“Why in the world would you do that?”
“I thought maybe if I got scared enough, my powers would come out.” Leon grimaced. “You can practice and get good at sports. You can study and get good grades. But with magic, you have it or you don’t. That’s it. And it’s so fucking unfair. Here you are, and an accident of birth, something in your DNA that you have no control over, decides, before you’re even born, how your life is going to go.”
I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have magic. It was this scary thing that ruled my life. I had so much guilt wrapped up in it. I never told Leon about it, because I knew he would have given up half of his life for some of that power.
“But you didn’t poison people,” I said.
“Who would I poison? You’re my family. I love you. I wouldn’t even poison Mom if she showed back up. I did hate her, you know. Still do. First, if she had slept with Bern’s dad instead of whoever my dad was, I would have had magic. Some magic. Second, she is a piss-poor mom.”
I tried to look for the best things in people. There was nothing good about Aunt Gisele. I used to think that she was just misunderstood but then she showed up and wrecked our life, and now I hated her too.
“Jeremy is a scumbag,” Leon said. “He’s too stupid to realize he isn’t smart. But he sees all the Primes in the news and on Herald, and he envies them. The jealousy is eating him alive. Once the wedding is over, Rivera will make sure he’s turned over to the proper authorities.”
Rogan could make Jeremy disappear, but he wouldn’t. I once asked Nevada about things like that and she said that being a House meant projecting a show of strength. If someone like Jeremy attacked a House, they would want to make a very public example of him.
The file downloaded. I tapped it. The feed from one of the hummingbird cameras filled the screen. Xavier was walking toward his cousins. I turned the sound up.
Adriana, the tall blonde, took a step toward Xavier, her face stamped with anger. Spanish words flew out. “Why are you doing this? She is a nice girl. Leave her alone.”
They were talking about me.
“Shut the fuck up,” Xavier said.
Elba giggled from her spot on the fountain, the gold bracelets on her tan arms sliding back and forth as she waved her hands.
“I mean it.” Adriana crossed the space between them and got in his face. “Leave Catalina alone. She is working really hard. She doesn’t know you’re a snake. Find someone else to screw around with.”
Xavier crossed his arms. Adriana was tall, but he was taller by at least four inches. “Or what? What are you going to do? Let me tell you what you will do: nothing. You’ve been doing nothing. None of you are doing anything about this wedding. He’s going to marry that bitch.”
My heart hammered in my chest. My cheeks were getting hot. Adriana was right. He was a snake. And I almost let him bite me.
“What do you care?” Samanta, the one with curly dark hair, said. “Let him get married.”
He turned toward her. “If you stopped shoving food in your mouth long enough to think, you’d figure it out. You want to explain it to her, Elba?”
“Rogan leads a dangerous life,” Elba said. “He has powerful enemies. Think about it—he’s old, like thirty something, and this is the first time he tried to marry someone. His mom is in a wheelchair because people kept trying to kill his dad. On top of that, everyone knows he’s a sicko. Then this bitch, a complete nobody, shows up and now he’s marrying her without a prenup.”
“Exactly,” Xavier jumped in. “He dies one day after the wedding, she gets everything, and we get nothing. Let me explain it to you in small words, so you can understand. Our grandparents are drawing money from family investments. They are not getting that much, one-two mil a year each. Our parents have to work. By the time the grandparents die off, and our parents start drawing their share, they will be getting even less money, because there are more of them. We’ll have to work and when it’s our turn, there might not be anything left over. You know who has money?”
“Rogan,” Elba said. “A nice pretty billion.”
“Rogan will get himself killed sooner or later. My dad says he made a lot of powerful enemies this last year. Arrosa is old. All we have to do is wait.” Xavier snapped his fingers. “And we’ll inherit. But for that to happen there needs to be no wife and no heir.”
“What are you going to do, Xavier?” Adriana sneered at him. “Even if you break up the wedding, are you going to follow him around with a rubber to make sure he doesn’t make any kids?”
