Burn for Me
“You should’ve stayed retired.” Augustine’s voice was dry.
“And what’s going on with your hair?” Mad Rogan raised his eyebrows. “That’s a huge amount of illusion. What are you hiding up there? Are you prematurely balding?”
Augustine turned to me. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. This man is extremely dangerous.”
Mad Rogan reached out toward Augustine’s hair, but lowered his hand. “I’d touch it, but I’m afraid I might cut myself.”
“Listen to me.” Urgency vibrated in Augustine’s voice. “You need to limit your association with this man. We exist in a fragile balance, and the core of that balance, the thing that restrains us, is our family. He feels no obligation to his family or anyone else’s. He has no restraint. You have no idea what kind of things he is involved in.”
And that, exactly that, was the problem with Primes. That right there.
“She needs to limit her association with you,” Mad Rogan said. “You’re trying to take her business.”
Augustine pulled off his glasses. “I may be putting her at risk financially, but you would take her life, if it was convenient, and make jokes about it later.”
Actually, Augustine was sending me after Adam Pierce, which was pretty much a death sentence.
Augustine kept going. “You have no code, Connor. You know nothing about duty or honor or self-sacrifice . . .”
Rogan moved, brutal and blindingly fast. Augustine’s back hit the wall, and Mad Rogan drove his left forearm into his neck, pinning him. His eyes turned cold and merciless.
“You spent your time after college sitting in a comfortable office learning the family trade.” His voice was precise and so filled with menace that the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose. “This was your grand, self-serving sacrifice. You sat here, wrapped in your luxurious cocoon and wallowing in self-pity, while I spent six years starving and bleeding in a fucking jungle where all the money in the world couldn’t buy you a gulp of clean water. I did this so people I’ll never know could go to sleep in peace. What do you know about sacrifice? You never watched someone’s head explode from a bullet, then brushed pieces of human being off you and kept going. So how about you shut the fuck up?”
The room turned dark. Black bulges slid along the walls. Fear drained down my spine. Every instinct I had screamed at me that whatever was in the walls was bad and dangerous, and if it broke out, I needed to run.
“Don’t push me, Connor,” Augustine ground out. “You’ll fucking regret it.”
A violent, deranged light flared in Mad Rogan’s eyes. “Let’s test your theory about killing and jokes. I’ve got a good one just for this occasion.”
The bulges split. Ropy black tentacles shot out of the wall, flailing. If it was illusion, it was the best I had ever seen. Panic crushed me, chaining my feet in place. I shuddered in its grip. What the hell kind of magic was this?
Things rose into the air as Rogan sorted through my possessions, looking for a weapon.
No. This is my house. You will not wreck my house and put my family at risk.
The icy vise of panic broke. “That’s enough,” I barked.
The two men startled. Augustine frowned. “How . . .”
“What the hell is wrong with both of you? This isn’t some bar you can wreck. This is my place of business. This is my home! There are children sleeping less than a hundred feet from this room.”
The darkness vanished like a candle flame snuffed out by a draft. Rogan let go of Augustine.
“I don’t know which one of you is worse. Are you out of your minds? You’re both selfish, spoiled pricks.”
“Nevada?” my mother said behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. My mother stood in the hallway with Grandma Frida next to her. My mother carried a shotgun. Grandma Frida carried her phone.
“Why are you screaming at an empty room?” my mother asked.
It had to be Augustine’s illusion. I glared at Augustine. “Drop it.”
He grimaced. Grandma Frida gasped. I had a feeling she and my mother just saw Mad Rogan and Augustine Montgomery suddenly pop into existence in my office.
“Get out of my house,” I said.
My mother chambered a round with an unmistakable metallic click.
The two men marched out of the office. Grandma Frida raised her phone and snapped a picture. The door closed. I landed into my chair.
My mother looked at the carnations. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”
I shook my head and picked up the phone. “Bern? Tell me you recorded all of this.”
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I saved a hard copy and offloaded it onto two remote servers.”
“Good,” I said. If there was ever a question as to why I needed to slap both of them with a restraining order, at least I would have plenty of evidence. Primes or not Primes, no judge would deny me a restraining order after viewing that.
Someone knocked on my bedroom door. I opened my eyes. I was sitting in bed, slumped against the pillow, my computer on my lap. I glanced at the electronic clock. Wow. 5:30 a.m. I’d moved to my bedroom after midnight, when my eyes had started glazing over. I must’ve fallen asleep. It had been a long day.
“Come in,” I called.
The door swung open and Bern entered, carrying a stack of papers. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“The kids printed out some stuff.” He put it on the bed. His eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard.
“Were you awake all this time?”
He nodded. “I’d gone over some things. It’s not Egypt, Japan, or China, I can tell you that. Leon did some research on India, but he conked out, so . . .” He yawned. “You . . .” He yawned again.
“Get some sleep. I’ve got India.”
He sat down on the trundle bed. It used to be mine when I was much younger. Sometimes, when my sisters and I would watch a movie in my room, they would pass out on it.
“I’ll just sit here a minute,” he said.
“Sure.”
I leafed through the papers. Printouts of articles about various artifacts. Some weird doodle. A picture of a knight holding a shield against a gout of flame. “Not bad.” I turned to show it to Bern. He lay asleep on the trundle.
Poor guy.
I tapped my keyboard to wake the laptop up. Right. India.
Leon’s notes listed the search strings. India, artifact, Emmens . . . over thirty-five searches. I blew out some air. He was very thorough.