Ruby fever epb, p.9
Ruby Fever EPB, page 9
“Probably. Rice’s colors are grey and navy, so I might have one. My closet is like a labyrinth. I have things I haven’t worn since middle school in there.”
“Do you ever take walks with your mother?” Alessandro asked.
Kaylee’s mind flashed with angry red. The tendril of my magic vanished, severed into nothing. Pain lashed my mind and in that brief instant, I felt the veins in my brain throb.
Kaylee Cabera was Linus’ would-be assassin. And she hadn’t even noticed that her magic slapped me. She killed Pete. She was the reason Linus was comatose.
How the hell did she get out of the house? Her mother had special clearance, but Kaylee didn’t. Why was she alive?
The two Cabera brothers came to attention. They must’ve realized Alessandro was going somewhere with his questions.
Kaylee gave a jerky shrug. “My mother didn’t walk, Prime Sagredo. She had a chauffeur who took her wherever she wanted to go.”
Liar.
She was right there, five feet away. I could blast her mind with my song, and she would confess to everything.
Alessandro reached, took my fingers into his, and squeezed my hand. He knew me too well. Nobody in that room realized that I was on the edge of violence, but he did, and he was trying to keep me from leaping off that cliff.
Kaylee’s gaze snagged on our hands. A furious spark flared in her mind.
The FBI agents leaned forward, focused on Kaylee like sharks.
Alessandro gave her his charming, irresistible smile, trying to defuse the bomb before it had a chance to explode.
I stared straight at her. Go ahead. Target me. Hit me. Do it. Do it right now, so I can end this. All I needed was the tiniest excuse, the smallest justification. I had the FBI right here as my witnesses. Just a little bit of aggression, Kaylee. Take a swing, and I will make you relive Pete’s death until your mind snaps like a twig.
Alessandro locked his fingers on mine in a silent no. His voice was smooth, almost intimate. “Where were you between the hours of 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. last night?”
The shell on Kaylee’s mind tore. A burst of magic shot out, uneven, knotted, and powerful, like a flooded mountain stream dragging branches and rocks as the water tore down. She’d meant to focus it on Alessandro, but her control was sloppy, and it splashed the entire room on its way to him. The magic smashed against my shields, burning hot, and harmlessly dissipated. The minds of the two uncles flashed in response, their shells impregnable.
Like me!
Agent Wahl’s face softened into a smile. It was one of the most disturbing things I had ever seen.
Next to him, Agent Garcia wasn’t smiling. She looked ready to rip Kaylee’s head off.
“As I said . . .”
A second flood of magic smashed into Alessandro, so potent, it was shocking. The edge of it swiped me. It was like sticking your head into a fireplace with a fire raging inside. Her magic was attempting to do the same thing a halcyon would, but it didn’t feel like any halcyon I had come across.
Like me. Like me! LIKE ME!
My magic bucked like a wild horse, straining my hold and trying to splay out into wings. I gritted my teeth and kept it in check.
“. . . I had homework,” Kaylee said.
A third flood. She was trying to cook him, except she had no training, so she was relying solely on power. There was no subtlety there. No skill. Just raw impact. She smashed his mind like a hammer.
Most mental mages hid their minds behind shields. It was one of the first things we learned. The shield was like a wall of stone. With enough power, you could shatter your opponent’s wall. Committing too much power to an attack like that could leave you vulnerable, but you could break through if you were strong enough.
Alessandro’s mind appeared to have a wall, but if you tried chipping at it, you realized that the wall never ended. His entire mind was a basalt craig, a solid chunk of stone. There was no breaking through.
“I didn’t take any walks.” A fourth flood.
Her magic burned a painful lesion across my defenses. If Alessandro wasn’t an antistasi, she wouldn’t have just turned him into a happy idiot, she would’ve damaged his brain.
Agent Garcia turned and stared at me, outrage in her eyes.
