Burn for Me

Chapter 4

Gustave’s Custom Cycles occupied a rectangular steel building with corrugated metal walls. It was exactly two hundred feet wide and eight hundred feet long, manufactured by Olympia Steel Buildings, delivered to the site and assembled there four years and seven months ago. Bern had pulled up the city permits for me.

Before I went to bed last night, I spent hours reading the background file on Adam Pierce and whatever Bern had been able to dig up during the day. I read interviews with Adam Pierce’s parents and teachers, tabloid articles, credible gossip on Herald, and what little Adam’s college friends said about him. I read his speeches. Adam liked making speeches, especially after giving his family the finger, and the message wasn’t so much anarchy but right of might. If you can take what you want, you should be able to do so, and government and law enforcement shouldn’t be able to prevent you because they have no right to exist. He threw around terms like negative liberty and quoted Hobbes.

I knew about Hobbes only because my major had required some political science courses. Hobbes was a seventeenth-century English philosopher best known for his belief that without political community, man’s life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Adam had found a different sentiment from Hobbes: “A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.” He repeated it on at least three occasions. Adam felt society hindered his freedom by not letting him do what he wanted to do. Unfortunately for him, if what he wanted to do was set people on fire, he was out of luck. The rest of us wouldn’t stand for that.

I now knew more about Adam Pierce than I ever wanted to. He was smart, at times cruel, and easily bored. He wouldn’t trust me no matter what I did. Establishing some sort of friendship was out of the question. If I tried to be earnest and sincere, he’d laugh; if I tried to use reason, he would yawn. My only chance was to be interesting. I had to catch his attention and hold it.

The Twitter picture of him in front of the bike shop kept bugging me. A real biker didn’t let just any mechanic put hands on his bike. No, real bikers picked their mechanics carefully. There was a good deal of trust involved. So last night I looked into Gustave’s Custom Cycles, and when a couple of red flags went up, I asked Bern to help. He found a number of interesting things. This morning I ate breakfast, put on my jeans and comfortable running shoes in case I had to run for my life, and drove to the motorcycle shop. Adam wanted amusement out of life. I was about to tap him on the shoulder. I just had to do it hard enough for him to turn around.

The building looked older than either of its neighbors. The corrugated walls had suffered some dents over the years. Someone had painted the front facade solid black and airbrushed a hell bike on it: huge, shiny, and framed in billowing flames full of grinning red skulls.

The parking lot held two vehicles, both Dodge trucks, one white, one black. Good. I wouldn’t have to do my show-and-tell in front of the whole class. I parked next to the white truck, grabbed my business fake-leather folder, and walked into the office. Nobody was manning the counter, so I rang the bell and waited.

The door swung open and a man in his early thirties shouldered his way in. Tall and lanky, he looked spare; not underfed but dried like jerky under the sun. He wore a T-shirt smudged with oil and faded old jeans. His skin was a rich olive brown, about a shade or two darker than my own. He’d shaved his head, but a short, carefully shaped beard hugged his jaw. I recognized him from the image Bern had dug up during his research—Gustave Peralta, the owner.

He saw me and blinked. I clearly wasn’t someone he’d expected. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Nevada Baylor. I’m looking for Gustave Peralta.”

“Call me Gus,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

I passed him my business card.

“Private investigator.” He frowned. “That’s new.”

“I was hired by House Pierce to find Adam Pierce.”

“Can’t help you,” Gus said. “Haven’t seen him in the last six months.”

An annoying magic click. A lie.

“He hasn’t visited the shop in the last week?” The Twitter photo was shared this Monday.

“Nope.”

A lie.

“Gus . . .”

“Mr. Peralta. I have nothing to say to you. You can show yourself out.” He turned to leave.

I opened the folder and pulled a piece of paper out. “This is the printout of your payments received.”

He stopped and turned on his heel toward me.

I put a second piece of paper on the counter. “This is the printout of your outgoing payments. And this is your payroll.”

He grabbed the paper off the counter. “Where did you get this?”

“We hacked your office computer.”

“That’s illegal!”

I shrugged. “I told you, I’m not the cops.”

He reached for his cell phone. “How about I’ll dial nine-one-one right now and report this?”

I smiled. “Let me get to the end, and if you still want to call the cops, I won’t stop you. If you look over here where I drew a small star? This shows a payment in the amount of nine thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars labeled ‘Motorcycle repairs.’”

