Sapphire Flames

Chapter 11

Lawrence’s bones stank. Once, I had stupidly smelled muriatic acid in a high school lab. It felt like inhaling razor blades, and the experience taught me to never stick my nose into a test tube. The skeleton reeked just like that, except worse. I had an absurd feeling that if I breathed through my mouth, it would cut my throat and I’d choke on my own blood.

Alessandro was carrying the bundle of Lawrence at arm’s length. I had to hurry up before one of us started retching.

I popped open the hatchback of Runa’s rental Rogue. An open suitcase tumbled out, spilling underwear and clothes onto the pavement. I jumped out of the way.

The back of the Rogue looked like an airport baggage claim after a tornado. Clothes strewn in a heap, tangled charging cords, shoes, a pack of sanitary napkins, and on top of it all a bottle of conditioner with its cap half off. The bottle had leaked pale green goo over the entire mess like the corpse of some alien creature. Arabella’s room was cleaner than this.

I grabbed the suitcase and frantically stuffed the fallen clothes and shoes into it. Alessandro waited next to me, a patient look on his face.

I just wanted to get out of this parking lot.

The suitcase was full, and half of the stuff still remained. How in the world had she packed it all in there?

“Backseat,” Alessandro said.

I heaved the suitcase into the back, slammed the hatchback closed, and opened the rear passenger door. He deposited Lawrence onto the floorboard. The bones clacked, pushed against each other.

Alessandro held out his hand. “Keys.”

I opened my mouth to fight with him about it and realized I had nothing left. I’d burned through every reserve I had. The world had gone soft and fuzzy, my legs refused to carry me, and the pavement of the parking lot looked very comfy and inviting. I could curl up on it, right here by the car, and sleep until morning. I was in no shape to drive.

I put the keys into his palm and climbed into the front passenger seat.

He got behind the wheel, moved the seat back, and started the car. The engine purred and we rolled out of the parking lot.

Alessandro cracked the rear windows half an inch and turned up the heat. I watched for the first few minutes, but he drove with easy confidence, comfortable behind the wheel, and merged into traffic as if he was born in Houston. Fatigue filled me, sand trickling into an hourglass. I lay back against the seat and closed my eyes.

“Catalina, are you all right?” he asked gently.

“I’m just thinking.”

“What about?”

“Lawrence’s hands. They didn’t look anything like the hand in Sigourney’s video, and his talent is completely different. I understand one warped person capable of magic. Strange things happen, and in life there are no absolutes. But two?”

He didn’t answer.

“And he was strong, Alessandro. Stronger than a normal summoner Prime. You said Diatheke had rapidly expanded over the last year. Are they manufacturing warped assassins somehow? Is that what’s fueling the expansion?”

“I don’t know.”

“Magic warped don’t occur naturally in significant numbers,” I recited from memory. I sounded tired even to myself. “The incidence of babies born with magic-induced birth defects is one per roughly nine hundred thousand. Almost all warped are the result of us meddling with inherent magic through experimentation. There is an Everest-size mountain of research on it, and none of it mentions them retaining any magical abilities post-transformation. Where would Diatheke get warped mages?”

“Again, I don’t know.”

“You can’t just cook up a warped human out of thin air. It requires fundamentally altering their talent. It requires years of research, complex arcane interaction, teams of mages working together. And money. A great deal of it.”

“Diatheke has the money,” Alessandro said.

“What about the rest of it?”

He shook his head, his gaze distant. “Every time I get close . . .”

“Close to what?”

He didn’t answer.

I should have probed deeper, but I was so tired, and thinking hurt. I wanted to feel him holding me again. I wanted him to pull over so I could climb into his seat and wrap myself in his strong arms again. I would put my head on his hard chest and let the steady pulse of his heart carry me off to sleep; safe, warm, and free of this oppressive sense of doom that hung over me like a storm cloud.

This could never happen. He and I could never happen. I was a siren. My magic would turn him into a lovesick zombie. He was an assassin. He killed people for a living. What did it say about him that he felt comfortable ending the life of a human being and getting paid for it?

What did it say about me? When he was with me, I felt alive. I had my family, I was never by myself unless I chose to be, but when he walked away, I suddenly felt alone, like someone had torn a vital part out of my life and I desperately needed it back. This wasn’t who I was.

