Ilona Andrews - Wildfire

Garen stood and held out my chair. The royal treatment. I smiled and sat.

“You came,” he said.

“I said I would.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

True. I took out my phone and put it on the table next to me. He glanced at it.

“Sorry,” I told him. “Work.” Also, the hidden camera in the side of the phone case now had an excellent view of him and sent live feed to Bern. It was a better camera than the one hidden behind the left lapel of my suit, but it was best to have the feed from both in case one of them decided to suddenly die.

“No worries.”

A waiter appeared, smiling, introduced himself, and brought complimentary toast and pâté. I ordered water. Garen did the same.

“Wine?” he asked.

“Your preference.”

He glanced at the wine list and murmured something to the waiter, who nodded and departed.

“I always feel uncomfortable ordering wine for the table,” Garen said.

True. “Why?”

“Because it’s so subjective. The taste of wine has very little to do with the price. Some people train their palate for years to become connoisseurs and some just want a delicious drink. I’ve been at a dinner where the host opened a five-thousand-dollar bottle of Riesling. It tasted like oak bark soaked in vinegar.”

I laughed.

“And the man looked straight at me while I tasted it. I knew I had to say something.”

“What did you say?”

Garen leaned forward, nodding. “Oh I lied through my teeth. I think I told him it was exquisite.”

Oh my, Mr. Wolf. What lovely eyes you have and delightful stories you tell. I can barely see the fangs. “One-word lies are the easiest.”

“Yes, they are.”

The drinks arrived. The waiter opened a bottle of white wine and poured some into the two glasses.

“Please,” Garen invited me.

The wine tasted clean and sweet. “I like it.”

I felt a light flick against my skin. Garen had truth-checked me. He was smiling.

The waiter filled our glasses and politely asked for the starter order. I went for the seared scallop.

“Make that two,” Garen said, and we were again alone.

He studied me, smart green eyes careful. “Let’s make a pact for tonight.”

“Mmm?”

“Let’s be honest with each other.”

“How honest?”

“Brutally. Ask me any question, and I’ll answer honestly. No shields, no attempt to block the probe. I ask the same in return.”

I swirled the wine in my glass. “That’s a dangerous game.”

“I realize that.”

“You won’t like my questions,” I said.

“I like to live on the edge.”

We faced off across the table, like two gunfighters, armed with glasses of wine instead of six-shooters.

“Go ahead,” he dared me.

“Have you or a member of your family ever lifted a hex with the purpose of finding the third piece of an artifact, which was located in the statue in the Bridge Park?”

I had considered that question carefully. That’s how the conspiracy showed itself the first time. They made a deal with a rogue Prime called Adam Pierce. Pierce wanted to burn Houston down, but he needed an artifact to amplify his power. The location of the artifact was a closely guarded secret, entrusted to the Emmens family. All members of that family, trusted with this knowledge, had a hex implanted in their minds to protect them from disclosing their secret. The members of the conspiracy had kidnapped the youngest member of the family and pried that knowledge out of his mind, despite the hex, the same way I had done with the oldest member of the family, except in my case he had volunteered to help me save Houston.

A truthseeker had cracked the hex in the younger Emmens, and I wanted to know if Garen was that truthseeker. Asking him about the Emmens family was useless. He may not have been told the name of the man whose mind the conspirators wanted unlocked. However, if Garen had anything to do with breaking the hex, he would know the location of the object.

“I don’t know what this is about, but that is oddly specific. No.”

True. Relief washed through me. Surprising. I didn’t realize that on some level, I liked him. I didn’t want him to be connected to the conspiracy.

He studied me, a hint of predatory anticipation in his eyes. Despite all his charm and disarming honesty, Garen was a Prime. “My turn. Are you really Victoria Tremaine’s granddaughter?”

“Yes.”

The waiter appeared with our appetizers and asked for our orders.

“Red snapper,” I said.

“ Medallion de Marcassin à l’aigre-doux .”

I won the bet. He did order in French.

The waiter departed.

“Let’s continue,” Garen said. “Your move.”

“What is the significance of a wavy line?”

“I don’t follow.”

“When you’re facing someone with hard mental defenses, and you want to loosen their will instead of bashing through it by brute force, you draw a wavy line inside the amplification circle. Why do people freak out when they see it?”

Garen stared at me for a second, picked up his glass, and gulped all of the wine in one swallow. “Have you done this?”

“Yes. Answer the question.”

“They freak out, because it’s a spell of House Tremaine. Nobody else does it.” He leaned forward, focused on me. “How do you determine the pattern of the waves?”

“You tailor it to the specific defenses of the person. By feel.”

“I knew it.” He slapped the table lightly. “I knew it. We’ve been trying to duplicate it for years. Will you show me?”

“Maybe. It’s your turn.”

He thought about it. “In the office, when I asked you the last question about me being an only child, did you know I was lying?”

“Yes.” I cut a small piece off my scallop. It was getting cold, and it looked delicious. It would be a shame to waste it.

He leaned back in his chair. His eyes were shining and it wasn’t all wine. “Your turn.”

“Why did you come here, Garen?”

He paused. “I came to find out if you were the real thing.”

“I know that. That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s a more complicated question.”

Our food appeared. The red snapper looked divine and smelled even better, but I barely noticed.

Garen waited until we were alone again. “As I said, I came to find out if you were the real thing. If I determined you lied or your magic wasn’t of high enough caliber, I would have been on a plane home already.”

“But you’re still here.”

“I am.”

He pondered the meat medallion on his plate.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Wild boar. Would you like to try?”

“No, thank you.”

“I understand you and Rogan have a history,” he said. “A tumultuous, violent history, very exciting but full of danger, fear, and uncertainty.”

“Yes.”

“Has he requested your profile?”

“No.”

“Then he is a blithering idiot.”

I tried my snapper to keep from responding. It melted on my tongue.

“I probably shouldn’t have said that,” he said, “but it’s too late now.”

I smiled. “Are you afraid he overheard?”

“No. But you obviously care for him, and I don’t want to alienate you. I’ve made some inquiries. I’m sorry about your father.”

Well, that was a 180-degree turn. “Thank you.”

“You took over a struggling PI firm on the brink of failure and you saved it. You didn’t overextend and grow too fast, hiring people to churn through as many cases as you could. Instead you concentrated on quality. You were instrumental in saving Houston from Adam Pierce, yet you stayed out of the limelight. I suspect that being quietly competent is much more important to you than being the flavor of the month. Am I right?”