Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  I hugged myself tighter. Yesterday, Abarca talked to me. He had opinions and if you asked him a question, he would answer. He was moving around, he was breathing. He was alive. He was a person. Now there was nothing.

  “Why would they do this? He was out. He quit, he took his people and left.”

  “Someone is trying to send a message,” Heart said.

  “There is no escape?”

  Heart nodded.

  It didn’t matter if you quit, ran away, or got fired. Everyone associated with us was a target. Diatheke offered no mercy.

  “What about the rest of his people?”

  “As of now, everyone is accounted for. Abarca was the only casualty.”

  I let out a breath. Diatheke must have considered the others beneath notice. They were grunts, none of them had magic, and a rash of sudden civilian murders would draw attention. Since they were no longer employed by us, killing them wouldn’t count as House warfare, and the Houston PD took civilian homicides seriously.

  “You have two choices,” Heart said. “We can treat this as a civilian matter. He deserted. His employment ended the moment he left his post. We can notify Houston PD and let them take it from there. There will be questions, but ultimately this absolves your House of any further responsibility.”

  “What’s the second option?”

  “You can treat it as House warfare.”

  If we pretended that Abarca died in the line of duty, it would save his reputation. While he worked for us, we maintained a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy in case of his death. That policy ended when he chose to terminate his employment with House Baylor.

  Abarca had two children and a wife.

  “He’s dead because of us,” I said.

  “No.” Heart’s eyes held no mercy. “He’s dead because he ran.”

  There was really nothing to say to that. “We’ll treat it as House warfare. Please notify his next of kin. I’ll authorize an insurance payout today.”

  It wouldn’t fix anything. It wouldn’t give them back a husband or father, but it would help a little.

  “Do I have your permission to take him down?” Heart asked.

  “Yes. Please do.”

  Heart nodded and pointed up at the corpse. Two of his soldiers, a man and a woman, jogged over, carrying a ladder. Heart turned and gestured for me to follow him.

  “I need your help,” I told Heart.

  He nodded.

  “We’ve always made an effort to treat our security people well. We gave them good gear, good benefits, and we tried to accommodate their wishes, but they still ran. I want to make sure we don’t repeat the same mistake twice.”

  “The only mistake you made was hiring George Abarca.” Heart stopped and turned to me. “Do you know why Abarca resigned his commission?”

  “He told us that he wasn’t making enough money to support his family.”

  Heart smiled. It was slightly unsettling.

  “I’ve worked with some excellent officers. I’ve also worked with some officers like Abarca. They put in the time, they do an acceptable job, they get promoted, but they don’t serve. Their primary motivation is ticking enough boxes to earn the next promotion. They miss the point. It’s simple: you’re assigned a job, you learn that job, you strive to excel at that job, and then you train the person under you to do that job. You set standards. New job comes along, you do it all again. That’s it.”

  “Abarca wasn’t like that?”

  “No. When I met him, George Abarca was assigned to a schoolhouse, training new officers. He was comfortable. About that time, the Army had started an initiative to actively recruit Significants and Primes. Because of their unique abilities and needs it was decided that the easiest way to integrate them was to build a small unit around each such officer, complementing their strengths and compensating for their weaknesses.”

  “Like they did for Rogan?”

  “Just like that. Rogan served as a test case for the program and I was assigned as his NCO. Abarca wanted badly to work with Rogan, but Rogan was a crucial asset and access to him was tightly controlled. At the end of Rogan’s training, command staff announced the formation of a new section within the schoolhouse dedicated to working with high-caliber magic users. Abarca wanted that command. He’d decided it would be very good for his career. He had put in his time schmoozing the colonel in charge, he’d made sure he was well liked, and he felt it entitled him to the post.”

  “He didn’t get it?”

