Burn for Me

Chapter 8

By the time Bern picked up my mother and grandmother from the hospital, I had cleaned up the garage, made dinner, and spent hours marinating in the fact that my actions had almost gotten my grandmother killed. I replayed the conversation with Adam in my head half a dozen times. The melted camera was far from definitive evidence, but my gut said he did it. My instincts almost never steered me wrong.

I’d tried calling back on Adam’s number. It was no longer in service. He must’ve used a prepaid phone and then tossed it.

If I hadn’t taken this job . . . I folded that thought very carefully and used it as fuel for the angry fire I was stoking inside. Guilt did me no good right now, but anger gave me all of the determination I needed. I would find out if he did it, even if it meant I’d turn the city upside down. And if he did do it, there would be hell to pay. I might not have combat magic, but I would make it my mission in life to bring him down. Nobody hurt my family and got away with it.

At two o’clock, the kids barged into the house, a full two hours ahead of schedule. Catalina’s friend and her mother happened to drive past our place on their way to a doctor’s appointment and saw the fire trucks. The friend texted Catalina, who saw the text after class and immediately texted Mom. Mom told her that Grandma was in the hospital but everything was fine. Catalina called Bern, got her cousin and her sister out of school, and drove home like a bat out of hell, because that’s how our family rolled.

I served them late lunch and sketched the situation out. It took them fifteen minutes to calm down and another fifteen minutes to be convinced that none of this should be shared on Facebook, Instagram, or Herald.

We were about done with food when Grandma came through the door looking like she wanted to punch somebody. My mother followed, limping. Today must’ve done a number on her leg.

“They wanted her to spend the night, but she won’t do it,” Mom said.

“Grandma!” Arabella waved her arms. “Why aren’t you in the hospital?”

“I have things to do,” Grandma squeezed through her teeth.

“Like what?” Lina blocked her way.

“Catalina, do not mess with me right now.” Grandma’s eyebrows came together. “I’m going to get a blowtorch and repair the walls, and then I’m going to install an observation post for your mother so she can shoot the next sonovabitch who tries to break in here.”

My mother pinned me down with her stare. “What did the firemen say?”

“They said Grandma shouldn’t have been smoking next to a gasoline container.”

Grandma Frida spun toward me. If looks could burn, we’d all be incinerated.

“Mad Rogan’s arson guys said someone mixed a military-grade antipersonnel compound with some gasoline and applied a heat source to it.”

“Mad Rogan?” Bern asked.

At the table Leon suddenly came to life and put his phone down. “Mad Rogan?”

“Mad Rogan had nothing to do with the arson,” I said.

“How do you know?” Leon asked.

“I know,” I said. “I asked. I monitored his experts too, and they weren’t lying.”

“Mad Rogan was here?” Leon pointed at the table. “Here? And nobody told me?”

“A thousand pardons, Your Majesty,” Arabella said. “Everybody was too busy trying to save Grandma.”

Leon ignored her. “Did he do anything while he was here?”

“He cut down the garage door,” I told him.

Leon jumped off his seat like his butt had springs.

“Sit,” Mother said.

He landed back in the chair. Apparently my younger cousin was a secret Mad Rogan fan.

“How sure are you that this was done by Adam Pierce?” Mother asked.

“I’m pretty sure,” I said. “I’ll be one hundred percent sure after I ask him face-to-face.”

My mother put a small box on the table. Ten orange pills rested inside. “So find him and ask.”

“I’d like nothing better.” I swiped the pillbox off the table. Looked like I would be going to the bad part of town tonight. It was just past three o’clock. Plenty of time before it got dark. “I might have to get backup. The kind you won’t like.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” my mother said.

“Better you get Pierce, than us,” Grandma Frida said. “Because if Pierce shows up here again, we won’t be playing around.”

“After we’re done, we’ll put what’s left of him into a plastic grocery bag and you can take it to his family,” Mother promised. “And Nevada? If you’re even thinking of beating yourself up over what happened, forget it.”

“You were doing your job,” Grandma Frida said. “You didn’t cause this to happen. They started it, whoever they are. They will regret it, because we will finish it.”

“Thank you.” It didn’t kill the guilt, but right now guilt wasn’t as important as finding Adam and finding out if he was responsible.

I headed out of the room. I’d need to get my Ruger.

