Wildfire

Mom opened her mouth.

“No,” Catalina said. “I’m sick and tired of everyone making excuses for her. She’s special. She’s under a lot of pressure. She’s a spoiled brat who’s used to getting her way. She acts like a five-year-old and you want all of us to compensate. Well, she’s too old for us to do that. I’m not going to listen to any more of this. I’m done. Seriously, I’m fucking done.”

She turned and marched away. A door slammed somewhere. The pressure of the upcoming trials was getting to her.

“What is happening to this family . . .” Grandma Frida murmured.

“Arabella did what you taught her to do,” I said to Mom. “She turned, took care of the problem, saved hundreds of people, turned back, and split. She didn’t linger, she didn’t show off, and she didn’t pose for any photos. She did her job and vanished.”

“Once she got into the helicopter, there was no way to stop her,” Bern said.

My mother landed into a chair. She looked defeated and old, older than I’d ever seen her. It was like being stabbed in the heart. I came over and crouched by her. “Mom?”

She looked at me, glassy-eyed.

“It will be okay.”

Mom didn’t answer.

“Mom? You’re scaring me.”

“I just can’t stop it,” she said softly. “I’ve done everything I can and I can’t keep you all safe.”

I took her hands. “It will be okay. I promise.”

“How?”

“The trials are being moved up. She’ll do a sealed trial, where she will be in front of a small group of witnesses. She’ll demonstrate reason during the trial, which we all know won’t be a problem. She’s still herself when she transforms. She just can’t speak. Once we qualify as a House, she will be protected under Emerging House Law.”

Mom stared at me.

“Emerging House Law states that no member of the House can be pressed into military service or be held by federal, state, or local authorities absent of clear evidence of committing a criminal act,” Bern said. “If we make it as a House, they can’t touch her.”

I wasn’t sure she heard us. “Mom?”

“What if they get her before the trials?”

“They won’t,” I told her. “She’s with Rogan’s mother. They’re not going to violate the privacy of House Rogan. They have no cause and no proof. If they try, she will make them regret it.”

“It will be on TV,” Grandma Frida said.

“Let it be on TV. I trust Rogan and his mother to keep her safe. It will be fine.”

My phone chimed. I answered it.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Rivera said. “We’re ready for you.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I hung up. “I have to go now, but I’ll be back. Don’t worry.” I hugged my mother and went outside. Crossing the street to Rogan’s HQ only took a few seconds, but I wasn’t going to his HQ. I was going to the one-story building behind it. Before Rogan bought it, it held a printing shop, and some traces of it still remained, including the granite counter at the front, now manned by one of Rogan’s employees, a tall, golden-haired woman. I nodded to her and went past her, through the heavy door to a large rectangular room. It had been gutted and painted with charcoal-black chalkboard paint. In the center of the room, Vincent sat, handcuffed to a chair. He saw me and sneered. Apparently, he was back to his old self.

At the wall closest to the door, Bug perched in a chair, with two screens in front of him. A row of chairs had been set up. Rogan sat in one, Heart in another, Rivera in the third, and Rynda in the fourth. Her spine was ramrod straight. Cornelius sat in the fifth chair, Matilda in his lap. His sister, Diana, the Head of House Harrison, sat next to him. Their gazes were fixed on Vincent. Cornelius’ eyes glowed blue, Diana’s green, and when Matilda glanced at me, an eerie amber light rolled over her irises.

Between the chairs and Vincent, two pieces of chalk waited for me.

I walked over and picked one up.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that, huh?” Vincent asked. “You don’t even know how to use it properly. We know all about you. No training. No education.”

My magic spilled out.

“Poor little cast-off from the family tree with a dead daddy. Your dad was a piece of shit, weak and stupid. The two go together in your family.”

I drew a simple amplification circle on the floor.

“Ugh. Are you blind or are your fingers broken? Rogan, come and do this for her. This is embarrassing.”

“Sir?” Bug murmured.

I stepped into the circle and concentrated. The room dimmed, the figure of Vincent in a chair dimming with it. A vague silver glow flared in his head—the hex reacting with my magic.

I needed to get a closer look. I needed to dive deeper, all the way into the place I had once reached when Olivia Charles attacked me.

“Nevada?” Rogan asked next to me.

“Yes?” I concentrated on the glow.

“Your family would like to watch. Your mother, sisters, cousins, and grandmothers.”

“That’s fine.”

“Both your grandmothers,” he said.

His voice dragged me back to the real world. I looked up. Bug had set a laptop on the desk to the right. On it, Victoria Tremaine reclined in a plush chair, her arm in a sling.

Behind me someone drew a sharp breath and I knew it was my mother.

“That’s fine.”

I crouched. I needed more power. I drew a second, smaller circle, joining the first, pivoted and added a third, the same size as the second, then a fourth. The tetrad, also known as Mother and Triplets. I had found it in one of the books Rogan had secretly sent me a while ago. It wasn’t that much more powerful than the perfect simplicity of the usual amplification circle, but when I practiced with it, it let me hone my magic with the precision of a scalpel. I would need a scalpel today if I hoped to break my grandmother’s hex and leave enough of Vincent intact to interrogate him.

“You’re a fucking traitor,” Vincent snarled at Victoria.

She smiled like a deep-water shark.

I fed power into the circle. It pulsed pale blue. The current of magic punched me, clear and strong. I concentrated on the hex, letting everything else fade.

The light grew dim.

Dimmer.

Dimmer.

The darker it grew, the brighter was the glow in Vincent’s mind. A pattern began to form in the glowing haze. A spark flickering in a straight line, like a glowing silver thread, as thin as a hair.

I fed more power into the circle. The room grew completely dark. More sparks, more silver hairs.

A bit more power.

“She’s committing too much,” Rynda warned.

“She can handle it,” Rogan said.

I was falling, falling down through a black well toward the glowing hex at the bottom.

A little more power.

“Rogan!” Rynda’s voice spiked somewhere far away.

“You’re distracting her,” Cornelius said gently.

I crashed to the bottom, somehow landing on my feet. The hex glowed in front of me. It was an arcane circle, a dazzling, glowing creation of pure power woven into gossamer lace. Its complexity made me dizzy.

How do I pull it apart?

The magic flowed through the pattern, a complete circuit. Interrupt the flow, and it would collapse. What would happen . . . ?

It wasn’t a single circle, but three, layered on top of each other. Within the second layer, nine triangles stretched toward the center. If I attacked, trying to force my will over Vincent’s, the top circle would collapse onto the center, the triangles would point down, like dagger blades, puncture the bottom layer, and the power of the entire hex would then surge into the daggers. It would plunge down and stab into Vincent’s psyche. It was a genius trap, impossible to disarm.

Breaking it was out of the question.

Could I shift the pattern? Maybe I could pull it apart . . .

Too risky.

If I broke the hex at any point, the collapse was inevitable.

When David Howling trapped us inside an arcane circle, Rogan had altered it. A hex was basically a circle. A really complicated, difficult to understand circle, drawn with pure magic in someone’s mind. Could I draw on it?