Wildfire
He looked like he was enjoying it too.
I leaned closer to him. “What about you, Rogan? Are you afraid of sleeping with an abomination?”
He smiled, his blue eyes light, raised his hand, and brushed a loose strand of blond hair from my cheek. “When we were at the lodge, and you were dancing in the snow, I kept wondering why it wasn’t melting. You’re like spring, Nevada. My spring.”
Rivera stomped up the ramp into the carrier. “We’re good to go, sir.”
“Move out,” Rogan said.
“Yes, sir.”
Rivera stomped out and barked, “Move out! We’re done here.”
I pulled my phone out. Dead. I should’ve charged it this morning. There goes my intelligence gathering.
“What’s the deal with Alexander Sturm?” I asked, as the transport began to fill with people.
“He’s a Prime,” Rogan said.
You don’t say. “What sort of magic?”
“He’s a dual fulgur and aero Prime, highest certification in both.”
Holy crap. Alexander Sturm controlled both wind and lightning. “Nice name.”
“His great-grandfather legally changed his name when he established the House,” Rogan said.
The big vehicle rumbled into life. We were off.
“How powerful is he?”
Rogan’s face snapped into his Prime face, neutral and calm. “When I was two, my father met with some other Heads of the Houses to discuss the strategy they were going to push through the Assembly in response to the Bosnian conflict. They met in a concrete reinforced bunker, sunken twenty feet into the ground, because some of them were paranoid about surveillance.”
“Okay.”
“Gerald Sturm got upset that he wasn’t invited. He created an F4 tornado and held it in place for eighteen minutes. The tornado partially dug out the bunker, ripped off part of the wall and the roof, and hurled it over a hundred feet. Maxine Abner was sucked out through the gap. She was a hopper and she managed to pulse-jump away, but the fall broke both of her legs.”
“What happened then?”
“Eventually, Gerald ran out of steam. When the tornado died, there were nine pissed-off Primes. Gerald had to pay restitution and publicly apologize. But my father never forgot sitting in that bunker while the sky roared above. Neither did anyone else who was there. Alexander Sturm is more powerful than his father.” Darkness crept into Rogan’s eyes. “We’ll have to adjust our defenses.”
The carrier stopped. My mother boarded, followed by Leon. She was still calm, her face serene. Leon had a dreamy look on his face. The last time I saw it, he was seven and we took him to Disney World.
“How was it?” I asked.
My cousin smiled at me. “Glorious.”
Mom rolled her eyes.
Rogan’s phone rang. He answered it.
“Slow down, Rynda, I can’t understand you. . . . Okay. Put it on ice. We’re on the way.”
He hung up. His face was grim. “They sent her Brian’s ear.”
The ear came in a Ziploc bag in a plain yellow padded envelope. It was addressed to Rynda and me and dropped off in front of the security booth on Gessner Street. She left the ear in the bag. I did the same, except I slid the bag onto a piece of white paper to examine it.
The ear was Caucasian and had been severed in a single precise cut, the kind an experienced surgeon might make with a scalpel. The cut bothered me. Things weren’t adding up.
We were in Rogan’s HQ on the second floor. The moment we arrived, people ran up to the carrier with urgent looks on their faces and Rogan took off with them, which left me to deal with the ear.
Rynda had been waiting all this time in the tender care of Bug, who was looking slightly freaked out. At least they had the presence of mind to get a cooler and fill it with ice.
“It’s not going to get fixed, is it?” Rynda asked, her voice dull. “We’re not going to get through this okay.”
“You will,” I told her. “Did Brian have pierced ears, scars, tattoos, anything that would let us confirm it’s his ear?”
“Please don’t ask me if it looks like my husband’s ear,” Rynda said in a small voice.
“Are you registered with Scroll?”
She blinked, taken aback. “Yes?”
“Please request DNA analysis on the ear. Let’s confirm it belongs to Brian.”
“Why would they send me someone else’s ear?”
And that was the million-dollar question.
“I’d like to be thorough.”
She rose. “I’ll make the call. I’m going to go check on the kids now. They don’t know. Please don’t tell them.”
“I won’t.”
I watched her go down the stairs. She seemed so frail now. I half expected her legs to give out. That poor woman.
I puzzled over the ear some more.
Bug sidled up to me. “What’s the deal with the ear?”
“I’ll tell you but you have to promise to keep it to yourself.”
“I can fill this room with things I keep to myself.”
“I mean it.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Sit down.”
He sat on the couch. I took a pen off the coffee table. “Let’s say you’re restrained, so hold your hands together.”
He clamped his hands into a single fist.
I showed him the pen. “Pretend this is a knife.” I grabbed his head with one hand and moved to “cut” his ear. He jerked away.
“See?”
“This doesn’t explain anything.”
I picked the bag up gently and showed him the ear. “One precise cut. No tears, no jagged edges, no nicks. He would have to be held completely immobile while this happened. Why immobilize someone’s head like that? You can just hack the ear off.”
“Maybe they sedated him.”
“Why? He’s a botanical mage. He isn’t dangerous. Why go through the trouble? I don’t know about Sturm, but Vincent for sure would want to torment him. He gets off on control and fear. Besides, sedation is dangerous. You never know when the person might have an adverse reaction to it and die.”
Bug pondered it.
“There is another thing,” I told him.
“What?”
“Look at the ear.”
He peered at it and gave it an intense once-over. “I don’t see it.”
“I don’t either.”
He squinted at me. “Will you just say it, Nevada, you’re driving me nuts.”
“When you nick your ear, it bleeds. A lot.”
“Yes. All head wounds bleed, so?”
“Where is the blood?”
He stared at the ear. “Huh. Did they wash it?”
“If you wanted to terrify a man’s wife into paying a ransom, would you send her a bloody mutilated chunk of flesh that was hacked off his head, or would you send her this perfectly clean, surgically removed ear?”
Bug blinked. “So what does it mean?”
It meant one of two things. Either Brian was dead or it wasn’t his ear.
“And?” Bug asked.
“And I’m going home to think about it. Did you find anything on Rynda’s computers?”
“No. Bern and I have been through them last night. He’s digging deeper today. There is nothing there. Pictures of the kids, a fungi database, Rynda’s holiday recipes . . .” Bug waved his arms. “So much domestic bliss, I could puke.”
“Tell me if you find something, please.”
“No, I was going to keep it all to myself, but now that you asked me, I guess I’ll clue you in.” Bug rolled his eyes.
“One day your face will get stuck like that,” I told him.
“Is that all you’ve got?” he asked.
“I’ve had a hard day. Don’t test me, Abraham.”
He opened his mouth and closed it with a click at the name. That’s right. I do know your real name.
“That’s playing dirty.”
“It is.”
“How did you know?”
“I’m a truthseeker, remember? I could fill this whole room with things I know and keep to myself.”