Behind me, Mom said, “Let’s talk about safety. Nobody goes anywhere alone . . .”

I went to the cage, unlocked it, and took out my P90. The pills were for Bug. It was barely three in the afternoon, but I’d need backup to go see Bug, even in daylight. Bug lived in Jersey Village, or, as it was better known, the Pit. I could call one of the freelancers except that right now most of them ran from us like we were on fire. It would also cost me an arm and a leg. Going into the Pit was bad for your health.

I split the pills, putting seven into a plastic bag and three in the jar to take with me. I might need to go see Bug more than once. Three would do for the first visit.

There was one person who could give me all the backup I needed and then some. I scrolled through my phone to Mad Rogan’s number. This was insanity, but the stakes had changed. Before, Adam was just talking. Now there was a chance he’d turned violent. If he had tried to burn my grandmother to death, nothing would stop him from incinerating me the moment I said something he didn’t like. And if I did find Adam Pierce, I had no way in hell to contain him.

I hesitated with my finger over the number.

This was a bad idea. Mad Rogan was violent, ruthless, and brutal. All of the things I normally avoided in my job. I had a feeling he had no brakes, and that scared me. If he went off the rails and started slaughtering people, there was very little I could do about it. I didn’t want to be responsible for any deaths. Nor did I want to be left holding the bag when the dust from his rampage cleared and cops came asking questions. He had expensive lawyers. I didn’t.

The way my body came to attention when he was near scared me too. He turned me on by just looking at me. Having sex with him would be an experience I would never forget, and some insane part of me wanted that experience. I wanted to see him naked. I wanted to have all of that overwhelming masculine intensity focused on me. I’d never before had a reaction like that to a man.

I couldn’t trust Mad Rogan. Not just because he was likely a sociopath but also because he was a Prime and head of an old House. To him I was a peon. If he needed a bullet shield in a fight, he’d use me without any hesitation. I was the hired help, the means to an end, and I had to draw some strict lines in the dirt for him and for myself, or I would come out of this crushed or not at all. And if I gave him any hint of being vulnerable, whether it was my love for my family, my pride, or my irrational craving to find out what his hands on my skin would feel like, he would use it against me.

Not to mention that I had locked him in place with my magic and pulled the answers out of him. Considering that I was still alive and uninjured, he’d handled it awfully well. That was something I would need to research. My magic was rare and information about it was sparse, mostly because the few people who had it worked in classified positions. I had done my best to learn as much as I could, but I had never seen any mention of that particular magic. It had come out of nowhere.

I stared at Mad Rogan’s number. Was there any other way to do this?

If Adam turned on me, any freelancer I took with me, even if I took two of them, would end up dead. I would end up dead. Adam thought he could use me; so did Mad Rogan. The best way to deal with them was to use them right back. I had to throw the two Primes at each other and wait quietly on the sidelines until the dust settled.

I took a deep breath and pushed the keys. He answered on the second ring.

“Yes?”

Hearing his voice was like being caressed. Chains, I reminded myself. Basement. Psycho. Boundaries. Boundaries were good. “I thought about your offer.”

“I’m aflutter with anticipation.”

Psycho who likes to mock me. Even better. “I don’t want your money. I don’t want to be employed by you. But I would like to have a partnership. I want to be very clear: I wouldn’t be working for you. I would be working with you on equal footing toward a common goal. And I have conditions.”

“I’m listening.”

“One, you don’t kill anyone unless they make a clear attempt to murder us.”

There was a long pause. “I’ll try.”

“Two, you promise to apprehend and deliver Adam Pierce to his House alive.”

“I can’t promise you that. I can promise that I’ll do everything in my ability to keep him alive, within reason, but if that moron decides to jump off Baytown Bridge, there won’t be much I can do to save him.”

Technically it was true. Human bodies reacted oddly to the loss of gravity and free fall. Even if Mad Rogan caught Adam with his magic half a second after he jumped, Adam would still die of internal bleeding. That’s why levitators had their own classification and weren’t just lumped together with other telekinetics.

“Fine. Promise me that you will do everything you can to help me return him alive to his family.”

“Sure.”

These promises probably weren’t worth diddly squat.

“Third, I want you to protect my family while we’re doing this. I need to know that I can count on that protection.”

“Of course. That’s the nature of our agreement. Would you like me to station some people to keep an eye on your home?”

