If I threw myself at him, he probably wouldn’t turn me down. He would’ve made out with me in the Galleria. I was young and pretty, and he was an unattached man. Well, I assumed he was unattached. If he was attached, it probably wouldn’t stop him. There was an ugly thought.
Realistically, the only thing I could hope to get out of any relationship with him was a couple of nights of glorious sex.
God, it would almost be worth it.
No, no, it wouldn’t be. I knew myself well enough. I would get attached to him. It would be so hard not to—everything about him was exceptional. People like that just don’t come into your orbit that often. If I jumped into that deep water, I would drown. I didn’t want to drown. I couldn’t afford to drown. I had a family, a business . . .
The phone rang.
I jumped up.
It rang again. I grabbed it. “Yes?”
“Finally, Ms. Baylor,” Augustine’s clipped voice said.
Oh crap.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ve reviewed the press coverage of recent events this morning. Perhaps I wasn’t clear at our last meeting. What part of ‘Apprehend Adam Pierce and deliver him to his House’ did you not understand?”
Oh you ass. “The part where I do this with no resources or assistance from MII.”
“House Pierce is unhappy. They are now financially liable for an expensive office building and are the target of several prospective lawsuits.”
“Perhaps they should’ve considered that possibility when they discovered Adam was a Prime. If they hadn’t raised a spoiled, immature egoist, they wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Ms. Baylor.”
Someone pounded on the front door. “One moment,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I marched over to the door and checked the monitor. Mad Rogan.
I swung the door open.
Mad Rogan stood at my doorstep, holding a bouquet of carnations. The ones in the store had been frilly and delicate pink blossoms. These were huge, heavy blooms, crimson, glossy, so dark toward the base of their petals that they were almost black, with a border of bright scarlet at the edges. They looked dipped in blood. He might as well have brought me a fistful of rubies.
His eyes looked smug.
I looked at the flowers, looked at his face, and shut the door.
No, wait.
I opened the door, took the carnations from him, shut the door, and locked it. There. I’d had a near-death experience, and confiscating the carnations would make me feel better. I marched back into my office and pushed the button on the phone.
“I’m back.”
“You put me on hold.” His voice could’ve frozen the Gulf of Mexico solid.
I smelled the carnations. Oh wow. “Yes. Someone was at the door. It could’ve been Adam.”
I looked for a vase to put the flowers in. The only thing I had was a tall, decorative glass full of marbles because the office needed some knickknacks. I emptied the marbles into a drawer, opened a bottle of water I kept for clients, poured it into the vase, and set the carnations into it. Perfect.
“I don’t think you understand the severity of your situation,” Augustine said.
The warehouse shuddered. The entire structure vibrated for a second and stopped.
“In the last forty-eight hours, my house was the target of an arson. Then a car exploded in front of our door.”
The warehouse vibrated again. Mad Rogan was shaking my house. Damn it.
“I’ve been almost strangled, almost crushed, and almost buried alive. I understand the severity of my situation.”
Shake. Shake.
“Adam publicly embarrassed his House. This matter now involves not just you . . .”
Shake.
“. . . but the reputation of the entire firm and . . .”
“I’m going to have to put you on hold for just a second.”
“Ms. Bay—”
I marched to the door and opened it. Mad Rogan smiled at me. I jerked my hand toward my office. He walked in. I locked the door behind him. Mad Rogan stepped into my office and landed in a chair. Instantly my office shrank. There had been space before, and now there was Rogan.
I pushed the button again. “I’m back.”
“My patience is at an end,” Augustine said with diamond-sharp precision. “I have to report to House Pierce, and my report, apparently, will say that you’ve made no progress. You’re making MII look incompetent.”
I’m shaking in my slippers. “Why don’t you tell them the truth: you assigned this case to me because you expect me to fail. When I do, you will take my business and write it off.”
“I’m trying to give you a chance to keep your business,” Augustine said.
“She’ll have to call you back,” Mad Rogan said.
“What?” Augustine asked.
“I said, she’ll have to call you back, Pancakes. She’s busy right now.” He pushed the disconnect button.
He didn’t just hang up on Augustine. Yes, yes, he did.
“Pancakes?” I asked.
“When he was trying to enter the Arcana Club at Harvard, one of the initiation trials was eating the most food. That year, it was pancakes. He won and got admitted, but it took six months before he could walk by pancakes without getting sick.” Rogan smiled. “He’d smell them and run out of the room.”
“Well, Pancakes owns the mortgage on my business. You just hung up on my boss,” I said.
“He was talking in circles. He’ll get over it.”
“You know what your problem is? ‘You’ as in Primes, in general?”
“I think you’re about to tell me.” Mad Rogan leaned forward with rapt attention.
“Your problem is that nobody ever tells you no. You think you can do whatever you want, enter wherever you want . . .”
“Seduce whoever we want.” He grinned, a wicked, wolfish smile.
Oh no, we are not veering off the highway onto that road. “You play with people’s lives. When cops show up, you wave your hand and make them go away. Because you are Primes and the rest of us are, apparently, nothing.”