“That will be later. Right now, we have a more pressing issue. He is marrying that bitch.”
“They are Primes,” Samanta shot back.
“Yeah, last time I checked, Xavier, you weren’t a Prime.” Adriana crossed her arms.
“Neither are you,” Xavier said. “I looked up their records and they just became a House this year. She’s a truthseeker, there is a pattern mage, but everybody else’s records are sealed. They are upstarts. If they had useful magic, they would’ve announced it. What kind of Prime doesn’t disclose their magic? Trust me, they’re trash. Have you seen Catalina scurrying around with her tablet, like a mouse with a piece of old cheese? She’s a Prime? Please. A Prime geek. She knows she doesn’t belong here. She told me she feels ‘uncomfortable.’ She’ll feel uncomfortable when I kick her and her sister off the grounds.”
I saw red. I actually saw red, as if someone suddenly jerked a translucent red curtain closed in front of me.
“I’m going to shove a gun up his ass sideways,” Leon snarled.
Xavier paced back and forth. “All that’s required of you is to keep your mouths shut and stay out of my way, while I romance that rat. She’s got the entire wedding and probably half her family secrets on that tablet she carries with her. I’m going to get that tablet.”
“You really are an asshole,” Adriana said.
“Don’t worry,” Xavier said. “Even though great-grandfather kicked your mom out of the family for being a lesbo, you and I can work something out when we inherit.”
“Xavier!” Samanta glared at him.
Elba grinned. “Don’t be jealous. If I were you, I would be doing everything I could to help us. The way Lucian sleeps around, you’ll have to share your inheritance with an army of bastards.”
“Ugh!” Adriana spun and walked away. Samanta looked after her, glanced at Xavier and Elba, and hurried after Adriana.
“Don’t worry,” Elba said. “Samanta is a coward, and Adriana won’t say anything. She’s bought Isabella’s pills off me a couple of times. She’s got ‘anxiety’ and if her mom finds out, she’ll skin her alive.”
Xavier grimaced. “Good, keep them under control and I’ll handle the rest.”
The recording stopped.
“I’ll fucking kill him.” Leon growled. “I’ll drown him in that damn fountain and then I’ll CPR him back and drown him again.”
A pit had opened in my stomach. I tasted acid on my tongue and swallowed it back down. Hot tears wet my cheeks, burning the skin. It was as if I had been poisoned and my body was desperately trying to expel it.
“Don’t cry, Catalina—he’s not worth it. Don’t let him make you sad.” Leon hovered next to me. “Please don’t cry. I’ll make it okay somehow. Just don’t cry, or I might cry with you, and then you’ll tell everybody, and I’ll be embarrassed. Do you need tissues? I have tissues.”
He grabbed a box of tissues from the backseat and thrust them in my hands. “Don’t be sad.”
“I’m not sad,” I ground through clenched teeth. “I’m angry.”
Leon blinked. “You don’t get angry.”
I turned and looked at him. He shied back.
“That waste of space actually thinks that he has a chance against us. He thinks that I’m so flattered that he paid attention to me for ten minutes that I’ll just do whatever he wants. He thinks he dazzled me. That arrogant prick!”
Leon flinched.
“And their brilliant plan! They’ll get ahold of my tablet, because that’s where we keep all our family’s deep shameful secrets.”
“Do we have those?” Leon asked.
“No, but they do, and I will find every last one of them. They think they can break up the wedding, so in some distant future Rogan will die alone. I can’t even! This is the dumbest thing I ever heard. It’s like a tv movie for tweeners.”
“Yes, that is some Parent Trap level shit, right there.”
“It’s something a twelve-year-old would come up with. Xavier is an adult! Elba is sixteen years old. They can’t take care of themselves, they’re petulant, they’re immature, they don’t know basic things, they’re dumb, and their magic is nowhere near ours. Where does this superior attitude come from exactly?”
Leon started the car and locked the doors. “Okay,” he said in a soothing voice. “Your face is turning purple and I’ve never seen it do that before. I really think we should just go home.”
