Keri Arthur: Fireborn

“No, thanks.”

I turned and walked out. I could feel the guard’s gaze on me the entire time and, for some weird reason, it had chills skating down my spine.

I jogged down the street to Mark’s place. From the various apartments on the first two levels came the sounds and smells of life—voices, music, late-night pizza, and even a baby crying. The third floor, however, was shadowed and silent.

I paused, the unease that had lingered after the guard’s attention suddenly flaring again. There was only one other tenant on this floor besides Mark, and he was a man in his mid-twenties who was probably out partying, given it was a Friday night. The old woman who’d lived in one of the other apartments had died last week, and the remaining apartment still hadn’t been rented out. So it wasn’t surprising the floor was hushed.

And yet something felt wrong.

Wrong is better than boring, that inner voice whispered. I flexed my fingers, then walked forward. When I reached his door, I pressed the buzzer. It rang inside, echoing softly. He didn’t answer, and there was no other sound to indicate whether he was there or not.

If he was asleep, I would resort to violence.

I stepped across to the security panel, entered the code, and had my iris scanned. The door opened. It was dark inside. Real dark. He must have drawn the curtains; otherwise the glow of the streetlights would be filtering in.

I swept my hand across the light switch. Light flared, the sudden harshness making me blink.

And I saw him.

Professor Mark Baltimore wasn’t asleep.

He was dead.

He sat on a wooden-backed kitchen chair in the middle of the living room, his hands lashed behind his back and his feet tied to the chair’s front legs. His nose had been smashed, and bits of blood and gore had splattered across his face and dribbled down the front of his shirt—which had been torn open, revealing more cuts and bruises. Even his spiky gray hair was matted and dark with blood. They’d really done a number on the poor sod.

But why? What did he have that anyone would want so desperately? Nothing in his molecular research warranted this sort of response—nothing that I could see, anyway. But then, what would I know? I only made his gibberish legible and had no real understanding of what most of it meant. I didn’t even understand what type of molecules he was researching. Science had never been my forte. Reading illegible writing was , and that was the main reason I’d gotten this job—which no longer existed now that he was dead.

I smacked that rather self-centered thought away and dug my phone out of my purse, calling the cops for the second time that day.

As I waited for them to arrive, I dialed the office but got a busy signal. When I also had no luck with Abby’s cell number, I left a message, saying she needed to contact me immediately. Hopefully, she’d do so sooner rather than later, because if Lady Harriet found out about the murder via the TV or newspapers, there’d be hell to pay.

Time after that seemed to drag. I tried to ignore the guilt that crawled through me every time I glanced at his body, but had little success. While I knew it was highly unlikely I could have changed the outcome here if I had answered the buzzer when it initially went off, there was always going to be that what-if question lingering in my mind.

Although—truth be told—if I had gotten here earlier, I might have been found dead alongside my boss. I sometimes dreamed of death, but my own usually came without warning.

The cops eventually arrived. I was questioned, first by the men who’d initially responded and then later by the detective in charge, and it was close to two—yet again—by the time I finally got home. I stripped off my clothes as I walked through the living room, then padded into Rory’s darkened bedroom, crawled into his bed, and snuggled into his back.

And promptly went to sleep.

A strange sound woke me. An incessant, annoying noise that just went on and on. I blinked, my mind fuzzy and my body securely cocooned in the warmth of Rory’s. Eventually, I realized what the sound was. Someone was downstairs leaning on the intercom buzzer.

“Whoever that is,” Rory murmured, “tell them to fuck off. It’s still early, for god’s sake.”

A glance at the clock proved he was right. It was barely seven. But whoever it was apparently wasn’t going to take silence for an answer.

I groaned and pulled myself away from the delicious heat of Rory’s embrace, then staggered barefoot and naked through the living room. Only I wasn’t entirely watching where I was going and I ran shin first into the coffee table, spilling Mark’s precious notebooks everywhere in the process.

I cursed fluently and hobbled the rest of the way to the intercom, slapping the button hard and saying, “Whoever the fuck you are, you’d better have a good reason for waking me up at this hour of the goddamn morning.”

There was a long silence; then an all-too-familiar voice said, “It’s Sam. We need to talk.”

Surprise, and perhaps a tiny bit of pleasure, raced through me. “You and I said all there was to be said the other night. I don’t want—or need—you in my life.”

“Look,” he said, voice gravelly and decidedly grim. “I don’t want this any more than you do, but you happen to be the only witness to Professor Baltimore’s murder—”

“I didn’t witness it,” I corrected tartly. “I found the body. Big difference.”

“And,” he continued, like I’d never spoken, “you worked for the man. You knew him better than anyone else at the institute, apparently, and that makes you a possible key to tracking down his murderer.”

“I met the case detectives last night. You’re not one of them, so why the hell are you here?”

He hesitated. “This case is no longer being handled by homicide. It’s been turned over to us.”

“And who, pray tell, is ‘us’?”

My voice was every bit as cold as his, but my heart was hammering so hard it felt like it was going to tear out of my chest. And I didn’t know whether it was the fear that talking to him could inflame all those barely buried feelings or the half certainty that it would turn them into ashes and blow them away forever.

“That is not something I’m about to explain over an intercom. Let me in, Emberly.”

“Never again,” I muttered. And the last thing I wanted was memories of him in this apartment. When we’d split, I’d either thrown out or gotten rid of every single thing that reminded me of him, and that not only included all the furniture and every gift he’d given me but also the apartment we’d once shared. “I’ll come down. Give me five minutes.”

I turned around. Rory was standing in the living room doorway, his arms crossed and his expression grim. “Do you want company?”

I hesitated, then shook my head. Sam wasn’t dangerous—at least not physically. My mental health was another matter entirely, but that wasn’t something Rory could help me deal with. “Go back to bed. I’ll join you afterward.”

He continued to study me, concern radiating from him in waves. I picked up my old sweatpants and T-shirt from the floor and dressed, then grabbed my jacket and slung it on. “Honestly,” I said, when I finally met his gaze again. “I’ll be okay.”

He didn’t say anything, but his gaze remained on me as I picked up my keys and headed out.

Sam waited to the right of the building’s main exit, his arms crossed and his expression closed. The early-morning sunshine gave his black hair an almost blue shine, but his face, like his body, seemed leaner now than it had once been. Certainly his cheekbones looked more defined. More French, I thought, though I knew he could claim that blood only through his mother’s grandmother.