“Yes. They have to come to the front door, and they have to introduce themselves to my family, or someone might accidentally shoot them.”

“Done.” His voice was crisp. “My turn. This is a professional partnership, and I expect you to treat it as one. If you hear from Adam, if he calls you, if he comes to your house, the moment that meeting or conversation is over, I want to be informed of it. Not the next day, not when it’s convenient, but immediately after. You’ll disclose all information related to this matter, including the terms of your contract, the state of your relationship with Adam, and anything you know about Gavin Waller.”

“Fair enough.”

“You also won’t depart on any expeditions without discussing it with me. I don’t want to get a text ‘Hi, going after Pierce’ and then watch cops fish you out of Buffalo Bayou the next morning.”

“I’m touched.” Not really.

“I would have to start the investigation from scratch. If you die, it will be very inconvenient.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Do we have a deal?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m going to Jersey Village to look for Adam Pierce. Would you like to come?”

“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

I hung up. So this is what making a deal with the devil felt like. Too late for regrets now. I sighed and packed an extra clip.

A Range Rover slid into the parking lot in exactly ten minutes. It was a large vehicle, gunmetal grey, slick, but solid. The passenger door swung open and I saw Mad Rogan in the driver seat. He’d traded the suit and shoes for faded jeans, a pale grey T-shirt, and heavy, dark boots. The effect was staggering. The suit had toned him down, smoothing harshness with a veneer of wealth and civilization. Now he was all rough edge and rugged strength. He looked like he needed some jungle ruins to explore or some bad people to hit with a chair. Trouble was, he was the bad people.

His magic lay coiled about him, a violent pet with vicious teeth.

I would have to get in and sit next to him, with only a few inches of distance between us. I would have to enter his space. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get into this car.

“I have one more condition,” I said.

He simply looked at me.

“Do not read my thoughts.” He didn’t need to know what was in my head. He just didn’t.

He smiled. “Not a problem.”

I took the passenger seat and put my backpack in the space in front of it. Okay. I was in. I just had to say the bare minimum and keep my thinking to myself.

“I can’t read thoughts,” Mad Rogan said. “But I find that most of the time I don’t need to.”

And that did not sound ominous. Not at all. I buckled up.

The Range Rover shot down the side road. The window glass looked really thick and tinted. This wasn’t the cheaper bullet-resistant version. This was the heavy-duty bulletproof glass with six-centimeter safety glazing and a layer of polycarbonite on the inside to keep the window from shattering. You could fire an AK-47 at it at close range and the glass would crack but remain completely smooth on the inside. This kind of glass also weighed a ton. I touched the window controls. The window crept down, whisper quiet, and back up. Grandma Frida would be proud. A normal window lifter wouldn’t be able to raise the window back up. He’d had custom window lifters installed. The vehicle was likely armor-plated too.

“What’s the rating on the armor plates?”

“Hard ammo. It’s a VR9 vehicle.”

Holy crap. The Range Rover wouldn’t just stop a bullet from a handgun or an assault rifle. It would stop an armor-piercing round from a machine gun. That much armor meant a crap load of extra weight, but the car glided like a skater across the ice, which required reinforced suspension and custom dampers. This vehicle wasn’t retrofitted with armor. It was built to be armored from the ground up.

To top it off, it looked just like any other high-end Range Rover on the road. Most people didn’t realize that armored cars weren’t just about being the most bulletproof. It was also about discretion. No car was completely damage proof, not even a tank, and the best strategy to keep your occupant safe was to not get shot at in the first place. That required the vehicle to be as close to the non-armored equivalent as possible so it would blend in with other cars on the road. There were always idiots who wanted flashy armored monstrosities that looked like something out of a postapocalyptic movie. They wanted to make a statement. Unfortunately, their statement said, Here I am, shoot me. People who actually required protection opted for quiet quality like this, the kind that came at a heart-stopping price and said volumes about their owners.

Mad Rogan didn’t give a crap about what the rest of us thought about him. He had no need to impress; he wanted the best, and he would pay premium price as long as he got it. Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

“What’s in Jersey Village?” he asked.

“Bug. He’s a surveillance specialist. I have something he wants, and I’m going to have him find Adam Pierce for us. We have to do it now, before Adam shows up at my house again, because my mother has threatened to deal with him and then send what’s left of his body to his House in a plastic grocery bag.”

“Your mother seems confident,” he said.

