Master of Fire Read online

  “I was so gone over him.” She sighed in remembrance. “Fat little twelve-year-old, helping studly eighteen-year-old get through calculus. He was so nice to me. Didn’t realize he was treating me like one of his brat little sisters. Even called me Squirt. Did I get a clue?”

  Since she seemed to actually expect an answer, he said, “Uh, no?”

  “Heck no. I finally screwed up my courage and confessed my luuuuv.”

  Logan winced in sympathy. “Didn’t go well, did it?”

  “He was very kind.” She blinked hard. Logan had the horrifying suspicion the shine in those beautiful eyes was tears. “Very kind.” Heaving a sigh, Giada eyed her drink. Less than a third of it was left. “I need to stop drinking this.”

  “Yeah,” he said gently. “You really do.”

  She shoved the glass as far across the table as she could reach. Logan took it into protective custody.

  “I was fourteen when I went to college,” she continued. He suspected her eyes were not quite in focus. “I’d started growing boobs by then, shooting up and slimming down, but all that made me was jailbait.”

  “I gather you didn’t get asked out a lot.”

  Giada snorted. “Not by anyone who wasn’t creepy.”

  Out of sheer curiosity, he asked, “I trust I’m not creepy.”

  “Nope, but then, I’m not jailbait anymore.”

  He gave her a crooked grin. “No, you’re definitely not jailbait.”

  He didn’t think she was a Maja either. She was just too damned artless. He wasn’t even sure she knew how beautiful she was. Somehow he got the impression that in the back of her mind, she was still that fat little girl who was too smart for her own good.

  He wondered what quirk of his personality found that so appealing.

  “Wait a minute,” Logan told Giada as they pulled up in front of the six-story cream building that was the Daniel Morgan Inn. “If you try to hop out of the truck right now, you’ll fall on your head.”

  He swung out of the bomb truck cab and jumped down, then strode around to open Giada’s door. There was no way she could manage the metal steps down from the truck’s high seat, not with all the tequila she had on board.

  Giada blinked owlishly at him, then placed her hands on his shoulders and allowed him to swing her down.

  She swayed against him on her long legs, and he braced her there. Her breasts felt delightfully full and soft against his chest. The scent of her hair seemed to arrow straight to his groin. Logan swallowed, looking down into her wide gray eyes. Her lips parted, full and naked of lipstick. The temptation to kiss her rolled over him like a wave.

  “You feel really good,” she murmured.

  He swallowed with an effort and managed, “And you are really drunk.” Somehow he found the self-control to take a step back from that lovely, delightfully female body.

  “How am I going to get to work?” A worried frown line formed between her delicate blond brows. “My car is back at the sheriff’s office. Isn’t it?”

  He sighed. “I’ll give you a ride in the morning. What floor are you on?”

  “Third. 304.” She fumbled the long strap of her purse onto her shoulder, then moved off across the parking lot for the front door of the hotel, swaying dangerously on her short heels. Logan caught up to her and took her arm, steadying her. Breathing deep of her seductive scent.

  Do not seduce the coworker.

  Logan walked Giada to her hotel door with careful courtesy, but did not ask to come in, pointedly, like a man holding tight to his self-control. After telling her he’d pick her up in the morning, he strode off down the hall as she watched with drunken admiration.

  He really did have the most incredible butt. Might even be worth catching a fly or two.

  “Ribbit.” Giada closed the door and turned with a sigh to let her back fall against it. The room promptly did a slow revolution. Pointedly ignoring the effect, she made for the bed and fell facedown atop it.

  A cat leaped silently up onto the bed. Technically speaking, the Daniel Morgan Inn was not a pet-friendly hotel, but nobody saw Smoke if he didn’t care to be seen.

  He strolled up to her body, black as India ink at midnight, except for smoke gray stripes across his forelegs and rear haunches. She turned her head to stare woozily into the unearthly crystalline blue of his eyes.

  “Hi there, Smoke,” she murmured as he made his way onto her backside.

  He paused to knead her ass with sheathed claws, then strolled up to her shoulder and settled down, a warm, furry weight.

