I picked a spot in the corner out of the way and opened the book to the charging circle page. It looked complicated enough to break my brain. Greater Houses combined the charging circles with a special ritual called the Key, perfected with each new generation. I had watched Rogan perform it once. He had drawn a constellation of arcane circles on the motor pool’s floor and moved between them with lethal grace, his hands striking like a weapon, his kicks breaking bones of invisible opponents, as his body absorbed the magic. I had no House and no Key, so I would stick to the single charging circle. I had tried it once before and it worked.
I crouched and began drawing on the concrete floor. It would be tempting to use tools, but every source I ever consulted said that using anything except chalk and a firm hand would diminish the power of circle. Whether it was true or just a magic legend didn’t matter. I couldn’t afford to take chances. I had called Augustine and set our meeting for eight o’clock. It would take me half an hour to get there, so if I started now, I could get at least eight hours of charge. The benefits of charging tapered off with each hour you spent in a circle, and eight hours would nicely top me off.
The blue Honda was parked in the middle of the motor pool and Grandma Frida was messing with its engine.
“Whose car is this?”
“Yours,” she said. “Your not-boyfriend’s people dropped it off. There is a note.” She handed me a small card.
I opened it. Sorry about the Mazda.
“Are you going to pitch a fit about it and demand that he takes it back?” Grandma squinted at me.
“No. Maybe later.” I’d need a car this evening.
I crouched, trying to meticulously replicate the design from the page on the floor. Ugh. It looked like a five-year-old was drawing it. Why the hell was it so complicated anyway? More importantly, why hadn’t I learned the circlework years ago?
“So, how is it going with Mad Rogan?” Grandma Frida asked, wiping her hands with a towel.
“Good.” A circle inside a circle inside a circle . . . Kill me, somebody.
“You’re still fighting?”
“No.”
Three circles on the outside. Three smaller circles on the inside.
“You’re concentrating so hard I can see the steam coming out of your ears.”
“Mhm.”
“Have you done the deed?”
I paused my drawing and looked at her. Really?
Grandma Frida held the towel between me and her like a shield. “Whoa, the stare.”
I went back to drawing.
“I just want you to be happy.”
“I’ll be happy when everyone who is trying to kill us is dead.”
“You sound like him.” Grandma Frida’s voice faltered. “Nevada, Penelope has been up in her crow’s nest for an hour. She barely said two words to me this morning and she looks like she is preparing for a funeral. Now you look like you need to punch something. Honey, what’s wrong?”
What’s wrong? That’s a great question. Rogan is in love with me, but he doesn’t want to act on it because I’m a Prime who will sooner or later form her own House. My mother has been lying to me for years and I don’t even know if all of those times she and Dad urged me to hide my talent was for my benefit or just so we wouldn’t be discovered by my other, psychotic, grandma. She’s coming to town, and both Rogan and my mother want to murder Augustine. We know David Howling helped kill Nari, but we don’t know where he is and we don’t have the evidence to attack his co-conspirator. And tonight I have to convince the one person who spends all of his time trying to take advantage of me that it’s in his best interest to let me screw around in his psyche. Other than that, things are great.
“I’m just tired,” I said. “I have some things I need to do tonight.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I almost snapped, You don’t have to, but her bright blue eyes were so filled with worry that I bit that reply back before it even started. I wouldn’t be mean to my grandmother.
“Is there anything I can do?” Grandma asked.
“I would take a hug,” I said.
Her face fell. “Okay, now I’m really worried.”
“Do I get a hug or not?”
Grandma Frida opened her arms. I came over and hugged her, inhaling the familiar comforting scent of machine oil, and for a short moment I turned five and the world was simple and bright. She patted my back gently. “I put a new computer guidance system into Romeo. You just tell me who to shoot, okay?”
“Okay.” If only I could fix my problems with Romeo. My life would be so easy.
Someone stood outside of my circle. I opened my eyes slowly. A sheen of sweat slicked my body. The inside of the circle steamed slightly, as if I was in a sauna. Matilda crouched by the line of chalk. Her menagerie of pets sat around her, the cat and the raccoon on one side, and Bunny on the other.
We didn’t say anything. We just looked at each other.
Matilda patted Bunny. He got up and padded away, his claws clicking on the hard floor. A few moments later he returned, carrying a small pink sleeping bag. Matilda straightened it out, climbed into her bag at the very edge of the circle, and curled up, looking at me with her big brown eyes. The animals lay down by her, the cat and raccoon by her feet and the big Doberman on the other side of her. She stretched one hand toward the circle, close but not touching the fragile chalk line, and watched me.
For a long while we stayed that way until her eyes closed and she fell asleep.
The next time I opened my eyes, Cornelius walked into the room. A woman followed him, short but wearing high heels, her hair the same silvery blond as his. A shimmering dress, dark grey with a bateau neckline, sheathed her trim figure. Expertly applied makeup highlighted her soft brown eyes and the sharp arches of her eyebrows. Two black panthers followed her on velvet paws.
I must’ve charged for so long that my poor brain had developed hallucinations.
