Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews
“I can’t be with you, no matter how crazy you make me, because you have no empathy, Rogan. I’m not talking about magic. I’m talking about the human ability to sympathize. I would matter to you only as long as I had some use, and even then, I would be more of an object than a lover or a partner. The gulf between us, both financially and socially, is too great. You would use me, and when you were done with me, you would dismiss me like a servant and I would have to go back to pick up the pieces of my life, and I’m not sure there would be anything left of it or of me by that point. So no, I won’t go away with you. I want to be with someone who would if not love, then genuinely care, for me. You are not that man.”
“Pretty speech,” he said.
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
“I know what’s really going on here. You’re scared to step into my world. Afraid you can’t hack it. Much better to hide here and be a big fish in a very small pond.”
“If that’s the way you see it, fine.” I raised my chin. “I have nothing to prove to you, Rogan.”
“But now I have something to prove to you,” he said. “I promise you, I will win, and by the time I’m done, you won’t walk, you’ll run to jump into my bed.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” I told him.
All of his civilized veneer was gone now. The dragon faced me, teeth bared, claws out, breathing fire. “You won’t just sleep with me. You’ll be obsessed with me. You’ll beg me to touch you, and when that moment comes, we will revisit what happened here today.”
“Never in a million years.” I pointed at the doorway. “Exit is that—”
He grabbed me. His mouth closed on mine. His big body caged me in. His chest mashed my breasts. His arms pulled me to him, one across my back, the other cupping my butt. His magic washed over me in an exhilarating rush. My body surrendered. My muscles turned warm and pliant. My nipples tightened, my breasts ready to be squeezed, ready for his fingers and his mouth. An eager ache flared between my legs. My tongue licked his. God, I wanted him. I wanted him so badly.
He let me go, turned on his toes, and went out, laughing under his breath.
Aaargh! “That’s right! Keep . . . walking!”
I threw the wrench down.
“Now that was a kiss,” Grandma Frida said from the doorway behind me.
I jumped. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough. That man means business.”
All my words tried to come out at once. “I don’t . . . what . . . asshole! . . . screw himself for all I care!”
“Aww, young love, so passionate,” Grandma said. “I’m going to buy you a subscription to Brides magazine. You should start shopping for dresses.”
I waved my arms and walked away from her before I said something I would regret.
Epilogue
He parked the car, got out, and looked at the house. A typical suburban home, a cookie-cutter traditional on a square of mowed grass. A dime a dozen in any subdivision. He walked to the door and tried the handle. Unlocked. Tom had said it would be.
He had left Thomas Waller with Daniela. By now Thomas was likely sedated. His teenage son had been arrested and charged with murder. His wife had disappeared. Then he’d gotten an email from her, and the contents of it had broken the last shreds of resolve Thomas had. His hands had been shaking when they’d spoken.
He walked through the house to the kitchen. A brand new laptop waited for him on the kitchen island, its box still nearby. Tom had followed the instructions in his wife’s email to the letter.
He checked the time. 6:59 p.m. He set his phone to record and placed it on the table behind him.
The clock on the screen blinked. 7:00 p.m. A blue icon flashed, indicating an incoming call. He tapped the icon.
Kelly Waller’s face filled the screen. “Hello, Connor.”
He hid his fury. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I hate you. I wanted you to know this. I hate you so much. If I could get my hands on you, I would grab you by the hair and I would hit your face into this island until it turned into a bloody mess. I would burn you. I would skewer you. I would vent my rage for days.”
That told him nothing. Ten years ago, when he had reached out to her through his mother and offered a college fund for Gavin, she had turned him down. She made it painfully obvious she wanted nothing that had the Rogan name attached to it. At the time he’d wondered if it was pride. Now he realized it had been hate, but he still didn’t understand it. “Why?”
“Because they loved you and praised you. Because you’re magic and I’m not, and I will never be good enough. I want to destroy you. I want to rip you apart with my hands, but I lack the strength, so I found some people who are a lot more powerful than me. I sacrificed my son for my revenge. But you failed me, Connor.”
Her face shook for a moment, distorted by anger. “We knew Adam was a loose cannon. We needed additional insurance, and who would be better than you. The Scourge. The Huracan. We knew there was a chance you would stop Adam but we counted on you destroying Houston in the process. You were doing it. I saw the buildings quake, and then you stopped. How is it you stopped, Connor? You could never stop your magic in the higher state, not since you were a child. Once you start the ascent, you continue until all of your power is exhausted. Not even your mother could reach you. What did you do? What happened? Is this some recent skill?”
