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 from 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.
Mr. Emmens nodded to me. “Before we get started, I’ve been warned that answering a direct question about the location of the object may kill me. I want to tell you where it is, but if you force me to disclose the exact location, I will die before I can help you and you will never find it in time. I don’t mind giving up my life for the city. It is the duty of my family. I ask you only not to waste my life. I don’t want to die answering the wrong question.”
“I understand.” My magic filled the circle like a dense vapor. The surface of the “liquid” was placid under me. Somehow the two had to interact.
“We’re wasting time,” Augustine said.
“Do you feel the circle?” Mad Rogan asked, walking behind me.
“Yes.”
Slowly, he circled the chalk line and stopped on the left of me. “Do you feel your magic filling it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what Pierce plans to do?”
“He wants to burn the city down.” Where was he going with this?
“The artifact made Emmens into a Prime.” Mad Rogan’s voice was cold. “It will make Adam Pierce a god of fire. He can melt steel now. It melts at 2,750 degrees Fahrenheit. The artifact will double that. A house fire never burns higher than 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. Adam Pierce will burn at five times that, maybe hotter. At 2,192 degrees, concrete will lose its structural integrity and turn into calcium oxide, a white powder. At 2,750 degrees, stainless steel within the buildings will melt. The downtown will be a nightmare of molten metal, crumbling concrete, flames, and noxious, poisonous gasses. It will become hell on earth. Thousands of people will die.”
I swallowed. Anxiety rose inside me.
“Pierce just crossed Dreyfus Street,” one of the people at the terminal announced. “The cameras have gone out. We lost him again.”
He was staying off the main roads to avoid Lenora’s roadblocks. Even with traffic, it would take him only twenty minutes to get downtown.
“The problem with ‘thousands’ of people,” Mad Rogan said, “is that it’s not personal.”
He took Augustine’s tablet and tapped it. The big flat-screen on the wall flared into life. A silver van was parked in front of an elaborate, ultramodern building—2 Houston Center, corner of MacKinnley and Fanin streets. It was a really distinctive building, all black glass, right in the middle of downtown.
Mad Rogan handed the tablet back to Augustine and raised his phone. “Bernard?”
“Yes?” my cousin’s voice answered through the phone.
“I need you to step out of the car and face the building.”
No. My body went ice cold.
The passenger door of the van opened. Bern exited the van and turned to the building. The camera zoomed up on his face.
Everything else disappeared. All I saw were Bern’s serious blue eyes, wide open on the screen.
Adam was less than twenty minutes away. Bern would die. And Mad Rogan knew it. He knew it, and he’d parked him there.
I heard my own voice. “Get out of there. Get out of there!”
“He can’t hear you.” Mad Rogan put away the phone.
“You bastard!”
My magic punched into the circle, smashing it. A cloud of chalk dust shot up from the circle’s boundary. Augustine dropped his tablet. The circle bounced back, and power flooded me.
“There it is,” Mad Rogan murmured. “It’s not fear or anger. It’s the protective impulse.”
“He’s nineteen years old!” My magic raged and my voice matched it.
“Then you better do something to save him.”
My magic snapped to him.
“Not me.” Rogan pointed at Mr. Emmens. “Him.”
I pivoted. My magic grasped the old man into its vise. He paled. The circle fed me more power. I stared into his eyes. “Is your name Mark Emmens?”
“Yes.”
True.
My magic locked on him. He was enclosed in a barrier, like a nut in a shell. It was old, thick, and strong. I felt his life, shivering inside, both protected and bound by the shell. The two were connected. If I broke the barrier, the light of his life would perish with it.
“Do you know where the third piece of amulet is hidden?”
He tried to resist. I punched the circle with my magic. Power bounced into me. I grasped the invisible barrier with my magic and strained to wrench it apart. I didn’t need much. Just a gap. A small opening.
The shell resisted.
I didn’t have time for this. Bern would die.
I pulled the power from the circle. It kept coming and coming, as if I pulled on a rope, expecting only a foot or two, but it kept going, and now I was pulling it with both hands as fast as I could. The influx of power slowed. I punched the circle again and the flow sped up. I focused it all on the shell.
It shuddered.
More power.
I felt light-headed.
Another tremor.
The shell cracked. In my mind, I saw light spilling from inside it. I thrust my magic into it like a wedge and kept it open.
