Emerald Blaze

Chapter 1

“House Baylor Investigative Agency,” I shouted. “Holster your weapons and step away from the monkey!”

The orange tamarin monkey, about the size of a large squirrel, stared at me from the top of the lamppost, silhouetted against the bright blue sky of a late afternoon. The two men and a woman under the post continued to grip their guns.

All three wore casual clothes, the men in khakis and T-shirts, the woman in white capris and a pale blue blouse. All three were in good shape, and they held their guns in nearly identical positions, with their barrels pointing slightly down, which marked them as professionals who didn’t want to accidentally shoot us. Given that none of us had drawn weapons yet, they must have felt they had the upper hand. Sadly for them, their assessment of their personal safety was wildly off the mark.

Next to me, Leon bared his teeth. “Catalina, I really don’t like it when people point guns at me.”

Neither did I, but unlike Leon, I would be highly unlikely to shoot each of them through the left eye “for symmetry reasons.”

“Montgomery International Investigations,” the older of the men announced. “Pack it in and head back to the mystery machine, kids.”

Usually Augustine’s people wore suits, but chasing monkeys through the sweltering inferno of Houston’s July called for a more casual attire. Leon and I had opted for casual as well. My face was dirty, my dark hair was piled in a messy bun on top of my head, and my clothes wouldn’t impress anyone. Of the three of us, only Cornelius looked decent, and even he was drenched in sweat.

“You’re interfering with our lawful recovery,” I announced. “Step aside.”

The female agent stepped forward. She was in her thirties, fit, with light brown skin and glossy dark hair pulled into a ponytail.

“You seem like a nice girl.”

You have no idea.

She kept going. “Let’s be reasonable about this before the testosterone starts flying. This monkey is the property of House Thom. It’s a part of a very important pharmaceutical trial. I don’t know what you’ve been told, but we have a certificate identifying the ownership of the monkey. I’ll be happy to let you verify it for yourself. You’re still young, so a word of advice, always get the proper paperwork to cover your ass.”

“Oh no she didn’t,” Leon muttered under his breath.

At twenty-one, most of my peers were either in college, working for their House, or enjoying the luxury carefree lifestyle the powerful magic of their families provided. Being underestimated worked in my favor. However, we’d been looking for the monkey for several days. I was hot, tired, and hungry and my patience was in short supply. Besides, she’d insulted my paperwork skills. Paperwork was my middle name.

“This monkey is a helper monkey, a highly trained service animal, certified to assist individuals with spinal cord injuries. She was snatched from her rightful owner during a trip to the doctor and illegally sold to your client. I have her pedigree report, immunization records, vet records, certificate from the Faces, Paws, and Tails nonprofit that trained her, a signed affidavit from her owner, a copy of the police report, and her DNA profile. Also, I’m not a nice girl. I am the Head of my House conducting a lawful recovery of stolen property. Do not impede me again.”

On my left Cornelius frowned. “Could we hurry this along? Rosebud is experiencing a lot of stress.”

“You heard the animal mage,” Leon called out. “Don’t we all want what’s best for the stressed-out monkey?”

The shorter of the men squinted at us. “Head of the House, huh? How do you even know this is the same monkey?”

How many golden lion tamarin monkeys did he expect to be running around in Eleanor Tinsley Park? “Rosebud, sing.”

The monkey raised her adorable head, opened her mouth, and trilled like a little bird.

The three MII employees stared at her. Here’s hoping for logic and reason . . .

“This proves nothing,” the woman announced.

As it happened so often with our species, logical reasoning was discarded in favor of the overpowering need to be right, facts and consequences be damned.

“What about now?” Leon asked. “Can I kill one? Just one. Please.”

Leon was extremely selective about shooting people, but the MII agents drew on me and Cornelius, and his protective instinct kicked into overdrive. If they raised their guns another two inches, they would die, and my cousin was doing his best deranged rattlesnake act to keep that from happening.

Leon wagged his eyebrows at me.

“No,” I told him.

“I said please. What about the kneecaps? I can shoot them in the kneecaps, and they won’t die. They won’t be happy, but they won’t die.”

“No.” I turned to Cornelius. “Is there any way to retrieve her without hurting them?”

