Sapphire Flames

Chapter 8

I jumped into the passenger seat of a silver Alfa Romeo 4C and buckled my seat belt, the little dog on my lap. Alessandro slid behind the wheel and pushed the start button. The tiny car purred. He fastened his seat belt, put the Alfa into gear, and we sped off.

“You shot the elephant?”

The remains of my Element with bald wheels and bullet hole scars in the doors flashed by us.

“Of course I shot the damn elephant.”

At the other end of the parking lot another Guardian roared, coming up the street. Alessandro took a turn at an insane speed. The Alfa all but floated above the pavement. We circled the mall and shot out onto Old Post Road like a bullet.

“Who’s in that Guardian?”

“Celia.”

“What? Rose-gold Celia?”

“Yes. I told you to let it go. I told you to go home. And what did you do?” His magic pulsed with a flash of orange. “You flounced straight into that snake pit.”

“Flounced?”

“Like a lamb, Catalina. Like a stupid, pretty little lamb bouncing over green grass straight into the wolf’s den. Do you have any idea what Benedict does to women?”

“No, why don’t you enlighten me?”

“The man is a degenerate. Ma porca puttana! What were you thinking?”

Well, look who lost his temper. I would have agreed with his assessment of Benedict, except in Italy “that whore of a pig” only applied to situations, and never to a person.

“I was thinking I have a client whose mother was murdered and whose seventeen-year-old sister is missing. Instead of posturing and cursing, you could help me. Where is Halle, Alessandro?”

“I wish I knew so I could kidnap her back and leave her on your doorstep with a bow to keep you from sticking your pretty nose into things you don’t understand.”

He said I had a pretty nose. “Stop treating me like I’m an idiot.”

My phone rang. I answered it. “Hello?”

“Good news,” Bug said.

I put him on speaker.

“I found your vomit muffin. He’s driving a crappy silver Italian import. He’s about to merge onto the I-10. Where are you?”

“In the passenger seat of the crappy import.”

“This is a great car.” Alessandro executed a hair-raising merge and cut across three lanes of traffic with three inches of room to spare. “Italians make the best cars.”

Bug sputtered. “Ask Captain Vapid if he knows what Fiat stands for. Fix It Again, Tony!”

Alessandro shifted lanes again. “You better ask Tony how good he is at fixing surveillance drones.”

“You son of a bitch! When I get my hands on you—”

“You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Will the two of you shut up?” I snapped. “Bug, there is a Guardian following us. We need to lose it.”

Alessandro cut across two lanes to the right, weaving in and out of traffic. The Alfa slid between two trucks about an inch from the front vehicle’s bumper. Someone laid on their horn.

“I don’t understand why we couldn’t just fight her at the mall,” I squeezed out through clenched teeth.

“Because your magic won’t work on her in her active state and I don’t have a gun large enough to take her down. I looked.”

“I have the Guardian,” Bug reported. “Bad news. They’ve got a Cockerill MK III 90mm cannon mounted on that thing. People are getting out of their way like the Red Sea before Moses.”

Alessandro stepped on the gas. The Alfa jumped forward into the lane on our left, sped around a semi, and slid in front of it, nearly skidding.

“Find us an exit strategy,” I barked. “Before we wreck.”

“We won’t wreck.” Alessandro’s voice was completely calm.

“If you keep driving this way, we won’t have to. This is Texas, someone will shoot us.”

“It’s not my fault you have barbaric gun laws.” He switched lanes again.

“Stop driving like a maniac!” Bug yelled. “Slow down.”

Behind us a horn blared. I turned. The huge semi we’d passed was moving into the left lane, which was illegal.

“Oh shit,” Bug said.

The semi finally merged over. Behind it the Guardian sped up, a huge barrel pointing at us. Holy crap, that thing could put a hole in a tank.

“There’s no way they can fire that cannon at us,” I said. “The shell would go through our car and wipe out three lanes around us. Diatheke would be finished.”

“That’s not for us,” Alessandro said. His eyes scanned the lanes ahead of us, but there was no opening. We were stuck.

The top of the Guardian came open and Celia climbed out in her pink Chanel suit. She stood, her arms out, trying to balance on top of the Guardian in her pumps.

What the hell was she doing?

Long dark quills thrust out of her, piercing her suit. Her skin stretched and tore, and a creature twice her size burst out of her, muscles bulging under dense red fur. It sat on its haunches, the sickle-shaped tiger claws of its hind feet digging into the metal of the Guardian. Its forelimbs, thick and powerful, like a gorilla’s, clutched at the barrel of the Guardian, anchoring the beast. A dense red mane that was more hair than fur thrust from its head and shoulders. Two-foot-long quills protruded from the mane and the backs of its forelimbs. Its face was horrible; a meld of cat and ape, with beady eyes sunken deep into its skull, a simian nose with huge nostrils, and feline mouth filled with long dagger teeth. A long, whiplike tail snapped behind it.