“Yes,” Mr. Emmens said.
He had answered my question. I made my mouth move. “Is the third piece in your possession?”
“No.”
“Is it hidden on the property you own?”
“No.”
“She’s going to die,” Augustine warned. “She’s pulling too much power.”
“She’s fine,” Mad Rogan said.
It hurt now. It hurt as if something had stabbed me in the stomach and I was trying to pull the knife out inch by inch. But my magic wedge held.
Think, think, think . . .
Bern’s face looked at me from the camera. I had to save him. He was just a boy. He had his whole life ahead of him.
Adam Pierce was going downtown. The piece had to be here. In the center of the city. It wouldn’t be in a bank or in a building, because the Emmens family wouldn’t want to repeat themselves.
“Is it on the property you used to own?”
“No.”
The pain was clawing at me now, hot and sharp.
“Is it on the property your relative owns?”
“No.”
“Is it on a property your relative used to own?”
“Yes.”
That yes nearly rocked me.
“Search the records,” Augustine barked.
The five people at the computer terminals typed furiously.
“Was that property sold?”
“No.”
If his relative no longer owned it but it hadn’t been sold, what the heck could’ve happened to it?
The world swayed. I was about to pass out. I clung onto consciousness, desperately struggling to stay upright.
“Frederick Rome,” one of the computer techs reported. “His daughter’s ex-husband, from her first marriage, used to own a building on Caroline Street. It was lost in a divorce settlement and awarded to his second ex-wife.”
Augustine spun to me. “Ask if it was lost in a legal action.”
“Was the property lost as a result of a legal action or awarded as a settlement?”
“No.”
Tiny red circles swam in my eyes. My magic was ebbing. I was barely holding on. I forced my brain to work through the haze of pain and fatigue. It was downtown. There was nothing downtown but big businesses owned by Houses, government buildings, and . . .
Government buildings.
“Is it on municipal land?”
“Yes.” Mr. Emmens came to life.
“Was the property donated to the city?”
“Yes.” Mr. Emmens nodded.
The techs typed so fast that the clicking of their keys blended into a hum.
“Patricia Bridges,” the middle technician called. “Married to William Bridges, maiden name Emmens.”
Mr. Emmens smiled.
“William and Patricia Bridges jointly donated a parcel of land to the city of Houston, provided that the land may never be sold or built upon but used instead as a place for the free people of Texas to gather as they see fit.”
The Bridge Park. Directly across from the justice center. My magic was quaking under pressure. I had just enough time left for one last question.
“Is it in a monument that includes a horse?”
“Yes,” Mr. Emmens said.
The shell snapped closed, crushing my magic.
Mad Rogan grabbed me and pulled me out of the circle. The pressure and pain vanished. I felt light-headed again.
His gaze searched my eyes. “Speak to me.”
“I hate you.”
“Okay.” Mad Rogan let go of me. “You’re fine.”
He handed me the phone. I grabbed it. “Bernard, get out of there! You don’t understand, Pierce is about to burn down downtown!”
“I know. I volunteered,” he said. “Did you do it?”
Oh you idiot. “Yes! Get out of there. Don’t bother with the van, go down into the tunnels.”
On the screen my cousin ran down the street.
I turned to Rogan. “Don’t ever ask my family to volunteer for anything.”
“Don’t you want to know what it is?” Mr. Emmens asked.
We gaped at him.
“The hex covers what it does and where it is, but not what it is,” he explained. “It’s a forty carat green flawless diamond. The color is the result of natural irradiation.”
“I have to go,” Rogan told me.
“I’m coming with you.” I would see this to the end. I would get through this and punch Adam Pierce in the face while Rogan dug the last piece of the artifact out of that horse.
“Fine. Keep up.” He turned and ran. I spun to Augustine. “I need handcuffs.”
One of the computer techs opened a drawer and tossed a pair to me, together with keys.
“Thanks!” I caught them and chased Rogan down the hallway.
“Stop,” Augustine yelled.
I turned.
“You’re a drained battery. You have no magic left. What could you possibly do to Pierce?”
“She can shoot him in the face.” Rogan mashed the elevator arrow.
“If Rogan fails to stop him, you’ll die,” Augustine called out.
The doors swung open.