He smiled and looked to the sky.

Cornelius Maddox Harrison didn’t look particularly threatening. He was white and thirty-one years old, of average build and below average height. His dark blond hair was trimmed by a professional stylist into a short but flattering cut. His features were attractive, his jaw clean shaven, and his blue eyes were always quiet, calm, and just a little distant. The three MII agents took one look at his face and his badass ensemble of light khaki pants and white dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and decided they had nothing to worry about. Next to him, dark haired, tan, and lean, Leon radiated menace and kept making threats, so they judged him to be the bigger risk.

“This has been fun and all,” the older MII agent said. “But playtime is over, and we have an actual job to do.”

A reddish-brown hawk plummeted from the sky, plucked the monkey from the pole, swooped over the agents, and dropped Rosebud into Cornelius’ waiting hand. The monkey scampered up Cornelius’ arm and onto his shoulder, hugged his neck, and trilled into his ear. The chicken hawk flew to our left and perched on the limb of a red myrtle growing by the sidewalk.

“Well, shit,” the woman said.

“Feel free to report this to Augustine,” I told them. “He has my number.”

And if he had a problem with it, I would smooth it over. Augustine Montgomery and our family had a complicated relationship. I’d studied him with the same dedication I used to study complex equations, so if he ever became a threat, I could neutralize him.

The older of the men gave us a hard stare. His firearm crept up an inch. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I snapped my Prime face on. “Leon, if he targets us, cripple him.”

Leon’s lips stretched into a soft, dreamy smile.

People in the violence business quickly learned to recognize other professionals. The MII agents were well trained and experienced, because Augustine prided himself on quality. They looked into my cousin’s eyes and knew that Leon was all in. There was no fear or apprehension there. He enjoyed what he did, and given permission, he wouldn’t hesitate.

Then they looked at me. Over the past six months I’d become adept at assuming my Head of the House persona. My eyes told them that I didn’t care about their lives or their survival. If they made themselves into an obstacle, I would have them removed. It didn’t matter what I wore, how old I was, or what words I said. That look would tell them everything they needed to know.

The tense silence stretched.

The woman whipped out her cell phone and turned away, dialing a number. The two men lowered their guns.

Oh good. Everyone would get to go home.

Augustine’s people marched toward the river, the shorter man in the lead, and turned right, heading for the small parking lot where I had parked Rhino, the custom armored SUV Grandma Frida had made for me. They gave us a wide berth. We watched them go. No reason to force another confrontation in the parking lot.

We’d been looking for Rosebud for five days straight, ever since Cornelius took the case. Her owner, a twelve-year-old girl, was so traumatized by the theft, she’d had to be sedated. Finding the little monkey had trumped the rest of our caseload. We had accepted this job pro bono, because snatching a service animal from a child in a wheelchair was a heinous act and someone had to make it right.

Scouring Houston in hundred-degree heat looking for a tiny monkey took a lot of effort. I had barely managed five hours of sleep in the last forty-eight, but every bit of my sweat would be worth it if I could see Maya hug her monkey. My Monday was looking up.

Cornelius smiled again. “I do so love happy endings.”

“Happy ending for you, maybe,” Leon grumbled. “I didn’t get to shoot anybody.”

First, we would deliver Rosebud to Maya, and then I would go home, take a shower, and then a long, happy nap.

Cornelius shook his head. “Your reliance on violence is quite disturbing. What happens when you meet someone faster than you?”

My cousin pondered it. “I’ll be dead, and it won’t matter?”

Talon suddenly took to the air with a shriek, swooping over Buffalo Bayou River. Leon and Cornelius stopped at the same time. Cornelius frowned, looking at the murky waters to the left of a large tree.

Directly in front of us, a narrow strip of mowed lawn hugged the sidewalk. Past the grass, the ground sloped sharply, hidden by tall weeds all the way to the river that stretched to Memorial Parkway Bridge in the distance.

The river lay placid. Not even a ripple troubled the surface.

I glanced at Leon. A second ago his hands were empty. Now he held a SIG P226 in one hand and a Glock 17 in the other. It gave him thirty-two rounds of 9 mm ammunition. He only needed one round to make a kill.

“What is it?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Leon said.

