Burn for Me

What’s next for Nevada and Rogan?

I stood in the private executive bathroom of Montgomery International Investigations and slipped a big black boot onto my left foot. The boot was almost knee high, charcoal opaque leather, and it looked like something out of a historical movie. Augustine Montgomery leaned against the marble vanity and watched me wedge my heel into it.

When you saw Augustine for the first time, he took your breath away. His face wasn’t just handsome, it was perfect in the way the greatest works of Renaissance art were perfect. His skin was flawless, his pale blond hair was brushed with surgical precision, and his features had a regal elegance that begged to be immortalized on canvas or, better yet, in marble. His beauty had that cold air of detachment. If he had somehow traveled to the sixteenth century and met Michelangelo, the angel statue would’ve looked completely different. Augustine Montgomery specialized in illusion, and he was a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, which meant he was capable of remarkable things. There was no telling what hid under that remarkably perfect facade. The only thing human about him were his thin-rimmed glasses and his eyes. Shrewd, smart, they gave away his real age—he was around thirty—and they told you he would be a dangerous man to cross.

Lina, his receptionist, surveyed me with a critical eye. Unlike Augustine, she didn’t have the benefit of being an illusion Prime, so her perfect makeup and unnaturally scarlet hair were the result of hours of daily preparation.

“This is a terrible idea, Ms. Baylor,” Augustine said.

I wasn’t going to argue. I’d had better ideas.

“Let me explain why this is a terrible idea.”

“Let me” was a figure of speech. I really had no choice about it, since I was relying on him to make this happen.

“If you do this once, even if it is completely anonymous, they will expect you to do it again. And when you won’t, they will become unhappy. That unhappiness will breed discontent. Eventually one of them will let it slip out: there is a magic user who can extract the truth out of all of our criminals, but she is too selfish to help us.”

I stomped my foot into the right boot.

“This is why Primes do not engage in the day-to-day operations of society. We are only people. We can’t be everywhere at once. If an aquakinetic puts out one fire, the next time something goes ablaze and he fails to be there, the public will turn on him.”

I straightened. “I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. You’re about to do something that’s technically illegal. Yes, I can’t think of a more worthy cause than saving a child, but you are still breaking the law.”

He was wrong. I understood completely. My morning had started completely differently. I had received a payment from a client and then ended up sitting in my car in front of the New Justice Center looking at my tablet and reading the news article about the most hated man in the city of Houston.

His name was Jeff Caldwell. He was in his late forties, neither handsome nor ugly. If you met him on the street, you wouldn’t pay him a second glance. He worked as a support specialist for Harris County Transit, which meant that when people with disabilities applied for curb-to-curb service, he was the one who reviewed their applications. He had a perfectly ordinary family, a wife who was a schoolteacher, and two children, both in college. He had no magic and wasn’t affiliated with any of the Houses—powerful magic families that ran Houston. His friends described him as a kind, considerate man.

In his spare time, Jeff Caldwell kidnapped little girls. He kept them alive for up to a week at a time, then strangled them to death and left their remains in parks, surrounded by flowers. His victims were between the ages of five and seven, and the stories their bodies told made you wish that hell existed just so Jeff Caldwell could be sent there after he died. Last night he had been caught in the act of depositing the tiny corpse of his latest victim, and he’d been apprehended. The reign of terror that had gripped Houston for the past year was finally over. There was just one problem. Seven-year-old Amy Madrid was missing. She had been kidnapped two days ago from her school bus stop, less than twenty-five yards from her house. The MO was too similar to Jeff Caldwell’s previous abductions to be a coincidence. He had to have taken her, and if so, it meant she was still alive somewhere.

Jeff Caldwell refused to talk.

Police scoured his house. They questioned his family, his friends, and his coworkers. They pored over his cell phone records. They interrogated him for hours. He kept his mouth shut.

I could make him talk. Ten minutes with him, and my magic would crack him like a walnut. There was only one problem. Doing that would be announcing to the Houston PD that I was a Truthseeker.

If I’d been a member of a prominent family or a retainer of one of the Houses, such as House Montgomery, the power and influence of such a magic dynasty could have shielded me from the consequences of exposing my magic. But I wasn’t. I was twenty-five years old, and I ran Baylor Investigative Agency, a small, family-owned investigative firm. I had no wealth, no power, and no pedigree. I was a nobody.

If I walked into the police station, declared that my name was Nevada Baylor, and wrenched the truth from Jeff Caldwell, a couple of hours later I would get visitors from Houston PD, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, private Houses, and anyone else who had need for a talented, 100 percent accurate interrogator. Truthseekers like me were rare and valuable. My life would become hell, and they would keep pressure on me and my family until finally I broke and went to work for one of them as a human lie detector. If the government didn’t strong-arm me into it, one of the Houses would.

I liked my life exactly the way it was now. I liked my job, I loved my family, and I even loved our odd house. But if one of my sisters had been kidnapped, and some woman I didn’t know could find her, I would do everything in my power to convince her to do it. I would cry, I would beg, and I would offer her anything she wanted if only she could bring my sister back. Right now Amy Madrid’s parents were probably begging and crying, trying to convince a monster to return their child. And I was that other woman, sitting in my car, while somewhere Amy Madrid was slowly dying of thirst and hunger.

I’d been walking to the New Justice Center, about to destroy my life, when Augustine Montgomery had called my cell. Technically, MII owned Baylor Investigative Agency. We had mortgaged our firm to pay for my late father’s medical bills. Augustine Montgomery had a client for me. He could no longer compel me to take his cases, thanks to a renegotiation of our contract, so I’d declined. But he had insisted. The client was his friend and had asked specifically for me. We’d struck a deal. I would talk to the client, and Augustine would make sure I could anonymously interrogate Jeff Caldwell. Which is how I’d ended up in the corporate bathroom, putting on this disguise Augustine had procured for me. It was the only way he would let me do it.

Lina handed me a charcoal black mask that looked like a ski mask and a ninja hood had a baby. I pulled it on, making sure to tuck in any loose strands of hair, and looked in the mirror. The mask hid my face and my blond hair completely. All you could see were my brown eyes and a narrow strip of tan skin around them.

“Hold your hands out,” Lina said, picking up a pair of elbow-long charcoal gloves. “You can’t put these on by yourself.”

I raised my hands and she tugged the gloves on me.

“Nevada,” Augustine said. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to,” I told him. I couldn’t get the photo of Amy Madrid out of my head.

“You don’t.”

“Mr. Montgomery, when my father was still alive, he set up three rules for our agency. We stay bought once a client hires us. We try to avoid doing illegal things. But most important, at the end of the day we have to be able to look our reflection in the eye. I have to do this. She is just a little girl. She is slowly dying somewhere.”

Augustine sighed. Lina turned to the dark garment bag hanging from the hook on the wall, unzipped it, and took out a long green garment. “Arms.”

I raised my arms again. She slid the garment on me. I was wearing a cape. Dark, forest green, it hid me from head to toe. Lina pushed the Velcro closed on my chest, pulled the deep hood onto my head, and stepped back.

I couldn’t even tell if I was a man or a woman. “What is this?”

“It’s a costume from Alley Theater’s stage production,” Lina said.

“Congratulations,” Augustine said, his perfect face twisting in disgust. “You are now Sir Dougal MacLagain, ‘the Scottish Highwayman.’”

Lina opened the bathroom door.

“Showtime,” Augustine said.