Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  There were nine other people at Benedict’s table and nine at Cristal’s. Most of the tables around us had filled. Several women were looking in our direction, some at me, but most at Alessandro. Our table remained empty except for the three of us.

  “Will we be joined by anyone?” I asked.

  “No,” Linus said. “The Society maintains a table for me to use as I see fit.”

  If Linus wasn’t here tonight, nobody would have sat at this table. For some reason, I found that more disturbing than all of his turrets, guns, and exosuits.

  A handsome older Hispanic man in a ringmaster’s suit of blue velvet strode to the middle of the stage, a top hat in one hand and a cane in the other.

  The opening act began.

  Chapter 14

  The beautiful acrobats in silver bodysuits cartwheeled off the stage to enthusiastic applause. The clowns, the animal trainers in pink, the magician, and the rest followed. The baritone in the ringmaster’s suit took a bow and strode off. The first act was over, and the intermission began.

  Soft music filtered in. People got up and began mingling, some drifting to the tables, others to the stage. Half of them could kill me, and the rest would put up a serious effort.

  Avoid Benedict, get to Cristal, get her to confess, and go home. Don’t screw this up or we would never find Halle.

  A stunningly attractive woman jumped to her feet and crossed the stage, heading straight for us. Petite, with a perfect figure, golden skin, and a wave of glossy black hair, she seemed almost elflike, otherworldly, as if she had stepped out of some fantasy painting. I caught sight of her face. It was perfect. Too perfect, with the same flawless coldness as Augustine.

  I knew her. Natasha Popova, Illusion Prime from the Russian Empire. Alessandro’s fiancée number three.

  “Do we have a problem?” Linus asked.

  Alessandro put his fork down. “No.”

  Natasha crashed to a halt at our table, her eyes blazing. “You! How dare you show your face?”

  Alessandro smiled.

  Natasha spun to me. “Are you with him? You shouldn’t be with him. He’s a liar. Everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. He isn’t who he says he is. His family is—”

  “Do I need to remind you why you ended our engagement?” Alessandro asked, his voice carefree. “Perhaps you would care for another demonstration, right here?”

  Natasha froze for a furious second. Fear flickered in her eyes. She spun on her heel and walked away.

  Alessandro’s expression turned dark. “See? No problem.”

  And that wasn’t weird. Not at all.

  I rose to my feet. Both Linus and Alessandro stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Alessandro asked.

  “Cristal is on her third glass of wine and they refilled her water. She’s going to have to visit the bathroom and I want to get there first.”

  “I’ll escort you,” Alessandro said.

  “Play nice,” Linus warned.

  We strolled through the stage toward the back of the Grand Foyer, where a hallway led to the women’s restroom. We turned a corner, and suddenly the hum of the crowd and the lights receded. We walked side by side. The women’s bathroom was almost halfway down the hall, past a couple of doors presumably leading to other smaller rooms. We were completely alone.

  I leaned against the wall by the bathroom. I would step inside as soon as we saw her coming.

  We waited.

  Minutes ticked by. My skin was on too tight.

  Maybe I had miscalculated, and Cristal had a bigger bladder.

  Another minute. Two . . .

  She wasn’t coming. I started back to the Grand Foyer. At least I could see where she was.

  “So, about this business of me lying,” he said.

  You’ve got to be kidding me. “What about it?”

  “Care to explain what you meant?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” I felt like I was running on the edge of a sword as it was.

  Alessandro fixed me with his stare. Magic flared around him, flashing with orange for a fraction of a moment. “I’m afraid I have to insist.”

  I stopped and crossed my arms on my chest. “Or what?”

  “You’re just going to throw it out there and walk away?” The stalking killer was back in all his glory. “A bit cowardly, don’t you think?”

  “Fine, let’s talk about it. When Benedict’s goons chased me into that mall, I beguiled four of them. As they cheerfully murdered their friends for me, they told me this charming story about how they killed a lawyer in his own home. They put a gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, and left him for his wife and daughters to find. They killed him with no remorse, collected their payment, and then went about their lives, fishing, saving for their kids’ college, and doing whatever else hired killers do in their off time.”

  “And you think I’m just like them.”

  “That’s precisely my point. You’re nothing like them. At first, I thought you might be, but it made no sense. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You’re a Prime from one of the oldest and most respected Houses. You have a noble title. You’re smart, funny, handsome, charming, and rich. If you see a fast car you want to drive, you buy it. If you find a woman you like, you seduce her. You could be anything. Every door is open to you. The world is your playground.”

  He winced.

  I should’ve stopped, but he’d started it and now I was on a roll like a runaway train. “So I thought to myself, why would a man with your opportunities become a hired killer? It could happen if you were an adrenaline junkie. There probably comes a point when the cars, yachts, and women no longer provide enough of a thrill. Perhaps taking the life of another human being is the only way you feel alive.”

  His expression was flat, but his eyes were drowned in orange fire. “So that’s how you see me?”