A metamorphosis mage. Shit.

The gun wasn’t for us. That cannon was for her, in case she went off the rails. When a metamorphosis mage transformed, they lost most of their ability to reason, reverting to a primal state somewhere between an attack dog and an enraged ape. There would be no reasoning with her. Anything short of a lethal injury would just piss her off.

“Can you nullify her with your magic?” I asked.

“Not once she’s in that shape. She’s fucking immune to everything.”

Celia’s enraged eyes fixed on us. She opened her mouth and howled, flinging spit into the wind. Oh God.

“Drive faster, Alessandro!”

“Go,” Bug screamed from the phone. “Go, go, go!”

There was nowhere to go. We were in the second lane from the right. Traffic clogged the interstate ahead of us. Even if we managed to force our way into the far-right lane, this section of the I-10 ran above the ground and a concrete wall guarded the edge. We couldn’t jump it. The Alfa was too small and low.

We had to exit.

“We can’t maneuver here. There’s an exit ahead,” I said. “Take Bunker Hill. We’ll lose them on the surface roads.”

“No!” Bug yelled. “Don’t take Bunker Hill, it’s closed. The tanker truck, remember?”

Two weeks ago, a tanker truck carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline overturned on the Bunker Hill exit and burst into flames. It burned for hours, and the fire ate through the concrete. A section of the exit had collapsed, plunging the burning wreck down to the street below. It was the biggest story on the news for a week.

“Bug’s right, don’t take the exit, there is a hole in it.”

“How big a hole?” Alessandro asked.

“Too big,” Bug said. “Twenty feet.”

“How many meters is that?”

“Six.”

“Ascending or descending?”

“Descending, right at the top of the curve.”

Alessandro darted into a tiny gap between a white truck and a black SUV on our right.

“Don’t do it, dickass!” Bug barked.

The green exit sign flashed over our heads, an orange warning strip across it screaming, “EXIT CLOSED.”

If h is the difference in height between the two sides of the gap, then θ is the angle of the exit’s slope, V is the velocity, and g is the standard acceleration of free fall at 9.8 m/s²; the required velocity would equal the square root of g *36m² divided by 2(h+6tan θ)*cos² θ . . .

I kept my voice calm. “Alessandro, you’re going to kill us. This only works in the movies and it requires a ramp. The moment our wheels leave the ground, the car will start dropping. Even if we make it, the vehicle will be crushed from the impact.”

“It will be fine.” The Alfa roared up the slope, accelerating.

“How? How will it be fine?”

He looked over at me. “This car is very light and we’re going to drive very fast.”

Striped white and orange barriers blocked the way. The small sports car smashed through them. Chunks of wood flew. Behind us the Guardian lumbered onto the exit, speeding up.

“No!” Bug screamed.

Construction vehicles flashed by on our sides. In the sideview mirror the Guardian tore up the slope, squeezing everything it could out of its engine to catch us.

“Please don’t do it,” I said.

Alessandro glanced at me for half a second and hit me with a dazzling smile. “Trust me.”

Black scorch marks stained the pavement ahead. Alessandro stood on the gas. The digital speedometer flashed 145. We were almost to the top of the slope.

I hugged the little dog to me.

The Guardian skidded to a stop. Celia leaped from the top of it, flying through the air like she had wings.

The Alfa went airborne.

I expected my life to flash before my eyes. Instead I went weightless, floating . . .

The Alfa crashed to the pavement and bounced hard. I pitched forward. My seat belt yanked me back. The Alfa skidded to a stop.

We made it. Oh my God.

“For fuck’s sake!” Bug cried out.

“See?” Alessandro grinned.

A heavy thud rocked the car. Celia landed on the roof. Two huge clawed fists smashed into the windshield like sledgehammers. The laminated glass cracked in a spiderweb pattern but didn’t shatter. Celia’s hand-paw broke through the glass and plastic. She clutched the edge of the hole and ripped the windshield out.

The little dog erupted into barks.

I pulled my Beretta out, pinned the dog with my left hand to keep it out of the way, and fired four shots through the roof. An angry shriek answered.

Eleven bullets left.

Alessandro stepped on the gas. The Alfa screeched in protest but rolled forward, weaving between the heavy construction equipment. Something must have broken on landing. We picked up speed . . .

Alessandro threw his arm in front of me and slammed on the brakes, spinning the car to the left. Celia slid off the roof, landed on the pavement on all fours, and rolled to her feet. Her maw gaped and she roared.

We had to get past Celia before the Guardian decided to start blasting the cement mixers and dump trucks blocking its view of us on the off chance the shrapnel and debris would hit the Alfa. Ramming her wouldn’t work. We didn’t have the mass and if she destroyed the car, we would be stranded on this exit.