“The hawk is scared,” Cornelius said.

The surface of the river was still and shining slightly, reflecting the sunlight like a tarnished dime.

The distance in Cornelius’ eyes grew deeper. “Something’s coming,” he whispered.

We had no reason to hang around and wait for it. “Let’s go.”

I turned right and sped up toward our vehicles. Leon and Cornelius followed.

Ahead the shorter of the MII agents was almost to the lot. The woman trailed him, while the taller agent brought up the rear.

A green body burst through the weeds. Eight feet long and four feet tall, it scrambled forward on two big muscular legs, dragging a long scaly tail fringed with bright carmine fins. Another fin—this one bloodred and crested with foot-long spikes—thrust from its spine. Its head could have belonged to an aquatic dinosaur or a prehistoric crocodile—huge pincher-like jaws that opened like giant scissors studded with conical fangs designed to grab and hold struggling prey while the beast pulled them under. Two pairs of small eyes, sunken deep into its skull, glowed with violet.

This didn’t look like anything our planet had birthed. It was either some magic experiment gone haywire or a summon from the arcane realm.

We would need bigger guns.

The beast rushed across the grass. The taller MII agent was directly in its path.

“Run!” Leon and I screamed at the same time.

The man whipped around. For a frantic half second he froze, then jerked his gun up, and fired at the creature. Bullets bit into the beast and glanced off its thick scales.

The two other MII agents pivoted to the beast and opened fire. I sprinted to Rhino and the combat shotgun inside it. Leon dashed after me, trying to get a better angle on the creature. Cornelius followed.

Augustine’s people emptied their magazines into the beast. It plowed through them, knocking them aside. Purple blood stained its sides, but the wounds barely bled, as if the bullets had merely chipped its scales.

The beast’s gaze locked on me. It ignored the agents and hauled itself toward me, two massive paws gouging the turf with red claws.

Leon fired a two-bullet burst from each gun. Four bloody holes gaped where the creature’s beady eyes used to be. It roared, stumbled, and crashed to the ground.

I halted. Cornelius ran past me to the lot.

The female MII agent rose slowly. Her tall friend stared at a bright red gash in his bare thigh. His left pant leg hung in bloody shreds around his ankle. He shifted his weight. Blood poured from the wound and I saw a glimpse of bone inside. The agent gaped at it, wide-eyed, clearly in shock.

“Holy shit,” the shorter MII agent muttered and snapped a new magazine into his HK45.

At the edge of the parking lot, Cornelius spun around and waved his arms toward the river. “Don’t stop! There’s more! More are coming!”

Green beasts poured through the weeds, a mass of scaled bodies, finned tails, and fanged jaws, and in the center of their pack, buried under the creatures, a dense knot of magic pulsated like an invisible beacon. The knot’s magic splayed out, touched me, and broke around my power, like a wave against a breaker. A sea of violet eyes focused on me.

The pack turned toward me and charged.

Whatever was emanating magic in the center of the pack was also controlling them. If I had a second, I could’ve fought it with my magic, but the cluster of bodies was too thick, and the beasts came too fast.

I turned and sprinted toward Rhino. The thing’s magic followed me, pinging from my mind like radar. I didn’t need to look back to know the entire pack chased me.

Ahead Cornelius jerked a car remote from his pocket. The lights of his BMW hybrid flashed. The hatchback rose and a massive blue beast tore out, a tiger on steroids, with glossy indigo fur splattered with black and pale blue rosettes.

Zeus landed, roared, flashing fangs the size of steak knives, and bounded across the parking lot. The fringe of tentacles around his neck snapped open, individual tendrils writhing. We passed each other, him sprinting at the creatures and me running in the opposite direction to Rhino.

Gunfire popped behind me like firecrackers going off—Leon, thinning the pack. He’d run out of bullets before they ran out of bodies.

I jumped into Rhino, mashed the brake, and pushed the ignition switch. The engine roared. Cornelius flung the passenger door open and landed in the seat. I stepped on it. Rhino’s custom engine kicked into gear. We shot forward and jumped the curb onto the grass.

