Sapphire Flames

Chapter 4

Houston traffic was murder. It took us twenty-five minutes to cover the distance we could have driven in fifteen if the streets were empty. Nobody tailed us, but still I couldn’t breathe right until we turned onto the road leading to the warehouse.

The security checkpoint, a squat armored building, was an eyesore, but when I finally saw it up ahead, I wanted to run out and hug it. Almost home.

“Catalina!” Runa yelled.

A truck horn blared. I nearly jumped up out of the seat. A delivery truck screeched to a halt on our right, from the access road. Another foot and it would have plowed into us. The driver waved his arms, his face skewed by anger.

I had run a stop sign. I knew the stop sign was there and I ignored it, because we were on high alert. There should have been a two-foot-high steel barrier obstructing that access road.

This was beyond ridiculous.

I stepped on the gas, drove up to the security booth, and rolled down my window. Kelly, a white man in his forties, with dark blond hair and a farmer’s tan, slid open the window and grinned at me. “Stop signs are there for a reason, Ms. Baylor.”

There should have been two people in the booth.

I had two choices. I could either chew him out in front of Runa and highlight exactly how incompetent we were, or I could let my mother, who oversaw our security, chew out his superior in private. I settled for the latter. “Raise all security barriers. No vehicles come in.”

“But what about the deliveries?”

I made my voice very calm. “No vehicles come in, Mr. Kelly. Find Mr. Abarca and please have him see me ASAP.”

Kelly finally realized that things were FUBAR, and the smile bled off his face. “Yes ma’am.”

I rolled up my window and drove off, checking the rearview mirror. Behind me hydraulics whined, raising the spiked barricade to block the street.

I drove to the warehouse, and we came in through the business entrance. I walked into the conference room and used the intercom. “Family meeting in the conference room, please.”

Runa took a seat. I sat down at the head of the table.

I’d been attacked by two corpses, saw my teenage crush stab a man in the heart, and then watched him jump out of a three-story window. I’d bullied an administrative assistant and stood up to the cops. Then I drove through heavy traffic, scanning it for enemies, and almost got into an accident in front of my damn house. My heart was still pounding. I wanted to jump up and run around the block to burn off the adrenaline.

Instead, I had to sit in a chair and appear professional.

I could still feel the sharp desiccated fingers on my throat, squeezing to crush my windpipe. I would remember that awful smell as long as I lived. There was no time to deal with any of it.

The reanimated bodies were bad, but Alessandro was worse. I kept replaying that strike in my head. I wasn’t sure I could’ve blocked it even with my magic. And his face. He’d looked relaxed. He’d stood there, with a human being sliding off his knife, and he’d looked relaxed.

My cell rang. An unlisted number.

I answered it on speaker. “Yes?”

“You’re tracking me,” Alessandro said.

Runa’s eyes went big.

“I’m not tracking you,” I told him. Technically, it wasn’t even a lie.

“You’re having me tracked. I understand that I’m irresistible. It’s a cross I bear. But do try to have some self-control, Catalina. I’m embarrassed for you.”

He . . . Argh. “As I recall, I never had a problem resisting you.”

“I thought we agreed that you would drop this.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.”

“Catalina, listen to me. This is serious, the people involved are dangerous, and your well-being is important to me.”

Since when? “Why don’t you tell me more about it? Maybe if I fully understand the danger, I’ll stay out of it.”

“No, you won’t. You have no sense.”

“I have all kinds of sense.”

“This is your last warning, Catalina.”

“Or what?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”

He hung up.

I glared at the phone. Insufferable ass. When I got my hands on him, I would pry his mind open like a tin can. And then I would make him do a little dance, record it, and play it for him on a loop after I drained my magic off. Irresistible. I’ll show you irresistible. Just you wait.

“‘I have all kinds of sense’?” Runa quoted.

“I was too mad to think of a snappy comeback.”

Mom and Bern walked into the conference room. I put my phone down.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Closing Yarrow,” Mom said. “There has been a development. Leon called for reinforcements. Your grandma and Arabella left about an hour ago.”

“What kind of a development?”

“They wouldn’t tell me, but they took Brick.”

Brick was Grandma Frida’s ultimate achievement. It started life as a military Humvee and was now the pinnacle of vehicular security. It couldn’t go faster than sixty miles an hour, but my grandma claimed it could take a shot from a tank. She also refused to let any of us drive it.

The Yarrow case involved a woman who posed as a CPA and used her charm to worm her way into her friends’ small businesses and then rob them blind. What in the world would they need Brick for?

I brought Mom up to speed on the events of this morning. “Also, I asked Mr. Abarca to join us after this meeting.”

“Right,” Mom said, loading a world of meaning into the single word. She and our head of security had been butting heads almost from the moment we hired him, and it was only getting worse.

