Sapphire Flames

Chapter 10

Being brave was easy in the kitchen, surrounded by my family. But by the time I got to the back door, all of my courage had evaporated. We were about to drive to a place where people would try to kill us. While we were gone, the warehouse was very likely going to be attacked, and Arabella wasn’t here to defend it. I had no doubt that my family could hold the fort. But my sister’s presence guaranteed a quick victory.

I stepped into my office and grabbed a ratty trench coat off the coatrack. My hands shook.

This was ridiculous.

I moved around the office, collecting things I’d need. Let’s see; chalk, spare magazine for the Beretta, phone, keys, what was I forgetting? The sword sheath. I would take the gladius again. It offered the most versatility. I took the sheath out of the cabinet. Driving with it on would be a pain in the butt, so I would buckle it on after we got there.

Alessandro leaned against the door frame and watched me. “It’s very you.” He gave the office an elegant sweep of his hand.

Very me? He didn’t even know who I was. “How so?”

“Organized and businesslike.” He said it like a condemnation.

“It’s a business office. It’s supposed to be organized and businesslike. This is where I work.”

He strolled into the office, reached behind my monitor, and swiped his finger across the desk’s surface. “No dust.”

“That’s a good thing,” I told him. “Dust is bad for computers and people.”

“Have you ever tried making a mess, Catalina?”

“I don’t make messes, I clean them up.” And now I was sounding like a renegade detective from some edgy cop drama.

Alessandro shuddered. “Ooh, so hardcore.”

I ignored him. It was that or throw something, and the chief of police said next time it would be my badge.

I pushed past him and walked out to my car. He followed. I couldn’t see him behind me, but I knew exactly how much space separated us. Sometimes Matilda and I took Zeus to her aunt’s property on the edge of Houston, to walk the trails through the woods. The moment we let him out of the car, Zeus melted into the brush. He would follow us while we took the path, invisible but always there, a dangerous predatory presence gliding through the woods like a ghost, watching us. Walking with Alessandro behind me was just like that.

I took my gladius and slid it into its sheath. The holster was next. I didn’t feel any need to hide it from Moody. I fitted the Beretta into its holster, locked my car, and went to Runa’s Nissan.

Alessandro held out his hand. “Keys.”

I made a face at him, popped the locks open with the fob, and put my coat and sword in its sheath in the backseat.

“Catalina.”

I got into the driver’s seat and shut the door.

Alessandro knocked on my window. I could just drive off, but then I would have to go to Moody’s office by myself. It wasn’t like he could follow me in his car. Oh, oh, that was good.

I rolled the window down. “I thought you’d follow in your Jeep.”

Alessandro leaned his right arm on the top of the car and bent forward, so our faces were close. The urge to scoot out of the way gripped me.

“I get it,” he said. “You had to put on a show for your family. But it’s just us now. I’ll drop you off at a coffee shop, go see Moody, and pick you up on the way back.”

Who the hell did he think he was? “Amazing.”

“Give me the keys,” he said.

“You have two choices. You can get in the passenger seat or you can stand there looking stupid as I drive away.” I rolled the window up and started the car.

He didn’t move. I wiggled my fingers at him in a little bye-bye wave, put the car into reverse, and eased my foot off the brake. The Nissan rolled a bit. He stepped back to save his feet.

I let the car move back another foot.

He looked like he wanted to take the door off the Nissan with his bare hands and pull me out of it.

Another foot. Last chance, Alessandro. I really didn’t want to go there without him. Thinking about it turned my insides cold. But I would if he left me no choice.

Alessandro circled around the front to the passenger side. I unlocked the door. He got in, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air. He stole it all, saturating the car with menace. It rolled off him in waves.

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

He glared at me, his eyes full of orange flames.

“For my private collection,” I told him. “Seat belt, please.”

Moody ran his business from an office building on Bering Drive, sandwiched between the multimillion-dollar mansions of the Villages in the west and the less luxurious but still prosperous neighborhoods of Tanglewood in the east. The traffic was decent for Houston, and the eight-mile drive to Bering took us only twenty minutes.

I turned right and continued down the street. We were almost there.

Alessandro hadn’t said a word since he had buckled his seat belt.

Any other time, the prospect of spending twenty minutes in a car with Alessandro would have petrified me. He filled the vehicle, his presence much larger than his physical body, and his magic simmered just above his skin. I felt it, a volatile power ready to lash out. The faint scent of his shampoo or soap, herbal and slightly spicy, curled around me, enticing and distracting. It was just me and him, together in the car, with the night wrapping around us like a length of smoky velvet.