In front of us the lawn churned with bodies. A trail of scaled corpses stretched to the left, piling up at the curb of Allen Parkway. Across the street, Leon methodically sank bullets into the creatures in short bursts, using traffic as cover. Zeus snarled next to him. A corpse of a scaled beast lay nearby and Zeus raked it with his claws to underscore his point.

On our right the female agent and the leader had put their arms under the injured man’s shoulders and staggered toward the parking lot. He hung limp, dragging his bleeding leg behind him. The leading beasts on the left snapped their jaws only feet behind them.

No more people would be mauled by these things today if I could help it.

I steered right, cutting the creatures off from the MII agents at a sharp angle. The enormously heavy bulk of Rhino smashed into the closest creature with a wet crunch. The armored vehicle careened as we rolled over a body. We burst through the edge of the pack into the clear. I put my foot down on the accelerator, tearing down the lawn. Behind me the pack thinned out as the creatures got in each other’s way trying to turn to follow us. For a moment, the cluster of bodies dispersed. Something spun in their center, something metal, round, and glowing. The strange magic knot.

“You see it?”

“I see it.” Cornelius pulled the tactical shotgun from the floorboards and pumped it.

“Can you reach their minds?”

“No. They’re too preoccupied.”

Asking him what that meant now would distract him. I made a hard left, clipping what was once the back of the pack, knocking the stragglers out of the way.

“Ready,” Cornelius said, his voice calm.

I hit the button to lower the front windows and cut straight through the pack, mowing a diagonal line to the left. The churning rolling thing spun on our right, drawing tight circles on the grass. Cornelius stuck the barrel of the shotgun out the window and fired at the metal object.

BOOM.

My ears rang.

BOOM.

“One more time,” Cornelius said, as if asking for another cup of tea.

We flashed by the pack, smashed head-on into a beast, and I veered right and jumped the curb back into the parking lot. In front of us, the MII vehicle, a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, peeled out onto Allen Parkway with a squeal of tires. The stench of burning rubber blew into the cabin.

“You’re welcome,” Cornelius called after them and reloaded.

I made a hard right onto the parkway. The pack of beasts streaked by on our right.

BOOM.

BOOM.

“Didn’t get it,” Cornelius said. “The slugs bounced off the metal. There’s something alive inside that spinning shell.”

“Animal?”

“Not exactly.”

If it was alive, we could kill it.

We could drive around until the pack tired enough to slow down, grab Leon and Zeus, and drive off, but then these things would rampage through Houston. There was a group of kids playing baseball just a quarter of a mile down the road. We had passed them and the adults who were watching them on our way in to retrieve Rosebud.

Rosebud!

“Where’s the monkey?”

“Safe in the BMW.”

Oh good. Good, good, good.

I pulled a sharp U-turn and sped down the street back toward the parking lot. The beasts scrambled to follow. The gaps between the bodies widened to several feet and I saw clearly the source of the magic. Two metal rings, spinning one inside the other, like a gyroscope. A small blue glow hovered between them.

We passed Leon. He pointed to the glowing thing with his SIG and pretended to smash the two guns in his hands together. Ram it. Thank you, Captain Strategy, I got it. That thing had survived the river. If I hit it with Rhino, it might just bounce aside, and if it was arcane, there was no telling what sort of damage it would do to the car. No, this would require precision.

“Rapier?” I asked.

“One moment.” Cornelius turned and hit the switch on the console between our seats. Most SUV vehicles had two front seats and a wide backseat designed to seat three. Rhino’s backseat was split into two, with a long, custom-built console storage space running lengthwise between them. The console popped open, and a weapon shelf sprang up, offering a choice of two blades and two guns secured by prongs.

I pulled another U-turn. A white truck screeched to a stop in front of me. The driver laid on the horn, saw the beasts, and reversed down the street at breakneck speed.

“Got it.” Cornelius turned back in his seat, my rapier in his hand.

I aimed Rhino at the gyroscope. Bodies slammed against the car.

“This is foolhardy,” Cornelius advised. “What if it explodes?”

“Then I’ll be dead, and it won’t matter,” I quoted.

“Using Leon as inspiration is a doubtful survival strategy.”

I slammed on the brakes. Rhino slid across the lawn and stopped. I grabbed the rapier from Cornelius and jumped out of the SUV. The rotating thing spun only fifty feet away from me. I sprinted to it.