I closed my eyes. The scarred hunter’s face surfaced from my memories, his eyes devoid of human emotion like the eyes of a gator. He and the man who’d put his arms around me on the roof were a world apart. The hunters had felt flat to me, as if some integral thing that made them fully human had withered and died, leaving only self-interest and bitter pragmatism. Alessandro felt vibrant and alive. When he talked about finding Halle, when he went out of his way to buy Shadow a treat, when he had asked me if I was all right a few minutes ago, he showed compassion. He had nothing to gain by doing any of these things. One couldn’t be compassionate and be a hired murderer.

Bits and pieces floated through my mind, trying to string themselves into a coherent whole. The derision in his voice when he called the assassins “they,” the dossier on Diatheke, the way he had explained how Sigourney hired him. I have a certain reputation, the kind people like Sigourney make a point to note. He wasn’t a simple assassin. There had to be more there.

Or perhaps I was deluding myself. I wanted him to be something more, because I wanted him. I would settle for the mere possibility of a future, a hope. Was it making me blind? Was I deliberately twisting the facts so I wouldn’t feel guilt about falling in love with a hired killer?

No, love was too strong of a word. Definitely too strong.

I had to stop thinking. Right now. “Why a shovel?”

“What?”

“On the rooftop when we fought the swarm, why did you conjure a shovel?”

He paused, obviously deciding how much to say. “It’s the way my magic works.”

“So it’s intention-based?”

He sighed, resigned. “Yes. I imagine the action, and the magic does the rest. It’s very fast. Sometimes I’m not fully aware of my intent before the item manifests.”

“So if you imagine stabbing someone, your magic produces something sharp?”

“It might. A knife, an ice pick, a shard of broken glass. Whatever is in range. It’s magic, not science. It takes a lot of training because thinking too broad or too narrow is useless.”

“What were you thinking of on the roof?”

“A really large bug swatter.”

The reek of Lawrence’s bones spread through the car, diluted by the wind but still strong enough to turn my stomach.

“Tell me about Linus Duncan,” he asked.

“I first met him at our trials and then again at Nevada’s wedding. He is charming and intelligent and very retired. Or at least so he claims.”

“Is he retired?”

“Men like Linus never truly retire. One time I asked Rogan about him, and he said Linus Duncan was the most dangerous man he knew.”

Since we became a House, Linus had been a constant presence in our lives. Sometimes he stopped in for dinner without warning. Sometimes we received an invitation to his house. His magic was off the charts. Nevada thought the world of him because he helped broker a ceasefire between us and Victoria Tremaine. Rogan respected him but treated him the way one would handle a loaded gun, aware that a single mistake could lead to tragic consequences.

With us Linus was always pleasant and charming. But no matter how likeable, a man who steered the Assembly full of bickering Primes had to be ruthless.

The image of him dancing with Victoria Tremaine popped into my head. My grandmother had cut a bloody path through the country’s magic elite. People were terrified of her. Just mentioning her name killed the conversation.

Who the hell dances with Victoria Tremaine?

He had to have done something for Diatheke to want him dead. I had no idea how he would react to me bringing this information to him. Did I want him to be aware that I knew someone had put a hit on him? How mad would he be when he found out that we knew about this?

I wish Nevada was here.

I wanted my big sister. I needed her advice. I wanted her to hug me and tell me the right thing to do.

No. At this point I knew more about all of this than she did. She was in Spain and I was here, on the ground. I had a front row seat to all of this. The responsibility for the decision was mine. If I called her, she would tell me the same thing. She would tell me to trust my instincts.

Jocelyn’s words floated up from my memory and stung me again.

“I didn’t climb over Nevada.”

“I know,” Alessandro said.

I glanced at him. I loved the way he looked right now, his profile etched against the light-studded night city. His expression had turned harsh, his eyes scanning the road in front of us. The wolf was out of the woods and on the prowl.

“How?”

“You hate being the Head of the House. Every bit of it.”

I had to work on hiding it better.

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

“There was nobody else.” I had no idea why I was even talking about this. He didn’t care about my family problems, but it felt vitally important to make him understand.

“What about Nevada?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time.”