Alessandro jumped out. Two guns appeared in his hands out of thin air. He fired at Celia.

I unbuckled my seat belt and scrambled out of the vehicle. The little dog tried to follow, but I slammed the door in its face.

The stream of bullets from Alessandro’s firearms pounded Celia. She jerked, snarled, and charged, loping forward in great leaps. I sighted her and fired. The Beretta pumped out bullets.

Eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven.

The shots tore into Celia without any visible damage. No blood.

Alessandro darted out of the way. A shotgun materialized in his hands. He pumped it and sank a burst into Celia’s stomach. She recoiled.

Six, five, four.

He pumped it again and fired at her face. She leaped aside, nimble like a cat, and flexed her tail. It whipped Alessandro, nearly taking him off his feet. He grunted and shot her again.

Three, two, one. Out.

Celia reared, swinging her arms in a frenzy. Her clawed hand closed on Alessandro’s shotgun and she tore it from his grasp, knocking him back. He stumbled and she chased him, claws rending the air.

“Celia!” I snapped. “Look at me!”

She spun toward me. I opened my wings and let my magic rip. The focused torrent of power drowned her.

“Come here,” I called, sinking enough magic to seduce a room full of people into it.

Celia rushed me. Her huge arm swung, and she backhanded me. I flew and hit a hard surface with my right side. Pain tore through my hip. Something crunched. Ow. A dump truck had thoughtfully broken my fall.

I looked up and saw Celia leaping toward me, claws ready to rend, mouth gaping. I dropped to my knees and scrambled under the truck.

Celia slammed into the vehicle with a thud and hugged the ground. Her terrible face thrust into the gap between the wheels. Tiny hate-filled eyes bore into me. She tried to squeeze in after me. I held my breath. She wiggled, pushing in another inch, and stopped. The truck sat too low.

Celia bared a mouthful of monster teeth and thrust her arm under the truck, trying to hook me with her claws. I shimmied back. She shrieked, frustrated, jumped to her feet, and gripped the truck, trying to lift it. The huge vehicle rocked.

How strong was she?

Celia shrieked again and dropped down to the ground, her face only feet away from mine. I pulled the mace out of my pocket and sprayed her in the eyes.

Celia screamed and clawed at her face. The telltale roar of a chain saw answered. Blood spray wet the asphalt. Celia squirmed from under the truck and disappeared.

I crawled to the right, out from under the vehicle, and dashed around it.

Alessandro chased Celia with a chain saw. She dashed back and forth. Her left arm hung off her shoulder on a string of flesh, gushing blood. Bone glared from the stump. A gash sliced across her left hind leg.

I pulled my sword out and sprinted after them.

Alessandro backed Celia against the pavement roller and sliced the chain saw across her stomach. A horrible scream tore out of Celia. She threw herself at him, and the sheer weight of her took Alessandro off his feet. He fell, buried under her bleeding body.

No! I ran like I’d never run before in my whole life.

She opened her mouth and aimed for his face.

I drove my gladius into her neck. The sword slid into flesh and found bone.

Boom!

Bullets tore out of the back of her skull. Bone and brain exploded, spraying me.

I yanked the gladius out and brought it back down with everything I had. The blade carved through reinforced vertebrae. Celia jerked and collapsed. Who is your pretty little lamb now?

I dropped to my knees. “Alessandro?”

Please be alive, please be alive . . .

Celia’s body shuddered, rose, and Alessandro heaved it aside, pulling a Smith & Wesson 460XVR revolver out of her mouth. He stared at the massive gun’s fourteen-inch barrel and then looked at me, his eyes incredulous.

“It’s a hunting revolver.” I slumped back. “It’s for big game hunting.”

“Texas,” Alessandro said, loading a state’s worth of meaning into a single word.

The Alfa still worked. It wasn’t as fast or as smooth, and riding without a windshield in a tiny seat with every bump jabbing a spike of pain through my hip was a new kind of torture, but we made it off the exit onto Frontage Road.

I hugged the dog to me with one hand and dialed our lawyer with the other. Sabrian listened to my recap without a word.

“Any injured civilians?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’m on it. I’ll be emailing you documents. Read, print, sign, scan, email back, get the originals to me by courier, today.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, just be on time with papers and payment.”

I hung up.

Next to me, Alessandro drove as if we were enjoying a pleasant excursion on the Pacific Coast Highway, winding our way through picturesque hills with a blue ocean on our side. A relaxed smile played on his lips.

“What are you so happy about?”

“We’re alive. I told you it would work.”

“Your car is ruined.”

“It’s just a car. It’s replaceable. You’re not.”

What did it mean? Why did he even care? He saw me for fifteen minutes during the trials, then for another fifteen minutes when he showed up asking me to go for a drive, and then we hadn’t spoken for three years.

