White Hot

Chapter 6

I woke up because I heard voices. I opened my eyes. My mom was gone. The tower was empty and the only light came from the outside filtering through the narrow slits of the windows and from the square opening that led down. I checked my phone. I’d slept for forty minutes, and now I felt kind of woozy. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to lie right here on this cozy air mattress and stay warm and comfy. And maybe sleep some more.

The creaking of a ladder announced someone climbing up into the tower and moving fast.

I flipped onto my stomach, sat up, and leaned toward the opening, my hands on the floor, to see who was coming up the stairs. In that exact moment Rogan raised his head. We were face to face. An overwhelming relief flooded his eyes.

I was so glad to see him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. Mere inches separated us.

“That’s the second time today you asked me that.” I leaned closer. I couldn’t help myself. “You should really come up with a better pickup line.”

He surged up, halfway into the room, his upper body in, his feet still on the stairs. His mouth closed on mine.

His lips burned me. The sleepy wooziness evaporated in a heart-fluttering rush. He smelled of sandalwood, and my head was spinning. I licked his lips. He tasted so good. A hoarse male noise escaped his mouth. Yes, growl for me.

His hand stroked the back of my neck, his teeth bit my lower lip, and I gasped as my breath caught in my throat. Heat warmed my skin from within, each sensation magnified. I felt so alive. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted the heat of his rough fingers on my skin. I wanted him inside me. I opened my mouth, shocked at the thought, and he took it, his tongue brushing mine and withdrawing, perfectly in tune with my breath, conquering and seducing, teasing and pulling back, pretending I could get away and then claiming my mouth as his.

A velvet heat dripped down the back of my neck, a phantom molten honey sizzling on my skin, as Rogan’s magic bound us. It slid down my spine, inch by inch, setting every nerve on fire in its wake, my body eager for the repeat of ecstasy it remembered. Oh my God, how could this feel so good?

Rogan’s hand slid over my chest to cup my breast. Yes, yes, please. He took a step up. Another.

If he came up all the way, we’d have sex right here, right now.

On my mother’s air mattress.

I pushed him. For a fraction of a second he stayed where he was, grasping the air for balance, and then he slid down the stairs with a thud.

I leaned into the opening. He caught himself midway down the ladder, looked up at me, and spread his arms, his face puzzled.

“What’s going on?” Mom called from somewhere below.

“Mad Rogan fell down the stairs.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, cringing inside.

“Does he need a medic?”

Yes, Rogan mouthed and pointed at me.

Aha, no, I’m not giving you any sexy healing. “No, he’s fine.”

Rogan started back up the stairs, his face determined.

“He’s coming down,” I announced. “Now.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh, went down the stairs and stayed there. Great. Now I would have to climb down the stairs while he entertained himself by looking at my butt. Maybe he would move.

He didn’t.

However, by the time I got down the stairs, he’d slid back into his I’m-a-Prime-and-I-can-kill-you-with-my-pinkie expression. Probably because my mother and my grandmother were both in the vicinity, standing in the doorway of the media room and looking at something on the screen. Leon hovered nearby, gazing at Rogan with all of the puppy love his evil teenage heart could muster. For some odd reason, Leon hero-worshiped Rogan with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

I went to the media room. Rogan followed me. One of his people, an African American woman, sat cross-legged on the floor by a laptop connected to our TV with a cord. The other, a trim athletic man in his forties, sat on the couch, leaning forward and keeping most of his weight on his feet, expecting to jump up any moment. An image of an iced-over overpass stretched on the screen and the view was flying down the ice, veering left and right.

Mom and Grandma Frida had identical expressions on their faces: dark and angry.

“Troy should get a raise,” I murmured.

“He will,” Rogan promised, his voice hard. “Thank you for saving his life.”

“I didn’t . . .”

“I’ve already watched this,” Rogan said. “You did. Thank you for taking care of him.”

On the recording I snapped, “Open the window!”

I hadn’t realized I barked like that.

The woman’s hands flew on the laptop keyboard. The view switched to the rear camera and the windshield of the 4Runner fractured.

“Clean kill,” Mom said.

“What?”

“Zoom in,” Mom said.

The recording rewound a few seconds and crept forward at a fraction of the normal speed, zooming in on the windshield. The bullets tore into the glass and punched the dark shape in the passenger seat. It jerked and went limp. That’s why nobody came out of the 4Runner after the illusion mage. I’d killed the passenger.

“That’s a hell of a shot,” Rogan’s man said.

Mom turned to Grandma Frida. “Threat-based?”

“Probably.” Grandma Frida grimaced. “Well, at least Bernard takes after me.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Pause it,” Mom said. The woman paused the recording.

“You and your mom get your shooting from your grandfather,” Grandma Frida said. “You more than her. Your Grandpa Leon was crap with a sniper rifle, but if he were under fire, he returned it with deadly accuracy. That’s the way his magic worked. Penelope lies there with her rifle and goes to her happy place, but you have to have people shooting at you to hit the target.”

“Dual,” Rogan said and smiled. He had a really smug expression on his face, like a cat who’d snuck into the pantry and stolen a bag of catnip.

“Keep going,” Mom said.

I would have to ask him later what that meant.