I wanted to kill Kaylee. She hurt Linus. She hurt my family. I needed to wipe her off the face of the planet here and now, before she hurt anyone else I cared about. There was a stormy ocean inside of me, with furious waves battering the rocks and unstoppable currents swirling, and I needed to drown Kaylee in it.
Alessandro shook his head at both me and Garcia.
Another splash of magic, weaker this time. She was getting tired.
None of her attacks even fazed him. He squeezed my hand again and said, his voice smooth, almost chiding, “Are you sure you didn’t go out? Perhaps a quick walk around the neighborhood? I’m here to help you, but you have to be honest with me.”
Kaylee stared at him, incredulous.
Agent Wahl let out a happy sigh. “I’m so relaxed right now. I really like it here. You are a lovely person, Ms. Cabera.”
Elias and Julian rose in unison.
No. We’re not finished. I didn’t have my turn.
“My niece is tired,” Julian announced.
“Does your niece know the meaning of an assault on a federal officer?” Agent Garcia ground out.
“This interview is over,” Elias said.
Agent Garcia grabbed Wahl by his arm and hauled him to his feet.
He blinked at her. “Are we leaving? Can’t we stay a little bit longer?”
“No, we can’t.” Agent Garcia steered him to the door. “This isn’t over. We’ll be in touch.”
Julian ushered Kaylee out of the room, while Elias stared us down. “Thank you for your visit.”
Alessandro nodded, rose calmly, and I stood up with him, since he refused to let go of my hand. We headed for the front door, our fingers intertwined.
Chapter 6
Getting out of that house was like stepping out of a crypt into sunshine.
Ahead Agent Garcia half-guided, half-shoved Agent Wahl into the black SUV.
He smiled at her. “You are so . . .”
“So what?”
“Forceful,” he told her with a dreamy look on his face.
She grabbed him by the chin. “Victor! Look into my eyes.”
He gazed at her. His eyes rolled back into his skull, and Agent Wahl slumped in his seat, unconscious.
“An enersyphon,” Alessandro murmured. “That explains things.”
Enersyphons, also known as magic eaters, absorbed magic, pulling it into themselves. They didn’t guard against it, they fed on it, which granted them a mild immunity to a lot of mental and elemental powers. Agent Garcia just sapped the magic dancing through Wahl’s brain and the shock knocked him out.
“You stopped me.” I pulled my hand out of his. Our backs were to their security cameras, and I kept my voice low. “She killed Pete.”
“We don’t have proof.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do. We follow the rules. That’s what separates us from them. Catalina, it’s the wrong time and the wrong place. I know you are angry, but if I hadn’t stopped you, you would’ve regretted it.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.”
“If Linus were here, he would have stopped you, too.”
“Linus isn’t here, because she hurt him.”
He dipped his head to look at me. “This is not like you.”
This was not like me.
That thought spun my mind around. The surge of magic inside me died.
I had endangered the investigation. If he hadn’t taken my hand, Kaylee and I would be locked in a mental duel right now. She was untrained, but she was freakishly powerful.
I’d come within a hair of singing. Not only had I almost jeopardized the search for Linus’ assassin, but I would have put the lives of everyone in that room in danger. This didn’t happen to me. I’d been controlling my magic and my emotions since early childhood, but an untrained mental mage had managed to rile me up to the point of nearly losing it.
It wasn’t Kaylee. It was Linus. He was still unconscious, and it was seriously messing with my head. I needed to get a grip right now, because if I spun out of control, I wouldn’t be able to undo what would happen.
“Thank you for stopping me,” I told him.
“Any time,” he said.
Agent Garcia marched back to us. We started walking toward her at the same time. The more distance was between us and the watchful eyes inside the house, the better.
We met halfway.
“She attacked a federal agent and the two of you just sat there,” Agent Garcia growled. “Tell me why I shouldn’t get a strike team down here right now and take her into custody. Alive or dead, I don’t care.”
That would be a nightmare. I turned my back to the security camera, pointed at it, hiding the gesture with my body, and lowered my voice.
