Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  “All you ever have to say is that you need my help,” Sergeant Heart said. “Do you need me, Penelope?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Yes, Benjiro, I need you.”

  “Ah, you know my name. I’ll be there tomorrow at 20:00 hours. Can you hold until then?”

  “Yes,” Mom said.

  I quietly backed away and into my office. The little black dog scampered in and went straight to the loveseat in the corner.

  There was no way she could jump that high on her short little legs.

  The dog leaped onto the loveseat and started making circles on the folded blanket Arabella used when she hid in my office to nap.

  Well. I stood corrected.

  I gently shut the door, sat at my desk, and put my headphones on in case Mom noticed me when she left the conference room. What, you had a tender, almost intimate conversation with deadly and almost superhuman Sergeant Heart? No, I didn’t hear a thing. I had my headphones on the whole time.

  Sergeant Heart liked my mother. I wasn’t sure how she felt about that. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that either.

  I opened the Etterson file on my computer and stared at it. Making a list of everything I knew usually helped me, so I started a new file and wrote out my list.

  Sigourney Etterson was a poison Prime who amassed a fortune of almost ten million dollars in twelve years by unknown means.

  She knew her life was in danger.

  Someone killed her and possibly kidnapped her second daughter.

  Before she died, Sigourney visited Diatheke, Ltd., to withdraw two million dollars, in cash.

  Diatheke had no problem filling a bag with two million dollars in cash on the spot. Celia, who worked at Diatheke, didn’t find this odd.

  Celia described Sigourney as a “pro.” She also implied Sigourney had a secret account, and acted like getting killed was a known occupational hazard for pros.

  Benedict De Lacy, who is a screwed-up mental Prime, didn’t ask any of the usual questions most people ask when learning about the death of an acquaintance or a client. He didn’t show surprise or express condolences.

  Diatheke routinely employs a trained strike team of killers.

  Celia was a metamorphosis mage, probably at least a Significant, and she tried to murder me. I was her primary target.

  There was only one reasonable conclusion to all of this. Sigourney Etterson worked for Diatheke as an assassin. They either knew she was about to die, or they killed her. Other convoluted ways to interpret that list existed, but this was the simplest and most straightforward.

  Did Benedict have her murdered over the two million dollars? I had no doubt that Diatheke gave Sigourney her money. If they hadn’t, Celia would have told me. By the time Sigourney cashed out the account, she had already moved her will to her desktop, which meant the threat existed before she went to Diatheke. If they intended to kill her, why cash her out?

  I still had no idea what Diatheke actually did. Private security teams, like the one that almost killed me today, usually served prominent, wealthy Houses. On paper, Diatheke wasn’t associated with any House, but it sure was run like one, with a Prime at the top.

  A metamorphosis mage of Celia’s caliber required careful management. Arabella was a metamorphosis mage. There was no comparison between the two, because my sister was one of a kind, but similarities existed. For one, deploying Celia would’ve been a gamble every time. Very few metamorphosis mages retained the ability to reason while transformed. They were the magic equivalent of a directional antipersonnel mine. Point the right side toward the enemy and hope for the best. Diatheke would have to maintain a suppression team to neutralize her if she went off the rails.

  What kind of nasty shit was Diatheke involved in that they needed Celia on their team? There was a simple answer to that, and I didn’t like it.

  Bern had already done a search on Diatheke and came up with nothing out of the ordinary. That left Benedict De Lacy. Mental Primes with that sort of power didn’t just pop out of nowhere.

  Most of his furniture and artifacts dated between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, during the rise and peak of the Ottoman Empire, and came from that specific region, with the exception of some medieval European swords and French furniture. To acquire that collection took not only ridiculous wealth, but education. He had to have gone to college, probably an Ivy League university somewhere. I pictured his office in my mind. No, he didn’t have any diplomas framed on his wall.

  I logged into Herald and searched for Benedict De Lacy. Nothing.

