Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  Mom came over and sat next to me.

  “I destroyed the house,” I told her.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You tried to save a child. We all went along with it. Nobody could have anticipated this.”

  My cell rang. I looked at it. Nevada.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi! How’s everything?”

  Next to me, Mom shook her head, her eyes really big.

  “Everything is great,” I lied. “We’re doing great. The warehouse is great.”

  “Umm, Catalina?”

  Another chunk of the roof collapsed. “We’re having a thunderstorm.” It was good her magic didn’t work over the phone.

  “Okay,” Nevada said. She wasn’t buying a word of what I was selling. “I have big news.”

  “Oh good. Mom is here. I’ll put you on speaker.” I pushed the icon. “Go.”

  “I’m pregnant!”

  I raised my voice. “Hey everybody, Nevada is pregnant.”

  Everybody made cheering noises.

  “Catalina,” Nevada said. “I can hear water running. I can tell by the sound that you’re outside. If it’s raining, why are all of you outside in the storm?”

  “Love you, got to go.” I hung up.

  A van pulled up to the curb. Shadow dashed toward it, barking. The windows rolled down and four heads stuck out, one human and blond, and the other three belonging to boxer dogs.

  Cornelius stared at the warehouse. “What did I miss?”

  I’d laugh, but again, no strength left.

  Mom and I looked at the warehouse some more.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It will be okay,” Mom said. “It was time to let it go, anyway.”

  Runa looked at her phone and jerked it to her ear, her eyes wild. “No! Don’t do it, please don’t do it!”

  Oh, what the hell now?

  Runa hurled the phone to the ground, then dived down, grabbed it, turned, and ran to us.

  Mom and I looked at her. Arabella dropped what she was doing and sprinted over to us.

  “It’s Ragnar.” Tears wet Runa’s eyes. “He just walked into Diatheke.”

  “Why?” The word fell out of me.

  “He said that he was done surviving. He couldn’t let them hurt anybody else.” Desperation skewed her face. “I need a car. A fast one.”

  “I’ve got you,” Arabella said.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” Arabella looked at everyone around us. “Can we have some privacy?”

  “I’ll meet you at your car.” Runa spun on her foot and walked away.

  Arabella crouched by me. “You’re in charge and if you order me, I’ll take you. But you’re tapped out. You can’t even stand. My car sits four. I’ll take Runa, Leon, and Mom.”

  She was right. I hated it but she was right. Every second counted, and they needed to pack as much firepower as they could into four seats.

  “Go,” I said. “I’ll come with the second wave.”

  She hugged me and took off at a run. Mom followed her.

  My phone rang again. Alessandro. Alive. Oh my God, he was alive. Relief drowned me.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” he said. “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t get Benedict.” Frustration sharpened his voice. “I’ll be at the warehouse in half an hour.”

  “I won’t be here. Ragnar just attacked Diatheke. We’re going to get him.”

  “What the hell is he doing?” Alessandro snarled.

  “Trying to kill everyone by himself.”

  “I’ll get him. I’m closer.”

  “Don’t! It’s suicide.”

  He growled something fast in Italian and hung up.

  Ten minutes later I strapped myself into the safety harness inside Heart’s APC. Next to me Bug fiddled with a tablet, his hand flying over the onscreen keyboard.

  The APC rumbled and lurched forward. All around me Heart’s soldiers rode, their faces relaxed.

  Bug thrust the tablet in front of me. On it, Alessandro walked into Diatheke.

  What the hell was he doing? My heart squeezed itself into a tight, painful ball in my chest. Please, please let it be okay. Let it all be okay.

  The sound of gunfire emanated from the building on the tablet, tearing the silence. Everyone looked at us.

  “That’s all I got,” Bug said.

  The doors of Diatheke were gone. Glass shards littered the sidewalk. The metal grate hung crumpled to one side. Heart’s people streamed into the building past me. I wanted to run, but walking was the best I could manage, and the two bodyguards Heart assigned to me refused to move faster.