“Mhm,” he said. “The irony of this is so rich, it’s simply delicious.”
“I don’t see what’s so ironic about it.”
“I’d tell you, but it would ruin the fun.”
“Could you be more smug?”
He leaned on his elbow. “Possibly. I see you liked the flowers.”
I got a sudden urge to set the carnations on fire. “They are gorgeous. It’s not their fault you brought them.” I leaned over the table. “Mr. Rogan—”
“Mad,” he corrected. “Mad Rogan.”
“Mr. Rogan, here are some boundaries. You’re using me as bait for Adam Pierce. I’m using you as a means to capture Adam. I think you’re a dangerous man.”
“So formal,” Mad Rogan said.
“Here is the informal version: we have to work together, and when we’re done, we will go our separate ways. Don’t bring me flowers. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
He laughed. It was a genuine, amused laugh. “You’re really mad at me.”
I was mad as hell, but saying it would be admitting that I’d let myself get emotionally involved, and he didn’t need to know that. “No, I just don’t want to compromise our professional relationship. It’s late and I’m tired. If you don’t have anything to tell me about Adam, please leave.”
“Thank you for keeping me alive earlier today,” he said. “I should’ve acknowledged it. I didn’t. In my defense, your circlework really is terrible.”
I opened my mouth to tell him where he could shove his circlework, when someone knocked on the door. What was it with the visitors tonight?
I went to the door and checked the monitor. Augustine Montgomery, wearing a silver suit, his glasses perched on his perfect face, his pale hair styled into a razor-precise haircut. Seriously?
“Who is it?” Mad Rogan came up behind me and peered over
my shoulder. He was standing too close to me.
I didn’t want to let Pancakes in, but he still owned us. I unlocked the door.
Augustine stared over my shoulder, his eyes like ice. “What are you doing here?”
“I dropped in to borrow a cup of sugar,” Mad Rogan said.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Augustine looked at me. “He shouldn’t be here.”
“You got here rather quickly,” Rogan said.
“I was driving when I made the call.”
Behind Augustine, an elegant silver Porsche sat in a parking spot, all alone. We’d moved all of our cars inside, given that we couldn’t just order a brand-new one if one of them blew up.
“You might not want to park there,” Mad Rogan said. “I parked there yesterday and my Range Rover exploded.”
Augustine opened his mouth.
If we kept standing here with the door open, sooner or later my mother would come to investigate. If she realized that Augustine Montgomery—the cause of all our misfortunes—had appeared on our doorstep, she would shoot him. Just out of principle. Not to mention that we were sitting ducks here, lit up by the floodlight. The last thing I wanted was to have them both here at the same time, but I had no choice.
“Come inside,” I growled.
I led them both to my office. Augustine saw the flowers, blinked, and turned to Mad Rogan. “So you decided to involve yourself in this because of Gavin? Why the sudden concern for your relatives? So unlike you, Connor.”
Mad Rogan peered at him. “Why are you wearing glasses? I know for a fact that you have perfect vision.”
Here we go. This would end in them unzipping themselves to see who was bigger.
“You should’ve stayed retired.” Augustine’s voice was dry.
“And what’s going on with your hair?” Mad Rogan raised his eyebrows. “That’s a huge amount of illusion. What are you hiding up there? Are you prematurely balding?”
Augustine turned to me. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. This man is extremely dangerous.”
Mad Rogan reached out toward Augustine’s hair, but lowered his hand. “I’d touch it, but I’m afraid I might cut myself.”
“Listen to me.” Urgency vibrated in Augustine’s voice. “You need to limit your association with this man. We exist in a fragile balance, and the core of that balance, the thing that restrains us, is our family. He feels no obligation to his family or anyone else’s. He has no restraint. You have no idea what kind of things he is involved in.”
And that, exactly that, was the problem with Primes. That right there.
“She needs to limit her association with you,” Mad Rogan said. “You’re trying to take her business.”
Augustine pulled off his glasses. “I may be putting her at risk financially, but you would take her life, if it was convenient, and make jokes about it later.”
Actually, Augustine was sending me after Adam Pierce, which was pretty much a death sentence.
Augustine kept going. “You have no code, Connor. You know nothing about duty or honor or self-sacrifice . . .”
Rogan moved, brutal and blindingly fast. Augustine’s back hit the wall, and Mad Rogan drove his left forearm into his neck, pinning him. His eyes turned cold and merciless.
“You spent your time after college sitting in a comfortable office learning the family trade.” His voice was precise and so filled with menace that the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose. “This was your grand, self-serving sacrifice. You sat here, wrapped in your luxurious cocoon and wallowing in self-pity, while I spent six years starving and bleeding in a fucking jungle where all the money in the world couldn’t buy you a gulp of clean water. I did this so people I’ll never know could go to sleep in peace. What do you know about sacrifice? You never watched someone’s head explode from a bullet, then brushed pieces of human being off you and kept going. So how about you shut the fuck up?”
