Fire Raiser

by Melanie Rawn

  “Yeah, that’s me, all right—a whole lotta wind, keeps goin’ around in circles.” He could almost hear Cam saying it, with a tilt of his head and the hint of a dimple, wry self-mockery in his eyes.

  “You already knew everything important about him.”

  Maybe he did, after all. It was just Cam. His face, his fine bones and intense blue eyes. His long fingers gripping the amber, his lips forming a single word, over and over—Cam’s voice, sounding that odd word in unison with Holly, two octaves apart, then three as his voice deepened and hers soared, and the smoke spun upward. It hovered ten feet overhead, spread outward and downward in a delicate delineation of an encompassing globe. Four octaves now, that single mysterious word like a mantra: Sgë! Sgë! There was a sharp tinging sound, like a fingernail against a crystal goblet, and the smoke escaped the dome at its apex, a slither of white, thin as a thread and sharp as a spike.

  “Nice, very nice,” Evan whispered. “That’s my girl. . . .”

  And my guy, Jamey thought suddenly—right before a slab of concrete tore loose from the ceiling and smashed to the floor.

  SOMEONE WAS YELLING HER NAME.

  She felt very tired, and quite out of breath. It was nice just to rest for a moment, the lazy fragrance of one of Evan’s cigars soothing her. But there was more than one voice now, most insistent that she pay attention. She blinked, surprised that she’d had her eyes shut, sank back on her heels, and looked around.

  Nicky and Alec and Lulah were doing the shouting. Cam, she remembered, was behind her. He’d helped with the singing. She’d sensed his presence around and even within her, the strength of his magic and the suppleness of his mind, that impatient, impassioned intellect that had been his defining characteristic since childhood. He was so much smarter than she was, but just as stupid about love.

  “Holly!”

  Ceremonially speaking, they ought to have waited for her to get up off her knees and begin the closing of the Circle before badgering her with questions. Her fingers shook a little as she reached for the little clod of mud, and she watched bemused as the flame from Evan’s lighter danced on her trembling diamonds.

  “Holly! For the love of—Holly, will you listen to me?”

  She wondered if anyone had listened to what she and Cam had sung. If they had any idea what that strange duet had taken out of her.

  “Holly! Don’t!”

  No, it was her Circle, her responsibility. Thanking silently the spirits of Earth, she moved on to Water, then Fire, and finally Air. Pushing herself slowly to her feet, feeling a thousand years old with creaking knees and stiff muscles, she used the cigar smoke to cense her Circle again—not bothering to walk around it, unsure that she could, instead simply turning widdershins from Alec to Lulah to Nicky to Cam—

  —who was on his knees, wheezing in huge gulps of air.

  Now she knew what they were yelling about.

  As quickly as she could without screwing up the magic, she finished opening the Circle. And was slammed to the floor and swept beneath a thunderous flood of chlorinated water.

  “HOLLY? COME ON, babe, open your eyes. That’s it.” Lachlan smoothed the sopping hair from his wife’s face. She blinked, coughed, sneezed twice, and collapsed back onto the gurney, moaning. “Oh, knock it off,” he told her. “And be grateful it was the lap pool and not the Olympic you tapped into. Didn’t any of you geniuses think to figure out just what you were standing under?”

  “Oh, shut up,” she muttered.

  “All it said on the site map was ‘Spa,’ ” Nicky defended. “And anyway, we tried to warn her.”

  “Never did listen,” said Lulah. “Not from when she was a pup. That’s the way, honey, just breathe.”

  “Angling for a little mouth-to-mouth?” Evan asked with a grin. Holly glared up at him. “Yeah, you’re okay. But we’re shin-deep in water here and you know how I hate getting my boots wet.”

  “Poor you,” she said without any sympathy whatsoever. “Next time, you stand under Niagara Falls.” She squinted up at him. “Why is it so dark?”

  “You shorted out the electricity,” Evan said. “You also brought down about half a ton of cement along with all that water, ruined Cam’s spare cigar, and lost my lighter.”

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch.” She coughed again and sat up, looking around at the tiny flames set at useful intervals by Lulah and Nicky. “Evan! The laptop!”