  Bodies sprawled in the lobby, two men and a woman. Black fuzz sheathed the corpses. Runa or Ragnar had been through here.

  A soldier waited by the elevator. He swiped a bloody keycard and the doors swung open. “Your mother and sister are on the top floor,” he said. “Leon is sweeping the building with a team.”

  We stepped into the cabin and the elevator carried us up. I couldn’t even worry anymore. I was just numb.

  The elevator opened to the aftermath of a slaughter. Bodies lay on the expensive carpet, some slashed, some shot, others sprouting the same black fuzz from downstairs. The door to Benedict’s office had exploded and broken shards protruded from the walls. Inside, the butchery continued. Blood soaked the carpet. Corpses stared with unseeing eyes as we passed. Priceless art lay discarded like trash, ripped from the walls.

  We turned into the Ottoman room. The massive rug had disappeared. The remnants of an arcane circle smoked, etched into the floor. To the right, my mother slumped in a chair, Arabella kneeling by her. To the left, Runa wrapped her arms around a sobbing Ragnar. Blood drenched him from head to toe, dripping from his hair and clothes.

  A heap of clothes smoked slightly in the center of the circle. I had seen this before. Someone had used an arcane circle to teleport out. Unless the teleporting mage was a Prime, teleporting killed almost as many people as it transported safely. It was a desperate last resort, it required a high-caliber teleport mage, and it couldn’t transport anything inorganic. When someone teleported a human, clothes, breast implants, and pacemakers stayed behind.

  Mom saw me.

  “Is anybody hurt?”

  “No,” she said. “This wasn’t us. The place was like this when we got here. The boy and Alessandro turned this place into a graveyard.”

  Panic punched me. “Where is he?”

  Mom shook her head.

  What does that mean?

  “Is he dead?” Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . .

  “He saved me,” Ragnar said through his sobs.

  “Where is he?” I barked.

  “They teleported him.” Arabella stood up. “They contained Ragnar and were going to take him to the lab, and then Alessandro showed up and murdered everyone in the damn building. When he broke into this room, the teleport mage panicked and teleported herself and Alessandro out.”

  The teleport circle took forever to set up and it corresponded to a marker at the destination. You couldn’t just change the arrival point on the fly.

  I turned to Ragnar. “Were they going to teleport you?”

  “Yes.”

  The teleporter had to point to the lab. If Alessandro survived, he would arrive naked, dazed, and without weapons. He had already taken on a building full of killers. He had to be near his limit.

  We had no time. We had to find the lab now.

  If they tried to magic warp him . . .

  I shoved that thought aside. “Ragnar, did they say where the lab was?”

  “No. I’m sorry, this is all my fault . . .”

  I tuned him out, scouring my memories. There had to be something, something I heard, something I saw, something that would point me in the direction of that damn lab.

  Going to Linus was out of the question. He told me to wait. I didn’t wait. I would hav
e to answer for that. There was no way to predict how he would react.

  Benedict would know. Benedict—

  It hit me like a freight train. I spun to Arabella. “I need you to drive me.”

  She didn’t ask where. She jumped to her feet and followed me to the elevator.

  “You are out of your mind,” Arabella said.

  The Shenandoah State Correctional Facility, nicknamed the Spa, rose in front of us. About an hour and a half north of Houston, the Spa knew it was a prison, but it really wanted to be a luxury resort. Wrapped in a picturesque stone wall ten feet high, it was built in the style of the Spanish masonry star forts, a four-story-high pentagon with bastions at the corners of the walls. A luxurious park occupied the space between the wall and the citadel, complete with a track, a driving range, and a tennis court. As we drove past the guard at the gate to the main parking lot, elderly people on the track waved at us.

  When the Texas magical elite chose to serve time, they did it at the Spa. The residents were predominantly older, not necessarily nonviolent, but shrewd enough to recognize that spending a few months at the Spa for their transgressions was much more pleasant than pitching a fit and being shipped off to the Ice Box in Alaska or the Iron Locker in Kansas. This was the place our grandmother chose to pay her debt to society.

