Snippet from White Hot (Hidden Legacy Series #2) by Ilona Andrews

PROLOGUE

A wise man once said, “A human mind is the place where emotion and reason are locked in perpetual combat.  Sadly for our species, emotion always wins.”  I really liked that quote.  It explained why, even though I was reasonably intelligent, I kept finding myself doing something really stupid. And it sounded much better than “Nevada Baylor, Total Idiot.”

“Don’t do this,” Augustine said behind me.

I looked at the monitor showing Jeff Caldwell.  He sat shackled to a chair that was bolted to the floor.  He wore prison orange.  He didn’t seem like much, an unremarkable man in his fifties, balding, average height, average build, average face. I read a news article about him this morning.  He had a job with the city, a wife, who was a school teacher, and two children, both in college. He had no magic and wasn’t affiliated with any of the Houses, powerful magic families that ran Houston. His friends described him as a kind considerate man.

In his spare time, Jeff Caldwell kidnapped little girls.  He kept them alive for up to a week at a time, then he strangled them to death and left their remains in parks surrounded by flowers.  His victims were between the ages of five and seven, and the stories their bodies told made you wish that hell existed just so Jeff Caldwell could be sent there after he died.  The night before last he had been caught in the act of depositing the tiny corpse of his latest victim in her flower grave and was apprehended.  The reign of terror that had gripped Houston for the past year was finally over.

There was just one problem.  Seven-year-old Amy Madrid was still missing.  She had been kidnapped two days ago from her school bus stop, less than twenty-five yards from her house.  The MO was too similar to Jeff Caldwell’s previous abductions to be a coincidence.  He had to have taken her and if so, it meant she was still alive somewhere.  I had followed the story for the last two days waiting for the announcement that Amy was found.  The announcement never came.

Houston PD had Jeff Caldwell for thirty-six hours. By now the cops had scoured his house, questioned his family, his friends, and his co-workers, and poured over his cell phone records.  They interrogated him for hours. Caldwell refused to talk.

He would talk today.

“If you do this once, people will expect you to do it again,” Augustine said.  “And when you won’t, they’ll be unhappy. This is why Primes don’t engage.  We’re only people. We can’t be everywhere at once. If an aquakinetic puts out one fire, the next time something goes ablaze and he fails to be there, the public will turn on him.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I don’t think you do.  You’re hiding your talent precisely to avoid this kind of scrutiny.”

I hid my talent because truthseekers like me were extremely rare.  If I walked into the police station and wrenched the truth from Jeff Caldwell, a couple of hours later I would get visitors from the military, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, private Houses, and anyone else who had the need of a one hundred percent accurate interrogator.  They would destroy my life.  I loved my life. I ran Baylor Detective Agency, a small, family-owned investigative firm, I took care of my two sisters and two cousins, and I had no plans to change any of it.  What I did wasn’t admissible in court. If I took any of those people up on their offer, I wouldn’t be in the courtroom testifying in a nice suit.  I’d be at some black site facing a guy tied to a chair and beaten to within an inch of his life, with a bag over his head.  People would live or die on my word. It would be dark and dirty, and I would do almost anything to avoid that. Almost.

“I’ve taken every precaution,” Augustine said, “but despite my best efforts and your… outfit, the chance you will be discovered exists.”

I could see my own reflection in the glass.  I wore a green hooded cape that hid me from top to bottom, black gloves, and a ski mask under the hood.  The cape and the gloves came courtesy of Alley Theater production and belonged to Lady in Green, Scottish Highwaywoman and Heroine of the Highlands.  According to Augustine, the outfit was so unusual, people would concentrate on it and nobody would remember the details of my voice, my height, or any other details.

“I know we’ve had our differences,” Augustine started. “But I wouldn’t advise you to act against your self-interest.”

I waited for the familiar mosquito buzz of magic telling me he lied.  None came. For whatever reason, Augustine was doing his best to talk me out of an arrangement that directly benefited him, and he was sincere about it.

“Augustine, if one of my sisters was kidnapped, I would do anything to get her back.  Right now a little girl is dying of hunger and thirst somewhere.  I can’t stand by and let it happen.  I just can’t.  We had a deal.”

Augustine Montgomery, head of House Montgomery and owner of Montgomery International Investigations, held the mortgage on our family business.  He couldn’t force me to take clients, but he called my cell earlier this morning, just as I was walking to the police station about to destroy my life.  He had a client who specifically requested my services.  I promised to hear the client out if he arranged for me to have an anonymous shot at Jeff Caldwell. Except now he seemed to be having second thoughts.

I turned and looked at Augustine. An illusion Prime, he could alter his appearance with a thought.  Today his face wasn’t just handsome; it was perfect in the way the greatest works of Renaissance were perfect.  His skin was flawless, his pale blond hair brushed with surgical precision, and his features had the kind of regal elegance and a cold air of detachment that begged to be immortalized on canvas or better yet, in marble.

“We had a deal,” I repeated.

Augustine sighed. “Very well.  Come with me.”

I followed him from the room to a wooden door.  He opened it.  I walked through into a small room with a two-way mirror in the far wall.

Jeff Caldwell raised his head and looked at me.  I searched his eyes and saw nothing. They were flat and devoid of all emotion. Behind him a two-way mirror hid observers.  Augustine assured me that only the police would be present.

The door closed behind me.

“What is this?” Caldwell asked.

My magic touched his mind. Ugh. Like sticking your hand into a bucket of slime.

“I did nothing wrong,” he said.

True.  He actually believed that. His eyes were still flat like those of a toad.

“Are you just going to stand there?  This is ridiculous.”

“Did you kidnap Amy Madrid?” I asked.

“No.”

My magic buzzed in my brain. Lie. You scumbag.

“Are you holding her somewhere?”

“No.”

Lie.

My magic snapped out and clamped him in its vise.  Jeff Caldwell went rigid.  His nostrils fluttered as his breathing sped up, racing in tune to his rising pulse. Finally, emotion flooded his eyes and that emotion was raw sharp terror.

I opened my mouth, letting the full power of my magic saturate my voice.  It came out low and inhuman.  “Tell me where she’s.”

CHAPTER ONE

Figuring out when people lied came naturally to me and required no effort.  Compelling someone to answer my questions was a whole different ball game.  Until a couple of months ago I didn’t even realize I had the power to do it.  Picking through Jeff Caldwell’s mind was like swimming through a sewer.  He fought me every step of the way, his will buckling in panic, threatening to shatter his own mind in self-defense.  The trick wasn’t getting the information; it was keeping his mind intact enough to stand trial.  I’ve got what I wanted anyway, and when I had exited  MII’s building, a caravan of cop cars had taken off down the Capitol Street, an urgent cacophony of sirens demanding right of way.

Jeff Caldwell had drained me down to nothing.  Driving was an effort. Somehow I made it through Houston’s notorious traffic, turned onto the road leading to our house, and almost blew through a stop sign.  It was a bad place too; delivery trucks had a nasty habit of rolling out this way as if other cars didn’t exist.

