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Her face was impassive. She was looking at the laptop in front of her. On the other side of the desk, Alessandro and Konstantin sat in large leather chairs. Konstantin had shifted back into Smirnov. He was tall, dour, and stooped, and he fidgeted as he sat. I’d never seen him do that so far, so it must’ve been one of Smirnov’s mannerisms.
A careful knock echoed through the room. The door must have edged open off-screen because Lenora looked up and nodded. Matt entered the room. The last time I’d seen him, when he came to pick up Alessandro, he’d worn a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, his hair was a mess, and his face had sported two days of stubble. Today he wore a black suit, his hair was brushed back, and his tan face was clean shaven. He looked like what he was, a young successful attorney.
He strode into the room and stopped in the middle of the rug in front of Lenora’s desk. “You wanted to see me . . .”
He saw Smirnov. In a split second his expression tore like a flimsy mask. His hand went into his jacket.
Alessandro shot across the room, insanely fast. He gripped Matt’s arm, twisted, and a gun fell onto the carpet. If I had blinked, I would’ve missed it. One moment Matt was reaching for his gun, the next he was bent over, his arm clamped in Alessandro’s fingers.
“Thank you, Prime Sagredo,” Lenora said. “I’ll take it from here.”
Alessandro released Matt and stepped back.
Thick chains burst from the rug, spiraling around Matt in a flash. In half a second, they gripped him in a magical fist, lifting him off the ground two feet into the air. His glasses sat askew on his nose, but they did nothing to diminish the defiance that twisted his face.
He looked down at Lenora and sneered. “Ah. I always wondered what this felt like.”
“You betrayed this office,” Lenora said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Money, of course,” Matt said. His expression turned harsh. “Do you even know what my starting salary was? No, of course you don’t. Sixty-four thousand dollars. I’ve been here for three years. Now I make sixty-eight.”
Lenora remained unmoved.
A little color came back into Matt’s face. He kept going.
“I graduated from Columbia with one hundred ninety thousand in law school debt, and that’s on top of the hundred grand I still owe to Baylor U for my bachelor’s. My apartment costs three grand a month, and I hate it. Every day I deal with Houses and Primes, whose brats get busted for underage drinking and DUI in their Mercedes and Audis, while I bust my ass so I can drive a Honda. I have to buy my suits on credit, just so I won’t be laughed at.”
“Is that so?” Lenora tilted her head. “One hundred and seventy-two dollars.”
“What is that?”
“The monthly food stamp allowance my mother was receiving the year I graduated from high school. Tell me again about your suits. Are they nice?”
Matt blinked, then recovered. “You know what, whatever. You are a shitty boss, Lenora. You don’t take care of your people, so I found someone who does. Whatever you’re hoping to get out of me, forget it. The hex in my head is better than anything you can throw at it.”
Matt twisted his neck to glare at Smirnov. “And you? Your days are numbered.”
A door swung open, and Nevada walked in and stood beside Lenora.
Matt’s face blanched.
“Mr. Benson,” Nevada said.
Matt didn’t answer.
Nevada picked up the corners of the rug and folded it in half, exposing the dark floor underneath. The chains slid out of her way, shifting Matt aside, and straightened again.
“Last night Xavier Secada put a chunk of metal through my mother’s leg,” my sister said.
Matt swallowed and licked his lips. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So was I.” Nevada took out a piece of chalk. “I think you and I should have a nice long chat.”
My phone rang. An unfamiliar foreign number starting with 351. Now what?
I waved at Bern. He muted the feed, and I took the call on speaker.
“Prime Baylor speaking.”
“My name is Christina Almeida, Prime of House Almeida.”
Female, young, slight trace of an accent, not Spanish, not Italian, something else.
Bern’s fingers flew over the keyboard. The search engine spat the results. House Almeida, a Portuguese House, old nobility, rich, made money from rubber and cork . . .
“How can I help you?”
Another page of results. Christina Almeida, Magus Praelia, Prime. A warrior mage. Like Buller, who conjured armor, praelia conjured weapons and they used them with deadly skill.
“I’ve come to retrieve my fiancé,” Christina said.
“Who would that be?”
“Alessandro Sagredo.”
What?
A text popped up with GPS coordinates.
You have questions. That’s understandable. Meet me at this location in one hour. Let’s talk.
I showed the coordinates to Bern. He plugged them into the search engine and Google Maps obliged. A park, ten minutes down the road from us.