“If he fails, we’re all dead anyway,” I told him and ducked into the elevator with Mad Rogan.
Two lanes of traffic filled Caroline Street. The cars in both lanes faced south, away from downtown. Nothing moved. The cars were abandoned. Their owners must’ve gone into the tunnels.
Mad Rogan took the corner too sharp. I grabbed onto the door handle to steady myself. The Audi jumped the curb and landed on the sidewalk. The side of the vehicle scraped against the building. Mad Rogan stepped on the gas. We barreled down the sidewalk, the Audi screeching in protest as the stone scraped the driver’s side. Ahead a lamppost loomed. I braced myself. The post snapped off and flew aside.
“Try not to kill us,” I squeezed through my teeth.
“Don’t worry. Wouldn’t want to disappoint Adam.”
Before us Congress Avenue was completely clogged with cars. The green trees of the Bridge Park shivered in the breeze just beyond the traffic.
The Audi slid to a screeching stop. I jumped out, my Baby Desert Eagle in my hand, and ran ahead, between the cars. The park occupied a single city block. I saw the bronze statue of the Riding Cowboy through the trees. The horse’s head was gone, melted into a puddle of cooling metal goo. Next to the horse stood Adam Pierce. The third eye of Shiva sat on his forehead: three rows of uncut diamonds crossed by a vertical eye shape studded with bloodred rubies. In the middle of the eye shape, where the iris would be, an enormous pale green diamond shone in the sun, like a drop of pure light somehow captured and faceted and set among the lesser stones.
I sighted Adam Pierce, aimed for the center mass, and fired. The bullets punched the space near Adam and fell harmlessly to the grass. I kept firing, walking straight at him. My gun spat the bullets, the sound too loud in my ears.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Click.
I was out.
I lowered the gun. We stood face-to-face, Adam and I. Directly around him, the grass lay flat. He was in a magic circle, not one drawn with chalk but one made by the third eye of Shiva.
“Null space,” Adam said, his voice quiet. “You’re too late.”
“Why? Why, Adam? Thousands of people will die. Don’t you care? Don’t you care even a little bit?”
“Look around you,” he said. “You see all this? It looks good, but once you look deeper, you’ll see the rot. All of it is rotten to the core.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The establishment,” he said. “Their so-called justice system. Justice. What a joke. It’s not justice; it’s oppression. It’s a system designed to shackle those who can to those who can’t. The rot is everywhere. It’s in the politicians, in the businessmen, and in the courts. There is no repairing it. There is only one way to get rid of it. I am going to purify the downtown.”
“There are people down in the tunnels, normal ordinary people, Adam. They have nothing to do with your rebellion.”
“They have everything to do with it.” He faced me, his eyes completely lucid. “They are dragging us down. They prevent us from taking what is rightfully ours. You see, we bought into this entire bullshit utilitarianism. We had it pounded into us that good is whatever benefits the majority. Well, I don’t give a fuck about the majority. Why should I care about their laws and their needs? If I have the power to obtain and to keep the object of my desire, then I should be able to do so.”
“And if someone stronger takes it from you?”
He spread his arms. “So be it. Now you’re getting the picture. I’m illuminating the rot. I’m a freedom fighter. I’m freeing us. I’m severing the chains.”
“The way you tried to free me from my family?”
He nodded. “I thought you’d understand, but you weren’t ready. You either have the power or you don’t, Snow. Power is action, and today I choose to act. I will turn this place to ash, like a rotten forest, and watch the new growth stretch to the sun. I will be remembered.”
“So you want this to be your legacy? You want to be the one who burned alive thousands of people? Families? Children? Listen to yourself. You can’t be this monster.”
He raised his finger to his lips. “Shhh. Save your breath. The old world is about to end, and you have a front-row seat.”
We’d failed. We’d failed so miserably. Everything was over. There was nothing we could do now.
“I liked you, Snow,” he said. “Sorry you won’t get to see it. No hard feelings?”
There was no reasoning with him.
“Hello, Mad Rogan.” Adam stretched Mad into a three-syllable word. “We meet at last. How does it feel to come up second best?”
“Nevada,” Mad Rogan said. “Come here.”
“I almost feel sorry for you, man.” Adam grinned. “You had a chance to be invited to the party, but your own cousin made you into a patsy instead. God, that’s got to suck.”