“How are you involved in this?”

The smile died. It was like the sun being turned off. I felt like a moment of silence was in order.

“Not that again,” he said.

“Yes, again. I have to find Halle.”

“What part of ‘drop it’ don’t you understand?”

“The part where you keep interfering with my investigation and shooting people I need to interrogate.”

“Interrogate? I must not understand the meaning of that word, because from where I’m sitting, you blunder around asking people questions until they try to kill you.”

Oh, you ass.

“You haven’t even thanked me for the elephant. When someone saves your life, you’re supposed to be grateful. Do they have laws against expressing gratitude here?”

Argh. “Thank you so much, Alessandro, for providing help I didn’t need. I so appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule of Instagram posing and luxury car wrecking to murder every person who could conceivably shed some light on this investigation. Thank you ever, ever so much.”

We glared at each other.

He raised his eyebrows. “Wait, I know. Since you insist on doing the opposite of what I tell you, let’s try this. Don’t stay home, Catalina. Don’t drop this case. Don’t stay safe. Is it working? Please tell me it’s working.”

“God, you are an asshole.” It just kind of came out.

Alessandro drew back. “Such a dirty mouth. Oh, the possibilities.”

“You have no possibilities with my mouth! Nobody has any possibilities with my mouth!” I did not just say that.

He laughed. He laughed at me.

“Halle’s seventeen, Alessandro. She’s innocent. Whatever her mother did or didn’t do, she shouldn’t be paying the price for it. Tell me what’s going on so I can find her. Don’t you have any compassion at all?”

“The sooner you realize that I’ll tell you nothing, the easier it will be. Give up, Catalina. It’s being handled.”

He turned onto our street.

“Stop the car.”

The Alfa slid to a stop with a metallic groan. I unbuckled my seat belt.

“Catalina, let me take you to the door. I know your leg hurts.”

I climbed out of the car clutching my dog and my sword.

“Don’t be a hero,” he called.

I wished I had a free hand so I could flip him off. I marched toward the security booth, grimly determined to not limp.

“Hey,” he shouted. “At least we finally had our drive.”

“Drop dead.”

I marched to the booth, the grinding noise of the Alfa driving away receding behind me.

The two guards in the booth stared at me. I saw my reflection in the glass as I passed them. Most of me was covered with a uniform layer of dirt and dust from lying on the floor of the mall. Blood splattered my face, my neck, and my white turtleneck. Bits of Celia’s skull and brains hung in my hair. Two bullet holes punctured my coat, right in the middle of the chest and a little to the left.

Terrific. Just terrific.

The dirty, matted dog whined softly in my arms.

“I know, right?” Some pair we made.

If I walked like this through the front door, my family would suffer a collective apoplexy. I needed to clean myself up. My best bet would be to go through the motor pool, at least wash my face and hands, and then try to sneak upstairs to my room. That meant circling the warehouse.

I turned into the narrow space between the warehouse and a concrete wall separating it from the next parking lot and limped on.

Ow. Ow.

I never quite realized how large our place was.

Ow.

Did we really need a warehouse this big?

The little dog whined again, overcome with some sort of canine sadness.

“Shh. You’ll blow our cover.”

I finally turned the corner. The huge industrial bay doors stood open and the motor pool inside seemed deserted. Everything was in its regular place: Brick and Romeo, Grandma’s pet tank, covered with tarps, the armored Humvee we used for dangerous jobs, and Grandma’s latest commission, a medium-size track vehicle waiting in the middle of the floor.

A lopsided tangle of blue yarn on circular needles lay on the worktable. Nevada once told Grandma Frida that other grandmas knitted things for their grandchildren. Ever since then she made valiant efforts to knit presents for each of us, and the current Gordian knot was supposed to be my sweater. Usually she took it with her when she was done for the day.

I stopped and listened. The motor pool lay silent. Nothing moved. The coast was clear.

Maybe Grandma Frida had run inside to use the bathroom.

I limped through the doors and headed toward the sink. Grandma Frida chose that moment to jump out of a track vehicle’s cab. She stared at me, her blue eyes widening.

I had to distract her, quick. “The Honda might be totaled, but I left two Guardians without drivers at Keystone Mall. They’re all yours, just don’t forget to disable their GPS . . .”

Grandma Frida walked past me and pressed the intercom.

“Please, please don’t,” I begged.

My grandmother mashed the intercom button. “Penelope, the baby is hurt.”

I wasn’t a baby. I was twenty-one years old, but it didn’t matter. To Grandma Frida all three of us would always remain babies. “I said please.”

Grandma’s eyes held no mercy. “She’s got two bullet holes in her coat and someone’s brains in her hair. Come quick.”

Damn it.

