Burn for Me: A Hidden Legacy Novel (15 page)

Mad Rogan didn’t give a crap about what the rest of us thought about him. He had no need to impress; he wanted the best, and he would pay premium price as long as he got it. Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

“What’s in Jersey Village?” he asked.

“Bug. He’s a surveillance specialist. I have something he wants, and I’m going to have him find Adam Pierce for us. We have to do it now, before Adam shows up at my house again, because my mother has threatened to deal with him and then send what’s left of his body to his House in a plastic grocery bag.”

“Your mother seems confident,” he said.

“Do you know what a Light Fifty is?” I asked.

“It’s a Barrett M82 sniper rifle.”

“My mother was looking at your head through the scope of one while we were eating lunch. We need to find Adam Pierce before my mother shoots him or my grandmother runs him over with a tank. Or before he incinerates our home and my family with it.”

“As we discussed, I have a team guarding your warehouse. If he shows up anywhere near it, we’ll know. Now your turn. I’ll have the information now,” Mad Rogan said. “All of it.”

I started at the moment MII called us, told him very briefly that MII hired us to find Adam Pierce, and ran through my investigation, skipping unimportant details such as mortgaged businesses and dreams featuring him being half naked. Volunteering was for suckers, and he wouldn’t get any information out of me unless it was absolutely necessary.

He grimaced. “Augustine finally caved in.”

“You know him?”

“Yes. We went to college together. I’m not his favorite person.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen him without his magic.” Mad Rogan shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Augustine always had an overdeveloped sense of loyalty to his House. He struggled with it. I told him back then that if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up in an office dancing to his family’s tune.”

“Is that why you joined the military? To get away from your family?” And why did I ask that?

“I joined because they told me I could kill without being sent to prison and be rewarded for it.”

True. Holy shit. I was trapped in a car with a homicidal maniac. Awesome.

“You have a strange look on your face,” he said.

“I just realized I shouldn’t be in the same vehicle with you. In fact, I shouldn’t have called you in the first place, so I’m trying very hard to rewind time.”

He grinned.
I’ve amused the dragon. Whee.

“Would you rather I lied to you? Not that I would bother, but even if I did, there is no point in it, is there?”

I didn’t answer. Keeping my mouth shut was an excellent strategy.

“Does Augustine know you’re a Truthseeker?”

He’d figured me out. I wasn’t really surprised, not after I’d pinned him down and wrenched the answers out of him. “What my employer knows or doesn’t know about me is none of your business.”

He chuckled, a genuine, rich laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Augustine prides himself on his powers of observation and being an excellent judge of character. He thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. He used to try to make brilliant deductions by noting what people wore and how they acted. He has a Truthseeker on staff and he has no idea. He’s likely been looking to employ one for ages.” Mad Rogan chuckled again. “The irony, it’s delicious.”

I kept my mouth shut. Hopefully he wouldn’t ask me anything else.

“Truthseeking is the third rarest magic talent. Why not make a living from it? Shouldn’t you be in some office with a two-way mirror asking uncomfortable questions?”

“That’s not covered under our agreement.”

He glanced at me, his eyes dark. “Would you rather talk about your dream?”

“No.”

“Considering that I was featured in it, I think I deserve to know the particulars. Were my clothes missing because we were in bed? Was I touching you?” He glanced at me. His voice could’ve melted clothes off my body. “Were you touching me?”

I shouldn’t have gotten into his car. I should’ve taken a separate vehicle.

“Cat got your tongue, Nevada?”

“No, we weren’t in bed. I was pushing you off a cliff to your death.” I pointed at the highway. “Take the next exit and stay in the right lane, please. We’ll need to make a right.”

He chuckled again and took the exit.

T
he Range Rover rolled down a gentle stop at the end of the exit ramp, and we turned right onto deserted Senate Avenue. At some point it was a typical suburban street, two lanes on each side, divided by a flower bed and decorative trees. A field with grass mowed short stretched on the left. An equally shorn lawn lay on the right, a curving drive cutting through it to permit access to a one-story brick building. A large sign rose on the right, set on a sturdy metal pole.