Nothing rolled out today.  I glanced down the access road anyway. A two-foot-high steel barrier bristling with thick six-inch-long spikes blocked the street.  Judging by the indentations in the pavement it could be lowered into the ground. If you added some blood and tattered cloth on the spikes, it would fit into any post-apocalyptic movie. The barrier wasn’t here a couple of days ago. The last time two trucks collided here must’ve resulted in some serious lawsuit.

I yawned and kept going.  Almost home.  Almost.  I pulled into the lot in front of our warehouse and parked my Mazda minivan between my mother’s blue Honda Element and Bern’s 2005 Ford Mustang.  My cousin’s ancient Civic had died a sad death a month ago, when the descendants of two magical families decided to have words in the college parking lot.  Their words involved trying to crush each other with five hundred pound decorative rocks from the landscaping display.  Unfortunately, their aim turned out to be crap and they survived.  Their families reimbursed us – and five other car owners – for the damages.  Now a gunmetal gray Mustang occupied the Civic’s former spot.

No charges were filed.  In our world, magic was the ultimate power.  If you had it, you suddenly found that many rules bent around you.

I dragged myself out of the car and punched the code into the security system.  The heavy duty door clicked, I swung it open, stepped inside, and shut it behind me.  The familiar office walls, plain beige carpet, and glass panels greeted me.

Home.

Today was over.  Finally.  I exhaled and took off my shoes.  I had stopped by a client’s office before dressing up as a Scottish Highwaywoman so I was still wearing one of my “we’re not poor” outfits.  I owned two expensive suits and two matching pairs of heels, and I wore the first when I went to see a client who might be impressed by appearances and the second when I came to collect the payment. The heels I had to put on today should’ve been banned as evil torture devices.

Someone knocked.

Maybe I imagined it.

Another knock.

I turned and checked the monitor.  A blond man stood in front of my door.  Short and compact, with a serious face and thoughtful blue eyes, he was in his late twenties.  A zipped up brown leather folder rested in his hands.  Cornelius Harrison, the second son of House Harrison.  A few months ago Augustine had strong-armed me into looking for Adam Pierce, a lunatic pyrokinetic with the highest magical pedigree.  Cornelius had been forced by his family to play the role of Adam’s “boyhood companion” and he had helped me in my investigation.

The Cornelius I remembered was clean-shaven and meticulously dressed.  This Cornelius was still well dressed, but his cheeks were rough with stubble and an unsettling shadow darkened his eyes, as if he had seen something that disturbed him to the very core and was still reeling from the impact.

A little girl stood next to him, carrying a small Sailor Moon backpack.  She had to be about three or four years old.  Her hair was dark and straight and her eyes pointed at an Asian heritage, but her features reminded me of Cornelius. Their expressions, solemn and serious, were completely identical.  I knew he had a daughter but I never met her.  A large Doberman pincher sat next to the child, as tall as she was.

What would a member of Houston’s magical elite want from me? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good. Baylor Detective Agency specialized in small-time investigations.  Contrary to the PI novels, gorgeous widows in search of their husband’s killer or billionaire bachelors with missing sisters rarely darkened my doorstep. Insurance fraud, cheating spouses, and background checks were our bread and butter.  Please don’t let this be a cheating spouse.  Those were always so difficult when children were involved.

I unlocked the door.  “Mr. Harrison.  How can I help you?”

“Good evening,” Cornelius said, his voice quiet. His gaze snagged on the shoes in my hand and moved on to my face. “I need your help.  Augustine said I could come by.”

Augustine… Oh.  So Cornelius was the client Montgomery wanted me to see.

“Come in, please.”

I let them in and shut the door.

“You must be Matilda.”  I smiled at the little girl.

She nodded.

“Is that your dog?”

She nodded again.

“What’s his name?”

“Bunny,” she said in a small voice.

Bunny looked at me with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for rattlesnakes.  Cornelius was an animal mage, a rare brand of magic, which meant Bunny wasn’t a dog. He was the equivalent of a loaded assault rifle pointed in my direction.

“He can smile,” Matilda offered.  “Smile, Bunny.”

Bunny showed me a forest of gleaming white fangs.  I fought an urge to step back.

“Is there a place Matilda can wait while we talk?” Cornelius asked.

“Of course.  This way, please.”

I opened the door to a conference room and flicked on the light.  Matilda took off her back pack, put it on the table, then climbed into the nearest chair.  She opened her bag and took out a tablet, a coloring book, and some markers.

Bunny took a spot by Matilda’s feet and gave me the evil eye.

“Would you like some juice?”  I opened the small refrigerator.  “I have apple and kiwi-strawberry.”

“Apple, please.”

I handed her a juice box.

“Thank you.”

There was something oddly adult about the way she held herself.  If this is what Cornelius was like when he was a child, Adam Pierce and his chaos must’ve driven him insane.  It was no wonder that he’d distanced himself from both Houses.

“Do you have many clients with children?” Cornelius asked.

“A few, but the juice boxes are mine.  I’m hiding them from my sisters.  This is the only place they won’t raid.  Let’s talk in my office.”

I led Cornelius across the hallway to my office and my head almost exploded.  A page from Bridal magazine was taped to my office glass door.  It showed a woman in a spectacular gown made with long white feathers.  Someone – probably Arabella – had cut out my head from some selfie and pasted it over the bride’s.  A big heart, drawn in a pink marker and sprinkled with glitter, decorated the bride’s dress.  Inside the heart someone had written N+R = LURVE.  Little pink hearts floated around my face.

Killer way to make the first impression. I wished I could fall through the floor.

Through the glass I could see another bridal photograph, this one embellished with glittering dollar signs, waiting on my desk. On the bride’s dress, big block letters written with Catalina’s painstaking precision, said, “Marry him, we need college money.”

I had to murder my sisters.  There just wasn’t any way around it.  No jury on this Earth would convict me.  I could represent myself and I would still win.

I pulled the photograph off the glass and swung my office door open.  “Please.”

Cornelius settled into one of my two client’s chairs.  I grabbed the second photograph off the desk, crumpled both, and threw them in the trash.

“Are you getting married?” Cornelius asked.

“No.”

R stood for Rogan.  Connor Rogan, except nobody called him that.  They called him Mad Rogan, the Scourge of Mexico, the Butcher of Merida, the man who nearly leveled downtown Houston trying to save the rest of the city. Mad Rogan and the rest of humanity were never on a first name basis.  He cut buildings in  half,  threw buses like they were baseballs, and when he and I were done with Adam Pierce, he offered me to become his… mistress would be the polite term.  It took all of my will to turn him down. Even now, when I thought about him, my pulse shot up.  Unfortunately, my grandma witnessed our parting fight and decided that sooner or later we would get hitched, a fact she shared with my two sisters and two cousins, and since three of them were under the age of seventeen, the teasing was relentless.

“Coffee? Tea?”

“No, thank you.”