I sighed. “Three years ago, several powerful Texas Houses conspired to overthrow the democratic government. The plan was to destabilize the current social order and, when everything went to hell, step forward as the saviors of the state, the heroes who stood for law and safety. They had a leader they called Caesar, and their goal was to remake our republic into an imperium, the way the original Caesar and his legions remade Rome. Rogan and my sister stopped it. We never did find out who Caesar was, but the conspiracy itself died. There were arrests and trials. My own grandmother was part of it. She’s still in prison. It’s a very posh prison, but it’s a prison. It seemed so simple. Bad guys failed. Good guys won. We thought we won.”

“Nothing is simple when it comes to Houses,” Alessandro said, his voice tinted with just a hint of bitterness. He hid it well, but I still heard it.

“Yes. All those powerful Houses and Primes had friends and allies, and once the dust settled, they attacked. They couldn’t touch us because we were an emerging House, but they came after Rogan full force. They attempted a hostile takeover of his businesses, they accused him of illegal trade practices, they manufactured evidence that he was involved in human trafficking. He had known all along it would happen, but none of us anticipated it, and it hit Nevada the hardest. She was trying to do everything at once: help Rogan, build goodwill to make sure we were safe once the grace period was over, and earn money for us. Our business was mortgaged. We were in debt. The Houses didn’t have to attack us. They just didn’t hire us. We had to fight for every dollar.”

He was listening to me and the words just kept coming out.

“Nevada didn’t ask for help. She was going to fix it all herself. She’d been fixing things herself since she was seventeen, when she took over the business. She lost weight. She looked sick. We asked her to slow down. She said she would, but she didn’t. We went to Rogan. He asked her to stop. She promised she would but kept on going. She was trying desperately to make sure that all of us were okay.”

My heart was speeding up. Talking about it was like jumping into an ice-cold well full of anxiety and fear. You would think time would have dulled it, but no.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Arabella and I came home and found her facedown on the floor.” The memory slashed across reality, raw and charged with pure panic: Nevada prone in the hallway and Arabella’s bloodless face and the terrifying sound of her screaming.

“It was just like when we found out my father had cancer. Mom, Arabella, and I had gone school supply shopping and when we came back, he was passed out on the floor in the home office.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “What did you do?”

“We freaked out and called an ambulance.”

There was so much there that couldn’t be explained. The single thought running through my head on a loop, “Cancer, cancer, cancer . . .” Mom’s glassy eyes as she stared straight ahead, driving the car behind the ambulance; Arabella rocking back and forth in the hospital waiting room, hugging herself and mumbling, “My sister’s going to die. My sister’s going to die”; the waiting for the doctor; my cousins running into the waiting room, Leon freaked out and stuttering, Bern lost and somehow small; and finally, Rogan tearing through the hospital hallway like he was going to take the building down. That was the only time I’d ever seen fear on my brother-in-law’s face.

“Was she sick?”

“Yes. She had the flu. She hadn’t eaten in two days, she was dehydrated and running a fever, and she’d spent the night in the rain doing some bullshit surveillance.”

Violence didn’t come naturally to me, but at that moment I had wanted to grab Nevada by her shoulders and shake her until her head popped off.

“I’m glad you found her. I know it was terrible for you to see her that way, but you found her that way because you were supposed to. If you hadn’t, she would’ve done permanent damage to herself.”

Who are you, Alessandro Sagredo? Why did you walk into my life?

“We all told her she had to stop. She said she would take two weeks off. The hospital released her. Rogan carried her out to his car. It was terribly romantic.”

Alessandro raised his eyebrows. “How long?”

“Fourteen hours. I found her in the office going through case files the next morning. It’s like she was stuck in a hamster wheel and couldn’t get out. Talking to her was pointless. Everything I said just bounced off.”

“She knew you were right, but she didn’t think she was wrong.”

“Yes.” I sighed. “I realized that we had to act. Arabella had turned eighteen a couple of months before this happened. When our dad died, he was the sole owner of the agency and he split his shares equally between the three of us.”

“You voted her out of the business?” He glanced at me, the disbelief clear on his face.

“No! Of course not. Nevada took the agency over from Dad at its lowest point and built it back up. She’s the reason our bills were paid and there was food on the table. We could never lock her out.”

“Then what?”

“We took away her ability to financially contribute to the business.”

He laughed under his breath.

