Up In Flames

by Jenny Schwartz

  “I’d rather drink battery acid.” It was hard to talk upside down and with her nose bumping Stuart’s back as he walked. She wriggled. “Put me down.”

  “Thanks, Cabot,” Stuart said.

  Diane craned her head.

  The traitorous mage handed him her purse, held the door open, and grinned.

  “Put me down or I’ll—” She broke off as Stuart skirted the banana skin bomb. Someone, probably Cabot, had encircled it with a warning light. Two dark-suited men stood guard. It sobered her, washing away the surge of adrenaline that came from fighting the chief bodyguard. “Put me down, Stuart. Please.”

  He hesitated on the pavement, then set her down on the bottom step. A large hand on her waist steadied her.

  The step made up the difference in their heights. Diane looked him straight in the eye, and read his worry. It shook her.

  His worry went beyond professional concern. He loved the older man. The President’s affection for his godson was returned.

  She felt the nudge of it in her own heart. “You should be with the President.”

  “He has guards.” He took his hand from her waist. “Miss Lee, you saw the spell bomb. I have to follow that up.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t know you.” He touched her elbow, guiding her through the police cordon. “But Nancy said you’re not flagged in the database.”

  “Meaning I’m not a registered terrorist?”

  “No. Meaning you’re a magic user with no known affiliations or powers.”

  “I’m a mage,” she contradicted. She had a graduate degree to back up her claim. She had powers, and if he slung her over his shoulder again, he’d feel them. Stuff the clause that said magic couldn’t be used against mundanes. Her sympathy for him vanished.

  Stuart shook his head. “By powers I mean your agreement or refusal to use your magical abilities for government work. It seems no one ever approached you.”

  “Oh, that.” Diane hunched her shoulders and walked faster. He was talking about the recruitment security agencies undertook among mage students, and he was right. No one had ever approached her.

  “Miss Lee, today you’ve shown you have a talent for the work. You’re a mage for hire. I’d like to hire you.”

  She stopped at the steps to her apartment building and swung around to face him. “You don’t know me. And you called me a nutcase.”

  “I apologize.”

  “You shouldn’t.” She sighed sharply. “Other people share your assessment of me: Unreliable and unfocussed. Dizzy. That would be why no government agency approached me. Not that I wanted to join them.”

  “What do you want?”

  She looked at the sky, at the cluster of police, bomb disposal experts and spectators, and finally, at the man in front of her. Despite all the noise and excitement, he was totally focused on her. That sort of concentration demanded the truth. “I want to be free of other people’s expectations.”

  He blinked.

  “Never mind.” She retreated up two steps. She should never have given him her heart truth. It was just that she was shaken by the morning’s events that she’d confided in him. “I can’t help you, Agent Stuart.”

  “Stuart’s my first name. I’m Stuart Alan Jamieson.”

  “Good-bye, Agent Jamieson.”

  “If you wanted a life free of others’ expectations, why did you create your To Do List?”

  Her hand froze on her apartment building’s front door. She leaned a shoulder against it, and looked down at him.

  He wasn’t fretted about others’ expectations or his place in the world. His confidence was part of him. He’d never understand.

  “I thought I could be the daughter my parents wanted, a sensible citizen, a respectable neighbor. I thought the list would help me fit in.”

  He leapt up a couple of steps and stood beside her, close enough that the swing of his jacket brushed her arm. “Sometimes fitting in is about being true to yourself. Don’t make yourself over to fit the niche you’re in. Find the niche that fits you.”

  “Philosophy?”

  “Life advice.”

  They stared at one another, seeing deeper than the selves they presented to the world. Loneliness recognized itself.

  Diane broke first. She glanced away and turned the door handle.

  Stuart’s arm came over her shoulder and he pushed the door open. “The President has enemies, Miss Lee, and it seems that you can see their work. I want him safe and you can help. Maybe you’ll even find a place where you fit in.”