  “No. They brought in Captain Swan, a Significant with a lot of combat experience. He shared a common background with the trainees, and he’d put in more time in combat. Abarca blew up in the colonel’s office. I was in Sergeant Major’s office at the other end of the building and I heard it. We all heard it. Enlisted, officers, students. The next day he resigned his commission.”

  The light dawned. “It was never about us, was it? We were a stepping-stone to Rogan.”

  “I suspect so. I don’t know if he was motivated by money or if it was the prestige, but Abarca wanted into Rogan’s inner circle. He had sent his résumé to us three times. I imagine he thought working with you would be the doorway to Rogan’s confidence.”

  “Except we hired him specifically to keep our independence from Rogan.” It all made sense now. “So, when Mom told him he would be let go for doing a bad job and that the people he wanted to impress would be replacing him, he couldn’t handle it.”

  “Now you understand.” Heart fixed me with his direct stare. I felt a strong urge to stand straight and very still. “A unit is only as good as its leader. That’s why a good leader holds herself to the highest standard. It’s not about being liked or being fair. It’s about deciding what your goal is and doing what is necessary to achieve it. Especially when it’s difficult. What happened to Abarca wasn’t the result of your actions. He made his choices. Don’t let it cripple you. You still have a job to do.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it. We will build a new security team around a strong leader. I have someone in mind. With your permission, I’ll extend an invitation to interview to her and her wife. She’s a talented soldier, but she comes with some baggage.”

  “Everyone comes with baggage,” I told him. “Please invite her to interview.”

  “Good,” Heart said, and smiled.

  I was in the kitchen, chopping up a mango, when Alessandro sauntered in and parked himself by the kitchen island. He wore a dark suit with a crisp white shirt and a conservative black tie. His jaw was clean-shaven, his hair tamed. His shoes cost more than the rest of his outfit combined. A long cashmere scarf, snow white and unadorned, hung from his neck, thrown up there almost as an afterthought. A Prime; successful, elegant, confident. Someone to be taken seriously. He would give Augustine a run for his money.

  At the kitchen table Arabella raised her eyebrows and elbowed Runa. Prime Etterson raised her head from her laptop and did a double take.

  I kept chopping. “Is that your I’m-going-to-see-Linus-Duncan outfit?”

  He took a long look at me, inspecting my award-winning ensemble of sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt covered by a pink apron with a frilly ruffle. “Is that yours?”

  I rolled my eyes, slid the chopped-up mango into a plastic bowl already containing minced onion, garlic, cumin, ginger and other spices, and picked up plastic gloves.

  Alessandro eyed the assortment of cooking ingredients in front of me, taking in honey, apple cider vinegar, and small orange peppers. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m waiting until 8:00 a.m. before I call him.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because he’s Linus Duncan. I have no idea when he gets up.” I put the gloves on and began slicing the peppers. “Maybe he does yoga in the morning, maybe he swims, maybe he sleeps in. Eight o’clock seems like a reasonable time to call out of the blue demanding that he drops everything and sees us. Seven forty-five, not as much.�
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  “I understand that. I’m asking why you’re chopping little bell peppers first thing in the morning.”

  Because my cousins pitched a fit when we ran out of their favorite taco sauce.

  “She cooks when she’s nervous,” Arabella volunteered.

  I stopped chopping and looked at her. My sister giggled. “You look just like Mom.”

  “Are you afraid of Linus Duncan?” Alessandro frowned.

  “No. I told you, he’s a family friend.” Of course I was afraid of Linus. Who wouldn’t be?

  Alessandro leaned forward, invading my space, and hit me with a seductive smile. “So why are you nervous?”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  “Do I make you nervous?” Alessandro purred.

  My sister choked on her coffee.

  “No.”

  Leon walked into the kitchen, saw Alessandro, growled “For fuck’s sake!” and walked out.

  Alessandro laughed, reached over, and stole a piece of one of the little orange peppers.

  Arabella’s eyes got big. Runa opened her mouth and Arabella clamped her hand over it.

  I gave Alessandro a sweet smile. “That’s not yours.”