He didn’t answer.
“How is it that between you and Adam, you couldn’t do such a simple thing? No matter. We counted on it, and you and Adam both disappointed us. We will find a different path.”
We. Us. Here it was, the secret force that drove this entire plan. She knew about it. All he had to do was find her and rip that knowledge out.
“I wanted to tell you this: you have no idea what’s coming. It’s big. You can’t stop it no matter how hard you try. It will undo you. When you lie dying and broken, I want you to remember this moment and my face. Remember me, Connor. This is only the beginning.”
The laptop went dark.
He stood, looking at it. A month ago he’d had no goals, only the minutiae of annoying tasks that had occupied, rather than challenged him. Now he had two.
He had to crush whoever was behind his cousin and Adam Pierce. He’d fought for this country and the safety of its people because he believed in it and in them. The system wasn’t perfect, but it was better than most of what he saw outside of it. This city belonged to him. They would realize soon enough what kind of enemy he made. That was his first goal. As to his second . . .
He closed his eyes for a lingering moment and conjured a memory. Nothing existed in the ascent. It was a place of magic and power, calm but completely empty. He entered it to access the apex of his power, but within it there was no joy and no sadness. No cold, no warmth, only serenity. It was a prison and a palace all in one.
And then he had felt her. She was warm and golden and she tore through the sterility of ascent and reached for him. She kissed him and as she shared all of her fears and wants, he felt alive. He had shrugged off the cold serenity for her, and the world around him bloomed. He felt like an addict who, after abusing a narcotic for years, somehow found himself sober, wandered through his house, opened the front door, and saw a beautiful spring day.
He wanted Nevada Baylor. He wanted her more than he had wanted anyone in a long, long time, and he would get her. She just didn’t realize it yet.
* * *
What’s next for Nevada and Rogan?
Keep reading for a sneak peek from ILONA ANDREWS’
second Hidden Legacy novel.
* * *
I stood in the private executive bathroom of Montgomery International Investigations and slipped a big black boot onto my left foot. The boot was almost knee high, charcoal opaque leather, and it looked like something out of a historical movie. Augustine Montgomery leaned against the marble vanity and watched me wedge my heel into it.
When you saw Augustine for the fi
Lina, his receptionist, surveyed me with a critical eye. Unlike Augustine, she didn’t have the benefit of being an illusion Prime, so her perfect makeup and unnaturally scarlet hair were the result of hours of daily preparation.
“This is a terrible idea, Ms. Baylor,” Augustine said.
I wasn’t going to argue. I’d had better ideas.
“Let me explain why this is a terrible idea.”
“Let me” was a figure of speech. I really had no choice about it, since I was relying on him to make this happen.
“If you do this once, even if it is completely anonymous, they will expect you to do it again. And when you won’t, they will become unhappy. That unhappiness will breed discontent. Eventually one of them will let it slip out: there is a magic user who can extract the truth out of all of our criminals, but she is too selfish to help us.”
I stomped my foot into the right boot.
“This is why Primes do not engage in the day-to-day operations of society. We are only people. We can’t be everywhere at once. If an aquakinetic puts out one fire, the next time something goes ablaze and he fails to be there, the public will turn on him.”
I straightened. “I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. You’re about to do something that’s technically illegal. Yes, I can’t think of a more worthy cause than saving a child, but you are still breaking the law.”
He was wrong. I understood completely. My morning had started completely differently. I had received a payment from a client and then ended up sitting in my car in front of the New Justice Center looking at my tablet and reading the news article about the most hated man in the city of Houston.
His name was Jeff Caldwell. He was in his late forties, neither handsome nor ugly. If you met him on the street, you wouldn’t pay him a second glance. He worked as a support specialist for Harris County Transit, which meant that when people with disabilities applied for curb-to-curb service, he was the one who reviewed their applications. He had a perfectly ordinary family, a wife who was a schoolteacher, and two children, both in college. He had no magic and wasn’t affiliated with any of the Houses—powerful magic families that ran Houston. His friends described him as a kind, considerate man.
In his spare time, Jeff Caldwell kidnapped little girls. He kept them alive for up to a week at a time, then strangled them to death and left their remains in parks, surrounded by flowers. His victims were between the ages of five and seven, and the stories their bodies told made you wish that hell existed just so Jeff Caldwell could be sent there after he died. Last night he had been caught in the act of depositing the tiny corpse of his latest victim, and he’d been apprehended. The reign of terror that had gripped Houston for the past year was finally over. There was just one problem. Seven-year-old Amy Madrid was missing. She had been kidnapped two days ago from her school bus stop, less than twenty-five yards from her house. The MO was too similar to Jeff Caldwell’s previous abductions to be a coincidence. He had to have taken her, and if so, it meant she was still alive somewhere.
