Wildfire

by Ilona Andrews

  Rogan’s face snapped into an impenetrable mask.

  “Connor . . .”

  He held up his hand. I shut up. He clearly needed a minute.

  Rogan looked at me, opened his mouth to say something, clamped it shut, and shook his head wordlessly. A terrible internal struggle was taking place.

  “Use your words,” Kyle suggested helpfully.

  Rogan glared at him for a second, then looked back at me. “It’s nice that you saved your grandmother, but if she ever comes for you, I’ll kill her.”

  “She won’t hurt me. I’m family.”

  Rogan made a noise that might have been a snarl or a growl, it was hard to tell, and pulled out his phone.

  “Good afternoon, Keeper,” he said. “Due to unprecedented circumstances, I, as a witness, urge the Office to move up the Baylor trials. Ms. Baylor and her family will need the immunity immediately. . . . Yes, related to the I-10 incident. . . . Yes.” He turned to me. “Will Arabella register? Say yes.”

  I hesitated.

  “If she demonstrates ability to reason during the trial, her status as a Prime of your House will protect her from federal authorities. Otherwise, they will take her into custody under the Danger to Public Act,” Rogan said.

  “Yes.” She would be overjoyed.

  “She will register. . . . Sealed demonstration. . . . Thank you.”

  He hung up and pulled up another number. “Mother? I have a favor to ask. I’m sending a young girl to you by car. Could you please keep her hidden until I come to get her? . . . No, she isn’t my secret love child. I’ll explain later. Thank you.”

  He dialed a third number. I heard Sergeant Heart’s crisp hello.

  “We’re about to get federal visitors. Lock it down. Nobody goes in, nobody goes out, nobody knows anything.”

  He hung up and looked at me. “No more surprises. At least for the next twelve hours.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “You had one job.” My mother fumed. “One.”

  Bern, Catalina, and I stood in the kitchen. Grandma Frida sat at the table, resting her chin on her hands, her expression grave. Leon had stormed off because I refused to let him kill Vincent.

  “You had to keep her hidden. You know she has no sense. And you failed.”

  I waited. There was no point in talking.

  Mom glared at us. “Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”

  I opened my mouth. Catalina beat me to it. “You let her get into the helicopter.”

  Mom blinked. Catalina almost never got into a fight with anyone except Arabella and me.

  “I was taking care of Jessica. You let her run out of the house and climb into the helicopter, Mom. What were we supposed to do? Was I supposed to telepathically make her behave? Were Bern and Nevada supposed to magically make her stop while they were being shot at?”

  Mom opened her mouth.

  “No,” Catalina said. “I’m sick and tired of everyone making excuses for her. She’s special. She’s under a lot of pressure. She’s a spoiled brat who’s used to getting her way. She acts like a five-year-old and you want all of us to compensate. Well, she’s too old for us to do that. I’m not going to listen to any more of this. I’m done. Seriously, I’m fucking done.”

  She turned and marched away. A door slammed somewhere. The pressure of the upcoming trials was getting to her.

  “What is happening to this family . . .” Grandma Frida murmured.

  “Arabella did what you taught her to do,” I said to Mom. “She turned, took care of the problem, saved hundreds of people, turned back, and split. She didn’t linger, she didn’t show off, and she didn’t pose for any photos. She did her job and vanished.”

  “Once she got into the helicopter, there was no way to stop her,” Bern said.

  My mother landed into a chair. She looked defeated and old, older than I’d ever seen her. It was like being stabbed in the heart. I came over and crouched by her. “Mom?”

  She looked at me, glassy-eyed.

  “It will be okay.”

  Mom didn’t answer.

  “Mom? You’re scaring me.”

  “I just can’t stop it,” she said softly. “I’ve done everything I can and I can’t keep you all safe.”

  I took her hands. “It will be okay. I promise.”

  “How?”

  “The trials are being moved up. She’ll do a sealed trial, where she will be in front of a small group of witnesses. She’ll demonstrate reason during the trial, which we all know won’t be a problem. She’s still herself when she transforms. She just can’t speak. Once we qualify as a House, she will be protected under Emerging House Law.”