  Take the bait. You know you want to.

  “Give me back my pepper. I mean it, Alessandro. You can’t have it.”

  Three, two, one . . .

  Alessandro winked at me and popped the pepper into his mouth. His gorgeous jaw moved.

  He froze. His expression locked into a harsh mask.

  “Don’t you want to say something suave?” I asked. “Go ahead. Flirt with me.”

  A red flush washed over his face.

  “What’s the matter, Alessandro? Do I make you nervous?”

  His eyes teared.

  I took pity on him. “Welcome to Texas. That ‘little bell pepper’ on fire in your mouth is called a habanero. The bathroom is down the hall, first door on the left. Don’t be a hero, Alessandro. Spit it out. I don’t have time to take you to the hospital.”

  “Dibs on holding his hair while he pukes,” Runa announced.

  “Fine,” Arabella said. “But I get to rub his back and make ‘there, there’ noises.”

  Clearly, she and Runa were the same person.

  Alessandro turned on his heel and marched out of the kitchen.

  I held it together until I heard the bathroom door close and laughed. Runa put her head down on the table and squeaked. My sister giggled, making snorting noises.

  “That was evil, Catalina,” Runa managed between howls of laughter.

  “I told him to give it back. He saw me put on gloves.”

  “He did,” Arabella moaned.

  “Did you see the look on his face?” I laughed so hard, I cried a little. Some of it was probably a hysterical reaction to everything that had happened since Augustine dragged me out of bed three days ago, but I didn’t care. It felt so nice.

  Leon walked back into the kitchen and slid a piece of paper on the island. “While you’re in a good mood.”

  I swiped at my tears with my forearm and focused on the words. The purpose of this letter is to request full reimbursement for my personal property destroyed on January 6th by an employee of House Baylor Investigative Agency . . . Blah, blah, blah . . .

  “Twenty-three thousand dollars?!”

  Leon took a step back. “Remember, I’m your favorite cousin and you love me.”

  “We only got paid seven thousand for the Yarrow job. You put us sixteen thousand in the hole. How, Leon?”

  “I can explain. I got to the house to confront the accountant lady, and her husband ran out in his pajamas and started screaming that she locked herself in the panic room with their baby.”

  “And you called the cops. Because that’s what we do when we find ourselves with a hostage situation. We defer to law enforcement, don’t we? Because they have authority and jurisdiction and experienced hostage negotiators, right, Leon? Because we can’t assume responsibility for resolving a hostage crisis since we don’t know what we’re doing. Because we don’t want anyone to die, and we don’t want to be sued.”

  Leon raised his hands. “Who hasn’t been sued?”

  “Us! We haven’t been sued. And we aren’t getting sued if I can help it. Did you call the cops?”

  Alessandro chose that moment to wander back into the kitchen. He looked pale, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hands shook a little.

  “You had to be there,” Leon said. “I made an executive decision. Time was of the essence.”

  “Bullshit. It takes twenty minutes to drive from our house to that subdivision. You called here, convinced Grandma and Arabella to bring Brick over, and waited for twenty minutes for them to arrive. And then the three of you thought it would be a grand idea to drive Brick through the house. Literally!”

  “It sounds bad when you put it that way,” Leon said. “But we saved a hostage.”

  “No, you put the life of a child in danger.”

  Arabella stirred. “Technically, it wasn’t exactly a child.”

  I turned to Leon. He sighed, looking resigned, and held up his phone. On it a middle-aged white man clutched a giant orange cat.

  “What is that?”

  Leon visibly braced himself. “It’s Tuna. Also known as Baby.”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  Leon backed away.

  I dropped the knife and grabbed a habanero. “Come here.”

  “What has gotten into you?” Leon backed away, keeping the island between us. “You’re always so calm and reasonable . . .”

