Up In Flames

by Jenny Schwartz

  “In a sense.” He fastened the last two buttons. “She’s the housekeeper, here.”

  “How did that happen?” She was conscious of his hands sliding and flattening to settle at her waist. “From agent to housekeeper?”

  “Defeating an Aernish attack against the Treasury took all of Sharon’s magic. I’m not a magic user, but Cabot said it would be like me losing my name. She had to find herself again, as a mundane. She received counseling and compassionate leave. But nothing seemed to touch her. She…faded.”

  Diane covered his hands with hers. “Sharon doesn’t look faded now.” The woman who had interrupted them was vital and determined. “What changed?”

  “She used some of her leave to visit her sister, and she found Kyle.”

  An echo of old rage stirred in him, swirling his energy and tightening his hands.

  “Kyle is her nephew?” Diane guessed.

  “Yeah, and his stepfather’s a mundane. Sharon never liked him, but she never realized he feared magic. Kyle’s stepbrothers are all mundane. He’s the odd one out, and he hid it. Except he was also sick, and George, his stepfather, is a bully who preys on weakness. Kyle used illusions to hide his illness. He used energy he didn’t have just to placate the bastard.”

  “Poor kid.”

  “The neglect and abuse could have warped him for life. Sharon had a stand-up fight with her sister, and won. George was happy to get rid of a kid he saw as a burden and a freak. Sharon needed a reason to live. She brought Kyle back to Washington, and I offered her the job as housekeeper here. It kept her close to the Agency, but gives her the freedom to make Kyle her first concern.”

  “You gave her the job?”

  “Gar Lodge is mine,” Stuart said. “Other agents stay here, and the magic users have seen to its warding, but the house is mine. I inherited it from a great-uncle.”

  “But if you own Gar Lodge…you’re rich.”

  He grinned. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

  “It’s unexpected. You don’t act rich.”

  “How do rich people act?”

  “Arrogant.”

  “I can be.” He hugged her tight. “And demanding. Do you think you can keep up?”

  “Anything you can do—”

  He kissed her, then finished the misquotation while she struggled for breath. “Anything you can do, we can do better.”

  We. She turned the bond and promise over in her mind.

  Stuart was a man who took his loyalty and responsibilities seriously, to the President, to his colleagues, to the boy who had entered his house. Now, she understood why he’d treated Kyle with such apparent roughness, dangling him from the coat rack. The boy needed respect and discipline from a mundane male, one who didn’t overtly make allowances for his frailty.

  The man offering her a partnership was a man who’d never step back when she needed him, whether in bed or in life. Could she match him?

  “Bring it on,” she said, and pinched his butt.

  Chapter Nine

  Stuart held Diane’s hand as they walked down the tiled hallway to the rear of house and the kitchen. “I’m hoping Sharon has some ideas of how we track the Aernish attack against Uncle Kevin, and how we can use your talents.”

  “I’m just a mid-level mage.”

  “Who can see through Aernish spells—that’s rarer than you know.”

  “As rare as salamanders? They’re like unicorns, Stuart, almost mythical. How did we attract one?”

  “Are they really that rare?” His steps slowed. “You seemed okay with it. I thought it might be something that went with mage lovers.”

  “No.” She smiled. “None of my mage school lecturers had ever seen one.” She tucked away for later consideration Stuart’s admission by implication that she was his first magic user lover. “This day is getting weirder and weirder. By the end of it, I won’t know myself.”

  “Maybe you should have kept your To Do List?”

  “Yeah, right.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Adding a bossy list—which failed to mention the salamander—to my day is just what I need. What if it said something like, ‘Fly with the President’? I wouldn’t know if it meant catch Airforce One or change into a swallow and flit around with Prez.”

  “Can you shape shift?”

  “With enough preparation, about two days’ worth.”

  “So I won’t wake to a wildcat in my bed one morning?”

  “You wish.” But his sly humor stilled her rising nervousness and she walked into the kitchen with a smile relaxing her face.

  “The salamander’s gone,” Kyle said.