  Mom stared at me.

  “Emerging House Law states that no member of the House can be pressed into military service or be held by federal, state, or local authorities absent of clear evidence of committing a criminal act,” Bern said. “If we make it as a House, they can’t touch her.”

  I wasn’t sure she heard us. “Mom?”

  “What if they get her before the trials?”

  “They won’t,” I told her. “She’s with Rogan’s mother. They’re not going to violate the privacy of House Rogan. They have no cause and no proof. If they try, she will make them regret it.”

  “It will be on TV,” Grandma Frida said.

  “Let it be on TV. I trust Rogan and his mother to keep her safe. It will be fine.”

  My phone chimed. I answered it.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Rivera said. “We’re ready for you.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I hung up. “I have to go now, but I’ll be back. Don’t worry.” I hugged my mother and went outside. Crossing the street to Rogan’s HQ only took a few seconds, but I wasn’t going to his HQ. I was going to the one-story building behind it. Before Rogan bought it, it held a printing shop, and some traces of it still remained, including the granite counter at the front, now manned by one of Rogan’s employees, a tall, golden-haired woman. I nodded to her and went past her, through the heavy door to a large rectangular room. It had been gutted and painted with charcoal-black chalkboard paint. In the center of the room, Vincent sat, handcuffed to a chair. He saw me and sneered. Apparently, he was back to his old self.

  At the wall closest to the door, Bug perched in a chair, with two screens in front of him. A row of chairs had been set up. Rogan sat in one, Heart in another, Rivera in the third, and Rynda in the fourth. Her spine was ramrod straight. Cornelius sat in the fifth chair, Matilda in his lap. His sister, Diana, the Head of House Harrison, sat next to him. Their gazes were fixed on Vincent. Cornelius’ eyes glowed blue, Diana’s green, and when Matilda glanced at me, an eerie amber light rolled over her irises.

  Between the chairs and Vincent, two pieces of chalk waited for me.

  I walked over and picked one up.

  “What do you think you’re going to do with that, huh?” Vincent asked. “You don’t even know how to use it properly. We know all about you. No training. No education.”

  My magic spilled out.

  “Poor little cast-off from the family tree with a dead daddy. Your dad was a piece of shit, weak and stupid. The two go together in your family.”

  I drew a simple amplification circle on the floor.

  “Ugh. Are you blind or are your fingers broken? Rogan, come and do this for her. This is embarrassing.”

  “Sir?” Bug murmured.

  I stepped into the circle and concentrated. The room dimmed, the figure of Vincent in a chair dimming with it. A vague silver glow flared in his head—the hex reacting with my magic.

  I needed to get a closer look. I needed to dive deeper, all the way into the place I had once reached when Olivia Charles attacked me.

  “Nevada?” Rogan asked next to me.

  “Yes?” I concentrated on the glow.

  “Your family would like to watch. Your mother, sisters, cousins, and grandmothers.”

  “That’s fine.”

 
“Both your grandmothers,” he said.

  His voice dragged me back to the real world. I looked up. Bug had set a laptop on the desk to the right. On it, Victoria Tremaine reclined in a plush chair, her arm in a sling.

  Behind me someone drew a sharp breath and I knew it was my mother.

  “That’s fine.”

  I crouched. I needed more power. I drew a second, smaller circle, joining the first, pivoted and added a third, the same size as the second, then a fourth. The tetrad, also known as Mother and Triplets. I had found it in one of the books Rogan had secretly sent me a while ago. It wasn’t that much more powerful than the perfect simplicity of the usual amplification circle, but when I practiced with it, it let me hone my magic with the precision of a scalpel. I would need a scalpel today if I hoped to break my grandmother’s hex and leave enough of Vincent intact to interrogate him.

  “You’re a fucking traitor,” Vincent snarled at Victoria.

  She smiled like a deep-water shark.

  I fed power into the circle. It pulsed pale blue. The current of magic punched me, clear and strong. I concentrated on the hex, letting everything else fade.