If I closed my eyes, I could imagine Mad Rogan in my office.  I remembered the feel of his hands on my skin. I remembered his taste.  I slammed a mental door on that thought so hard, my whole skull rattled.  Rogan and I were over before we even had a chance to start.

“I ask only because my problem will be difficult and time-consuming, and if you have other obligations, I’ll make alternative arrangements.”

I took my seat, trying to remember everything I could about Cornelius.  He had distanced himself from his House and moved out of their territory to a very comfortable, but modest by the House’s standards, residence.  He was a stay at home Dad, while his wife worked somewhere, I had no idea where.   He detested the entire Pierce family.  That was pretty much it.

“Why don’t you tell me about your problem and I can tell you whether or not we’re equipped to handle your issue.”

“My wife was murdered on Monday night.”

Oh my God.  “I’m so sorry.”

Cornelius sank deeper into his chair.  His eyes turned ashen.  His words sat there between us, lead bricks on the table.

“How did it happen?”

“My wife is… was employed by House Forsberg.”

“Forsberg Investigative Services?”

“Yes.  She was one of the attorneys in their legal department.”

Private investigation was a small field and you got to know your competitors pretty quickly.  Full service juggernauts similar to Augustine’s MII were rare.  Most of us tended to specialize, and Matthias Forsberg’s firm concentrated on the prevention of corporate espionage, which meant they did bug sweeps, information security audits, and risk assessments.  The word on the street was that occasionally, if the check was big enough, they would change hats and engage in the very things they offered to protect you from.  Once in a while you’d hear rumors about possible legal action, but no cases had ever reached the public eye, which meant House Forsberg had a robust legal department.

“On Monday night my wife called at nine thirty to tell me she would be working late.” Cornelius’ voice lost all emotion.  “At eleven, she and three other lawyers from her department walked into Hotel Sha Sha. They came out in body bags. There is an established way to handle matters when someone dies in the service of your House.  When I approached House Forsberg on Tuesday, I was told that my wife’s death is a private matter, unconnected to her job.”

“What makes you think it was connected?”  Hotel Sha Sha was an expensive boutique hotel, located on Main Street.  It was small and private and just upscale enough to add glamor to a clandestine meeting without breaking the bank.  I’d tailed more than one cheating spouse there.

“I may not be a Prime, but I’m still a Significant and a member of a House.  When I ask for information, I get it.” Cornelius reached into the folder and handed me a piece of paper.  “Nari was shot twenty-two times.  Her body–” his voice caught “– her body was riddled with bullets.”

I scanned the ME report.  Nari Harrison’s body showed bullet wounds from left and right sides.  They had to have occurred simultaneously, because the trajectory of the projectiles would’ve changed once she fell.  Two of the gun wounds were in her forehead.  The ME noted that her face showed signs of gunfire stippling.  In the margins of the report someone had scrawled notes in a quick hand, as if writing something in hurry.  HK 4.6 x 30 mm.  Traces of HTSP.  Stippling, 12-18 inches.

I had this terrible feeling in my chest, as if a heavy cold ball somehow formed just under my heart and was growing larger and heavier by the second.  “Who made these notes?”

“The leading detective.  This is all he could give me and it took a lot to get that much.”

“Did he explain this to you?”

Cornelius shook his head.

The woman he loved was dead.  Now I would have to explain how she died.  He was sitting right in front of me, a living breathing human being.  His daughter was in the next room.

I took a deep breath to steady my voice.  He came to me for professional advice.  I had to give him my best opinion.

“Your wife was hit by armor-piercing rounds from Heckler & Koch MP7.  It’s a vicious weapon developed for the German Army and the counter terrorism division of German police and designed specifically to penetrate body armor.  It’s meant for military use.  The pattern of the bullet wounds indicates that your wife was in the center of two intersecting fields of fire.”

I took a mug with a little kitten on it and set it in the center of the desk, grabbed two pens, and lined them up diagonally in front of the mug, one pointing to the left, the other to the right.

“HTSP stands for High Tensile Strength Polyethylene. She was wearing a bullet proof vest.”

“That makes no sense.” Cornelius stared at me.  “She had a bulletproof vest, but she died anyway.”

“Yes.  In fiction, bulletproof vests stop everything.  In reality, bulletproof vests are only bullet resistant.  They come in different levels of protection.  Your wife was likely wearing a bullet vest rated up to Level III, which means it would have stopped a single round from a handgun.  Even then, being shot in a bullet proof vest feels like taking a hammer to the body.  The force of the impact could break your ribs.  In this case, your wife was shot multiple times by personal defense class military grade firearms from the angles that would render a bullet proof vest least effective.  Death was instant.”  At least I could offer him that.

He didn’t seem to draw any comfort from it.

I had to keep going.  I started this, I had to finish.  “The gunpowder stippling occurs when someone is shot at a close range and gunshot residue is deposited on the victim’s skin.  This includes gunpowder burns, soot, and pitting and tearing of the top layers of the skin, if the gun discharged close enough.”

He clenched his right fist.  The knuckles of his hands went completely white.  He was probably picturing Nari’s face in his head.

“According to this report, after your wife was already dead and prone on the ground, someone pumped two bullets into her forehead.  The lead detective estimated the range to be between a foot and a foot and a half.” Just about right for someone holding a Heckler & Koch straight down.

“Why?  She was already dead.”

“Because the people who did this were well trained and thorough.  If we get reports on the other three lawyers, it’s highly probable they were also shot in the head.  A group of people ambushed your wife and her colleagues, killed them with military precision, and then lingered long enough to walk through the scene and put two bullets in the heads of those present to ensure there were no survivors.  They did this in the middle of Houston, they made no effort to be subtle about it, and they got away clean.  This wasn’t just a professional hit.  This was a message.”

“We’re stronger than you are.  We can do this any time anywhere to any of your people,” Cornelius said quietly.

“Exactly.”

He understood the House politics better than I.  He had a front row seat to them most of his life.

“Mr. Harrison, you came to me for my opinion.  Based on what you told me, I believe House Forsberg is involved.  We don’t know if your wife…”

“Nari,” he said.  “Her name is Nari.”

“We don’t know if Nari acted in the interests of the House or against them.  We do know that House Forsberg is pretending that nothing happened, which either means they are the guilty party and they punished their people for their betrayal, or they got the message and it scared them.  My recommendation to you is to walk away.”

All of the muscles in Cornelius’ face were clenched so hard, his skin looked too tight. “That’s not an option for me.”

He wouldn’t survive this.  I had to talk him out of it.  I leaned forward.  “This is a war between Houses.  Last time we spoke, you told me you deliberately distanced yourself from yours.   You said that you loved your family, but they used you and you didn’t enjoy being used.”

“You have a good memory,” he said.

“Has that situation changed?  Will your House help you?”

“No.  Even if they were inclined to do so, their resources are limited.  House Harrison isn’t without means, but my family is reluctant to engage in combat, especially on my behalf.  I’m the youngest child and not a Prime.  I’m not necessary for the future of the House.  If it was my brother or sister, things might be different.”

