Sapphire Flames

Chapter 2

I had texted Mom while en route, and the family met us at the door. Bern took Ragnar from Augustine and carried him into my office; Grandma Frida wrapped a blanket around Runa, Arabella thrust a cup of hot cocoa into her hands, Leon told her she was safe now, and Mom thanked Augustine and shut the door in his face.

Then everybody left, abandoning us in my office. Runa blinked at me from the client chair, her hands wrapped around the mug of hot chocolate, looking a little shell-shocked.

I walked over to where Ragnar lay on the floor, to the left of my desk. Someone had already moved the rug, exposing the arcane circle underneath, and Bern had placed the boy inside it. Drawn in chalk by hand, arcane circles served various purposes. Some refined the mage’s power, some amplified or channeled it. This one drained excess magic. I had drawn it for just such an emergency and redrew it every week, for practice. From above, it resembled a complex double ring, encircled by glyphs. Straight lines of various lengths pierced the rings, radiating out like the sun’s corona.

I took a piece of chalk from the shelf and drew two lines connecting the second circle under my chair to the one with Ragnar in it. I sat in the chair and sank a burst of magic into the smaller ring under my feet. The chalk lines flashed with silver and faded to a weak white glow as the circle began to sap my magic from Ragnar. Eventually I would get tired and have to quit, but I had a lot of power and I was willing to bet Ragnar would be purged first.

“He’ll be fine,” I told Runa. “There is no way to keep his magic from being drained as well, so he might be groggy, powerless, and kind of flat emotionally for the next few days.”

“That might be for the best,” she said.

I felt pressure to say something, but my brain refused to come up with anything appropriate. Asking her if she was okay was pointless. Her mother and sister had just died. In her place I would be catatonic.

Runa looked away from me to the corner of my desk. Her eyes widened. I glanced to the right to see what she was looking at.

A framed picture of Alessandro Sagredo sat on my desk. The frame itself was square, but the photograph cutout was shaped like a heart, its edge studded with rhinestones seated in the small pools of the glue from the hot glue gun. The left half of the frame was a hideous Pepto-Bismol pink; the other was covered in pink glitter. Massive plastic jewels decorated both. The image of Alessandro was black and white, and on it in pink glittery marker someone had written, “My smoochie poo.”

I would recognize that cursive anywhere. My twenty-eight-year-old sister took the time out of her busy schedule of wrenching the truth from terrorists and murderers and preparing for an extended trip overseas to make this monstrosity, and then conspired with my other sister to troll me with it.

Why, Nevada? Why . . .

He was tall and broad-shouldered. He stood with an easy, natural grace. I used to stalk his Instagram and I knew every line of his face, but he hadn’t posted for a while and usually his pics were posed. Alessandro against a Maserati. Alessandro on a yacht. Alessandro riding an elegant Andalusian horse like he was born in the saddle. Alessandro the Prime. Count Sagredo. The heir to one of the oldest noble families in Italy. Wealthy, powerful, handsome, once a teen heartthrob with millions of followers on Herald and Instagram and now a man who weaponized his influence and beauty. He could make the photograph communicate whatever he wanted.

But this, with the sun in his eyes and wind messing with his brown hair, this was real. And his smile was magic. I looked at it and was eighteen again, standing across from him in a trial room, waiting to match my magic against his and prove that I was a Prime. He had spoken to me, impossibly handsome, with amber eyes and that slightly lopsided grin, and I couldn’t even make noises come out of my mouth.

I thought I was over this.

“Boyfriend?” Runa asked.

“No.” And that didn’t hurt at all.

Whenever I looked at Alessandro, in pictures or in person, he made me think of duels and courting, of a time when men carried swords and women concealed daggers. There was a dangerous edge to him, hidden deep in his eyes, and it drew me to him like a magnet. But that Alessandro was a fantasy, born from reading too many books set in medieval Italy with all its wars, glamour, art, and poison. He was a fantasy the way imagining being a secret princess was a fantasy. I knew it wasn’t real, but it was so seductive, I couldn’t let it go.