  Arabella parked. “She’s not going to help you. Even if she wanted to, she’s locked up here. What do you think she can do?”

  “I have a plan.” I got out of the car and headed for the arched doors. My body ached, and my legs shook a little. I had passed out two minutes into the drive and didn’t wake up until Arabella turned the music all the way up about two miles back.

  My sister followed me. “Your plan involves making a deal with a rabid shark.”

  “Sharks cannot get rabies. They’re fish.”

  My sister waved her hands. “You know what I mean. Don’t do this. We’ll find him another way. We can go to Linus. He likes us.”

  I looked her in the eye to make sure I had her attention. “Linus forbade me from attacking Diatheke. Right now we have to stay away from him. If he calls, don’t answer the phone and don’t tell him where we are.”

  “What the hell happened at Linus’ ranch?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “What will he do when he finds out you disobeyed?”

  I put my hand on the door handle and pushed. “One problem at a time.”

  We walked into the lobby. Two surveillance cameras and an automated turret mounted on the ceiling registered our presence. The Spa seemed old but looks were deceiving. It was a state-of-the-art facility. By now our faces had been scanned and run through their database.

  “Please don’t do this. Nothing good will come from it.”

  She was right, but I had no choice. “Please wait for me. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “No, I’m going to drive off and have ice cream.” Arabella rolled her eyes and headed for the elegant reception area equipped with its own coffee bar.

  I walked to the officer trapped in a round cage of bulletproof glass.

  “Catalina Baylor, Head of House Baylor,” I spoke into the small window covered by a grate. “I’m here to see Victoria Tremaine. It’s urgent.”

  “Visitor hours begin at eleven,” the officer behind the glass told me.

  “Did you not hear me? I’m here to see my grandmother.”

  The officer took a step back, spoke into her headset, and then said to me, “Proceed. Follow the blue line.”

  As I passed by the booth, an older white woman sipping her coffee leaned to her visitor, a dark-haired man about my age, and murmured, “Apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  Ugh.

  I followed the blue line, which consisted of a beautiful glass mosaic built into the travertine floor. It brought me to a heavy door, which swung open at my approach, releasing me into the inner garden. Roses bloomed on both sides of the brick and gravel path, behind a row of boxwood. I stopped and waited.

  A door opened somewhere. A few seconds later my grandmother walked onto the path from the side. She’d lost weight. Six inches taller than me and two shades paler, my grandmother wore a white blouse of tiny hexagons defined by silver thread, soft grey slacks, and a brocade coat with silver and mother-of-pearl embroidery tracing a pattern over cream fabric. Her silver hair was twisted into an elegant coil on the back of her head. Her makeup was understated but flawless. The only concession to prison she had allowed were her shoes, light grey, expensive, but with a short heel. The type Grandma Frida would have called sensible.

  Victoria Tremaine looked at me. Everything about her, from the way she stood to the way she stared, communicated unapologetic power. She turned and walked down the path.

  I chased after her, caught up, and fell in step. I had demanded an audience, and now she put me in my place.

  “What can I do for you, Head of House Baylor?”

  I had rehearsed this speech in the car on the way over, after Arabella woke me up. Looking at her now, I knew none of it would work. She was a truthseeker and she would know if I lied. “I need your help.”

  “Obviously. Be more specific.”

  “Runa Etterson came to me for help because Diatheke killed her mother and kidnapped her sister. Diatheke had recruited Cristal Ferrer to produce warped killers capable of magic manipulation. Cristal Ferrer has a secret lab, where she’s holding Runa’s sister. Runa’s brother attacked Diatheke. Alessandro Sagredo, who has been working with me, went in to save him, and was teleported to that same lab.”

  I paused for a breath.

  “So far I fail to see how any of this is my problem.”

