I had to bait the hook just right. My heart was beating too fast. Deep breath. I could do this.
“Gustave tells me you derailed my money train.”
“Yes, I did. Your brother and your mother are having a conversation about it right now. Does she have something against migrant workers?”
He chuckled. “She probably meant vagrant. So you want to find me?”
“Want is the wrong word. I’m forced to find you. I don’t particularly want to.”
“Who’s forcing you?”
Got you. “What are the chances of you surrendering to me?”
He laughed again, a distinct male chuckle. “Come see me and we’ll talk about it.”
Score. “Sure. Where?”
“Mercer Arboretum, Shade Bog Garden. In half an hour.”
He hung up.
Half an hour. Mercer was twenty miles north of downtown. Twenty miles in Houston traffic might as well have been sixty. Bastard.
I double-timed it to the car, texting Bern on the way. He would still be in class. “AP just called my cell. Meeting in half an hour, at Mercer Arboretum.”
No response.
Bern could track my phone anywhere, but tracking wouldn’t do me any good if Adam turned me into burnt ends. Half an hour would give me just enough time to get to Mercer Arboretum. Not enough time to wrangle any backup. Besides, backup wouldn’t do me any good.
I jumped into my Mazda and drove out of the parking lot like my wheels were on fire. Be interesting. Convince him to turn himself in. Don’t get killed.
I walked into Mercer Arboretum exactly twenty-nine minutes after the call. A two-hundred-and-fifty-acre botanical garden, Mercer was a welcome spot of green shade popular with magical heavyweights. There was something about gardens, and especially flowers, that drew magic users to them even if their magic had nothing to do with plants. I felt it too. All around me flowers bloomed, trees spread their vast canopies, insects fluttered from leaf to leaf, birds sang . . . It was like being wrapped in a cocoon of life, suffused with a simple happiness of existing.
I wasted twenty seconds at a gift kiosk, turned north, and hurried down the trail, my purchase folded in my hand. Men and women passed me, some speaking quietly, some deep in thought. Expensive clothes, beautiful faces, some so flawless that illusion magic had to be involved. There was a point where a human being became too perfect and lost whatever sexual allure they might have been born with. They became untouchable and almost sterile, like plastic mannequins in store windows. Many Primes understood this and left some imperfections, like Augustine Montgomery, but a lot of mages of lower caliber didn’t. Considering how many magic users I passed, this might turn out to be a wild-goose chase. Adam Pierce was too well known, and this place was too public.
The winding path turned into a boardwalk flanked by a black iron rail. The points of the rail bent out toward the nature in arches, as if straight, man-made lines had no business here. Trees crowded in. The air smelled of moisture, that unmistakable wetlands scent of mud and water plants. A bog stretched on both sides of the trail, a few inches of water the color of tea surrounded by thriving green plants and brilliant red irises. The path veered slightly, crossing over the bog, and brought me to a bench. A low stone wall flanked the bench on both sides. On the wall sat Adam Pierce.
He perched, cross-legged, his legs stretching the black leather of his pants. He was wearing a jacket over a black T-shirt. His hair fell over his face in a ragged wave. A complicated magic circle, drawn in black and white chalk, marked the boardwalk and the wall around him. Three rings within each other, three half circles facing outward, their backs touching the middle ring. Spider-thin perfectly straight lines crossed back and forth within the circles, forming an elaborate pattern. Half circles out meant containment. He was holding in his power.
Years ago when aristocrats were expected to serve in the military, they began practicing with swords as soon as they could walk. Now Primes practiced drawing arcane symbols. If I had to duplicate whatever he had drawn, I would need a picture for reference, a ruler, a pair of compasses to make those circles, and a couple of hours. He probably drew it freehand in a few minutes. It looked perfect.
He was capable of incredible precision and control. Come to think of it, the way he sat, the way he posed during interviews with his best angle to the camera, indicated that he had practiced in front of the mirror. Maybe Adam the Chaotic Rebel was just for show. Maybe everything he did was calculated. Wouldn’t that be just the icing on top of this Cake of Awful? I would have to tread this treacherous water very carefully.
Adam glanced up. Brown eyes took my measure. He looked just like he did in all those photographs. Okay. Now I needed to not get fried as I talked his handsome ass into surrendering.
I went over to the bench. As I passed by him, heat washed over me, as if I had stepped too close to a bonfire. He had made the containment circle and then filled it with heat. I had my Taser in my bag. I could probably shoot him from here, but even if the Taser hit and he went down, getting anywhere close to him was out of the question. The heat would peel the skin off my fingers. Then the shock would wear off, and I would be dead.
I sat down.
Adam Pierce smiled. His face lit up, suddenly boyish and charming, but still a little wicked. So that’s why his mother gave him anything he wanted.
“Nevada. Such a cold name for such a sunny girl.”
Aren’t you smooth? Nevada meant “snow-covered” in Spanish. I was anything but.
Grandma Frida’s parents came to the US from Germany. She was dark haired and light skinned naturally. Grandpa Leon was from Quebec. I didn’t remember much about him except that he was huge and dark-skinned. It caused some issues for both of them, but they loved each other too much to regret it. Together they made my mother, with dark hair and medium brown skin. We didn’t know a lot about Dad’s family. He once told me that his mother was a terrible person and he didn’t want anything to do with her. He looked part Caucasian, part Native American to me, with dark blond hair, but I never asked. All of those genes fell into the melting pot, boiled together, and I came out, with tan skin, brown eyes, and blond hair.
My hair wasn’t silvery blond but a darker, tupelo honey kind of blond. I almost never burned in the sun, just got darker, while my hair turned lighter, especially if I spent the summer swimming. Once, when I was seven, a woman stopped my grandma and me as we were walking to my school. She tried to chew Grandma out for dying my hair. It didn’t go well. Even now people sometimes asked me which salon did the coloring job. Nevada didn’t exactly fit me. There was nothing wintery about me, but I didn’t care what he thought about it.
I shook my left hand, unfolding a Mercer Arboretum gift T-shirt, black with a sage green Mercer logo on it. “For you.”
“You bought me a T-shirt?” He raised one eyebrow.
Every nerve in my body was shivering with tension. Steady. “You keep forgetting to put one on, so I thought I’d bring you one. Since we’re having a serious discussion.”
He leaned forward, his beautiful face framed by soft hair. “Do you find my chest distracting?”
“Yes. Every time I see that panther with horns, it makes me laugh.”
Adam Pierce blinked.
Didn’t expect that, did you? “Just out of curiosity, why horns?”
“It’s Mishepishu, an underwater panther of the Great Lakes. It’s revered by Native American tribes. It has the horns of a deer, the body of a lynx, and the scales of a snake.”
“What is it famous for?”
“It lives in the deepest reaches of the lakes, where they guard copper deposits. Those who cross their waters must pay it tribute.”