It would have been shockingly intimate, except that the memories of slitting a human throat with my sword cycled through my head. I saw myself kill over and over, I smelled the blood, I heard the hoarse gasp one of them made through my fingers clamped on his mouth. We weren’t driving to dinner where Alessandro would be charming and clever and make me laugh while I drank my wine. We were going to do terrible things.

Alessandro reached over and touched my right hand. I jerked my hand off the wheel, the Nissan veered right, and I caught it just before it jumped the curb. I glared at him. I must have seemed a bit freaked out, because he rolled his eyes.

“The coffee shop offer is still on the table.”

“What the hell was that?”

“You were gripping the wheel so tight, I thought your fingers would break.”

“I wasn’t.” Yes, I was. My hands hurt.

“I’m good at this. I won’t let you get hurt. We’ll get what we need, get home, and I’ll sample that mythical pithivier I’ve been promised. We’ll have dessert, we’ll have coffee, everything will be fine. You won’t die there.”

“That’s not what I was afraid of.”

“You’re not scared of dying?”

“I am. And I’m scared of getting hurt. But I’m more afraid of what I’ll have to do to walk out of there.”

For a long moment we were both silent.

“You can always stay in the car,” he offered, his voice seductive, as if he were trying to tempt me with expensive chocolate. “Or you can come inside and watch me work and tell me how good I am. I’m very susceptible to flattery.”

“Not susceptible, Alessandro. More like dependent on, addicted to, live only for.”

I pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot overshadowed by trees. The twelve-floor office building towered over the lot, its big black windows dark. Only the lobby was lit, a haven of warm electric light trying to push back the night.

“So judgmental,” Alessandro said. His tone was light, his mouth was smirking, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. They were hard and sharp. “First you tell your family that I’m a bad person, now you’re accusing me of vanity.”

“I have an idea. Why don’t I go in and you can sit here in the car and look pretty?”

He heaved a dramatic sigh. “But what would I do alone for hours with no one to admire me?”

“Take selfies, kill random people, take selfies of you killing random people?”

“Is that why you think I’m not a good person?”

“No, lots of people take selfies. You just do it more than most.”

I stared at the building looming in front of us. I had to get out of the car.

Alessandro turned, leaned over, and looked me in the eyes. “Catalina.”

I really hated the way he said my name. It cut through the constant busy hum of my thoughts like a knife. I could never let him learn about it, because then he’d purr my name in the middle of random conversations just to mess with me.

“You don’t have to go in there. Once I’m out of the car, drive away. Don’t park anywhere, keep moving. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

I opened my door and got out of the car. The cold night air bit at me. I shivered, retrieved my sword sheath, buckled it on, and put on my trench coat. The weight of the weapons inside was comforting and familiar, like hugging an old friend. I started toward the building.

He caught up with me. “Why are you so stubborn?”

“I’m here because a girl is missing. Someone killed her mother in a horrific way and took her from her bed in the middle of the night. It’s wrong and I’m going to fix it. As much as it can be fixed. It’s my job, Alessandro.”

“Good,” he said.

The doors slid open at our approach. The cavernous lobby lay empty, the grey and cream modern walls rising two stories high. A polished concrete floor, a matching shade of grey, reflected the cluster of white oval lights floating like glass jellyfish suspended from the ceiling by thin wires. At the opposite wall, a bank of elevators offered access to the top floors.

After the gloom of the parking lot, walking into a brightly lit, huge space, with its polished floor and shiny light fixtures, was like striding out of a dark passage into a sun-drenched arena. The sound of our steps sent echoes scurrying up the tall walls. In my imagination, they morphed into the beating of a drum counting heartbeats until the start of a fight. The space between my shoulders itched, expecting a bullet. I couldn’t see the other fighters, but I knew they were waiting.

We passed the empty reception counter and walked to the wall opposite the entrance, to a bank of elevators. On our right a small waiting area offered ultramodern grey loveseats and a coffee table with a selection of magazines, their bright covers fanned across the wood. On the left a narrow hallway led to two doors, one marked as an exit and the other as stairs.

I checked the directory posted next to the elevators. Moody’s office was on the second floor. The elevator would be a trap. All they had to do was stop it between floors and we would be sitting ducks.

“Stairs,” Alessandro said.

I nodded.

We turned left, into the hallway. As we reached the end, Alessandro leaned on the metal bar of the exit door. It didn’t budge. Locked. One way in, one way out. Better and better.

I tried the door to the stairs. It swung open, revealing a concrete staircase. I held the door open and listened.

Silence.

Alessandro glided past me and went up the first flight of stairs, completely silent, like a ghost. I followed him, carefully, quietly, moving at a measured pace. A few tense breaths, and we emerged into a simple hallway, lined with a charcoal rug. A row of doors, each an identical wooden frame with frosted glass, punctuated the right wall, with small signs identifying the individual offices. We started down the hallway, Alessandro stalking next to me on quiet feet. The signs slid by.