The world was full of interesting words used to describe complicated things. There was tartle, a Scottish word for the panicked pause you experience when you have to introduce someone, but you don’t remember their name. There was backpafeifengesicht, a German term for a face you’d love to punch. There was gigil, a Filipino word for the urge to squeeze an item because it is unbearably cute.

I didn’t know if there was a word for the whirlwind my very upset family created while they tried to treat my wounds, clean me up, and interrogate me all at the same time while talking over each other, but if there was one, I would definitely have to learn it. I refused to answer any questions until after they let me shower. My demand was met with howls of protest, but I held firm in the face of adversity, and when Bug conveniently sent the drone video of our fight with Celia, the family surrendered and released me so they could watch it.

The little dog was a girl. It took fifteen minutes of strategic mat cutting to reveal that fact. After I trimmed the worst of her fur, I had taken her into the shower with me. At first, she cowered in the corner, but by the end of it, she decided bath time wasn’t so bad. The water that ran off her on the first rinse was black and smelled like a sewer. I had to shampoo her with Dawn dish soap twice.

After the shower, she dashed into my loft, running in circles while I dried myself off. One of her parents had to have been a dachshund and the other a Scottish terrier or some similar breed. Her little body was long with short legs that looked delicate. Her black and now glossy fur grew longer and coarser on her back and butt, where it curled backward in clumps. Her ears were floppy, her jaws long and framed with sideburns reminiscent of a Scotty, and when she opened her mouth, her teeth were huge in proportion to her head. It looked like a bear trap from old cartoons.

She was also painfully thin. Getting rid of the mats must’ve cut her weight by a third. Her ribs stuck out and vertebrae protruded from her spine.

I ended up chasing her with a towel for three whole minutes, until inspiration struck, and I threw it on the floor. She burrowed under it and I caught her and dried her off.

Someone knocked on my door. Well, that didn’t take long.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Mom said.

I knew this was coming. The last thing I wanted was to talk to Mom.

After Dad died, everything had been in shambles. The business was failing; our house was gone; we had to change schools, which to most people would be no big deal and to me was catastrophic; and most importantly, Dad wasn’t there. When my mother deployed, Dad took care of us. When I had a problem, I went to Dad before I went to Mom. Up to that point, Dad knew more about me and he always managed to talk me off whatever ledge I had climbed on.

I’d been twelve years old and the idea that he would never be there again was apocalyptic. It felt like my world had ended.

And then Mom somehow picked us all up and made it okay. It took me nearly half a decade to realize Mom herself was not okay.

My mother had spent months as a POW in the Bosnian Conflict. It left her with a permanent limp and enough invisible scars to last a lifetime. She never dealt with it because her husband became sick, so she’d had to go from being deployed six months out of a year to being a full-time parent, and the sky was falling. It came back to haunt her at the worst possible moment. She lost her PI license and the only way she could provide for us. Nevada had to become the breadwinner before she even finished high school. My mother was no longer a soldier or a PI. It made her feel helpless.

The conversation we were about to have would make her feel helpless again, and there was nothing I could do to avoid it. She’d climbed my ladder with her limp and she wouldn’t go away until I leveled with her.

“Catalina?”

I got up off the floor and opened the door.

“Let me see that hip,” Mom asked.

I turned and pulled down my sweatpants. “It’s just bruised. Look, I can put weight on it and everything.” I heroically stood on one foot.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Nothing broken.”

“Your grandma took your sister and two guards and left. She said something about two Guardians at the Keystone Mall.”

That was exactly the line of questioning I was hoping to avoid. “Uh-huh.”

Mom pinned me with her stare. “Why are there Guardians at an abandoned mall?”

To lie or not to lie? I hated to lie to Mom.

“You went to Diatheke and then what happened?”

“I left.”

“Did someone follow you? Is that why you went to Keystone?”

Crap. My short answers clearly didn’t work. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

Because I was followed by twenty highly trained killers who would’ve carved through our security and stormed the warehouse with children inside. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

My mother’s face fell. She knew.

“I’ll ask you one more question, but I want an honest answer. If Rogan’s people were here, would you have come home?”

I shut my eyes. “Yes.”

She stepped close to me and hugged me. If I had any tears left, I would’ve cried.

“Was it bad?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Mom let go of me. “I’ll fix this. I promise you. It will be fixed tonight.”

She turned around and went down the ladder.

I looked at the little dog. “I suck.”

The little dog squatted and peed on the floor. Right.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “You’ll figure it out.”

I cleaned up the mess and took her downstairs. At the kitchen table Bern, Leon, Runa, and Ragnar crowded around Bern’s laptop. On it, Celia was paused in mid-leap.

I got some rotisserie chicken out of the fridge, pulled a generous chunk of the breast meat off the bone, and shredded it into a small bowl. The dog spun in circles at my feet.

The sounds of a chain saw came from the screen.