Mad Rogan took me by the hand and pulled me to him, leading me away from Adam.
We were going to die. Houston would burn. It was over.
“Nothing to say, oh Great One? Come on, Scourge of Mexico!” Adam called. “Look at me when I’m talking to you. I’m about to incinerate your ass.”
Rogan glanced at him. “It’s your party. You’re wearing the tiara. Try to be a gracious host.”
Adam’s face flushed.
“Fuck you!” He stabbed his index finger in our direction. “Fuck you, man. Fuck both of you.”
“Kids these days.” Mad Rogan shook his head. “No manners.”
Rogan halted in the middle of the lawn. I stopped with him. Everything seemed so bright. The trees were such a vivid emerald green, the sky so blue. I could see every blade of grass around us.
“I don’t want to die,” I whispered. I realized I was crying. I was supposed to be stoic or strong, but all I could think about was how much I loved being alive. I’d barely gotten to do anything with my life. I would never get to see my sisters grow up. I would never fall in love and have a family. I wouldn’t even get to say the proper good-bye. I’d just pecked my mom on the cheek. I . . .
“Stay close to me,” Mad Rogan said. “You’ll feel the boundary around us. No matter what happens, do not cross. Do you understand, Nevada? You can’t enter null space, but you can exit it, and if you try to do it while I’m active, it will shred you into a bloody mist.”
I swallowed.
“Once I begin, I may not be able to stop,” Mad Rogan said. “I won’t know where you are. I won’t hear you. I won’t see you. Do not leave the circle. No matter what happens, you’ll be safe here. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He pulled me to him, my back against his chest, and he locked his arms on me. Magic pulsed out of him. Wind stirred the grass around us.
“Won’t work,” Adam called out. “Whatever you’re doing, it won’t work. I’ll burn through it.”
“Let’s dance,” Mad Rogan said. His voice sounded strange, deep and distant.
Nothing happened. His arms were still around me. He didn’t move.
Seconds dripped by, slowly, so slowly.
Across from us, faint orange light rose from Adam’s circle. It flared up, like phantom flame, and died down, then flared up again and faded once more. Adam Pierce opened his mouth. His voice was no longer his own. It was a voice of something ancient and terrible, a roar of a volcano come to life. “I AM FIRE. BURN FOR ME.”
The wind died. It was there one second, and now it was gone. I could still see it rustling the trees and the grass, but I felt nothing. A strange calm came over me, as if an invisible wall cut us off from the world. I felt it about two feet in front of me, curving into a circle about seven feet wide. It was so peaceful here. So quiet.
Mad Rogan’s hold loosened. His arms slid up my shoulders. I turned. His eyes turned unnatural turquoise blue. His face looked serene.
“Rogan?”
He was looking into the distance. He didn’t see me.
His feet left the ground. His body floated a foot up in the air. His arms opened, loose by his sides. The grass outside the circle bent away from it, as if a blast wave ran across it.
In his circle, Adam Pierce’s fire shot up, spinning around him, solid and four feet high now. He was looking straight at me, and his eyes were pure fire. Hair rose on the back of my neck.
The circle around me pulsed. I didn’t hear it, but I felt it. It reverberated through me, echoing in my bones, not painful, but not pleasant either. The trees around us collapsed, severed at the root. The Riding Cowboy slid sideways and crashed down.
The circle pulsed again. The Harris County Criminal Justice Center quaked. To the right, the huge tower of the Harris County civil courthouse shuddered.
What was Rogan doing?
The circle pulsed again, like the beating of a titan’s heart.
The Justice Center slid forward and broke apart. For a fraction of a second, pieces of it hung in the air, as if deciding whether they should obey the pull of gravity. Hundreds of glass shards hovered, catching the sun. Thousands of chunks of stone floated, motionless. Between them, the inner guts of the building showed, fractured, all of the three hundred and twenty-five feet of its height torn and left on display. It was as if the entire enormous structure had turned to glass and some deity had smashed it with its hammer.
The massive building imploded. Tons of stone, glass, wood, and steel crashed to the ground. It made no sound as it fell. My brain refused to accept that it made no sound. I kept straining to hear it, but it didn’t come.
To the right, the Civil Courthouse swayed and shattered. Two dust clouds boiled forth, heading straight for us, boulders of broken stone flying among the dust. I crouched, hands over my head.