The righteous anger died down a little in Gus’s eyes. “So what?”

“This is a recurring payment that’s coming out of Christina Pierce’s personal account.” Mrs. Pierce was a wild guess. The best we’d been able to do was determine that the payment had been made from an account owned by someone within House Pierce. Adam’s mother seemed like a safe bet.

“So? I did some work for Adam back then, and he was low on cash. His family makes payments.”

“No, Mr. Peralta. You and I make payments. Adam Pierce walks in and says, ‘I’ll take one of each color’ and throws down his Visa Black Card. If you look right here, in your payroll, you will see a gentleman by the name of Reginald Harrison listed as an independent contractor. You will also see that Reginald Harrison is paid nine thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars in cash. The nine thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars number is very interesting because the IRS pays attention to any cash transaction in the amount of ten thousand dollars or above.”

“So what? Reginald works for me.”

Lie. “Reginald Harrison’s net worth is close to twenty million dollars, so I very much doubt that. He does have a younger brother, Cornelius Harrison, a very nice man, who happens to be Adam Pierce’s childhood friend. You’re washing Adam’s money. His family makes a payment and you pass it on to Adam in cash, while Reginald claims it on his taxes. You receive five hundred dollars in compensation via the second payment, two days later, once Adam gets his money.”

Gus crossed his arms.

“The payments are made on the seventh of each month. That means the next payment is in two days and Adam Pierce will visit you to pick up his pocket change. I’m guessing you didn’t mention this to the nice detectives who interviewed you.”

If I’d had the manpower, and if I’d been confident that Houston’s finest wouldn’t find Adam for two more days, I would have laid a lovely trap. But Adam would burn through anything I could throw at him, and the manhunt had reached hysterical levels. Talking Adam into surrendering to his House was still my best and only strategy. To do that, I had to show that I wasn’t lying.

“He didn’t do it,” Gus said. “Adam is a stand-up guy.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Right now most of the city’s police force is foaming at the mouth hoping to blow his brain over the nearest sidewalk. You’re a reasonable man. Honestly, what do you think his chances are of getting out of this alive?”

Gus grimaced. “Look, I don’t know where he is.”

True. “I just want to bring him home safe to his mother. She loves him. He is her baby boy. She doesn’t want to lose him to some trigger-happy SWAT sniper.” I pushed my card across the counter. “Tell him I came by. That’s all I’m asking.”

The shark fin of Montgomery International Investigations rose among the towers of Houston’s downtown, still as menacing as ever. I stuck my tongue at it. It didn’t seem impressed.

I parked and marched to Augustine Montgomery’s office. The immaculate receptionist spoke into her headset and motioned me to follow.

“So how long did it take you to figure out which shade of liquid foundation would cover up your bruise?” she asked.

“About half an hour. Did it work?”

“No.”

Touché.

Augustine Montgomery, still impossibly beautiful, raised his eyes from his tablet. “I am not a terrible person.”

“Yes, you are. The note in the file states that House Pierce cut off Adam financially. They are still giving him money. His mother is probably the culprit.”

Augustine leaned back and braided his long fingers into a single fist. If their shredder stopped working, they could just dump the paper over his head and his marble-perfect cheekbones would slice it to ribbons on the way down.

“I was assured that all financial ties were severed.”

I put the printouts of Gustave’s business hijinks on Augustine’s desk. He studied them for a long moment. “Do I want to know how you got these?”

“No.”

Augustine motioned to me. “Stand here.”

I came over and stood next to him.

“Say nothing,” he said. “I want you to understand that if this information is in error, the consequences for you will be serious.”

His fingers flew over the keyboard. A large monitor came to life, showing an office backdrop and a trim man in a business suit at a desk. Peter Pierce, Adam’s older brother. The traces of Adam’s beauty were definitely there, in the dark eyes, the bold line of the nose, and the shape of the mouth, but Peter lacked the pretty-boy smolder that turned Adam into the darling of the media. Peter was at least ten years older, and he radiated “respectable” the way his young sibling radiated “edgy.”

“Augustine,” Peter said. “Have you found him yet?”

“We’re working on it.”

We meant me, and Peter saw my face. I was now irrevocably connected to the search for Adam.

Augustine leaned back. “I have reason to believe House Pierce is still supplementing his income. I can’t stress how important the financial incentive is to bringing him in safely. If you keep giving him play money, he will keep taking his chances.”