I put the dish on the floor. The dog attacked it like her life depended on her victory over the cold chicken. I got myself a plate and set about assembling two tacos.

“Pause it. Right there,” Leon said.

“It just . . . appears in his hand,” Ragnar said, his voice full of wonder. “How is he doing that?”

“It seems completely subconscious,” Runa said. “He needs a weapon and poof!”

“Poof?” Bern said.

Runa turned to him. “Yes. Start it for a second. Notice how he’s looking at the chain saw. He’s clearly never seen it before.”

“So, you think it’s a passive field effect?” Bern thought out loud.

“It would make sense,” Runa said.

“What would an active effect of this look like?” Bern wondered.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s passive or active.” Leon leaned closer to the screen. “I want to know if he’s teleporting items he has seen before, or does he snatch them up within a certain area of effect.”

“Why?” Ragnar asked.

“Because I need to know if I have to worry about this asshole teleporting my guns into his hands when I fight him.”

Everyone pondered that.

“Maybe he doesn’t teleport them,” Ragnar said. “Maybe his magic duplicates them.”

“That would be a hell of a thing,” Leon said.

“What kind of magic is it anyway?” Runa said. “I thought he was an Antistasi.”

“He is,” I said.

They turned to me.

I put my plate down. I wasn’t hungry anyway. “The Antistasi magic occurs roughly five times as often as truthseeking. It’s not the rarest, but Antistasi Primes are exceptionally rare. There are three truthseeker Houses in the entire continental US, and only two Antistasi Houses. There are five Houses in the whole of the European Union, two in Africa, we don’t know how many in China, and another three in the Russian Imperium. Of all of these, House Sagredo is the oldest.”

“Your stalking of Alessandro is truly impressive,” Runa said.

She had no idea. “The point is, we know what the Antistasi can do because of what they choose to reveal to us. Perhaps whatever Alessandro is doing is the ultimate expression of that talent and the handful of Antistasi Primes are keeping it secret. Perhaps he’s in a league of his own like Rogan. What matters is, he’s dangerous.”

Leon smirked. Oh no, you don’t.

“Forget Instagram,” I said. “Forget all the yachts, and cars, and women. It’s a smoke screen. This man is lethal. Diatheke sent an experienced, well-armed strike team after me. I watched Alessandro kill eight of them. He impaled two of them with a piece of broken pipe, murdered the remaining pair with a knife, and then he shot the four people I beguiled. One shot, one kill, every bullet in the T-zone.”

If you drew a rectangle around both eyes and another around the nose, you would get a target area in the rough shape of a T. Shots to the T-zone were almost always fatal.

“From how far?” Leon asked.

“About twenty yards. He’s precise, calm, and he can use a wide variety of weapons. And he can negate our magic whenever he feels like it. The Antistasi are only supposed to negate mental magic, but when I asked him if he could nullify the metamorphosis mage, he said, ‘Not in her current form.’ Which means he could have nullified her prior to transformation. Metamorphosis is arcane, not mental. If you see him, do not engage him alone. He’ll kill you. I mean it, Leon. Don’t get into a pissing match with him alone. Take it as an order.”

He smiled at me.

“Leon!”

He raised his hands. “Okay, okay. So did you figure out what happened to the two million?”

He changed the subject way too fast. He would try to take on Alessandro the moment he saw him and then die trying to outshoot him. Leon was lethal, but Alessandro was versatile, more experienced, and stone cold.

They were waiting for an answer.

“They’re claiming Ms. Etterson withdrew the two million dollars in cash.”

“In cash?” Bern asked.

I sighed. “Yes. We need to look further into Diatheke. It’s not what it seems.”

I slipped out of the kitchen and headed to my office. The little dog trailed me. I really had to give her a name. I was just about to duck into my office when I heard my mother’s voice coming from the conference room through the half-open door.

“. . . a strike team,” my mother was saying. “She had to kill some of them, I’m almost sure of it. Then she fought a metamorphosis mage.”

I snuck forward on my toes and leaned to look through the glass wall. Mom sat at the conference table, an open laptop in front of her.

“Is she okay?” a familiar male voice asked.

She was Skyping with Sergeant Heart.

“She’s alive. She won’t tell me anything. I watched my daughter chop off a monster’s head with a sword.”

Mom paused. Her tone had an odd note in it. If I didn’t know better, I would say it stopped just short of being fear, except my mother would never show fear to anyone outside the family.

“We need protection,” she said. “I can’t tell you for how long, but I promise you that however long it is, we will pay you . . .”

“Penelope.”

He said it with warmth in his voice, and I almost did a double take. Sergeant Heart didn’t do warm. He did efficient and scary.

It must have startled my mother too, because she stopped talking mid-word.

“All you ever have to say is that you need my help,” Sergeant Heart said. “Do you need me, Penelope?”

There was a long pause.