L.M. Markham, CPA

Eunice C. Roberts, Affinity Insurance

Dennis George Moody, Moody Investments

The rapid staccato of someone typing filtered through the frosted glass. Alessandro reached for the door handle, swung the door open, and held it for me. I walked into a cozy office with a desk on the right and a couple of chairs on the left. A woman sat behind the desk, typing at the computer. She was Hispanic, in her sixties, and as I walked in, she raised her head and gave me a smile.

“Runa Etterson?”

“Yes,” I lied.

She opened her mouth, saw Alessandro, and stopped for a befuddled second. “And who are you?”

“My personal assistant,” I said.

My personal assistant dazzled the receptionist with one of his armada-launching smiles.

The woman finally recovered. “Mr. Moody is waiting for you. You go on right ahead, it’s the second door on your right.”

We walked deeper into the office suite. The short reception area terminated in a hallway. We turned right and found the second door. It stood wide open, and we went through it.

Moody looked just like the headshot on his website: broad-shouldered, not exactly fat, but thick through the chest and middle, the way football players sometimes got thick in the offseason. He was probably strong, but he wouldn’t be fast, and if he had to chase me, he would be slow to build up speed. His desk matched him, massive and solid. The pinewood had been cut against the grain and stained with waxed tobacco to imitate a rustic Old West look. The rest of the decor in the office went along with the desk; a Texas star on the wall, a huge map of Texas, cowhide rug on the floor, the client chairs upholstered in dark leather. Good Old Texas, reliable and trustworthy. The desktop was the only modern touch.

“You’re not Runa Etterson,” Moody observed.

“Clearly, I’m not,” Alessandro said.

“Not you. Her.” Moody pointed at me.

I let him see a glimpse of my feathers. “That’s okay.” My magic surged through my words, stretching for him. “Runa is a very good friend of mine. You can tell me whatever you wanted to tell her.”

My power wrapped around him, twisting like a magical grapevine spiraling over his body. I could apply it delicately, light as gossamer. I could do it so subtly that after I was done asking my questions, Moody wouldn’t even remember the conversation. But Moody didn’t seem like a man who had a gun to his head. His posture showed no tension or nervousness, his eyes didn’t betray any apprehension. He sat behind his desk, completely at ease except for being annoyed that Runa hadn’t come herself. A man whose life depended on Runa’s presence would have panicked.

There was no need to be gentle with him. He was in this up to his eyeballs.

I sank more magic into my voice. “I’ll be sure to let Runa know everything you tell me.”

Moody smiled at me and sat up straighter in his chair. “Well, I guess that’s okay, then. Please have a seat.”

I sat down. Alessandro remained standing right behind me.

“Why did you call Runa?” I asked.

“I have these papers.”

My magic was all around him now. He was breathing it in, it seeped through his pores, and I shook my feathers at him one more time.

“Are these papers important?”

Moody’s smile widened. “Nah, they’re some bullshit I cooked up. You’re a really nice girl, you know that?”

“Thank you, Mr. Moody. Why did you cook up bullshit papers?”

“I got a call from Diatheke and they asked me to do it. I mean, it’s a small thing, and they pay me enough, by God.”

And there it was. “How long have you worked for Diatheke?”

“About four years. They called me right after Sigourney hired me. What was I supposed to do, turn down easy money?”

You greedy asshole. “And what did Diatheke require from you in return for that easy money?”

He chuckled. “Not much. I was supposed to tell them if she made sudden large deposits.”

Benedict wanted to know if Sigourney started doing jobs on her own.

“And of course, now they called me to get Runa out here.”

“What do they want with Runa?”

He shrugged. “Hell if I know. Who cares about Runa, anyway? Let’s talk about you.”

Let’s not. “Do you know who killed Sigourney?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t know, don’t wanna know, don’t need to know. She must have pissed off some powerful people and it ain’t my business.”

The more we talked, the more the polish of education wore off. He sounded more Texas country with every word. I needed to wrap this up, or he would chase after me, and Alessandro would shoot him. He deserved it, but I didn’t want to murder anyone we didn’t have to kill. Besides, there were better ways to punish.

“Do you know what happened to Halle?”

“Burned up with her momma.”

“Are we done?” I asked Alessandro.

“Ask him who his contact was at Diatheke.”

“Who did you talk to at Diatheke?” I asked.

“Some lady named Jocelyn.”

“I’m done,” Alessandro said.

I yanked my magic back. Moody gasped, throwing himself back against his chair, his spine rigid, his eyes glassy.

