When I was twelve, I began rebelling against everything my parents stood for, and I studied interrogation techniques and spells. Acubens Exemplar was one of the most potent. It took days of careful preparation to set up, and there was a very narrow window in which it could be used before the magic it accumulated dissipated, but it was almost completely foolproof. Like the claw of the crab for which it was named, the spell would allow a telepath to put crushing pressure on the person trapped in its center. The spell would amplify the pressure until the victim’s will broke and they revealed whatever secret they had been trying to hide.
“Acubens Exemplar requires a telepath.” I was grasping at straws. “You’re a telekinetic.”
The lines around Mad Rogan pulsed brighter. Okay. So he was also a telepath. Or he had some sort of will-related magic.
“I want to know everything you have on Adam Pierce,” he said. “His location, his plans, his family’s plans for him. Everything.”
I crossed my arms. “No. First, I was hired to find Adam Pierce, and my client has an expectation of confidentiality. Second, you attacked me and then chained me to the floor.” I tried to rattle my cuffs to underscore the point, but they remained completely immovable.
Mad Rogan fixed me with his blue eyes. There it was again, the predatory, merciless power. Alarm squirmed through me. He was a dragon in human skin, powerful, ruthless, and dangerous. My mind locked, struggling to come to terms with it. The muscles in my legs and arms tensed; my chest tightened. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs to just vent the fear out of my body.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I want the information.”
True.
“Forcing you gives me no pleasure.”
True. “If you don’t like forcing me, you should let me go.”
“Tell me what I want to know, and you can walk out of here.”
“No. It would be unethical and unprofessional.”
He was a Prime telekinetic. Sometime Primes had secondary talents, but they were never as strong as their primary magic. Telepathy was will based. My magic was also will based, and in all of the time I had been alive, I had never met a person on whom it hadn’t worked. I grabbed onto that thought and used it to steady myself. He might be a dragon, but if he tried to swallow me whole, I’d make him choke. I scooted forward, trying to get as comfortable in my restraints as I could, and licked my dry lips. “Okay, tough guy. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Mad Rogan shrugged his shoulders. Magic pulsed from him, running down the lines of magic, turning them brighter, like fire traveling along a firing cord. Pressure clamped me, squeezing my mind in an invisible vise. I clenched my teeth. He was strong.
I pushed back. His eyes narrowed.
“Adam Pierce.” He would keep repeating the name. The more he repeated it, the harder it would be not to think about it, and the harder the spell would grind against my defenses.
I braced myself against the pressure. He wouldn’t break me. “Eat dirt and die.”
The pressure crushed my mind, pushing against it like an impossibly heavy weight. It felt like my head was locked inside a giant lead bell, and it kept growing tighter and tighter, compressing my skull. The relentless assault of magic had turned into a steady, terrible pain. It hurt to think. It hurt to move. Time had dissolved into ache in my mind.
The heat from all the energy rushing back and forth through the spell had turned the room into a sauna. Sweat slicked my skin. I had pulled off my T-shirt ages ago. I would’ve stripped off my jeans too if I could’ve gotten them over the cuffs.
Across from me, Mad Rogan sat motionless in the circle. A damp sheen beaded at his hairline and slicked his chest and carved biceps. The blue runic script covering his body still held, but some symbols were beginning to smudge. The effort of crushing my will was wearing him out. In the soft illumination of the room, he looked barely human, a feral, predatory creature of some arcane magic. I would’ve loved nothing more than to walk over there and kick him right in the face. As it was, I glanced at him anytime the pressure got to me, and a fresh jolt of fear kept me going.
The pressure ebbed slightly. He was tired.
“You’re rich, right?” My voice came out rough.
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t you spring for air-conditioning in the room?”
“I didn’t expect to sit here for hours. But if you’re too hot, feel free to take the bra off.”
I gave him the finger.
“What are you?” he asked.
“I’m the woman you chained in your basement. I’m your captive. Your . . . victim. Yes, that’s the right word. All of that education. How come nobody ever explained to you that you can’t just kidnap people because you feel like it?”
He grimaced. “You had a full second to shoot me.”
“I don’t just shoot strangers unless my life is clearly in danger. For all I knew, you could’ve been a cop assigned to Pierce’s case. If I fire, I have to be prepared for the possibility of killing my target. Besides, discharging a firearm into a crowd is irresponsible.”
“A .22 will bounce off wet laundry on the line. Why even carry it?”
I leaned back. Something in my spine popped. “Because I don’t shoot unless I mean to kill. A large caliber will tear a hole through the target and exit, possibly striking innocent bystanders. A .22 will enter the body and bounce around inside it, turning your insides into hamburger. Small-caliber gunshots to the chest and skull are nearly always fatal. Had I known you were going to pull a pretty ribbon out of your sleeve like some two-bit magician, tie me up with it, and indulge your mental torture fetish in your basement, I would’ve shot you. Many times.”
“Two-bit magician?”
“Men like you enjoy being flattered.”
The muscles on his arms bulged. Magic clamped me, hard and painful. The familiar fear flooded me in a slow wave. I was really tired.