“She could take all the cases she wanted, she could use all of our resources, but instead of getting a set salary and letting the bulk of the fee go toward our debt, she had to keep everything she earned. I told her that if she wanted to work herself to death, there was nothing we could do about it, but we wouldn’t be complicit in her slow suicide.”

He smiled.

“What?”

“An elegant solution. It’s very you. Was she mad?”

“Livid. She tried to force us to rescind the provision, but we wouldn’t do it. Then she got this strange look on her face and said, ‘I can’t be the head of a family that doesn’t trust me.’ And then she walked out.”

The hurt on her face would stay with me forever.

“She didn’t speak to me for three weeks. She wouldn’t take my calls, she didn’t respond to my texts . . . Nevada gave me my first case, she taught me how to drive, she stayed up and talked to me when I would cry in my room over some teenage catastrophe. Once, she drove all over the city for hours looking for me when I used my magic accidentally and had to run away from a kid . . .”

“What?”

I shook my head. “It was stupid. I was fifteen, he was paying attention to me, and I went on a date with him. It got out of hand. I wanted him to like me, and my magic leaked. It was just a trickle, but it was enough. Everything was going well until I had to go home, and he grabbed me by my hair and tried to drag me into his car. I ran away and hid, and Nevada searched for hours until she found me.”

He had an odd look on his face.

“Anyway, Nevada was always there for me and I had hurt her. It was my idea. I had ripped a hole in our family.”

“Arabella went along with it. I assume the rest of the family did too.”

“Yes, but I was the mastermind.”

“Did she call you that?”

“Leon did.”

“Your cousin is a hotheaded idiot.”

“Leon is impulsive, but he wasn’t wrong.” I shrugged. “Nevada came to see me eventually. She told me she understood where I was coming from, but she couldn’t be the Head of the House anymore. As far as she was concerned, that was a vote of no confidence. Somebody had to be her replacement. I was the next oldest Prime. I had engineered the coup. There was nobody else.”

“What happened to the agency?” he asked.

“It belongs to all of us. Nevada is still a shareholder. I run the House Baylor part of it, and she’s in charge of Baylor Investigative Agency. She takes complicated cases, mostly pro bono, usually to help people who have nowhere else to go. A lot of her work revolves around Rogan too. They’re still dealing with the fallout from three years ago.”

“It had to happen,” Alessandro said. “You can’t belong to two Houses at the same time, Catalina. Eventually you have to choose. No matter how close of an alliance you have with your family, once you’re married, your loyalty belongs to your spouse.”

“Is that why you never went through with any of your engagements?” I was really brave. Or maybe it was the blood loss. I was bleeding from a dozen shallow gashes, and the stench of Lawrence’s bones made me feel woozy.

“It was part of it,” he said.

We turned onto our street.

The burnt-out shell of a Guardian lay on its side on the left. Black, greasy smoke rose from it. Next to it a charred body in urban fatigues sprawled on the ground.

The spike barriers were up, blocking access from the sides. Ahead, a Howitzer sat by the guard shack. Sergeant Heart had arrived.

Alessandro raised his eyebrows.

A huge, shaggy shadow charged from behind the shack.

“Stop!” I grabbed Alessandro’s arm. “Don’t hurt him.”

He slammed on the brakes.

An enormous grizzly sprinted toward our car. I unbuckled my seat belt and jumped out. The massive bear reared up on his hind legs and loomed over me, blocking the floodlight at the top of the guard booth.

I held out my arms. The grizzly leaned over and hugged me to him.

I caught a glimpse of Alessandro, halfway to us, a chain saw in his hands.

“This is Sergeant Teddy,” I told him, leaning my head against the soft fur. “He won’t hurt me. He’s a pacifist.”

“Che gabbia di matti!” Alessandro said.

We might be a bunch of lunatics, but it didn’t matter. I was finally home.

The street in front of the warehouse was strewn with bodies. The streetlamps, which we turned on in an emergency, flooded the scene with bright electric light, and every detail of the corpses was clearly visible. Some had simply fallen, their expressions blank, neat bullet holes in their skulls. Those had to belong to Leon and my mother. They were the lucky ones. They died fast. The others lay contorted, their faces twisted into hideous masks by fear and pain. It took them a while to die and they knew it was happening. They felt it.