He said it so matter of fact.  My family would do anything for me.  If I was trapped in a burning house, every single one of them, my knucklehead sisters and cousins included, would run in there trying to save me.  Cornelius’ wife was dead and his family would do nothing.  It was so unfair.

“It’s up to me,” he said.

I lowered my voice.  “You don’t have the resources to fight this war. Your daughter is sitting in the next room.  She already lost her mother.  Do you really want her to lose her father too?  You are the only parent she has left.  What will happen to her if you die?  Who will take care of her?”

“I could have an aneurysm in the next ten seconds.  If that happens, Nari’s parents will raise Matilda.  My sister hasn’t seen my daughter since she was a year old.  My brother never met his niece.  Neither of them are married.  They wouldn’t be good caretakers.”

“Cornelius…”

“If you are planning on telling me that revenge doesn’t make one feel better…”

“It depends on the revenge,” I said.  “Punching Adam Pierce was one of the best moments of my life.  Every time I think about it, it makes me smile.  But revenge has a price.  My grandmother almost burned to death.  My oldest cousin nearly died in the collapse of Downtown.  I nearly died half a dozen times.  The price for this will be too high.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

His eyes had that steely cold look to them.  He wasn’t going to back down.

I leaned back.  “Very well.  But you’ll have to find someone else to help you with your suicide mission.”

“I would like your help,” he said.

“No.  I understand that you are determined to hang yourself, but I won’t be holding the rope for you.  Not only that, but Baylor Detective Agency is a very small firm.  We specialize in low risk investigations.  I’m not qualified.”

He pointed at the ME’s report.  “You seem very qualified.”

“I know about guns, Mr. Harrison, because there is a long tradition of military service on my mother’s side of the family.  My mother and my grandmother are both veterans.  It doesn’t mean I’m capable of taking on this investigation.  Hire someone else.”

“Who?”

“Augustine.”

“I’ve already spoken with Augustine.  He did me the courtesy of being candid.  With the amount of money at my disposal, I can’t afford a full investigation.  My money will buy me some surveillance and the due diligence of his people, but it’s not really lucrative enough for him to throw the full power of his team behind it.  Even if he does so, House Forsberg is very well prepared for any traditional level of scrutiny. This means a drawn-out expensive investigation and I would run out of money before we obtained any results.  According to Augustine, you’re capable of non-traditional scrutiny.  He said that you were able, professional, and honest and that you had good instincts when it came to people.”

Thanks, Augustine. “No.”

“My finances aren’t enough for MII but they allow me to make a very attractive proposal to a smaller firm.”

“The answer is no.”

“I mortgaged our house.”

I put my hand over my eyes.

“I can pay you a million today.  Another million when you explain to me why my wife was murdered and who was responsible.”

Absolutely not. “Good-bye, Mr. Harrison.”

“My wife is dead.”  His voice shook with barely controlled emotion.  His eyes glistened. The knuckles of his fists turned white.  “She’s my light.  She found me in the darkest time of my life and she saw something in me…  She believed I could be a better man.  I didn’t deserve her or the happiness we had.  She loved me, Nevada.  She loved me so much, in spite of my faults, and I was the luckiest man alive because when I opened my eyes in the morning, I saw her next to me.  She had integrity.  She was kind and intelligent, and she tried her hardest to do the right thing so this world would be a better place for our child to grow up.  She didn’t deserve this.  She deserved to be happy.  She deserved a full and long life.  Nobody had the right to rob her of it.”

His face contorted with raw pain and grief.  I was trying so hard not to cry.

“I love her determination.  I love her spirit.  I’m proud to have been her husband.  And now she’s dead.  Someone took this wonderful, this truly beautiful human being and turned her into a corpse. I saw her on the morgue table.  She’s just… cold and lifeless as if she never was.  Everything is gone except for our daughter and my memories.  I have to strive to be the man she thought I was.  When my daughter grows up, she’ll ask me why her mother was murdered and I’ll have to answer her.  I have to account for my actions.  I want to tell her that I found those responsible and I made sure they wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”

He brushed moisture from his eyes with a furious swipe of his hand.  “Nobody else will do this.  Her family doesn’t have the means, my family doesn’t care, and her employer might have murdered her.  There is only me.  Will you help me?  Please.”

He fell silent  He was sitting here asking for my help and I couldn’t throw him out of my office.  I just couldn’t.  If it was someone I loved, I would do the same.

AI reached into the top drawer of my desk and took out the blue new client folder. I opened it so it faced him, placed it on the table, and wrote $50,000 in the margins on the front.  “This is my retainer.  This stays with the agency no matter what happens.  It’s non-negotiable.”  I used my pen to circle the bottom number on the right side.  “These are our rates.  This job is likely to be high risk, so the top rate right here will apply.  As you can see, it’s a daily and not hourly rate.  Depending on the situation, I may have to charge you hazard pay or additional expenses.  The retainer acts like a deductible.  Once the amount billed to you exceeds it, you will make additional payments in installments of $10,000.  After we’re done here, you may want to go to the bank and withdraw at least $20,000 in cash.  We may have to bribe people…”

“Thank you.”

“This is a bad idea.  Please reconsider.”

He shook his head. “No.”

I walked him through the privacy policy and had him sign all of wavers.  “What happens once we find whoever is responsible?”

“I’ll take care of things from there.”

“Meaning you’ll kill your wife’s murderer.”

“It’s the way Houses handle things,” Cornelius said.

“Well, I’m not a House.  I’m a person with a family, and I respect and try to obey the laws of this country.  I won’t hesitate to defend you or myself, but I won’t condone murder.”

“Understood,” Cornelius said.  “How do we start?”

“I need to be able to speak to Matthias Forsberg.  I need face to face time, so I can ask him some questions.  I can make the necessary calls tomorrow, but he’ll refuse to see me.”

“You don’t have the social status and you work for his competitor.”  Cornelius nodded.  “Matthias is an active participant in the Assembly.  He never misses a session.  Tomorrow happens to be December 15th.  The session starts at 9:00 am.”

“I don’t have admission to the Assembly.”  The Assembly was an unofficial executive body that governed the magic users at state and national levels.  The Texas State Assembly met in Houston.  A family had to have at least two Prime caliber magic users in three generations to be considered a House and each House had a single seat.  Technically the Assembly had no power within the US government, but practically when the Houses spoke in one collective voice, both the Congress and the White House listened.

“A family name has to be good for something, right?” Cornelius smiled.  It never reached his eyes.  They stayed bitter and haunted.  “As a Significant and a scion of a House I’m free to attend the Assembly and bring a companion of my choice.  I intend to be an active participant in this investigation, Ms. Baylor.”

“Call me Nevada,” I told him.  “Good.  Then we’ll meet here tomorrow at seven.”