The pain never came. I raised my head.
Chunks of stone littered the ground around us. None had landed in the circle. Above me, Mad Rogan levitated. His face glowed from within, the brilliant turquoise of his eyes bright, like stars. He looked like an angel.
I glanced at Adam. The fire had engulfed him, turning into a pillar. It climbed higher and higher, spinning, ten; no, eleven; no, twelve feet high.
The circle around me pulsed again. The force minced the rubble into dust, pushing it back, sweeping it against itself. Behind the park, Harris County Family Law Center disintegrated. Across Congress Avenue, the juvenile justice center fell apart, spitting out a car-sized boulder. It hurtled through the air. Oh my God.
Don’t leave the circle.
I clenched my hands into fists.
The boulder smashed against the circle and bounced off.
The circle pulsed again and again, each wave pushing the rubble out and up, crushing it into powder, again and again.
Rogan was building a wall. If he could contain the fire, it wouldn’t spread.
The pillar of fire was fifty feet tall and climbing.
The pulse from Mad Rogan toppled the next circle of buildings. Their remains joined the wall.
The pillar of fire shot up another twenty-five feet.
The wall gained another ten.
They kept racing, growing taller, wall, pillar, wall, pillar.
The pillar had to be over a hundred feet high. I couldn’t tell if the wall was higher.
The pillar of flames flashed with white. A ring of fire exploded outward, racing toward me. The fallen trees vanished, instantly turned to ash.
I braced myself and held my breath.
The fire splashed against the circle and swallowed it. I was alive. The air around me wasn’t any warmer. I couldn’t even smell the smoke. The air tasted fresh.
The fire rolled toward the wall. Please be tall enough. Please be tall enough.
The flames splashed against the barrier and came up thirty feet short.
I held my breath. It could still burn through.
All around me an inferno raged, and within its depths Adam Pierce stood, glowing with golden light, wrapped in flame, the stolen artifact on his head blazing like an angry sun.
The street turned black and glossy. The pavement had melted into tar. The Riding Cowboy had melted too, its metal slipping into the slowly moving river of asphalt. The grass under my feet remained intact.
The circle kept pulsing, compacting the wall.
The fire battered against the barrier. The outer layer of concrete chunks turned to white powder.
Please hold. Please.
Minutes passed, sliding by. I sat. I couldn’t stand anymore. My heart was tired of beating too fast. My whole body shook from anxiety. I felt punched all over.
The wall began to glow with eerie light. The concrete had turned into calcium oxide, which was now melting and producing the same kind of light that had illuminated the stage productions before the electricity took hold.
The fire raged and raged, eating at the wall.
All those people in the tunnels. If the wall broke and the fire ravaged downtown, they would suffocate from the smoke. If they didn’t cook alive first.
The wall to the left stopped glowing. I peered at it. The fire still burned, but the concrete and stone of the wall no longer lit up.
My mind struggled with that fact. I was too shell-shocked to process it. Finally, pieces came together in my head. The wall stopped glowing, which meant there had to be a space between it and the magic fire. Adam had grown the pillar of fire as wide as he could. Rogan could hold him. The blaze was contained.
Relief washed over me. A sob broke free, then another. I realized I was crying.
Bern wouldn’t die in the tunnels. The city wouldn’t di—
Another pulse rolled through me. The circle was still pulsing. The buildings beyond the wall were quaking. Oh no. Rogan was still going. If Adam didn’t burn downtown, Rogan would level it.
I jumped to my feet.
Rogan was three feet off the ground now, his face glowing, floating so high that he seemed inhuman and unreachable.
If I disrupted what Rogan was doing, the circle might collapse. We would both be incinerated. I would die. I would kill Rogan. The thought squirmed through me in a cold rush. I didn’t want him to die.
If I didn’t find a way to disrupt him, the entire downtown would collapse onto the tunnels. Instead of being burned alive, all those people would be buried alive.
Our lives for Bern’s. For the countless lives of the people inside the tunnels, for the lives of children trusting in their parents, for the lives of those who loved each other, for the lives of those who’d done nothing to deserve to die.
It wasn’t even a choice.
“Rogan!”
He didn’t answer.
“Rogan!!!” I grabbed his feet. I couldn’t move him an inch. He was held completely immobile.