I got up, turning around. Alessandro had this cold look in his eyes, as if Moody wasn’t a human, but some centipede that had slithered out of the drain and needed to be stepped on.

“We have to go,” I told him.

He didn’t move. “Wait for me in the front office. I’ll catch up with you.”

“Alessandro, please.”

He sighed and turned to the door. “If that’s what you want.”

The receptionist waved at us as we passed her. “Y’all drive safe now.”

We were out of the hallway and going down the stairs when I heard the scream.

Alessandro paused midway on the stairs.

“He won’t come after us,” I told him.

“I wasn’t worried. What did you do to him?”

“He’s been to Sigourney’s home. He’s met her children. She invited him to holiday parties. The entire time he was spying on her. And after she died, he tried to lure her daughter here knowing that nothing good would come from it. I can remove my magic gently or I can do it the way I did it to Moody. I’m told it feels like the love of your life has died in front of you. I wanted him to feel grief. It’s all he can feel right now, and it will take him a long time to heal.”

“So, he’s suffering?”

“Yes.”

Alessandro gave me a narrow smile. Just a hint of fangs. “I like your way better.”

We exited the stairs into the lobby hallway and kept walking. This was too easy. Why get us all the way out here and not do anything about it? Maybe once they realized that Runa hadn’t shown up, they dropped the whole thing and went to the warehouse to get her.

“We could be cutting Moody apart with a bone saw right now, and Diatheke wouldn’t give a crap, would they?”

Alessandro shook his head. “Sigourney’s dead. They have no further use for him. He’s a loose end. We didn’t cut it, but they will.”

“Who’s Jocelyn?” I asked.

“A psionic. Upper-range Significant. Experienced. Strong. Dangerous.”

We rounded the corner. A person stood in front of glass doors, blocking our escape. Tall, wrapped in a black coat, deep hood hiding his face. More a dark shadow than a human, a smudge of night in the lobby flooded with electric light.

Hello.

The hooded figure thrust its hands to the sides, palms up. The mage pose. A knot of black smoke burst into life above him and surged open, spiraling out like a blossoming flower, a deep indigo darkness shot through with blue lightning at its center.

A summoning portal.

Alessandro raised his arms, a gun in each hand, and fired.

Before the first shot rang out, the portal flared with blinding white and a swarm of flying creatures tore out of it. Bright psychotic green splashed with blotches of yellow and crimson, they swirled in front of the summoner, hiding him from view, each beast the size of a turkey vulture and shaped like a bloated tick with beetle wings and six long segmented legs. The swarm churned, chaotic, contracting and expanding like a flock of monstrous birds, the creatures zipping back and forth.

I pulled my Beretta out and fired into the mass of whiplike tails and big mouths lined with serrated teeth. The gun spat thunder and I counted the shots.

One, two, three . . .

A few bodies dropped, leaking nacre-colored ichor, but more kept coming, spilling out of the portal. This was beyond any summoner Prime on record without a complex, House-grade arcane circle to help them. There was no circle under the summoner’s feet.

Four, five . . .

They kept coming and coming. Too many. We had to get out of the lobby.

We backed up in unison, moving toward the stairs.

Six. Seven.

The swarm built on itself, so big it filled the lobby like a storm cloud come to life.

In a single smooth move, Alessandro lowered his arms, letting the two guns clatter to the floor, and raised them again without a pause, a new firearm in each hand. He squeezed the triggers, and bullets punched into the beasts. How?

Metal clanged behind me, the exit door swinging open. Pressure smashed into my mind, searing hot, trying to crush my will. I lunged to the side to cover Alessandro’s back and snapped my wings open, taking the brunt of the mental attack on my feathers.

The pressure battered my defenses. A psionic. At least a Significant, maybe higher.

Alessandro whipped around, looked over my shoulder, and fired a rapid burst down the hallway. Boom, boom, boom.

“Stay behind me,” I ground out.

If I turned around, I’d have to engage the psionic full-on. Once two mental mages locked in combat on a mental plane, there was no moving. I couldn’t fight a mental duel with flying scorpion ticks trying to rip us apart.

The first wave of creatures dived at us, screeching. Alessandro shot, quick, barely bothering to aim, the steady gunfire mixing with the shrieks of the summoned beasts into a deafening cacophony. The scorpion ticks rained on the floor. Every bullet he sent hit and killed a target.

A beast dove at me, flying low. I raised my gun and fired. The creature crashed to the floor by my feet, splitting open. Ichor spilled onto the polished floor. An acrid, salty stench washed over me. I gagged.