The recording restarted. We crashed. A demon got out of the car and walked toward the camera, his trench coat flaring. A smirk curved his lips, baring serrated teeth. Wow. True illusion. There were several kinds of illusion magic. Cloaker mages could make you invisible, but they accomplished it by affecting the minds of others, and a camera would still record you as you were. True illusion mages, like Augustine, not only affected minds, but also altered their physical appearance. Their reflection and pictures showed only what they wanted you to see.

The view switched to the internal camera. I sat petrified on the back seat, breathing fast through my mouth. My pupils were so large that my eyes looked completely black on a bloodless face. I wanted to close my eyes, but instead I watched myself fry him. I’d taken his life. I had to own it.

The doorbell chimed.

“I got it!” Arabella chirped from somewhere inside the house.

“Bug scrambled the footage from the toll road,” Rogan said. “The cops got to the 4Runner before my people did, but you have nothing to worry about.”

“They will find bullets from my gun in his car,” I said.

“Yes. And I’ve sent an excellent lawyer down there to explain that the car was used to attack one of my vehicles. You may have to give a statement at some point.”

“That’s it?”

“House wars, House rules,” Rogan said. “They aren’t interested unless a civilian is involved and often not even then.”

“What about the car itself?”

“It was stolen this morning from an office building’s parking lot. The Suburban was appropriated from another office building, and neither lot had cameras pointing in that specific direction. And this guy’s prints aren’t in any databases so far.”

“So we have no leads.”

“No.” Rogan’s eyes hardened. He was looking at something on my neck.

I pulled out my phone and checked the camera. Red welts marked my throat, four on one side and one on the other. A souvenir from the illusion mage’s fingers.

“Why did you shoot him in the back?” Leon asked from somewhere to the left. “Head would be better.”

“Because we need his face for ID.” I turned to Rogan. “I saw one of the people in the Suburban.”

His eyes lit up.

“The view wasn’t great,” I said. “It was raining. But I’m sure it was the ice mage. He was in his thirties, I think. Blond, wearing a suit. It’s not much, but if Bug puts together possible ice mage candidates, I can look at them. He smiled at me.”

“Smiled?” Rogan said, his face dark. “I’ll remember that.”

My imagination painted him standing over the blond mage, holding the man’s guts in his hand. Okay then.

On the screen, I was driving, my eyes empty. I looked like a zombie. We had to be on the right track, at least. Rogan’s people were iced before they died. Only an ice Prime could’ve frozen that overpass so quickly and completely. Something we had done had convinced Nari’s murderer that either I or Rogan was a threat.

Troy said something. I replied, my eyes scanning the windshield. I didn’t quite have the thousand-yard stare, but it was close. Anxiety splashed me in a cold gush, an echo of driving to the warehouse expecting to be forced off the road any second. I felt the urge to cross my arms to try to put some distance between me now and me on that screen.

A warm hand touched me. Rogan’s strong fingers wrapped around mine, forging a link between us. He didn’t look at me, his gaze still on the recording. He just held my hand, anchoring me here and now. I’d survived. I’d made it, and now the look in his eyes promised me that he would put himself between me and whatever tried to hurt me next. I could’ve jerked my hand away, but I didn’t. I held on to him.

“You need to switch to Akula tires,” Grandma Frida said. “See how the vehicle is lurching? Akula has thicker inserts and an inflated inner chamber.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Rogan said.

“This way,” my sister said.

I turned and leaned to glance out of the room. Augustine Montgomery was striding down the hallway toward me, with Arabella by his side. My mother had never forgotten that he’d threatened to terminate our mortgage to force me to apprehend Adam Pierce. If she saw him, she’d probably murder him.

“I’ll be right back,” I announced, slipped my hand out of Rogan’s hold, and left the room to intercept the incoming disaster.

Arabella offered me a cherubic smile.

“Why did you let him in?” I hissed in a loud whisper.

“Because he’s so very beautiful.”

Augustine was remarkably beautiful today. His skin all but glowed, his frost-blond hair barely short of perfect. The quality of his illusion was off the charts.

“He’s too old for you. You can’t just let someone in the house because you think they’re pretty.”

Augustine’s eyes narrowed. He must’ve seen Rogan behind me.

“What are you doing here?” Rogan asked, his voice suffused with menace.

“What are you doing here?” Augustine snapped, his gaze fixed on Rogan.

“Shhh!” I hissed. “Into the office, before people see us.” My mother had stopped coming into the office when I formally took on the leading role in our firm. I didn’t care, but she considered it to be my professional domain.

I herded everyone in and shut the door behind me.

“Ms. Baylor . . .” Augustine pushed his glasses up his nose.

Arabella snapped a picture of Augustine.

“Stop that,” Augustine and I said at the same time.

“Augustine, don’t tell my sister what to do. Arabella, stop it.”

“Why do you even associate with him?” Augustine pointed his hand at Rogan. “Was your last adventure not enough?”

Most people, even Primes, gave Rogan a wide berth. Augustine met him head on. He and Rogan had gone to college together and at one point they’d been friends, but now they mostly snarled at each other. The last time they’d met in my office, they nearly destroyed it in their pissing contest. If they tried that again, they would sorely regret it.