  Curiosity and embarrassment tangled in him, his gaze falling from Diane’s when she met his hazel eyes. He’d definitely heard the stories of salamander’s attraction to virginity, but he was a nice boy.

  Her own color heightened, Diane looked at Sharon. “I set the ground rules and dismissed it. Are you sure it’ll respect them?”

  “If it went when you said, then yes. But if you want to keep the bond with it, you’ll have to feed it occasionally.”

  “So if we don’t call the salamander, it’ll stay away?” Stuart took a chocolate chip cookie from a wire cooling rack.

  “Yes, but it would be a waste.” Sharon dried her hands on a tea towel and sat down at the table. “Sit down, Diane. Have a cookie?”

  “Thanks.” She slid into a chair.

  Stuart walked over to the sink and picked up a tea towel. He started to dry the dishes Kyle was washing. “In what sense a waste?”

  “Maybe Diane can answer that?” Sharon suggested.

  “No. I heard salamanders are attracted to flares of power, but that’s it. I never thought I’d meet one.”

  “A bonded salamander may agree to share its power.”

  Diane’s eyes widened.

  “What does that equate to?” Stuart asked.

  “Anything up to a dozen high level mages chanting,” Sharon answered. “Salamanders are nearly a hundred percent magic.”

  Kyle whistled, impressed.

  “Why would it share its essence with us?” Diane demanded. That sort of power was scary.

  “Who knows?” The older woman shrugged. “Mages who use salamanders don’t go into detail.”

  Diane took a cookie and ate it while she thought.

  “Well, if this one left, then it understood Diane,” Stuart said. “It can make a bargain.”

  “But what sort of bargain?” She stared at him. “What would it ask in return for giving something of itself?”

  Everyone looked at Sharon.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. All I’m saying is that a bond with a salamander is rare and rarely relinquished.”

  “Okay.” Stuart broke the silence. “Forget the salamander for the moment.”

  “Its name is Zstl,” Diane said.

  “Weird name.” Kyle rinsed a last cake tin.

  Stuart ignored them. “Sharon, have you thought about the Aernish attack on the President? Is Cabot bringing over the spell bomb?”

  “Bringing it here?” Diane straightened in her chair. “It’s not safe.”

  Kyle wiped out the sink with unusual care for a teenage boy. His back was tense.

  “Gar Lodge has a safe cell,” Sharon said.

  Diane looked to Stuart. “Shouldn’t the bomb go to the Agency?”

  “But you’re here,” he said.

  “Oh no.” She pushed back from the table.

  “You sensed the Aernish magic. You saw through it.” Stuart dropped the tea towel and came to the table. “We’ve never had an agent who could do that.”

  “Cabot reported that you smelled the enchantment.” Sharon was curious.

  “Yes, but it was in my street, in my territory.”

  “You’re a mage, not a witch. Your territory is everywhere,” the older woman countered.

  Kyle picked up the discarded tea towel and wiped the cake tin.

  “All I’m asking is for you to try to track back from
the spell bomb, to ‘smell’ who created it and where they are,” Stuart said. He made it sound so reasonable.

  “Is that all?” Diane said, sourly. She had volunteered to help, but not to touch an Aernish spell bomb.

  “Actually, with the salamander and her ability to see through Aernish enchantments, I think Diane should attack the Aernish mage directly,” Sharon said.

  “No!” The protest came from Kyle. He whirled from the sink. “You just want to use her.”

  “We have a duty.” Sharon looked at her nephew. “I paid mine.”

  “So you’re a hero. Maybe other people just want to be happy? Why does magic have to have a price?”

  “Diane is not dueling an Aernish mage,” Stuart said, definitely. “I brought her to Gar Lodge to track, not kill.”

  Diane shuddered.

  “If the President wants someone dead, he should kill him himself,” Kyle said, passionately.

  Sharon’s mouth set. “That’s Aernish thinking. We have a duty to defend mundanes and the world in which they’re free.”

  “Why? What do they do for us?”

  Diane remembered Kyle’s mundane stepfather. The kid was speaking from pain.

