stop. There’s a great deal of expectation on me, as a public figure, you understand.”
“I find that rather tragic, actually,” Nigel said, shaking his head, “that you would expend all that talent, all that skill of yours on something as banal as cosmetics.”
“Banal?” Her lip curled in a snarl. “You try surviving as a woman in a man’s world. Then tell me how banal cosmetics really are!”
Nigel lifted his tea mug in a salute of acknowledgement, but did not take a sip. “So, after the Shadowbane Lady’s fall,” he said, “you . . . what? Used your connections and your position in the l’mauvas to find the scattered sorcerers of Nocturnus?”
“Among other things,” she admitted.
“And now you’ve got them organized.”
“Insofar as one can organize a pack of mangy, power-hungry dogs.”
“And you provided them with disguises. Like my brother, Fabian.”
“How is dear Fabian, by the way?” she purred poisonously.
“You tell me.”
“The last I heard from him was a telegram from the Phrigidos Isles where he is, apparently, enduring a rather extended vacation.”
Nigel’s lips compressed in a thin smile. “Has he sampled the whale blubber special yet? I understand it’s a culinary delicacy, not to be missed.”
“He mentioned your little flower shop.”
Though this wasn’t really a surprise, Nigel felt a cold jolt in his veins. “Did he now?”
Calista laughed, that bitter note more prominent than ever. “You know, if you’d really wanted to keep secret the fact that you are still in possession of that enchanted acreage, you probably shouldn’t have started selling magical flowers over the counter. It’s a bit of a giveaway, don’t you think?”
Nigel picked up his mug and made himself take a large pull of Limpty’s.
It was just disgusting enough to brace him, and when he’d recovered from a spontaneous grimace, he set the mug down and addressed himself to his companion once more.
“So, you think you’re going to . . . what?
Wrest my father’s great work from my cold, dead hands and drain its power to perform some great summoning spell?
That’s what Fabian seemed to believe. That the Brotherhood sought to bring Jastira back from hell. ”
“Not from hell.” Calista’s golden curls gleamed with the little toss of her head. “If you had cast her into hell, you would have had to give your own soul as well. That is the price for that particular curse, is it not?”
Nigel gazed into his tea mug. “It would seem you continued your studies post-undergrad after all, Mrs. Anguish.”
“I read The Grimoire of Forgotten Souls and the Malignium Archives. I know the basic theory of Infernus Magic.”
“Heavy reading for a politician’s wife. What would the l’mauvas think if they knew their spokeswoman was delving into such dark spaces of magical study?”
“Oh, they’re all much too afraid of me to put up any fuss.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“You could not have bound her to hell,” Calista continued urgently, “without binding yourself as well. Yet I sit across from you even now. Which means the voice I hear in the back of my head is no ghost rising from the infernal pit, but a spirit bound to the Dire Dimensions. And such a spirit can be brought back.”
Nigel narrowed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. “What I don’t get is why you want Jastira back. It makes sense for the Brotherhood—we were all her little minions anyway, halfway worshipping her when we didn’t hate her guts.”
“From what I understand, you far more than halfway worshipped her.”
His stomach pitched. Even now, three years since Jastira’s death, some of those memories were too dark, too horrible.
“I have backslidden from that particular faith since then,” he said and made himself take another awful gulp of Limpty’s before pressing on.
“But what do you stand to gain, Mrs. Anguish? You were destined for great things—everyone saw it. But then you seemed to abandon sorcery entirely. What is your game?”
She actually looked thoughtful for a moment, turning from him and inspecting the melting ice in the bottom of her glass. “I . . . saw something. Scried something, to be exact.”
Nigel’s brow lowered.
“It was during that final class period, when you were trying to keep me alive. We had already opened our minds to the Sight, and when I hovered in that space between life and death, the opening widened a hundredfold. I saw things such as I had never dared to dream. Power. Dire Power. Great explosions of pure force, ripped from one reality to the next. And Jastira herself, manifested in a form so great, so glowing—a goddess-like creature. I realized then that I must, indeed, worship her. Not as you and the Brotherhood did, with all your masculine fawning and lusting, mingled with your not-so-secret hatred.” She shook her head, her teeth flashing in a brief smile that was almost soft, almost gentle.
“In her, I beheld the true Feminine Ideal. Power beyond that of man and mortality. The power of creation itself.”
Her eyes flashed to meet Nigel’s, swift as two arrows shot to the mark.
“But I also saw the moment when she was to be cast down. When she would face off against a Dark Sorcerer, her male counterpart. And he would betray her just at the moment when she was to achieve her Great Glory.” She breathed out slowly.
“I saw it all, Grimm. Her fall and the consequences thereof. I saw sorcerers rounded up and marked with the heptagram. I saw the great magic-users of our day driven into hiding, hunted down like animals. And then, even as you forced your air into my lungs, and I found myself poised on the very brink of death, I heard her voice. Jastira. Speaking to me from beyond the bounds of Time and Space.”
“What did she say?” Nigel asked in a low whisper.
“She said I was to save her. That I was uniquely chosen to bring about her liberation from the prison into which you were to cast her. But I could not do so from within the society of Nocturnus. I could not be what my goddess needed unless I separated myself from any association with sorcery. The Shadowbane Lady would need an ally who rubbed elbows with all the Authorities of Plym, who could gain access to information and records. Who could move and manipulate and make things happen with impunity. Oh, I saw it all! She revealed it to me, in a great and ecstatic vision!”
She closed her eyes, as though reliving those moments of ecstasy right then and there, seated at the bar of The Ugly Mug. She pressed a bejeweled hand to her breast, breathing in and out in great gasps.
The moment passed, however, and she lowered her hand and shook her head.
“Then I woke,” she said. “Brought back to life by you—the very man who would destroy my goddess, though I did not know it then. I left Belfany University the very next day, my course set before me, my mission fixed in my heart. And I’ve never once looked back. ”
“So you got your hooks into Mr. Anguish and stepped into politics by way of matrimony.”