“Do you know what a Light Fifty is?” I asked.

“It’s a Barrett M82 sniper rifle.”

“My mother was looking at your head through the scope of one while we were eating lunch. We need to find Adam Pierce before my mother shoots him or my grandmother runs him over with a tank. Or before he incinerates our home and my family with it.”

“As we discussed, I have a team guarding your warehouse. If he shows up anywhere near it, we’ll know. Now your turn. I’ll have the information now,” Mad Rogan said. “All of it.”

I started at the moment MII called us, told him very briefly that MII hired us to find Adam Pierce, and ran through my investigation, skipping unimportant details such as mortgaged businesses and dreams featuring him being half naked. Volunteering was for suckers, and he wouldn’t get any information out of me unless it was absolutely necessary.

He grimaced. “Augustine finally caved in.”

“You know him?”

“Yes. We went to college together. I’m not his favorite person.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen him without his magic.” Mad Rogan shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Augustine always had an overdeveloped sense of loyalty to his House. He struggled with it. I told him back then that if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up in an office dancing to his family’s tune.”

“Is that why you joined the military? To get away from your family?” And why did I ask that?

“I joined because they told me I could kill without being sent to prison and be rewarded for it.”

True. Holy shit. I was trapped in a car with a homicidal maniac. Awesome.

“You have a strange look on your face,” he said.

“I just realized I shouldn’t be in the same vehicle with you. In fact, I shouldn’t have called you in the first place, so I’m trying very hard to rewind time.”

He grinned. I’ve amused the dragon. Whee.

“Would you rather I lied to you? Not that I would bother, but even if I did, there is no point in it, is there?”

I didn’t answer. Keeping my mouth shut was an excellent strategy.

“Does Augustine know you’re a Truthseeker?”

He’d figured me out. I wasn’t really surprised, not after I’d pinned him down and wrenched the answers out of him. “What my employer knows or doesn’t know about me is none of your business.”

He chuckled, a genuine, rich laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Augustine prides himself on his powers of observation and being an excellent judge of character. He thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. He used to try to make brilliant deductions by noting what people wore and how they acted. He has a Truthseeker on staff and he has no idea. He’s likely been looking to employ one for ages.” Mad Rogan chuckled again. “The irony, it’s delicious.”

I kept my mouth shut. Hopefully he wouldn’t ask me anything else.

“Truthseeking is the third rarest magic talent. Why not make a living from it? Shouldn’t you be in some office with a two-way mirror asking uncomfortable questions?”

“That’s not covered under our agreement.”

He glanced at me, his eyes dark. “Would you rather talk about your dream?”

“No.”

“Considering that I was featured in it, I think I deserve to know the particulars. Were my clothes missing because we were in bed? Was I touching you?” He glanced at me. His voice could’ve melted clothes off my body. “Were you touching me?”

I shouldn’t have gotten into his car. I should’ve taken a separate vehicle.

“Cat got your tongue, Nevada?”

“No, we weren’t in bed. I was pushing you off a cliff to your death.” I pointed at the highway. “Take the next exit and stay in the right lane, please. We’ll need to make a right.”

He chuckled again and took the exit.

The Range Rover rolled down a gentle stop at the end of the exit ramp, and we turned right onto deserted Senate Avenue. At some point it was a typical suburban street, two lanes on each side, divided by a flower bed and decorative trees. A field with grass mowed short stretched on the left. An equally shorn lawn lay on the right, a curving drive cutting through it to permit access to a one-story brick building. A large sign rose on the right, set on a sturdy metal pole.

YOU ARE LEAVING HOUSTON

METRO AREA

A second sign in bright yellow yelled at us with big black letters.

FLOODING AHEAD

TURN AROUND

DON’T DROWN

“Make a right here.” I pointed at the driveway.

Mad Rogan turned. The driveway brought us to a drive-through at the brick building, blocked by a solid metal bar. Another sign said Private Security Area Parking. $2 per hour, $12 per day maximum.

“Let me do the talking,” I said.

“Be my guest.”

The drive-through window slid open and a woman looked at me. She was short and muscular, with dark brown skin and glossy black hair put away into six neat cornrows. A tactical vest hugged her frame, and a Sig Sauer lay in the desk next to her.

“Hi, Thea.” I showed her my ID.