“Yes, Benjiro, I need you.”

“Ah, you know my name. I’ll be there tomorrow at 20:00 hours. Can you hold until then?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

I quietly backed away and into my office. The little black dog scampered in and went straight to the loveseat in the corner.

There was no way she could jump that high on her short little legs.

The dog leaped onto the loveseat and started making circles on the folded blanket Arabella used when she hid in my office to nap.

Well. I stood corrected.

I gently shut the door, sat at my desk, and put my headphones on in case Mom noticed me when she left the conference room. What, you had a tender, almost intimate conversation with deadly and almost superhuman Sergeant Heart? No, I didn’t hear a thing. I had my headphones on the whole time.

Sergeant Heart liked my mother. I wasn’t sure how she felt about that. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that either.

I opened the Etterson file on my computer and stared at it. Making a list of everything I knew usually helped me, so I started a new file and wrote out my list.

Sigourney Etterson was a poison Prime who amassed a fortune of almost ten million dollars in twelve years by unknown means.

She knew her life was in danger.

Someone killed her and possibly kidnapped her second daughter.

Before she died, Sigourney visited Diatheke, Ltd., to withdraw two million dollars, in cash.

Diatheke had no problem filling a bag with two million dollars in cash on the spot. Celia, who worked at Diatheke, didn’t find this odd.

Celia described Sigourney as a “pro.” She also implied Sigourney had a secret account, and acted like getting killed was a known occupational hazard for pros.

Benedict De Lacy, who is a screwed-up mental Prime, didn’t ask any of the usual questions most people ask when learning about the death of an acquaintance or a client. He didn’t show surprise or express condolences.

Diatheke routinely employs a trained strike team of killers.

Celia was a metamorphosis mage, probably at least a Significant, and she tried to murder me. I was her primary target.

There was only one reasonable conclusion to all of this. Sigourney Etterson worked for Diatheke as an assassin. They either knew she was about to die, or they killed her. Other convoluted ways to interpret that list existed, but this was the simplest and most straightforward.

Did Benedict have her murdered over the two million dollars? I had no doubt that Diatheke gave Sigourney her money. If they hadn’t, Celia would have told me. By the time Sigourney cashed out the account, she had already moved her will to her desktop, which meant the threat existed before she went to Diatheke. If they intended to kill her, why cash her out?

I still had no idea what Diatheke actually did. Private security teams, like the one that almost killed me today, usually served prominent, wealthy Houses. On paper, Diatheke wasn’t associated with any House, but it sure was run like one, with a Prime at the top.

A metamorphosis mage of Celia’s caliber required careful management. Arabella was a metamorphosis mage. There was no comparison between the two, because my sister was one of a kind, but similarities existed. For one, deploying Celia would’ve been a gamble every time. Very few metamorphosis mages retained the ability to reason while transformed. They were the magic equivalent of a directional antipersonnel mine. Point the right side toward the enemy and hope for the best. Diatheke would have to maintain a suppression team to neutralize her if she went off the rails.

What kind of nasty shit was Diatheke involved in that they needed Celia on their team? There was a simple answer to that, and I didn’t like it.

Bern had already done a search on Diatheke and came up with nothing out of the ordinary. That left Benedict De Lacy. Mental Primes with that sort of power didn’t just pop out of nowhere.

Most of his furniture and artifacts dated between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, during the rise and peak of the Ottoman Empire, and came from that specific region, with the exception of some medieval European swords and French furniture. To acquire that collection took not only ridiculous wealth, but education. He had to have gone to college, probably an Ivy League university somewhere. I pictured his office in my mind. No, he didn’t have any diplomas framed on his wall.

I logged into Herald and searched for Benedict De Lacy. Nothing.

House De Lacy?

Herald spat out two search results, one for some aquakinetics in Canada and the other for some harmonizers in New York. The aquakinetics imported bottled spring water, and the harmonizers, whose specialty was creating living spaces that evoked a particular feeling, owned an interior design firm. I checked both out of due diligence. Neither listed any Benedicts and none of the family members looked anything like Benedict.

He was something though. I had spent enough time with Arrosa to recognize old wealth and breeding. Perhaps he was using an assumed name. If he was a bastard child of some high-ranking Prime, he would be nearly impossible to identify. Family resemblance would be my best bet.

I accessed the Herald’s Prime visual database and went to advanced search. I typed in male, white, fifty to eighty, Prime, mental branch of magic. It resulted in two thousand hits.

Great. Here’s hoping Benedict had a living father who looked like him.

I was on page seven when I smelled blood. The salty metallic stench cut across my senses like a razor. It came from my sword.

It made no sense. I’d wiped the gladius with an oiled rag before putting it back in its bracket on the wall. It hung there, five feet away from me, the blade shining slightly, reflecting the light of my lamp. I knew it was clean.