  House De Lacy?

  Herald spat out two search results, one for some aquakinetics in Canada and the other for some harmonizers in New York. The aquakinetics imported bottled spring water, and the harmonizers, whose specialty was creating living spaces that evoked a particular feeling, owned an interior design firm. I checked both out of due diligence. Neither listed any Benedicts and none of the family members looked anything like Benedict.

  He was something though. I had spent enough time with Arrosa to recognize old wealth and breeding. Perhaps he was using an assumed name. If he was a bastard child of some high-ranking Prime, he would be nearly impossible to identify. Family resemblance would be my best bet.

  I accessed the Herald’s Prime visual database and went to advanced search. I typed in male, white, fifty to eighty, Prime, mental branch of magic. It resulted in two thousand hits.

  Great. Here’s hoping Benedict had a living father who looked like him.

  I was on page seven when I smelled blood. The salty metallic stench cut across my senses like a razor. It came from my sword.

  It made no sense. I’d wiped the gladius with an oiled rag before putting it back in its bracket on the wall. It hung there, five feet away from me, the blade shining slightly, reflecting the light of my lamp. I knew it was clean.

  I had killed three people with it. I’d cut their throats. They’d died while my hands were on them. I could still feel the warmth of the second man’s face as I clamped my fingers over his mouth. I remembered the heat of his breath when he exhaled as I drove my sword into his flesh.

  My hands shook. The scent of blood was everywhere now, saturating the air and settling on my skin in a sticky patina. I inhaled it with every breath.

  I gagged and tasted acid in my mouth. Tears wet my eyes, blurring my vision. I wished I could open a window, but the office had none.

  I swiped at my eyes and heard myself sob. The office blurred. I got up, locked the door, and lowered the shades on the glass wall facing the hallway. Then I collapsed in the chair, put my hands over my face, and cried.

  I wished I could take it back. I wished I could rewind today or wake up and realize I’d had a nightmare. It felt like a sharp shard was inside me trying to cut its way out. It hurt so much.

  The little black dog stood on her hind legs, put her front paws on my knee, and wagged her tail. I petted her shaggy head. The tears kept coming. I just couldn’t stop.

  My phone rang. Bug. I answered and hit the speaker icon.

  “Hey,” he said. “Your grandma and your sister made it to Keystone okay, got the Guardians, and are heading back. Arabella made a slight detour, so I thought I’d tell you so you don’t freak out.”

  “That’s great,” I choked out. My voice sounded strained and sharp.

  “I detect some hostility,” Bug said. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s great.”

  “Catalina, where are you? What’s wrong?”

  “I killed three people.” I was trying to keep it together, but saying it out loud proved too much. The sobs broke through.

  “What people? Where?”

  “At Keystone Mall. Actually, I killed ten people, three myself and seven through people I beguiled. Ten people, Bug. They can never go home. They had families . . .”

  “It’s okay.” Bug’s voice turned soothing. “It’s okay. Why were you at the mall?”

  “Things didn’t go well after Di
atheke. I picked up a tail, took them to the mall, and killed them.”

  “The crew from the Guardians?” Bug guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “Catalina, they followed you to the mall. You didn’t chase them down. They could’ve walked away at any point. Those fuckers made a deliberate choice to hunt you down instead. It was you or them. Listen to me. You didn’t do anything wrong. You killed ten bad people.”

  The rational part of me knew he was right, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I took ten lives.

  “If you hadn’t killed them, they would have killed you and then tomorrow or next week, they would have killed someone else. Talk to me. Are you there?”

  “Yes. I just can’t stop crying.”

  “It’s adrenaline overload. Listen to me, listen to my voice: they were wrong, you were right. People who ride around in Guardians so they can hunt down a lone woman in an abandoned mall don’t deserve mercy. They’re the worst kind of assholes. The world can use less assholes.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “I’m better,” I told him. “I’ve got it.”