More>>

from http://www.ilona-andrews.com/snippet-white-hot/

"Magic Binds" (Kate Daniels #9) by Ilona Andrews - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The skull glared at me out of empty eye sockets.  Odd runes marked its forehead, carved into the yellowed bone and filled with black ink.  Its thick bottom jaw supported a row of conical fangs, long and sharp like the teeth of a crocodile.  The skull sat on top of an old STOP sign.  Someone had painted the surface of the hexagon white and written KEEP OUT across it in large jagged letters.  A reddish-brown splatter stained the bottom edge, looking suspiciously like dry blood. I leaned closer.  Yep, blood. Some hair, too. Human hair.

Curran frowned at the sign.  “Do you think he’s trying to tell us something?”

“I don’t know.  He’s being so subtle about it.”

I looked past the sign.  About a hundred yards back, a large two story house waited.  It was clearly built post-Shift, out of solid timber and brown stone laid by hand to ensure it would survive the magic waves. But instead of the usual simple square or rectangular box of most post-Shift buildings, this house had all the pre-Shift bells and whistles of a modern prairie home: rows of big windows, sweeping horizontal lines, and a spacious layout.  Except prairie style homes usually had long flat roofs and little ornamentation, while this place sported pitched roofs with elaborate carved gables, beautiful barge boards, and ornate wooden windows.

“It’s like someone took a Russian log cabin and a pre-Shift contemporary house, stuck them into a blender, and dumped it over there.”

Curran frowned. “It’s his… what do you call it?  Terem.”

“A terem is where Russian princesses lived.”

“Exactly.”

Between us and the house lay a field of black dirt.  It looked soft and powdery, like potting soil or a freshly plowed field.  A path of rickety old boards, half rotten and splitting, curved through the dirt to the front door.  I didn’t have a good feeling about that dirt.

We’d tried to circle the house and ran into a thick thorn-studded natural fence, formed by wild rose bushes, blackberry brambles, and trees.  The fence was twelve feet tall and when Curran tried to jump high enough to see over it, the thorny vines snapped out like lassos and made a heroic effort to pull him in.  After I helped him pick the needles out of his hands, we decided a frontal assault was the better option.

“No animal tracks on the dirt,” I said.

“No animal scents either,” Curran said.  “There are scent trails all around us through the woods, but none here.”

“That’s why he has giant windows and no grates on them.  Nothing can get close to the house.”

“It’s that, or he just doesn’t care.  Why the hell doesn’t he answer his phone?”

Who knew why the priest of the god of All Evil and Darkness did anything?

I picked up a small rock, tossed it into the dirt, and braced myself.  Nothing.  No toothy jaws exploded through the soil, no magic fire, no earth-shattering kaboom.  The rock just sat there.

We could come back later, when the magic was down.  That would be the sensible thing to do.  However, we had driven ten miles through lousy traffic in the punishing heat of Georgia’s summer and then hiked another mile through the woods to get here, and our deadline was fast approaching.  One way or another, I was getting into that house.

I put my foot onto the first board.  It sank a little under my weight, but held.  Step.  Another step.  Still holding.

I tiptoed across the boards, Curran right behind me.  Think sneaky thoughts.

The dirt shivered.

Two more steps.

A mound formed to the left of us, the dirt shifting like waves of some jet-black sea.

Uh-oh.

“To the left,” I murmured.

“I see it.”

Long serpentine bone spines slid through the soil, the fins of a sea serpent gliding just under the surface of a midnight-black powdery ocean.

We sprinted to the door.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cloud of loose soil burst to the left.  A scorpion the size of a pony shot out and scrambled after us.

That’s all we needed.  If we killed his pet scorpion, we would never hear the end of it.

I ran up the porch and pounded on the door. “Roman!”

Behind me bone tentacles exploded from the soil and wound about Curran’s body.  He locked his hands on the bones and strained, pulling them apart.  Bone crunched, and the left tentacle flailed, torn.

“Roman!”  Damn it all to hell.

A bone tentacle grabbed me and yanked me back and up, dangling me six feet off the ground.  The scorpion dashed forward, its barb poised for the kill.

The door swung open, revealing Roman.  He wore a T-shirt and plaid pajamas and his dark hair, shaved on the sides into a long horse-like mane, stuck out on the left side of his head.  He looked like he’d been sleeping.

“What’s all this?”

Everything stopped.

Roman squinted at me.  “What are you guys doing here?”

“We had to come here because you don’t answer your damn phone.” Curran’s voice had that icy quality that said his patience was at an end.

“I didn’t answer it because I unplugged it.”

Roman waved his hand.  The scorpion retreated.  The tentacles gently set me down and slithered back into the ground.

“You would unplug yours too, if you were related to my family. My parents are fighting again and they’re trying to make me choose sides.  I told them they could talk to me when they start acting like responsible adults.”

Fat chance of that.  Roman’s father Grigorii was the head black volhv in the city.  His mother Evdokia was one third of the Witch Oracle.  When they had fights, things didn’t boil over, they exploded.  Literally.

“So far I’ve avoided both of them, so I’m enjoying peace and quiet. Come in.”

He held the door open.  I walked past him into a large living room.  Golden wooden floors, huge fire place, thirty foot ceilings, and soft furniture.  Book shelves lined the far wall, crammed to the brink.  The place looked downright cozy.

Curran walked in behind me and took in the living room.  His thick eyebrows rose.

“What?” Roman asked.

“No altar?” Curran asked.  “No bloody knives and frightened virgins?”

“No sacrificial pit ringed with skulls?” I asked.“Ha. Ha.” Roman rolled his eyes.  “Never heard that one before.  I keep the virgins chained up in the basement.  Do you want some coffee?”

I shook my head.

“Yes,” Curran said.

“Black?”

“No, put cream in it.”

“Good man.  Only two kinds of people drink their coffee black: cops and serial killers. Sit, sit.”

I sat on the sofa and almost sank into it.  I’d need help getting up.  Curran sprawled next to me.

“This is nice,” he said.

“Mhm.”

“We should get one for the living room.”

“We’d get blood on it.”

Curran shrugged.  “So?”

Roman appeared with two mugs, one pitch-black and the other clearly half-filled with cream.  He gave the lighter mug to Curran.

“Drinking yours black, I see,” I told him.

He shrugged.  “Eh…  Goes with the job.  So what can I do for you?”

“We’re getting married,” I said.

“I know.  Congratulations.  On Ivan Kupala night. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s brave.”

Ivan Kupala’s night was the time of wild magic in Slavic folklore.  The ancient Russians believed that on that date the boundaries between the worlds blurred.  In our case, it meant a really strong magic wave.  Odd things happened on Ivan Kupala’s night.  Given a choice, I would’ve picked a different day, but Curran had set the date.  To him it was the last day of werewolf summer, a shapeshifter holiday and a perfect day for our wedding. I told him I would marry him, and if he wanted to get married on Ivan Kupala night, then we’d get married on Ivan Kupala night.  After moving the date a dozen times, that was the least I could do.

“So did you come to invite me?” Roman asked.

“Yes,” Curran said.  “We’d like you to officiate.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We’d like you to marry us,” I said.