The pressure turned into pain, the dull battering ram of the psionic’s magic splitting into sharp spikes trying to rend my defenses. Claws tore at my side, slicing across my thigh in an ice-cold burn. I fired to the side on instinct, without turning to look. A shriek answered and died.

The swarm flailed around us. I couldn’t even see the walls. Claws cut my left arm, then my right.

Alessandro dropped the guns. A machete appeared in his right hand.

“Elevators!” he barked.

I had to save my bullets. I thrust the gun into its holster and pulled my gladius out. We sliced at the swarm, carving a way through it. Alessandro cut a path ahead of me, slicing, chopping, cutting in a controlled frenzy. A step. Another step. The battering ram of the psionic’s magic hammered against my will. If my defenses broke, the psionic would flood my mind with fear, rage, or any of the other primal emotions, smothering all conscious thought.

I stumbled after Alessandro, hacking with my gladius on pure instinct, almost collided with the wall, and frantically pushed the call button.

A creature smacked into the wall on my right. Ichor splattered my face. Oh, gross. I pushed the button again. Come on. Come on!

The elevator chimed. The doors took forever to open.

“Get in!” Alessandro shouted and hurled his gun into the swarm.

I dove in, grabbed his jacket, and pulled him back into the elevator. A scorpion tick thrust in behind him, trying to claw at Alessandro’s arms with its segmented legs. Alessandro chopped at it with the machete. The beast screeched, ichor and severed legs flying everywhere. I punched the panel, lighting up all floors, and mashed the close doors button.

The doors started closing, ever so slowly, the swarm surging toward us like a tsunami through a shrinking gap.

Close, close, close!

The doors shut. The cabin slid up. The pressure on my mind vanished and I exhaled.

Alessandro raised his hands, flexing his fingers. I ejected the magazine out of my Beretta and slid the full one in. I still had eight bullets left, but I might need fifteen bullets fast.

The digital display counted off the floors: 2, 3, 4 . . . I had pressed all of them. The elevator should have stopped.

“They’re taking us to the roof,” I guessed. On the roof there would be nowhere to hide.

“Yes.” His face was grim. “Stay close to me.”

“What is your Antistasi range?”

“Not far,” he said.

When he’d used it on me, he’d been within touching distance. During the trials, when he was defending himself, he was about fifteen feet away. That was probably the extent of his range. He would have to get close to either mage to negate their magic, and neither the summoner nor the psionic would let him do that.

A summoner and a psionic. A far easier plan would have been to snipe us as we exited the building. Benedict had tried a strike team, and when that hadn’t worked, he sent two magic users perfectly paired to pin down and capture a Prime. Benedict wanted me alive.

The elevator door slid open and delivered us into a small room. On the left was a metal door marked stairs. On the right an open doorway gaped, leading to the roof, its door missing.

Alessandro tried the stairs door, then rammed it with his shoulder. It held.

“Barred from the other side.”

The elevator slid down.

A soft thud sounded from the other side of the stairs door, then another, followed by a shriek. The scorpion ticks had flooded the stairway. In a few moments they would be in the elevator shaft too.

I needed to get an arcane circle going fast. Most commercial buildings had flat concrete roofs.

I sprinted for the doorway and into the night.

A rectangular roof stretched in front of me, lit up by orange lights along its perimeter and perfectly flat except for the stubby row of AC units to the far right. Gravel crunched under my feet. A tar and gravel roof. It wasn’t smooth enough for a circle. The gravel would break the lines. Damn it.

Behind me Alessandro marched out of the utility room.

A whirlwind of green spiraled up over the building’s edge, directly opposite us, smashed into the roof, breaking into individual creatures, and vomited the summoner onto the gravel. He landed on his side, awkward, and staggered to his feet, his movements jerky and disjointed. The scorpion ticks circled him, whipping about. I could see glimpses of him, but I had no shot. Pumping bullets into the swarm was futile. I might as well just toss the gun over the side of the building.

To the left of me, Alessandro strode forward, putting himself into the path of the swarm. I moved to my right to get a clear shot.

The summoner focused on Alessandro, his swarm thickening to counter an attack from his direction. His coat hung open, revealing a thin body and a face that was no longer human. His skin had a sickly bluish tint, stretched too tightly over his features. His forehead protruded over his temples and the corners of his jaw were too far apart, as if someone had grafted extra bones onto a human skull.

Revulsion squirmed through me. The mix of human and insect felt wrong on a deep, primal level.

The summoner opened his mouth and hissed.

He was warped, and he was using magic. And doing a damn good job.

I reached out with my magic, trying to sense his mind. It was there, a weak, pale glow to my mind’s eye. The scorpion ticks streamed over him, each a faint greenish dot of primitive sentience. They buzzed around him like bees. On their own, they wouldn’t deter me, but collectively, they formed a mental veil that wrapped around him, all parts of it communicating, connected, and one.

