Burn for Me

“If he is, it’s a good one.”

We burst out onto the wooden bridge. Something flashed in an empty window in the building across from us, reflecting the sun. I grabbed Mad Rogan’s arm and yanked him toward me. A shot rang out.

“Where?” Mad Rogan growled.

“Top floor, left corner.”

A chunk of concrete the size of a basketball shot out from the pile of rubble and rocketed into the dark window. A muffled scream echoed through the building sounding a lot like “Ow!”

We ran down the bridge.

“Crown Tech,” a calm male voice said from Mad Rogan’s cell. “Emerald Drilling, Palomo Industries, Powell Piping Technologies, Bickard, Stang, and Associates, and Reisen Information Services Corporation.”

Mad Rogan hung up.

“Does that tell you anything?” I asked.

“No.”

Ahead, a pattern crossed the bridge, drawn in chalk and coal. It hadn’t been there when we had come the other way. Mad Rogan frowned. The boards with the pattern broke. A flash of vile-smelling green mist shot into the air. He jumped over the gap. I followed.

“I think they’re trying to kill me,” he said.

“You came into the Pit and punked them in their own territory. Of course they are trying to kill you. Get used to it.”

The bridge shuddered under our footsteps. We ran through the island and onto the bridge leading out.

Ahead, sun reflected in a long, horizontal spark right at the level of Rogan’s throat.

“Wire!”

“I see it.” He pulled a knife out of his jeans and slashed at the wire. It snapped, the two ends coiling to the sides. We ran down the bridge into the parking lot and jumped into the Range Rover. Mad Rogan peeled out of the parking lot so fast that the car almost banked. I grabbed onto the door handle out of sheer self-preservation.

“If he is using Hellspawn, we might not be able to get him,” Mad Rogan said.

“What?”

“Hellspawn creates null space.”

“In English?”

“The amount of magic he’s using is so high that the boundary of the circle he’s in doesn’t exist in our physical realm.”

“How can it not exist? What does that—” A tiny grey body shot in front of the Land Rover. “Squirrel!”

Mad Rogan swerved to the side, trying to avoid the suicidal beast. The SUV hit a curb and jumped. For a terrifying second, we almost flew, weightless. My heart leaped into my throat. The heavy vehicle landed back on the pavement with a thud. The squirrel leapt into the grass on the other side.

I remembered to breathe. “Thank you for not killing the squirrel.”

“You’re welcome, although now I want to go back and strangle it.” Mad Rogan took a ramp onto the interstate. “Back to arcane circles. The boundary of the circle is where our physical reality meets the arcane realm, the ‘place’ where we reach to get swarms for swarmers, for example. It’s a small hole in our space. Nothing can penetrate the circle while the null space is active. You can stand on the street and lob grenades at Pierce, and they’ll just bounce off.”

We’ll see about that.

While the Land Rover hurtled down the interstate, an imaginary conversation between Adam and me played in my head. Hi, Adam. Did you set fire to my house? Did you try to kill my grandmother? They said I had to bring him in alive. They didn’t say anything about what condition he had to be in.

Maybe I could do it again, that thing I did with Mad Rogan—lock Adam in place and make him answer me. I bet I could. Just thinking about Grandma Frida made me shake.

Mad Rogan took the exit, and I glanced at the clock. Four minutes. We made it in record time.

Ahead the street rolled out, devoid of traffic. In the middle of the intersection, Adam Pierce spat a torrent of white-hot flames at the building. Two wrecks that used to be cars slowly melted a couple dozen feet from him.

Mad Rogan slammed on the brakes, and the Land Rover screeched to a halt.

“Get us closer, please.” I reached for my gun.

“Too hot. Look.”

The pavement just outside Adam’s circle had turned dark and soft. He was melting the road.

I jumped out of the car. Heat bathed me, blocking my way like a wall.

A car door clanged as Mad Rogan leaped out of the vehicle. A metal pole holding up a streetlight snapped in half and flew like a spear toward Adam Pierce. The pole hit the circle and ricocheted, spinning back at us through the air. I gulped. The pole reversed and punched the invisible boundary of Adam’s magic circle, grinding against it.

Mad Rogan grimaced.

The pole clattered to the pavement.

“Null space,” he said. “Come on.”

I could see Adam. He was right there. Argh.

“Nevada! We’re wasting time.”

Right there.

But the firemen and Adam were working together. If we got what the firemen were after, Adam would come to us.

We spun around and hopped back into the Land Rover. Mad Rogan took a sharp turn left, circling the buildings, heading for the silver tower. He drove up to the front steps and parked the car, then we got out. The moment I stepped onto the stone steps leading to the door, a blinding headache gripped my brain and squeezed like a vise, tighter and tighter. I took another step up the stairs. The doorway wavered in front of me, distorted. The pain scraped the inside of my skull. I had an absurd feeling that my brain had swelled like an overinflated water balloon and was about to pop.

“They have a mage blocking the door.” Mad Rogan backed away onto the pavement and jogged right, looking at his phone.

I followed him. As soon as I left the stairway, the headache vanished. That was a nice power to have. If I’d had that power, I wouldn’t have had to build retractable stairs to my room.

In the distance sirens wailed. The emergency responders were on their way, which meant the fake firemen in the building would speed up whatever they were doing so they could get away before Houston’s finest showed up in force. We had to find a way in, and we had to find it now.

Since the firemen left someone covering the front entrance, it was highly likely they were still on the first floor. Their team was small. If their goal was on a different floor, they wouldn’t have left anyone covering the front entrance; they would’ve all gone to that floor instead. But they left a guard, so all of them were probably on the first floor, and they were armed, which meant they would probably defend the side entrances. That left us with windows, but the bottom floor of the tower was solid stone, and the first row of windows started about eighteen feet off the ground.