  It was unscrupulous to use her loneliness against her. But what if it was a promise, not a bribe? She retreated a couple of steps. “I…I’m not sure.”

  “How about you make me a coffee and we’ll talk about it?” For the first time, he smiled. The harsh lines of his face shifted, revealing humor. “I wouldn’t mind seeing your famous list, either.”

  She blushed. Her list, with “Fall in love” still to be crossed off. Or worse, what if “Fall in love” had vanished? Would it mean she had already tumbled? “My To Do List isn’t precognitive in the sense of directing fate. It doesn’t tell me what will happen, just the chances I’ll have. I can ignore it.”

  “Do you?”

  She thought back to how she’d structured her life since Graduate School to follow the list’s guidance. She even took jobs based on what tasks it showed. She really did need more confidence in herself. “I told Mrs. Tanner this morning that I’d burn the list.”

  “Mrs. Tanner?”

  “Yes, dear?” The elderly lady was winding herself into a pashmina for the walk to her pet shop.

  Prez the parrot flew down the stairs, over her head and landed on Diane’s shoulder. He nibbled her ear.

  “Mrs. Tanner, this is Agent Jamieson.” Diane raised a hand and scratched Prez’s feathered chest. “Agent Jamieson, my neighbor, Mrs. Tanner, and her parrot, The President.”

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Good morning. Did you want me for something, Diane? I need to open the pet shop.” Mrs. Tanner finished winding herself into her pashmina and held out a hand for Prez. The parrot ignored her.

  “Only to say Prez is safe. I just saved the real president’s life.”

  “How unexpected. And how vexatious your list wasn’t more specific. There we were worrying for nothing.”

  Stuart cleared his throat. To him, threats against the President weren’t “nothing”.

  Carefully, Diane detached Prez from her shoulder and passed him across to her neighbor. “I’m glad Prez is safe. He’s a sweetie.”

  “Honey-pie,” Prez said.

  “Don’t flirt, dear boy,” Mrs. Tanner said. The parrot laughed, a low masculine chuckle. “Naughty. Bye, Diane, Mr. Jamieson.” The door closed behind her.

  Diane smiled after them, then turned to Stuart. “Mrs. Tanner’s a witch and Prez is her familiar and friend. He’s important to her.”

  “I understand.”

  But could a mundane really understand a magic user’s bond with their familiar?

  “Do you have one, a familiar?” he asked.

  “No. Familiars express an aspect of a magic user’s personality. They’re meant to strengthen and balance their owner. I’ve never wanted to find out what I’d end up with.” Probably a tortoise.

  “I could see you with a wolf.”

  The observation slammed into her with the force of lightning. It lit, burned and shocked. A wolf was a powerful animal, wild but bonded to its mate and pack. She wasn’t anywhere as strong and centered. She couldn’t control a wolf. So why did Stuart’s suggestion resonate in her bones?

  “A friend of mine has a wolf companion who has just had pups. You should meet him. Maybe you’ll bond with one of the pups.”

  “I think you’re a dangerous man,” she said slowly. He was turning her life upside down. She had always seen herself as a lightweight mage, someone to find life’s inessentials and produce fine weather for society wedding
s. Land cleansing, redemption, was her dream, but Stuart challenged her to reach deeper and reassess her self-vision.

  Could you fall in love with a man who challenged you? or would a smart woman run?

  She surrendered to temptation, to fate. “How do you like your coffee?”

  Chapter Four

  Stuart drank his coffee black. Diane added milk to hers, and joined him at the small kitchen table. Fully half the table was covered in books, mostly garden books. Cleansing Dominion Court would cover her expenses for the next two months.

  Unfortunately, the To Do List had relegated that task to number nine on the list. A whole raft of new tasks were responsible for the demotion. They included “Find spell bomber” and “Feed the fire”. But arguably the most dangerous was “First kiss”.

  “May I see the famous list?” Stuart asked.