The room turned dark. Black bulges slid along the walls. Fear drained down my spine. Every instinct I had screamed at me that whatever was in the walls was bad and dangerous, and if it broke out, I needed to run.
“Don’t push me, Connor,” Augustine ground out. “You’ll fucking regret it.”
A violent, deranged light flared in Mad Rogan’s eyes. “Let’s test your theory about killing and jokes. I’ve got a good one just for this occasion.”
The bulges split. Ropy black tentacles shot out of the wall, flailing. If it was illusion, it was the best I had ever seen. Panic crushed me, chaining my feet in place. I shuddered in its grip. What the hell kind of magic was this?
Things rose into the air as Rogan sorted through my possessions, looking for a weapon.
No. This is my house. You will not wreck my house and put my family at risk.
The icy vise of panic broke. “That’s enough,” I barked.
The two men startled. Augustine frowned. “How . . .”
“What the hell is wrong with both of you? This isn’t some bar you can wreck. This is my place of business. This is my home! There are children sleeping less than a hundred feet from this room.”
The darkness vanished like a candle flame snuffed out by a draft. Rogan let go of Augustine.
“I don’t know which one of you is worse. Are you out of your minds? You’re both selfish, spoiled pricks.”
“Nevada?” my mother said behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. My mother stood in the hallway with Grandma Frida next to her. My mother carried a shotgun. Grandma Frida carried her phone.
“Why are you screaming at an empty room?” my mother asked.
It had to be Augustine’s illusion. I glared at Augustine. “Drop it.”
He grimaced. Grandma Frida gasped. I had a feeling she and my mother just saw Mad Rogan and Augustine Montgomery suddenly pop into existence in my office.
“Get out of my house,” I said.
My mother chambered a round with an unmistakable metallic click.
The two men marched out of the office. Grandma Frida raised her phone and snapped a picture. The door closed. I landed into my chair.
My mother looked at the carnations. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”
I shook my head and picked up the phone. “Bern? Tell me you recorded all of this.”
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I saved a hard copy and offloaded it onto two remote servers.”
“Good,” I said. If there was ever a question as to why I needed to slap both of them with a restraining order, at least I would have plenty of evidence. Primes or not Primes, no judge would deny me a restraining order after viewing that.
Someone knocked on my bedroom door. I opened my eyes. I was sitting in bed, slumped against the pillow, my computer on my lap. I glanced at the electronic clock. Wow. 5:30 a.m. I’d moved to my bedroom after midnight, when my eyes had started glazing over. I must’ve fallen asleep. It had been a long day.
“Come in,” I called.
The door swung open and Bern entered, carrying a stack of papers. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“The kids printed out some stuff.” He put it on the bed. His eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard.
“Were you awake all this time?”
He nodded. “I’d gone over some things. It’s not Egypt, Japan, or China, I can tell you that. Leon did some research on India, but he conked out, so . . .” He yawned. “You . . .” He yawned again.
“Get some sleep. I’ve got India.”
He sat down on the trundle bed. It used to be mine when I was much younger. Sometimes, when my sisters and I would watch a movie in my room, they would pass out on it.
“I’ll just sit here a minute,” he said.
“Sure.”
I leafed through the papers. Printouts of articles about various artifacts. Some weird doodle. A picture of a knight holding a shield against a gout of flame. “Not bad.” I turned to show it to Bern. He lay asleep on the trundle.
Poor guy. r />
I tapped my keyboard to wake the laptop up. Right. India.
Leon’s notes listed the search strings. India, artifact, Emmens . . . over thirty-five searches. I blew out some air. He was very thorough.
Let’s see, what did the guy say before the explosion? Something about gateway to enlightenment, or door to enlightenment . . . I typed in Indian artifact enlightenment. The search engine spat out image results. Lots of things about Native Americans and United Native Tribes. Let’s see, what about Hindu artifact enlightenment? Hmm, pictures of flowers, ancient palaces, mosaic, an illustration of some deity with four arms sitting on a pink flower, a metal statue of a deity with an elephant’s face, a photograph of some beer cans and empty soda bottles . . . how did that get in there? This was a wild-goose chase. I kept scrolling. City with a river lapping at its walls, a piece of quartz, another deity, blue this time, with white stripes across his forehead . . .
Wait. Wait, wait, wait.
I clicked the picture. An illustration of a beautiful man with blue skin and one hand raised looked back at me. Two white stripes marked his forehead, forming oblong outlines. I grabbed my phone and pulled up the picture. The exact same shape. My heart sped up. There was something else sitting on top of the outline, but the image was too small to figure out what it was. I clicked the link for the image’s page. A site selling antique beads.
I typed so fast that my fingers flew over the keyboard. Hindu god blue skin. The search engines spat out the images. No, no, no, yes! Exact same picture. I clicked it. Dead website. Damn it.
I kept scrolling. Another one, something about a video game. I clicked the image. Shiva. I had a name. Dozens of articles popped up. Shiva, supreme god of Hindu mythology. Chief attributes include a snake around his neck, a third eye . . . A third eye!