You’d think two months of not seeing him would’ve made a difference, and it had. It made whatever was pulling me to him worse. Yeah, do you remember how you woke and ran downstairs, because you thought you saw him, and when you opened the door, nobody was there?
He shut my door and got into the driver’s seat, scanning the parking lot in front of us with a thousand-yard stare. “There is a Sig in the glove compartment.”
I opened the glove compartment, took out the Sig, checked it, and put it on my lap.
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
“I lost some people,” he said. There was an awful finality in his voice.
I hadn’t thought he cared. I’d thought he viewed his people as tools and took care of them because tools had to be kept in good repair, but this sounded like genuine grief—that complicated cocktail of guilt, regret, and overwhelming sadness you felt when someone close to you died. It broke you and made you feel helpless. Helpless wasn’t even in Rogan’s vocabulary. Maybe I’d been wrong then or maybe I was wrong now. Time would tell one way or the other.
I closed my mouth and watched Houston slide by outside the window, searching the warm winter day for something I might have to shoot.
Chapter 3
Most of the Houston Houses had mansions inside the Loop, a long road that encircled the downtown and the pricey neighborhoods such as River Oaks. Having an address inside the Loop was as much of a status symbol as driving luxury cars and owning personal yachts.
However, Rogan was a fourth-generation Prime. He had no interest in impressing anyone. We climbed northwest instead, leaving the city, and then the main road, behind. Old Texas oaks spread their branches over green grass, stoically enduring the rain of Houston’s December.
My phone rang. Bern.
“Yes?”
“Hey, the Internet is buzzing with some sort of disturbance at the Assembly.”
Well, that didn’t take long.
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“Forsberg is dead. I didn’t kill him.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“I’m showing you moving northwest.”
He’d tracked my phone. “That’s right.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m going to Mad Rogan’s house.”
Silence.
“Don’t tell Mom,” I said.
Rogan grinned next to me, a quick parting of lips.
“I won’t,” Bern promised.
I hung up.
“Were you trying to murder Forsberg?” I asked.
“If I was trying, he wouldn’t have left the floor.”
“You looked like you were about to kill him.”
“I wanted answers and he was going to give them to me. If he didn’t, I probably would’ve.”
I didn’t even need my magic to tell me he meant it. “Will you be able to get your hands on his autopsy report?”
Rogan spared me a glance. Yes, of course. What was I thinking doubting the great Mad Rogan?
“How was he able to hop while dead?” I asked.
“Hopping is a two-step process,” Rogan said.
“It’s similar to breathing,” Cornelius explained from the back seat. “Forsberg pulled the magic in, inhaling, then let it out, exhaling, and it carried him forward. If someone killed him just as he exhaled, the jump would still occur.”
I really needed access to the House network and its explanations of higher magic talents. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a member, nor would I ever get to be one.
We came to a wrought-iron gate that swung open at our approach and Rogan drove up the long curving driveway, past the picturesque plants. The path turned and a massive Spanish Colonial house sitting atop a low hill came into view. Two stories tall, with thick stucco walls and red tile roof, it looked at the world with arched windows. A large round tower graced the right side, and a covered balcony offered the view from the second story on the left. Red-and-purple flowers dripped from flower baskets, stretching over the balcony’s dark wood rail. In the middle, a heavy rounded door, old wood with wrought ironwork, offered access to the inside of the home. It was impossibly romantic. If they ever made another Zorro movie, I knew just the place where they could film it. You half expected a man in a black mask and a cape to sword-fight his way across the balcony, leap onto a jet-black Andalusian horse, and gallop past us down the driveway.
I realized that Rogan leaned next to me.
“Do you like it?” he asked quietly.
People lied to me every day, several times a day, with the best and the worst intentions. I made it a point to lie as little as possible. “Yes.”
A self-satisfied smile lit up his face. Oh, for crying out loud, it wasn’t as if he had built it with his bare hands . . . Why was it even important if I liked it?
We followed him through the door into the formal entrance, with a cool limestone floor and massive columns. On the right, a curved staircase with a wrought-iron railing led to an upstairs hallway. On the left, a vast living room waited under the high ceiling crossed with rough wooden beams and lit by three rustic chandeliers, rings of metal studded with candle-shaped bulbs, that could’ve come from a medieval castle. Wide window-filled arches supported by stone columns interrupted the wall to the left, letting the light of the late morning stream into the space. Red-and-white Oriental rugs lay across the floor. The furniture was old and heavy, the cushions of the couches oversized and plush. A massive fireplace took up the far wall. It could’ve easily turned into a stuffy dark space, but instead it was light and airy, welcoming and clean. Plants stood here and there in large pots, adding bright spots of green to the stone walls.
Mad Rogan owned my dream house. Life just wasn’t fair. That was okay. I would work really hard and one day I would buy my own house—maybe not quite as big, or as tastefully furnished, but it would be mine.
Rogan went up the staircase and we followed him across an indoor balcony that spanned the living room to a hallway. Rogan turned right, and we walked up another short staircase to a metal door. He held it open for me.
I walked into a square room. The wall on my left and the one directly in front of me were thick tinted glass that showed a wide covered balcony and more walls—these windows opened into the inner courtyard. The other two walls were taken up by screens and computers, manned by two people with headsets.
“Leave us,” Rogan said.
They got up and left without a word. Rogan invited us to a U-shaped blue couch arranged around a coffee table. We sat.
“Bug!” Rogan called.
“Coming, Major,” a voice responded from some speaker.
Rogan looked at Cornelius. “Did you bond with your wife, Mr. Harrison?”
Cornelius hesitated. “Yes.”
What kind of a question was that?
“Was it a true bond?’
“Yes.”
Rogan looked at me. “Is he telling the truth?”
“You do realize that I work for him and not you?”
“If he’s lying to me, and I show him this, I may have to kill him.”
I looked at Cornelius. “Do I have your permission to tell him?”
“Yes,” he said.
“He’s telling the truth.”
Rogan walked over to the wall, slid the panel open, and came back with a glass and a bottle of Jack Daniels. He set the glass and the bottle in front of Cornelius.
“I don’t drink,” Cornelius said. “I’ll be sober for this.”
“What will happen after you find your wife’s killer?” Rogan sat down to my left.
“I’ll fire Ms. Baylor,” Cornelius said.
“Because of Ms. Baylor’s stubborn inability to compromise when it comes to legal matters?” Rogan asked.
“She made it clear she doesn’t want to be involved in what would follow.”
I waved at both of them in case they forgot that I was sitting right there.
“How committed are you to this course of action?” Rogan asked.
“I’ve taken measures already,” Cornelius said.
Rogan sat back, his eyes calculating. “I’m going to share some confidential information with you. It has wide-reaching implications. If you would rather not be involved, tell me now. The lives of my people depend on your discretion and if you betray my confidence, I’ll have to eliminate you.”