I turned to Runa. “We need to figure out why your family was targeted. People kill for one of three reasons: emotion, power, or money. Not every House in Houston would have the audacity to pressure an AME. The penalties are severe. Your mother made an enemy with a lot of power.”

Runa spread her arms helplessly.

“How did your family make money?” I asked.

Runa frowned. “I don’t exactly know. We just always had enough. We had some investments, I think. Once in a while, Mom would consult in criminal cases. She served as an expert witness.”

“Any recent cases?” If someone’s conviction hinged on her testimony, it could be a hell of a motive. That or revenge. Always a good one. I would have to pull up all the recent cases Sigourney Etterson had testified in.

“No.” Runa shook her head. “She used to do it more frequently when I was younger. I remember her traveling a lot, especially right after my father bailed on us. But she told me a few years ago that she wanted to spend more time with us, and that the forensic work didn’t pay well enough to justify her missing things in our lives.”

I glanced at Bern. He met my gaze and frowned.

“What?” Runa asked.

Someone had to state the obvious and that someone was me, apparently. “You said your father cleaned out the family accounts and twelve years later you are worth eight million dollars.”

“Less now. Some of it was the house,” Runa said.

“Expert testimony can be profitable, but it doesn’t pay that well,” Bern said.

She bristled. “What are you saying?”

“We’re not saying anything,” I told her. “We’re asking questions. Things are not making sense and we need to keep digging until they do.”

Runa rubbed her face with both hands.

“Did your mother use any kind of remote backup?” Bern asked.

“I don’t . . . Wait, yes,” Runa said. “Yes, she did. She used Guardian, Ltd. All the important documents were backed up to a remote server. Her user name is Hemlock. The password is our three names, RunaHalleRagnar. She made me memorize it. I should have checked it. I’m so dumb. I didn’t even think about it.”

“You had a lot going on,” Bern said. His fingers flew over his laptop’s keyboard. “I’m in.”

“Did she leave any letters for me? A message?”

“Not that I can see right away,” he said. “I’ll look.”

The excitement drained from Runa’s face. “Is that all the questions?” she asked quietly.

“For now,” I told her.

“I’m going to go check on my brother. Please tell me if you find anything.”

I waited until the door behind her closed and turned to Mom.

“Abarca?” she asked.

“The access road barrier wasn’t up. We almost got hit by a truck coming from that street. The barricade by the security booth was down also and when I checked with Kelly, he thought the truck thing was funny. Kelly didn’t have a battle buddy.”

My mother rested her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her fingers. This was her we-have-a-serious-problem pose.

When I agreed to become the Head of our House, I decided that I wouldn’t repeat Nevada’s mistake. I wouldn’t try to do everything myself. I wasn’t as strong as she was, and if I tried to carry it all, I would crumble; so I delegated. Bern oversaw all things digital that were more complex than our regular information searches. Grandma Frida handled our vehicles. Arabella collected payments. Mom took care of our security. That was her sphere, and I mostly stayed out of it. Delegating didn’t mean anything if I questioned every decision she made.

The doorbell chimed. I got up, went to the front door, and checked the camera. Abarca stood on the other side. Lean and bronze-skinned, Abarca was forty-eight years old but looked ten years younger. He had a full head of hair, once black but now going to grey, and a pleasant face with dark eyes and an infectious grin.

As I opened the door, he gave me a bright smile. I smiled back, because it was polite, and shut the door behind him.

Three years ago, Nevada married Connor Rogan, also known by such fun nicknames as Mad Rogan, the Scourge of Mexico, and Huracan. Connor maintained his own private army, and for a while they provided our security.

We were all very naive back then. We actually looked into building a house next to Rogan and Nevada’s, going as far as negotiating the price for the land. The deal fell through when I crunched the numbers and saw how much money we still owed Augustine and how much we would need to survive. Instead we had to concentrate on paying off our debt.

As time went on and we slowly crawled out of our financial hole, we decided to hire our own security team. We did it for two reasons. We didn’t want to be a drain on House Rogan’s resources, and we had to separate ourselves from Connor’s long shadow. Always counting on Nevada and Connor to save us and provide for us wasn’t fair to them. Once I understood that fact, I worked sixty-hour weeks.

When we started, I had no idea how much capital went into maintaining a private security force. We had to house them, feed them, and provide them with equipment. We had to carry insurance and employ an accountant to issue paychecks and file taxes. We had to retain a lawyer to file all the necessary permits. It was like piling money into a heap and setting it on fire twice a month.

Once we gathered enough capital to hire our own security, Mom brought Lieutenant Abarca in to oversee it. They’d served together, and he’d needed a job. Abarca supervised the hiring and the training of our guards, and he seemed competent. He was approachable and friendly, but as time went on, the cracks in our security became more and more apparent.