  “If you remember it’s not a guarantee of what will happen.” She put her mug down. “It’s being difficult.” She stood reluctantly and retrieved the list from the refrigerator, then watched his eyebrows twitch as he read it.

  He put the list on the table. “Seems like it thinks you’re going to work for me.”

  “‘Negotiate a better deal’ needn’t apply to you,” she said.

  “Nor should ‘Fall in love’, but you applied it to me.”

  “I was concussed from tackling the President.”

  “Uh huh.” He drank his coffee. “It’s not on the list, now.”

  “What isn’t?” She played dumb.

  There was a gleam in his eyes before he lowered them to study his mug. “Uncle Kevin is like the rest of my family. He wants me to find a nice girl.”

  “Settle down in the suburbs and raise kids,” Diane finished. Her own family mightn’t include the President of the Free World, but they had similar concerns.

  “Not quite.” A grin shaded his mouth. “Uncle Kevin thinks I need a nice girl to trip me up.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “My dad’s a musician, Mom’s a children’s book illustrator, my younger brother is sailing in the Caribbean. They think my controlled life needs stirring up. They’ve convinced Uncle Kevin. He undoubtedly thinks that the sort of girl who can knock him down would also be capable of tripping me up. If you do decide to work for me hunting terrorists, Uncle Kevin will be on your side.”

  “I doubt it.” Diane reached for the To Do List and fidgeted with it. “It sounds like the President wants to match-make. I don’t want to be match-made for. He’ll be disappointed in me.”

  Stuart flicked the list from her, humor forgotten. “Forget his expectations and the damn list. The bottom line is that the spell bomb placed to take out Uncle Kevin was Aernish built and well enough enchanted that Cabot didn’t spot it. You did. That ability to penetrate their enchantments is something I need. If they’ve launched a campaign against Uncle Kevin, they’re not going to stop till the ringleaders are caught.”

  Aernish. She had heard but not registered the bomb maker’s name at the tailor shop. Now, her stomach tightened.

  The Aernish were fanatics. It wasn’t capture that stopped them. It was death.

  “I can’t take on an Aernish mage,” she said.

  “You already have.” A touch of sympathy tempered his bluntness. “You crossed them when you saved the President.”

  “Oh God.” She wrapped cold fingers around her coffee mug. She would have to strengthen her wards, maybe enchant an extra protection.

  “Join my team, Diane. We watch one another’s backs, and until we’ve cleaned up this Aernish group, you have to be hyper-vigilant. They won’t overlook what they see as your interference.”

  She shuddered. Every mage school student heard the stories. It wasn’t only the government agencies that recruited on campus. Aernish and other radical hate groups ran their own campaigns. Sometimes their strategies included fear, intimidation and coercion.

  “They never asked me to join them. There was a boy in my class. He had the brightest blue eyes, but cold, like glacier caves. He really believed that mundanes were lesser. Slaves.”

  “The radicals think that way,” Stuart said.

  “I’ve never understood it. My family are all mundane. I like that they see my magic as just another talent, like my brother’s talent with numbers. He’s an accountant. I’d hate for them to see me as something different. And I would never, never see them as lesser. People are people.”

  “Not to the Aernish. They believe only a magic user should be President, someone who can win magic duels.”

  “Like in the old Wild West.” She stood and paced, arms wrapped around herself. “It’s insane. I’ve read about the President and watched him on the news. He’s brave and intelligent. He’s compassionate. Why would having magic make him any better?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  She focused on the mundane man lounging at her table. He was big and powerful. Forget magic. His will could bend the world. And currently, his attention was on her.

  It warmed her. She stopped pacing and stood in front of him. It was time she stopped reacting and responding emotionally—which was a polite euphemism for running scared. Time to grow up.

  If Agent Stuart Jamieson, godson and security to the President, was here in her small apartment while his staff dealt with a major security breach, then he truly thought her important to saving the President. Forget all the chatter of love and philosophy. The issue at stake was the President’s life.