Roman’s eyes went wide.  He pointed to himself. “Me?”

“Yes,” Curran said.

“Marry you?”

“Yes.”

“You do know what I do, right?”

“Yes,” I said.  “You’re Chernobog’s priest.”

“Chernobog” literally meant Black God, who was also known by other fun names like Black Serpent, Lord of Darkness, God of freezing cold, destruction, evil, and death.  Some ancient Slavs divided their pantheon into opposing forces of light and dark.  These forces existed in a balance, and according to that view, Chernobog was a necessary evil.  Somebody had to be his priest and Roman had ended up with the job.  According to him, it was the family business.

Roman leaned forward, his dark eyes intense.  “You sure about this?”

“Yes,” Curran said.

“Not going to change your mind?”

What was it with the twenty questions?  “Will you do it or not?”

“Of course, I’ll do it.” Roman jumped off the couch. “Ha!  Nobody ever asks me to marry them. They always go to Nikolai, my cousin—Vasiliy’s oldest son.”

Roman had a vast family tree, but I remembered Vasiliy, his uncle.  Vasiliy was a priest of Belobog, Chernobog’s brother and exact opposite.  He was also very proud of his children, especially Nikolai, and bragged about them every chance he got.

Roman ducked behind the couch and emerged with a phone.

“When some supernatural filth tries to carry off the children, call Roman so he can wade through blood and sewage to rescue them, but when it’s something nice like a wedding or a naming, oh no, we can’t have Chernobog’s volhv involved.  It’s bad luck. Get Nikolai. When he finds out who I’m going to marry, he’ll have an aneurysm. His head will explode.  Good that he’s a doctor, maybe he can treat himself.”

He plugged the phone into the outlet.

It rang.

Roman stared at it as if it were a viper.

The phone rang again.

He unplugged it.  “There.”

“It can’t be that bad,” I told him.

“Oh it’s bad.”  Roman nodded.  “My Dad refused to help my second sister buy a house, because he doesn’t like her boyfriend.  My Mother called him and it went badly. She cursed him.  Every time he urinates, the stream arches up and over.”

Oh.

Curran winced.

“You hungry? Do you want something to eat?” Roman wagged his eyebrows.  “I have smoked brisket.”

Curran’s eyes lit up.  “Moist or dry?”

“Moist. What am I, a heathen?”

Technically, he was a heathen.

“We can’t,” I told him. “We have to leave.  We have Conclave tonight.”

Curran grimaced.

“I didn’t know you still go to that,” Roman said.

“Ghastek outed her,” Curran said.

The Conclave began as a monthly meeting between the People and the Pack.  As the two largest supernatural factions in the city, they often came into conflict and at some point it was decided that talking and resolving small problems was preferable to being on the brink of a bloodbath every five minutes.  Over the years, the Conclave evolved into a meeting where the powerful of Atlanta came together to discuss business.  We had attended plenty of Conclaves when Curran was Beastlord, but once he retired, I thought our tortures were over.  Yeah, not so fast.

“Back in March Roland’s crews started harassing the teamsters,” I said.

“In the city?” Roman raised his eyebrows.

“No.”  I had claimed the city of Atlanta to save it from my father, assuming responsibility for it. My father and I existed in a state of uneasy peace, and so far he hadn’t openly breached it. “They would do it five, six miles outside of the land I claimed. The teamsters would be driving their wagons or trucks, and suddenly there would be twenty armed people blocking the road and asking them where they were going and why.  It made the union nervous, so a teamster rep came to the Conclave and asked what anyone would be doing about that.”

“Why not just go to the Order?” Roman said.  “That’s what they do.”

“The Order and the union couldn’t come to an agreement,” Curran said.

The Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid offered that aid under some conditions, not the least of which was that once they took a job, they finished it on their terms and their clients didn’t always like the outcome.

“So the teamster rep asked the People point blank to stop harassing their convoys,” Curran said, “And Ghastek told him that Kate was the only person capable of making it happen.”

“Did you?”

“I did,” I said. “And now I have to go to the Conclave meetings.”

“I’m there as a supportive spouse-to-be.”  Curran grinned, flashing white teeth.

“So why did your father mess with the convoys?” Roland asked.

“No reason.  He does it to aggravate me.  He’s an immortal wizard with a megalomaniac complex.  He doesn’t understand words like no and boundaries.  It bugs him that I have this land.  He just can’t let it go, so he sits on my border and pokes it.  He tried to build a tower on the edge of Atlanta.  I made him move it, so now he’s building himself ‘a small residence’ about five miles out.”

“How small?” Roman asked.

“About thirty thousand square feet,” Curran said.

Roman whistled, then knocked on the wooden table and spat over his shoulder three times.

Curran looked at me.

“Whistling in the house is bad luck,” I explained.

“You’ll whistle all your money away,” Roman said.  “Thirty thousand square feet, huh?”

“Give or take. He keeps screwing with her,” Curran said.  “His construction crews obstruct the Pack hunting grounds outside Atlanta.  His soldiers nag the small settlements outside, trying to get people to sell their land to him.”

My father was slowly driving me insane.  He’d cross into my territory when the magic was up, so I would feel his presence, then leave before I could get there to bust him. The first few times he had done it, I rode out, dreading a war, but there was never anyone to fight. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night because I’d feel him enter my land, and then I’d lay there gritting my teeth and fighting with myself to keep from grabbing my sword and running out of the house to hunt him down.

“Don’t forget the monsters,” I said.  “They keep spawning just outside and then raid Atlanta.”

“Most of the time we can’t tie it back to him,” Curran said. “When we can, she calls him on it.  He apologizes and makes generous reparations.”

“And then we all somehow end up eating in some seafood joint, where he orders the whole menu and the waiters serve us glassy-eyed,” I said.

Curran finished his coffee in one gulp. “Last week a flock of harpies attacked Druid Hills.  It took the Guild six hours to put them down. One merc ended up in the hospital with some kind of acute magical rabies.”

“Well, at least it’s rabies,” Roman said.  “They carry leprosy, too.”

“I called Roland about it,” I said. “He said ‘Who knows why harpies do anything, Blossom?’  And then he told me he had two tickets to see Aisha sing and one of them had my name on it.”

“Parents,” Roman heaved a sigh.  “Can’t live with them.  Can’t get away from them.  When you try to move, they buy a house in your new neighborhood.”

“That’s one thing about having both of your parents murdered,” Curran said. “I don’t have parent problems.”

Roman and I looked at him.

“We really do have to go,” I said.

“Thanks for the coffee.” Curran put his empty mug on the table.

“No trouble,” Roman said.  “I’ll get started on this wedding thing.”

“We really appreciate it,” I said.

“Oh no, no.  My pleasure.”

We got up, walked to the door, and I swung it open.  A black raven flew past me and landed on the back of the couch.

Roman slapped his hand over his face.

“There you are,” the raven said in Evdokia’s voice.  “Ungrateful son.”

“Here we go…” Roman muttered.