Leon slipped into the office, a slender shadow. Great, more witnesses if anything went wrong.

Augustine was waiting for my answer.

“I’m associating with Mr. Rogan because it’s in the best interests of my client—the one you sent to me. They have signed a professional agreement, and I have to abide by its terms.” That sounded a lot better than “because he makes me feel safe and every time I think about kissing him, I feel a little electric thrill.”

“Mr. Montgomery, was there a point to your visit or did you just come here to critique my choice of professional partners?”

“You know perfectly well why I’m here. I warned you it was a terrible idea and I was right.”

I took a deep breath. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Augustine blinked. “Don’t any of you watch the news?”

I tapped my keyboard to get my PC to wake up. “What am I looking for?”

“Amy Madrid, press conference.”

A dozen links popped up. I clicked the first one. An older woman held seven-year-old Amy in her arms. A man stood next to her, hugging them both. Amy looked like a deer in the headlights.

I smiled.

“Fast forward to the nine-minute and thirty-seven-second mark.”

I did.

“. . . finally found . . .” some reporter was saying.

“It was the Lady in Green,” Amy’s mother said, the words bursting out of her. “They told me. She made him tell her where our daughter was. We love you. Thank you, thank you for saving our daughter. We’ll never forget. Eres una santa . . .”

The mike died. A man in a suit clamped his hand over it and called out, “That is all for today.”

“You?” Rogan asked, his expression resigned.

“She would’ve died,” I told him.

Rogan turned to Augustine. “And you helped her do this? How many lunchtime martinis did you have before it seemed like a good idea?”

Augustine recoiled in outrage. “I tried to talk her out of it. She wanted to just walk into the police station. I helped her do it as anonymously and secretly as possible.”

Rogan crossed his arms. “Someone told that woman exactly what took place. The video has two million views already. Now she is a damned urban legend. If that’s your definition of secret, you need to get your head examined.”

“Her face and her entire body was obscured. Anyway, I didn’t come here to be insulted.” He turned to me. “I came here to warn you, just like I did before. This act will have consequences, ones you’re likely unable to anticipate. Make your preparations.”

Sure, let me get right on that. “If I can’t anticipate the consequences, how can I prepare for them?”

“That’s for you to figure out.” Augustine turned to leave.

“Wait,” Rogan said, a speculative look on his face. “I’d like to show you something.”

Augustine grimaced. “Is it work related at least?”

“Yes. Nevada, may we enter the motor pool?”

“Follow me. Quietly, please. I don’t want to upset my mother.” I opened the door and checked the hallway. Clear.

“Why would your mother be upset that I’m here?” Augustine asked.

“Think about it,” I said. “It will come to you.”

We crossed the hallway and I opened the door to the motor pool.

“Is this about that nonsense of me being a terrible person?” Augustine asked.

Rogan strode through the motor pool, heading for the Range Rover parked in the middle and watched over by a Hispanic woman.

Augustine squinted at the two track vehicles—a tank and a mobile flamethrower. “What exactly does your grandmother do?”

“She tinkers,” I told him.

Augustine opened his mouth to say something else, saw the mangled Range Rover, and closed his mouth.

Rogan walked up to the stretcher covered with a dark brown tarp they must’ve stolen from Grandma Frida and nodded to the woman. “Thank you, Tiana. Take a break.”

“Yes, Major.” Tiana trotted outside.

Rogan pulled the tarp, revealing the illusion mage’s face. “Do you know this asshole?”

Leon and Arabella climbed up on the nearest track vehicle to get a better view.

Augustine grimaced. “Yes. I do know this asshole. Who did he go after?”

“Me,” I said.

“Did he look something like this?” Augustine took off his glasses. His flesh boiled. He expanded, growing to eight feet. Enormous leathery wings thrust out from his shoulders, issuing a challenge. Muscle sheathed his tree-trunk legs, covered in mottled python scales. Hooves formed over his feet. Carved arms stretched forward, armed with razor sharp talons. The horrible face stared at me with ruby red eyes, dripping fire onto the cheeks. A mane of bright roiling flames fell onto his shoulders and back.

“Holy crap!” Leon almost fell off his perch.

Arabella laughed. I threw her a warning glance. Don’t you do it. The last thing we needed was for her to show off.

The demon flexed his colossal shoulders. I could feel the heat of the fire. I smelled it. How was that even possible? The other guy’s illusion had looked real. This felt real. I swallowed.

“Yes, he looked like that. Except he was a foot shorter and there were no flames. He had a hood.”

“Dilettante,” the demon said in Augustine’s voice. “Living fire takes concentration.”

The demon deflated in a rush, snapping back into Augustine. He slid his glasses back on. “Philip McRaven. Also known as Azazel, mostly because he attempted to get everyone he ever worked with to call him that. He cost me a great deal of money.”

“How?” I asked.

“He was a Significant, related to the San Antonio McRavens. They excised him twelve years ago for various offenses and when I met him, he was working as a free agent. He advertised himself as a decent tracker. We were looking to expand our staff and I can always find use for a good illusion mage, especially one with a secondary talent. In addition to being an illusion mage, he was also an upper-range Average psionic.”

That explained the panic.

