Burn for Me

by Ilona Andrews

  “Because he’s constantly scanning for water and not finding any?”

  Mad Rogan nodded. “It’s similar to a cell phone. If you take it to an area where there are no towers, it will continuously roam, looking for a signal and draining its battery. Passive field. If the aquakinetic decides to manipulate water by drawing moisture from the air or a water source, that manipulation will require an active effort on his part. That’s called an active vector. If we stick to the cell phone, passive field is the phone looking for a signal. Active vector is you actually making a call.”

  “So when I can tell that people are lying, it happens because they’re in my passive field.” That meant that when I’d locked him down to ask if he was responsible for arson, it had been the first time I’d actually actively used my power. Ugh. No, wait. I also resisted his spell when he kidnapped me. Maybe I could draw on that.

  “Yes.” Mad Rogan rose. “I’m forty-five years old.”

  My magic clicked. “Lie.”

  “Turn around,” he said.

  I turned around, facing away from him.

  “My mother hated me.”

  Click. “Lie.”

  I turned around. He backed away into the kitchenette area.

  “Are you testing range?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I can save you the trouble. If I can see you and/or if you’re close enough for me to hear you, it works. Phone calls, TV broadcasts, and Skype sessions don’t, so there has to be some physical proximity. It works better if I can see you and hear you at the same time. Direct eye contact works best.”

  He approached me and stopped about a foot away, looking directly into my eyes. “Ask a question and try to compel me to answer.”

  I strained, focusing on him. Something simple that required yes or no. On some neutral topic. “Have you ever been married?” Oh yes. This was totally neutral.

  Nothing.

  We waited another ten seconds.

  “Let’s try something else.” Mad Rogan rummaged through the kitchenette’s drawer and came up with a piece of chalk. He offered it to me. “Draw an amplification circle.”

  I took the chalk from him, walked to the wide, clear part of the room, crouched, and began to draw the circle on the floor.

  “Wait.” He walked over to me and knelt behind me. “This is one of those cases when size doesn’t matter.”

  Ha-ha.

  “A small circle that’s perfectly drawn will have more power than a large, sloppy mess. Here, let me show you.”

  He covered my hand with his.

  I felt the heat of his hand, the texture of his fingers, and excitement shot through me, an apprehensive thrill, part hope, part alarm. His other arm braced me.

  Oh my God. Where did all of the air go?

  “Extend your arm. Don’t lock your elbow.” His hand slid up my arm to my elbow, setting off a chain reaction that rolled all the way up my arms into my back in a splash of shivering heat. My mind desperately tried to reassert control, while my body moaned in my head. Touch me. Again. Touch me more.

  “Place the chalk down.” He was directly behind me, talking into my ear.

  The world shrank. I was suddenly hyperaware of every inch of space between us. The air became charged, as if he’d been a thunderstorm. Anticipation grasped me. My ears tuned out everything except his voice. His hand caressed my arm. His knee brushed against my thigh, and I almost jumped.

  “It’s like a compass. Your body is the frame, and your arm with the chalk is a pencil.”

  The timbre of his voice had changed. He was breathing deeper. His hold on my arm widened, shifting. “Hold it firmly. Now, turn.”

  I pivoted on my feet, drawing a near perfect arch on the floor.

  “Good.”

  My hand bumped into his leg. I let go of the chalk and looked up. We were face-to-face.

  His eyes, normally cold and merciless or sardonically amused, were a hot blue, drowning with an intense male need. They lured me in, promised me things that made my head spin, and I didn’t care if those things were lies.

  He moved forward, fast, his arms catching me, and he sealed my mouth with his. His tongue thrust between my open lips, caressing, making me open wider for him, and seducing me into tasting him. A phantom fire spilled over the back of my neck, sliding over my throat like warm amber honey, slipping deep into my flesh, into my veins, and my skin all but sizzled with lust in its heated wake. The liquid warmth rolled down slowly, dripping into the valley between my breasts, then sliding along their tops to the sides, then under the breasts. My nipples tightened in anticipation. Suddenly the fire sped up, cupping my breasts with velvet pressure. It squeezed gently, lathing my breasts, and finally seared my nipples with tiny explosions of heat. My body collapsed under the onslaught of pleasure. I gasped into Rogan’s mouth.