  “Good, because your sister just passed the security checkpoint.”

  I grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped my face.

  “Bug?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please don’t tell anybody.”

  “I won’t,” he promised. “She’s at the front door.”

  I jumped up, opened the shades, unlocked the door, and sat back at my desk. The front door swung open. There was a grunt. The door swung shut. Arabella staggered down the hallway and into my office carrying an armload of stuff and dumped it on the floor.

  “What’s this?” I asked. My face was red, my eyes bloodshot, and we both pretended they weren’t.

  She sat on the floor and dug through the bags, raising each item like she was auctioning it off. “Dog food bowl, water bowl, collar, leash, dog food; goes in the bowl, puppy pads; go on the floor, special cleaner with enzymes to clean up messes, chewy toys, an almost life-like squirrel, a rubber hamburger, little tennis balls, a blankie, a dog pillow, special dog shampoo, and a grooming brush.”

  Wow.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “How did you know what to get?”

  “I asked Matilda.”

  The little dog trotted over to the pile of loot and bit the rubber hamburger. It squeaked. The dog dropped the hamburger and dashed under my desk.

  “A paragon of bravery,” Arabella observed.

  “She’s been through a lot. Why the sudden attack of kindness?” I asked.

  She got up off the floor and hugged me. We almost never hugged anymore.

  Arabella headed to the door.

  “Hey,” I called.

  She turned back to me.

  I lowered my voice. “Sergeant Heart has a thing for Mom.”

  She blinked, then her eyes went wide. “How do you know?”

  “She Skyped with him and he told her that all she had to do was let him know that she needed him. And she said, ‘Benjiro, I need you,’ and then he got terribly excited that she knew his first name.”

  “He has a first name?”

  “Don’t say anything,” I warned.

  “I won’t.”

  “I mean it. He’s coming here tomorrow night.”

  “What, like a date?”

  “No.” I waved my hand. “He and his team are coming to replace Abarca.”

  Arabella sagged against the door frame. “Don’t scare me like that.”

  I made a face at her and she left.

  I stared at the pile of doggie goods on the floor. I loved my sister so much. I loved my whole family more than anything. I had to make sure they kept breathing.

  I looked back to the screen, switched to the browser, and clicked to go to the next page of headshots.

  Chapter 9

  I woke up because the little black dog licked my nose. I hugged her to me, turned on my side, and tried to steal more sleep, but my alarm went off and dragged me out of bed.

  The little dog spun in circles at my feet, ridiculously excited that I was conscious. I took a step toward the bathroom and my foot landed in a puddle of cold pee. Awesome.

  I hopped to the bathroom on one foot.

  Looking at all the male Primes yesterday had gotten me nothing except a pounding headache. I would’ve accomplished more cold-calling random Houses and demanding to know if their Primes had sired any bastards with freaky powers.

  After I finished my fruitless search, I spent an hour researching Alessandro. I learned the same things I already knew. Italian count, Antistasi Prime, old family, wealthy, handsome, three broken engagements, no long-term relationships. The shield he presented to the public was bulletproof.

  I would’ve searched more, but the documents from Sabrian landed in my inbox. The good news was that Sabrian was confident that Celia’s attack would be classified by the authorities as House warfare or a metamorphosis mage going berserk. The bad news was that the House unit of Houston PD wasn’t staffed with idiots. The moment our packet of documents hit, the cops would realize that Celia attacked me while I was in a car with a man matching the description of the guy who had knifed Conway.

  I spent the next few hours carefully reading the documents and then writing two versions of a detailed statement, one with Alessandro in it and the other without. In version number two, I was driving “a vehicle” all by my lonesome. I emailed everything back to Sabrian and instructed her to use her discretion. She told me she would sit on it until she had no choice.

