White Hot

Rogan started back up the stairs, his face determined.

“He’s coming down,” I announced. “Now.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh, went down the stairs and stayed there. Great. Now I would have to climb down the stairs while he entertained himself by looking at my butt. Maybe he would move.

He didn’t.

However, by the time I got down the stairs, he’d slid back into his I’m-a-Prime-and-I-can-kill-you-with-my-pinkie expression. Probably because my mother and my grandmother were both in the vicinity, standing in the doorway of the media room and looking at something on the screen. Leon hovered nearby, gazing at Rogan with all of the puppy love his evil teenage heart could muster. For some odd reason, Leon hero-worshiped Rogan with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

I went to the media room. Rogan followed me. One of his people, an African American woman, sat cross-legged on the floor by a laptop connected to our TV with a cord. The other, a trim athletic man in his forties, sat on the couch, leaning forward and keeping most of his weight on his feet, expecting to jump up any moment. An image of an iced-over overpass stretched on the screen and the view was flying down the ice, veering left and right.

Mom and Grandma Frida had identical expressions on their faces: dark and angry.

“Troy should get a raise,” I murmured.

“He will,” Rogan promised, his voice hard. “Thank you for saving his life.”

“I didn’t . . .”

“I’ve already watched this,” Rogan said. “You did. Thank you for taking care of him.”

On the recording I snapped, “Open the window!”

I hadn’t realized I barked like that.

The woman’s hands flew on the laptop keyboard. The view switched to the rear camera and the windshield of the 4Runner fractured.

“Clean kill,” Mom said.

“What?”

“Zoom in,” Mom said.

The recording rewound a few seconds and crept forward at a fraction of the normal speed, zooming in on the windshield. The bullets tore into the glass and punched the dark shape in the passenger seat. It jerked and went limp. That’s why nobody came out of the 4Runner after the illusion mage. I’d killed the passenger.

“That’s a hell of a shot,” Rogan’s man said.

Mom turned to Grandma Frida. “Threat-based?”

“Probably.” Grandma Frida grimaced. “Well, at least Bernard takes after me.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Pause it,” Mom said. The woman paused the recording.

“You and your mom get your shooting from your grandfather,” Grandma Frida said. “You more than her. Your Grandpa Leon was crap with a sniper rifle, but if he were under fire, he returned it with deadly accuracy. That’s the way his magic worked. Penelope lies there with her rifle and goes to her happy place, but you have to have people shooting at you to hit the target.”

“Dual,” Rogan said and smiled. He had a really smug expression on his face, like a cat who’d snuck into the pantry and stolen a bag of catnip.

“Keep going,” Mom said.

I would have to ask him later what that meant.

The recording restarted. We crashed. A demon got out of the car and walked toward the camera, his trench coat flaring. A smirk curved his lips, baring serrated teeth. Wow. True illusion. There were several kinds of illusion magic. Cloaker mages could make you invisible, but they accomplished it by affecting the minds of others, and a camera would still record you as you were. True illusion mages, like Augustine, not only affected minds, but also altered their physical appearance. Their reflection and pictures showed only what they wanted you to see.

The view switched to the internal camera. I sat petrified on the back seat, breathing fast through my mouth. My pupils were so large that my eyes looked completely black on a bloodless face. I wanted to close my eyes, but instead I watched myself fry him. I’d taken his life. I had to own it.

The doorbell chimed.

“I got it!” Arabella chirped from somewhere inside the house.

“Bug scrambled the footage from the toll road,” Rogan said. “The cops got to the 4Runner before my people did, but you have nothing to worry about.”

“They will find bullets from my gun in his car,” I said.

“Yes. And I’ve sent an excellent lawyer down there to explain that the car was used to attack one of my vehicles. You may have to give a statement at some point.”

“That’s it?”

“House wars, House rules,” Rogan said. “They aren’t interested unless a civilian is involved and often not even then.”

“What about the car itself?”

“It was stolen this morning from an office building’s parking lot. The Suburban was appropriated from another office building, and neither lot had cameras pointing in that specific direction. And this guy’s prints aren’t in any databases so far.”

“So we have no leads.”

“No.” Rogan’s eyes hardened. He was looking at something on my neck.

I pulled out my phone and checked the camera. Red welts marked my throat, four on one side and one on the other. A souvenir from the illusion mage’s fingers.

“Why did you shoot him in the back?” Leon asked from somewhere to the left. “Head would be better.”

“Because we need his face for ID.” I turned to Rogan. “I saw one of the people in the Suburban.”

His eyes lit up.

“The view wasn’t great,” I said. “It was raining. But I’m sure it was the ice mage. He was in his thirties, I think. Blond, wearing a suit. It’s not much, but if Bug puts together possible ice mage candidates, I can look at them. He smiled at me.”

“Smiled?” Rogan said, his face dark. “I’ll remember that.”

My imagination painted him standing over the blond mage, holding the man’s guts in his hand. Okay then.

On the screen, I was driving, my eyes empty. I looked like a zombie. We had to be on the right track, at least. Rogan’s people were iced before they died. Only an ice Prime could’ve frozen that overpass so quickly and completely. Something we had done had convinced Nari’s murderer that either I or Rogan was a threat.

Troy said something. I replied, my eyes scanning the windshield. I didn’t quite have the thousand-yard stare, but it was close. Anxiety splashed me in a cold gush, an echo of driving to the warehouse expecting to be forced off the road any second. I felt the urge to cross my arms to try to put some distance between me now and me on that screen.

A warm hand touched me. Rogan’s strong fingers wrapped around mine, forging a link between us. He didn’t look at me, his gaze still on the recording. He just held my hand, anchoring me here and now. I’d survived. I’d made it, and now the look in his eyes promised me that he would put himself between me and whatever tried to hurt me next. I could’ve jerked my hand away, but I didn’t. I held on to him.

“You need to switch to Akula tires,” Grandma Frida said. “See how the vehicle is lurching? Akula has thicker inserts and an inflated inner chamber.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Rogan said.

“This way,” my sister said.

I turned and leaned to glance out of the room. Augustine Montgomery was striding down the hallway toward me, with Arabella by his side. My mother had never forgotten that he’d threatened to terminate our mortgage to force me to apprehend Adam Pierce. If she saw him, she’d probably murder him.

“I’ll be right back,” I announced, slipped my hand out of Rogan’s hold, and left the room to intercept the incoming disaster.

Arabella offered me a cherubic smile.

“Why did you let him in?” I hissed in a loud whisper.

“Because he’s so very beautiful.”

Augustine was remarkably beautiful today. His skin all but glowed, his frost-blond hair barely short of perfect. The quality of his illusion was off the charts.

“He’s too old for you. You can’t just let someone in the house because you think they’re pretty.”

Augustine’s eyes narrowed. He must’ve seen Rogan behind me.