  “They almost got us today.” Giada swallowed tequila-flavored bile at the thought of just how close she and Logan had come. “But it wasn’t a sniper like the others. It was a bomb.”

  The cat growled deep in his throat, a rumbling sound she could feel in her shoulder blade.

  “I managed to disarm it with my magic, but Logan got suspicious.”

  “Well,” the cat observed in a basso masculine voice, far outsized for his seven-pound body, “the boy has never been stupid.”

  “No, he’s definitely not stupid.” Handsome, seductive, and suspicious, but not stupid. “I think I convinced him I’m just a mortal, but I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. Lying to him—now, that’s stupid. He needs to know what’s going on. If I hadn’t had a vision of what was about to happen, he’d have triggered that booby trap.”

  The cat eyed her in feline disapproval. “You know your orders.”

  “Yeah, well, the orders need to change. I’m going to go talk to them.”

  “Better brush your teeth first.” Smoke jumped off her back and thumped to the floor. “You smell like tequila.”

  Giada cast a spell to sober herself up, then took a shower to complete the process. After stroking on a little eye shadow, then adding blush and lipstick to relieve her imminent-hangover pallor, she donned black jeans, boots, and a red tank top. For once, she let her blond hair down to spill in curls around her shoulders. A silver studded belt completed the Goth-chick look.

  She’d gotten heartily sick of playing Dr. Shepherd, CSI Barbie.

  Smoke leaped onto her shoulder and rode with regal calm, his long black tail tickling her back as it lashed back and forth.

  It was full dark now, so casting spells took no effort at all. The gate appeared in the center of the room, a rippling shimmer of Mageverse darkness. Giada stepped through eagerly, sighing in relief as she felt the tides of magic lap around her body.

  She might have been born mortal, might have spent most of her life unaware of the magical potential in her Latent body. But now that she was a witch, she craved the alien energies of the Mageverse—energies as natural as gravity or electromagnetism in the mortal universe. Energies everyone called magic for lack of a better term.

  Giada badly wanted to understand those forces, wanted to formulate a theory to explain them, find answers to the questions nobody else had ever thought to ask.

  What were the physics of magic?

  As glittering currents lapped at her senses, she considered possible experiments before reluctantly putting the thoughts aside. Keeping Logan MacRoy alive was the priority. She could play later. But still, Giada couldn’t help but look skyward and smile at the alien constellations overhead.

  A new universe. All hers to explore.

  Later, she reminded herself. Logan came first.

  Sighing, she took a look around. She’d gated in near the Pendragon home. Even for Avalon, it was in a very upscale neighborhood, with Victorian mansions, Gothic Revivals, and French châteaus, each more elaborate and beautiful than the next.

  By comparison to its massive neighbors, the Pendragon house looked—well—tiny, as if the family saw no need to impress anyone. Three stories tall, built of solid gray stone with a slate roof, it was surrounded by mounds of white rosebushes that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Ivy climbed its walls to form a leafy green veil, and a trio of massive oaks presided over the front yard. There was no high brick wall to keep visito
rs out, nothing to prevent anyone from walking up the stone pathway to those arched double doors of thick, shining dark wood.

  Giada’s boot heels tapped on the three stone steps that led up to the modest porch. Despite her confident stride, her heart hammered in her chest. They invited me. They said I could come anytime I wanted.

  Which didn’t stop her mouth from going dry.

  Before she could reach up to knock, the door opened. A slim blonde stood in the arched doorway, barefoot and smiling in jeans and a green polo shirt. Her eyes were wide and blue in her lovely face, her skin as dewy and ageless as a twenty-year-old’s.

  “Why, hello, Giada,” said Guinevere Pendragon, once High Queen of Britain. “Come in, please. How’s my son?”

  “That’s . . . a long story.” Giada walked inside as the Maja stepped back to let her enter.

  Gwen frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Hello, Gwen,” the cat rumbled from Giada’s shoulder. “You look beautiful, as always.”

  Guinevere smiled in delight and reached up to scratch between his pointed ears. “Smoke, you silver-tongued devil. How are you?”