Peter waved his hand. “Yes, yes, we must make it as nasty for him as possible. I remember the lecture. I assure you, no payments have been made to him.”

Augustine ran through the transfer for him.

“Give me the account number,” Peter said.

Augustine typed it in. A computer chimed on Peter’s side. He peered on another monitor to his left and shook his head, his expression grim. He pushed a few keys on the keyboard. “Mother?”

“Yes?” an older female voice said on the other end of the line.

“You have to stop funneling money to Adam.”

“Oh, please, it’s an insignificant amount.”

“He can’t have money, Mother. We’ve discussed this.”

“But then he will be poor. This is ridiculous. Do you want your brother to be poor, Peter? Why do all of you have to make it so unpleasant for him?”

Augustine kept his face perfectly neutral.

Unpleasant. That was a good word, especially considering that right now a widow with two children was getting ready to bury the charred corpse of her husband.

“Perhaps you want him to be like the dirty migrants begging for a dollar by the traffic lights?”

Charming. If I never met Christina Pierce, it would be too soon.

“Yes,” Peter said. “I want him to be poor and desperate. So desperate that he comes to us for help.”

“Absolute and utter . . .”

Peter waved at us and pushed a key on his keyboard. The feed stopped. We both looked at the screen for a blink or two.

“So, if I make less than nine thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars per month, does it mean I can legitimately beg at intersections?” I couldn’t help myself.

Augustine took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Do your clients know that you hire dirty migrants?”

“Stop,” Augustine said. “Christina Pierce is a third-generation Prime. She hasn’t been poor a day in her life. It colors her mind-set.”

“If I do track Adam Pierce down, are you going to provide me with support?”

“It depends on the situation.”

Lie. “I stand by my earlier statement. You will have to live with yourself.”

I walked out of his office. My cell phone rang midway through the lobby. An unfamiliar number. I took the call.

“Nevada Baylor.”

“Adam Pierce,” a male voice said. He sounded just like I thought he would, with a slightly sardonic voice, the kind that would fit a self-aware spoiled rich boy to a T.

I had to bait the hook just right. My heart was beating too fast. Deep breath. I could do this.

“Gustave tells me you derailed my money train.”

“Yes, I did. Your brother and your mother are having a conversation about it right now. Does she have something against migrant workers?”

He chuckled. “She probably meant vagrant. So you want to find me?”

“Want is the wrong word. I’m forced to find you. I don’t particularly want to.”

“Who’s forcing you?”

Got you. “What are the chances of you surrendering to me?”

He laughed again, a distinct male chuckle. “Come see me and we’ll talk about it.”

Score. “Sure. Where?”

“Mercer Arboretum, Shade Bog Garden. In half an hour.”

He hung up.

Half an hour. Mercer was twenty miles north of downtown. Twenty miles in Houston traffic might as well have been sixty. Bastard.

I double-timed it to the car, texting Bern on the way. He would still be in class. “AP just called my cell. Meeting in half an hour, at Mercer Arboretum.”

No response.

Bern could track my phone anywhere, but tracking wouldn’t do me any good if Adam turned me into burnt ends. Half an hour would give me just enough time to get to Mercer Arboretum. Not enough time to wrangle any backup. Besides, backup wouldn’t do me any good.

I jumped into my Mazda and drove out of the parking lot like my wheels were on fire. Be interesting. Convince him to turn himself in. Don’t get killed.

I walked into Mercer Arboretum exactly twenty-nine minutes after the call. A two-hundred-and-fifty-acre botanical garden, Mercer was a welcome spot of green shade popular with magical heavyweights. There was something about gardens, and especially flowers, that drew magic users to them even if their magic had nothing to do with plants. I felt it too. All around me flowers bloomed, trees spread their vast canopies, insects fluttered from leaf to leaf, birds sang . . . It was like being wrapped in a cocoon of life, suffused with a simple happiness of existing.

I wasted twenty seconds at a gift kiosk, turned north, and hurried down the trail, my purchase folded in my hand. Men and women passed me, some speaking quietly, some deep in thought. Expensive clothes, beautiful faces, some so flawless that illusion magic had to be involved. There was a point where a human being became too perfect and lost whatever sexual allure they might have been born with. They became untouchable and almost sterile, like plastic mannequins in store windows. Many Primes understood this and left some imperfections, like Augustine Montgomery, but a lot of mages of lower caliber didn’t. Considering how many magic users I passed, this might turn out to be a wild-goose chase. Adam Pierce was too well known, and this place was too public.