“Eighteen hours in labor and that’s what I get. He can’t even pick up the phone to talk to his own mother.”

“Mother, can’t you see I have people here?”

“I bet if their mothers called them, they would pick up.”

That would be a neat trick for both of us.  Sadly, dead mothers didn’t come back to life, even in post-Shift Atlanta.

“Nice to see you, Roman.” I grabbed Curran by the hand.

The bird swiveled toward me.  “Katya!”

Oh no.

“Don’t you leave.  I need to talk to you.”

“Got to go, bye!”

I jumped out of the house.  Curran was only half a second behind me and he slapped the door closed.  I sped down the wooden path before Evdokia decided to track me down.

“Are you actually running away from Evdokia?”

“Yes, I am.” The witches weren’t exactly pleased with me.  They had trusted me to protect Atlanta and its covens and I had claimed the city instead.

“Maybe we could skip the Conclave tonight,” Curran said.

“We can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s Mahon’s turn to attend.”

The Bear of Atlanta was brave and powerful and the closest thing to a father Curran had.  He also had an uncanny ability to alienate everyone in the room and then have to defend himself when a brawl broke out. He took self-defense seriously.  Sometimes there was no building left standing when he was done.

“Jim will be there,” Curran said.

“Nope.” The Pack rotated Conclave duty between the alphas, so if something happened at the Conclave, the leadership of the Pack as a whole wouldn’t be wiped out.  “Jim was at the last one.  You would know this if you hadn’t skipped it to go fight that thing in the sewers.  It will be Raphael and Andrea, Desandra, and your father.  Unsupervised.”

Curran swore.  “What the hell is Jim thinking with that line up?”

“Serves you right for pretending you don’t have parent problems.”

He growled something under his breath.

Mahon and I didn’t always see eye to eye.  He’d thought I was the reason Curran left the Pack and told me so, but now he’d come to terms with it.  We both loved Curran so we had to deal with each other and we made the best of it.  Although lately Mahon has been nice to me.  It was probably a trap.

“We make it through the Conclave and then we can go home, drink coffee, and eat the apple pie I made last night,” I said.  “It will be glorious.”

He put his arm around me. “It’s a dinner.”

“Don’t say it.”

“How…”

“I mean it! I want a nice quiet night.”

“… bad could it be?”

“Now you ruined it.  If a burning giant busts through a window while we’re at Conclave and tries to squish people, I will so punch you in the arm.”

He laughed and we jogged down the winding forest path to our car.

#

Bernard’s was always full but never crowded.  Housed in a massive English style mansion in the affluent northern neighborhood, Bernard’s restaurant was one of those places where you had to make a reservation two weeks in advance, minimum.  The food was beautiful and expensive, the portions tiny—and the patrons were the real draw.  Men in thousand dollar suits and women in glittering dresses with shiny rocks on their necks and wrists mingled and had polite conversation in hushed voices, while sipping wine and expensive liquor.

Curran and I walked into Bernard’s in our work clothes: worn jeans, T-shirts, and boots.  I would’ve preferred my sword, too, but Bernard’s had a strict no weapons policy so Sarrat had to wait in the car.

People stared as we walked to the conference room.  People always stared.  Whispers floated.

“Is that her?”

“She doesn’t look like …”

Ugh.

Curran turned toward the sound, his eyes iced over, his expression flat.  The whispers died.

We entered the conference room, where a single long table had been set.  The Pack was already there.  Mahon sat in the center, Raphael on his right, Desandra two seats down on his left.  Mahon saw us and grinned, stroking his black beard, shot through with silver.  When you saw the Bear of Atlanta, one word immediately sprang to mind: big. Tall, with massive shoulders, barrel chested and broad but not fat, Mahon telegraphed strength and raw physical power.  While Curran held the coiled promise of explosive violence, Mahon looked like if the roof suddenly caved in, he would catch it, grunt, and hold it up.

Next to him, Raphael couldn’t be more different.  Lean, tall, and dark, with piercing blue eyes, the alpha of the Bouda Clan wasn’t traditionally handsome, but there was something about his face that made women obsess.  They looked at him and thought of sex. Then they looked at his better half and decided that he wasn’t worth dying over.  Especially lately, because Andrea was nine months pregnant and communicating mostly in snarls.  And she wasn’t at the table.

Desandra, beautiful, blonde, and built like a female prize fighter, poked at some painstaking arrangement of flowers and sliced meats on her plate, saluted us with a fork, and went back to poking.

Curran sat next to Mahon.  I took the chair between him and Desandra and leaned forward, so I could see Raphael.  “Where is Andrea?”

“In the Keep,” he said. “Doolittle wants to keep an eye on her.”

“Is everything okay?”  She was due any day.

“It’s fine,” Raphael said. “Doolittle is just hovering.”

And the Pack’s medmage was probably the only one who could force Andrea to comply.

“Boy.” Mahon clapped his hand on Curran’s shoulder. His whole face was glowing. Curran grinned back. It almost made the Conclave worth it.

“Old man,” Curran said.

“You’re looking thinner.  Trimming down for the wedding? Or she not feeding you enough?”

“He eats what he kills,” I said. “I can’t help it that he’s a lousy hunter.”

Mahon chuckled.

“I’ve been busy,” Curran said.  “The Guild takes a lot of work.  Outside of the Keep, it’s not all feasts and honey muffins.  You should try it sometime.  You’re getting a gut and winter isn’t coming for six months.”

“Oh,” Mahon turned, rummaged in the bag he hung on the chair, and pulled out a large rectangular Tupperware container. “Martha sent these for you since you never come to the house.”

Curran popped the lid off.  Six perfect golden muffins.  The aroma of honey and vanilla floated around the table.  Desandra came to life like a winter wolf who heard a bunny nearby.

Curran took one muffin, passed it to me, and bit into a second one.  “We came to your house just last week.”

“I was out on clan business.  That doesn’t count.”

I bit into the muffin and, for the five seconds it took me to chew, went to heaven.

The People filed into the room.  Ghastek was in the lead, tall, painfully thin and made even thinner by the dark suit he wore. Rowena walked next to him, shockingly stunning as always.  Today she wore a whiskey-colored cocktail dress that hugged her generous breasts and hips, while accentuating her narrow waist.  Her waterfall of red hair was plaited into a very wide braid and twisted into a knot on the side.  I wouldn’t even know how to start that hairdo.

I missed my long hair. It was just past my shoulders now and there wasn’t much I could do with it, besides letting it loose or pulling it back into a pony tail.

Curran leaned toward me.  “Why didn’t those two ever get together?”

“I have no idea.  Maybe they did and we just don’t know?”

“No, I had him under surveillance for years. He never came out of her house and she never came out of his.”

The People took the seats across from us.

“Any pressing business?” Ghastek asked.

Mahon pulled out a piece of lined paper.

Half an hour later both the People and the Pack ran out of things to discuss. Nothing major had happened and the budding dispute over a real estate office on the border between the Pack and the People was quickly resolved.