A beast lunged at me. I jumped aside and kept running.

Behind me Rhino thundered as Cornelius revved the engine to distract them.

The air turned to fire in my lungs. I dodged a beast, another . . .

Thirty feet.

The shining object pinged me with its magic.

Twenty.

Ten.

The metal rings spun in front of me, a foot wide, splattered with slime and algae. Inside a flower bud glowed, a brilliant electric blue lotus woven of pure magic and just about to bloom.

My family’s magic coursed through me, guiding my thrust. I stabbed it.

The bud burst, sending a cloud of luminescent sparks into the air. Its glow vanished. The rings spun one last time and collapsed.

The beasts around me froze.

For a torturous moment nothing moved.

The creatures stared at me. I stared back.

The pack turned and made a break for the river.

It was over.

Relief washed over me. A steady rhythmic noise came into focus, and I realized it was my heart racing in my chest. My knees shook. A bitter metallic patina coated my tongue. My body couldn’t figure out if it was hot or cold. The world felt wrong, as if I had been poisoned.

The ruins of the device lay in front of me. I tried to take a step. My leg folded under me, the ground decided to spontaneously tilt to the side, and I almost wiped out on a perfectly level lawn. Too much adrenaline. Nothing to do but wait it out. Some people were born for the knife-edge intensity of combat. I wasn’t one of them.

Focusing on something to distract myself usually helped. I crouched and scrutinized the rings. The metal didn’t look exactly like steel, but it might have been some sort of iron alloy. A string of glyphs ran the circumference of each ring.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and snapped a pic.

The rings fit inside each other, the inner about three inches smaller than the outer one. The flower stalk was attached to the bottom of the inner ring. No, not attached. It grew from the inner ring, seamlessly protruding from the metal.

How?

I picked up the ring and tugged on the stalk. It held. I ran my fingers along the flower. Toward the severed end, where the flower bud had been, the texture felt like a typical plant. But the lower I moved my fingers, the more metallic the texture became. A true biomechanical meld. To my knowledge, no mage had yet achieved it.

Rhino rolled up next to me and Cornelius jumped out. Pale purple blood splattered the armored vehicle’s custom grille guard. Bits and pieces of alien flesh hung from the metal.

“Are you all right?” Cornelius asked.

No. “Yes. I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I know this was very unpleasant for you.”

Animal mages formed a special bond with a few chosen animals, but they cared about all of them, and we had just mowed down at least a dozen, maybe more.

Cornelius nodded. “Thank you for your concern. They weren’t true animals in the native sense of the word. It helped some.”

“Is this a summon?” I asked.

Cornelius shook his head. “I don’t think so. They feel slightly similar to Zeus. Not of Earth but not completely of the arcane realm either.”

“Earlier you said they were too ‘preoccupied’ to reach?”

Cornelius frowned and nodded at the rings and the bud within. “This object emitted magic.”

“I felt it.”

“The emissions were so dense, they effectively deafened the creatures. They couldn’t feel me. I tried to contact the object itself, but the biological component of it is so primitive, it was like trying to communicate with a sea sponge.”

The House lab scenario looked more and more likely. If these proto-crocodiles had come out of the arcane realm, we would have seen a summoner and a portal. Massive holes in reality were kind of hard to miss.

Linus would just love this.

I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. One beep, two, three . . .

At the other end of the lawn Leon jogged across the road, Zeus in tow.

The phone kept ringing. Officially Linus Duncan was retired. In reality, he still served the state of Texas in a new, more frightening capacity, and I was his Deputy. He always answered my calls.

Beep. Another.

Linus’ voice came on the line. “Yes?”

“I was attacked by magic monsters in Eleanor Tinsley Park. They were controlled by a biomechanical device powered with magic.”

Leon ran up and halted next to me.

“Do you require assistance?” Linus asked.

“Not anymore.”

“Show me.”

I activated FaceTime, switched the camera, and panned the phone, capturing the device, the corpses, and the fleeing creatures. On the screen, Linus stared into the phone. In his sixties, still fit, with thick salt-and-pepper hair, he always had the Texas tan. His features were handsome and bold, a square jaw framed by a short beard, prominent nose, thick dark eyebrows, and dark eyes that looked either hazel or brown, depending on the light. He smiled easily, and when he paid attention to you, you felt special. If you asked ten people who just met him to describe him, they would all say one word—charming.