  “They love us.” She stood and moved around the table to Stuart. She clasped his hand. “Stuart would die to save your life, Kyle. So would Sharon. My family are all mundane, but they love me and I love them. We magic users would be lesser people if we allowed evil to enslave the world. We fight the Aernish because freedom saves all of us.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m scared, Kyle, but I’ll do my part in defending the President and the country.” She looked at Sharon. “But I will decide what that is. It is everyone’s right to choose their own path.”

  Stuart’s hand tightened around hers. Power glowed between them.

  “Zstl,” Diane said.

  The salamander shimmered into being at the center of the glow.

  “Holy hell,” Stuart exclaimed.

  Diane stared at him. “You can see Zstl?”

  “He’s like a lizard made of fire.”

  “Yeah.” Kyle wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Better be careful, salamander, or Aunt Sharon will conscript you.”

  “Kyle.” Her whisper was hurt.

  He scowled at her. “I know why you sent me to that mixed magic school. You’re training me up for the Agency.”

  “No. I wanted you to know there are other kids like you.”

  “But all you ever talk about is the Agency and duty.”

  “It is my life.”

  “It was your life,” Kyle said cruelly. “It used you up and spat you out.”

  “I resigned.”

  He shrugged. “Same difference.”

  Poor kid, thought Diane. He’s scared and lost. She looked at Stuart and saw his frowning concentration on the boy. It pleased her that he cared.

  Power surged between them. It reached out, golden and glowing, enveloping Kyle in a wave of protection.

  “Do you see?” she asked Stuart. Kyle was wrapped in their power, a power enhanced by Zstl.

  The salamander purred, enjoying Stuart’s strong, protective energy.

  “I see the salamander,” Stuart said cautiously.

  “Uh, I think she’s talking about me.” Kyle lifted his hands, staring at the glow that streamed behind the movement. “What is this?”

  “You’re hurting.” Diane wouldn’t use the word “scared”. Kyle had a teenager’s fragile ego. “Stuart and I wanted to protect you, and Zstl got into the act, boosting our power. Apparently salamanders don’t bargain. They give.”

  “Some boost. What will it protect me from?”

  “Good question.” Diane looked at Sharon.

  The older woman slumped at the table. She was hurting at her nephew’s suspicions.

  Diane sent a wave of the protection at Sharon, and then, as it flowed swift and easy, she pushed at the glow. She felt it push out from the kitchen, saturate the house, spread across the gardens and ring Gar Lodge in a warding of pure power.

  She let it rest there.

  “Zstl.” She stroked the salamander. “Thank you.”

  Its tongue flicked her wrist.

  The power between her and Stuart settled to a low hum, and Zstl crawled to Diane’s shoulder, nestling under her ear.

  Stuart reached up and touched the salamander. “How come I can see you, but not the other signs of magic?”

  The salamander licked his finger.

  “I think it’s Zstl’s choice,” Diane said. “It’s made itself visible to you.”

  “I appreciate it, fella.”

  Stuart’s phone rang. He answered it, one finger still scratching the salamander’s chin.

  Standing so close, Diane heard the caller’s words.

  “We have the spell bomb, but we can’t get in. What’s happened to the gate wards?”

  “Diane arranged some extra protection.” Stuart grinned at her. She smiled back, and Zstl vibrated with its purring.

  Then a horrible thought struck her. “I don’t know how to let them in.”

  He laughed. “Cabot, who’s with you?”

  “Vic and Harmony.”

  “Tell them to return to the White House. Diane knows you. Give her a second and she’ll let you in.” He closed the phone.

  “I don’t know that I can let him in with the Aernish spell bomb. I’m too scared of it.”

  Stuart put an arm around her. “Do you trust me?”

  She nodded, and felt the gate open in the warding. “Cabot’s in.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Cabot will take the spell bomb directly to the safe cell,” Sharon said. “I won’t go with you. Kyle and I need to talk.” Aunt and nephew stared at each other, then Kyle nodded. “Be careful, but get the bastard.”

  “Will do.” Stuart’s hand at her back guided Diane out of the kitchen, through a back door and into a paved courtyard.