“No, we’re going back to Mountain Rose and I will feed him this tablet.”
“Well, I’m driving so I say we’re going home.”
“Leon!”
“Just keep in mind,” Leon said, merging onto the highway, “I’m your cousin and you love me. If you attack me while I’m driving, we will both die and then he wins. Don’t let him win, Catalina.”
I sat in the kitchen, going through the background files. Leon had taken off for his room and a shower. Bern was working in the computer room we called Hut of Evil. It was just me, Arabella, Mom, and Grandma Frida in the kitchen.
I had looked at the files some yesterday, but they were a mile long, and I didn’t review them as thoroughly as I needed to. Thanks to Xavier’s little rant, I had some nice suspects.
I focused on Mikel, who managed Ramírez Capital, and was the husband of Maria of many cocktails, white clothes, and loud gold jewelry and father to Elba, who was a vicious little bitch. When Xavier put on his little performance for me as we walked by the fountain and he told Elba off, he said something about Mikel paying off the house staff. On the way back to the warehouse, I had scoured his file. On paper, Mikel drew a salary equivalent to one point four million dollars. He had no other significant sources of income. Maria spent money at an alarming rate. They lived in a seven-million-dollar mansion; they had a second home in Barcelona, valued at five million; they owned four luxury cars, totaling over eight hundred thousand dollars; a yacht; and they showed no signs of slowing down. Where was all the money coming from?
I had asked Bug to comb through his financial statements and to let me know as soon as he found something.
Lucian de Baldivia was the next on my list. He was married to June, but it seemed everyone in the family knew he was having affairs. I’d been tracking cheaters down for years and I knew that affairs weren’t free. They left a trail. Hotels, gifts, dates, luxury getaways disguised as work conferences or conventions, more gifts, this time to the wronged spouse. Rogan’s files listed twenty-three women Lucian had slept with since marrying June twenty years ago, and twelve of these relationships were long-term affairs. Every couple of years he got the itch and found someone to scratch it. His last affair ended eighteen months ago. He was about due for a new one, and the Sealight would make a pretty present.
There was still Paul Sarmiento, the boy toy, who appeared to have materialized out of thin air. He was a mystery: nobody knew him, nobody knew how Ane knew him, and nobody knew what he did. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars might not be a huge windfall for the Ramírez and de Baldivias, but it was an attractive prize for the average thief . . .
Arabella moaned and dramatically slammed her head on the table.
Mom and Grandma Frida put down their utensils and clapped.
“I’ve had it,” my sister announced. “She is not getting those damn lilacs and that’s final.”
“If she wants lilacs, just let her have lilacs. What’s the harm?” Grandma Frida asked.
“Her colors scheme is sage, pink, and white. Blue is going to clash with it. It’s going to be ugly. The bouquet will be in all the important photographs and everybody is going to notice how ugly it looks. You don’t understand, Grandma. People on Herald are vicious. I don’t want Nevada to be torn apart. They’re going to be mean. They’re jealous. Nobody wants to hear a story about a beautiful wedding, but everyone is going to make fun of a Prime bride who is marrying a billionaire but couldn’t afford to coordinate her bouquet. No!”
“Since when do we care what people on Herald think?” Mom asked.
“Since we became a House and everyone thinks we’re country bumpkins.” Arabella spun to me. “Catalina, tell them.”
Everyone looked at me.
“Fuck Herald,” I said.
Grandma Frida dropped her fork.
“Fuck Primes, fuck their paparazzi, and if Nevada wants lilacs, she should have all the lilacs ever. I will buy the damn lilacs myself, with my own money.” I took my tablet and walked out.
Behind me, Arabella said, “Mom?”
“I think your sister is a little stressed out,” Mom said.