The man looking back at me from the phone was the real Linus Duncan, a Prime, former Speaker of the Texas Assembly, focused, sharp, his eyes merciless. He looked like an old tiger who spotted an intruder in his domain and was sharpening his claws for the kill. A dry staccato came through the phone, a rhythmic thud-thud-thud, followed by a mechanical whine. Linus’ turrets. He was under attack.

Who in the world would assault Linus Duncan in his home? He was a Hephaestus mage. He made lethal firearms out of discarded paperclips and duct tape and his house packed enough firepower to wipe out an elite battalion in minutes.

They attacked me and Linus simultaneously. The thought burned a trail through my mind like a comet. Was someone targeting the Office of the Warden?

“Disengage,” Linus said. “Go straight to MII and take over the Morton case, use the badge. Repeat.”

“Go straight to MII, show the badge, take over the Morton case.”

Usually Linus brought me in after jurisdiction had been established. In the last six months, I’d had to use my badge exactly once, to take over an FBI investigation. To say they had been unhappy about it would be a gross understatement.

“I’ll send the files.” Linus hung up.

“That was turret fire,” Leon said.

“It sure was.”

My cousin grinned, no doubt anticipating another fight. “What are we doing?”

“You’re driving me to MII.”

“I’ll follow.” Cornelius sprinted to the parking lot, Zeus on his heels, bounding like an overly enthusiastic kitten.

I grabbed the device. The metal rings were slick with mud and slime. I walked to Rhino, threw the device into the bin in the back, and jumped into the passenger seat.

In the distance, police sirens wailed, getting closer.

Leon peeled out onto the street. In the rearview mirror, Cornelius’ BMW glided out of the parking lot. We’d likely lose him before long. Cornelius’ top driving speed usually stayed four miles over the posted limit. MII was roughly thirty minutes away but knowing Leon we would get there much faster if the traffic let us.

“Call Bern.”

My cousin answered on the second ring, his voice coming from Rhino’s speakers as the phone synced with the car’s control panel.

“I was just attacked by some magical monsters. So was Linus.”

“Was he with you?”

“No. He was at his mansion. Lock us down, please.”

“Done. Do you need help?”

“No. Is everything okay there?”

“Everything is fine.”

“I’m fine too, Bern!” Leon yelled.

“That’s debatable,” his older brother said.

“I’ll call you in a bit,” I told him and hung up.

My phone chimed, announcing a new email. I clicked my inbox. A message from Linus with a video file attached. The file was huge. Linus didn’t optimize the video. I tapped it to download. This would take a while.

“Let me get this straight. Linus is attacked. You don’t ask him if he needs help. You just drop everything and go to MII to take over some case you never heard about before.” Leon shook his head.

“Yes. If Linus required my help, he would tell me.” The Morton case was likely connected to the attacks somehow.

“One day you’ll have to tell me what you do for Linus Duncan,” Leon said.

“But then I’d have to kill you, and, as you often point out, you’re my favorite cousin.”

Leon snorted.

Most of my family had no problem with secrecy. Grandma Frida and Mom both served in the military, Bern naturally kept things to himself, and Nevada was a truthseeker. She could fill her and Rogan’s mansion with other people’s secrets and kept them to herself. But Leon and Arabella thrived on gossip. They knew I was doing something confidential for Linus Duncan, but they had no idea what exactly, and it was driving them both up the wall.

I dialed Augustine’s direct number. Voice mail. Getting to see the head of MII on short notice could prove to be a problem. He was busy. But like Leon and Arabella, he loved to collect information—the more exclusive, the better. I had to bait my hook and dangle it in front of him just out of reach.

“This is Catalina Baylor. I have critical information regarding the Morton case. I must see you in person. I’ll be at your office in twenty minutes.”

I hung up.

“Who is Morton?” Leon asked, taking a corner too fast.

“Most likely Lander Morton. A Prime geokinetic, very old, very rich, one of the prominent developers in the state.”

“How do you know that?”