The winding path turned into a boardwalk flanked by a black iron rail. The points of the rail bent out toward the nature in arches, as if straight, man-made lines had no business here. Trees crowded in. The air smelled of moisture, that unmistakable wetlands scent of mud and water plants. A bog stretched on both sides of the trail, a few inches of water the color of tea surrounded by thriving green plants and brilliant red irises. The path veered slightly, crossing over the bog, and brought me to a bench. A low stone wall flanked the bench on both sides. On the wall sat Adam Pierce.

He perched, cross-legged, his legs stretching the black leather of his pants. He was wearing a jacket over a black T-shirt. His hair fell over his face in a ragged wave. A complicated magic circle, drawn in black and white chalk, marked the boardwalk and the wall around him. Three rings within each other, three half circles facing outward, their backs touching the middle ring. Spider-thin perfectly straight lines crossed back and forth within the circles, forming an elaborate pattern. Half circles out meant containment. He was holding in his power.

Years ago when aristocrats were expected to serve in the military, they began practicing with swords as soon as they could walk. Now Primes practiced drawing arcane symbols. If I had to duplicate whatever he had drawn, I would need a picture for reference, a ruler, a pair of compasses to make those circles, and a couple of hours. He probably drew it freehand in a few minutes. It looked perfect.

He was capable of incredible precision and control. Come to think of it, the way he sat, the way he posed during interviews with his best angle to the camera, indicated that he had practiced in front of the mirror. Maybe Adam the Chaotic Rebel was just for show. Maybe everything he did was calculated. Wouldn’t that be just the icing on top of this Cake of Awful? I would have to tread this treacherous water very carefully.

Adam glanced up. Brown eyes took my measure. He looked just like he did in all those photographs. Okay. Now I needed to not get fried as I talked his handsome ass into surrendering.

I went over to the bench. As I passed by him, heat washed over me, as if I had stepped too close to a bonfire. He had made the containment circle and then filled it with heat. I had my Taser in my bag. I could probably shoot him from here, but even if the Taser hit and he went down, getting anywhere close to him was out of the question. The heat would peel the skin off my fingers. Then the shock would wear off, and I would be dead.

I sat down.

Adam Pierce smiled. His face lit up, suddenly boyish and charming, but still a little wicked. So that’s why his mother gave him anything he wanted.

“Nevada. Such a cold name for such a sunny girl.”

Aren’t you smooth? Nevada meant “snow-covered” in Spanish. I was anything but.

Grandma Frida’s parents came to the US from Germany. She was dark haired and light skinned naturally. Grandpa Leon was from Quebec. I didn’t remember much about him except that he was huge and dark-skinned. It caused some issues for both of them, but they loved each other too much to regret it. Together they made my mother, with dark hair and medium brown skin. We didn’t know a lot about Dad’s family. He once told me that his mother was a terrible person and he didn’t want anything to do with her. He looked part Caucasian, part Native American to me, with dark blond hair, but I never asked. All of those genes fell into the melting pot, boiled together, and I came out, with tan skin, brown eyes, and blond hair.

My hair wasn’t silvery blond but a darker, tupelo honey kind of blond. I almost never burned in the sun, just got darker, while my hair turned lighter, especially if I spent the summer swimming. Once, when I was seven, a woman stopped my grandma and me as we were walking to my school. She tried to chew Grandma out for dying my hair. It didn’t go well. Even now people sometimes asked me which salon did the coloring job. Nevada didn’t exactly fit me. There was nothing wintery about me, but I didn’t care what he thought about it.

I shook my left hand, unfolding a Mercer Arboretum gift T-shirt, black with a sage green Mercer logo on it. “For you.”

“You bought me a T-shirt?” He raised one eyebrow.

Every nerve in my body was shivering with tension. Steady. “You keep forgetting to put one on, so I thought I’d bring you one. Since we’re having a serious discussion.”

He leaned forward, his beautiful face framed by soft hair. “Do you find my chest distracting?”

“Yes. Every time I see that panther with horns, it makes me laugh.”

Adam Pierce blinked.

Didn’t expect that, did you? “Just out of curiosity, why horns?”

