What were they talking about?
“I’ll take Cornelius with me,” I said. If I could pry him away from Zeus.
Rogan’s face told me he didn’t like it.
“My grandmother isn’t going to try anything in broad daylight, not after you took Dave apart. Sturm gave us forty-eight hours. I’m trying to find the thing he wants. It isn’t in his best interests to impede me, and I doubt he’d let Vincent out of his sight now. Trying to grab me off the street is risky and wouldn’t make sense. He already has all the leverage he needs. Bug will keep an eye on me and warn me if anything weird comes up.”
All the words I was saying made total sense, and they were bouncing off Rogan without making any impact. I had to redirect this before he thought up some creative ways to keep me safe and hamstring my investigation in the process.
The best defense is a good offense. “Where will you be today?”
“I’m going to see House Ade-Afefe in Austin,” Rogan said.
Ah. Now the paranoia made sense. He would be out of town, so if something happened, he couldn’t drop everything and rush over to my side to murder everyone in sight. “What kind of House is it?”
“They are weather mages,” Rogan said. “Very powerful House. We’ve done business before. I’m going to ask for help. I know who I want, but I doubt I’ll get her, so I’ll take whoever they’ll let me have. If they let me have anyone. I’ll be back in time for the dinner.”
Primes never did anything for free. “What will it cost you?”
For a second weariness claimed his face, then vanished so fast that if I wasn’t looking straight at him, I would’ve missed it. “It’s not the cost. I’ll have to explain the full extent of what we’re facing. I’ll have to do it in person.”
That meant explaining the conspiracy and the ramifications of picking a side. This was a no-way-back kind of decision. Once the choice was made, you were either against Caesar or with him. Either way, the choice wouldn’t be forgotten. What was it Sturm said yesterday? A man can often assume that he’s in the right, only to find himself unexpectedly on the wrong side of history. History was written by the winners. House Ade-Afefe would likely need a lot of convincing.
“Do you need me to come with you?” I asked.
“No.”
Yes, on second thought, bringing Victoria Tremaine’s granddaughter to deal with sensitive negotiations wouldn’t endear him to any House. It signaled he expected them to lie and he needed me to tell him when they did. My presence would shatter any illusion of trust like a wrecking ball swinging at a glass house.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me know if I can help.”
His arm was still around me, and he showed no signs of letting me go. His eyes brimmed with power, calculating, smart, and worried.
“Fullerton is waiting,” I reminded him quietly.
“He will wait.” Rogan reached for his laptop. “I want to show you something.”
I’d tell him I heard that line before but Bug, Rivera, and Heart were right there.
Rogan opened his laptop and clicked a file. An image of my mother filled the screen. She lay on the carpeted floor in some building, her gun pointing at a small perfectly circular hole in the window. Leon lay next to her. The Harcourt building loomed in the distance.
“Go to three alpha, three o’clock, ten mils,” Leon said.
The sector game. I remembered playing it in the kitchen when I was a child. You divided your field of vision into sectors by reference points. From doorway to table, sector one. From left table edge to centerpiece, sector two. From centerpiece to the right edge of the table, sector three . . . Then you moved on to depth. From the table to the island, sector alpha. From the island to the fridge, sector bravo. Then Mom would call out, and we’d identify. Salt on the left side of the table became two alpha, nine o’clock. When each of us got older, Mom took us to the firing range and the game got slightly more complicated.
Leon was playing it for real now.
“Contact,” Mom said. “Second window from the left. No target.”
“Bottom right corner. Little more to the left. Little more.”
Leon was breaking protocol. That wasn’t how you talked the sniper onto the target.
“Little bit more.”
He should be telling her to check parallax and mil. Once she got the mil, she would say it out loud, he would plug it into the ballistic computer, give the hold over, wait for the “Ready,” and then give wind call. None of that was happening. And my mother wasn’t correcting him.
“Fire,” Leon said.
Mom squeezed the trigger. The window shattered.
Leon laughed quietly under his breath.
“Did she hit the target?” I asked.
“The best we can figure out,” Rivera said, “the bullet struck something inside the building, made an almost ninety-degree turn, and took out the shooter at the other side. Leon can literally shoot around corners. The kid is magic.”
“Two bravo, six o’clock,” Leon said. “A little to the left.”
I would’ve never gotten away with that “a little to the left.”
Wait. We all had made trips to the range, including Leon. My mother knew. She had to have known about his magic before any of us. It would’ve come out at the range. When I had told her my big revelation about Leon’s talent, she had already figured it out.
Well, I was an idiot. Mom and I were overdue for a talk.
Another shot rang out.
“How many confirmed kills?” I asked.
“Thirteen,” Heart said. “It’s difficult to determine exactly, because as Rivera said, your cousin lines up shots that kill people two rooms over. Your mother fired twenty-one times. Your cousin laughed or smiled seventeen times, so we estimate the actual kill count at seventeen.”
Leon smiled when he killed people. I rubbed my face. “Maybe if I can get him some therapy . . .”
The four men at the island stared at me.
“He laughs when he kills people. He thinks it’s funny.”
“I don’t care if he laughs,” Rivera said. “As long as he’s next to me shooting out, I’m good.”
Rogan glanced at him. Rivera clamped his mouth shut.
“He isn’t laughing because he’s killing someone,” Rogan said gently. “He’s laughing because he’s finally using his magic. This is what he was born to do. In the moment the bullet hits the target, he doesn’t feel small, or weak, or useless, because it works. He would laugh the same way if he was shooting at sandbags. Think about how it felt when you used an amplification circle for the first time.”
When I sent my magic into the circle and that first rush of power came back, surging through me, twice as potent as before, it felt like I had learned to fly. Leon had wanted magic so badly. He didn’t even realize he had it.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Ask him.”
“I will.”
Rogan closed his laptop. “Please take Leon with you.”
“You want me to bring my baby cousin with me in case I get into a firefight?”
“Please consider it,” Rogan suggested.
“I’ll think about it.”
Rogan studied me. His power uncurled around him and wound around me, as if it too didn’t want to let me go.
“Be careful out there,” the dragon said.
“I’ll bring my sword and shield,” I murmured, brushed a kiss on his lips, and headed to the stairway.
Rynda stood on the stairs, just out of sight. She hurried up, pretending that I caught her walking up the stairs, but I would’ve heard her moving. No, she’d waited on the steps until I was leaving.
“How are you this morning?” I asked.
“I still don’t have my husband,” she said quietly.
“I’m working on it.”
“I know.”
There didn’t seem to be much left to say after that, so I took the stairs down.
On the bottom floor, to the left of the open doors, someone had rigged a big-screen TV. Sergeant Teddy sprawled in front of it. Matilda sat in the crook of his paw, a big bowl of trail mix on her lap. Jessica and Kyle leaned against Sergeant Teddy’s side. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.