Ex-soldiers in the dark uniforms of Rogan’s private army moved around them, quick and efficient, all wearing hoods, gas masks, and gloves up to their elbows.

Runa sat in front of the motor pool on a huge tire, watching as Heart’s people hooked the bodies and pulled them onto plastic, vacuum sealing them like pieces of meat to be stored in the freezer. There was an odd look on her face, not exactly blank but tired and sort of satisfied.

She saw me. “I told them to just burn the bodies, but they didn’t listen to me.”

I came and sat next to her on the tire. Across from us at the other end of the motor pool Ragnar sat at the wooden table, his head tilted up. He was looking at the moon.

“I told him to stay inside.” Runa shook her head at her brother. “He didn’t. Those three bodies over there”—she pointed at the far right, where three fallen bodies formed a clump of arms and legs—“they’re his. He asked me if that meant he was now a werewolf, and now he’s staring at the moon and won’t talk to me.”

Alessandro walked over to Ragnar and sat down by him.

Runa looked at me. “Nobody listens to me. What the hell happened to you?”

“Flying scorpion ticks.”

Runa raised her eyebrows.

“Never mind that,” I told her. “What happened here?”

Runa took a deep breath, puffed her cheeks out like a chipmunk and let the air out. “Let’s see . . . You left. Your security dude, the one with the A name . . .”

“Abarca?”

“Yes, him. He came in to talk to your mom. He wanted to hire somebody, she said no, he got all upset and started ranting about authority issues and how he was in charge of security, and your mom lost her patience and told him he was being replaced. He freaked out. He actually screamed at her. And she got this weird look on her face.”

Oh no, oh please no. “Is he alive?”

“He was when he stormed out. Leon got between the two of them and told Abarca to start walking. Abarca said, ‘If that’s the way you want it, I’m walking and taking my people with me.’ Leon told him that if he did that, he shouldn’t count on severance pay. That the job wasn’t over until they were relieved. And then your mom said that deserters didn’t get severance pay. Abarca spat on the floor and took off.”

“I left for two hours. Two hours.”

“I know, right? Then your security guards rolled out, quick too. Fifteen minutes and they were gone.”

He left us defenseless. They wouldn’t have been able to leave so quickly unless they’d prepared in advance. Abarca must have made up his mind that if he didn’t get what he wanted, he’d be gone. The entire team must have been packed and ready to go.

They knew we were in danger. They knew there were children in the warehouse, and they just left us to die. I wanted to punch something.

“Then Montgomery showed up.”

“Augustine? Why?”

“Apparently Matilda’s aunt asked him to pick her up. Your mom wouldn’t let her go until Matilda called her aunt and confirmed it.”

Well, MII did have a division specializing in private security. Matilda would be safe with Augustine.

“Half an hour after that, two teams attacked in four of those things.”

Runa pointed inside the motor pool, where Grandma Frida was elbow-deep in the engine of a dented Guardian and humming softly. Two others waited on the left, in addition to the two she and Arabella brought from Keystone. The entire side wall of the motor pool was black with soot.

Grandma saw me looking, gave me a big smile, and went back to singing lullabies to the personnel carrier.

“Bug warned us when he spotted them, so we had time to set up. Leon took that street, on the left, and I took this one. Your mom was up there, in the attic thingy. She had wanted your grandma to take the tank out, but your grandma said, ‘Penelope, once you hit them with a tank, there isn’t much left, is there?’”

I can’t even.

“And then your mom said that all those vehicles would make a lovely funeral procession when we bury the children. She said maybe your grandma could paint them black to match the coffins.”

God.

“Then your grandma went to get the tank. There isn’t much else to tell. She shot the first car. It exploded, which was kinda cool. Then she knocked it out of the way with her tank and started chasing the other three cars with it. They made a circle around the warehouse. Whoever was driving the cars was pretty good, because I’ve never seen anyone drive backward that fast before. She banged another one with the tank, and then the bad guys decided to get out of the armored SUV things, and we started killing them. They had a pyrokinetic mage with them. That’s his corpse over there. He fireballed the warehouse. It caught on fire, which was exciting. Then I killed him. And then the cavalry showed up. Some of the bad guys ran away.”

Judging by the carnage in the street, most of them didn’t.