  I chased him around the island. “I’m trying to solve a murder and a kidnapping, a consortium of assassins is targeting us, we had to hire the most expensive private army in the country to keep us alive, I have no idea how to pay for any of it, and instead of making money, you decided to put us deeper in the hole. For a cat in a domestic dispute.”

  “I didn’t know it was a cat until we busted down the door. He said baby, not fur baby.”

  We made a full circle around the island. I stuck my hand out at Arabella. “Hold him.”

  My sister shook her head. “I’m not involved.”

  “You rode in Brick. You’re involved. I’m the Head of the House and I’m ordering you to hold him down so I can stuff this pepper up his nose.”

  Alessandro moved into my path, put his hands around my waist, and picked me up. Everything stopped. He was holding me effortlessly five inches above the floor. He was touching me.

  Leon made a break for the doorway.

  “Put me down,” I growled.

  “No, you’ve gone mad with power.”

  “Alessandro!”

  “It’s eight fifteen,” he said. “We have bigger fish to fry. Call Linus. Or I can keep holding you just like this. I don’t mind.”

  Runa put her hands to her mouth, making a funnel with her fingers, and dramatically whispered. “Door number two.”

  The fight went out of me. “I’ll make the call.”

  Alessandro lowered me back to the floor. He held on to me for another long breath and slowly let go. I marched to the cutting board, dumped the chopped habaneros into the bowl, and pulled my gloves off. “Arabella, please put this into the food processor, pulse on high for three minutes, pour it in a pan, and simmer it for ten. Don’t let it burn. Also, I’m taking your Mercedes for this trip.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  I made a face at her and reached for the phone.

  The moment we got into the car, Alessandro morphed back into a killer. The slick veneer of polish he projected in the kitchen dissolved into calm alertness. He wasn’t on edge, but he was ready, his magic coiled and simmering just under the surface. Right now, he was lying back in the passenger seat, his eyes closed. We were making our way west, to Cat Spring, a tiny town about an hour out of Houston.

  Alessandro could look like multiple people. There was Instagram Alessandro, meeting my family, charming and harmless. There was sexy Alessandro, flirting
and too hot for real life, posing on my bed and petting my dog. There was Alessandro the Count, in an expensive tailored suit, and Alessandro the Prime, frighteningly competent, his power an impenetrable wall wrapping around him at the trials. None of them was a lie. He put them on like clothes to match the occasion.

  But his default was this, a relaxed but ready killer. Assassin in repose. That’s what he was when he didn’t have to be anything else. I wondered if anyone besides me ever saw him like this.

  They probably did. Just before he killed them.

  “How many people have you killed?”

  He glanced at me. “Why is that important?”

  “I just want to know.”

  “There is no upside to this conversation. How do you quantify it? What’s the right number? More than ten? More than twenty? When do I become a monster, banished from family meals?”

  What brought that on? “Do you even know how many people you’ve killed?”

  “Do you?”

  “Three with my sword in Keystone. Three more upstairs on my orders, so I didn’t do it myself, but I was there. Another two at the escalator. And Lawrence. So, nine.”

  “Impressive. If you keep going like this, in a couple of years you might catch up to me.”

  “Is that based on the average number of people killed per week?”

  He looked at me.

  “I’m just asking because an average year has roughly fifty-two weeks, two years would have a hundred and four and at a rate of nine murders a week, it would amount to nine hundred and thirty-six . . .”

  “Does your brain ever take a break?” he asked.

  It did every time he said my name, or he touched me. Or propositioned me in my bedroom while I was wearing a towel, but he didn’t need to know that. “Do you ever answer a direct question?”

  “Yes.”

  Touché.

  A ranch-to-market road wound its way through copses of oaks. We took a smooth turn and the trees on the left parted to reveal a picturesque lake, perfectly smooth like the surface of a mirror.

  My phone chimed a triumphant little note. I knew that sound. That was Alessandro’s Instagram alert chime. I reached for the phone, but he grabbed it first. He really was ridiculously fast.