  The light grew dim.

  Dimmer.

  Dimmer.

  The darker it grew, the brighter was the glow in Vincent’s mind. A pattern began to form in the glowing haze. A spark flickering in a straight line, like a glowing silver thread, as thin as a hair.

  I fed more power into the circle. The room grew completely dark. More sparks, more silver hairs.

  A bit more power.

  “She’s committing too much,” Rynda warned.

  “She can handle it,” Rogan said.

  I was falling, falling down through a black well toward the glowing hex at the bottom.

  A little more power.

  “Rogan!” Rynda’s voice spiked somewhere far away.

  “You’re distracting her,” Cornelius said gently.

  I crashed to the bottom, somehow landing on my feet. The hex glowed in front of me. It was an arcane circle, a dazzling, glowing creation of pure power woven into gossamer lace. Its complexity made me dizzy.

  How do I pull it apart?

  The magic flowed through the pattern, a complete circuit. Interrupt the flow, and it would collapse. What would happen . . . ?

  It wasn’t a single circle, but three, layered on top of each other. Within the second layer, nine triangles stretched toward the center. If I attacked, trying to force my will over Vincent’s, the top circle would collapse onto the center, the triangles would point down, like dagger blades, puncture the bottom layer, and the power of the entire hex would then surge into the daggers. It would plunge down and stab into Vincent’s psyche. It was a genius trap, impossible to disarm.

  Breaking it was out of the question.

  Could I shift the pattern? Maybe I could pull it apart . . .

  Too risky.

  If I broke the hex at any point, the collapse was inevitable.

  When David Howling trapped us inside an arcane circle, Rogan had altered it. A hex was basically a circle. A really complicated, difficult to understand circle, drawn with pure magic in someone’s mind. Could I draw on it?

  A dull pain came from somewhere deep inside me. I had expended too much magic and I would likely need more.

  “This is too much for her.” Mom’s voice. “You’re asking her to take apart something that . . . woman built with years of experience.”

  “She’s right.”

  Shaffer. Who let him in?

  “I can feel the hex in his mind. It is exceedingly complex. It’s a trap and she’s too inexperienced to realize it.” Shaffer again.

  “But is it breakable?” Rynda asked.

  “No,” Shaffer said. “It’s a perfect trap. Get her out of there before she overextends.”

  “She’s fine,” Rogan said. “She knows her limits.”

  They all needed to shut up.

  The hex was too complicated to alter. There were loops within loops, twisting magic onto itself.

  But I didn’t need to alter it. All I needed to do was shield Vincent’s mind from the daggers.

  I pulled on my magic. It came from within me, stretching into a thin line glowing with silvery blue. I slipped it under the bottom layer and began to weave. A direct shield wouldn’t work, no more than a blunt approach would’ve worked with Vincent’s father. There was too much power in the hex. I had to redirect the energy of the spell away once it collapsed. I had to . . . Yes. That would work.

  “If you want your daughter to live, you will stop this,” Shaffer said. “Look at him. He doesn’t care if she lives or dies, as long as he gets what he wants. I care. I want to marry her.”

  “Nevada knows what she’s doing.” Mom’s voice. Cold. She didn’t like him.

  The pattern grew more complex, spreading under the hex like a snowflake, unfurling from the center.

  An insistent pounding began in my head, a sure sign that my magic resources had grown low. I was walking a tightrope.

  “Have all of you lost your minds?” Shaffer demanded.

  “Will someone shut that weakling up?” Victoria snapped.

  The last stroke of my bottom layer. It was all or nothing.

  I molded my magic into a blade and severed the top layer of the hex.

  The blackness broke. I was back in the room, with the glowing pattern in front of me. I had drawn it in chalk on the floor, a circle of rivulets with nine points within it locked in the spirals. The ghostly radiance of Victoria’s hex flared above it, an echo of the real hex.

  Someone gasped.

  The top layer collapsed, flowing into the second, like sand or water spilling from a hole in the bottom of a vase. Its power flowed into the triangles, bending them down, feeding into them, stretching them into razor-sharp blades.