“It’s Mishepishu, an underwater panther of the Great Lakes. It’s revered by Native American tribes. It has the horns of a deer, the body of a lynx, and the scales of a snake.”

“What is it famous for?”

“It lives in the deepest reaches of the lakes, where they guard copper deposits. Those who cross their waters must pay it tribute.”

“And if the tribute isn’t paid?”

Adam smiled, giving me a small flash of teeth. “Then Mishepishu will kill you. One moment the waters will be placid, and the next you will see your death glaring you in the face.”

So Adam thought of himself as Mishepishu. He ruled, and those who crossed his waters had to pay him tribute. Full of himself didn’t begin to describe it.

Adam was looking me over in a slow, evaluating way. “I don’t believe my mother hired you.”

“Why not?”

“She hires for appearances. Those jeans cost what, fifty dollars?”

“Forty. I got them on sale a couple of years ago. I wore them especially for going to see Gustave.”

“Why?”

“Because I needed him to trust me and I wanted to show him that I’m a working person, just like him. I’m not ‘them.’ I’m not the Man. I don’t even know the Man, although he does occasionally pay my bills. If I went to see your mother, I would’ve worn my Escada suit. It cost sixteen hundred bucks, so your mother wouldn’t be impressed, but at least she wouldn’t dismiss me as a beggar right away.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve looked you up. You’re small potatoes, Snowflake.”

Pet names? Ugh. “Our firm has an excellent reputation.”

“Why would you spend a grand and a half on a suit? Isn’t it like half of your monthly paycheck?”

I forced my voice to be casual and light. “See, this is how I can tell you’ve never been poor. Are you poking at me, or are you genuinely curious?”

He leaned back. “I’m curious. When I start poking at you, you’ll know.”

I let the innuendo fly by, pretending I didn’t get it. “When you’re wealthy, you have the luxury of wearing whatever you want. You’re rich. If someone does attempt to judge you by the way you’re dressed, you would find it amusing and rub their nose in it. When you’re poor, your ability to land the job you need or accomplish some social task often depends on what you wear. You have to cross that threshold from supplicant to ‘one of us.’ It’s amazing how doors can open once people stop looking down on you. So you save up, buy one outrageously expensive outfit, and wear it to every special occasion for years as if it’s your everyday clothes. I have two, an Escada and an Armani. Once in a blue moon, a large insurance company or a wealthy member of some House wants to hire us, so I wear one to get the job and the other to deliver results, because I like to be promptly paid. The rest of the time they hang in my closet wrapped in two layers of plastic, and my sisters know that to touch them is to face a penalty of horrible death.”

Adam laughed. It was the rich, self-indulgent laugh of a man who didn’t have a care in the world. “I like you, Snowflake. You’re genuine. Real. Why are you on this job?”

“Because our firm is a subsidiary of Montgomery International and if I don’t bring you in, they will take away the business I worked years to build. My family will be homeless.”

Adam laughed again. Something about my family being homeless must’ve been hilarious.

“How much do you weigh?”

“That’s an odd question. About a hundred and thirty pounds.”

He shook his head. “You don’t lie at all, do you?”

When an occasion called for it, I lied like he wouldn’t believe. “People lie too much, because it’s easier. I don’t lie unless I have to. Adam, you know you can’t evade the cops forever. When they find you, it won’t be ‘put your hands on the back of your head and kneel so we can cuff you.’ It will be a bullet to the brain.”

He leaned his elbow on his knee and rested his chin on his fist. “Mhm.”

“If they don’t find you within the next couple of days, they will offer a reward. Then any junkie on the street will be gunning to turn you in. The only logical way out of this situation is turning yourself in to your House.”

“Why? So I could rot the rest of my life in a cage?”

“I seriously doubt House Pierce will let you rot in a cage. Your mother clearly adores you. She’ll move heaven and earth to keep you out of prison. You have money and power on your side. And anything is better than being dead.”

He focused on me. “Do you think I did it?”

I was beginning to think he did. I forced a shrug. “I don’t care. My job ends with bringing you in.”

He unfolded himself from the wall and touched the chalk with his foot, smudging the perfect line. Heat shot upward in a column. My heart was beating too fast. I tasted metal in my mouth. Adrenaline had kicked in. If he fried me now, I couldn’t do a thing about it.