“I’ve broken Significant mages in this trap,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact.
True.
“I’ll break you.”
“You will try.”
The pressure on my mind skyrocketed. The magic turned into a beast, chewing on me. Its teeth ripped a quiet moan from me. I stared at him, channeling all of my anger into my defenses.
Blood slipped from his nostrils and slid down his face.
“Give up,” he growled.
“You first.”
It hurt. The weight was so heavy. My defenses quaked. My hands were shaking.
Mad Rogan growled like an animal. It hurt him too.
Adam Pierce, Adam Pierce, Adam Pierce . . . The name resonated through my mind like the toll of a church bell. I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears, but it wouldn’t help. The sound and pressure were everywhere. The magic devoured my barriers, seeking its prey.
My thoughts began to dissolve, slipping away from me. He was almost through.
Adam Pierce, Adam Pierce, Adam Pierce . . .
The basement swam around me. The walls turned liquid.
My mind boiled under pressure. I had to give in. I had to feed the beast to save myself.
I couldn’t betray my client. He couldn’t win.
Feed the beast. Feed it something secret, something I kept buried so deep in my soul that I swore never to let it out.
No, I can’t.
The magic ripped apart the inner walls of my mind.
I can’t.
My defenses burst, and with one last effort I shoved my deepest secret in front of the beast. It snapped my guilt into its jaws and tore it out. The words spilled out of me in a rush.
“When I was fifteen years old, I found the letter from our physician with my father’s diagnosis on it. He caught me and made me promise not to tell anyone. I kept his secret for a year. I’m the reason why my father died when he did. If I had told Mom, we could’ve started treatment a year earlier. I’m responsible. I didn’t tell. I didn’t tell anyone to this day, because I’m a coward.”
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The magic shot through the Acubens Exemplar like a blast wave. The glowing lines pulsed with brilliance and vanished, exhausted, all of their power expended in trying to rip my secret out of me.
I slumped over on the floor, my face cold. The lack of pressure was pure, distilled bliss. I felt so light.
Mad Rogan walked over to me, moving carefully, and swore.
“Fuck you too,” I told him.
He knelt by my feet. How the hell could he even move after this? I heard metal clanging. He lifted my head and put something to my lips.
I clamped my teeth together.
“It’s water, you stubborn idiot,” he snarled.
I tried to shake my head, but he forced my mouth open. Water wet my tongue. I swallowed, fighting the fog.
Fatigue wrapped me, or maybe it was some sort of blanket. Then we were in a car. It was dark outside.
The car stopping. Car door swinging open. Mad Rogan carrying me. Warehouse door. Cold cement.
The door opening.
Mom.
I woke up in the living room. Someone had left the table lamp on. It glowed with soft electric light, and the room looked so cozy, with its dark blue-green walls and warm yellow lamps. I snuggled into the throw someone had put over me. I’d had a really ugly nightmare.
I stretched. The muscles of my legs and arms cramped. Ow, ow, ow.
Not a nightmare. Mad Rogan really did chain me in his basement.
I sat up. Everything hurt. My back felt like it had been beaten up by a sack of potatoes.
That bastard. I’d file a police report, except nobody would believe me, and explaining how I’d held him off inside the spell would make things really complicated. That’s okay. I would find some way to get even.
Voices floated to me from the kitchen. Mother. She sounded upset. I squinted at the clock on the Blu-ray player. 11:45 p.m. Given a chance, we argued until we turned purple in the face and passed out from the effort, but this was late for a fight even by our family’s standards. I pushed myself upright and staggered toward the voices.
My mother’s voice cut through the night. “. . . Pierce? Irresponsible and stupid. Stupid, Bernard!”
Right. We’d been busted. After that ass dropped me off at my doorstep, my mother must’ve leaned on Bern for explanations, and he must’ve broken down and told her everything.
I pushed my way into the kitchen. Bern sat at the table, his face a somber mask. Next to him Leon was pushing a marble back and forth on the table with a chopstick and trying his best to look like he didn’t care about anything. Catalina and Arabella sat together. Catalina’s face had shut down, the way it usually did when something really stressful happened between adults. Arabella looked like she wanted to punch something. Both they and Leon should’ve been in bed. Grandma Frida nursed a coffee, her eyes red. I felt a rush of guilt. I’d made my grandmother cry.
“I can’t believe you,” my mother snarled.
“You can stop yelling at him,” I said. “It was my call.”
Mom spun around. We stared at each other.
“Tomorrow you will go to MII,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but it had about as much give in it as a steel beam. “You’ll tell them you’re off this job.”
I braced myself. I’d known this moment would come sooner or later, and I’d been dreading it. “No.”
My mother squared her shoulders. “Fine. Then I will do it.”
Mother had lost her license four years ago. She blamed herself for it. If anything happened to me, she would blame herself as well. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to stir up all that guilt and heartache, so I tried to keep my voice as gentle as possible. “You don’t have the authority to speak for the firm. The agency is in my name.”
