Diamond Fire

Nobody said anything or moved.

“What? How did you think this worked? That I would wiggle my nose and sniff out the poison? If only. No, you eat it and if you die, I can say, ‘Yes, it’s been poisoned.’”

Rivera sighed. “Ma’am. Please take this seriously. According to the agreement between House Rogan and House Etterson . . .”

“Yes, yes. I’ve been stuck in the guardhouse on a chance someone at this wedding will get poisoned for the last two weeks. Let me have a little fun.”

Runa raised her hands. A faint green mist spread from her, passed through the refrigerators, and dissipated. She stepped forward, took a tub of ice-white fondant out, opened it, pinched some fondant off, and popped it in her mouth. “Mmm, delicious cyanide. Old school. Histotoxic hypoxia on you, histotoxic hypoxia on your house, histotoxic hypoxia on your cow. Wait.” She held her hand up. “What is this fishy aftertaste?”

Runa ate a little more and smacked her lips loudly. “It’s on the tip of my tongue. Ooo. Tetrodotoxin. Sneaky. Cyanide would kill you in minutes, but if you happened to somehow take an antidote, tetrodotoxin would still get you.”

Runa held out her hands. “Every tub in here is poisoned. All of the fondant. If the poisoner wanted to simply assassinate the happy couple, they could have used thallium. It is odorless, tasteless, lethal, and it takes several days to kick in. What this person did is about as subtle as taking a hammer and smashing the bride and groom on the head with it. You are looking for someone for whom Connor’s and Nevada’s death is deeply personal. This person wants to see them suffer and die. They will likely be in the wedding party or near it. They want to inflict pain and witness it so badly, they are willing to risk their personal safety. They can’t wait to do it. There is glee in this and a horrible malice.”

This aligned with everything I was thinking so far. I pulled up my main suspect and showed the tablet to Rivera and Leon. Rivera’s eyes narrowed.

“Makes sense,” he said.

A crazy grin tugged at Leon’s mouth. “Oh, I hope so. I really hope so.”

“Who is responsible for the fondant?” I asked.

“Jeremy,” Carlos said. “But he’s a good kid. He wouldn’t do this.”

Rivera spoke into his phone. “Bug, I need a full workup on Jeremy Wagner. Payments, debt history, any connection to Rogan or Baylor. I want to know where he was and what he was doing since Valentina’s was hired for the wedding. Anything you can dig up.”

We had done a background check on every employee. Jeremy Wagner had come back clean, which meant that either we were incompetent, or his darkness was well hidden. Trying to retrace Jeremy’s steps in the last few days, even with Bug’s talent, would take time. We didn’t have time. Right now, in Mountain Rose, Mrs. Rogan could be serving the children poisoned lemonade.

I had to use my magic. I felt cold and nauseous and sticky, as if I had been poisoned. It was an awful feeling. My heart was hammering in my chest. I wanted to go somewhere alone and quiet, anywhere but here. I wanted this to be somebody else’s problem.

They were going to poison my sister. And Rogan. And his mother. And all their friends, relatives, and children. Mia Rosa with her bedazzled unicorn. I could think of only one person who had that kind of hate.

“I will interview Jeremy.”

Rivera startled. Leon frowned at me. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“The real target is the person who hired Jeremy,” Rivera said.

“I’m aware of that. The background will take time and may not turn up anything. It’s a simple matter of what would be quickest and produce the best results. If I ask him, he will tell me.”

Rivera spoke slowly and deliberately. “If I wanted to poison someone by tampering with the wedding cake, I would watch the bakery to make sure the tampering was not discovered. The moment you question Jeremy, we will have to sit on him. If the poisoner suspects that we know about the cake, they will try again, and this time we may not find it in time. Tracing Jeremy’s employer through Bug is cleaner and carries less risk.”

“And what if Bug doesn’t find anything?” Leon asked.

Whatever happened, my cousin was in my corner.

“If he doesn’t find anything, then we squeeze Jeremy,” Rivera said.

“I can question Jeremy and make sure he won’t remember it.”

Leon’s eyebrows crept up.

“Are you sure?” Rivera asked.

I wasn’t sure, but sooner or later I had to try it. It had to work. My sister’s life depended on it.

“Yes. It’s plausible that we would talk to all of the employees after the break-in.”

“If Catalina says she can do it, she can do it,” Leon said.

“Okay,” Rivera said.

I turned to Valentina. “Please call in your employees. Let them know that there has been a burglary and they will be interviewed. Meanwhile, I need you to replace all of the fondant with an identical product. If Jeremy is in on it, he will not taste the fondant, because he knows it’s lethal, so he’ll have no way of knowing it was switched.”

“Ahem,” Runa said. “Or you could let me purify the fondant for you, no need to replace or dispose of anything.”

“But will it be safe?” Valentina asked.

The smile vanished from Runa’s face. Suddenly her expression turned cold and harsh. “Let me introduce myself again. Runa Etterson of House Etterson, Prime Venenata. I have walked into a house filled with sarin and after I was done, the family hiding upstairs in the safe room, walked out and made coffee for me in their kitchen. Mad Rogan trusts my House with the safety of the people who are most precious to him. If I say the fondant is safe to use, it’s safe to use. Stand back please.”

Runa pulled out chalk and began drawing an arcane circle on the floor.

Chapter 6

I sat in the small office on the other side of the building. Normally this room was used to meet with clients and go over menus and cake books. Today there would be questions about cakes, but they would have a different flavor.

Rivera took his job as chief of security very seriously. He and two of his guys wouldn’t budge from their position behind me. Runa perched on the chair, flipping through a photo album filled with beautiful cakes, on the off chance Jeremy tried to poison me.

Leon leaned on the table next to me. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah.” I would have to use my magic with finesse. The few times I’d actively used it required power. Finesse was entirely different.

When I was born, the nurse who helped deliver me picked me up out of the crib by my mother’s side and ran. They caught her before she made it off the floor, and when they took me away from her, she screamed and cried. In twenty years of nursing, she had never done anything like that. That woman lost her career because I was born with the kind of magic that made people love me.

She was the first but not the last. Over the years, there had been others. A dentist who examined my teeth tried to hide me in his office and then claimed that I ran away. I was two years old. The preschool teacher loaded me into her car and tried to run my mother over when she attempted to stop her. When we would go shopping, strangers would follow me as I rode in the cart and employees would try to give me things for free.

Other babies and toddlers were encouraged to be cute. I was taught to never draw attention to myself, not to smile at strangers, and not to make friends. If I liked another child, they would abandon everything to play with me. But soon playing wouldn’t be enough. They would follow me, mesmerized, and then they would want a piece of me, a piece of my dress, a lock of my hair, some skin, maybe a finger. Once it started, I didn’t know how to stop it. Only my family and my primary doctor were immune.

I was homeschooled until high school, when it became clear that I could control my power well enough to keep it from leaking. I had practiced controlling my magic since the moment I understood that I ruined lives. My talent was extremely rare, but I studied similar magics, I practiced arcane circles, and I read all about magic theory, but theory, by definition, wasn’t practice.

I had experimented before on my sisters, because they were immune, and I had no way of knowing if anything I learned would actually work. Rivera shouldn’t have bothered with the lecture. I needed him and his guys here. He knew what I could do. If I failed to control my power and besotted Jeremy snapped, they would pull him off me.