Adam shrugged off his leather jacket. A whiff of burned fabric polluted the air. Scorched patches appeared on the T-shirt. It melted, turning into ash, and Adam shrugged it off. The sun played on his sculpted chest and washboard abs, highlighting every smooth curve and every hard contour of muscle with golden glow. It was good Grandma Frida wasn’t here. She would have had a heart attack for sure.

Adam reached over and plucked the Mercer T-shirt from my hand. He pulled it on, shrugged on the leather jacket, and grinned at me.

“Adam . . .”

“I’ll think about it, Snowflake.” He winked at me.

I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a picture of him.

He stepped over the stone wall and guided a motorcycle from behind a bush.

He’d taken a motorcycle into Mercer. Into this calm, tranquil place where even bicycles were restricted to only a few trails.

Adam saddled the bike and roared off at breakneck speed.

Well, that went about as well as I had expected.

My hands shook. My body still hadn’t realized the danger had passed. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down.

In front of me the bog spread, a green and brown labyrinth of mud and water. Suddenly it seemed depressing. I wanted flowers, color, and sunlight. I got up and walked south, heading toward the gardens.

I’d failed. Logically I’d known I wouldn’t be able to talk Adam into turning himself in on the first try, but I still had hoped. I was good at talking to people.

Well at least he hadn’t fried me. That was good. I pulled out my cell phone, sent the picture of Adam Pierce to Augustine’s inbox, dialed MII, and asked for Augustine.

“Yes?” his cultured voice said into the phone.

“Check your inbox.”

There was a tiny pause. “Why is he wearing a Mercer Arboretum T-shirt?”

“I bought it for him to cover up the Native American water panther on his chest. He refuses to come in. His exact words were ‘Why? So I could rot the rest of my life in a cage?’ I think I can get him to meet with me again, but I need some assurances from the family. He doesn’t want to go to prison.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Augustine hung up.

I kept walking. Adam probably did commit the arson. I had no idea what would possess him to torch the bank, but the way he danced around it, flirting with the question, suggested he had something to do with it. Of course, he could just have a persecution complex, let himself be blamed for something he didn’t do, and revel in his victimhood. In any case, whether he did it or not, I had to deliver him to his family. Even spoiled rich boys were entitled to due process. My job ended with him in his mother’s loving arms. What House Pierce did with him afterward wasn’t my problem.

The path brought me to the center of the gardens, to a rectangular plaza surrounded by towering trees. A long water-curtain fountain stretched across the far end of it, a pale concrete beam supported by ten-foot-tall Doric columns. When you came close, water would spill down from it in a cascade of glittering drops, which fell into three narrow basins. Rectangular flower beds and carefully bordered stretches of vibrant green grass dotted the plaza. Several benches sat on the edges. They looked so inviting. I walked over to the bench under a wooden pergola and landed. I just wanted to sit here for a minute.

Being scared took a lot of energy. Now I was tired and kind of flat.

People milled around the plaza. To the right of me two women chatted on a bench. The one on the left had long silver-blond hair that fell down to her chest without any hint of a curl. She wore a peach teardrop dress that stopped midthigh and probably cost about as much as my best professional suit. Her tan was golden, her makeup bright and flawless. Her dark-haired friend had chosen a pearl-colored asymmetric top with a soft feminine ruffle and a pale grey pencil skirt. Both wore high-heeled shoes so delicate that they looked like they would break if any actual weight rested on them.

They saw me. Both looked me over with identical expressions of attractive women evaluating another young woman in their orbit. Judging by the raised eyebrows and the brunette’s stifled sneer, my faded jeans, plain blouse, and beat-up Nikes failed to make an impression. They went on chatting. Probably critiquing my lack of taste and money. They dismissed me as a peasant, I dismissed them as shallow, and we were all happy like that.

Past the women a couple of men lingered midway down the plaza. Both wore light-colored loose pants, expensive shirts, and designer sunglasses. Both were groomed to within an inch of their lives, and the perfection of their faces signaled money and magic.

The men were discreetly checking out the women, while the women pretended not to notice. It was an old dance. Eventually the men would break the ice and the women would pretend to be surprised but receptive. They looked like they could reasonably belong together.