The kitchen went so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Catalina’s eyes were as big as saucers.
My mother’s face turned into a cold, flat mask.
“The decision is mine,” I said. “I’m the one licensed. We are going after Pierce.”
“How are you going to contain him?”
“I don’t have to contain him. I met him and I’m talking him in.”
“How is that working for you?” Mother asked. “Because you looked half dead when I found you on the doorstep.”
“That wasn’t Adam Pierce. That was Mad Rogan.”
Mother recoiled. Leon made a choking noise.
“I thought he was out,” Bern said.
“He’s in. Apparently he does care about his cousin.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Mother’s voice cracked like a whip. “Do you have any idea what kind of fire you’re playing with?”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s just money.”
“It’s not just about money.” My voice went up. “It’s about our family. I won’t let them push us around just because they feel like it. I won’t let them uproot us. They don’t get to do it.”
“Nevada!”
“Yes, Mother?”
“We can start over!”
“And how long will that take? Without equipment, without a house, without our client database? You know most of our business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations, and those recommendations are for Baylor Investigative Agency. MII will take our name. When our phone is disconnected, and our website is down, people will assume we’re out of business and move on. It will take years before we rebuild. The answer is no.”
“It’s not worth your life!” my mother snarled. “If you’re doing this out of some misguided obligation to your father . . .”
“I’m doing it for us and for me. When I took over, the business had slowed to almost nothing. I built this agency on the foundation you and Dad made. It’s my business now because I worked my ass off for six years to get it running. I sacrificed for it, and I love it. I love what I do. I love our life. It makes me happy and I’m good at it, and nobody, not you, not Grandma, not MII, or Pierce, or Mad Rogan is going to take it away from me!”
I realized I was screaming and clamped my mouth shut.
Shock slapped Mom’s face. The kids sat frozen. Bern kept blinking.
Grandma Frida set her coffee cup down with a clink. “Well, she is your daughter.”
Mother turned and walked out of the room.
I faced the kids. “Bed. Now.”
They took off.
Bern got up. “I’m going to go too.”
I landed next to Grandma Frida. I felt all raw inside. Fighting with Mom was always difficult. She used to drive me insane. I would scream and she would counter with these perfect, logical arguments. And then I grew up and realized how brittle she was.
Grandma glanced at me. “You look like hell.”
“Mad Rogan sedated me, kidnapped me, chained me in his basement, and then tried to pry information out of me with a spell.”
Grandma Frida blinked. “Did you give him what he wanted?”
“No. I broke his spell.”
Grandma Frida looked into her cup. “Your mother will get over it. She knew you’d butt heads sooner or later. Hell, if you didn’t, I’d take you to have your head examined. Your mother survived in that hole in the ground for two months. She’s more resilient than you give her credit for.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. “Grandma . . .”
“Yes?”
“When you said you knew someone who could install shockers, did you mean it, or were you kidding me?”
Grandma Frida set her coffee back down. “You’re not serious, are you?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.”
“That bad?”
I had been beaten up before and I’d been shot at four times. But what happened today bothered me more. “When I get into a fight, I know I can cause damage. When I am shot at, I can shoot back. But this . . .” My hands curled into fists as I struggled to find the words. “I had no chance. His magic was off the scale. I felt it when he picked me up. It was like looking into an outer space shot of a supernova. It made
me feel helpless. Vulnerable. Like nothing I did would even make a dent in him.”
Grandma sighed.
He could’ve killed me. He could’ve cut my head off while I was chained up, and there was nothing I could’ve done about it. I caught myself before I told that to my grandmother. “I need a way to have a fighting chance.”
“You can walk away.”
I shook my head. “Oh no. No. Maybe before he attacked me, but not now.”
“You have to be very sure, darling. Once they go in, they stay in forever.”
“How likely is it to kill me?”
“Less than one percent of the bindings go wrong, and if Makarov installs them, you won’t have an issue. But bindings aren’t your biggest problem. It’s using those bastards. Do it wrong, and it will kill you.”
“Then I’m sure.” The next time Mad Rogan came near me, he would be in for a hell of a surprise.
“Let me make a call.” Grandma rose.
I got up and went to look for my mother.
I checked the living room, the media room, and the hiding room, which had started out as a spare bedroom but had turned into another hangout room. I checked the door to Mother’s bedroom and found it locked. Knocking didn’t seem to produce any result. Calling “Mom . . .” in a sad, conciliatory voice didn’t work either. I gave up and headed to my bedroom.
When I was picking out the spot for my bedroom, I wanted privacy. There was a time about seven years ago when I couldn’t get away from my sisters no matter how hard I tried. When we moved into the warehouse, my parents took that into account and built me a small loft apartment. My bedroom and bathroom sat near the top of the warehouse, on top of the two storage rooms. My bedroom faced the street and my bathroom, along the same wall, was right against the separating wall that segregated our living space from Grandma’s motor pool. A wooden staircase led to a landing, which connected to my loft by a sturdy folding ladder. If I wanted, I could stow the top ten steps, making my bedroom unreachable.
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