  His hand was in my hair, cupping the back of my head. His other hand lifted me to him, hard across my back, effortlessly supporting my weight. His chest flattened my nipples. The time at the mall was just a tiny taste of his magic. This? This was heaven, or maybe hell, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I wanted more.

  The insanity-inducing liquid heat pooled under my breasts, sliding down my body, slowly, ever so slowly, tracing the sensitive nerves in my back and igniting them one by one until my whole body hummed with near ecstasy . . . he drank me in, like nothing else mattered, and I let him.

  The heat crept down, lower and lower, winding in ribbons of pleasure around me. Pressure built between my legs, aching need and shuddering anticipation. The heat pulsed inside me, building and building.

  He kept kissing me, the onslaught of his tongue relentless.

  Oh my God. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t . . .

  He thrust into my mouth. The velvet warmth drenched me. Pleasure was a river and I drowned in it, overwhelmed by the throbbing rush of ecstasy and delirium. My body contracted, so hard it almost hurt and I cried out, my hips arching up on their own.

  The pressure between my legs broke into a cascade of aftershocks. I slumped against him, into his arms, and floated in a haze of bliss.

  He held me to him and kissed me, the brush of his lips on mine almost tender.

  Someone banged on the door. “Sir? Sir?” Daniela.

  The reality slammed into me like a train. I made out with Mad Rogan and I came. I had a mind-numbing, life-altering orgasm that I would remember until the day I died, and he didn’t even take my clothes off. Oh no. No, no, no. I covered my face with my hands.

  “What?” Mad Rogan snarled.

  “You’re not answering your phone, sir. I have Augustine Montgomery on the line.”

  “I’ll call him back,” Mad Rogan said.

  “He says it’s urgent.”

  “I’ll call him back,” Mad Rogan repeated, steel in his voice.

  I heard retreating steps. His arms were still around me.

  “Nevada?” he asked. “You okay?”

  I’d shot my professional integrity in the face. I’d made a complete fool of myself. I’d made out with Mad Rogan. But worst of all, he’d given me a tiny taste of what it would be like to be with him. It was magic. It would be a drug that would be addicting from the first moment, and like a drug, it would consume me and leave me hollow. And he would leave me. I couldn’t have him forever. He was a Prime, he looked after his own interests first, and the moment I became boring or tiresome, he would walk away. Just thinking about it hurt.

  “Nevada?” he repeated.

  Get a grip. I took my hands off my face, pushed away from him, reached for the bed, and handed him his cell phone.

  He took the phone from my hand and tossed it over his shoulder with a dismissive flick of his wrist. The cell phone thudded into a wall and fell on the carpet. He reached for me.

  “No,” I told him.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “It’s unprofessional and dangerous. This didn’t happen.”

  “It happened.”

  “No.”
r />   “It happened. I was there. And you liked it.”

  “No.”

  “You melted.” A male, self-satisfied smile touched his lips. “Like spring snow.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Fine,” he said. “You had no idea it could be this good. Nobody in your past was ever that good and you know that nobody in your future will ever be this good. You’ve had a taste and you want more. You want sex. Dirty, naked hot sex. It’s floating through your head as we speak. You think you can imagine what it would be like. Trust me, you have no idea. I haven’t even started. So run from it, think it over, pretend it didn’t happen, it doesn’t matter. I’ll allow it for now. The more you fight, the more irresistible it will become, until one day I’ll motion with my hand and you’ll come running.”

  My fingers closed about something hard. I tossed it at his face. The chalk hit him square in the forehead. He blinked.

  I got to my feet and marched into the bathroom to compose myself.

  Chapter 15

  Either Mad Rogan’s cell phone was shatterproof, or he had an identical supply of them, because when I came out of the bathroom, he was holding one to his ear, listening. He was also wearing shoes. We were leaving.