  “I have to get Alessandro and Halle out of the lab.”

  Victoria narrowed her eyes. “This Alessandro, what is he to you?”

  “I love him.”

  Alarm dashed down my spine. I had admitted it.

  “I see. Where do I fit in?”

  “Before I took the case, Augustine warned me away from it. His exact words were ‘I know exactly what you’re up against. Sometimes when you search the night, you’ll find monsters in the dark.’ I discovered later that Augustine’s agents caught one of Diatheke’s warped assassins in action. By now Augustine’s people would have extensively surveilled Diatheke. That’s how he operates. He knows where the lab is.”

  “Most likely. Has Montgomery approached you with an offer? House to House?”

  “Yes. I regretfully declined.”

  Victoria raised her eyebrows. “Why?”

  “Because House Baylor will not be a vassal House.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  I kept going, trying to stuff my desperation deep inside to keep it from showing on my face.

  “Augustine never shares. He trades. When I rejected his offer, I told him that if I came seeking information, I would bring valuable information in return. I have to give him an item in trade.”

  Victoria tilted her head. “You could just accept his offer.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “But what about Alessandro?”

  I closed my eyes for a second. It felt like I was being ripped apart. “I can’t. Not for him, not for Halle. This is about our survival as a House. If I put on Augustine’s leash, he would force us to compromise everything we stand for.”

  “So you come to me, because you think I have information to trade?”

  “I know you do. You approached Augustine when you were looking for Nevada. You would not have gone to that meeting empty-handed. Please help me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m your granddaughter. Our House doesn’t bear your name, but we have your blood. We’re the only family you have. You don’t want to see us fail.”

  I held my breath.

  She stopped and pondered the delicate golden roses. “Your older sister failed me. She has my magic, but she’s too set in her ways. She’s inflexible and incapable of cruelty, and sometimes survival requires it. Arabella, ador
able as she is, is too young and impulsive, and her magic makes her think she’s invulnerable. She’s rarely afraid, and the Head of the House needs to know fear. Failure is the best teacher, and fear is the best motivator. Of the three of you, you’re the most like me. You’re smart like me. You’re sensitive like me. The world cuts you deeply, and it will either kill you, or you will grow armor the way I did.”

  When I thought of my father’s mother, sensitive was not a word that came to mind.

  Victoria studied me. “I can work with you. But it will cost you.”

  I raised my chin and waited.

  “And that’s the difference between the three of you. Nevada would have told me she would give me nothing and stormed off to fight the war on her own. Arabella would have promised me anything. And you are . . . just waiting.”

  I kept waiting. It seemed to be working for me.

  “For the House to survive, the family needs someone to steer it. You can’t belong to two Houses at once; you have to choose. If you marry into a powerful House, you’ll choose your husband over your House the way Nevada did.”

  I opened my mouth to argue.

  “I’m not finished. My deal is this: I’ll give you information to trade to Augustine. And I’ll help you in the future with advice, knowledge, and influence. In return, you’ll dedicate yourself to House Baylor. You won’t dilute your bloodline. If you marry, your husband must be a Prime and he must join your House and renounce all ties to his other family.”

  That was impossible.

  “So, you can save your pretty Italian, you can fuck him, but you can’t marry into his House. I know that family; they’re old nobility, so wrapped up in their own blue blood, they can’t see past their noses. They’ll never let him go. You won’t be a countess. You will never go to Italy. Your place is here. Think very carefully before you say yes, because you might get out of a deal with the devil, but you won’t bargain out of a deal with me.”

  With one hit she ripped my future away from me. I stood there frozen while my mind feverishly sorted through it all.

  What did I want from my future? I’d never asked myself that before, but I always knew the answer. I wanted to find someone who made me happy and whom I made happy. I wanted to marry him. I wanted kids. I wanted a family. And most of all, I wanted to be myself, to be open instead of clenching myself into the tight fist of my will every waking moment. I wanted to be loved for who I was, and I wanted to love in return.