Right?
Viktor squared his shoulders. “Recent events have…changed me. I was granted back the doubts and concerns I had sought to remove from myself.” He shifted a rueful glance to Armaeus. “You are not the only Council member to both remember and forget too much.”
The Magician remained quiet, and it was all I could do not to scoff, though the idea of Viktor suddenly growing a conscience in the wake of the recent conflicts the Arcana Council had faced was not completely unreasonable. He and Simon had both been shaken by an unholy contract they’d struck when Simon had ascended back in the eighties, the details of which had unraveled in front of us during the war against the gods. I’d helped Simon through that transition, and I’d tangentially understood that Viktor had been affected as well. I spent so much time trying to avoid the man, however, I hadn’t given him much thought.
But if he had been asked to help out the Fuggeren family nearly eighty years ago, did that mean he still was in tight with them? And if Jarvis Fuggeren was embroiled with the Shadow Court…
Why had Viktor been in Memphis?
My blood iced over as Viktor began speaking again. “Once my recollections had been fully restored, I began to quietly do research into the agreements I had made and the people I had made them with, only to find myself more concerned at every turn. I had agreed to help the Fuggeren family, but they were little more than ghosts, well-monied playboys without any direction, and that didn’t make sense. Why did they need my help? There seemed to be no reason. I did some small favors, and we both drifted to our own priorities, and our conversations ceased. This was more than half a century ago. Then I was contacted shortly after your return from Hamburg, Armaeus. With a new deal, an offer. To join the Shadow Court and take down the Arcana Council.”
“Yet you’re still here,” the Devil murmured, his voice so soothing, so assured that it almost made me want to answer on Viktor’s behalf just to gain his approval.
Viktor’s eyes shifted to Kreios again. “I am still here. Do you want to know why?”
“They didn’t respect you this time,” Armaeus said. “They didn’t understand what you truly had to offer.”
Viktor’s lip curled. “They did not. They believed I could play only a supporting role.”
My eyes widened. That was a serious miscalculation by anyone wanting to work with Viktor Dal. There were no depths to which the man wouldn’t stoop, but he had a profound and abiding need to be respected. Surely, anyone watching him would know that. Then again, this was a guy who’d dedicated his support to Hitler back in the day. So maybe the people who were making the offer rocked the same megalomania as their one-time leader.
“So you stayed within the Council. And told them no.”
Viktor smiled. It was a cold smile. “I stayed. But I told them yes. I could help them. I would help them. They had only one requirement for me to prove my worth.”
“Bullshit,” Brody hissed beside me as if he couldn’t help himself. I shot my hand out to grab his arm, but the near-soundless word only did partial damage. Viktor blinked, then turned away from Kreios to stare at Eshe. She remained still and silent, her eyes unfocused, but I could feel her energy increase, bathing Viktor with a sense of well-being, respect, even awe.
“What a sacrifice,” she murmured, and I didn’t miss the flush of pride darken Viktor’s cheeks.
He refocused on Kreios. “The Shadow Court revealed only a sliver of its true power in Hamburg. You need to understand that. They fully intend to manipulate the psychic abilities of the key government advisors, military leaders, and national rulers. It’s already begun.”
“What did they want of you?” Kreios murmured.
What they have always wanted,” Viktor said. “The blood price for admission into the High Court. The death of a Council member at my hands.”
Nobody spoke, nobody breathed, and I could do nothing but gape. Blood price, he said, the same words used in the taunting note I’d received at Justice Hall. Blood price. My mind started racing, wondering at the game Viktor was playing. The game he played now—the game he played over a decade ago, in Memphis, Tennessee. How long had he been working with the Shadow Court, and doing what?
And why had he been in Memphis?
“Whose death, Viktor?” Kreios pressed, his question whisper-soft. “Speak your truth.”
Viktor smiled and lifted his hand. A gun materialized in his elegant grasp.
He aimed it at Simon and fired.
8
It was a testament to Nikki and Brody’s cop training and my own relative lack of coffee that we all didn’t completely freak. Instead, everybody froze for a hot second. The gun disappeared from Viktor’s hand, and the Magician breathed out a single word.
“Eshe.”
The High Priestess turned to Viktor, and I realized her aura had changed, fading back to a lavender gold.
“Speak, Emperor,” she entreated, and Viktor seemed to shake himself, his smile growing stronger, his air of cockiness resurfacing, the color returning to his skin. Then, as we sat and watched, spellbound, he began the same story all over again…
But with critical differences.
“Three weeks ago, I was approached by members of the Shadow Court,” he said, outrage and disdain dripping from his words. “There’s no question in my mind that’s who they were. They knew of Armaeus’s challenges, but they did not know I had taken his place along with the Devil as the head of the Council. They sought to make me a turncoat. A traitor. They advised me that I needed only take out a member of the Council to prove my worth.”
Viktor’s disgust was palpable as he spoke, and if I’d not just witnessed a very different rendition of the story, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. As it was, I kept quiet and so did everyone around me. There was something about witnessing full-on crazy right in front of you that proved as mesmerizing as the High Priestess’s aura.
“I informed them I had no desire to go to a court that did not understand how to conduct itself,” Viktor said haughtily, gesturing to Simon, who remained remarkably chill, given he’d just been shadow shot. “But you all need to know. They could approach any one of us, some more subtly than others. And they were ghosts. I asked Simon to track them down, and there were no names or faces in the system that matched. They were completely off the grid.”
The Magician spoke next, his words pitched at a conversational tone, but so loud in the absolutely silent room, we all jumped.
“That appears to be the modus operandi for the Shadow Court. Impressive to have so many people unable to be tracked.”
“Unlikely too, given today’s surveillance capabilities,” Simon put in. My eyes stayed on Viktor as he shook off the residual effects of the High Priestess’s energy, and she squeezed his hand with apparent reassurance. I only managed to transfer my gaze to Simon a second before Viktor felt me staring at him, and I could sense his gaze on me in the next breath as my brain scrambled to catch up with what I’d witnessed.
Which story was true? And what, exactly, was the relationship between the Emperor and the High Priestess? Viktor had handed us a confession of guilt, hadn’t he? Right before he’d handed us some fairy tale about him being the noble leader of the Arcana Council. But nobody else on the Council was reacting to his bombshell, while Nikki, Brody, and I were strangled by our own confusion.