I pounded his legs with my fists. “Rogan, wake up! Wake up!”
No response.
I had to get to him. If only I could get to his face. I gathered what little magic I had left.
The circle pulsed again. As that pulse reverberated through me, I pushed against it the same way I had pushed against the amplification circle, sinking everything I had into that push. Something snapped inside me. My feet left the ground and I floated up and locked my arms around Rogan. It wouldn’t last, my instinct told me. I had seconds before my magic ran out and gravity would drag me down, and I had no power left to do it again. This was my one and only shot. I had to wake him up.
His expression was so serene, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. He wasn’t here with me. He wasn’t even on this planet.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and kissed him. All of my wants, all of my secrets, and all of the times I’d watched him and thought about him and imagined us together, all of my gratitude for saving my grandmother and for protecting Houston and its people, all of my frustration and anger for putting my cousin into harm’s way and for having no regard for human life, I poured all of it into that kiss. It was made of carnations and tears, stolen glances and desperate, burning need. I kissed him like I loved him. I kissed him like it was the only kiss that had ever mattered.
His mouth opened wider beneath mine. His arms closed around me. He kissed me back. There was no magic this time. No phantom fire, no velvet pressure. Just a man, who tasted like the glory of heaven and the sin of hell rolled into one.
My feet touched the ground and I opened my eyes. He was looking at me. His irises were still turquoise. His skin still glowed. But he was here now, with me. The circle was still up, and rivers of tar and fire flowed past us while Adam burned in his own hate.
“You have to stop,” I whispered. “You’ve won, but you’re wrecking the city.”
“Kiss me again and I will,” he said.
An hour later, Adam finally stopped and fell to the ground. Rogan kept the circle up. Everything was too hot. I sat with him in the circle and watched the asphalt solidify slowly. At some point I dozed off, slumped against Mad Rogan.
When I woke up, Rogan’s eyes and skin had stopped glowing. A helicopter had flown over us twice. Then a crack appeared in the wall. We couldn’t hear it, but we saw it happen. A torrent of water gushed in, instantly evaporating when it touched ground scorched by Adam. But the water kept coming. The aquakinetics must’ve tapped Buffalo Bayou for the water supply.
The world turned to steam. It took another hour before the water began to stay, and another hour before we decided we probably wouldn’t boil alive. Rogan let go of the power that connected him to the circle. The water flooded in, reaching my ankles. It was warm, at least a hundred degrees, but it didn’t burn me. We waded toward Adam Pierce. He lay on his back. His circle must’ve collapsed at some point, because water lapped at his hair and bare chest. He looked no worse for wear. The artifact was still on his head.
Mad Rogan slipped it off and passed it to me. “Hold this for a second.” He leaned over Adam’s prone body and shook him by his shoulder. “Hey, buddy.”
Adam’s eyes opened. “Hey,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Sit up.” Rogan helped him up, a smile on his lips. “You okay? Everything working as intended?”
Adam stared at him, confused. “Sure.”
“You know who you are?”
“Adam Pierce.”
“You know what happened here?”
“Yeah.” Adam got to his feet. “I burned it down.”
“And you’re not hurt? Nothing’s broken?”
“No.”
“Oh good.” Mad Rogan sank a vicious punch into Adam’s jaw. Adam fell to his knees, his mouth bloody. “How about now, Adam? Anything hurt now?”
Adam surged from his feet and swung at Rogan. His fist whistled by Rogan’s face. Mad Rogan hammered a punch into Adam’s gut with his left hand, while his right landed a hook to Adam’s face. Adam went down.
“Have some more.” Rogan punched him again, hard, his fist like a sledgehammer. Adam threw his arms in front of his face.
“You whiny little piece of shit,” Rogan growled. Another punch. “We don’t kill civilians. We don’t show off in public and scare people.” Another punch. “We don’t abuse our power, you fucking moron. You’re a disgrace.”
“Rogan! That’s enough.” I grabbed him and pulled him off Adam.
Adam rolled to his hands and knees. I kicked him as hard as I could right in the stomach. He fell and curled into a ball.
“You almost killed my grandmother. You used kids to deliver a bomb to my house.” I kicked him again. “Flirt with me now, you sonovabitch! See if I’m impressed.”
Behind me Mad Rogan was laughing his head off.
