Raintree: Inferno (Raintree 1)

Strange, but of all the really weird things he’d said to her, this struck her as the most unbelievable. She buried her head in her hands, wishing this day was over. She wanted to forget she’d ever met him. He was obviously a lunatic. No—she couldn’t comfort herself with that delusion. She had been through fire with him, quite literally. He could do things she hadn’t thought were possible. So maybe—just maybe—he really was some sort of leader, though “king” was stretching things a bit far.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” she said wearily. “Who are the Raintree, and who are the Ansara? Is this like two different countries but inhabited only by weirdos?”

His lips twitched as if he wanted to laugh. “Gifted. Gifted. We’re two different clans—warring clans, if you want the bottom line. The enmity goes back thousands of years.”

“You’re the weirdo equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys?”

He did laugh then, white teeth flashing. “I’ve never thought of it that way, but…yeah. In a way. Except what’s between the Raintree and the Ansara isn’t a feud, it’s a war. There’s a difference.”

“Between a war and a feud, yeah. But what’s the difference between the Raintree clan and the Ansara clan?”

“An entire way of looking at life, I guess. They use their gifts to cheat, to do harm, for their personal gain. Raintree look at their abilities as true gifts and try to use them accordingly.”

“You’re the guys with the white hats.”

“Within the spectrum of human nature—yes. Common sense tells me some Raintree aren’t that far separated from some Ansara when it comes to their attitudes. But if they want to remain in the Raintree clan, they’ll do as I order.”

“So all the Ansara might not be totally bad, but if they want to stay in their clan, with their friends and families, they have to do as the Ansara king orders.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “That’s about it.”

“You admit you might be more alike than you’re different.”

“In some ways. In one big way, we’re poles apart.”

“Which is?”

“From the very beginning, if a Raintree and an Ansara crossbred, the Ansara killed the child. No exceptions.”

Lorna rubbed her forehead, which was beginning to ache again. Yeah, that was bad. Killing innocent children because of their heritage wasn’t just an opportunistic outlook, it was bad with a capital B. Part of her own life philosophy was that there were some people who didn’t deserve to live, and people who hurt children belonged in that group.

“I don’t suppose there has been much intermarriage between the clans, has there?”

“Not in centuries. What Raintree would take the chance? Are you finished with that bagel?”

Thrown off track by the prosaic question, Lorna stared down at her bagel. She had eaten maybe half of it. Even though she’d been starving before, the breakfast conversation had effectively killed her appetite. “I guess,” she said without interest, passing the plate to him.

He dumped the bagel remnants and put that plate in the dishwasher, too. “You need training,” he said. “Your gifts are too strong for you to go around unprotected. An Ansara could use you—”

“Just the way you did?” She didn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

“Just the way I did,” he agreed. “Only they would be feeding the fire instead of fighting it.”

As she stood there debating the merits of what he’d said, she realized that gradually she had become more at ease with discussing these “gifts” and that somewhere during the course of the conversation she had been moved from denial to acceptance. Now she saw where he was going with all this, and her old deep-rooted panic bloomed again.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head as she backed a few steps away. “I’m not going to let you ‘train’ me in anything. Do I have ‘stupid’ engraved on my forehead or something?”

“You’re asking for trouble if you don’t get some training, and fast.”

“Then I’ll handle it, just like I always have. Besides, you have your own trouble to handle, don’t you?”

“The next few weeks will be tough, but not as tough for me as they will be for the people who lost someone. Another body was pulled out just after dawn. That makes two fatalities.” His expression went grim.

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the cops. Something hinky is going on there, because otherwise, why would two detectives be interviewing people before the fire marshal had determined if the fire was arson or accidental?”

The expression in his eyes grew distant as he stared at her. That little detail had escaped his all-knowing, all-seeing gifts, she realized, but if there was one thing a hard life had taught her, it was how the law worked. The detectives shouldn’t have been there until it was clear there was something for them to detect, and the fire marshal wouldn’t make that determination until sometime today, probably.

“Damn it,” he said very softly, and pulled out his phone. “Don’t go anywhere. I have some calls to make.”