  The cat sighed. “Fine, considering your son keeps getting called out in the middle of the night for every fire in Greendale County.”

  “Well, he is an arson investigator.”

  “I know, but he’s running my tail off.” The cat lashed the body part in question.

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch.” The owner of the laughing male voice stepped around the open door, plucked the cat off Giada’s shoulder, and inflicted a brisk rub between his pointed ears. Though no taller than average height, the man was so brawny and broad-shouldered, he gave the impression of being much bigger. Dark hair fell to his shoulders, and a thick mink brown beard framed his stubborn jaw. Otherwise, he looked enough like Logan to be his older brother. In reality, he was his father. Arthur Pendragon had survived fifteen tumultuous centuries as mankind’s vampire protector, his witchy wife by his side.

  The fact that she knew King Arthur still had the power to get a squeal out of Giada’s inner fangirl. “Hello, sir,” she managed, and was proud her voice didn’t squeak.

  “How’s the boy?” Arthur asked, handing Smoke over again, having apparently finished rubbing the cat’s fur the wrong way. With a long-suffering sigh, Smoke scrambled back onto Giada’s shoulder.

  She cleared her throat. “Well . . .”

  “They damned near blew him up,” Smoke announced, sounding like a ruffled James Earl Jones. “Luckily, Giada disabled the bomb, or you’d be holding a funeral right about now.”

  Gwen’s eyes widened in horror. “Bomb?”

  So much for breaking the news gently. “I’m afraid so, ma’am.” Giada gave her report, keeping it as brisk and matter-of-fact as possible, trying to avoid any emotion that would add melodrama to the account. Listening without comment, the couple escorted her to the living room and guided her to a seat.

  “I remembered the cell phone just as we were about to walk outside,” Giada finished, stroking Smoke absently. “I suspect I disabled it just in time.” She shook her head. “That could have ended really badly.”

  “Multiple detonators.” Arthur rubbed both hands over his bearded face. “The bomber has to be a professional.”

  Gwen frowned. “And you think he was somehow keeping you from detecting him with magic?”

  “But if he’s some kind of sorcerer, why use bombs?” Arthur rose from his seat and began to pace. “None of this makes sense.”

  “I think this conversation requires coffee,” Gwen announced, standing up. “Be right back.”

  “She doesn’t like to conjure when she’s trying to think,” Arthur explained as his wife disappeared around the corner, presumably into the kitchen.

  Giada nodded and fell silent to let him pace in peace. Still stroking Smoke, who curled comfortably in her lap, she gazed around the room. It was cool and airy under a high, beamed ceiling, dominated by a fieldstone fireplace big enough to roast an ox. Massive furniture in buttery brown leather clustered around a low coffee table of cream granite on curling bronze legs. Tapestries and paintings adorned three walls, all depicting medieval scenes of jousting, hunting, or court life.

  The fourth wall hosted a huge flat-screen television and an entertainment center. Beside it, a set of shelves held an impressive collection of DVDs, everything from a boxed set of The Sopranos to the complete works of Monty Python.

  Elvis had his very own shelf.

  She was still smiling at that when Gwen walked in, deliberate as a geisha, carrying a coffee service on a heavy, intricately scrolled silver tray. The former queen sat down next to her and poured two cups of coffee, steaming and fragrant, into delicate Waterford cups. She handed one to Giada, who accepted it nervously. The china was so thin it was practically translucent. God forbid she break it. Balancing the saucer carefully on her knee, she watched as Gwen poured a saucer of cream for Smoke. The cat hopped onto the coffee table and settled down to drink in dainty laps, purring like an outboard motor.

  Guests served, Gwen poured her husband a crystal goblet of something deep crimson. Probably her own bottled blood. Giada made a mental note to make a donation herself, the sooner the better. Her blood pressure would soon start to spike if she didn’t. Majae needed to donate blood as desperately as their vampire counterparts needed to drink it.

  Well, she’d worry about that later. Logan was a far more immediate concern.