Adam staggered back up. I swung, turning my body into it, the way my mother taught me. My punch connected with his gut. Adam exhaled sharply and rolled down. I kicked him again. “Bet you wish you wore a shirt now, huh? Need something to mop up the blood with?”
Mad Rogan picked me up and carried me a few feet away from Adam. “Okay, that’s enough. You have to have something left to turn in to his House.”
“Let me go!”
“Nevada, you’re still under contract.”
I pulled away from him and marched over to Adam. He jerked his hands up.
“Get up,” I growled. “Or I’ll get Rogan to beat you and then drag your body to your family by your hair.”
Adam got to his feet.
“Hands in front of you, wrists together,” I barked.
He put his hands out. I slapped the handcuffs on him, and we marched him across the flooded street to the gap in the wall.
We walked through, Mad Rogan first, then me dragging Adam. The street outside was crowded. People stood with cameras. I saw Lenora Jordan. Next to her stood a tall, prim woman with a haughty expression on her face. Christina Pierce, Adam’s mother. Perfect.
I hauled Adam in front of her and kicked the back of his knee. He went down to his knees. I pulled the keys out of my pocket and dropped them next to him. “Adam Pierce, surrendered alive to his House, as requested. MII will expect prompt payment.”
She stared at me. If she’d been a spitting cobra, my face would be dripping with venom.
I turned around and walked away, from the wall, from the crowd, heading down the street amidst the rubble. Most of downtown was still standing. I could hardly believe it.
A familiar figure squeezed through the crowd and ran to me. I opened my arms and hugged Bern as hard as I could.
I sipped my Angry Orchard cider and tapped a lug wrench against my leg. The garage doors were open, and Grandma Frida’s workshop was flooded with bright morning light. The big industrial fans created a cooling breeze.
A week had passed since Adam Pierce had tried to turn downtown into a burned-out wasteland. I knew that MII had received a payment from House Pierce, because they’d applied our fee against our loan balance. Augustine hadn’t returned my phone call acknowledging the receipt of paperwork. He was probably still sore because Mad Rogan had outmaneuvered him on our contract. I had spoken with his secretary. Her name was Lina, and she’d passed along a message: the third eye of Shiva had been returned to India, where it belonged. Professor Itoh had been right. Stealing another nation’s treasures never turned out well.
I’d had several requests for interviews, all of which I’d turned down. A couple of people had proved persistent, and I’d referred them to MII and its lawyers. They’d stopped calling. I wasn’t looking for fame, nor did I want to drum up clients by hitting the talk-show circuit. I would much rather Baylor Investigative Agency be synonymous with quiet professionalism.
There had been a formal inquiry. I had no idea how it had gone, because I hadn’t been required to testify. Whatever testimonies House Rogan, House Montgomery, House Pierce, and Lenora Jordan had provided must’ve been sufficient. I still had no idea who was behind all those people helping Adam. All I knew was that they’d locked him up in Ice Box, a subterranean, maximum-security prison somewhere in Alaska. It was designed to hold magic users. He was awaiting trial. I probably would have to testify at that proceeding, unless he pled guilty.
Gavin Waller had been found. The news reported that Adam Pierce had stashed him away in a motel room with a week’s worth of food and drugs. Gavin spent the week terrified that he would be found by authorities and executed on the spot. Twenty-four hours after the events downtown, Mad Rogan had brought him to the police station. The leading detective on the arson had publicly speculated that the only reason Gavin had survived at all was that Adam had been busy with his end-of-the-world plans and had simply forgotten the boy.
I hadn’t heard from Rogan. All in all, that was a really good thing.
It was Saturday, and I was helping Grandma Frida with her latest project. One of the Houses had commissioned a hover tank from one of the other armored car garages. The tank neither hovered nor tanked very well. They’d sunk a lot of money into it and had finally ended up selling it for scrap. Grandma Frida had bought it, and we were pulling it apart for spare parts. She’d gone into the house to get a sandwich, and she’d been gone for ten minutes. I sipped my hard cider. She’d probably gotten distracted.
Someone stepped through the garage doorway. I squinted against the light. Mad Rogan.
He wore a dark suit. It fit him like a glove, from the broad shoulders and powerful chest to the flat stomach and long legs. Well. A visit from the dragon. Never good.