“Haven’t seen you for a while,” Thea said. “Who’s the prince in the driver seat?”

“A client.”

Thea’s eyebrows rose. “You’re taking a client into the Pit?”

“There is a first time for everything.”

Thea leaned forward a little and gave Mad Rogan her tough stare. “Okay, client. Standard warning: you have left the Metro Houston area. You are entering territory controlled by House Shaw. This is a limited-security area. If you proceed past the red line at the end of this parking lot, you may be a victim of a violent crime, such as mugging, assault, rape, or murder. House Shaw patrols the water, and if they observe you being a victim of such a crime, they will render aid, but by crossing that red line you acknowledge that House Shaw has a limited ability to assist you. This conversation is being recorded. Do you understand the warning that has been given to you?”

“Yes,” Mad Rogan said.

“Your consent has been recorded and will be used as evidence should you attempt to seek any damages or hold House Shaw liable for any harm happening to you in the Pit. Getting in is easy, getting out is hard. Welcome to the anal sore of Houston. Have fun, kids.”

She popped a paper ticket from the machine on the side of her desk and handed it to Rogan. He took it. The bar rose and he steered the vehicle into the deserted parking lot. He drove to the far end and parked by the foot-wide red line drawn on the pavement. A hundred yards beyond the line, a bayou spread. The murky water the color of green tea lay placid. On the left, the top floor of a once-two-story office building stuck out of the mire. Once-decorative trees stood half submerged next to sunken wrought-iron streetlamps.

Jersey Village used to be one of those small suburban towns Houston was in the habit of swallowing whole as it grew. A boring bedroom community northwest of downtown, Jersey Village slowly grew a robust mini-downtown, with several large tech companies building their offices here. It would’ve continued to exist in happy obscurity if it hadn’t been for the infamous Mayor Bruce. Mayor Thomas Bruce, better known as Bubba Bruce, somehow managed to get himself elected on the platform of being a fun guy to have over to your backyard barbecue. Once in office, Bubba Bruce desperately tried to leave his mark on Houston. He really wanted to build an airport, but since Houston already had one, Bubba decided to build a subway. He was told that Houston was built on marshes and ground moisture would be an issue. Bubba Bruce insisted. He planned to use mages to “push” the groundwater out of the construction areas. Despite vocal opposition to the project by people much smarter than him, he went ahead with it.

Twelve years ago, a cadre of mages broke the ground on the first metro station here, in Jersey Village. They spent a month setting up their spells and finally activated their complicated magic. The water left the area. Without it, the weight of the town proved to be too much, and Jersey Village, which sat atop an empty oil field, promptly sank into the ground. An hour later the water came back with a vengeance, aided by nearby bayous and underground streams. In twenty-four hours, Jersey Village turned into a swamp. Two days later, Mayor Bruce was kicked out of office.

Over the next year the city tried unsuccessfully to drain the area. The suburbanites had cashed in their insurance and fled, while criminals, drug addicts, and homeless squatted in half-flooded buildings. Finally the city council, exhausted by lawsuits and failed attempts to drain the area, gave up and excised the entire flood zone from the Houston metro area, because it was single-handedly doubling Houston’s crime rate. Now private firms patrolled the area. The task of keeping the Pit from completely degenerating into a lawless zone came bundled with some lucrative municipal contracts, so over the years it bounced from House to House. Right now House Shaw was looking after the Pit. They were doing just enough to keep the contract.

Over the last decade, Jersey Village had become the last stop. Magic-warped, gangsters, most wanted—they made their lairs here, hiding from the light in the abandoned offices. The Houses didn’t care, as long as they didn’t get out. The last time I had come here, I’d taken Aisha for backup. It had cost me a grand, and both of us had barely gotten out.

I checked my gun in its shoulder holster and stepped out of the car. Mad Rogan exited on his side. A rickety dock led the way into the Pit, veering off between the buildings. I started down the bridge. Mad Rogan strode next to me.

Bayous had their own primeval beauty, a kind of grim, timeless elegance, with dark, calm water and enormous cypresses, buttressing the shore with their bloated trunks. Jersey Village had none of it. It looked just like a flood zone where the water hadn’t gone away. Here and there the top of a rusted car poked through the dirty water. Some smaller buildings had burst, warped by the flood, spilling moldy trash into the open. Pale green scum floated on the surface. The Pit was ugly and it smelled even worse. Like sticking your head down an old half-drained fish tank.