“There she is,” Cornelius said quietly, nodding at Matilda.
The panthers stared at me with golden eyes. I braced myself for the inevitable clash between Bunny and the panthers. It never came. The three beasts studiously ignored each other.
I rocked forward, trying to get on my feet. My butt and legs had fallen asleep and tiny electric needles of blood flowing back into the muscles stabbed into my thighs.
“Please, don’t get up on my account,” Cornelius’ sister said.
Cornelius stole a metal mesh chair from the security desk and rolled it over to his sister. “Please.”
She carefully swept her dress with her hand and sat. The panthers settled at her feet.
“Just so we’re all on the same page, everyone sees the panthers?” I asked quietly.
“They’re real,” Cornelius’ sister said. “Although mostly there for the sake of appearances. I attended a business event before I came here, and I wanted to remind the other parties involved that I’m a Prime. I couldn’t leave them in the car. They get snappish without supervision and claw at leather upholstery. If you’re really in need of protection, dogs are best. Medium to large size, nothing too bulky. You want an athletic dog that can charge and jump but with enough mass to knock an attacker off their feet. Dobermans, Belgian sheepdogs, Rottweilers . . .”
She stroked the head of the left panther with her fingertips. The massive beast raised his head just like an overgrown house cat and leaned into her hand. “Dogs will die to protect their owners without a moment’s hesitation. Cats have to be convinced it’s their problem.”
She glanced at Bunny. “My brother was always the most pragmatic of the three of us.”
Cornelius smiled. “I have someone besides myself that I have to protect, Diana.”
She glanced at Matilda. A shadow crossed her face. She seemed ill at ease. “Why does she lie like that?”
“Nari was an empath.” Sadness saturated his voice, threatening to roll over into despair.
“I didn’t know that,” Diana said.
/>
“Her magic was weak. She never bothered registering. Still, it helped—whenever she had a trial or a jury selection, she’d spend the night like this, in the circle. Matilda missed her, so she would come and sleep next to her.”
I looked at Matilda’s hand, stretched to the circle. So tiny. Her mother was gone forever, so she’d come and slept next to me because it was familiar and for a few seconds when she was between the dream and reality, she might think I was her mother, alive and waiting for her in the circle. Someone reached into my chest and squeezed all the blood out of my heart.
Diana shifted in her seat. “This isn’t what we do, Cornell. Rogan, Howling, Montgomery—those are the big names. Harrison doesn’t belong among them. You’re asking me to sanction something that would put all of us in danger. It won’t bring your wife back. She was . . . a spouse.”
“Disposable,” Cornelius said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you meant it.”
“She was a human,” Diana said quietly. “I never understood your devotion to her. It is—”
Matilda sat up and stared at me, blurry eyed.
Oh no. Please don’t cry, little one.
Her lower lip trembled. She turned to look at her father and her aunt. Diana blinked, suddenly taken aback. Matilda rose, walked over, and climbed into Diana’s lap. Prime Harrison sat utterly still. Her niece hugged Diana, snuggled up close, and rested her head on her aunt’s chest.
Diana swallowed and wrapped her arms around the little girl to keep her from sliding off. “What is this?”
“Your niece is grieving,” Cornelius said. “She feels your magic and it’s familiar. She knows you’re family and a woman, and she misses her mother. She wants comfort, Diana.”
Matilda sighed quietly. Her body relaxed.
“This is almost like . . . binding.”
“It’s more,” Cornelius said. “When an animal binds with us, there is a simplicity to their needs. Meet them and you earn devotion. With a child, it’s infinitely more layered and complicated, but it is wonderful, because this love is freely given. There is no bargain. Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, you’re loved and the one who loves you expects nothing in return. She trusts you, Diana, and she doesn’t even know you.”
Diana looked at Cornelius. “Why don’t we have that?”
“We did. Do you remember the strawberry syrup?”
She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. “That was my favorite shirt. I loved that shirt.”
“But you didn’t tell Mother I did it.”
“You had enough to deal with. You had to spend your days with that little Pierce monster . . .” Diana sighed. “I suppose you’re right. We grew up.”
“And now we’re a family in name only.”
She winced. “That is surprisingly painful to contemplate.”
The clock on the wall showed quarter to seven. I needed to get dressed. I rose and stretched slowly. They didn’t notice.
“When was the last time you saw Blake?” Cornelius asked.
“In person?” Diana frowned. “He usually emails. Six months? No, wait, a year. I ran into him at that abominable NCBA dinner last December.”
I got the push broom and scrubbed the chalk lines off the floor.
“Two years for me,” Cornelius said.
“He lives half an hour away,” Diana said.
“I know.”
Diana craned her neck to glance at her niece. “Is she asleep?”
“Yes,” Cornelius said.
I headed for the door.
“Tell me about it again,” Diana said behind me. “About your family. Tell me about your wife.”
