Burn for Me

Mad Rogan had just taken a shower. He had stood in that glass box, naked, with water running all over him. I’d probably missed a naked Rogan by mere minutes.

My imagination painted him nude, the golden skin damp, hard, smooth muscle rolling on his arms as he ran his hand through his hair . . . heat spread through me. I was flushing. I knew I was flushing.

We were locked in a room together. The room had a bed. Why did my heart speed up?

“. . . male.”

What?

Mad Rogan grimaced. “No, I didn’t see his face. I saw his hand as he bent down.”

He was on the phone. This wasn’t good. I was observant. It was one of my professional skills, something I practiced, but also something that came naturally to me. He was standing right there with his phone to his ear, and I completely didn’t see it. I just saw his eyes, and his jaw, and the strong line of his neck, and the outline of a muscular chest under the T-shirt. I saw an enormous dark bruise creeping up the left side of his neck and a dozen small cuts and bruises on his arms. But I didn’t see the phone. The thought of him in the shower short-circuited whatever power of observation I had.

Okay. This had to stop. This was now actively interfering with my ability to do my job. I had to not think about him in the shower. Or being in the shower with him.

“Yes, I’m sure, Augustine,” Mad Rogan said into the phone. “He didn’t caress my cheek softly with his calloused fingers, but I saw a male hand.”

“He wore a ring,” I said.

“Wait.” Mad Rogan put the phone on speaker. “What kind of a ring?”

“A thick gold ring. It looked like a school ring.”

“Did you happen to notice what finger the ring was on?” Augustine said through the phone.

“Index finger.”

“Are you sure?” Augustine asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I thought it was odd, because school rings are usually worn on the ring finger of the right hand.”

“Not if it’s a Zeta Sigma Mu frat ring,” Rogan said.

“What kind of fraternity is that?” I asked.

“Magic. Notable and above only,” Augustine said.

“That frat ring is worn on the index finger because the ancients believed that ring fingers had a vein going through them that led straight to the heart,” Mad Rogan said. “Magic is an analytical art and must be free of constraints of the heart, so you wear the ring as far away as possible from the ring finger. Which would technically mean the thumb, but thumb rings are too impractical.”

“There are eight animator Houses in the country,” Augustine said. “Possibly more. I don’t like it. I don’t like that more than one Prime is involved in this. The stakes just skyrocketed. Okay, I’ll call you when I get him.”

Mad Rogan hung up the phone and looked at me. “He found Mark Emmens, the great-grandson of the original Emmens. He is seventy-nine and of sound mind. Augustine is personally bringing him to MII.”

“Great.”

“He’s hexed.”

“What do you mean, hexed?”

Mad Rogan tossed the phone on the bed. “Every member of the Emmens family is placed under a powerful compulsion that prevents them from speaking about the artifact.”

“You can do that?”

“Not me personally, but it can be done. It’s very rare and requires months of preparation. Apparently the Emmens family considers it their sacred duty to protect the location of the artifact.”

I frowned. “So how does it help us?”

“You’ll have to break the hex.”

“Me?”

“You.”

I spread my arms. “I have no idea how to do it. You’ve used Acubens Exemplar on me. Can’t you do something like Hammer Lock to break through the hex?”

“I’m a weak telepath. My telepathy is the by-product of my being a tactile, and besides, Acubens Exemplar took weeks to set up. It was left over from another venture I was involved in. Using it completely drained me. Of the two of us, you have much better chances.”

Great.

“Rogan, I don’t know how. I will try my best, but I don’t know how to do it.”

He sat on the bed. “You’ll likely have to tap into the same place you did when you interrogated me after your grandmother nearly died during the arson.”

Sure. Piece of cake.

“Nevada?”

“I can’t. I’m not sure what I did or how I did it.”

“Okay.” Mad Rogan leaned forward. “Let’s try to figure this out. When you exercise your power, do you make an effort?”

“Not really.”

“What happens when your magic misfires?”

“It doesn’t.”

He paused. “You never had a false positive?”

“No.”

He looked at me. “Are you telling me that all this time you’ve been tapping your passive field, and it has never misfired?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

His expression went blank.

Silence stretched.

I felt stupid standing there. “Rogan?”

“Hold on. I’m trying to figure out how to condense thirty years of being a Prime and learning magic theory into twenty minutes of explanation. I’m trying to put it into words you’d understand.”

I shook my head.

“What?”

“I realize that I’m ignorant and it’s frustrating for you, but it would be nice if you didn’t imply that I was an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. I’m trying to explain how to fly a jet to someone who’s never seen a plane before.”

I sighed and sat in a chair. “Well, when you find the words my stupid self can understand, you let me know.”

“Are you at least going to try to learn, or are you just going to sit over there and pout? It’s unlike you.”

“Rogan, you don’t know anything about what I’m like.”

He slid off the bed and crouched by me. No wince, no frown. Whatever painkillers the good doctor had given him must’ve been really strong. He focused on me completely, the same way he did when he asked me a question and waited for an answer. It was almost impossible to look away. If he ever fell in love—which probably wasn’t possible, given that he was likely a psychopath—his would be the kind of devotion people fantasized about.

“You’ll hurt your ribs,” I said.

“What’s the problem, Nevada?”