Diamond Fire

“In the car, with Leon.”

“Are you going back to Mountain Rose?”

“Yes, but only for a minute.” I needed to make sure they finished the tent like they were supposed to.

“I need you to find a safe place to pull over. I’m sending you some footage you need to see before you get there.”

What? “Send it. I’ll just look at it while Leon is driving.”

“No, I need you to pull over.”

I sighed. “Your brother is being weird.”

“And this is news how?”

“Can you take the next exit and find a good spot to pull over?”

Two minutes later, Leon pulled over from 281 into a gas station lot and parked. I sent Bern a text. My email dinged, and I started the download on my phone. It was taking forever.

“That was awesome back there,” Leon said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I didn’t know I could either.”

“Does it feel good when you use your magic?”

“It feels good to not hide it.”

If we weren’t in a parking lot in public, I would open my wings and just rest. I was even afraid to do it while we were driving. I couldn’t take a chance on someone fixating on me and wrecking their car.

“He was going to poison all of us, Leon. When I think about it, it kind of freaks me out. Anybody, everybody who ate that cake would have died. Little kids would have died. And he didn’t care. I could tell when he was talking, that part of it was the money but not all of it. He did it because he hates us. He doesn’t even know us. He didn’t feel bad about it, Leon—he was proud of it.”

Leon leaned back in his seat. “Everybody in our family has magic. Aunt Penelope, Grandma Frida, you, your sisters, Bern . . . I thought I didn’t have magic. I thought I was a dud. I used to climb to the top of the warehouse. There is a way to get to the roof from the attic. I would walk on the edge of the roof.”

“Why in the world would you do that?”

“I thought maybe if I got scared enough, my powers would come out.” Leon grimaced. “You can practice and get good at sports. You can study and get good grades. But with magic, you have it or you don’t. That’s it. And it’s so fucking unfair. Here you are, and an accident of birth, something in your DNA that you have no control over, decides, before you’re even born, how your life is going to go.”

I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have magic. It was this scary thing that ruled my life. I had so much guilt wrapped up in it. I never told Leon about it, because I knew he would have given up half of his life for some of that power.

“But you didn’t poison people,” I said.

“Who would I poison? You’re my family. I love you. I wouldn’t even poison Mom if she showed back up. I did hate her, you know. Still do. First, if she had slept with Bern’s dad instead of whoever my dad was, I would have had magic. Some magic. Second, she is a piss-poor mom.”

I tried to look for the best things in people. There was nothing good about Aunt Gisele. I used to think that she was just misunderstood but then she showed up and wrecked our life, and now I hated her too.

“Jeremy is a scumbag,” Leon said. “He’s too stupid to realize he isn’t smart. But he sees all the Primes in the news and on Herald, and he envies them. The jealousy is eating him alive. Once the wedding is over, Rivera will make sure he’s turned over to the proper authorities.”

Rogan could make Jeremy disappear, but he wouldn’t. I once asked Nevada about things like that and she said that being a House meant projecting a show of strength. If someone like Jeremy attacked a House, they would want to make a very public example of him.

The file downloaded. I tapped it. The feed from one of the hummingbird cameras filled the screen. Xavier was walking toward his cousins. I turned the sound up.

Adriana, the tall blonde, took a step toward Xavier, her face stamped with anger. Spanish words flew out. “Why are you doing this? She is a nice girl. Leave her alone.”

They were talking about me.

“Shut the fuck up,” Xavier said.

Elba giggled from her spot on the fountain, the gold bracelets on her tan arms sliding back and forth as she waved her hands.

“I mean it.” Adriana crossed the space between them and got in his face. “Leave Catalina alone. She is working really hard. She doesn’t know you’re a snake. Find someone else to screw around with.”

Xavier crossed his arms. Adriana was tall, but he was taller by at least four inches. “Or what? What are you going to do? Let me tell you what you will do: nothing. You’ve been doing nothing. None of you are doing anything about this wedding. He’s going to marry that bitch.”

My heart hammered in my chest. My cheeks were getting hot. Adriana was right. He was a snake. And I almost let him bite me.

“What do you care?” Samanta, the one with curly dark hair, said. “Let him get married.”

He turned toward her. “If you stopped shoving food in your mouth long enough to think, you’d figure it out. You want to explain it to her, Elba?”

“Rogan leads a dangerous life,” Elba said. “He has powerful enemies. Think about it—he’s old, like thirty something, and this is the first time he tried to marry someone. His mom is in a wheelchair because people kept trying to kill his dad. On top of that, everyone knows he’s a sicko. Then this bitch, a complete nobody, shows up and now he’s marrying her without a prenup.”

“Exactly,” Xavier jumped in. “He dies one day after the wedding, she gets everything, and we get nothing. Let me explain it to you in small words, so you can understand. Our grandparents are drawing money from family investments. They are not getting that much, one-two mil a year each. Our parents have to work. By the time the grandparents die off, and our parents start drawing their share, they will be getting even less money, because there are more of them. We’ll have to work and when it’s our turn, there might not be anything left over. You know who has money?”

“Rogan,” Elba said. “A nice pretty billion.”

“Rogan will get himself killed sooner or later. My dad says he made a lot of powerful enemies this last year. Arrosa is old. All we have to do is wait.” Xavier snapped his fingers. “And we’ll inherit. But for that to happen there needs to be no wife and no heir.”

“What are you going to do, Xavier?” Adriana sneered at him. “Even if you break up the wedding, are you going to follow him around with a rubber to make sure he doesn’t make any kids?”

“That will be later. Right now, we have a more pressing issue. He is marrying that bitch.”

“They are Primes,” Samanta shot back.

“Yeah, last time I checked, Xavier, you weren’t a Prime.” Adriana crossed her arms.

“Neither are you,” Xavier said. “I looked up their records and they just became a House this year. She’s a truthseeker, there is a pattern mage, but everybody else’s records are sealed. They are upstarts. If they had useful magic, they would’ve announced it. What kind of Prime doesn’t disclose their magic? Trust me, they’re trash. Have you seen Catalina scurrying around with her tablet, like a mouse with a piece of old cheese? She’s a Prime? Please. A Prime geek. She knows she doesn’t belong here. She told me she feels ‘uncomfortable.’ She’ll feel uncomfortable when I kick her and her sister off the grounds.”

I saw red. I actually saw red, as if someone suddenly jerked a translucent red curtain closed in front of me.

“I’m going to shove a gun up his ass sideways,” Leon snarled.

Xavier paced back and forth. “All that’s required of you is to keep your mouths shut and stay out of my way, while I romance that rat. She’s got the entire wedding and probably half her family secrets on that tablet she carries with her. I’m going to get that tablet.”

“You really are an asshole,” Adriana said.

“Don’t worry,” Xavier said. “Even though great-grandfather kicked your mom out of the family for being a lesbo, you and I can work something out when we inherit.”