Two hours past sundown, Houston’s downtown showed no signs of slowing down. Ragged clouds drifted across a deep purple sky, framing a huge silver moon glowing above skyscrapers. The tall business buildings stretched to it, studded with lights as the office workers surrendered their evening to the electric glow of computer screens. The city was a turbulent ocean, its buildings rocky spires thrusting from the streets as the glowing rivulets of traffic wound among their base. And the asymmetrical triangle of the Montgomery International Investigations HQ, all twenty-five stories of it sheathed in cobalt glass, was a shark swimming through it all to bite at me with razor teeth.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” Melosa asked. I had found her waiting by the car when I left the house. She’d insisted on coming with me and considering the hot water we were in, I would’ve been an idiot to say no.
“No. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay.” Her tone plainly said she didn’t approve but she couldn’t do anything about it.
I walked into the familiar ultramodern lobby and took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. The gleaming stainless tube desk that served as Lina’s workspace stood empty and her purse wasn’t on the chair. Augustine’s secretary was out. That was okay; I remembered the way to his office well enough. I walked through the vast space, a sloping expanse of blue windows on my left and frosty white interior walls on my right. I was in the corner of the shark fin, in Augustine’s lair, and House Montgomery spared no expense in creating its elegance. It always felt slightly sterile to me, too clean, too devoid of personal touches, but the view was breathtaking. During the day the glass tinted the office a gentle blue, as if you were at the bottom of a shallow sea, but at night the glass melted into the darkness, all but disappearing, and the city spread below, bottomless and glowing with lights.
Ahead a wall loomed, frosted with feathery white. A section of the glass had been pushed aside, and through the gap I saw Augustine at his desk, reading something on his tablet. I reached the door.
“Come in,” he invited without raising his head.
I stepped into the office and sat. He kept reading. Augustine was reminding me he was my boss.
Gently, softly, I let my magic out. It began to grow through the office, spreading in thin tendrils, branching and growing, like the roots of some massive tree. I held it back, letting it barely creep forward. I had to take my time.
Finally, Augustine raised his head.
“I had a few questions about my contract,” I said.
Surprise flickered in his eyes and turned into speculation. He put two and two together. The impending arrival of Victoria Tremaine scared me and I was considering picking up his option of a decade of servitude in return for the protection of House Montgomery.
“Very well. I’ll do my best to answer.”
I pulled out a printed contract and a camera. Augustine’s eyebrows rose.
“I prefer to do it on paper, so I can write notes,” I said. “And I would like to record our conversation, if you don’t mind.”
“I should be insulted that you believe me capable of going back on my word, but I suppose I’ll compliment you on your prudence instead. Let’s begin.”
I pushed the record button on the camera. “Paragraph I, ‘in the interests of House goodwill.’ Could you give me more details on the specifics of goodwill? It’s rather vague as written.”
“The goodwill of a House is a layered concept. On one hand it represents the relationships House Montgomery has with its customers and clients. Such goodwill is evidenced by repeat contracts with existing clients and referrals to new clients. A less specific aspect of House goodwill involves our reputation, name, and location. House Montgomery stands for confidentiality. We’re a local House with solid ties to the community and a proven history. In our line of business, trust is essential, and as a House Montgomery vassal, you will be held to a high standard . . .”
My magic crept forward. I asked a question, he offered an answer, each exchange reinforcing the pattern, and with each answer I claimed a little more of him, until he was completely shrouded in my power.
“Paragraph V, ‘financially labeled.’ What does that mean?”
“Where?” Augustine scrolled on his tablet.
“Here.” I offered him a piece of paper and let my magic
spread a little more. The more I distracted him, the better.
He focused on the paragraph, his lips moving silently. “It’s a typo. It should say financially liable.” He grimaced. “My apologies.”
“No problem.” I corrected the right paragraph.
“I detest sloppiness. I’ve stressed it before that a spell check is no substitute for human attention. The more eyes reviewing the contract the better.”
He was volunteering information he didn’t have to disclose. He was ready and I couldn’t keep him here indefinitely. Now or never.
“How will I be compensated for my services?”
Augustine opened his mouth.
I gave him a slight nudge.
“By direct deposit into your bank account.”
“What bank would that transfer be coming from?”
“First House.”
“Could you tell me the routing and account number?”
This was a gamble. If he needed to look that up, he might pause. But Augustine was almost pedantic in his attention to detail.
“Certainly.” He named the two strings of numbers. I wrote them down.
“Do you access that account online?”
“Yes.”
“What is your username and banking password?”
“JulienMont. LoT45B9!n.”
“Who is Julien?”
“I am. It’s my middle name. I quite detest it.”
“Paragraph XII, line three guarantees me three weeks of paid leave. Can I take them at once or separately?”
“Whatever way you choose.”
I began pulling my magic back. Two more questions, and I released him completely. Augustine was frowning. He must’ve felt something, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“I believe that covers everything,” he said finally. “All that remains is your signature.”
I leaned back. “I won’t be signing the contract, Augustine.”
He stared at me. “That’s a mistake. Did Rogan make a better offer?”
I shook my head. “No. This has nothing to do with Rogan. We both know what you’re offering me is a disproportionately small compensation to my ability to aid your House. I understand where you’re coming from. Having a vassal Prime would be a great asset to House Montgomery.”