  Mad Rogan beckoned to me and headed for the door. I followed, and we walked out of the room, down the hallway. Rogan moved fast, and I almost had to jog to keep up with him.

  “Okay,” Mad Rogan said. “I need you to be there in ten. Can you do it?”

  He hung up and sped up. “Augustine called. A police cruiser sighted Pierce driving into the city on South Freeway. They radioed it in three minutes ago.”

  “Did he explode the cruiser into a fireball and then laugh dramatically?” I broke into a run.

  “He ignored them, and then an armored vehicle following him rammed the cruiser and rolled it off the road.”

  We burst out of the doors into the light.

  Adam wasn’t taking the opportunity to make a statement. He was heading into the city on South Freeway, which would put him straight into downtown, and he was conserving his energy. He was about to hit Houston like a meteor. This had just turned into a race.

  “Keys.” Rogan held out his hand.

  I put them into his palm. He clicked the locks on the Audi and we got in.

  “He doesn’t have the third piece.” Rogan reversed and stepped on the gas, and the Audi shot out of the parking lot like a bullet. “He made a huge production out of getting the first and the second, so he’ll make a production out of getting the third one. He knows where it is. We don’t.”

  The radio came on. “This is an Emergency Broadcast. The Secretary of Homeland Security received credible evidence of a possible terrorist attack on the city of Houston. The risk of terrorist attack has been raised from elevated to imminent. Evacuate the downtown area. I repeat, evacuate the downtown area. If you’re unable to exit via vehicle, seek shelter in the tunnel system. The main entrances are . . .”

  Mad Rogan turned it off. We wove in and out of traffic at a breakneck speed. A flood of cars clogged the street going in the opposite direction. Everyone in our lane was either turning onto side streets or trying to turn. People fled out of downtown.

  “Mark Emmens has one daughter,” Mad Rogan said. “His wife and sister are deceased, and so is the sister’s husband. The daughter and her husband are accounted for. According to Augustine, nothing unusual has taken place in their life, but Mark’s grandson Jesse Emmens disappeared from his dorm room at Edinburgh three months ago.”

  “His grandson’s last name is Emmens? Was there a son, too?”

  “No, Mark’s son-in-law took the Emmens name. The Emmens family is respected and their name has more recognition. Jesse Emmens was gone for forty-eight hours, then he was dumped in front of the dorm unharmed, but with no memory of what had transpired while he was missing. The block on him was so strong that it took him twenty-four hours before he could remember his own name.”

  “Did Jesse know the location of the artifacts?”

  Mad Rogan nodded. “He was hexed as well. Someone had broken him, so it can be done.”

  And it would be up to me to do it. I still had no idea how.

  “You can do it,” Rogan said. “This could’ve gone a lot differently if you had received proper instruction.”

  “If I had received proper instruction, people like Augustine would force me to become their own personal lie detector.” And now, no matter if I succeeded or failed, it would happen anyway. Assuming MII survived whatever Adam was about to unleash.

  “Can Augustine compel you to do it under the terms of your contract?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can buy your contract.”

  “No, you can’t. Any sale of our mortgage requires my consent, and I won’t consent to it.”

  He grinned. “You don’t want to work under me?”

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

  “Do you have a copy of the contract?”

  “I have it on my phone.”

  “Read me the provision that forces you to take MII’s cases.”

  Ten minutes later we pulled into the parking lot in front of the blue glass shark fin of the MII building. A flood of cars rolled out in the opposite direction. People hurried out of the building, their faces pinched with worry. Augustine was evacuating MII.

  Augustine’s receptionist met us in the lobby. Her makeup was still impeccable, her clothes still fit her perfectly, but her hair was now malachite green. “Follow me, please.”

  She hurried to the elevator at a near run. We followed her. She pushed the button for the fifteenth floor. “We were able to capture an image of Adam Pierce coming into the city via street-level cameras before the entire network went off line. He was riding his motorcycle, which was preceded and followed by two black BMW X6 SUVs.”