  “You can see why I’m worried,” Giada said as she stirred her coffee. “That mortar . . .” She shook her head. “The bomber couldn’t have designed a more lethal trap for Logan. Disposing of that kind of device is routine for his squad. They do it on a monthly basis. If I hadn’t been there . . .”

  “Logan would be dead now.” Arthur drained his glass and began to pace again, moving with a swordsman’s muscular power and balanced grace, lethal and silent on his feet.

  Giada blinked, suddenly recognizing that fluid stride. Logan walked the same way.

  Smoke lifted his head from his saucer, licking cream from his whiskers. “And Giada might have died with him, powers or no powers. Even if she could have gotten a shield up in time, it might not have been enough to save her from a bomb going off in her face.”

  “We know, Smoke.” Gwen’s gaze was somber as she put her cup down with a restless clink. “We are very grateful for everything you’re doing to protect our son. Particularly considering that we lost another Latent yesterday.”

  Giada sat up, frowning. “Another one? That brings the total to—”

  “Twelve,” Arthur growled. “Counting the hit-and-run night before last. Twelve of our people who could have become Magekind. Given your experiences with Logan, it’s painfully obvious these are not accidents.”

  Gwen shook her blond head. “But the other attacks don’t sound anything like this.”

  Smoke cocked his head. “Which suggests a gang of several criminals rather than just one. And a very well-funded gang at that. Any idiot can run down a target in a car or shoot them in a drive-by. A booby trap with two different detonators sounds like a professional, not a nutjob with a grudge. Who have you pissed off lately, Arthur?”

  The Magus grimaced. “Who haven’t I pissed off?” “Could be a terrorist,” Giada pointed out. “The Magekind has been running all those operations in the Mideast.”

  “I doubt it. None of those fanatics knows who I really am, much less who my son is.” Arthur clenched his fists restlessly, as if aching for someone to punch. “Dammit, I wish I knew what the hell was going on here.”

  At first, the Magekind had believed the deaths were accidental, or possibly random crimes of violence. Car crashes, muggings, drive-bys, pedestrian hit-and-runs. Law enforcement, too, had failed to realize there was even a connection, since the cops hadn’t known the victims were all Latents. Which was no surprise, since the cops didn’t even know Latents—or the Magekind—existed.

  A month ago, Arthur and Gwen had grown conce
rned enough to ask Giada to keep an eye on their son. She was the obvious choice, since she’d only become a Maja four months before, and Logan didn’t know her. Too, Giada, having been a chemist, could pass herself off as a mortal forensic specialist looking for additional training.

  She hesitated a long moment before broaching the next point. It was going to take delicate handling. “Given the situation, are you sure keeping Logan in the dark is a good idea?”

  Arthur snorted and walked over to pour himself another goblet of blood. “Giada, if Logan knew what you were, he’d throw you out on your pretty little ear.”

  “Sir, your son is not an idiot. Given all the other deaths, surely he’d realize he needs protection.”

  “Not likely. That kid has his father’s hard head.”

  “Not to mention a healthy dose of the Pendragon ego,” Gwen muttered into her teacup.

  “But . . .” Giada began desperately.

  Arthur snared her in a forbidding black stare. “But nothing. Once you told him the truth, he wouldn’t want you around. You’re too damned much temptation, for one thing. He’s got it in his head that he doesn’t want to become a vampire yet, and you could make him forget that.”

  “But you’d better not.” A muscle flexed in Guinevere’s delicate jaw. “I don’t want my son thinking we trapped him. Morgana tried that, and he’s never forgiven her. I’m not going to be put into that position.”

  “Which means you’d better keep your distance.” Arthur folded his brawny arms and leaned a shoulder against the fieldstone fireplace mantel to glower. “Latents are pretty damned tempting to unbonded Magekind, and vice versa. If you get too close, you could find yourself in deep with him before you even know what hit you.”

  This was going to be a disaster—she knew it. But damned if Giada could tell Arthur Pendragon no. She sighed. “Yes, sir.”

  Ten minutes later, Giada was walking back up the cobblestone path with Smoke riding her shoulder. “I told you so,” the cat rumbled in her ear.

  Giada gritted her teeth in frustration. “Shut up.”