“Lovely place,” Mad Rogan said.

“Wait until you meet the natives.”

A sardonic smile curved his lips. “Will there be a welcome party?”

“Probably.”

He stopped and held his arm out, blocking me. The water in front of us parted. A clawed hand reached out, grabbing the slimy support of the bridge, and a nude woman pulled herself up onto the wooden planks. Her skin was a mottled green. You could play xylophone on her ribs. She blinked at me, her eyes dull and empty.

“How’s life, Cherry?” I asked.

“How the fuck do you think it is? You bring me meat?”

I reached into my backpack and pulled out a plastic container with two big raw chicken drumsticks in it, the thigh meat on. “Bug still alive?”

“Yeah. He’s in his old digs, in Xadar building. Stay away from the main bridge. Peaches and Montrel are in a turf war.”

That meant Peaches did away with his former boss. Not good. I passed the container to Cherry. She grabbed the chicken leg and bit into it with triangular crocodile teeth. I stepped around her and kept walking. Mad Rogan followed me.

“A friend of yours?”

“I met her about two years before,” I said. “She’s magic-warped.”

“I can see that.”

Magic was a funny thing. Almost a century and a half ago, when the serum that granted magic powers was first developed, some people took it and gained power, while others turned into monsters. Now, generations later, all of us still carried the potential to become twisted. Sometimes when people tried to augment their power, their magic reacted in terrible ways and they became like Cherry—warped.

“What happened to her?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Her arms have track marks, so she was likely a junkie at some point. Probably sold herself to some institute or House for experimental augmentation and it didn’t go well. I bring her chicken to trade for information.”

“It’s a rare treat for her?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you didn’t get a good deal. She didn’t tell you anything to justify the chicken.”

“She told me that Peaches killed Basta and took over the Southside. Montrel has the Northside, and he can be reasonable, but Peaches is batshit crazy and there is no way we can avoid him, because there are only a handful of ways in and out of here, and Xadar building is in the Southside.”

“You could’ve gotten more out of her.”

I turned to him. “What’s your point?”

Mad Rogan loomed next to me. “You bring her chicken because you feel sorry for her.”

“Yes. Why is that a problem?”

“I don’t judge,” he said. “You’re allowed your compassion.”

Oh great. Thank you for permission. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“The one where you think you can tell me what to do.”

The bridge split and we turned right, away from the main route. Ahead, office buildings stuck out of the water like islands of concrete and brick. The roofs bristled with metal poles supporting tangles of wires. Above the second floor, a wide yellow line crossed each building with words stenciled in yellow: No power below this line.

Mad Rogan’s magic brushed against me and I fought an urge to jump back.

“As I said, I don’t judge,” he said. “If you had kicked her in the face instead of giving her chicken, I’d need to know. If you had hurled the chicken into the water and made her swim for it, I’d need to know that too. The more information I have, the better I can anticipate your actions when it will matter. For example, if a starving man pulls a gun on you and you get the upper hand, you will likely let him go because you will feel sorry for him. That’s the kind of person you are.”

“And what kind of person are you?”

His face was hard. “The kind who shoots first.”

The bridge curved behind the office buildings. We walked past the first half-sunken giant of concrete. Ahead, the bridge ended abruptly. I stopped.

“Damn it.”

“We’ll have to take the main bridge?” Mad Rogan asked.

I reached into my light jacket, pulled my gun out of the holster, and put it in my pocket. Mad Rogan watched me with a slightly amused expression. We turned left, picking our way across a rickety, narrow bridge until it spat us out into the open space between the office buildings. Here the ground rose slightly. Over the years, the Pit’s inhabitants had dumped piles of gravel, concrete, and brick chunks onto it until a narrow rectangular island had formed. Wooden bridges thrust from it, curving in all directions. Directly in front of me, men and women peered from the windows of an abandoned building. To the right, a group of people crowded around something.

I stepped onto the island. The group parted and a tall man strode out. He was skinny and pale, his arms and legs too long for his body. Limp reddish hair framed his face, the tangled strands the exact color of a ripe peach.

“Peaches?” Mad Rogan murmured next to me.

“Yes.”

“Anything I need to know?”

“He summons swarms of poisonous swamp flies.”