The real Alessandro didn’t carry a sword. He was an Antistasi Prime. His magic nullified other mental magic. The Keeper of Records had chosen him to test my power during the trials. To be recognized as a Prime, I had to make Alessandro step over the line drawn on the floor. He took the full brunt of my power and resisted it for several minutes, but in the end I won.

With that type of talent, there were only two paths open to Alessandro: military service or private protection. He chose neither. Instead, he did what many young Primes with too much money and freedom chose to do. He indulged. He sailed yachts, raced fast cars, and dated stunning women.

He and I were worlds apart. He would never be what I imagined him to be and it was probably for the best.

I slapped the frame facedown on the desk. The back of the frame was covered in pink hearts and small pictures of Alessandro printed from his Instagram.

If the world had any compassion in it at all, I would teleport a thousand miles away.

Runa squinted at the back of the frame. “Is that Alessandro Sagredo?”

I picked up the frame to throw it in the trash, changed my mind halfway there, and dropped it into the desk’s top drawer instead. Putting him in the garbage was beyond me. “My sisters have a weird sense of humor.”

“Sisters do that,” she said, her voice dull.

And hers was dead. “I’m so, so sorry.”

She looked at me with haunted eyes. “Thank you. You’re the only person who’s been nice to me since this happened.”

Who wouldn’t be nice to her? She just lost most of her family. “What do you mean?”

“I was at UCLA. I’m working on my master’s, molecular toxicology.”

Her tone was flat, her expression detached. She had to be barely keeping it together. I’d been there before, in a place where you’re so freaked out that you hold yourself supertight, because any splash of emotion could break the dam and you would fall to pieces.

“On Monday I got a call from the Houston PD. They said, ‘The residence in Piney Point Village burned down and we believe your mother and sister died in the fire.’ Just like that. I understood that sentence, but also kind of didn’t. I knew what the words meant, I just couldn’t put them together to make sense. I must’ve stood there with the phone in my hand for ten minutes, just trying to process, you know?”

I didn’t, but I could imagine it in vivid detail.

Runa sighed. “I took the first flight.”

It was Wednesday now. She’d been in town for two days.

“I came back to a burned-out husk of a house and two dead bodies. Ragnar was on a school trip to Colorado at an astronomy camp. No cell reception. I had to call the local police station and get them to notify him. That first day, after I viewed the bodies, I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I mean, what do you do when your mom and sister are lying on a table so burned, the ME has to use dental records to identify them?”

That was odd. Why dental records? Everything Primes did was dictated by the need to strengthen and preserve their magic. Parenthood was no exception. The Houses based marriages on calculated DNA matches most likely to result in powerful offspring. Because of this, every magically significant bloodline registered with a genetic database. It would take at most twenty-four hours to compare DNA from the bodies to their genetic profiles, and unlike dental records, DNA match was error-proof.

Runa looked into her cup. “I didn’t want to be by myself, so I called Michelle. We’ve been friends since middle school. She wouldn’t take my call. Then I called Felicity, my other friend. She picked up, made all the right noises, and then when I asked her if I could stay with her for one night, she told me she would call me back in five minutes.”

Runa looked at me. Her eyes looked dead. My heart cracked. When I met her three years ago, Runa was larger than life. She made jokes, she ate poisoned fondant, she flirted with Rogan’s security detail. She was strong and confident and alive. This Runa wasn’t even a shadow of herself. She was a ghost.

“Felicity never called back?” I guessed.

“No. I’ve known these people for years. They were my squad. We’ve lost touch since we all went to college, but we got together on holidays. We follow each other’s accounts on Herald. These were my friends, Catalina.” A little life came back into her gaze. “I expected them to have my back.”

That didn’t surprise me. Houses entered alliances based on family ties and mutual benefit. Runa wanted to hire Augustine, which meant she suspected that her family was murdered. If she was right, both she and Ragnar could be targeted. Runa was alone and inexperienced, which made her vulnerable. Sheltering her, aiding her, or associating with her brought no advantages. It only put you in danger.