“I put him on a skip trace. One of the Houses had a runaway spouse who married into the House and six months later took off.”

“Took the good silver?” I asked.

“Nothing so pedestrian. He made his getaway in a California Spyder.”

“Good taste,” Rogan said.

I glanced at him.

“It’s a 1961 Ferrari. Only fifty-three ever made,” Rogan explained.

“The last one to come on the market sold for seven million,” Augustine said, his voice dry. “The man was a gambler who used to frequent Vegas. A relatively easy job. McRaven was to find him and call in the local team so we could deliver him and the car back to his heartbroken wife. McRaven found the runaway, put on his demon routine, and then choked the man to death. To add insult to injury, the thief voided his bowels while still in the car.”

“How inconsiderate of him.” Rogan’s expression was perfectly placid.

“Yes, how dare he ruin the upholstery,” I murmured.

Our sarcasm flew right over Augustine’s head. “It’s incredibly difficult to remove the stench of human waste once it soaks into the carpet fibers. I almost killed McRaven. When I asked him why he did it, I got psychosis on parade with all flags flying and a marching band. According to him, he had done it because he liked, and I quote, ‘to see light go out of their eyes as they wet themselves in terror.’”

“Charming,” I said. Whatever mild tinges of guilt I felt about killing a man who’d tried to murder me evaporated.

“I seriously considered making him disappear,” Augustine said.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“One, he was my employee. There were plenty of warning signs in his background check, so the fault was mine for hiring this psychopath in the first place. And two, his mother came to see me from San Antonio. The McRavens may not be a full-fledged House, but there are four Significants in that family and now they owe me a favor.” Augustine studied Rogan for a long moment. “How do you fit into this? What are you involved in?”

“I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you,” Rogan said.

Nobody laughed.

“You should wink next time you make a joke,” I told Rogan. “So people know when to laugh.”

“I’m not joking,” he said.

“He isn’t.” Augustine pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Except I’m obviously not trembling in terror. Let me break this down for you. I own the largest investigative firm in Houston. Obtaining information is literally what I do for a living. I’m now intrigued enough to divert resources from other, profitable ventures, to look into this. I will put the two of you under enough surveillance that you won’t be able to breathe. I’ll bug your offices and your vehicles, I’ll hack your computers, and I’ll have you followed by people who change their faces and bodies with a thought. You can devote an enormous amount of resources to fight me off or you could just tell me, because we all know I’ll figure it out in the end. I can be a nuisance or I can be an ally. Your choice. Either way is fun for me.”

Rogan considered it.

Augustine waited.

Rogan leaned back. “Do you know how Forsberg’s people were killed?”

Augustine peered at him through his glasses. “You realize I referred Harrison to Nevada?”

“I meant, do you know what really happened?”

“No, but I’m all ears.”

I sighed and headed to the counter, where Grandma Frida’s coffeemaker waited. This would be a long conversation and I needed coffee for it.

By the time Rogan was done talking, we’d moved back into my office, since there was less chance of discovery there. I chased Leon and Arabella off, then checked up on Mom and Grandma and told them I was discussing things with Rogan just in case they decided to look for me. I was on my second cup of coffee, it was barely eight o’clock, and I was still sleepy.

Augustine took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. A modern angel, urbane, well-dressed, and carrying a briefcase filled with savage weapons.

“So there is a conspiracy, probably involving several major Houses. To what end?”

“They are trying to destabilize Houston’s status quo,” Rogan said.

“Yes, but what’s the end game?” Augustine frowned. “They’re committing a great deal of money and resources. There are only a handful of reasons that motivate people to risk that much of their assets.”

“Power, greed, or revenge,” I said.

Augustine nodded. “Precisely. Let’s say Adam had succeeded and Houston’s downtown is in ruins. The stock market crashes. Theoretically, one could make money from that crash, but the local economy would be recovering for years. Long-term outlook for doing business is poor.”

“Not only that, but backlash against the Houses would spike,” Rogan said. “It would make sense if one of the anti-House radical groups was involved, but this is coming from within House elite. You know what this means. It will eventually explode.”

“And when it does, everyone will have to pick a side.” Augustine sighed again. “I don’t like it. I don’t like not knowing what the hell is going on. In fact, I make it my life’s mission to know what is going on at all times.”

Out of Augustine’s view, Rogan rolled his eyes.

Augustine grimaced. “I’m tired of odd things happening. I don’t want excitement, I want boredom. Boredom is good for business.”

Him and me both.

Augustine glanced at me. “I understand Rogan’s involvement. But what about you? You do realize the full danger of this mess?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then why?”

“I’m here because I want to help Cornelius. But mostly because of Nari Harrison.”

Augustine’s eyebrows rose.

“When we talk about the deceased, we usually mention whom they left behind,” I explained. “We say, ‘She was a wife and a mother’ or ‘He leaves behind two children and three grandchildren.’ It’s almost as if the dead have no value unless we know that someone they are related to is still alive and mourning them. I feel terrible for Cornelius and Matilda. But I feel even worse for Nari. She expected to have a long life ahead of her. She had dreams. She won’t see them come true now. She won’t see Matilda grow up. She’ll never grow old with Cornelius. She’ll never experience anything again, because some scum decided to kill her. Someone should care that this happened. Someone should fight for her and make sure that her murderer never takes another life and that he or she pays for what they did. If I die, I want someone to care. So, I’m that someone for her.”