  “A man like that would be fundamentally selfish, Alessandro. He would put his enjoyment above the lives of other people. He wouldn’t give a half-starved dog a treat. He wouldn’t pose for a picture for an elderly woman just to make her happy or comfort a teenager lost in guilt and grief. He wouldn’t fight his way through an assault team to save a girl he barely knows. He wouldn’t promise her that he would stay with her to see things through. Because a man like that only cares about himself. Why are you doing this, Alessandro? What is it you want?”

  He just looked at me.

  “Will you answer the question for once in your life?”

  His face was resolute. “You have family obligations. I do too.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I hate you.” The emotional dam broke and words tumbled out. “You walked into my life and screwed it all up. I’ve wanted you for so long, and now you show up, and you flirt with me, and you hold me to protect me, and you tell me things like ‘I’ll stay with you as long as it takes,’ and all the while I have to constantly check myself because I’m scared to death that if my control slips, I’ll turn you into a lovesick zombie. I know you’re trapped somehow, and all I want is for you to be happy, Alessandro. Tell me what’s going on, and I swear I’ll do everything I can to help you. Tell me. It’s driving me insane . . .”

  His big body braced mine against the wall. I saw his eyes, amber and heated from within, he bent his head, his lips touched mine, and I tasted the faint hint of champagne . . .

  He kissed me.

  It felt like lightning. It tore through me in one blinding jolt and then I was on fire. There was nothing hesitant or gentle about it. He kissed me like he needed me to breathe. I grabbed his jacket and pulled him closer, fierce and desperate, my body screaming for more of him. It was reckless and stupid, and I knew we had to stop, but nothing in this world could make me let go.

  His tongue licked mine, his strong arms gripped me to him, his hand slid into my hair, and it felt so good, all of it. So impossibly good.

  His magic boiled aroun
d him, the searing flashes of orange dancing, the power churning and twisting. There was no going back. There was life before this kiss and there would be one after, but they wouldn’t be the same.

  He broke away and looked at me, his amber eyes full of lust and a searing need. That hint of the terrifying edge I’d glimpsed in him before was out now, dangerous and glaring right back at me from deep inside him. It took my breath away.

  He should’ve never kissed me. He was mine now and I wanted him.

  I threw my arms around his neck and sealed my mouth to his. Touching him was like coming home. I’d wanted to do that since the moment he put his arms around me on that roof. I tasted his mouth, trying to feed the howling need. He growled low in his throat.

  His hands slid over my back. The wall behind me gave. I stumbled back, but he caught me, and then we were in a small room and he shut the door behind him. He kissed my lips, my neck, my throat. It felt like I had shattered, and he was putting me back together with every touch of his lips.

  There were too many layers between us. I clawed at his jacket and he let me go for a torturous second to shrug it off and toss it to the side. We came back together like two fighters about to grapple. He cupped my butt, picked me up, and hoisted me onto something, a counter, a sink? I didn’t care. I threaded my fingers through his hair, knotting my fingers in it, and kissed that gorgeous jaw, tasting his skin. I was burning up.

  He yanked the straps of my dress down my shoulders, trapping my arms, and buried his face in my bare breasts. I gasped and arched my back. His lips found my nipple. I closed my eyes, savoring each delicious moment. His teeth grazed the sensitive bundle of nerves, his hot tongue tasted me, and he sucked, sending a tiny electric shock through me. I moaned. I wanted to make love to him, and I wanted it to be amazing, so he would stay with me forever.

  “Angelo mio,” Alessandro whispered, his words ragged and rough. “So beautiful.”

  I opened my eyes and saw the edge of my feathers glowing as his magic roiled around us. I was sitting on a counter, gloriously half naked, and my wings were out, spread wide above my shoulders, each luminescent feather deep green at the base then brightening, like the water of the Aegean growing lighter as one rose from a deep dive, turning emerald, then grass-green, then turquoise until finally at the tips, they shone with radiant gold.

  My wings were out.

  Reality punched me with a cold hard fist. I jerked away and shoved him back.

  “What is it?” Alessandro spun, alert, looking for threats.

  My magic was all around him. I had lost it. It made sense now. Why else would he suddenly want to make love to me in the hallway and then kiss me like his life depended on it? Oh my God, what had I done?

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . .”

  “What are you sorry about?”

  “We have to go.” Panic clawed at me, ripping me apart from the inside. I’d destroyed his life. “I have to drain you. We have to . . .”

  “I don’t have to drain.”

  “You don’t understand. I didn’t mean to. We have to fix it.”

  He grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Look at me. Look me in the eyes. Your witchery doesn’t work on me. I’m already obsessed with you.”

  He was too far gone. He was saying nonsense. “Of course you are.”

  I turned around. Where the hell did it go? “It’s okay, it will be okay, I’ll fix this.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My clutch. I have chalk in it.” Even if I drew a circle, it would take forever to drain him. He was a ridiculously powerful Prime. I could run out of magic before he did, and then it wouldn’t work.

  “What should I do?” he asked. “Should I stay right here, out of the way, and not go anywhere? Would it make you happy?”

  “Yes, stand right here and don’t move. It will make me very happy.”

  “Don’t move. Got it.”

  He grabbed his jacket off the tiled floor and walked out. My magic wailed in mourning.