“I spent the night in a hotel,” she said. “Ragnar flew in the next day. I met him at the airport and his face just fell. He must’ve expected me to tell him that it wasn’t true, but it is, and then he shut down. He went limp on me right there, and he was too heavy for me to carry. Then airport security called the first responders, and I let them take him to the hospital. I didn’t know what else to do. I was late to my appointment with Montgomery, but he agreed to meet me at Memorial. You know the rest. When Montgomery offered to see me at the hospital at one o’clock in the morning, I really thought he would help. I should’ve known better.”

“What did he quote you?” I asked.

“Twenty million. Even if I sold every financial asset the estate has, I couldn’t raise enough money.” Runa shook her head.

Even for MII, that was a high price tag. But then Augustine came and got me to help her. He had a moment of compassion. Unfortunately, telling her that wouldn’t make anything better.

Runa looked down at her hot chocolate. “Thank you again. I’ll be out of your life as soon as Ragnar wakes up.”

The responsible thing to do, the Head of the House thing to do, would be to send her on her way. This wasn’t our fight and there was no profit to be made here. We were an emerging House, and we had neither the financial resources nor the manpower of MII. If I helped her, I would be putting all of us in danger.

But she was a friend. She’d kept us all from dying at Nevada’s wedding, and when I looked at her, my chest hurt.

“You’re not going anywhere,” I told her. “We have more than enough guest bedrooms and if you don’t want to be alone, you can crash on the media room couch. Someone’s always in the media room.”

She stared at me.

“It’s a very special couch,” I told her. “Mad Rogan once fell asleep on it. We’re thinking of having it gold-plated and donated to a museum . . .”

Runa’s composure broke like a glass mask and she cried.

I got up, took away her hot chocolate before she sloshed it all over herself, and hugged her.

Morning came far too fast. Normally I got up at 7:00 a.m., but Ragnar didn’t finish draining until a little past 4:00 a.m., and when my alarm blared, I turned it off and slept for another hour. That proved to be a mistake. I had a nightmare and woke up scared out of my mind. When I finally made it downstairs, bleary-eyed and carrying my laptop, Mom, Grandma Frida, and Bern were already there, finishing their breakfast. Grandma gave me a zombie look from above the rim of her coffee mug. Neither one of us did well with little sleep.

I landed in my chair. Mom put a cup of tea in front of me and I drank it. It was so hot, it made the roof of my mouth wrinkle, but I didn’t care.

“Easy there,” Bern said.

“Let me have my drug.” I drank more tea. “Mmm, caffeine. So delicious. Where is everybody?”

“Leon left last night to close the Yarrow case,” Bern said. “Arabella has an appointment with Winter, Ltd.”

“Let me guess, they still haven’t paid us?”

“Yep.”

Occasionally, clients were slow to pay. We reminded them once, then a second time, and then we sent my sister in an Armani suit, armed with her laptop. None of us had any idea what she said, but the payment usually arrived within twenty-four hours.

My phone chimed. A text message from Nevada. Landed safe. Everything ok?

I texted back. Everything is great. Selfie or it didn’t happen.

“They landed in Barcelona. They’re okay.” I couldn’t keep the relief out of my voice.

Bern raised his tawny eyebrows. “You do realize that you’re more likely to die in a car going to the airport than to get into a plane crash?”

“Yes, but I can influence the outcome of my car ride. I can drive myself or hire a driver. I can choose the type of car and the route. I can’t influence the plane.”

When Bern boarded a plane, he relaxed in his seat and looked out the window, because “Woo, technology.” When I got on a plane, I calculated my odds.

My phone chimed again. My sister stood against a backdrop of green mountains, smiling, her big brown eyes laughing. She was beautiful, with a golden tan and blond hair the color of light honey. Next to her Connor Rogan loomed; huge, muscular, dark-haired, his blue eyes piercing in contrast to his bronze skin. He was smiling too, a genuine warm smile. Looking at them made me so happy. I could almost feel Spain’s sunshine.

“About the Ettersons,” Bern said.

I sighed and opened my laptop. Bern had sent me an email titled “Etterson.” I clicked it.