A short figure walked down the hallway toward us. I fell silent.

Matilda stopped in the doorway of my office. She was carrying the huge Himalayan cat and a little plastic bag. The cat hung limp in her arms, perfectly content to be dragged around like a stuffed teddy bear.

Matilda looked at the three of us, walked up to Rogan, and held out the cat to him.

“I need to clean his eyes.” Her voice was so cute. “His tears are brown because of his smushed nose and he gets infected. He won’t hold still. He can’t help it.”

Rogan stared at her, stunned. I’d never seen that expression on his face before. It was almost funny.

“Will you hold my cat?”

Rogan blinked, reached out, and carefully took the cat from her arms. The cat purred like a runaway bulldozer.

Matilda opened her little Ziploc bag, took out cotton pads and a small plastic bottle, her tiny eyebrows furrowed in concentration. She wet the cotton and reached out to the cat. He tried to turn away, but Rogan held him tight.

“Hold still. Be a good kitty.” Matilda stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, held up her cotton ball, and carefully wiped the cat’s left eye with it.

It was such an odd thing. Rogan—big, frightening, all coiled violence and icy logic—gently holding a fluffy cat for a tiny child a fraction of his size. I should take a picture, but I didn’t want to ruin it. I wanted to remember it just like this, serious Matilda and shocked Rogan, his eyes soft.

Matilda finished. I held out the trashcan to her. She threw away the cotton pads stained with brown, packed away her bottle, and took the cat from Rogan, settling his front paws over her shoulder. She petted the fur. “There, there. It wasn’t bad. You’re okay.”

The cat purred.

Catalina ran down the hallway, her face flustered. “There you are. I went to the bathroom for a second and you disappeared. Come on, we’ll make some cookies.”

Matilda held out her hand to her. My sister took it.

“Thank you!” Matilda said to Rogan.

“You’re welcome,” he said with all of the formality of a man accepting knighthood.

Augustine was smiling.

Rogan looked back at me. “Why me? Why not you?”

“Cornelius is a stay-at-home dad,” I said. “She views men as caretakers. Usually he probably holds the cat, but he wasn’t available.”

Rogan leaned back in his seat.

“It’s terrible when he’s reminded he is human,” Augustine said to me. “He doesn’t know how to deal with it. Just think, Connor, one day you might be a father and get one of your own.”

Rogan stared at him as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on his head.

Payback time. “I doubt it. He’ll never marry. He’ll stay in his house and brood in solitude being cynical and bitter.”

“And entertain himself with his piles of money and high-tech toys,” Augustine said. “Like a broody superhero.”

Augustine had a sense of humor. Who knew? “Maybe we should invest in one of those searchlights with a Rogan symbol on it . . .”

Rogan reached into his wallet, pulled out two dollar bills, pushed one toward me and the other toward Augustine. “I hate to see comedians starve. Our only lead is Gabriel Baranovsky, who was Elena’s lover, according to her douchebag of a husband. Are you going to help me with Baranovsky, Augustine?”

“I wasn’t planning on attending,” Augustine said. “But I might now. I want in. Not because I have some altruistic motives, but because when this thing finally bursts out in the open, it will be like an earthquake. It will shake the House politics not only in Houston, but probably in the entire country, and I can’t afford not to know where the pieces land.”

“Attending what?” I asked.

“How much do you know about Baranovsky?” Augustine said.

“Nothing,” I told him. “I haven’t had a chance to do any research. I was busy trying not to die.”

“Gabriel Baranovsky is an oneiromancer,” Rogan said.

Oneiromancers predicted the future by dreaming. Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to catch a glimpse of things to come by any means they could, from casting bones to examining cheese. Dreaming about it proved to be one of the more commonly used methods.

“He’s a very accurate short-term precog,” Rogan continued. “He dreams specifically about the stock market.”

“Dreams during the night, trades during the day,” Augustine said. “He made his first billion before he turned thirty.”

“His first billion?”

“He’s worth more than the two of us combined,” Rogan said. “He stopped at three billion because he got bored.”

“Wife?” I asked.

“He never married,” Rogan said.

“But he’s a Prime.” That was extremely odd. Finding the right person to marry and producing a gifted child dominated everything Primes did. In our world, magic equaled power, and the Primes feared losing power more than anything. “If there is no wife, then there is no heir and his family will lose the House designation.”

A family had to have at least two living Primes in three generations to be considered a House and to qualify for a seat in the Assembly.

“He doesn’t care,” Rogan said. “He never attends Assembly or socializes.”

“Much like someone else we know,” Augustine said. “Rumor has it, there is a bastard child. But nobody’s ever seen him or her.”

“So what does he do with all that money?”

“Whatever the hell he wants.” Rogan shrugged.

“Baranovsky is a collector,” Augustine said. “Rare cars, rare wine, rare jewels, rare art.”

“Rare women,” Rogan said. “He was likely Elena’s only lover, but for him she was one of many. It’s a compulsion. He can’t help himself. The more unusual and unique a thing is, the more he wants it. What he wants very, very badly is the 1594 Fortune Teller by Caravaggio.”