I was looking at an alien hive mind.

This was so far out of my frame of reference, I didn’t know how to go about attacking it. I couldn’t even tell if he was human enough for my siren call to work.

Alessandro pulled a nail gun out of thin air, dropped it, lifted up a shovel, threw it, and came up with a tennis racket–shaped bug zapper. He hurled it at the swarm. It sparked, and one of the scorpion ticks went into a swan dive, landed a few feet from me, and lay on the ground twitching.

I can’t even . . .

A small flock of scorpion ticks tore out of the utility room behind our backs and swallowed us. The creatures washed over me, scratching, biting, stinging, tearing my clothes and skin. One clamped onto my leg. I shot it. It stopped chewing on me, but hung from my jeans, dead. A scorpion tick tore at my hair. I grabbed it by its tail, yanked it off, and slammed it onto the gravel. They were shredding us. I wouldn’t last much longer.

Alessandro barked a short “Ha!”

A stream of fire arched over my head and seared the swarm. Bodies plunged down, burning. The air around me was suddenly clear and I spun left. He had a small black flamethrower in each hand, the fire pouring from them in twin orange jets. A maniacal grin twisted his face, lit up by the flames. His eyes glinted. I had never seen him so happy.

The summoner screamed, an odd, guttural sound.

All around me scorpion ticks dropped out of the night sky, fell to the roof, and kept burning. The stench of chemicals, fire, and singed hair filled the air. Thick black smoke poured from the flames. It looked like a medieval painting of hell come to life, and Alessandro Sagredo was its devil.

The flamethrowers sputtered and died.

“Ma porca puttana,” Alessandro swore, his voice ice-cold. “Ne andasse dritta una!”

A second swarm coiled over the edge of the building to our right, broke apart, and deposited a middle-aged black woman onto the roof. The receptionist from Diatheke. She still wore the same dark suit with a string of pearls, except now it was torn from dozens of scorpion tick claws.

Alessandro was right. Everything had gone wrong today.

I snapped my wings open and hit her with a stream of my magic. My power crashed against the solid wall of her will.

“Thank you, Lawrence,” the psionic ground out.

Her defenses wrapped around her mind in layers. She’d had them up before she ever set foot on this roof and they were entrenched, their pattern old. She must have maintained them for decades and now activating them would come effortlessly to her.

Her magic was combat grade, mine wasn’t. She relied on direct assault, while I beguiled and used subterfuge until my magic gained hold. If I had surprised her or if I had the time and opportunity to draw a circle, it would be a different story. I had her pinned with the blunt press of my power, but that was as much as I could do. If we had been swordsmen, I would be a large strong fighter beating my blade on the shield of a more skilled, more experienced opponent. She made no effort to parry me. She knew that once she engaged me on the mental plane, only one of us would be left standing, and I was a Prime of unknown power. She refused to commit. Instead she sat behind her shell like a turtle and bided her time.

I began to hum, sending tendrils of my magic through my voice, trying to wrap them around the mental sphere of her defenses and trying to burrow into it.

The scorpion ticks regrouped, readying for the next assault. They hung around Lawrence like a maelstrom. The summoner’s jaws moved continuously, cracking invisible walnuts between his teeth. His eyes bulged out of his skull. He’d planted his feet. The muscles on his shoulders bunched, causing the sleeves of his trench coat to ride up his arms. Everything about him emanated rage.

There was no pain feedback between the summoner and the summoned. Mages like Lawrence reached into the arcane realm, pulled creatures out, and sent them to do their bidding. Alessandro’s pyrotechnics hadn’t injured Lawrence, but they did piss him off. He looked like he couldn’t wait to tear Alessandro’s head off.

It was a standoff. Lawrence wouldn’t move until he knew what weapon Alessandro would conjure, and for some reason, Alessandro did nothing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him, his magic winding about him shining with orange fire. He watched both Lawrence and the psionic, his hands empty, a look of intense concentration on his face.

Little flashes of pain flared in random spots on my body. The adrenaline was wearing off, and I was bleeding from a dozen places.

I managed a Victoria Tremaine sneer. “If you run away now, I might not chase you until tomorrow.”

“The name is Jocelyn Rake, my dear. I don’t run and I don’t chase. And your cheap parlor tricks won’t work on me.”

“You just chased me through the building.”

The effort to keep her pinned wore on me. It took all my concentration to keep her where she was. Magic flowed out of me in a steady torrent. I had spent a lot of my power at Keystone and now I was deep into my reserves. Soon they would run out. I couldn’t keep this up too much longer, and if Lawrence unleashed the swarm again, I would be done.