Jeff Caldwell refused to talk.
Police scoured his house. They questioned his family, his friends, and his coworkers. They pored over his cell phone records. They interrogated him for hours. He kept his mouth shut.
I could make him talk. Ten minutes with him, and my magic would crack him like a walnut. There was only one problem. Doing that would be announcing to the Houston PD that I was a Truthseeker.
If I’d been a member of a prominent family or a retainer of one of the Houses, such as House Montgomery, the power and influence of such a magic dynasty could have shielded me from the consequences of exposing my magic. But I wasn’t. I was twenty-five years old, and I ran Baylor Investigative Agency, a small, family-owned investigative firm. I had no wealth, no power, and no pedigree. I was a nobody.
If I walked into the police station, declared that my name was Nevada Baylor, and wrenched the truth from Jeff Caldwell, a couple of hours later I would get visitors from Houston PD, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, private Houses, and anyone else who had need for a talented, 100 percent accurate interrogator. Truthseekers like me were rare and valuable. My life would become hell, and they would keep pressure on me and my family until finally I broke and went to work for one of them as a human lie detector. If the government didn’t strong-arm me into it, one of the Houses would.
I liked my life exactly the way it was now. I liked my job, I loved my family, and I even loved our odd house. But if one of my sisters had been kidnapped, and some woman I didn’t know could find her, I would do everything in my power to convince her to do it. I would cry, I would beg, and I would offer her anything she wanted if only she could bring my sister back. Right now Amy Madrid’s parents were probably begging and crying, trying to convince a monster to return their child. And I was that other woman, sitting in my car, while somewhere Amy Madrid was slowly dying of thirst and hunger.
I’d been walking to the New Justice Center, about to destroy my life, when Augustine Montgomery had called my cell. Technically, MII owned Baylor Investigative Agency. We had mortgaged our firm to pay for my late father’s medical bills. Augustine Montgomery had a client for me. He could no longer compel me to take his cases, thanks to a renegotiation of our contract, so I’d declined. But he had insisted. The client was his friend and had asked specifically for me. We’d struck a deal. I would talk to the client, and Augustine would make sure I could anonymously interrogate Jeff Caldwell. Which is how I’d ended up in the corporate bathroom, putting on this disguise Augustine had procured for me. It was the only way he would let me do it.
Lina handed me a charcoal black mask that looked like a ski mask and a ninja hood had a baby. I pulled it on, making sure to tuck in any loose strands of hair, and looked in the mirror. The mask hid my face and my blond hair completely. All you could see were my brown eyes and a narrow strip of tan skin around them.
“Hold your hands out,” Lina said, picking up a pair of elbow-long charcoal gloves. “You can’t put these on by yourself.”
I raised my hands and she tugged the gloves on me.
“Nevada,” Augustine said. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to,” I told him. I couldn’t get the photo of Amy Madrid out of my head.
“You don’t.”
“Mr. Montgomery, when my father was still alive, he set up three rules for our agency. We stay bought once a client hires us. We try to avoid doing illegal things. But most important, at the end of the day we have to be able to look our reflection in the eye. I have to do this. She is just a little girl. She is slowly dying somewhere.”
Augustine sighed. Lina turned to the dark garment bag hanging from the hook on the wall, unzipped it, and took out a long green garment. “Arms.”
I raised my arms again. She slid the garment on me. I was wearing a cape. Dark, forest green, it hid me from head to toe. Lina pushed the Velcro closed on my chest, pulled the deep hood onto my head, and stepped back.
I couldn’t even tell if I was a man or a woman. “What is this?”
“It’s a costume from Alley Theater’s stage production,” Lina said.
“Congratulat
Lina opened the bathroom door.
“Showtime,” Augustine said.
About the Author
“ILONA ANDREWS” is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Gordon was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.) They have co-authored two New York Times and USA Today bestselling series—the urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and the romantic urban fantasy of The Edge—and are working on the next volumes for both. They live in Texas with their two children and many dogs and cats.
www.ilona-andrews.com
www.avonromance.com
www.facebook.com/avonromance
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Also by Ilona Andrews
Kate Daniels series
MAGIC BREAKS
MAGIC RISES
MAGIC SLAYS
MAGIC BLEEDS
MAGIC STRIKES
MAGIC BURNS
MAGIC BITES
The Edge series
STEEL’S EDGE