He started toward me. The track vehicle on his left slid out of his way, as if pushed aside by an invisible hand. The Humvee on his right slid across the floor. I raised my eyebrows.
He kept coming, his blue eyes clear and fixed on me. I stepped back on pure instinct. My back bumped into the wall.
The multiton hover tank hovered off to the wall. So that was the secret to making it work. You just needed Mad Rogan to move it around.
Rogan closed in and stopped barely two inches from me. Anticipation squirmed through me, turning into a giddy excitement spiced with alarm.
“Hi,” I said. “Are you planning on putting all of this back together the way you found it?”
His eyes were so blue. I could look into them forever. He offered me his hand. “Time to go.”
“To go where?”
“Wherever we want. Pick a spot on the planet.”
Wow. “No.”
He leaned forward slightly. We were almost touching. “I gave you a week with your family. Now it’s time to go with me. Don’t be stubborn, Nevada. That kiss told me everything I needed to know. You and I both understand how this ends.”
I shook my head. “How did this encounter go in your head? Did you plan on walking in here, picking me up, and carrying me away like you’re an officer and I’m a factory worker in an old movie?”
He grinned. He was almost unbearably handsome now. “Would you like to be carried away?”
“The answer is no, Rogan.”
He blinked.
“No,” I repeated.
“Why not?”
“This is a long explanation, and you won’t like it.”
“I’m all ears.”
I took a deep breath.
“You have no regard for human life,” I said. “You saved the city, but I don’t think you did it because you genuinely cared about all those people. I think you did it because Adam Pierce got under your skin. You hire desperate soldiers, but you don’t do it to save them either. You do it because they offer you unquestioning loyalty. You rescued your cousin, but you had been content to ignore the existence of that whole branch of your family. Had you stepped into Gavin’s life earlier, perhaps he would’ve never met Adam Pierce. You don’t feel that rules apply to you. If you want it, you buy it. If you can’t buy it, you take it. You don’t seem to feel bad about things, and you offer gratitude only when you need to overcome some hurdle. I think you might be a psychopath.
“I can’t be with you, no matter how crazy you make me, because you have no empathy, Rogan. I’m not talking about magic. I’m talking about the human ability to sympathize. I would matter to you only as long as I had some use, and even then, I would be more of an object than a lover or a partner. The gulf between us, both financially and socially, is too great. You would use me, and when you were done with me, you would dismiss me like a servant and I would have to go back to pick up the pieces of my life, and I’m not sure there would be anything left of it or of me by that point. So no, I won’t go away with you. I want to be with someone who would if not love, then genuinely care, for me. You are not that man.”
“Pretty speech,” he said.
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
“I know what’s really going on here. You’re scared to step into my world. Afraid you can’t hack it. Much better to hide here and be a big fish in a very small pond.”
“If that’s the way you see it, fine.” I raised my chin. “I have nothing to prove to you, Rogan.”
“But now I have something to prove to you,” he said. “I promise you, I will win, and by the time I’m done, you won’t walk, you’ll run to jump into my bed.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” I told him.
All of his civilized veneer was gone now. The dragon faced me, teeth bared, claws out, breathing fire. “You won’t just sleep with me. You’ll be obsessed with me. You’ll beg me to touch you, and when that moment comes, we will revisit what happened here today.”
“Never in a million years.” I pointed at the doorway. “Exit is that—”
He grabbed me. His mouth closed on mine. His big body caged me in. His chest mashed my breasts. His arms pulled me to him, one across my back, the other cupping my butt. His magic washed over me in an exhilarating rush. My body surrendered. My muscles turned warm and pliant. My nipples tightened, my breasts ready to be squeezed, ready for his fingers and his mouth. An eager ache flared between my legs. My tongue licked his. God, I wanted him. I wanted him so badly.
He let me go, turned on his toes, and went out, laughing under his breath.
Aaargh! “That’s right! Keep . . . walking!”
I threw the wrench down.
“Now that was a kiss,” Grandma Frida said from the doorway behind me.
I jumped. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough. That man means business.”
All my words tried to come out at once. “I don’t . . . what . . . asshole! . . . screw himself for all I care!”
“Aww, young love, so passionate,” Grandma said. “I’m going to buy you a subscription to Brides magazine. You should start shopping for dresses.”
I waved my arms and walked away from her before I said something I would regret.
