Ilona Andrews - White Hot

“May I have some privacy?” Cornelius asked, his voice ragged and broken.

Rogan and I rose at the same time.

Rogan led me across the room and we walked out onto the balcony. Comfortable chairs and a chaise lounge with blue cushions circled a coffee table. I sat down.

Rogan pulled off his tabard. The black pants and the shirt hugged his frame, showing off his flat, hard stomach, his chest, and his wide shoulders. Normally I would’ve stared. Now I was too numb.

The menacing elemental force that had terrified Forsberg was gone. Instead Rogan was grim and resolute now, his magic coiling around him like an injured wolf with savage fangs ready for revenge.

“Beer?” he asked, his eyes dark.

“I can’t.”

He walked over to the fridge built into the stone side of the balcony and brought me a bottle of cold water.

“Thank you.”

I took the bottle and stared at it, trying to purge the visions of blood, Nari Harrison’s dead eyes, and the young soldier’s desperation. Right now Cornelius was inside struggling with images of his wife dying. The tinted wall of glass, opaque from the outside, hid him from us. Bug was probably monitoring Cornelius via his tablet. The swarmer had escaped through the back door as Rogan and I stepped out, but I highly doubted Rogan would leave Cornelius completely unsupervised.

“Can Cornelius hear us?” I asked.

“No. He can see us, but I’d guess he’s currently preoccupied.”

“Why did you ask him if he was bonded to his wife?”

“Pretium talent,” Rogan said.

The price of talent? “I don’t understand.”

“Animal mages bond with animals at a very young age, some in infancy. They’re too young to control their magic and they become attuned to dogs, cats, wild birds, squirrels, any living creature their talent can reach. That power comes at the cost of cognitive development and their relationship with humans. Some of them never learn to talk. Most don’t develop empathy toward other people, except for a bond with their parents, but, when parents themselves are animal mages, they don’t always bond with their offspring. It’s not something they advertise for obvious reasons. Meaningful adult relationships are very rare for them.”

“But Cornelius loved his wife.”

Rogan nodded. Sadness softened his harsh expression for a brief moment. “Yes. Somehow she broke through to him. She gave him something he thought he would never have and now she’s dead. He knows he probably will never experience that again.”

That explained so much and made everything even more horrible.

We sat in tense, heavy silence. The anger boiled inside of me, a self-defense against shock and brutality. I wanted to punch something. I rested my elbows on my knees and buried my face in my hands, trying to keep calm. Don’t rewind it in your head. Focus on the job. Focus on doing something about it.

“Do you think an ice mage was responsible?” I asked.

“Yes. To drop the temperature that fast, it would have to be a Significant, but probably a Prime,” Rogan said, his voice clinical and calm. “And an egocissor.”

“A manipulator?”

He nodded again, wrapped in an icy detachment. “Definitely a Prime.”

Manipulators were dangerous as hell. They could impose their will on others and their victim was usually aware of what they were doing. Luanne knew she had fired at her own people. She watched herself do it, but couldn’t do a thing about it. The freckled soldier had put bullets into his friends and was powerless to stop it.

And Rogan had watched it all. Knowing him, he had gone over that recording moment by moment, studying it, searching for the instant it had all gone wrong, looking for some slight hint of the enemy betraying themselves. How many times had he watched his people die? I searched his face and saw the answer—too many. They’d had his people murder each other and sent him a special fuck you at the end. They’d made it personal. They wanted him to blame himself and feel helpless. In his place I would’ve raged. I didn’t know these people. They weren’t my friends or employees, but after watching that, I had trouble keeping it together. He sat across from me, cold and calm.

An officer, I realized. He was acting like a capable military officer whose unit had taken heavy casualties—methodical, almost serene, while his mind feverishly sorted through threats and strategies. Rogan wouldn’t fall apart. He would stay just like that until he eradicated every last person responsible for his people’s death.

“Bug’s equipment says Luanne’s heart stopped beating three seconds after Rook fired at her,” Rogan said. “She was clinically dead. Only a Prime manipulator could’ve held on to her for a full ten seconds after death. An ice mage and a manipulator of that caliber working together means two different Houses.”

It meant a conspiracy and an alliance, the same type we had seen behind Adam Pierce. Rogan was right. Something big was happening and we had just grazed the edge of the storm.

“How many ice mages with that kind of capability are in Houston?” I asked.

“Sixteen, by conservative estimate. Twenty-two, if we’re being generous. Four Houses.”

Too many. “Manipulators?”

“Three Houses, but that doesn’t help us. I told you that animal mages don’t like to advertise the side effects of their powers.”

“Manipulators may not admit to being manipulators?”

Rogan nodded. “They rank as other telepathic specialties. Psionic inundation is a heavy favorite.”

Psionics had the ability to temporarily overload other minds. A psionic Prime could generate a field of mental effect and everyone caught in it would go blind, or fall to the ground in pain, or flee for their life.

“What about the glass breaking toward the end?”

“He dropped something out of the window. Bug thinks it may have been a USB drive. Whatever it was, a vehicle drove up and one of the passengers grabbed it off the pavement. My sniper had no clear shot because of the traffic.”

We sank into silence again. The recording kept playing over and over in my head, so visceral it shot right past all of my normal brakes and reached deep into the vicious part of me that usually woke only when my family was threatened. I wanted to kill the people who did this. I wanted to murder them and watch them die. It would be just. It would be fair.

I met Rogan’s gaze. “Do you have any leads?”

“Do you?” Rogan asked. “Did you get anything from Forsberg?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“No.”

He stared at me.

“You’re not my client,” I told him. “I don’t work for you and I’m not going to share confidential information with you unless my client directs me to do it. Even then, I have misgivings. I’m still trying to come to terms with what happened to his wife.” Her death kept playing though my head, stuck on a perpetual loop.

He leaned back and studied me. An imperceptible shift took place in the way he sat, in the line of his shoulders, and in his eyes. Apparently we were done talking about work.

“What?”

“I missed you,” he said, his lips stretching into a slow, lazy smile. The ice in his eyes began to melt. “Did you miss me, Nevada?”

He said my name. “No.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“No. Never thought of you.” Just because I usually chose not to lie didn’t mean I couldn’t.

Rogan grinned and all of my thoughts went to the wrong places. He was almost unbearably handsome when he smiled.

“Stop it,” I growled.

“Stop what?”

“Stop smiling at me.”

He grinned wider.

“Why did you even get involved in this? Trying to punish your cousin?”