I had killed three people with it. I’d cut their throats. They’d died while my hands were on them. I could still feel the warmth of the second man’s face as I clamped my fingers over his mouth. I remembered the heat of his breath when he exhaled as I drove my sword into his flesh.

My hands shook. The scent of blood was everywhere now, saturating the air and settling on my skin in a sticky patina. I inhaled it with every breath.

I gagged and tasted acid in my mouth. Tears wet my eyes, blurring my vision. I wished I could open a window, but the office had none.

I swiped at my eyes and heard myself sob. The office blurred. I got up, locked the door, and lowered the shades on the glass wall facing the hallway. Then I collapsed in the chair, put my hands over my face, and cried.

I wished I could take it back. I wished I could rewind today or wake up and realize I’d had a nightmare. It felt like a sharp shard was inside me trying to cut its way out. It hurt so much.

The little black dog stood on her hind legs, put her front paws on my knee, and wagged her tail. I petted her shaggy head. The tears kept coming. I just couldn’t stop.

My phone rang. Bug. I answered and hit the speaker icon.

“Hey,” he said. “Your grandma and your sister made it to Keystone okay, got the Guardians, and are heading back. Arabella made a slight detour, so I thought I’d tell you so you don’t freak out.”

“That’s great,” I choked out. My voice sounded strained and sharp.

“I detect some hostility,” Bug said. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s great.”

“Catalina, where are you? What’s wrong?”

“I killed three people.” I was trying to keep it together, but saying it out loud proved too much. The sobs broke through.

“What people? Where?”

“At Keystone Mall. Actually, I killed ten people, three myself and seven through people I beguiled. Ten people, Bug. They can never go home. They had families . . .”

“It’s okay.” Bug’s voice turned soothing. “It’s okay. Why were you at the mall?”

“Things didn’t go well after Diatheke. I picked up a tail, took them to the mall, and killed them.”

“The crew from the Guardians?” Bug guessed.

“Yes.”

“Catalina, they followed you to the mall. You didn’t chase them down. They could’ve walked away at any point. Those fuckers made a deliberate choice to hunt you down instead. It was you or them. Listen to me. You didn’t do anything wrong. You killed ten bad people.”

The rational part of me knew he was right, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I took ten lives.

“If you hadn’t killed them, they would have killed you and then tomorrow or next week, they would have killed someone else. Talk to me. Are you there?”

“Yes. I just can’t stop crying.”

“It’s adrenaline overload. Listen to me, listen to my voice: they were wrong, you were right. People who ride around in Guardians so they can hunt down a lone woman in an abandoned mall don’t deserve mercy. They’re the worst kind of assholes. The world can use less assholes.”

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “I’m better,” I told him. “I’ve got it.”

“Good, because your sister just passed the security checkpoint.”

I grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped my face.

“Bug?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “She’s at the front door.”

I jumped up, opened the shades, unlocked the door, and sat back at my desk. The front door swung open. There was a grunt. The door swung shut. Arabella staggered down the hallway and into my office carrying an armload of stuff and dumped it on the floor.

“What’s this?” I asked. My face was red, my eyes bloodshot, and we both pretended they weren’t.

She sat on the floor and dug through the bags, raising each item like she was auctioning it off. “Dog food bowl, water bowl, collar, leash, dog food; goes in the bowl, puppy pads; go on the floor, special cleaner with enzymes to clean up messes, chewy toys, an almost life-like squirrel, a rubber hamburger, little tennis balls, a blankie, a dog pillow, special dog shampoo, and a grooming brush.”

Wow.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How did you know what to get?”

“I asked Matilda.”

The little dog trotted over to the pile of loot and bit the rubber hamburger. It squeaked. The dog dropped the hamburger and dashed under my desk.

“A paragon of bravery,” Arabella observed.

“She’s been through a lot. Why the sudden attack of kindness?” I asked.

She got up off the floor and hugged me. We almost never hugged anymore.

Arabella headed to the door.

“Hey,” I called.

She turned back to me.

I lowered my voice. “Sergeant Heart has a thing for Mom.”

She blinked, then her eyes went wide. “How do you know?”

“She Skyped with him and he told her that all she had to do was let him know that she needed him. And she said, ‘Benjiro, I need you,’ and then he got terribly excited that she knew his first name.”

“He has a first name?”

“Don’t say anything,” I warned.

“I won’t.”

“I mean it. He’s coming here tomorrow night.”

“What, like a date?”

“No.” I waved my hand. “He and his team are coming to replace Abarca.”

Arabella sagged against the door frame. “Don’t scare me like that.”

I made a face at her and she left.

I stared at the pile of doggie goods on the floor. I loved my sister so much. I loved my whole family more than anything. I had to make sure they kept breathing.

I looked back to the screen, switched to the browser, and clicked to go to the next page of headshots.