“You’re not wrong,” I said. “And your anger is justified. However, she has done much worse than that. I want to nail her to the wall, but she’s involved in a much larger scheme, and I don’t exactly know how. I don’t know what will happen if we bring her in. Please give me time.”
“Promise me you won’t sweep this under the rug,” Agent Garcia said. “I want your word that this doesn’t become one of those House politics secrets.”
“I won’t and you have it.”
“Seventy-two hours,” Agent Garcia ground out.
“The Office of the Warden appreciates your patience,” Alessandro said.
Agent Garcia squeezed her hand into a fist and relaxed it. “I’ll tell you one thing. That girl is no halcyon. Her magic tastes like jagged glass.”
She marched around the car, got into the driver’s seat, drove off, with Wahl still unconscious, and almost collided with an armored gunmetal grey Dodge as it turned into the driveway. For a moment the two cars were at a standoff, then the Dodge reversed, giving Agent Garcia room. She peeled out of the driveway.
Alessandro frowned.
The grey Dodge slid to a stop in front of us. The driver’s window rolled down, revealing a tan man in his late twenties, with light brown hair and grey eyes behind large round glasses. I’d seen him before. He was one of Lenora Jordan’s Assistant DAs. Matt Something.
“No,” Alessandro said.
Matt gave us an apologetic wave with his hand. “I’m merely the messenger.”
Cornelius appeared at the mouth of the driveway, Gus on a leash next to him. He saw us and waved. His car was nowhere in sight. He must’ve walked from Linus’ house.
I waved back.
“We lost Dag Gunderson,” Matt said.
“How, Matt?” Alessandro growled. “I left him at your doorstep.”
“Gross incompetence,” Matt said cheerfully. “He’s been spotted near St. Agnes Academy. We’re reasonably sure he’s going to bomb it. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Alessandro’s tone was cold. “I’m busy.”
It was my turn to be reasonable. I took his hand and squeezed it. He gave me an outraged look.
“Lenora personally asked for you,” Matt said. “She said she would consider it a favor.”
There were a handful of people in Houston not even the strongest Houses cared to provoke. The Harris County DA was one of them. More importantly, hundreds of children were about to experience a magic meteor shower that would explode on impact.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “Go.”
He shook his head.
“She sent a car,” I told him. “I won’t do anything rash without you. I promise. Look, Cornelius is over there. I’ll pick him up, check on Bern and Runa, and we’ll go straight home.”
Alessandro swore again.
“It’s fine,” I told him. “There are hundreds of children in St. Agnes.”
He exhaled and got into the SUV. “Drive fast, Matt.”
“Always.” Matt smiled at me. “Thank you for your understanding, Ms. Baylor.”
The window rolled back up. The Dodge reversed and sped away.
I forgot to tell him about Konstantin. Well, crap. Not that it would change anything. He would still have had to go to apprehend Dag Gunderson. I would wait to interview the prince until he returned home.
I got into Rhino and drove it to the mouth of the driveway, where Cornelius stood.
“Would you like a lift?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He opened the rear passenger door. Gus hopped onto the seat and lay down, panting. A moment later, Cornelius got into the front passenger seat, and we were off.
“What are you doing here?”
“Gus and I decided to follow Luciana’s scent.”
And it led them straight to her house.
“Did you learn anything from talking to the family?” Cornelius asked.
“Kaylee Cabera is not a halcyon. Alessandro and I don’t know what she is. The FBI has a magic eater, and she didn’t know what Kaylee is either.”
“Do you think she is our killer?”
“Yes. I was five feet from her, and I had to let her go, because I can’t prove it.”
“Yet,” Cornelius said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Yet.”
“Why would the current Speaker use her daughter to try to murder the former Speaker?”
“She wasn’t trying to murder the former Speaker. She tried to murder the Warden.”
Cornelius tapped his chin, thinking. “Luciana is prudent. Was prudent. I would classify her as having been extremely risk averse. This was rash and ultimately, unsuccessful.”