I made a left turn to another hallway and walked to the Hut of Evil. When we sold our house to pay for Dad’s medical treatment and moved into the warehouse, the original plan was to set it up as homelike as possible. But instead we just threw walls up wherever they were needed and ended up with some unusual spots. To a stranger, our layout wouldn’t make much sense but to us, it worked great. The Hut of Evil was one of those odd places. It was a small room inside a larger space complete with the door and a roof and raised off the ground to accommodate all the cables and the cooling. I had to walk up three steps to get in.
The temperature inside was at least five degrees cooler than in the rest of the house. Bern sat in his usual seat in front of three monitors. I took a seat in Leon’s chair.
“Rough day,” Bern said.
“They lie, and cheat, and steal. And they think they’re better than us, because we work, and we don’t have as much money. This is the kind of family Nevada is marrying into.”
“Nevada is marrying Rogan. I like Rogan. I like Mrs. Rogan too, and the East Wing side of the family seem decent. Look, most of them will go back to Europe after this, and we will never, ever see them again. We just have to get through the wedding.”
“No, Nevada has to get through the wedding. We have to catch a thief and prevent mass murder at the wedding ceremony. Have you seen them doing anything weird? Something that could help us find the Sealight or whoever took it?”
Bern hesitated. “Well, not sure if it’s related but you gotta see this. Hang on.”
His fingers flew across the keyboard and an image appeared on the middle screen, a table on a patio, flanked by some chairs. The picturesque shrubs rustled, and a tall, lanky man stepped out of them, like some kind of jungle explorer emerging from the bush. Mikel Ramírez adjusted his glasses, looked around, and took off down a path, away from the building into the orchard.
“Keep watching,” Bern said.
A long minute crept by.
Maria Ramírez stomped into frame, her chunky heels making clicking noises on the patio. A faint green smudge stained her white dress. There was a twig in her bleached blond hair. She was holding a martini glass in her hand. She took off her sunglasses, paused, like a hound finding the scent, and took off in the direction her husband had fled.
I put my hand over my mouth and shook my head. “This is just bizarre.”
“She chases him like this, all over the house.” Bern turned his blond head and looked at me. “At lunch, he excused himself from the table, and never came back. I think he crawled out of a window because neither of the exit cameras caught him, and then he was outside. He could have stolen the Sealight. He’s pretty good at sneaking around.”
“Yes, but he’s a lousy telekinetic, barely an Average, and everything in his file says he’s desperate for his father’s approval, so it’s unlikely he is hiding his power.
He wouldn’t be able to lift the wall. What about Paul Sarmiento?”
Bern tapped a quick sequence on the keys. Ane and Paul came into view. They sat in the soft chairs overlooking the distant hills. Paul reached over to the table, lifted the small kettle, and poured Ane a cup of tea.
“They are joined at the hip,” Bern said. “If he stole the Sealight, she would have helped him, because I never see them apart for more than ten minutes. Also, most of them have used their powers since I started watching them. They levitate something minor or open a door with a wave of their hand. I’ll double-check on this, but so far, he’s done nothing. I don’t think he’s telekinetic.”
In other words, we still had nothing.
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Bern said. “Why?”
“I’m going to poke this snake nest with a stick and I might need a lot of help.”
“I’ll be here,” Bern promised. “Catalina, don’t let this get personal. Let’s find the jewel, catch the poisoner, and be done with them. What they think of us doesn’t matter. This is an investigation just like any other. They are suspects. You only interact with them to get to your objective.”
“I know.”
We sat together in a comfortable silence, watching Lucian schmooze his father-in-law over some whiskey and cigars.
“Did you like him?” Bern asked.
“Not that much.” Not as much as I had liked Alessandro Sagredo. Walking with Xavier had been nice, before I realized he was a two-faced scumbag, but it was nothing special. But when I saw Alessandro, I wanted to snap my wings open as far as they could go and dazzle him with everything I had, so he would be mine forever. I liked him so much, I had to let him go.
Chapter 7
It was almost brunch time, and I was walking through the garden of Mountain Rose, carrying a mimosa in each hand.
Diamond Fire: A Hidden Legacy Novella Page 8