  All of that had taken me the entire afternoon and most of the evening. By the time I finished, the sun had set and the little dog had declared victory over the rubber hamburger. Just before dinner I went up to my room “for a minute” because I needed to clear my head, collapsed on my bed, and passed out. And my family apparently let me sleep the whole time because I was still wearing my T-shirt and sweatpants from yesterday. My career as a respected and admired, all-important Head of the House was clearly on the upswing. Not.

  I looked like death. My hip hurt. And the worst part of all of this, I had slept for thirteen hours and I was still tired.

  I washed my foot in the sink and lifted my shirt and pulled down my sweatpants to look at my hip.

  Oh God.

  My whole side from the waist down all the way to mid-thigh was black and blue. I poked my thigh and jerked my finger away. Ouch. The bruising was real, and not just a funny prank perpetrated while I was asleep.

  The great detective Catalina Baylor. When confronted with undeniable empirical evidence, perform a field test anyway.

  I took the little dog outside, where she sat on her butt and stared at me adoringly for ten minutes. Clearly, she had no pee left because she’d emptied her bladder on my floor. I let her back inside, zombie-staggered into the kitchen, mumbled good morning at Mom, made myself a cup of tea, and escaped into my office.

  My inbox presented me with an email from Sabrian acknowledging the receipt of the documents I had couriered over yesterday. The rest was bills. I drank my tea and stared at them in the hopes they would disappear.

  Day three of the investigation, and still no Halle.

  I dialed Bug’s number.

  Bug answered on the first ring. “I lost him yesterday and I don’t have him yet.”

  “Never mind Alessandro. I need another favor, but it’s complicated, so it might be better if I explain in person. Can I visit you?”

  There was a slight pause. I had planned to call him about this yesterday, but too many things had happened. Face-planting on my bed was so not the plan. I hadn’t even taken any of the doggie things to my room.

  I should feed the dog. She was probably starving. I got up and filled a dish with dog food. How much food would a dog of this size need . . .

  “Bug?”

  “Yeah.”

  Yeah what? Yeah, you can visit, or yeah, I’m still here and thinking about
it?

  I set the dish down and the dog dove into it. Apparently, she needed all the food.

  Bug still hadn’t said anything. “When would be a good time?”

  “Now would be okay.”

  “Are you at Rogan’s?”

  “Kind of.”

  “What do you mean ‘kind of’?”

  There was another pause.

  Bug sighed. “I’m at the old HQ across the street.”

  Wait, what? “Across the street from me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I grabbed my phone and went to the door. The black dog licked her empty bowl, picked up her rubber hamburger, and followed me.

  “I’m going to call you Shadow.”

  Shadow wagged her tail.

  I walked into bright sunshine, and Shadow and I crossed the street to the old industrial building. Three years ago, when Nevada and Rogan were in the middle of trying to save Houston, my paranoid brother-in-law bought all the buildings around the warehouse in an effort to make us safe. We had since bought some of them back from him, but this one was still his. It housed a secondary HQ, and when Nevada and Rogan came to visit us, they stayed in the apartment on the top floor.

  The metal door was unlocked. I crossed the empty bottom floor, which once served as the motor pool for Rogan’s private army, climbed the metal staircase, heroically trying not to wince and failing, and emerged on the second floor. A massive computer station dominated the space, a gathering of servers and workstations, connected to nine large monitors arranged in a three-by-three grid on a wire cage. Behind the screens lay a small living space, with two couches on the right and a kitchen on the left. A tower of pizza boxes flanked by a brigade of empty Mello Yello bottles filled the kitchen island.

  In front of the screens, perched in a rolling chair, sat Bug. Thin and wiry, Bug was never still, so much so that he seemed to almost vibrate, as if his body was struggling to contain the nervous energy within. Bug had enlisted in the Air Force as soon as he turned eighteen, and while he was in, the military offered him a deal: they would pay him an outrageous bonus and in return he would allow them to augment him. A specialist mage had reached into the arcane realm, pulled out a swarm of magical insects, and implanted them into Bug.