  I was alone in the bathroom. Sitting on the sink counter. The sound of rushing water came from the pipes.

  He had walked away from me. No person I’d beguiled could’ve done that.

  This was too much. I couldn’t process it.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. My neck was red. Lipstick smears stretched across my skin from my lips.

  In the distance a loud chime announced the end of the intermission. I pulled my dress back up over my breasts, jumped off, and frantically looked for my clutch. I’d put a compact and lipstick into it, and I had to make myself presentable again.

  I slipped out of the bathroom. My neck was back to a neutral color, my hair was fixed, and my lipstick tinted my lips and nothing else. Alessandro was fully dressed. We rushed down the hallway to the foyer.

  “This did not happen,” I told him.

  “Oh, it happened. Stopping felt like the hardest fucking thing I had to do in my life. Fighting Benedict now would be a breeze.”

  “No, it didn’t happen and we’re not talking about this.”

  “We are going to talk about it. Tonight. My room, your room, wherever we can find some privacy.”

  Privacy was the last thing we needed.

  We reached the end of the hallway. The second performance was about to start. Alessandro walked me to the table. Cristal was at her table with another glass of champagne.

  “I was getting ready to send out a search party,” Linus said.

  “That’s all right,” Alessandro told him, “we found our way back.”

  Pairs of acrobats in silver suits took to the trapeze to the sound of haunting music. The soprano stepped onto the stage. She was about my mother’s age, a beautiful black woman wearing a shimmering gold suit that set off her brown skin. Her glossy dark hair fell on her back in a cascade of locks and golden jewels. She tilted her face up and began to sing, her voice rising to the ceiling, clear, pure, and tugging on some deeply buried emotion I couldn’t identify. Everything stopped. Madame Trapeze sang her heart out, pouring out emotion as if she had torn herself open for us. I had to fight to keep from crying.

  Alessandro covered my hand with his. I should have pulled away, but I didn’t. I would get to the bottom of this. I didn’t know if I could pry him loose from whatever forced him into murder. I would try as hard as I could. But there was nothing to be done about it right now. We had a job to do, so I listened to the best singer I had ever heard in my life, while the only man I wanted in the entire universe sat next to me and held my hand. Whatever came after, I would always have this moment.

  The last notes of the aria died. The song was over. An overwhelming sadness settled over me. We all applauded, Madame Trapeze bowed, and the lights came on.

  A waiter came to clear our plates and faltered, perplexed because I hadn’t eaten anything. A new lively melody filtered through the speakers.

  “Dance with me,” Alessandro said.

  I put my hand in his and we made our way to the stage. He rested his hand on my back and we swayed among other couples. I had taken enough dancing lessons to not embarrass myself, but nobody around us was doing anything identifiable or complicated. Drifting in pairs seemed to be perfectly acceptable.

  Alessandro drifted with a purpose, moving us slowly but inevitably to Cristal’s table.

  “What are you doing?” I murmured.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “That’s great.”

  “It probably will be.”

  Humility, thy name is Alessandro. “Were you always immune?”

  “No. You sucker-punched me at your trials. Your magic was unfamiliar. But I recovered. If you’re asking whether I pretended for your sake, I didn’t. I would never falsify the test of a Prime.”

  “What about when you came to see me after?”

  “Back then I just wanted to get to know you better. After I received the invitation to your trials, I looked you up on Instagram. I thought you were cute. I followed you and y
ou deleted your account. I was intrigued. Then I came to invite you for a drive, and you called the cops on me.”

  “I thought you were besotted.”

  “I know. You tried to save me from yourself. It was adorable. Almost as adorable as seeing you chase Conway down the hall.”

  I quashed the urge to growl.

  “You’re right, you know.” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed my fingers. “I am besotted.”

  My face was on fire. “Stop.”

  “Never.”

  We were nearly to Cristal’s table. A pink flush tinted her cheeks. Her eyes were glistening, and her movements, as she leaned in to listen to a young, attractive aquakinetic Prime, were very deliberate. It was the most animated I had seen her all evening. Cristal seemed to suffer from crippling social anxiety and she dealt with it by getting drunk. It was easy to be the queen of snark online. Real life was a whole different war.

  A young, dark-haired woman stepped into our way. We had two choices, to stop or to collide with her. We settled on stopping.

  “Alessandro Sagredo,” she purred.

  Alessandro gave her a polite smile. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Mira Fiore, House Fiore. The American branch of the family. You dated my cousin last spring, Constantia.”

  Was there anyone he hadn’t dated?

  The expression on Alessandro’s face cooled by several degrees. He didn’t respond, he just waited.

  His silence and cold stare took some wind out of Mira’s sails, but she bravely sailed on. “My friends and I were wondering about your date.”

  She wasn’t even looking at me.

  “She’s basically a nobody,” she continued. “Her House is five minutes old.” Her voice rose. Other nearby couples had stopped dancing and watched us. “Her sister marrying Mad Rogan is the only thing that her family is known for. So, you could have had my cousin, but here you are with Catalina Baylor. I’d like to know why.”