Diamond Fire

I checked my tablet for the houseguest chart, which I grabbed from Mrs. Rogan’s desktop before leaving. They had put the three oldest siblings and their children in the east wing and the three half siblings and their children in the west. That made my job easier. “Your grandfather isn’t coming to the wedding?”

“No. He had an odd rivalry with my father. It was one-sided, but now that Dad is gone, he’s carried it over to me. His health is failing, and he doesn’t want anyone, especially me, to know it.”

“Could any of your relatives open Mrs. Rogan’s vault?”

Rogan grimaced. “It’s possible. They pride themselves on hiding the full extent of their powers. It’s a family sport. Curiously, it keeps the peace. Nobody is sure how strong everyone is, so nobody wants to risk a confrontation. Most of that side of the family ranks in the Significant range, but once in a while, usually once per generation, they produce an off-the-charts Prime. My mother is one. My father came to Basque country because she matched the right set of powers he wanted in a bride and once he met her, he refused to let her go. He’d signed off almost half of his capital over to her father to marry her.”

“So, your grandfather sold her?”

“Pretty much. Ask her to tell you the story sometime.”

Better and better. “Who would know that cameras in the office are nonfunctioning?”

“Everyone. Mother assured everyone that they would have privacy inside the house.”

We stared at each other with identical expressions. Sometimes Mom did things like this. Like when we said, “don’t climb into the crow’s nest today, because your leg is hurting,” and she would do it anyway and then spend the evening rubbing Icy Hot into her knee and limping.

“I’m going to bug the house,” I told him.

“Did my mother agree to this?”

“Yes, on the condition that nobody except family views the recording. Bern is family.”

Rogan leaned back. “You got further than I have in the last twelve years. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. She really wants the Sealight found. She showed me the wedding album.”

“What do you need from me?”

“I need files on everyone, even people you don’t suspect. I need someone to sneak in as part of the landscaping crew and install the cameras. I could get Bern to do it, but if they had done their homework, they will recognize him, and I don’t want to take chances. Also, I would like you to take over the monitoring of the Sealight sensor.”

“Which is an antique.” Rogan grimaced again.

“I want to be notified immediately if the tiara leaves the grounds.”

“Very well,” he said.

“Also, I need you to convince Nevada that blue lilacs don’t belong in her bouquet.”

His eyes flashed. “Nice try. You’re on your own.”

“It was worth a shot.”

Chapter 4

People said that the kitchen was the heart of the house. If that was true, what would it make the kitchen table? One of the atriums, because food flowed into it, or one of the ventricles, because we ate the food and flowed out? Sometimes weird things like that got stuck in my brain. Usually when I was tired, and my brain wanted to do something else.

I rubbed my face and drank more coffee. The table was covered with tablets and notepads. On my right, my cousin Bern was messing with hummingbirds—tiny waterproof cameras in casings that could be tinted the color of your choice. We decided to hide them in the pretty shrubs. Bern was a huge blond bear of a guy, the cameras were tiny, and he handled them with the precision of a surgeon. He was the oldest of all of us, except for Nevada.

Across the table Arabella was going over the catering menu on her tablet. When Mrs. Rogan was a child, she was almost poisoned at a birthday party. Her little cousin had died instead. Now she prepared most of her food herself, but that wasn’t an option for the wedding. Nevada deferred to Mrs. Rogan, and after interviewing seventeen catering companies, she finally settled on one. Now we had to select the menu, and Mrs. Rogan had delayed till the last minute.

Next to Arabella, Bern’s brother, Leon, dark and lean, had taken apart some sort of a gun and was cleaning it. Ever since Leon discovered his magic talent a few months ago it was all guns all the time. Mom didn’t even try to stop him anymore. She was by the sink, trying to precision pour melted gelatin into silicone molds. Arabella had told her that there was no way homemade gummy bears would ever taste the same as store-bought. Now half the fridge was occupied with silicone trays.

My brain hummed, trying to sort through the background files on the two branches of the family Rogan suspected.

We all used to sit just like this when we did our homework.

“What’s a canapé?” Arabella asked.

“Something with a melon on it,” Leon said.

“It’s a bread thing,” Bern said.

A door swung open deep in the warehouse and a couple of moments later Grandma Frida emerged wearing a pair of heavy-duty twill overalls, smudged with engine grease. Her platinum white curls framed her face like a halo and her blue eyes sparkled. Grandma Frida was almost never in a bad mood. I once asked her why and she said she didn’t have that much time left so she didn’t want to waste it being miserable. I obsessed over every cough she made for a month after that.

“Grandma, what’s a canapé?” Arabella asked.

Grandma Frida landed in her chair and wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t it an Italian desert with cream in it?”

“That’s cannoli,” Mom said.

“Just google it,” Leon said.

Arabella growled under her breath. “Every time I shrink their order window, it resets, and my phone is dead.”

I passed her mine.

“How is it going?” Mom asked.

“If I eliminate everyone under the age of ten and everyone Rogan has vouched for, it leaves me with 12 primary suspects,” I said.

“An adult could get a kid to do their dirty deed,” Grandma Frida said.

“Yes, but anyone under the age of ten would tell,” I said.

“These kids run around the house in packs, unsupervised,” Arabella said. “They would blab. Also, Bern was right. Canapé is a bread thing.”

I studied my list of suspects. I had them organized room by room in the west wing, going north to south. The Spanish names were terribly confusing and some of them were very long, so for the sake of clarity, I culled them down to one given name and one married name. The main last name in the family was Ramírez. Mrs. Rogan had three siblings housed in the west wing, her two half brothers, Markel and Zorion, and her half sister, Ane.

First, there was Markel, Mrs. Rogan’s oldest half brother, and his second wife, Isabella. Markel didn’t seem to be employed. He lived off the proceeds from the family’s investments. A search of Isabella’s Facebook revealed a lavish house and nice cars. However, Rogan’s files noted that Markel repeatedly complained in private that his stipend wasn’t large enough. None of this stipend seemed to have made it to his son and daughter.

The next room held Mikel Ramírez, Markel’s son, and his wife Maria. Mikel managed Ramírez Capital, a venture capital firm owned by the family, with focus on telecommunications and internet companies. He was a tall, pale, dark-haired man with a prematurely greying beard and sad eyes. His wife was a thin, overly tan woman with bleached blond hair, who liked designer clothes, usually in white, and chunky gold jewelry. I had seen her twice. Both times she had a wineglass in her hand and both times she asked if I had seen her husband. They had four children, three under the age of twelve.

Next were Lucian and June de Baldivia. June was Markel’s daughter, a plump woman with olive skin and a wealth of dark curly hair. Her husband was tall, athletic, and handsome, with dark hair and narrow, startlingly blue eyes. He jogged around the estate every morning. Lucian worked for a computer firm specializing in cyber security, while June was heavily involved in a start-up trying to clean up plastic from the oceans. They had two daughters, who looked exactly like their mom.

Then, there was Zorion and Teresa Rosa del Monte, the parents of bedazzler girl. Zorion, Mrs. Rogan’s youngest half brother, was forty years old, trim, athletic, and handsome. He lived off the family proceeds and seemed to have two interests: soccer and cars. Teresa was a housewife with an edgy pixie cut. She took care of their two children and was trying to write a novel. A search of her online activity showed heavy Twitter usage where she stalked a number of romance writers and literary agents, both in and outside of Spain. They weren’t in great financial distress.