  The second layer collapsed into the third. The daggers punctured through it and met the soft rivulets of my circle. Their points touched the nine spots where the lines twisted together. They flared with silver, channeling power out. The silver glow spread through the blue, overpowering it. The lines grew thicker, channeling the magic. The spirals I had made rose, fed by the hex’s collapse, stretching higher and higher, glowing, beautiful, unfurling as they grew. An ethereal carnation bloomed in Vincent’s mind, its nine petals delicate and shimmering with magic.

  It glowed for a long moment and vanished, the hex’s power expended.

  A vicious sound echoed through the silence and I realized it was Grandmother Victoria laughing.

  I turned. Shaffer was on his feet. His hands shook. He stared at me, turned, and fled.

  Rogan smiled at me. There was pride on Mom’s face, shock on Grandma Frida’s, and respect on Catalina’s. Leon looked slightly freaked out, while Bern acted like nothing had happened. Rynda sat very still.

  I turned back to Vincent. He swallowed.

  My magic snapped out and gripped him in its vise. My voice dropped into an inhuman register, suffused with power.

  “Where is Brian Sherwood?”

  Chapter 13

  I blinked. The ceiling looked familiar. I lay in Rogan’s HQ, on one of his second-floor couches. Gloom shrouded the room, the windows dark and full of night. A warm blanket covered me. Someone had taken my shoes off, and I curled my toes under the blanket. Mmm, comfy.

  The interrogation went as expected. Vincent answered all my questions. Alexander Sturm owned a ranch outside of Houston. Brian Sherwood was cooling his heels there. They had contacted him intending to offer him the financial bailout of his company in exchange for Olivia’s files. When they found out that he had no idea where Olivia’s files were hidden, they struck a bargain. Brian would be their willing victim, but he didn’t want money. He wanted his wife dead instead. Prior to contacting Brian, Sturm and Vincent had briefly considered kidnapping Kyle or Jessica, but Sturm was afraid that Rynda would snap, and taking a child carried more risk. Brian turned out to be perfect for the task. He knew Rynda, he knew which buttons
to push, and he was sure that the threat of his death could pry Olivia’s files out of her.

  Rynda was supposed to die during the ransom drop. Failing that, Brian wanted her killed in a tragic car accident. According to Vincent, Brian didn’t care if the kids were in the car with her or not. Apparently, he’d said, “Whatever is more convenient.”

  Vincent had no idea what was in Olivia’s files, just that Sturm referred to it as “vital.” Vincent was under the impression that unless the files were recovered, all of them “would go down.” They had to get the files back and they would do anything to get them. Sturm had directed every aspect of this plan, except for the attack on Rynda’s house, where Vincent had decided to take the initiative.

  They watched Edward Sherwood, and once he moved to declare himself Head of the House, Sturm realized that we must be aware that Brian was in on the whole mess. They needed new hostages. There was no traitor. They had watched our tornado drills through some high-tech equipment, which was how they figured out where the kids would be. Vincent’s creatures had tunneled for two days to grab the children.

  Rynda listened to it all, politely excused herself, and left.

  After I pried everything Vincent had out of him, I released him. He slid to the floor, curled into a fetal ball, and cried. I didn’t feel sorry for him. Fatigue had mugged me. I remembered wanting coffee. I made it out of the room and up the stairs, and then everything went blank.

  Now I was on the couch.

  Voices came from the kitchen area.

  “. . . and now I have nobody,” Rynda said. “I’m truly and completely alone. Do you know what that’s like?”

  “Yes,” Rogan said.

  I should’ve sat up. Instead I quietly turned on my side. They were standing at the kitchen island, illuminated by the soft glow of the kitchen lamp. A cup of coffee sat in front of Rogan. He looked slightly tired and a little rough around the edges. A dragon in his off mode. I liked when he looked like that.

  Rynda stood close to him, her slender body almost touching his. And I got a small stab of jealousy right in the heart. It never failed. They looked good together.