“Caravaggio was a rebel,” Augustine explained. “In the 1590s most of the Italian art scene consisted of Mannerist works—posed, stilted arrangements of people with unnaturally long limbs painted in jarring colors. Caravaggio painted from life. His works showed ordinary people and they were hyper-realistic for the time, funny and sly. Later on he would become massively influential.”

That made sense. “Baranovsky identifies with Caravaggio,” I said. “They both rejected the established artificial status quo and did what they thought was real and important.”

“Precisely,” Rogan said.

“Fortune Teller was Caravaggio’s first work in his style,” Augustine said. “It was the genesis of everything he created. The painting exists in two versions, and Baranovsky already bought the later version from the French for an outrageous amount of money.”

“But he doesn’t have the 1594 version,” I guessed. “And it’s killing him. It’s the original. He has to have it.”

“You should come work for me,” Augustine said.

“I do work for you, by proxy.”

“Long story short,” Rogan said, “the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston owns the original Fortune Teller. Baranovsky tried everything to buy it, but MFAH refuses to sell. When the painting was donated, the owner stipulated that it could never be sold or leased for monetary compensation. And yet, MFAH wants Baranovsky’s money.”

“So they are letting him display it,” Augustine finished. “In return—because they can’t take money—once a year he organizes a huge charity gala. Minimum ticket price is two hundred thousand per family.”

I choked on the last of my coffee.

“Baranovsky won’t talk to me,” Augustine said. “I’m not flashy enough as Primes go. I’m very much in line with the status quo. He might talk to Rogan, since he’s the most dangerous man in Houston.”

“Is that the official title?” I asked.

“No,” Rogan said. “It’s a statement of fact.”

I couldn’t resist. “It’s so refreshing to meet a Prime with such humility.”

“Anyway,” Augustine cut in. “Even if Baranovsky talked to Rogan, it wouldn’t do us any good. We all know that Rogan has the interrogative subtlety of a howitzer.”

“I can be subtle.” He actually managed to look offended.

“Let’s ask her.” Augustine looked at me. “How do you think Rogan would try to get information from Baranovsky?”

I said the first thing that popped into my head. “He’d hold him by his throat from some really tall balcony.”

“I rest my case.”

“Holding people by their throat is effective and rapidly produces results,” Rogan said, completely matter-of-fact.

Augustine shook his head. “Two of the people in this room are private detectives who routinely extract information from people. You’re not one of those two. We need better bait.”

They both looked at me.

“What makes you think he would be interested?” I asked.

“Because Rogan will show up,” Augustine said. “He never shows up, but this time he will and he’ll pay very obvious attention to you. You will also be in my company. You’re beautiful and new, and you will seem to command the attention of two Primes. Baranovsky will want to know what’s so special about you.”

“When is it?”

“Friday.”

“I’ll need a dress,” I said. “And money.”

Rogan leaned forward, a warning in his eyes. “Right now the only two Primes that know about you are Augustine and me. If you walk into that benefit dinner, this will change.”

Augustine’s eyes narrowed. He was watching Rogan very carefully. “You want to get to Baranovsky. This is the best and most efficient way.”

Rogan ignored him. “Nevada, I know that you’re keeping your talent quiet. There will be no turning back after this.”

Either he genuinely worried about me, which was really touching, or he had some clandestine reason to keep the fact of my existence quiet so he could continue utilizing my power. I wish I knew which.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Augustine said. “As long as she doesn’t stand in the middle of the floor and announce that she is a truthseeker, nobody has to know she has any magic at all.”

“There will be consequences,” Rogan said. “It will be difficult to fade into obscurity after this. At worst, people will realize what you do. At best, you will be dismissed as a woman Augustine or I are using. I know your reputation is important to you. Think about it.”

I waited until both of them stopped talking.

“Augustine, are you attending in your professional capacity?”

“Of course. I’ll be using MII’s corporate account. The charitable contribution is tax deductible.”

“Then I’ll attend as your employee.” I looked at Rogan. “If he introduces me as his employee, it’ll explain why I’m there. Your kind of people don’t look too closely at hired help. It will look like I’m one of Augustine’s investigators and you’re trying to get into my pants to aggravate him. If the two of you act the way you’ve been acting every time I’ve seen you together, nobody will doubt it.”

“What do you mean, the way we’ve been acting?” Augustine leaned back.

“Have you ever seen a betta fish?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, when you and Rogan come into each other’s view, you act like two male betta fishes. You puff your fins out and swim around trying to intimidate each other. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and everyone will realize that it’s really about the two of you and I’m just collateral damage. Everything will be fine.”

“I take offense at that,” Augustine said.

“You’re giving Augustine too much credit,” Rogan said. “His fins don’t impress me.”

He’d delivered that reply on autopilot. His eyes were distant. He was probably still thinking about the gala and he didn’t like it.

“I still need a dress.”

“I’ll handle the dress,” Rogan said.

“No,” I told him firmly. “You’ll give me money and I’ll buy my own dress. Also Cornelius will likely want to attend. He’ll need financial assistance as well.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Rogan said.