  The elevator chimed, signaling a stop. The doors opened and the receptionist rushed down the hall. “The recordings indicate that street-level observers did not see either Pierce or the SUVs. The police forces have set up blockades on every major roadway into downtown.”

  Someone was cloaking Adam Pierce. Another powerful magic user. This was getting more and more complicated by the minute. Whoever these people were, they were organized and powerful, and they planned in advance. None of it boded well for Houston.

  What did they want? Why? Why was this even happening? It made no sense.

  The receptionist stopped before a door and held it open for us. We walked into a wide room. The floor was black, not glossy, but not exactly rough. The same paint covered the walls. Blackout shutters blocked the windows. The only light came from six glass tubes, positioned vertically like columns, from ceiling to floor, three on one side of the room and three on the other. Each tube was about a foot in diameter and filled with clear liquid. Hundreds of bubbles floated up through the water, their ascent slow and hypnotic, backlit by purple lights embedded inside the tubes, making the entire arrangement glow with gentle lavender light.

  In the wide space between the tubes stood a chair. An old man sat in it, holding a carved wooden cane in his left hand. He wore a suit, and his hair was white and wispy, like cotton. Age marked his face with deep wrinkles, but his hazel eyes looked at me with sharp, alert intelligence. Augustine stood next to the man. At the far end of the room, five people sat at computer stations below a big flat-screen TV. The light from their displays illuminated a little of the wall behind them, highlighting swirls of chalk dust. Now the odd color of the floor and the walls made sense. This was a spell room, painted entirely with chalkboard paint.

  “Mr. Emmens,” Augustine said, “allow me to introduce Connor Rogan and his associate.”

  “A pleasure,” Mr. Emmens said.

  “I need an amplification circle drawn,” Mad Rogan said, “with two focal points at forty-five and one hundred and thirty-five degrees.”

  A woman jumped up fr
om one of the terminals, ran over, and began drawing on the floor.

  “Excuse me.” Augustine smiled at Mr. Emmens. “I need to speak to my colleague.”

  He drew Mad Rogan aside. I followed them, because I didn’t know what else to do.

  “This isn’t going to help and you know it,” Augustine murmured. “He was hexed by Cesare Costa at birth. You’re not strong enough to break through. This will take a Breaker Prime. There are two of them in the country, and they’re both on the West Coast. We have minutes.”

  “Ms. Baylor would like to renegotiate her contract.”

  Augustine pivoted to me. “Now?”

  “Now,” Rogan said. “She would like one word added to provision seven. It should read MII may NOT compel Baylor Investigative Agency to assist, etc.”

  “Why would I do this? This is against my best interest.” Augustine frowned. “What’s going on here?”

  “You will do this because the wind is blowing south,” Mad Rogan said. “No matter where in downtown Adam starts his party, this building will be hit by his fire, and you know it. Your House will lose millions. One word, Augustine. Consider the stakes.”

  Augustine locked his jaw.

  “Don’t be petty,” Mad Rogan said.

  “Fine.” Augustine swiped a tablet from the nearest desk. His long fingers danced on it. He showed me the tablet. It read, “Addendum One,” listed the paragraph, and showed the correction. Augustine pressed his thumb to the screen, signed it, and held the tablet out. “Fingerprint.”

  I added mine to his. The screen flashed.

  “Done,” Augustine said.

  “You’re on,” Mad Rogan told me.

  I took a deep breath. Augustine watched me like a hawk.

  Mad Rogan walked me to the circle. “Take your shoes off,” he murmured.

  I took off my tennis shoes and slid the socks off. He held my hand and helped me step into the circle.

  “Relax,” Mad Rogan said. “Let yourself interact with it.”

  I stood in the circle. It felt strange, as if I’d somehow been balancing on the surface of elastic liquid. I had the odd feeling that if I jumped, it would bounce me up like a trampoline. Trouble was, I had no idea how to jump.