  “I’ll help,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”

  Chapter Five

  Apparently, joining the President’s security detail meant moving house.

  “Pack what you’ll need for a week,” Stuart said. “And anything you treasure.”

  Diane stared at him.

  “The Aernish will come after you, and if they can’t touch you, they can leave a message.”

  Ugh. She grimaced and nodded understanding. “I’ll bar the door and Mrs. Tanner wards the building.”

  “A witch’s magic won’t hold the Aernish.”

  “This witch’s might,” Diane said. “And witches are strongest on their home ground.” She shrugged her shoulders, trying to dislodge a weight of apprehension. “Give me ten minutes to pack, or I can meet you at the tailors?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  She left him pouring more coffee and walked into her bedroom. Since she didn’t bother folding her clothes neatly, she managed the packing in ten minutes. Her magic silver jewelry she took from its oak box and fitted round her neck, over her wrists and onto her fingers. Necklace, charm bangle and rings. She tucked her book of spells on top of her shirts and zipped the bag. “I’m ready.”

  Stuart turned from the living room window. “I’ll take the bag.”

  “No, thanks.” She swung it away from him, dropping it on her far side by the front door. “There’s something I have to do first.”

  Matches were on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. She grabbed a box and her To Do List. It was time to live life freefall, with courage.

  The list burned with startling rapidity. The ashes she washed down the sink.

  When she turned around, Stuart had picked up her bag. She let him carry it since he’d had the tact not to comment on her list burning.

  It had felt strange to destroy something she’d created with such effort. The tingle of loosed magic ran over her hands, fading into the silver jewelry. She called on it to reinforce the warding of her apartment.

  In mage sight, her door glowed gold then white before fading back to wood. Anyone attempting to enter without her permission would find themselves blasted back down the stairs. The rebuff spell had always appealed to her. Not least because, as in martial arts, it used the aggressor’s strength against them.

  She lowered her hands.

  Stuart didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath. “When we get outside, the press will have arrived. They’ll be concentrating on Ta’an Brothers Tailors, but some of them know me.
If they try to stop us or ask questions, ignore them. Keep your head down. Don’t make eye contact. It only encourages them.”

  “We could go out the back way or I could go on my own.” She reached for her bag.

  Stuart started down the stairs. “We go together.”

  “If my parents see me on television…” It was a scary thought. They would worry and their worry would nag her. “Let me go out the back way.”

  “It’s easier and safer if you stay with me. I have ID and there will be a car waiting.” In the foyer, he paused and looked at her. “Trust me.”

  “I am.” And it unnerved her. “But I can still think for myself. We could avoid all this if I just slipped out the back way. I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “And what if slipping out the back way leads you into the arms of the Aernish? That is what we’re trying to avoid.”

  “They wouldn’t still be around. Not with the area crawling with security.”

  “Are you willing to bet your life on Aernish commonsense?”

  Put that way…no. Diane pulled a face, and pushed open the front door.

  On the street, traffic had come to a standstill. Partly, this was due to the police cordon, but ringing the police vehicles were a vulpine crowd of press vehicles abandoned haphazardly as their drivers ran to the attempted presidential assassination.

  “Not exactly the publicity the Ta’an brothers prefer.” Serve the older brother right for suspecting her of plotting against the President. Nasty-minded elf.

  Cameras were pointed at the tailor’s shop; microphones at the impassive police. As she scanned the crowd, she noticed that a couple of the more enterprising reporters had cornered some of her neighbors. What if one of them had seen her tackle the President?

  There was so much noise and urgent shouting. She put her head down and ran where Stuart directed her. A black sedan waited, engine starting up at the sight of them.

  “Agent Jamieson,” a voice screeched.

  He opened the car door and pushed Diane into the back seat. Her bag followed heavily.

  “Agent Jamieson, why aren’t you with the President? How badly is he injured?”