“It’s decided then,” Augustine said. “Why do I have this nagging feeling this won’t end well?”

“Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures,” Rogan said, obviously quoting. He still didn’t seem enthusiastic about it.

“Where is that from?” I asked.

“The Three Musketeers.” Augustine shook his head. “Rogan, everything about you is hazardous. It’s late and I have things to take care of. You can have your broody Athos all to yourself, milady. I’ll let myself out.”

He left the room. A quick check of my computer monitor confirmed he’d exited the building, gotten into his car, and driven away.

A speculative light played in Rogan’s eyes. “I always liked Milady more than Constance.”

“I’m not Milady or Constance,” I told him, getting up. “I’m Captain de Treville. I’m the voice of reason that’s trying to keep you two from doings criminal things without any regard for the law or the lives of others.”

He smiled. A potent, heated mix of need and lust warmed his eyes. It should’ve banished the darkness that had made its nest there, but it didn’t. He was eyeing me from the back of his dragon cave, tired, haggard, dangerous, but willing to throw it all aside for my sake. It made me want to run my hands down the hard, corded strength of his shoulders. I could slide my legs over his, straddle him right there in the chair, and make him forget everything. Let him make me forget everything, if only for a few minutes. He would smell like sandalwood. His skin would be hot under my tongue. He would grip me and the strength of those arms and the feel of his fingers on my body would carry me away, into the place where only pleasure existed.

Some men seduced by words, others with gifts. Connor Rogan seduced by simply looking. The sad thing was he wasn’t even trying. He was just looking at me and wishing we were naked together.

And if I didn’t stop fantasizing, he would pluck the impressions from my mind and run with them.

“Go home, Rogan.”

“You stopped calling me Mad a while ago,” he observed.

“I called you Mad mostly to remind myself who I was dealing with.” I leaned my butt against the desk.

“And who would that be?”

“A possibly psychopathic mass murderer who can’t be trusted.”

No reaction.

“And now you call me Rogan. What are you reminding yourself of now?”

“That you’re mortal.”

“Planning on killing me?” An amused light flashed in his eyes.

“Not unless you become a direct threat. Are you planning on becoming a direct threat?” I winked at him.

He laughed quietly. There, that was better.

“Are you going home?”

“No.” Steel tinted his voice.

I sighed.

“Is this about the overpass?”

“Yes.”

“I handled it.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “Troy survived because you were in that car.”

If I hadn’t been in the car, Troy wouldn’t have been attacked in the first place, but now didn’t seem like a good time to discuss that. “Then why do you want to stay?”

“Because Cornelius, Matilda, and you are now here under one roof. This is what we call a target-rich environment.”

“The bad guys could take care of their problems with one well-timed explosion,” I said.

He nodded. “My presence might be a deterrent. If not, I’m good in explosions.”

“I remember.”

I could argue but what would be the point? He wouldn’t hurt me or my family, and I felt better when he was here. I was responsible for my family’s safety and for Cornelius and Matilda, and I needed all the backup I could get. I just had to deal with the fact that when I climbed into my bed tonight, he would be sleeping somewhere downstairs. Probably on the air mattress, since Cornelius and Matilda had the guest rooms.

“Won’t Bug miss you?”

“Bug’s never far away.” Rogan showed me his phone.

“I’ll have to sell it to my mother,” I said.

“I discussed it with her before waking you up,” he said, matter-of-fact. “She thinks it would be prudent.”

Wow. My mother was so concerned about our safety she’d invited Mad Rogan to stay at the house. That knocked me back a bit.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep knowing that you’re prowling in my house while I’m in my loft.”

He rose, his face serious and harsh. “You will. You’ll fall asleep fast and sleep soundly until morning, and then you’ll get up and have breakfast with your family because I’ll be prowling in your house tonight. And if anyone tries to interrupt your sleep and end your life, you have my word that they’ll sleep forever.”

That was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me. He meant it and he would make every word of it come true.

I made my mouth move. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I’d barely closed my bedroom door behind me when someone knocked.

“Come in.”

The door opened and Leon slipped through. My youngest cousin was still in the lanky-teenager stage. Skinny, dark-haired, olive skinned, he reminded me of Ghost Elves from the recent fantasy blockbuster Road to Eldremar. I could totally picture him jumping from some ancient tree with two curved knives and blue war paint on his face. For a while we thought he might turn out to be really tall and once he hit his height, he’d fill out, but he’d stopped two inches short of six feet and so far showed no signs of adding bulk to his slight frame.

“If this is about Mad Rogan . . .”

He lifted his laptop and held it open for me. A dark background ignited on the screen, simulating deep space, and in the middle of it a beautiful nebula blossomed, made of luminescent threads, each spider-silk thin and weakly glowing with bands of different colors. Ah. The Smirnoff rubber-band model. I remembered doing that in high school. Magical theory was a core class and it hurt.

“I can’t do it,” Leon said.

After the day I’d had, homework was the last thing I wanted to do right now. “Leon, you really need to do your own homework.”

“I know.” He dragged his hand through his dark hair. “I tried. I promise, I really, really tried.”

Leon had two settings: sarcastic and excited. This new sad Leon was puzzling.