I knew that because I did my homework. Linus Duncan had had a long and eventful career and he made no effort to conceal the close relationship between our two Houses. I wasn’t sure if we would inherit his friends, but we would definitely inherit his enemies, which was why I had built a biographical database around Linus complete with charts profiling his relationships with various Houses.

“After Linus retired from the Army, he went into politics. Lander Morton used to be Linus’ political rival. The first bill Linus tried to bring to the floor of the Assembly involved zoning restrictions for various Houses. Lander Morton opposed it. A lot of people owed him favors, and he called them in to kill the bill. It got ugly. Morton gave an interview to Houston Chronicle and told them that he would trust Linus with governance as soon as he took ‘his mama’s titty out of his mouth.’”

Leon choked on air. “How old was Linus, exactly?”

“Forty-two.”

“And he let that slide?”

“He got Morton back three years later. They both tried to buy the same building, and Linus won. As soon as the ink dried on the closing papers, Linus bought earthquake insurance.”

And he got it dirt cheap too. The last time a natural earthquake occurred around Houston was in 1910, near Hempstead. It was so weak, the city didn’t even feel it.

“Two months after Linus moved his company in, a very small yet surprisingly powerful earthquake destroyed the building. Nobody died. The Assembly and the insurance company investigated, and Morton was slapped with a huge fine and barred from voting in the Assembly for three years. What he really lost was political power.”

Leon frowned. “Is this Linus settling an old score?”

“I doubt it.”

While it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, it was highly unlikely. Linus dedicated himself to service, first military, then civil. Using his official position in a petty political squabble went against everything I knew about him.

The video file finally downloaded. I opened it.

Someone was flying a drone above a swamp. Bright algae islands, emerald green, electric blue, and neon orange floated on the surface. Here and there an abandoned husk of a building thrust through the bog, wrapped in vines and sheathed in moss. Lilies bloomed on the dark water, but rather than the usual white or pink, they were bloodred, so vivid, they almost glowed. Strange trees spread their branches over the mire, their limbs contorted and knotted.

Where was this? It looked like some alien world.

The drone ducked under a tree tinseled with long strands of bizarre moss and emerged into a clearing. Four rickety wooden bridges met at a small island supporting the remnants of what once must have been an office building. Someone had jury-rigged power lines and several long cables converged at a small power pole on top of the structure. One of them supported a body.

It hung above the water, its neck caught in a loop of the cable stretching from the nearby building. The drone turned, getting a better view of the corpse. A man in his late thirties, white, dark haired, wearing pants from a business suit, a torn blue dress shirt, and black dress shoes.

The drone’s camera dipped down, closed in, then panned up, capturing the body from bottom to the top.

No, he wasn’t wearing shoes. His feet had been burned to charred blackness. Ragged gaps marked his trousers over the knees, their edges stained with blood. A melon-sized chunk of his right side was missing, the wound red and jagged, dripping blood from where it had pooled in the body cavity. Prickly heat stabbed at my spine. He’d suffered before he died.

Breathe. This is your job. Do your job.

His face was an awful mess of blood and broken bone. His left eye had swollen shut. The bridge of his nose jutted to the side. His mouth gaped open and a green slimy trail had leaked from his busted lips, staining the front of his shirt.

The sheer brutality of it was nauseating. I wanted to cover my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

How could anyone do this to another human being?

“Catalina?” Leon asked, concern in his voice. “Are you okay? What is it?”

“It’s not Lander Morton.” Lander was eighty-three. The dead man had the build and dark hair of someone much younger.

What was this? Where was this?

A silver Alfa Romeo Spider flew past us down the street.

Alessandro.

The thought sliced through me, hot and sharp. I yanked myself back from it. Alessandro left six months ago. He was never coming back.

“It wasn’t him,” Leon said. “In the car.”

“I know.”

“If it was that jackass, I would’ve shot him by now.” His voice was cold and measured. He meant it.

“Why would you want to shoot him?”

“He broke your heart. You were miserable for weeks.”

“I broke my own heart, Leon. He was just the hammer I hit it with.”

Leon raised his eyebrows. “That’s deep, Catalina. Small problem though. I was there. He took advantage of your feelings, used you to help him, and then he split. You were depressed for months. You know that saying ‘I’ll make him wish he was never born’? If he shows his face here again, I’ll actually do that.”