Wine was served, followed by elaborate desserts that had absolutely nothing on Martha’s honey muffins.  It was actually kind of nice, just sitting there, sipping the sweet wine.  I never thought I would miss the Pack, but I did, a little.  I missed the big meals and the closeness.

“Congratulations on the upcoming wedding,” Ghastek said.

“Thank you,” I said.

Technically, Ghastek and the entire Atlanta office of the People belonged to my father and he had been quietly reinforcing them.  Two new Masters of the Dead had been assigned to Ghastek, bringing the total count of the Masters of the Dead to eight.  Several new journeymen had joined the Casino as well.  I made it a habit to drive by it once in a while and every time I did, I felt more vampires within the white textured walls of the palace than I did before.  Ghastek was a dagger poised at my back.  So far that dagger remained sheathed and perfectly cordial, but I never forgot where his allegiance lay.

“Ghastek, why haven’t you married?” I asked.

He gave me a thin-lipped smile.  “Because if I were to get married, I would want to have a family.  To me, marriage means children.”

“So what’s the problem? Shooting blanks?” Desandra asked.

Kill me.

“No,” Ghastek told her.  “In case you haven’t noticed, this city is under siege.  It would be irresponsible to bring a child into the world when you can’t keep him or her safe.”

“So move,” Desandra said.

“There is no place on this planet that is safe from her father,” Rowena said.  “As long as he lives…”

Ghastek put his long fingers on her hand.  Rowena caught herself.  “…as long as he lives, we serve at his pleasure.  Our lives are not our own.”

Nick Feldman walked through the door.  The Order of Merciful Aid typically didn’t attend the Conclave.  Not good.  Not good at all.

“Here comes the Knight-Protector,” Raphael warned quietly.

Everyone looked at Nick. He stopped by the table.  When I first met Nick, he’d looked like a filthy bum.  When I saw him again, he was working undercover for Hugh d’Ambray, my father’s warlord, and he’d looked like one of Hugh’s inner circle: hard, fast, without any weakness, like a weapon honed to unbreakable toughness.  Now he was somewhere in between.  Still without weakness, short light brown hair, lead eyes, and a kind of quiet menace that set me on edge.

Nick hated me.  His father had been in love with my mother, and that love broke the marriage of Nick’s parents.  That wasn’t the main reason for his hatred, although it helped.  Nick detested me because he got close and personal with my father.  He’d seen with his own eyes how Roland operated and he thought I would turn out the same way.  I was happy to disappoint him.

“Enjoying dinner like one big happy family?” he said.

“The Knight-Protector honors us with his presence,” Rowena said.

“Hey handsome,” Desandra winked at him.  “Remember me?”

They had gotten into it before and nearly killed each other.  Nick didn’t look at her, but a small muscle in the corner of his left eye jerked.  He remembered, alright.

“What can we do for you?” Curran asked.

“For me, nothing.”  Nick was looking at me.

“Just spit it out,” I told him.

He tossed a handful of pieces of paper on the table.  They spread out as they fell.  Photographs.  My father’s stone “residence.”  Soldiers in black dragging a large body between them toward the gates, nude from the waist up, purple and red bruises covering the snow-white skin.  A black bag hid the head.  Another shot, showing the person’s legs, the feet mangled like hamburger meat.  Whoever it was, he or she were too large to be a normal human.

Raphael picked up a photograph next to him and carefully placed it in front of me.

The hood was off.  A scraggly mane of bluish hair hung down around the prisoner’s shoulders.  His face was raw, but I still recognized it.  Saiman in his natural form.

My father had kidnapped Saiman.

Rage boiled inside me, instant and scalding hot.

I had tolerated all of my father’s bullshit, but kidnapping my people, this was going too far.

“When did this happen?” Curran asked, his voice calm.

“Yesterday evening.”

Saiman used to be my go-to expert for all things weird and magical, but the last time I tried to hire him, he told me that sooner or later my father would murder me and he wasn’t stupid enough to play for the losing team.  I knew Saiman was the center of his own Universe, but it still surprised me. I had saved him more than once.  I didn’t expect friendship – that was beyond him—but I had expected some loyalty.  One thing I knew for sure: Saiman would not work with my father.  Roland terrified him.  One hint of interest from him, and Saiman would run and never look back.

I wished I could reach across the distance and drop a burning space rock on my father’s house.

Nick was looking at me.  Some part of him must’ve enjoyed this.  He wasn’t smiling, but I saw it in his eyes.

I forced my voice to sound even.  “Is the Order taking the case?”

“No.  The Order must be petitioned, and no petition has been filed.”

“Shouldn’t this fall under the citizen in danger provision?” I asked.  “An agent of the Order took these pictures.  They saw that Saiman was in immediate danger, yet they did nothing.”

“We are doing something,” Nick said. “I’m notifying you.”

“Your compassion is staggering,” Ghastek said.

Nick turned his lead gaze to the Master of the Dead.  “Considering the involved citizen’s origins and his long and creative criminal record, his rescue is a low priority.  In fact, the city is safer without him in it.”

“Then why tell me at all?” I asked.

“Because I enjoy watching you and your father rip into each other like two feral cats thrown into the same bag.  If one of you kills the other, the world will be better off.”  Nick smiled.  “Give him hell, Sharrim.”

Mahon pounded his fist on the table.  The wood thudded like a drum.  “You will keep a civil tongue in your mouth when you speak to my daughter in law!”

“Your daughter in law is an abomination,” Nick told him.

Mahon surged up.  Raphael grabbed his right arm. Curran grabbed his left.

“That’s right, hold back the rabid bear,” Nick said. “This is why the world treats you like animals.”

I jumped onto the table, ran over to Mahon, and hugged him, adding my weight to Raphael’s.  “It’s okay.  He runs his mouth because he can’t do anything else.”

Nick turned around and walked out of the room.

Curran strained, flexing.  “Sit down, old man.  Sit down.”

Finally, Mahon dropped back into his seat.  “That fucking prick.”

Raphael collapsed into his chair.

I sat on the table between the plates.  Bernard’s manager would have a cow, but I didn’t care.  Holding Mahon back took everything I had.

Ghastek and Rowena stared at me.

“Did you know?” I asked.

Ghastek shook his head.  “They don’t notify us of what he does.”

“What are you going to do?” Desandra asked.

“We’ll have to go and get him,” I said.  I’d rather eat broken glass.

“The degenerate?” Raphael asked. “Why not just leave him be?”

“Because Roland can’t take people out of the city whenever he wants to,” Curran said.  His face was dark.  “And that asshole knew that when he brought the pictures.”

“You should’ve let me twist his head off,” Mahon said. “You can’t let people insult your wife, Curran. One day you’ll have to choose diplomacy or your spouse.  I’m telling you now, it’s got to be your wife.  Diplomacy doesn’t care if you live or die.  Your wife does.”

More>>

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

 from http://www.ilona-andrews.com/magic-binds-chapter-1-part-2/