Pyromancist (Seven Forbidden Arts 1)

“Shall I turn a couple more times?” Bono asked, giving him a sideways glance.

Joss nodded at the muscled man with the shiny skin the color of molasses who filled the pilot seat so effectively he crowded the cabin.

Bono threw a thumbs-up and tilted the heli left and down.

Joss turned the binoculars to the harbor. Someone was systematically burning down the whole damn village and it wasn’t a simple open-and-closed case of arson. His team didn’t operate on normal assignments. He headed a task force of investigators that specialized in unexplainable crime. The fact that they were called in to his birth town for the mysterious and deliberate destruction of properties left him clueless.

There was speculation about Clelia d’Ambois’s mother, but it was exactly that—only speculation. He recalled stories about the Japanese girl who had been abandoned by a trawler. It could’ve been nothing, just a bunch of superstitious fishermen blaming a dry spell and their own negligence on the girl. He never knew Katik. He was only four when she died. If she’d indeed possessed the ability the Japanese men had accused her of, she would’ve passed it on to her daughter. Those were mere guesses. There was nothing concrete. Besides, he’d always been keenly aware of the very young Clelia. If a supernatural force was at play, it wasn’t in her. He’d tasted her blood once, and he would’ve known if there was something in her DNA.

He’d been to every burnt house. There were no signs to point them in any direction, no clue as to how the fires had started. For all he knew, it could’ve been the devil himself setting the buildings alight with a pointed fork.

The whole damn mystery, including the one from last night, weighted him down. He should’ve point-blank refused the mission on the grounds of conflicting personal interests, but that would’ve raised questions about his past. If Cain knew how screwed up he really was, he’d send him on early retirement if not to a mental institution. He wouldn’t put elimination past Cain.

“We have a suspect in view,” Lann Dréan, the slender blond Russian with the golden eyes, said from the ground station into the mic.

Lann was the wizard-like aeromancist on the team, who had, only minutes ago, used his art, one of the seven forbidden by common law for four centuries, to clear the weather for the helicopter to take off. If Lann had spotted a suspect, it meant he’d picked up someone via their satellite tracking.

“I’m listening,” Joss said.

“At your twelve o’clock,” Lann replied. “She’s on the jetty.”

Joss turned his head in that direction. A woman wearing a blue rain jacket and red rubber boots stood at the top end of the quay.

“Got it,” Bono said. “Turning a hundred-and-eighty degrees. Shall I take this baby down, Joss?”

“Is there space to land?” Joss asked.

He didn’t feel like dropping down with the rope again like he had to in Cairo last week. He might just spill his guts over the pier.

“I can land her, no problem,” Bono said with a tinge of excitement, which should worry Joss. Bono was an air cowboy who only enjoyed his job when it required near impossible stunts that put his skill to the ultimate test.

“Let’s go,” Joss said, keeping his eyes trained on the target on the jetty through the binoculars. As they got closer, she pushed back the hood of her rain jacket, revealing a pretty face with big, dark eyes and beautiful, lush lips. Well, damn. “Suspect confirmed.”

“We’re on level zero,” Bono said, which was the cue for the ground team to move in.

Before Bono cut the blades, Joss already had the door open. Getting out, he faced the woman he was supposed to take in with or without her cooperation. She was all grown up, no longer the girl who stalked him in the woods, but her petite size made her look younger than her age. A few scrapes and bruises marred the pale skin of her legs, probably from helping Erwan pull oysters and fishing nets. There was no mistaking the look in her wide eyes. She looked like a deer caught in headlights. She was frightened. Petrified.

She was right to be. They didn’t do things by the book. They didn’t answer to any governing body. There was no law that could prevent them from taking the woman who stood at the end of the walkway as if she expected him.

She looked back over her shoulder, no doubt taking stock of her escape routes. A man in a brown leather jacket and jeans tucked into his boots exited the woods behind her. He stopped, looking between Joss and Clelia.

A witness could pose a problem. Just looking at the stubborn set of her chin, Joss could tell she wouldn’t go without a fight. They’d have to use force. The black SUV already made its way down the hill as he closed the distance between Clelia and himself. She looked ready to bolt, but the man at her back and the SUV on the right cut off the only two ways out, unless she was going to dive into the sea.