House Etterson:

Sigourney Etterson, Prime Venenata, 50, single;

Runa Etterson, Prime Venenata, 22, single;

Halle Etterson, Prime Venenata, 17, single;

Ragnar Etterson, Prime Venenata, 15, single.

James Tolbert, Significant, purifier, 52, ex-husband and father of the children; whereabouts unknown.

As I thought. Both Runa’s mother and her siblings were Primes.

No known House alliances. Estimated worth: $8 million.

In the sea of Houston’s elite, the Ettersons were a relatively small fish and they swam by themselves. No strong ties to other Houses, no patrons of great influence. It wasn’t unusual. Many smaller Houses preferred to operate independently, unattached to a larger family. Powerful Houses had powerful enemies, and when you allied yourself to one, you inherited their friends and their rivals.

Bern took a slow swallow of his coffee. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me. “Our grace period runs out tomorrow. I don’t need to remind you of the statistics.”

He didn’t. I could rattle the numbers off the top of my head. Ever since the invention of the Osiris serum over a century ago, magic and power became synonymous and intrinsically linked. Arcane talent was hereditary; those who had it bred to keep it, and bloodlines and families became the new power units of society. When a family produced two Primes in three generations, it could petition for and be formally recognized as a House; an honor that came with life-changing benefits and drawbacks.

On average, seventeen new Houses emerged every year nationwide. Of those, a quarter survived the first eighteen months after their grace period was over, and only a third of the survivors made it to the five-year mark as an independent entity. As soon as they were fair game, their competitors killed them off or the more powerful families dismantled them, scavenging their Primes for their own uses. Some voluntarily entered alliances, like the one Augustine had offered me, and became vassals, eventually absorbed by their patron House or killed, used as the first line of defense in House warfare. A grand total of 1.42 families lived through the melee.

The next year would be crucial. Our first case with me as the Head of the House would be equally important.

This morning, sometime between turning off the alarm and jerking awake, I had dreamed that Arabella burned to death. In my nightmare, I was holding her charred corpse to me, looking at her picture on my cell phone, and crying. I woke up with my face wet. For Runa, it wasn’t a nightmare, it was reality.

“Venenatas are combat mages. Runa Etterson would make a formidable ally,” I said. “I’ve looked at our schedule, and if Leon closes the Yarrow case today, we’re wide open.”

We were wide open because for the first time in the last three years we had decided to lighten our load for the holidays. We had mostly succeeded, except for the Yarrow fraud and the Chen case. The Chen case was a nightmare. Someone had stolen a van with three prize-winning boxer dogs in it on Christmas Eve. The van was found abandoned the next day, all three dogs missing, and the breeder was beside himself. Cornelius, an animal mage and our only nonfamily investigator, had taken that one, and we hadn’t seen him or Matilda, his daughter, since the day after Christmas. He’d emailed me yesterday to inform me he was still alive and working.

Bern smiled. “That’s a solid argument, and if I wasn’t your cousin, I would totally believe it. You’re making an emotional decision. You would help her if her magic consisted of conjuring up cute garden gnomes.”

“Bernard,” my mom said in her Mom voice.

“I want to help her as much as anyone,” Bern said, “but my job in this family of Care Bears is to provide logical analysis, so humor me.”

“I understand your point. It’s valid.” I sipped my tea to buy time. Bern could be swayed, but you had to present your arguments in a methodical fashion. “You’re right; the grace period is almost over, and I’m an unknown commodity. It would be different if Nevada was the Head of the House.”

“If Nevada was here, I would give her the same assessment,” he said.

“Either way, we’ll be watched and our first case with me in charge will be scrutinized. I considered it carefully and I like the message this case is sending.”

“What message?” Grandma Frida asked. The coffee must have finally kicked in.

“We stand by our friends,” I said. “We aren’t a House who abandons allies out of convenience. If you earn our trust, we’ll honor it.”

Bern nodded. “Very well. As long as we’re all clear on what we’re walking into. Two Prime Venenatas may have been burned to death in their home, on their own turf. We all know what that means.”