A second sign in bright yellow yelled at us with big black letters.

“Make a right here.” I pointed at the driveway.

Mad Rogan turned. The driveway brought us to a drive-through at the brick building, blocked by a solid metal bar. Another sign said Private Security Area Parking. $2 per hour, $12 per day maximum.

“Let me do the talking,” I said.

“Be my guest.”

The drive-through window slid open and a woman looked at me. She was short and muscular, with dark brown skin and glossy black hair put away into six neat cornrows. A tactical vest hugged her frame, and a Sig Sauer lay in the desk next to her.

“Hi, Thea.” I showed her my ID.

“Haven’t seen you for a while,” Thea said. “Who’s the prince in the driver seat?”

“A client.”

Thea’s eyebrows rose. “You’re taking a client into the Pit?”

“There is a first time for everything.”

Thea leaned forward a little and gave Mad Rogan her tough stare. “Okay, client. Standard warning: you have left the Metro Houston area. You are entering territory controlled by House Shaw. This is a limited-security area. If you proceed past the red line at the end of this parking lot, you may be a victim of a violent crime, such as mugging, assault, rape, or murder. House Shaw patrols the water, and if they observe you being a victim of such a crime, they will render aid, but by crossing that red line you acknowledge that House Shaw has a limited ability to assist you. This conversation is being recorded. Do you understand the warning that has been given to you?”

“Yes,” Mad Rogan said.

“Your consent has been recorded and will be used as evidence should you attempt to seek any damages or hold House Shaw liable for any harm happening to you in the Pit. Getting in is easy, getting out is hard. Welcome to the anal sore of Houston. Have fun, kids.”

She popped a paper ticket from the machine on the side of her desk and handed it to Rogan. He took it. The bar rose and he steered the vehicle into the deserted parking lot. He drove to the far end and parked by the foot-wide red line drawn on the pavement. A hundred yards beyond the line, a bayou spread. The murky water the color of green tea lay placid. On the left, the top floor of a once-two-story office building stuck out of the mire. Once-decorative trees stood half submerged next to sunken wrought-iron streetlamps.

Jersey Village used to be one of those small suburban towns Houston was in the habit of swallowing whole as it grew. A boring bedroom community northwest of downtown, Jersey Village slowly grew a robust mini-downtown, with several large tech companies building their offices here. It would’ve continued to exist in happy obscurity if it hadn’t been for the infamous Mayor Bruce. Mayor Thomas Bruce, better known as Bubba Bruce, somehow managed to get himself elected on the platform of being a fun guy to have over to your backyard barbecue. Once in office, Bubba Bruce desperately tried to leave his mark on Houston. He really wanted to build an airport, but since Houston already had one, Bubba decided to build a subway. He was told that Houston was built on marshes and ground moisture would be an issue. Bubba Bruce insisted. He planned to use mages to “push” the groundwater out of the construction areas. Despite vocal opposition to the project by people much smarter than him, he went ahead with it.

Twelve years ago, a cadre of mages broke the ground on the first metro station here, in Jersey Village. They spent a month setting up their spells and finally activated their complicated magic. The water left the area. Without it, the weight of the town proved to be too much, and Jersey Village, which sat atop an empty oil field, promptly sank into the ground. An hour later the water came back with a vengeance, aided by nearby bayous and underground streams. In twenty-four hours, Jersey Village turned into a swamp. Two days later, Mayor Bruce was kicked out of office.

Over the next year the city tried unsuccessfully to drain the area. The suburbanites had cashed in their insurance and fled, while criminals, drug addicts, and homeless squatted in half-flooded buildings. Finally the city council, exhausted by lawsuits and failed attempts to drain the area, gave up and excised the entire flood zone from the Houston metro area, because it was single-handedly doubling Houston’s crime rate. Now private firms patrolled the area. The task of keeping the Pit from completely degenerating into a lawless zone came bundled with some lucrative municipal contracts, so over the years it bounced from House to House. Right now House Shaw was looking after the Pit. They were doing just enough to keep the contract.