  “Death by drowning,” he replied. “Don’t worry. Jamey hooked into it with his BlackBerry. The laptop told it everything it knew.”

  She relaxed with a sigh. “I do love having clever friends. How’s Cam?”

  “Wet.”

  Watching a hole being bored in the ceiling had been kind of interesting; realizing that the hole was being bored into a pool was not. The water had dripped, then spurted, then cascaded down the dome of the Circle as chunks of concrete broke and fell, sliding off the protective magic. Only the strength of three tough-minded and accomplished Witches had held the arc aloft. When Holly dismantled it, she and Cam and Lulah and Alec and Nicky had been swept along in the sudden flood. Fetching up against walls and various bits of furniture, soaked to the skin, they’d all taken a few minutes to recover. In that time, Evan and Jamey had lugged them to gurneys and checked for injuries—a bruise or two, but nothing serious.

  Weiss, the girl, and the baby had slept through it all.

  Lachlan sat beside his wife with an arm around her shoulders. Cam had enlisted Jamey to help him knot sheets together, and now stood directly below the still dripping gouge in the ceiling. Like a redheaded Irish fakir charming a white cotton cobra, he sent the spelled material coiling upward—not without a flourish of fingers or two that indicated he was mindful of his fascinated audience.

  Jamey was the first to climb hand-over-hand to the empty swimming pool. Lachlan admired not only his fitness but his tenacity. Then again, maybe he was showing off a bit, too. After a few minutes, a pair of life preservers and a dangle of yellow nylon rope were tossed down. Disdaining the offered assistance, Cam hoisted himself up the sheets. Evan helped Alec and Nicky truss up first the girl and then Weiss. After them came the baby, then Lulah, then Nicky and Alec. Finally Evan turned to Holly. She was still pale and shaky with the pummeling she’d received, but he knew it was her fear of heights that was making her look woozy.

  “Come on, lady love,” he urged, his voice low and gentle. “I can’t get out of here until you do.”

  She rallied a little, and managed a smile. “I swear on the lives of our children, if you don’t tell me not to look down, I’ll buy a ten-pound bag of M&M’s.”

  “Deal. I think we’ll have to share them with Cam and Jamey, though. Wouldn’t be right not to, dontcha think?”

  Twenty

  THE DEMOLITION of a swimming pool—Olympic-sized or not—quite predictably attracted notice. By the time Holly was freed of the ropes and life preservers, and Evan had clambered up, someone was pounding on the outer doors of the spa.

  “What’d you do with Weiss?” Evan panted.

  “Deck,” Jamey told him, bent over, hands on knees as he caught his breath.

  “Freckles, darlin’,” Cam said as he allowed the sheets to drop back down into the clinic, “you know I adore you, but—” He looked down at his Armani trousers. “What the hell did you do to my pants?”

  “Oh, stop whining, and dry me off.” She dug in her pockets—well, his pockets—and pulled out two strips of fabric to wave in front of his face. “See? I saved the rest so you can put them back together again.”

  “Two cigars and a suit,” he replied crossly as he dried her off. “You now owe me two cigars and a suit.”

  “Thank goodness!” Alec’s voice boomed over-loudly from the foyer. “You got the door open! I thought we were going to be stuck in here all night!”

  Holly turned to Evan. “You guys get Weiss—let me do the talking. And make sure his hair’s wet!”

  “His hair?” Cam echoed.

  Evan looked
at her for a minute, then down at his own soggy self. “Plot away, lady love,” he told her with a grin. “And douse those lights, Cam.”

  Holly was just as glad he waited to do so until after they’d run up the pool steps. She spared a glance for Weiss, sprawled on the deck. Cam hadn’t bothered to dry him off. Good. She inhaled deeply, knotted her soaked hair at her nape in hopes it would look like some sort of overgelled coiffure in the dimness, and switched on Helpless Female Mode.