It’s a known fact that child molesters look just like normal, ordinary people. Peaches looked like you would imagine a child molester might look. His face wasn’t unpleasant, but there was something deeply unsettling in his gaze. Something sick and creepy. It rolled over you like old oil from a fryer.

Peaches pointed over my shoulder at Mad Rogan. “Hey you! You! What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

On his left, a tall man jerked a Glock up. A woman in a black tank top and dirt-smeared jeans next to him raised a Chiappa Rhino. The distinct barrel was a dead giveaway. Just what we needed.

“We don’t want any trouble,” I said. “We’re just passing through.”

“Trouble? I am fucking trouble, bitch!” Peaches waved his arms. His face flushed. He was building himself up. If he’d been a wild turkey, he would have puffed out all his feathers. He’d work himself up to violence in a minute. Mad Rogan must’ve set off some alarm in Peaches’ brain that told him something was to be gained by humiliating him. “You think you can just come through here with your bitch?”

Mad Rogan didn’t answer.

“You mute, punk? You mute?” Spittle flew from Peaches’ lips. He closed the distance.

My heart sped up. My knees trembled slightly from the rush of adrenaline.

Peaches looked like he was about to ram Mad Rogan with his chest. Mad Rogan looked at him. It was a cold, emotionless stare. Peaches decided that two feet of space was close enough. “You’re in my place now! I am in charge here!”

His hand barely missed me as he flailed around. I took a step back.

“Don’t you fucking move! Shoot her if she moves.”

The man on the left clicked the safety off his Glock.

Peaches leaned closer. “I tell you what, if I was in a good mood, I’d fuck you up and send you back without your bitch, but I’m in a bad mood. I’m in a bad mood, punk. I’m gonna shoot your bitch right here and then I’m gonna put you in a hole. You worth money, punk, because you look like you worth money.”

I could shoot Peaches from where I stood. I’d shot through my pocket before. I would have to kill him though, because if he lived, the flies he summoned would turn me into a cluster of boils. Aiming through a pocket was tricky.

Mad Rogan smiled a big, wide, conciliatory grin and raised his hands. “Hey, hey. No need to get worked up. Look, no gun. I can see you’re the man. You’re in charge here.”

“That’s right!”

“You’re a businessman, right?” Mad Rogan kept smiling, his expression pleasant and placating. “Let’s talk, like two businessmen.” He invited Peaches to a bridge stretching back the way we came. “Let’s just calm down for a minute and talk, right, buddy?”

“Talk money, punk.” Peaches moved with Mad Rogan onto the bridge.

Mad Rogan strolled next to him. “I can see you own all of this and you being in charge and all . . .”

Mad Rogan grabbed Peaches by the throat, kicked his feet out from under him, and hurled him into the water as if the tall man weighed nothing.

Several things happened at the same time: I yanked my gun out and took a shooter stance; the barrels of the man’s Glock and the woman’s Chiappa fell off the guns as if sliced off by a razor blade; and Peaches splashed in the water. We all stopped moving, me with my Ruger pointing at the group, and the two shooters staring blankly at their disfigured firearms.

The larger man opened his hand and let the Glock’s remains fall to the ground.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Peaches howled, rising to his feet, up to his hips in water. Dark green dots swirled around him. A swarm of fat flies shot out of his hands, curving around him like a shawl.

Mad Rogan flicked his fingers. The wall of the nearest building broke off in one long, twenty-foot slab, slid off the building, and crushed Peaches.

Oh my God.

Mad Rogan turned to face the crowd. Behind him a large crack split the building’s side, and bricks and mortar rained down onto the first chunk. Nobody screamed.

The last brick fell onto the pile. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

“Now we know,” Mad Rogan said, his voice cold. “I’m in charge. I’m in charge of you. I’m in charge of the guy next to you. I’m in charge of the ground you’re standing on. When I’m gone, I don’t care who is in charge. When I leave here, you can fight and kill each other over who is running things while I’m not here. But let’s be clear: when I’m here, when you see me, I’m in charge.”

The woman lowered her disfigured gun to the floor. The rest of Peaches’ people stood motionless.

“Are there any questions?” Mad Rogan asked.

A short man in a tattered Dallas Cowboys jersey raised his hand slowly. The woman in the tank top grabbed his hand and pushed it down.

“Okay then. You may go.”

By the time I took three breaths, the island was clear.

“Which way is your expert?” Mad Rogan asked me.