“I don’t know if you know, but Leon is psycho. I heard him talking to himself when shooting people. He used funny voices, Catalina.”

“Your brother thinks he’s a werewolf.”

“Good point.” Runa looked at the moon. “You didn’t tell me your mom was a sniper.”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“Of course, it is important. We both have moms who kill people for a living. Well, had, in my case, but still important. We have a lot in common, actually. Our dads are gone. We’re both the Head of our Houses. We both have younger male brothers or cousins who are crazy. We’re both murderers.”

Okay then. “Are you all right?”

“I’m great,” Runa said. “I can’t decide if I should start screaming because I killed nine people or celebrate because I avenged my mom. It felt good to kill them, but now I feel really guilty about it. I’m probably going to have a nervous breakdown once I process all of this.” She paused. “Yes, that sounds really nice. I think I’ll do that.”

“Okay, let’s go inside.” I got up and pulled her off the tire to her feet.

“But the dead people . . .”

“I think you’ve had enough dead people for today. Come on, let’s go inside, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea, you’ll cry and you’ll feel better.”

I was dragging her inside when my sister pulled up in her armored Mercedes.

“Where were you?” I growled as soon as Arabella jumped out.

“I drove to Austin to our insurance company HQ. They had no right to cancel our policy.”

“Did you get anywhere?”

“They called the cops and threw me out.”

“Did you get arrested?” If she had, I would deal with it.

Her expression turned bitter. “No. They didn’t have the balls.”

“Don’t leave my brother alone with Alessandro,” Runa said. She tried to turn around. “He’s a killer. Don’t leave them alone!”

“I’ve got this,” Arabella told me.

“I’ll go and get Ragnar,” I promised.

Arabella took Runa’s other arm and led her into the warehouse.

I turned around and walked over to where Ragnar and Alessandro sat at the table. Ragnar watched me approach.

“Your sister is worried about you,” I told him.

“He’ll be fine,” Alessandro said.

“He asked her if he was a werewolf.”

Ragnar sighed. “It’s a quote from a book. ‘When war knocks on your door, bringing suffering and death, good men turn into savage wolves.’ Am I a wolf now?”

“It depends on your definition of a wolf.” I sat on the bench. “Sometimes wolves go rabid. They slaughter everything they see just because they can. But most wolves kill only to eat or to defend their pack. You seem like more of the second type to me.”

“It’s my fault.” Ragnar turned to me, his eyes clear and lucid. “If I hadn’t tried to kill myself, none of this would’ve happened.”

His memories had come back. Hell of a timing.

“That’s ridiculous,” I told him. “None of this is your fault in any way.”

“If I didn’t collapse like some stupid baby, Runa wouldn’t have asked you for help. People wouldn’t have attacked your home. They wouldn’t have tried to kill your family because of us.”

“You’re being a dramatic fifteen-year-old,” Alessandro said, his voice harsh.

Ragnar drew back as if slapped.

“Guilt is a luxury and right now you can’t afford it,” Alessandro continued. “Do you want to be an adult or a child? Children require comfort even in a crisis, because they can’t understand how urgent things are. In a child’s world, it’s all about them: how this affects me, how this makes me feel, why is life so unfair? An adult sees a problem and tries to fix it. They think of other people and they plan their actions aware of the consequences. They understand that there will be time to deal with grief and loss after the danger is over.”

“So how do I fix this?” Ragnar asked, his face grim.

“Survive,” Alessandro said. “The enemy is trying to kill you and your sister. If you live, you win.”

Ragnar shook his head. “That’s not enough.”

“It’s plenty for now,” I told him.

“What do you want to do?” Alessandro leaned closer to the boy. “Do you want to go over and kill the people who murdered your mother?”

“Yes!”

“You can’t. Not yet. You’d die and they would win. That’s also part of adulthood—adults understand their limitations.”

“I did fine,” Ragnar squeezed through clenched teeth.

Alessandro looked at the bodies. “Their faces tell me that your sister is too caught up in making her enemies suffer. And that trail of vomit over there tells me you hesitated. You made them sick first. Was it hard to kill them?”

A tear swelled in Ragnar’s left eye. He swiped at it, his face a rigid mask.