Abarca dropped into a chair. “Hi Pen.”

Pen was not my mother’s favorite nickname.

“The security barriers weren’t up, George,” she said. “I sent the alert myself. You acknowledged it. And then my daughter almost got hit by a truck that shouldn’t have been on that road.”

“It was Justin’s truck. He delivers groceries to the DFAC, and he has done so for the last eight months. He was not a security risk and we were almost out of coffee. You know an army runs on coffee.” He grinned.

His smile bounced off my mother like rubber bullets off a tank. “This isn’t a joke. You put my children in danger. You put your own people in danger. Why was Kelly alone in the booth?”

“Merriweather’s daughter had a recital,” Abarca said. “These are people, Penelope. They have lives and families, just like you.”

My mom gave him her thousand-yard stare. “Their families don’t employ them, George. We do. And we have the right to demand a certain level of professionalism and discipline. Last night your people let an Illusion Prime roll right through the security checkpoint all the way to our front door.”

“That was an extraordinary case. Nobody could have foreseen that.”

“Really?” My mother leaned forward. “Our security personnel, who are supposed to maintain a log of departures and arrivals, didn’t realize that Catalina was already home or think it odd that she came back in a strange car driven by a chauffeur none of them had ever seen before?”

Abarca’s face took on a patient expression. “People are human. They make mistakes.”

“They can make mistakes on someone else’s dime.” Mom’s face held no mercy. “The two guards who let Montgomery through are fired.”

Abarca stared at her in stunned silence. A moment passed.

“You can’t mean that. Lopez is taking care of her sick mother and Walton has two kids.”

“I have five kids and a mother in this house, and I want to keep them all alive. Mistakes like that get people killed.”

Abarca shook his head. “I won’t do it, Pen. If you want them gone, you’re going to have to tell them yourself.”

He and Mom locked gazes.

“Either you fire them, or you can pack your shit and go with them.”

“We’re not at war anymore,” Abarca said.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “As of today, we are at war.”

“You’re dismissed,” Mom said. “Let me know your decision by tomorrow.”

Abarca looked at me, then at her, then at me again, stood up, and left.

I turned back to my mother.

“I know,” she said. “If we don’t fire him, he’s going to get himself killed and our people too.”

“Then let’s fire him and hire someone else.” We would give him a generous severance package. At this point, I would rather take a financial hit than keep at it. I knew everyone who worked for us. I didn’t want any of them to die because we failed to properly train them. We needed better leadership.

Mom sighed. “It’s not that simple. If we fire him, there is no telling how many of them will quit. They’re loyal to him.”

“Mom, they need to be loyal to us.”

“I know,” Mom said. “But at least they provide some protection. I don’t want to fire him until we have a replacement ready.”

“We could give Abarca a second chance,” Bern said.

Mom’s expression hardened. “We won’t get a second chance, Bernard. We will be dead. Second chances are given when someone is good but makes an honest mistake or their nerves get the better of them. I gave Abarca the authority to hire his own unit. I questioned his choices at the time and he personally vouched for every soldier he brought to the table. It was his responsibility to train them and mold them into a cohesive unit. It’s six months later, and they’re failing at the basic security procedures. That’s not nerves. That’s incompetence. Hiring him was a mistake, my mistake. I wasted our time and money and I put us in danger . . .”

She looked like she was about to walk across hot coals barefoot. Oh, Mom.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said. “It just didn’t work out. He looked really good on paper. He has all the qualifications. He’s just . . .”

“He just cares about being liked more than he cares about doing his job,” Mom finished. “I’ll handle it.”

Bern raised his head from his laptop. “Found something,” he said.

I found Runa in the guest bedroom. She sat on the queen bed, next to Ragnar, who was curled up under a blanket. Sleep had softened his face. He looked so young right now.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

“Hey. He’s still asleep,” Runa said. “Is that normal?”

“Yes. It’s normal.”

“Have you actually done this before?”

“Yes.”

Last year one of Rogan’s security people had developed an unhealthy obsession with Arabella and decided to break into our house in the middle of the night. I had fallen asleep in the media room, and he surprised me as he blundered past. He slept for two days, and once he woke up, he was an emotional zombie for a week. Rogan fired him and strongly encouraged him to move out of state. The last we heard, the man was in Alaska.

“What happens if he doesn’t wake up tomorrow?”

“We’ll put him on an IV and wait some more. His respiration is normal, his heartbeat is steady, and if we really tried, we could probably wake him up for a few seconds. He just needs rest, Runa.”

She looked at her brother, reached over, and pulled a corner of the blanket up to expose his feet. “He always kicks the blanket off to stick his feet out. When he was little, it used to cause him anxiety. He wanted to sleep with his feet uncovered but he was scared that a monster from under the bed would grab his foot at night . . .” Her voice trailed off.

