Raised in Fire

But I did.

Balls of flame sprang to life, various colors, various sizes, moving through the debris around me, making the guy hiding in the bushes do a fist pump. I rose back up and drifted forward, feeling all that horrible blackness inside me surrounded by bright light. Ice wrapped in heat.

Fire rolled along my arms and legs, but the cold stayed like a cap on my head. I’d probably still lose my eyebrows, unfortunately. You couldn’t have everything.

The sweet air rushed back into my lungs. My fingers tingled with pins and needles, coming back to life. My heart fluttered, emotion surging back in.

Finally, I pushed it all back down, the fire and ice together, a knot in my stomach now, but the start of something. I’d fuse them together one day.

My feet bumped the ground and the debris in the air slowly fell. The fire winked out. The man in the bushes ran like hell.

“Someone should help him forget,” I said, glancing at his retreating figure. “He was too excited for his own good.”

I felt the others draw near me, but no one spoke. When I turned to them, Callie and Dizzy had their eyebrows up, as if they’d just asked a question.

Another wave of relief flooded me. “If you are thinking things, I thankfully can’t hear them.”

“I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but…not yet.” Callie adjusted her satchel. “You can’t hear them yet. But you will. We’ll work on that power to help you develop it. Then hopefully control it so you don’t do it all the time. I have some pretty stupid thoughts I’d rather keep to myself.”

“Me too,” Dizzy muttered.

Darius was staring at me with his hard face, but he didn’t speak.

“Right, then, one crisis averted. Now for the second.” I started toward the house. “We have to kill that demon before it can get to the underworld.”

“Do we know where the summoning site is yet?” Dizzy asked, hurrying to my side. “That’s probably where they’ll congregate to send the demon back.”

“We came here to find information, Dizzy,” Callie said, tramping behind us.

“Oh yes, right.”

“Let’s hope there’s a clue in the mage’s house.” The spell from earlier was gone. The mages must’ve taken it down before they left. They had to get through it, too. “I wonder why the demon was randomly hanging out in the yard.”

“Following you, probably.” Darius reached the door first and went to grab the handle. He hesitated. “Would you like to kick this in, Reagan?”

“How thoughtful. But no. Let’s just go inside.”

He opened the door, having already unlocked it.

“Or maybe the demon already knew you would eventually find the mage in charge. It is hard to say.” Darius stepped out of the way so we could enter.

“If he got close enough to you in that ugly man’s body, he could have heard your thoughts,” Dizzy said. “Or my thoughts. Once that door is opened, are there any secrets anymore?”

“My mom came up with a way to block that,” I said to Dizzy as I entered the house. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Oh good. Yes. Very clever, your mom.” Dizzy followed closely behind me.

I looked around, not sure where to start. “My only question is, can I actually kill the demon without losing myself?”

“You can. I know you can. When you’ve solved a problem once, that’s it. You have it.” Callie riffled through papers on the counter.

“But we still have all the mages to deal with,” I said.

“We’ll take care of the mages.” Callie pushed an envelope to the side. “I’m nearly positive I finally recruited the little witch. Her mother doesn’t monitor Penny’s texts and calls, thank God. With her power at our backs, those other mages don’t stand a chance.”

“She’s a mage, hon. An untrained mage.” Dizzy yanked two drawers out and dumped them on the ground. “You call her. I’ll help Reagan and Darius look through the house. I have an eye for picking things out of chaos. If there are clues here, we’ll find them.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I have a check stub,” Dizzy shouted. “He doesn’t make much at his job.”

I rifled through a desk drawer in his disorganized office. We’d been at this for fifteen minutes and still hadn’t found anything solid. Or helpful.

“What does he do?” I shouted.

Darius appeared in the doorway, and I jumped, knocking the rolling chair back into the bookcase.

“Jesus, man.” I put a hand to my heart. “Don’t just pop up like a poltergeist. I’m a little jumpy right now.”

Darius held up a blue uniform without saying a word. The front resembled a police uniform, with a sewn-on patch like a badge on the arm. He turned it, and I saw security written on the back.

“Where did you say that skin suit was found?” Dizzy called.

“It wasn’t a skin suit, and it was in terminal thirty. Port of Seattle, I think. The shipping terminal.” I slipped out from around the desk and looked at the patch on the sleeve. It said security officer.

“Shoot,” Dizzy said. “I was hoping it would be the same company.”

“Perhaps they all work in security,” Darius said. “It would’ve been hard to get a body into the terminal in the later hours without being noticed. Unless you worked there and brought it in your car.”

“But they said all of the staff checked out. And yes, I realize these people probably wouldn’t have any priors, but Oscar also said none of them were magical…”

How stupid was I?

“The MLE office was keeping their mouths shut.” I shook my head. “They must’ve known a mage was responsible, and that one worked at the terminal, but they were warned away from mages, so they weren’t talking.” I bowed in frustration. “You even asked if I wanted to talk to the security people. I can’t tell most magical species, but I know mages. I would’ve felt his or her magic.”

“The thought had occurred to me, but I admit, it was in my best interest that you weren’t thorough,” Darius said. “I failed you there. I was thinking about feeding instead of covering all the bases. After hearing about the dangers in the area, we had new, more concrete leads. But this is telling.”

“It is. Dizzy,” I called. “What’s the company name on that check stub?” I lowered my voice so I wasn’t shouting in Darius’s face. “They dumped one body at the port, so maybe there’ll be some activity at this other place. I mean, the guy is the lead mage, probably. Maybe he uses his place of work for the summonings and leaves the scraps for the others to dispose of…”

“Torturing a body at one’s place of work would probably be noticed.”

I grimaced. “Unless they used a spell to hide themselves.”

“What?”

Dizzy’s sudden proximity, right beyond the doorway, made me jump.

“Would you guys stop sneaking around? I’m still coming down off a fear high.” I rubbed my face. “What is the company name on the pay stub?”

He pushed his way past Darius. “BNSF railway,” he read, looking up at me to see if that clicked.

It didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

“Is it normal for mages to have jobs?” I asked, trying to weigh the significance. “I mean, the mages I get spells from in NOLA do, but they aren’t particularly powerful. Which is why they are cheap and can’t afford to live off their magic. This guy is clearly both powerful and experienced.”

“Very few mages can afford to consistently do this full-time,” Dizzy said, stalking past me and looking around the small office. He stopped at the file cabinet, pulled out a drawer, and dumped the contents onto the ground. “It isn’t steady income if all you can do is make spells. You get surge months, sure, but there are also down months. Sometimes down years, depending on how many mages are trying to sell their wares. Most people need something steady, at least part-time, to cover the basic bills for the bad months.”

“And you guys, who clearly don’t fall into that category?” I asked, taking a hint and resuming my search. We needed something more concrete. Or, at the very least, we needed to establish we had no other options.