A dark-haired man walked out from one of the side trails into the plaza. He wore jeans and a plain black T-shirt and carried something that looked like a roll of fabric in his hand. His T-shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders. Muscle corded his arms, the powerful, supple muscle of a fighter, built by practice to punch and rip through his opponents. He stepped lightly, his stride sure and unhurried, like a huge jungle cat, an apex predator out for a prowl in his domain. There was no hint of submission anywhere in his body. He walked like he didn’t know his spine could bend.

I leaned forward, trying to see his face.

The two illusion-smoothed men simultaneously moved out of his way.

I saw him. My heart skipped a beat.

He had a sturdy, chiseled jaw, a strong nose, and a square forehead. He looked rough around the edges, from the trace of stubble on his jaw to the short, tousled dark hair. Rough, masculine, and arrestingly sexual. His eyes, smart and clear under the thick, dark eyebrows, evaluated everything he saw with calm precision, but deep inside those blue irises, a cold fire glowed. The same kind of lethal fire you would see in the amber eyes of a tiger, predatory yet irresistible. It compelled you to stare, even though you knew that if you caught his gaze, that icy fire would swallow you whole. He pulled me like a magnet. Every female instinct I had went into overdrive.

Oh wow.

He didn’t simply walk into the plaza. Those eyes told me that the moment he stepped foot into it, he owned it. I knew I should’ve looked away, but I couldn’t. I just sat there, shocked, and stared.

The two women saw him and stopped talking. He cut right through the layers of civilization, politeness, and social snobbery to some preternatural female sense that said, “Dominant male. Danger. Power. Sex.”

Why couldn’t I find someone like that? Why couldn’t he be my guy? If he ever talked to me, I probably wouldn’t be able to string words together into a sentence.

The man was looking at me.

Wait. There were two other attractive women in his way, both brightly dressed, better styled, and telegraphing “available” with every cell in their bodies. They were roses, and in my current getup, I was a daisy. He should’ve looked right over me. I was pretty, but not that pretty.

He was looking at me like he knew who I was.

My brain took a quarter of a second to process that fact before spitting back a cold rush of alarm. Stay or go?

I wasted another precious second trying to listen to my instincts and my magic. My gut feelings were almost always right.

Stay or go?

I looked into his blue eyes. No, I was wrong. He wasn’t a tiger. He was a dragon, regal and deadly, and he was coming for me.

This was bad. Bad, bad, bad. I had to go. Now.

I jumped right off the bench and made a beeline for the trail leading out of the park. He made a slight adjustment to his course, heading for me.

I sprinted down the trail. The greenery flew by. People stared at me. The trail turned and I chanced a glance back.

He was running full speed toward me and gaining.

I dashed forward, squeezing every drop of effort out of my body. The air turned hot in my lungs. My side hurt. The path turned again and I shot out into the open plaza with the gift shop. The entrance was only a hundred yards away.

I felt the magic behind me. It swelled, furious and unstoppable, like a cataclysm.

I glanced back.

He was twenty-five yards behind me.

I wouldn’t make it to my car.

Too far for a Taser, and I didn’t want him any closer. I pulled my .22 Ruger Mark III out and flicked the safety off. I had practiced with this gun every other week. I would hit him.

“Stop. I will shoot you.” I didn’t want to shoot him. I had no idea who he was. I had no idea what he could do. I didn’t want to fire a gun in this crowded place. I didn’t want to kill him.

He kept walking. I felt him coming closer. I’ve never felt magic like that in my whole life. It was like trying to stand in the path of a tornado. Fear shot through me, turning the world crystal clear and sharp.

“Help me!” I yelled.

Nobody moved. There was a plaza full of people and nobody moved.

Damn it. I raised the gun, barrel up and to the left over the trees, and fired a warning shot.

He threw the roll of fabric at me. I saw a flash of blue silk and then my arms were pinned to my body by a crushing force, my gun flat against my leg. The fabric clamped me, like a straitjacket.

Strong arms grabbed me. Something pricked my neck. My legs went soft and I fell over. He caught me and picked me up as if I weighed nothing.

The world was turning fuzzy. I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, but instead a weak whisper came out. “Help . . .”

“Hey!” A man in a cowboy hat moved toward us.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” the man told him, his voice like ice.

The cowboy froze.

The man shifted me in his arms and I saw his eyes up close, blue eyes, on fire with magic and tinted with self-awareness.

Oh my God. My lips were too puffy to speak. “Meh . . . ma . . . mad . . .”

“Mad Rogan,” he said.

Someone shut off the sun, and I fell asleep.