“What does it mean?” Runa asked from the doorway. She wore a big T-shirt and a pair of leggings. Her hair was a mess, dark circles clutched at her eyes, but some of the stiffness in her posture had eased off.

“House warfare,” Mom said.

House warfare had its own rules. When people who could incinerate entire city blocks and throw buses around fought to the death, the government turned a blind eye, as long as all reasonable precautions against civilian casualties had been made. You went to the courthouse, filed some paperwork, and walked out with carte blanche to murder your enemies as you saw fit. If your House was in a feud and people with guns and magic were storming your home, 911 wouldn’t take your call. If you were running down the street with a pack of summoned monsters on your heels, the cops wouldn’t stop to help you. That was one of the many costs of being a Prime. You weren’t above the law, but, in many cases, you existed outside of it.

“We don’t know for sure that it’s House warfare,” I said. “Let’s get all the facts and then make a decision.”

“I don’t want to put anyone in danger,” Runa said.

“Danger is our middle name,” Grandma Frida said.

Mom stopped what she was doing and looked at Grandma Frida.

“What?” Grandma Frida shrugged. “It’s been too quiet around here. I’m ready for some action.”

“The last time you got some action, you drove Romeo through a storm mage’s compound, while Nevada rode shotgun and fired a grenade launcher at the giant animated constructs chasing you,” Mom said. “Your tank had to be rebuilt from the tracks up, and you had four broken ribs and a gash on your head that needed thirty stitches.”

“Don’t you worry about me getting action, Penelope.” Grandma Frida grabbed a handful of her white curls and pulled them back, exposing the edge of a scar. “It adds character.” She paused. “And an air of mystery. A woman can always use more mystery.”

“God help me,” Mom said.

“Thank you for inviting me into your home,” Runa said. “But this is my problem. I don’t want any of you getting hurt because of us.”

Mom pointed at the chair next to Bern and said, “Sit.”

Runa sat. The combination of mom and sergeant always worked.

“You’ve helped our family,” Mom said. “Now you’re in danger and you’re responsible for your brother, who also might be a target. His safety should be your first priority. We’re offering you a protected base and assistance. We may not have the resources and the manpower of larger firms, but we close our cases. You are the Head of your House now, Runa. Do what’s right for your House.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Runa said.

I turned to Runa. “Do you have a dollar?”

She gave me an odd look and dug through her pockets. “I have a five.”

“If you give me that five-dollar bill, I’ll consider us officially hired. Your choice.” I held my hand out.

“I don’t expect you to work for free . . .”

“Have no fear, we’ll bill you for all of the expenses that will come up. If you still feel that you need to adequately compensate us, we can trade you for poison-detecting services.”

Runa took a deep breath and put the money in my hand. “House Etterson is honored to accept help from House Baylor.”

“Good.” Mom put a plate of pancakes and sausage in front of her.

“Tell us about the fire,” I said.

“It’s bullshit,” Runa said.

“Eat your pancakes,” Mom said.

Runa dug into a pancake with her fork. “The house was four thousand square feet, two stories, and every bedroom had an exit. Mom’s bedroom was on the first floor, Halle’s bedroom on the second, and it opened to the backyard balcony. When she was little, she used to jump off that balcony into our pool. Drove Mom crazy. The house had six smoke detectors and a high-tech alarm that should have sensed the rising temperature and alerted the fire department.”

“Did the alarm go off?” Bern asked.

Anger sparked in her eyes. “I don’t know. It should have though. Somehow, despite the alarm, and the smoke detectors, and the easy access to outside, my mother and my seventeen-year-old sister ended up dying together in the study at three in the morning. My mother could kill an intruder from thirty feet away. Halle could probably do the same, although she mostly specialized in purging toxins. None of this makes any sense. Especially the part where everyone I talked to insists on referring to this as ‘a tragic accident’ as if they’re all reading from the same script.”

She was right. Nothing about this story made any sense so far.

I opened a new case file on my laptop and hit record. “January 5th, Runa Etterson interview. I’m going to ask you some unpleasant questions. The more honest you are, the better we can help you.”

Runa’s expression hardened. “Let’s do it.”