  “Uncle Alec!” she cried, running into the foyer. “He’s still unconscious—oh!” She skidded to a stop, looked wide-eyed at the three guards, and clasped her hands piously together under her chin. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! Mr. Weiss was giving us a tour—gracious, simply hours ago!—and he slipped on some tiles by the pool. The next thing we knew he was in the water! I think he must have hit his head—he’s breathing okay—my husband—he’s the sheriff, Sheriff Lachlan—got him out pretty fast but he hasn’t woken up!”

  Nick nodded his congratulations—a bit too soon, Holly was sure. She was right. She was definitely getting too old for this. Twenty or even ten years ago the big-blue-eyes act would have worked within moments. These gentlemen were quite discourteously unimpressed.

  “Where’s Mr. Weiss? What was all the noise? And what happened to the lights down here?”

  On the other hand, maybe it was the clothes. She much preferred to blame their lack of instant chivalry on the shirt—ripped now where she’d made a bandage for Jamey—and the sawed-off pants. “I think my uncle must have done something funny to the wiring—he was—I don’t know—” She turned to Alec. “What was it you were doing?”

  “Hot-wiring the keypad,” he said, aiding and abetting. “It would’ve worked, too, except it isn’t wired to standard. I assume that’s for your own security. It’s quite common to switch the colors of the wires so that expert burglars don’t know exactly how they can get around the—”

  “Uncle Alec!” she wailed. “You could’ve been electrocuted!”

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” he soothed. “No harm done. Except to the lights, of course. I’m not entirely sure how that happened.” He turned to the guards. “You really ought to have an electrician out here to check the whole system. It should have worked.”

  Holly gave a nervous little fidget, looking back over her shoulder. “Oh, good—they’ve brought him out. Are there any blankets? That’s my husband, the sheriff—Evan, darling, has he said anything? Is he awake yet?” Turning to the guard, beseeching: “You have to get him upstairs and call an ambulance. None of our cell phones worked! Of course, we must be simply miles underground here, but still—could one of you gentlemen go make the call, and you two carry Mr. Weiss upstairs? Or is there an elevator? No, things have blinked or shorted or whatever it’s called—there won’t be any power for the elevator, will there?”

  “It’s all right now, honey bunny,” Evan said, patting her shoulder. “They’re here and they can take care of him now. That’s it—nice and easy. You guys get him upstairs and we’ll be right behind you.”

  They did as told. Once their backs were turned and their attention entirely engaged by their prone and insensate boss, Holly hissed at Nicky, “Where’s Lulah?”

  “Massage room with the girl and the baby. Alec? Shall we?” And he slipped off down a side hall, Alec at his heels.

  Holly peered up at Evan. “ ‘Honey bunny’?”

  “You’d prefer ‘M&M Girl’?”

  “I bet you would,” Cam murmured irrepressibly.

  “What is it with you people and—”

  “Jamey, sugar lump,” Holly purred, “consider their slogan.”

  “ ‘Melts in your—’ ” He stopped. He blushed. “Oh.”

  She spent a rewarding moment appreciating his embarrassment, then turned to her husband. “Where’d you stash the cars? I want to go home, Evan.” All at once she felt completely used up. “I want to hug the kids and fall into bed and sleep for a week.”

  “Best idea anybody’s had all night. But we have to secure things here first. Where’s Lulah? I want some good solid wards on the door to the pool before anybody else wanders down here.”

  “Oh, shit!” Cam exclaimed. “She’ll have to undo the locks on all the doors—the guests are probably climbing out the windows by now!”

  ALEC’S CHARM WAS DEPLOYED on the panicky guests—once Lulah had undone the magic that locked them in their rooms. Jamey took care of the staff milling around in the upstairs hall. Three astonished maids succumbed to his smile (and Holly’s suggestion about a couple of strategically undone buttons on his shirt), but the two bewildered janitors were infinitely more impressed with his District Attorney credentials than his shining white teeth.

  Evan unclipped his badge from its leather wallet, hung it from the silver chain of his St. Michael medal so it was nice and bright and obvious against the plum-colored sweater. Which was still waterlogged, because Holly’s little impromptu fantasy story required it. Kissing the kids was first on his list, too, but before the sleep-for-a-week part, he wanted a hot bath.