Jocelyn sneered back. “You’re a talented amateur. But I’m a professional. I didn’t survive this long by losing battles. I’ll kill you and be home in time to watch Out of Order and drink a glass of wine before bed.”

“You’re not leaving this roof.” My magic had grown with every word, but the tendrils of my power drummed against her mental shields without doing any damage. This was about to end, one way or another.

Jocelyn bared her teeth. “Big words for a little girl. I know all about you. You were the spare and now you’re the heir. You won’t elbow me out of the way like you did your sister.”

What?

“Look at you. You wanted to be in charge so badly, you climbed over your own flesh and blood to do it. It must have burned you that you had to follow her lead. She’s married and rich and so pretty, and here you are, an ugly dark duckling.” Jocelyn clicked her tongue. “You sad little thing. Couldn’t match your sister in anything else, so you decided to be the Head of your sad little House, climbed over her, and now you’ll die here, and your sister will laugh and laugh . . .”

The words burned. She wanted me to throw everything I had at her. I would exhaust my magic on her shell, then she would hit Alessandro, and Lawrence would finish us. I saw it in my head, me dying, curled into a fetal ball as the swarm tore at me, Alessandro running off the building, his eyes full of rage.

“Stop talking,” Lawrence spat, his voice low and inhuman. The swarm subtly realigned itself to face me and Jocelyn. “Kill the bitch. Kill the asshole. Bugs eat. We get paid.”

He could speak. He understood words.

“Hush, Lawrence,” Jocelyn told him. “You have your orders.”

“Fuck it. Kill, eat, go.”

Lawrence, a man of simple pleasures.

“You take orders from her?” Alessandro asked Lawrence. “She’s old and weak.”

Lawrence refocused on Alessandro, the swarm around him shifting in his direction.

“Hey, Lawrence, how about this? Kill her and we’ll go out for drinks. We will even find some roadkill for your friends.”

“Lawrence!” Jocelyn snapped.

“Yes, Lawrence,” Alessandro taunted. “Be a good boy and listen to Mommy.”

Lawrence opened his mouth. “Fuck you, shithead.”

“Such eloquence,” Alessandro noted. “Poetry in the flesh. No wonder she has you on a leash.”

Lawrence hissed at him.

“He’s all talk, but you got nothing to say?” Jocelyn mocked me. “Hey, pretty boy, your girlfriend weighed the odds, and she doesn’t like them. I can see it in her face. You understand, don’t you, little girl? There is nothing either of you can do, except die.”

“Switch,” Alessandro said, the single word cracking like a whip.

A new, longer flamethrower popped into his hands, white letters on the side spelling out “Property of the Houston Fire Department.” A twenty-foot jet of flame tore into the swarm and died. The scorpion ticks shied from the flame and heat, opening a gap.

I dropped my magic, spun to my left, and ran into the hole in the mass of insects. Behind me, the flamethrower roared, spitting fire at Jocelyn.

Hadn’t weighed those odds, had you?

The swarm surged to me, but it was too late. I charged through them, arms crossed to shield my face, knocking the small bodies out of the way. It was like trying to fight my way through a ball of barbed wire. Lawrence loomed in front of me, his eyes surprised and burning with fury. He bared his teeth at me, all three rows of them. I threw myself at him, hugging his neck, so we were face-to-face, and exhaled two words and all of my magic. “Love me.”

The surprise vanished from his eyes. His expression went slack, his features relaxing. “Hi,” he said.

He was mine.

I let go of him, stroked his jaw with my fingertips, and told him, soft like I would tell a lover, “Jump for me.”

He spun around and threw himself over the edge. The swarm followed the falling man. He crashed onto the pavement of the parking lot and lay still. The swarm spun about him and folded in on itself, blanketing him, a shining blanket of green mottled with red and yellow . . . I had seen this before, in a documentary on piranhas. They were devouring him.

I turned. Alessandro sat on the edge of the roof. Jocelyn slumped next to him, whispering, her eyes wild.

I ran up to them. His magic would wear off in about a minute. I had to hurry.

“It’s gone,” Jocelyn babbled. “My magic is gone.”

“She’s all yours,” Alessandro said.

I crouched by the older woman and swiped away the blood that was leaking into my eyes from a gash on my head. “Jocelyn,” I sang out. The world turned dim for a second. The last reserves of my magic emptied. If I took any more, I would pass out.

Her eyes widened. She stared at me.

“Where is Halle Etterson?” I asked her, keeping my voice gentle.

She strained, trying to fight me. Her will was strong, but mine was stronger.

“Magdalene has her.”

“Who is Magdalene?”