“Your House includes your mother, your sister, your brother, and you, correct?”

“Only me and my brother now.”

“What about your father?”

Runa gave a jerky, one-shoulder shrug. “When I was ten, my ‘dad’ gave up all pretense of being a father and a husband. He’d already had a string of affairs. Everybody knew it. I knew it. I was nine years old and I walked in on him having sex with some random woman on our dining table. For my birthday, he cleaned out our accounts and disappeared. My mother had to start from scratch. Nobody knows where he is, and nobody wants to know. He can die for all I care.”

“So, you don’t think there’s any way he could be involved?”

Runa shook her head. “No.”

“Does he have any financial claim on the estate? Life insurance, ownership of the house?”

“No. Mom removed him from everything after he left. He never paid child support and he stole from my mother. There is a police report and a paper trail, so if he showed up, he would be arrested.”

I would have Bern check on it, but we probably could scratch James Tolbert off the suspect list.

“Are you aware of any feuds or problems with other Houses?”

“No.”

“Did your mother ever tell you that she had a problem with anyone?”

Runa shook her head. “If she’d thought we were in danger, she would’ve warned me.”

“Was she seeing anyone? Did she have a significant other or others?”

“No. Her last relationship ended about a year ago and it was amicable. She wasn’t seeing anyone, because when we talked last week, she mentioned Halle pushing her to join a dating network on Herald. She said she wasn’t interested in another relationship. Men were a sore point with Mom. I don’t think she ever really trusted anyone after Dad.”

“What about Halle? Any recent problems, drugs, obsessive boyfriend or girlfriend, hanging out with the wrong crowd?”

Runa sighed. “Catalina, she was seventeen. Her life was school, volleyball, and college prep. No drugs, no weird boyfriends. She tried shrooms one time and hid in my room because she was scared the couch would eat her. She was a sheltered kid.”

“Are you now the Head of the House?” I asked.

Runa nodded. Her voice was bitter. “Yes, I’m the Head of all of me and Ragnar.” She held her arms out to her side. “The House of two.”

“Have members of any of the other Houses contacted you to make any claims or to ask you to make any financial decisions?”

“No.”

“Did your mother owe anybody money? Was the House having financial problems?”

Runa tapped her phone and showed it to me. A bank interface listing four accounts totaling $3.6 million.

I met her gaze. “This is the part where I’m ethically bound to inform you that you have other options. We’re a small firm. We don’t usually do murder investigations. The police and the Texas DPS both have more experience and greater resources. If you want a private option, there is MII. Do you understand that you have other choices available to you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you entering the contract with Baylor Investigative Agency of your own free will?”

“Yes.”

“To find your mother’s and sister’s killers, I’ll have to tear your life apart. You may learn things about your family that you won’t like. If you are hiding secrets and they have bearing on this case, they will come to light. If at any point during the investigation, I find out that you have deceived or misled me, I’ll immediately terminate our contract. You have my promise that when I deliver results to you, I’ll have proof. However, I don’t guarantee results. I swear that I’ll do everything in my power and within the law to solve this case, but not all murders are solved. Do you understand?”

Runa didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

I shut off the recording. “I have a small pile of paperwork for you. Once you’re done with it, we’ll start.”

“Where do we start?”

“At the medical examiner’s office. You said that the ME used dental records to identify your mother and sister.”

“Yes?”

“You are a House, which means your DNA profile is in some genetic database somewhere. Which genetic firm are you using?”

Runa frowned. “I don’t know. Mom handled all of that.”

I pulled up the Scroll website. Scroll was the largest DNA database in the US and the one we also used. I logged into our account, typed “House Etterson” into the search window, and the website spat the result at me.

“You are registered with Scroll. They will have all four of you in their database. We’re going to give them a call and have a representative meet us at the morgue. They should be able to confirm the identity of the bodies within twenty-four hours.”

Runa stared at me. “Why?”

I had to be really careful not to get her hopes up. “Because DNA identification is foolproof and dental records are not. Genetic testing is the established way to identify dead Primes. If it wasn’t done, I want to know why, and I want it done properly. That’s where we’re going to start.”