“Don’t be ashamed,” Alessandro told him. “That’s good. That’s what separates us from them. It should be hard. Killing another human being is the hardest thing you will ever do. But to fight in this war, your kills must be instantaneous. Any hesitation gives your enemy an opening to end you. You die, they win. Acknowledge to yourself that you hesitate. Don’t engage unless you must. Remember your job. You must live through this.”

“To do what?” Ragnar stared at the corpses.

“To train and practice to make sure that the next time someone comes for your family, you will be ready. Your sisters will need you.”

Ragnar jumped off the table and went inside.

“Harsh,” I told him.

“That’s what he needs right now. Trust me,” Alessandro said. “If he has a goal, it will keep him looking forward. Thinking about what already happened and what he could’ve done about it will just drive him mad.”

He got up and walked away. I took in the street full of corpses one last time and went into the warehouse, to the warm light and sounds of my family.

It took us half an hour to settle Runa down. In the end, Mom gave her a sleeping pill. Runa took it with her tea and then fell asleep at the kitchen table. Bern carried her to her room. Leon took Ragnar and two beers to the Hut of Evil to check out his gaming setup. I hadn’t seen Heart. He was definitely around, supervising, examining the lay of the land, and giving orders, and Mom had spoken to him. I would see him tomorrow. The last thing he needed right now was me underfoot.

Shadow had acted like I was gone for a century. She stood on her hind legs and scratched at my thigh. She made small, happy doggy noises and wagged her tail so much, it was a wonder it didn’t break off. She also trailed me wherever I went. I had gotten Lawrence’s bones out of the car, put them into a plastic bin, and carried the bin into the motor pool, and she’d managed to trip me twice.

Grandma Frida turned at our approach. Her eyes narrowed. “Girl, you’re all beat up.”

I’d counted on everyone being too busy to notice. Leave it to Grandma to zero in on my scratches like a homing missile. “It’s just torn clothes.”

Grandma Frida raised her finger and pointed. “Laceration. Abrasion. Puncture. Several punctures. Chunk of hair missing.”

I dropped the bin and grabbed my hair. “Where?”

Grandma reached out and touched the left side of my head. “Right there. You’re bleeding and you look like you’ve gone through a shredder.” She wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “And you stink like accelerant and smoke. Has your mother seen you?”

“Mom has her hands full. I’ll just take a shower . . .”

“Take off that rag and sit.” Grandma Frida pointed to a stool.

I dropped the torn trench coat to the floor and sat. Grandma Frida took one look at me and reached for the first aid kit.

There were times in life when alcohol really hurt.

“Actually, it’s been proven—ow—that treating wounds with—ow—rubbing alcohol slows the healing. A saline wash is so much better. Ow, ow, ow!”

“Saline wash is for your eyes. Alcohol is for getting arcane goo out of holes in your skin. Be a big girl and deal.”

Ow.

By the time I told her the story and my wounds were treated, it felt like I had no skin left. Or rather I had skin, but it was on fire.

“Where’s your Italian now?”

“In the old fire station building. He isn’t mine.”

Grandma Frida chuckled. “I think boatneck.”

“What?”

“For your wedding dress. It would be very flattering on you.”

“Grandma!”

Grandma Frida rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “I never canceled my subscription to Brides magazine.”

I jumped off the stool. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this.”

Grandma Frida hugged me. The familiar scent of engine oil and gunpowder enveloped me.

“You’re doing great, sweetheart. I know you think nobody notices, but we all do. You go take that shower now.”

I hugged her back and went to the door.

“What do you want me to do with your bin?” She pointed at Lawrence’s plastic coffin.

“Could you lock it in the cage for safekeeping. Don’t open it.”

“Will do,” Grandma promised.

I snuck upstairs into my room before my mom also noticed my punctures, went to the bathroom, stripped off my torn clothes, and stepped into the shower. I didn’t even look at myself in the mirror. The sharp sting of open cuts let me know exactly where I was hurt.

Shadow assumed a devoted vigil outside the shower door.

The hot water hit me, sending a fresh pulse of pain through my wounds. I cried out and cringed. Body wash was going to suck.

Gobs of translucent bug ichor splatted on to the tiles of the shower floor. I reached up and touched my hair. It was like sticking my fingers into half-set Jell-O. Ugh. I poured way too much shampoo into my hand and started working it into my hair.