“It was certainly out of character.”
“It had to be self-defense,” Cornelius said. “She must have felt Linus was a danger to her or someone she loved. She was a single parent like me. Her life revolved around her child. She might not have risked retribution from the Assembly to keep her job or stay out of prison, but she would do almost anything to protect her daughter.”
“Would you have killed Linus to protect Matilda?”
“Absolutely.”
He hadn’t even paused.
“The difference is, I wouldn’t have gotten caught.”
“How would you have done it?”
Cornelius smiled. “Poison would be the cleanest. Did you know that Linus keeps a kitchen towel on the door handle of his icemaker? A large rat or an ermine could grab that towel and use its body weight to open the icemaker. A single rat can easily carry a plastic bag in a pocket of its harness with enough cyanide or any number of other lethal substances to cause death within minutes. The hardest variable to control is making sure the poison is evenly spread over the ice.”
“Wow.”
Cornelius smiled wider.
“So, are you happy with your current position and compensation? Is there anything I can do on behalf of House Baylor to make you feel more valued?”
The smile vanished. He turned toward me. “Catalina, your family is my family. My sister and brother both feel the same. You, Arabella, and Nevada are the only older sisters Matilda will ever have. You never have to worry that I would harm any of you.”
Awww.
I pulled into Linus’ driveway. Cornelius’ electric BMW waited in front of the garage next to one of our armored Humvees. A guard stood by Linus’ front door, one of our Warden people. He held a submachine gun and was doing his best to look as conspicuous as possible. The public at large had no idea what happened to Linus and knowing Linus’ ties with the military, his neighbors wouldn’t find the presence of an armed guard alarming. But if Arkan was watching—and I was a hundred percent sure he was—we wanted to show that the house was well protected.
“By the way, Matilda told me that she felt the spider,” I said.
“Did she?” Cornelius’ eyes sparkled.
“Yes. She said the spider was a she, and she was stressed out and scared. Is it possible she is an arachnid mage?”
Cornelius smiled. “It’s not that. Animal mages have degrees of power like any other magic discipline. At the very bottom of that power ladder are those who can bond with a single species. Then we start climbing up the hierarchy of zoological classification. Those with Average abilities typically can affect an order like Rodentia or Carnivora. At Significant and Prime levels, most of us are capable of affecting the entire class, meaning there are Primes specializing in Mammals, or Birds, or Reptiles. Those with remarkable power can affect more than one of these classes.”
“So, an entire series? Like Amniotes?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
Despite Cornelius’ best attempts to downplay his power, I had seen him bond with both birds and mammals.
“But arachnids are very far removed from amniotes,” I said.
He nodded again, the same quiet smile on his lips.
We would have to go all the way up, to a group that included both mammals and arachnids. “I’m sorry, my knowledge of zoological classification is lacking.”
“I suspect Matilda is sensitive to the entire Nephrozoa Clade. Almost all bilateral animals fall into that group. Over a million species. Of course, whether or not she can bond with all of them remains to be seen, but even if she simply feels them, it is already enough. I cannot sense a spider, Catalina.”
Cornelius was a reserved man. He wouldn’t say anything else, but he didn’t have to. If parental pride had a glow, I would’ve gone blind because he would have lit up like a miniature sun.
The doors of Linus’ house opened. Runa emerged and waved me over.
“I think she wants me to talk to them.”
“Gus and I will wait for you. It would be best if we travelled home together.”
“Thank you,” I told him and got out of the car.
Bern met me in Linus’ study.
“Hey . . .” I started.
He held up the USB, put it into my hand, and he and Runa walked out and shut the double doors behind them.
Okay.
I sat down and plugged the USB into Linus’ desktop. A pair of headphones waited for me, already plugged in. Whatever it was, Bern clearly didn’t want it to get out.
I put the headphones on and accessed the storage stick. A single video. I clicked it.