Over the last decade, Jersey Village had become the last stop. Magic-warped, gangsters, most wanted—they made their lairs here, hiding from the light in the abandoned offices. The Houses didn’t care, as long as they didn’t get out. The last time I had come here, I’d taken Aisha for backup. It had cost me a grand, and both of us had barely gotten out.

I checked my gun in its shoulder holster and stepped out of the car. Mad Rogan exited on his side. A rickety dock led the way into the Pit, veering off between the buildings. I started down the bridge. Mad Rogan strode next to me.

Bayous had their own primeval beauty, a kind of grim, timeless elegance, with dark, calm water and enormous cypresses, buttressing the shore with their bloated trunks. Jersey Village had none of it. It looked just like a flood zone where the water hadn’t gone away. Here and there the top of a rusted car poked through the dirty water. Some smaller buildings had burst, warped by the flood, spilling moldy trash into the open. Pale green scum floated on the surface. The Pit was ugly and it smelled even worse. Like sticking your head down an old half-drained fish tank.

“Lovely place,” Mad Rogan said.

“Wait until you meet the natives.”

A sardonic smile curved his lips. “Will there be a welcome party?”

“Probably.”

He stopped and held his arm out, blocking me. The water in front of us parted. A clawed hand reached out, grabbing the slimy support of the bridge, and a nude woman pulled herself up onto the wooden planks. Her skin was a mottled green. You could play xylophone on her ribs. She blinked at me, her eyes dull and empty.

“How’s life, Cherry?” I asked.

“How the fuck do you think it is? You bring me meat?”

I reached into my backpack and pulled out a plastic container with two big raw chicken drumsticks in it, the thigh meat on. “Bug still alive?”

“Yeah. He’s in his old digs, in Xadar building. Stay away from the main bridge. Peaches and Montrel are in a turf war.”

That meant Peaches did away with his former boss. Not good. I passed the container to Cherry. She grabbed the chicken leg and bit into it with triangular crocodile teeth. I stepped around her and kept walking. Mad Rogan followed me.

“A friend of yours?”

“I met her about two years before,” I said. “She’s magic-warped.”

“I can see that.”

Magic was a funny thing. Almost a century and a half ago, when the serum that granted magic powers was first developed, some people took it and gained power, while others turned into monsters. Now, generations later, all of us still carried the potential to become twisted. Sometimes when people tried to augment their power, their magic reacted in terrible ways and they became like Cherry—warped.

“What happened to her?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Her arms have track marks, so she was likely a junkie at some point. Probably sold herself to some institute or House for experimental augmentation and it didn’t go well. I bring her chicken to trade for information.”

“It’s a rare treat for her?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you didn’t get a good deal. She didn’t tell you anything to justify the chicken.”

“She told me that Peaches killed Basta and took over the Southside. Montrel has the Northside, and he can be reasonable, but Peaches is batshit crazy and there is no way we can avoid him, because there are only a handful of ways in and out of here, and Xadar building is in the Southside.”

“You could’ve gotten more out of her.”

I turned to him. “What’s your point?”

Mad Rogan loomed next to me. “You bring her chicken because you feel sorry for her.”

“Yes. Why is that a problem?”

“I don’t judge,” he said. “You’re allowed your compassion.”

Oh great.
Thank you for permission.
“You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“The one where you think you can tell me what to do.”

The bridge split and we turned right, away from the main route. Ahead, office buildings stuck out of the water like islands of concrete and brick. The roofs bristled with metal poles supporting tangles of wires. Above the second floor, a wide yellow line crossed each building with words stenciled in yellow: No power below this line.

Mad Rogan’s magic brushed against me and I fought an urge to jump back.

“As I said, I don’t judge,” he said. “If you had kicked her in the face instead of giving her chicken, I’d need to know. If you had hurled the chicken into the water and made her swim for it, I’d need to know that too. The more information I have, the better I can anticipate your actions when it will matter. For example, if a starving man pulls a gun on you and you get the upper hand, you will likely let him go because you will feel sorry for him. That’s the kind of person you are.”