Tomorrow I would have to meet with Heart and figure out how much our new security was going to cost us and where we were going to get the money for it. I had a pretty good idea of how to get some quick cash for the deposit but I knew Grandma Frida wasn’t going to like it.

Finally, the water ran clear. I stepped out, smelling of lemon and lavender, dried my hair with a towel, and carefully wrapped another big, soft, fluffy white towel around myself. I only whimpered twice as I did it. I was a big girl and I dealt.

My dog was gone. Well, her devotion was short-lived.

I dragged my brush through my hair. It got stuck. Great. This would take a while.

I walked out of the bathroom, keeping my movements small to prevent the towel from rubbing me too much and trying to not rip all my hair out with my brush.

Alessandro lay on my bed, petting Shadow.

I squeaked and hurled the brush at his head.

He snatched it out of the air. “Stop throwing things at me.”

“Stop being in my room. Stop being on my bed. I’m wearing a towel!” And why had I just pointed that out?

He took a slow look from my feet all the way to my eyes. “Yes, you are.”

All of my thoughts derailed. My body recalled how it felt to be held by him in every vivid detail. Safe, and warm, and exciting. His carved chest under my cheek, his washboard stomach, the heat of his body, his arms around me . . .

I clamped the towel to my chest and pointed at the window. “Get out.”

He sat up, unhurried, confident, like a big cat stretching, and got up to his feet. If I could have recorded it in slow motion and then posted it online, I’d break Instagram.

“We need to decide what to do about Linus Duncan,” he said.

“We have to tell him,” I said. “His life might be in danger. Also, he might have a reasonably good idea why Diatheke is trying to kill him.”

“Do you think he’ll answer our questions?”

“I don’t know. He’s sort of a family friend, so he might. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow. Alessandro, do you know who Magdalene is?”

“No.”

“More for tomorrow.”

He was looking at me like he was thinking of stealing my towel. And I wanted him to.

No. Bad idea. Really, really bad idea.

A hint of a smile played at his lips. He looked evil. “What are you thinking right now?”

“Nothing.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Thinking about wearing nothing?”

“Out.”

Alessandro sighed. “I’m so tired. Are you sure I can’t just rest right here? I promise to behave. Unless you don’t want me to.”

Yes. No!

“Alessandro,” I pronounced each word as firmly as I could. “Leave my room. My mother has informed Heart that you are permitted on the premises, so there is no reason for you to hide here. You won’t get shot or evicted.”

“You think that’s why I’m here? You think I’m afraid of your new army?”

“I think you enjoy mocking me, why I have no idea. Don’t mistake Heart for Abarca. These are the people who take down Primes.”

He bared his teeth. “Now you’ve made it into a challenge.”

I met his stare. “Are you really contemplating killing people who have done nothing to you and who are here to protect my family?”

He sighed. “No.”

“Good night, Alessandro.”

He turned and walked to the window. My magic pulsed in appreciation, recognizing another swordsman in the sure, easy grace of his movements. I could never spar with him. If we ever tried it, I would end up having sex with him right there, on the spot.

He picked up an object wrapped in tinfoil from the windowsill. “If you scream, I’ll hear you. So if something bad happens, scream, Catalina.”

“That’s great, but there won’t be any screaming.”

His eyes lit up. “Wait for it. Three, two . . .”

“Damn it all to hell!” Leon roared downstairs.

I sprinted out of the room onto my landing. “What is it?”

“Someone took the damn pie!”

“What?”

“He wanted a piece of the pithivier,” Bern called up. “He already had a piece, but he said he was a great defender and deserved more.”

I spun around. A blast of cold air hit me. At the open window, Alessandro winked, grabbed his tinfoil loot, and vanished into the night.

“I just wanted some pie.” The despair in Leon’s voice was overwhelming. “That Italian bastard took it! I know he took it. It’s the kind of rat dick move he would do. I’m going to find him and . . .”

“And what?” Bern demanded. “Shoot him over the pie?”

I closed the door. Leon kept yelling, but I couldn’t make it out. I went to the window, shut it, locked it, and lowered the shades. I slipped on underwear and an oversize T-shirt and crawled into my bed.

The covers smelled like Alessandro.

It had been such a long day and now finally I was safe and cozy. My little dog snuggled into the crook of my knees. I closed my eyes and willed myself to go to sleep.