I sighed and sat down in my recliner. The chair was a necessity. I ended up taking work into my bed way too much, and my last laptop had leaped to its death in protest when I fell asleep and it slipped off my bed. From that point on, bed was strictly for TV watching, reading, sleeping, and having frustrating thoughts about certain telekinetics. Work was done in a recliner chair. It was comfortable like a cloud but it still made me feel like an old lady.

I studied the nebula. “Tell me about it.”

“This is a computer model of the Smirnoff rubber band theory,” he droned out.

“Your enthusiasm is overwhelming. What does the theory say?”

“It says that a space-time continuum is acted upon by many different factors. The influence of these factors is too great for any small change to affect the state of a continuum. It says that our reality is like a tangle of rubber bands. If you pull one out, the state of the tangle isn’t significantly affected. So if you went back in time and shot Alexei I, for example, World War II would still happen. Instead of Imperial Russia invading Poland in the 1940s, somebody else would’ve invaded, like France or Germany. Concentration camps and anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing would still happen. The rubber band theory is the complete opposite of the chain-link theory, which says that events are directly precipitated by each other, so if you go back in time and kill a mosquito, we’d all evolve gills or something.”

Good enough. “And your assignment is?”

“Prove or disprove rubber band theory as it relates to the introduction of the Osiris serum.” Leon pantomimed throwing up and pointed at the model on the screen. “Okay, so I know it should change. There is no way it wouldn’t change. If there was a huge plague, the world wouldn’t stay the same, right? Magic is like a plague. It’s affecting everything, so the events wouldn’t be the same. It’s too big of a factor. But I can’t make it work. Okay, so let’s say everything that glows blue is magic, right? I tried to pull all of the threads of the same color out to make a nonmagic model and nothing. Look, I let it run for ten years. Look.”

Leon clicked some keys. The screen split in two. On the left side the original nebula glowed with a rainbow of colors. On the right a new nebula formed. All of the blue threads vanished from it, but the shape of the new nebula remained the same.

“You’re ninety percent there,” I told him. “It’s a space-time continuum, Leon.”

“I know that.”

“So what are you forgetting?”

“I have no idea. Nevada, just help me, please. Please.”

I typed in new parameters. “You’re forgetting to take your time.”

On the screen the time counter rolled forward, dashing through decades. The nebula on the left remained unchanged, but the one on the right stretched, turned, evolving into a new odd shape. The counter clicked. One hundred years. Two hundred years. Five hundred. It came to a stop at a thousand. Leon stared at a completely different constellation of threads.

“You didn’t run it long enough,” I told him. “It’s like two roads branching from each other. At first they are close and going almost in the same direction, but the farther you go, the more they split. In the beginning magic didn’t change much. But with each generation it transforms our world more and more. Think about it. Without the magic we wouldn’t have Houses or Primes. Some things would probably stay the same, because some strings remained relatively untouched for a short while, but others would be completely different. Inevitably all strings will be affected, and the further we go, the more different the world will be.”

He landed on the bed. “How long did it take you?”

“Three days. I was frustrated and tried different things one by one, until I realized how it works.”

“Two weeks,” he said. “I’ve been doing it two weeks. Do you know how long it took Bern?”

“I have no idea.”

“Four minutes. I checked the school log. He holds the record.”

I sighed. “Leon, Bernard is a Magister Examplaria. He recognizes patterns. Code and encryption talk to him the way tanks talk to Grandma Frida. He probably figured it out within the first thirty seconds and then spent the next three and half minutes trying to find alternative solutions for fun.”

“I can’t do it.” Leon slumped, deflated. “I tried to do what Bern does and I just can’t. I’m a dudomancer.”

Not this again. “You’re not a dud.”

“I have no magic.”

Magic was a funny thing. What Catalina did and what I did was somewhat in the same area, but Arabella’s magic didn’t just come out of left field, it came out of the grass on the other side of the fence of the left field. Everybody in our family had magic, except for my dad, but Leon wasn’t directly related to him. His mom was my mother’s sister. All indications said that Leon had magic as well. It just was taking its sweet time demonstrating itself.

“Your talent will show up,” I said.

“When, Nevada? At first it was all ‘when he turns seven or eight,’ then ‘when he passes puberty.’ Well, I’m past puberty. Where the hell is my magic?”

I sighed. “I can’t answer that, Leon.”

“Life sucks.” He took his laptop. “Thanks for the help.”

“You’re welcome.”

“About Mad Rogan . . .”

“Out!”

“But—”

“Out, Leon!”

He stomped out. Poor kid. Leon so desperately wanted to be special. He wasn’t strong and large like his brother. He didn’t have Bern’s magic talent. He didn’t excel academically like Bern did. Bern was a wrestling star in high school and a lot of people had come to his matches. Leon ran track. Nobody cared about track except for people who did it. Some people in his place would’ve hated their older brother, but Leon loved Bern with an almost puppylike devotion. When Bern succeeded at something, Leon nearly burst with pride.

When he was little, I used to read baby books to him. One of them was about a puppy lost in the forest, with a picture of a small golden puppy among tall dark trees. Both Leon and Arabella inevitably bawled when we came to that part. Behind all of that sarcasm, he was still that little sensitive kid with big eyes. I just wished his magic would show up already.