Leon’s face had that particular calm, focused look that came over him when he locked on to his target.

If I detached enough to look at what happened between me and Alessandro, it made perfect sense. My magic had isolated me since I was born. If I liked someone or wanted them to notice me, they fell in love with me, completely and absolutely. Soon magic-fueled love progressed into obsession that turned violent. I was homeschooled until high school, because every time I thought I had my magic under control and tried to enroll in public school, disaster followed.

My attempts at relationships had been hesitant and always ended badly. A boy in middle school had built a shrine out of my used tissues and chewed-up pencils in his room and cut his wrists open to keep his parents from confiscating it. His family moved out of state to escape his obsession and I had to go back to being homeschooled. A high school football hero who all of a sudden noticed me panicked at the end of our perfectly nice date because I was leaving, grabbed me by the hair, and tried to force me into his car. There were others. Some escaped with their lives relatively unscathed, but others didn’t. I didn’t make a true friend outside the family until a few months ago. By that point, I had learned to control my power but lived in a constant state of paranoia, afraid that I would slip up and ruin someone’s life and endanger mine.

There was a time somewhere between fifteen and twenty when I desperately wanted friends. I had wanted a boyfriend, someone who was amazing, and handsome, and smart, who could carry on a conversation with me and get my jokes. Someone who would take off his jacket and drape it over my shoulders if we were caught in the rain. I wanted a connection, that simple human feeling of having someone to share things with. Handsome witty princes were in short supply, so I invented one, woven from book-inspired fantasies and naive little dreams. And then, one day I stumbled over Alessandro Sagredo’s Instagram account.

He was everything I had imagined my prince to be. Smart, handsome, charming. He lived in Italy, he was a Prime, an heir to an old noble family, and he sailed on the Mediterranean and rode horses in Spain. He was safe to dream about because he and I would never meet, and so I did.

Then, when I was eighteen, our family was forced to become a House, and I had to face off against Alessandro in the trials to prove that I was a Prime. He was everything his Instagram promised, and he noticed me. I was so terrified I had cooked him with my magic that when he came to ask me on a date, I did everything I could to push him away and then called the cops to keep him safe from me.

Six months ago, he crashed into my life again. The carefree playboy turned out to be a front. Alessandro was a ruthless, lethal killer. He tried to protect me, he flirted with me, he ate dinner with my family. He was immune to my magic, which meant that when he said he was obsessed with me, he actually meant it. He liked me for me.

The enormity of all that had short-circuited what little sense I had left. I never had a chance. I wanted to save him from the life of a contract killer and set him free. I wanted him to be happy.

And then the investigation ended and his fascination with me did as well. I had come to confess my love to him and found him packing. He was moving on to the next target on his hit list. When I asked him if he would ever come back, he told me he didn’t want to lie. It felt like someone pushed me off the top of a tall building and I hit the ground hard.

The rough landing woke me up. He had chosen the life he had for a reason and he wasn’t planning on giving it up. And whatever he felt for me, it sure wasn’t love. If you’re obsessed with someone, you don’t leave. You stay and try your hardest to make it work. I had been a fun diversion on his way to someplace else.

The obsession was now over. It hurt, but according to Sergeant Heart, who supervised my martial arts training, pain was the best teacher. Alessandro had people to kill, and I had a House to run and MII cases to take over. Leon was right. I had been depressed for months, but I wasn’t mourning Alessandro abandoning me. I was mourning the old me. For the new me to emerge, the old me had to disappear, and killing her bit by bit hurt.

Alessandro was a catalyst for that change. Eventually I’d scrounge up some gratitude for the lesson. No matter how agonizing, it was a necessary transformation. The old me would have gotten the lot of us killed. For now, I had to settle for determination. I would never again let myself sink that deep. And I wouldn’t allow my cousin to be hurt for my sake.

“Leon, if you shoot Alessandro, he will know he hurt me. I don’t want him to.”

Leon glanced at me.

I met his gaze.

“You have a point,” he said and pulled into the parking lot.

In front of us the MII building rose, a sharp triangular blade of cobalt glass and steel. It was time to earn my pay.