I wanted so much to make it better for her. “He will wake up.”

Runa looked up at me and held her hand out. “Runa Etterson, Prime Venenata.”

It was the way she had introduced herself at Nevada’s wedding. Why were we doing the introductions again? “We’ve already met.”

“No. I’ve met Catalina Baylor. She’s shy and she tries to fade into the background. She gets embarrassed if anyone glances at her a second too long. I watched her at her sister’s wedding and half of the time she looked like she was waiting for her chance to run away.”

“I was.”

“I saw you verbally eviscerate Conway a few hours ago. You had this look on your face like you were some ice princess and he’d trespassed in your kingdom. And then you cut my sister’s reanimated corpse into four pieces.”

“Conway was wrong to treat you the way he did, and reanimated bodies have to be disabled. The smaller the pieces, the lesser the threat.”

She shook her head. “That’s not my point and you know it. What the hell happened to you?”

I came over, sat on the other side of the bed, and put the small box I was carrying onto the covers.

“When we met at Nevada’s wedding, I was panicking. That was the first time I was in charge of anything important. You were born a Prime, into a House of Primes. I was born a normal person, into a normal family, except that I had this terrible magic I had to hide so I wouldn’t accidentally hurt people with it. I was only required to go to school, get good grades, and keep my magic hidden. Nobody expected me to take any responsibility for anything else. I had the luxury of covering my face and saying, ‘This is too hard. I can’t do this.’ And I did.”

“So what changed?”

I sighed. “We became a House. I was certified as a Prime. I had a nervous breakdown.”

Runa blinked. “Why?”

“Because it was all too much. I needed rules. As long as I followed the rules, nobody got hurt and everybody left me alone. Suddenly, all my rules no longer applied and hiding in the background wasn’t an option. I was freaking out. Then Rogan’s mother found me and offered to mentor me. She made me see things from a different perspective.”

“She taught you how to dismember a person with a knife?” Runa asked.

“She hired someone who did. Have you killed anyone before?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry you had to do that today.”

If I hadn’t taken her with me, she wouldn’t have killed Conway. But she would have to kill sooner or later. Maybe it was better this way. I had a feeling that whoever targeted her family wouldn’t let go, not now, after their murder was confirmed.

“Have you killed anyone?” Runa asked.

“Physically, no. But what I do is much worse. Victoria Tremaine is my grandmother. When she requires the contents of your brain, she grasps your mind, wrenches it open, and takes whatever she wants. All your secrets, all of your hopes, your fantasies, your guilt over things you did years ago and tried your best to hide and forget, she sees it and rummages through it. Nevada has the same talent. I saw her interrogate a man once. He was a hardened mercenary and after she was done, he curled into a ball and cried like a child.”

“Your magic is different.”

I shrugged. “I don’t use brute force. I entice, I seduce, but the end result is the same. I suppress your will. You’ll tell me everything, and you will be happy to do it. It’s the deepest violation of a person. I try not to do it unless I absolutely have to.”

“But you’ve had to,” Runa guessed.

“Yes. My mom is a veteran, and she once told me that nobody gets out of a war with their hands clean. We’ve been at war for the past three years.”

“You do realize how fundamentally fucked up this is.” Runa crossed her arms on her chest. “I feel like I lived my whole life with my eyes closed.”

“Your mother took very good care of all of you. Runa, it doesn’t have to be like this for you. I have no choice because of our circumstances, but there are plenty of Houses who don’t often come into conflicts with each other.”

“But why does it have to be you?”

“Because it’s my turn. Nevada is married. She has her own threats and problems to deal with and I can’t expect her to drop everything and run here to save us. My mother doesn’t have the kind of magic that can protect us. Grandma Frida is past seventy. Here I am with all this power and I let everyone take care of me for most of my life, because it was too hard and scary and because I didn’t want the guilt of hurting people. It wasn’t fair. So, when Nevada decided to take a step back, I decided it was my turn to take care of everyone and do the ugly things nobody wants to do.”

She shook her head.

“I’m the oldest ranking Prime in House Baylor,” I told her. “It’s my job to keep us fed, clothed, and safe. I still want to run away, Runa. But if someone tries to hurt my family, I’ll kill them. It will cost me a great deal, but I’ll do it.”

Runa stared at me. “This is what being the Head of the House does to you.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”

“I don’t feel bad about killing Conway,” she said. “I should. I took a life. But I don’t.”

“Guilt usually hits me late at night,” I said.

“How do you deal with it?”

I pushed the box toward her. “I keep a stash of chocolate in my room.”

“Does it help?”

“It does a little.”

She opened the box. “Neuhaus truffles?”

“Mhm. Bern found some information on your mother’s backup server. We have to go back to the conference room.”

Runa’s eyes widened. “Am I going to need these?”

“Yes.”