  He cursed the instinct that had told him to provide for a surreptitious escape. In his SUV, stashed in the bushes down the road, was a five-mile supply of yellow POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS tape. He had to make do with silver duct tape to cordon off the upper door to the spa. The pool entry downstairs was similarly marked off-limits. Both tape barricades sported Holly’s handmade signs: Keep Out—by order of the Pocahontas County Sheriff. Standing back from affixing the improvised warning to the tape, he noted the tiny smear of blood on the paper that meant one of the Witches had been at work and Holly had helped. What spells had been set, he neither knew nor cared; all he wanted was to know that his crime scene, for lack of a better term, was secured.

  Eventually the guests were all back in their rooms, the staff had returned to whatever duties occupied them at this insane hour of the morning, and the security guards had carted Weiss up to the lobby entrance to wait for the ambulance. This was done under Alec’s suave supervision, with Nick ready to apply special persuasions if necessary. Cam carried the girl, Lulah had the baby; during the general chaos they slipped into the ladies’ room down the hall. Lachlan surveyed the blessedly underpopulated lobby and trudged over to join Holly, who had just collapsed onto a chair.

  She looked up at him with a wan smile. “Where’d you leave the Beemer?”

  “Out back by the kitchen. I’ll get the keys from Cam and drive it around.”

  “Remember to take an umbrella.” Her voice was all sweet solicitude.

  In reply, he pulled a double handful of clinging sweater from his chest and wrung it out onto the carpet. She laughed.

  “Evan!”

  He turned as Cam ran up, groaning at the burgeoning panic in the blue Flynn eyes. “God, what now?” Evan asked wearily.

  “The girl. She’s gone.”

  “Of course she is,” he muttered. “Perfect.”

  “We were settling the baby down—she’d started to cry—”

  “Of course she did.”

  “—we didn’t have our backs turned for more than a minute or two—”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Holly said.

  “Will you knock it off? How was I supposed to know she’d—”

  Holly pushed herself to her feet. “I’m getting too old for this shit, too. Trust me, she hasn’t gone far. I’ve given birth. I know.”

  “She’s about two dozen years younger than you are, too.”

  “Piss off, Peaches,” said Holly. “It was your string thingy she got away from. Let’s go find her.”

  SHE WASN’T INSIDE. Not in the ballroom, the manager’s office, the men’s room, the kitchen, the library, the restaurant, nor even hiding under the piano.

  “A girl in a nightgown,” Alec said hopelessly.

  “Yeah, she’d really stand out among all the guests in their bathrobes.” Evan paced a few steps, squelching in his cowboy boots. “Upstairs? She’d need a key—and to th
e supply rooms, too.”

  “We’ll check,” Nick offered.

  “She wouldn’t go outside, would she?” Jamey asked. “She’d need keys as well for any of the cars.”

  Alec turned to his partner. “Do they teach people to hot-wire ignitions in Hungary?”

  Outside it was still raining. The short-outs had been confined to the spa and clinic; the outdoor floodlights were as just as bright as ever, and just as useless in the downpour. Evan went to a window and squinted out into the night, thinking that the girl must be either incredibly desperate or incredibly stupid to try escaping through this.

  Desperate, he decided. If the knotted string had slipped off, as it apparently had, then it was a clever young woman indeed who had kept her mouth shut and her body limp until opportunity presented itself. So if she wasn’t stupid, why would she go gallivanting out into the rain?

  “She’s not out there,” he said suddenly. “She’s still inside. Hiding. Waiting.”

  Holly studied his face. “For what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.” She frowned up at him. “And so do I.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Cam stated. “Care to enlighten me?”

  “Think about it,” Lachlan invited. “You’ve spent the last nine months—at least—locked up in a place you can’t get out of. You’ve just given birth to a child that probably isn’t even yours—”

  “But wouldn’t she want to get the hell away from here as fast as she could?”

  “How? Walking?” Evan shook his head. “No, she’s still inside someplace.”

  A wailing siren and a dizzying display of flashing lights distracted them. The county ambulance—a converted 1972 Cadillac hearse—rolled out of the floodlit rain and stopped at the verandah steps. Evan was grateful to see a paramedic he knew climb out of the driver’s seat.