  They met Cabot as he walked around the house. He held a wooden box about a foot square, carved and sullenly glowing.

  Diane recognized a containment box, but still mentally saluted Cabot’s courage in carrying the Aernish spell bomb.

  He walked straight to a narrow red brick building, outwardly nothing more than a garden shed. Its steel door opened at his approach. He disappeared inside for a few seconds, then walked out backwards, closing the door firmly. Only then did he turn to Diane and Stuart.

  “You have a salamander,” he said, mopping his forehead with the polka dot handkerchief.

  “Zstl,” Stuart said proudly. He touched the creature who had stopped drowsing the moment the spell bomb entered the courtyard. Now it blinked kaleidoscope rainbow eyes.

  “You can see it?” Cabot’s blue eyes bulged in disbelief.

  “Zstl’s bonded to both of us.” Diane watched that register with the other mage. “He gave us the power that re-warded the lodge.”

  “Hmm. I felt the strength of those wards.” Cabot tucked away the handkerchief. “Do you intend to study the spell bomb, Miss Lee?”

  “Call me Diane.”

  “She’ll track the Aernish mage responsible,” Stuart said. “But she won’t challenge him to a mage duel.”

  Cabot raised both eyebrows. Then he sighed. “Sharon’s suggestion. Relax, Stuart. Even backed up by a salamander, I wouldn’t allow a civilian to tackle an Aernish mage. Sharon acts like we’re at war.”

  “It was an assassination attempt against the President.”

  “And that will be the charge when we arrest the mage,” Cabot replied. “But we’re not here to dispense justice Aernish style, on the basis of who has the longest staff.”

  The slight crudity startled a giggle from Diane.

  Cabot turned to her. “When you’re ready, I would appreciate any sense of identity or direction you might get from the spell bomb.”

  “Okay.” She hesitated, then detached Zstl from her shoulder and handed him to Stuart who held the creature carefully. “Perhaps you should go home, Zstl
.”

  The salamander sat up like a meerkat, alert and unintimidated. Its tail curled around Stuart’s wrist for balance.

  “I’d say that’s a no.” Cabot chuckled. He opened the steel door.

  Diane’s last glimpse of Stuart and Zstl was of their tense, worried postures. The power around them held a red tinge. Then the door closed.

  Inside the safe cell, the containment box sat on a solid oak table. Cupboards lined three walls, their contents hidden.

  “Do you need anything to help you see the Aernish enchantment?” Cabot asked.

  “On the street I simply saw it, or rather, smelled it.” Diane rubbed her hands together nervously. “Open the box.”

  He opened, instead, a cupboard and retrieved a pair of heavy leather gloves. He pulled them on. Blunt fingered, he muttered the spell to release the lock on the containment box.

  A whiff of garbage slipped into the room.

  “Wait.” Diane sniffed cautiously. The hate in the spell bomb was overlaid by a new stink. Rage, frustration, failure. “The mage who created the bomb is still connected to it.” She paused, struggling to control her gag reflex. “He’s not happy.”

  “Are you sure it’s a him?”

  “Yes.” There was more than a hint of testosterone in this assassination challenge against the President.

  “Should I open the box?” Cabot asked.

  Diane reached out magically, feeling the wardings on the containment box, the safe cell and the protection she had wrapped around the lodge. It could hardly be safer. And the only other alternative was to destroy the spell bomb without releasing it, but then finding the Aernish mage would be that much harder. He would blend into the magic user community until his next attempt.

  “Are you shielded?” she asked. She hadn’t used a personal shield since Mage School, but it seemed a good idea now, another level of protection. She pulled one together.

  “I’ve maintained a shield since I boxed the spell bomb.”

  “Oh.” Of course he had. She breathed shallowly. “Go ahead.”

  He opened the box.

  The stench of rotting cadavers filled the room, rolling out in a noxious visible cloud of black smoke.

  Diane heard Cabot muttering a spell of deflection, trying to herd the evil into a far corner, to contain it and keep it from them. She couldn’t help him. She was locked onto the chain of malice that was the Aernish mage’s link to the corroding, crumbling spell bomb.