She shut her eyes tight.

“Don’t you want to tell me?”

She nodded like a child.

“It would make me so happy if you told me.”

Tears glistened in her eyes and slid over her cheeks. “I can’t. I’m trying, I’m really trying.”

“What’s her last name?”

Jocelyn bit into her lower lip. Blood ran down her chin. She would tell me if she could. Someone had hexed her. A mental mage, probably a Significant or a Prime, had placed a powerful compulsion in her mind that prevented her from speaking about Magdalene. Getting around the hex would take time and preparation and we didn’t have either. She wanted to tell me, she was desperate to tell me, but if I pushed any harder, her mind would break, and we would be left with nothing.

I switched gears. “Who killed Sigourney?”

She opened her eyes, relieved. “I don’t know. It went through Benedict.”

“Why was she killed?”

“She was supposed to do a job, but the dumb bitch backed away. You don’t ever do that.”

“Who was the target?” I asked.

“Linus Duncan.”

The name landed like a brick. Linus Duncan, former Speaker of the House Assembly, which had made him the most powerful man in Texas. Crossing him was fatal. He had also witnessed the formation of House Baylor. His name was written into the Book of Records next to my sister’s request for our family to be recognized as a House.

Rage sparked in Jocelyn’s eyes. Her magic stabbed me. Raw, primal fear burst inside me and exploded into panic. My vision blurred at the edges. A sharp metal taste coated my tongue. Every instinct I had screamed. I had to run away. I had to run away now or terrible things would happen. I scrambled back, away from her, trying to get to my feet. The fear whipped me into a frenzy. I had to run as fast as I could . . .

Alessandro grasped Jocelyn’s head and twisted. There was a dry crunch. Jocelyn’s head lolled to the side, her eyes blank.

Alessandro got up, stepped over her and held out his hand. His amber eyes were so warm and kind. “Catalina, come here.”

No! Danger! Go, go, run fast!

But it was Alessandro. I swayed, not knowing what to do. My whole body shook. The world was dancing, and its leaping made me dizzy.

“It’s okay.” Alessandro smiled, his voice so soothing. “Hold still. I’ll come to you.”

He moved toward me slowly, smiling and holding his hand out.

The last shreds of panic melted. The jittery blur in my peripheral vision dissipated. A long drop down to the parking lot yawned in front of me. I was standing on the edge of the building, balancing on my toes. I froze.

“Take my hand,” Alessandro said. “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”

I reached out. His hand gripped mine, his strong dry fingers hot on my skin. He pulled me back from the edge and hugged me to him. “I have you. It’s over. It’s over, angelo mio.”

The heat of his body shocked me. I was still shaking, so I wrapped my arms around him. He was pure muscle, hard and strong, and when he hugged me to him, the world slowed and stopped spinning, steadying with Alessandro as its axis. I shut my eyes. He was murmuring things to me, comforting, soothing things, his arms shielding me, his hand stroking my back, and I wrapped myself in his strength.

I would deal with what it meant later. I’d rationalize and dissect it and berate myself for being stupid, but right now I just needed him to hold me, and he did.

Gradually the world stopped doing a jig. My shaking muscles relaxed.

The dry crack of a gunshot popped to the right, close.

“Did you just shoot something?” I asked him.

“One of the bugs was eating Jocelyn’s face. Don’t look.”

He pulled me tighter to him, turning slightly to block my view. He would kill anything that came within his striking distance. Standing like this, with him holding me was the safest I had ever felt in the last three years. Something uncurled in me, happy and warm, and whispered that this was the perfect place for me to be.

I had to let go. I couldn’t just stand here on the roof for the whole night. The warehouse had probably been attacked, and we needed to go back and help.

I had to let go.

I had to.

Breaking away from him actually hurt.

I took a slow, deliberate step back. “I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” He was looking at me, his eyes concerned and warm. I looked away. If I didn’t walk away now, I would kiss him and I wouldn’t stop.

“I’m good,” I said again. I stepped around him and went to Jocelyn’s body.

She had nothing on her. No weapon, no identification, no wallet. Not even a tissue in her pocket. I checked her suit, and her jacket had no tags. I didn’t expect to find anything useful, but cutting all the tags off really took it to the next level.

We found Lawrence on the ground where he fell. His swarm, once terrifying, now lay around him, dying slowly on the grass and asphalt. They’d stripped his carcass of every shred of flesh, and only his skeleton remained, wrapped in his tattered coat. If we could identify Lawrence, we might be able to walk the trail back to his creator. We bundled the inhuman bones into what was left of the cloth and Alessandro carried it to Runa’s car, cursing the whole way.

I had no idea Italian had that many swearwords.