by Lora Leigh
She put a hand in her pocket, but he shook his head. “My treat.”
“But—okay. Thank you.” With that, she was up and out of the booth almost before he could react, but he couldn’t let her go like that. “Wait. Brynn, how do I reach you? I’d like to do this again, or dinner, maybe, as soon as we can figure out a time.”
Brynn started shaking her head before he’d even finished the sentence. By the time she replied, his heart was already sinking into his gut.
“Oh, no, you don’t understand. We can never see each other again.”
Before he could protest, she slipped through a door that said Employees Only, and she was gone.
Zach’s booming voice penetrated Sean’s stunned disbelief. “O’Malley, there you are. The chief wants to see you. Something about reporters and obeying orders.”
Sean stood up and met Zach in the aisle. “Forget it. I’m off duty. Tell him to go talk to a mirror, like he usually does.”
Zach didn’t smile at the admittedly lame joke. “You’re going, and I’m going with you. We’ve finally got a lead on the freak who’s setting these fires.”
Sean glanced back at the door through which Brynn had disappeared, but then made himself shake it off. No time to worry about mysterious women right now.
“Let’s go get the bastard,” Sean said grimly. He pulled out his wallet and left money on the cash register counter for Olaf.
“Go get him for all of us,” the little cook said, and the murmurs of agreement from everyone in the diner followed them out the door.
FOUR
Sean sat in the uncomfortable metal chair in the conference room and amused himself by imagining all the ways he could crush Bordertown Fire Chief Arvin Ledbetter like the pompous little cockroach he was. He didn’t know how many asses the new chief had kissed to get the job, but the windbag was clearly good at his work.
The ass-kissing part of his work. Not the fire chief part.
Zach and the guys had brought takeout breakfast for everyone, because they were all just too damn tired to cook. Nobody had said much until they’d devoured Olaf’s cooking down to the crumbs. Now they were ready to listen, even though most of them looked ready to drop any minute. The shift change had come and gone, and the fresh day crew sat and leaned against the clutter of safety notices and posters lining the walls of the room, including one that Zach had artistically altered.
Sean doubted that Smokey Bear had ever performed such a lewd act on a goat.
Shift change hadn’t meant a thing today. Not a single one of Sean’s crew had made a move to go home. They all wanted to catch the arsonist before he could strike a fifth time.
“As I was saying, we suspect that this is the fourth fire the same perpetrator set in Bordertown,” Ledbetter said, positioning himself in front of the whiteboard.
Sean groaned. “We know that. Same accelerant, same signature, same guy. Do we have any new evidence or not?”
The chief glared at him, and Sean could almost see the word insubordinate form in the jerk’s brain. “Yes, if you’d have a little patience, O’Malley. We believe the fires are the work of a disgruntled ex-Bordertown city official who was fired from the parks and—”
“No,” Sean interrupted, earning himself a death glare. “We already checked him out. Wagner, Waggoner, something like that?”
Zach nodded. “Yeah. Wagner. He had an alibi for the second fire.”
“Alibis can be faked,” Ledbetter pointed out.
“You’re right,” Sean admitted. “But that’s not why it isn’t him. Wagner is pure vanilla human. The arsonist used magic for the accelerant.”
Sharply inhaled breaths and low, vicious cursing filled the room from every firefighter in it. They all knew how much harder it was to combat a magically enhanced blaze.
“He could have had a partner,” Sue Newman pointed out, but she didn’t sound convinced. Her short, blond hair stood up in spikes, and dark smudges under her eyes testified to her exhaustion. She’d been on the same shifts as Sean for the past several days.
They were all working too hard, but they didn’t have a choice because, so far, the arsonist was working harder. Or smarter. Either way, the madman was at least one step ahead of them, and this time he’d almost claimed his first human victims.
Sean was pretty sure the man wasn’t working with a partner, though. Arsonists were almost always loners—at least the true crazies and the ones who considered themselves experts were—and no amateur was behind this string of fires.
Ledbetter made a croaking harrumph sound. “What evidence do you have that magic was used? We found no proof of that.”
Sean had been hoping the question wouldn’t come up, because he couldn’t explain it without revealing his fire demon heritage. As far as he knew, only fire demons and black magic practitioners could see the complete spectrum of colors in a fire and instantly know which were caused by magic, and there was no way in hell he was giving anybody cause to think he was either. He’d sworn an oath to his father—all the O’Malley boys had.
So he deflected. “You called us here because you had new evidence, Zach said, and since our witch was helping put out the fire, I just figured—”
The chief scowled, which unfortunately made his piggy little eyes squint and his puffy little jowls puff out even further. Sean made the mistake of glancing at Zach, who was clearly thinking the same thing, and he had to fight back the grin. It was neither the time nor the place for it, and there was damn sure nothing funny about the situation, but the man looked ridiculous when he tried to act important.
“Yes, well, you’re right,” Ledbetter said, pointing to the department witch, José Castilho, who was slumped at one end of the table looking no more than half-alive.
Castilho looked up when the guy next to him elbowed him, and he nodded wearily.
“Yeah. Magical accelerant. Worse than anything I’ve ever encountered before, too. It fought me like a living thing.”
The exhausted night-shift men and women around the room nodded and made sounds of agreement.
“The fire just didn’t act right. The air currents didn’t affect it in a normal way,” Sean improvised, when it became clear that Castilho had nothing else to say. “The smell was wrong, too. Whatever or whoever set this fire didn’t even try to hide the fact that he used magic.”
“The burn patterns were wrong, too,” Ledbetter interjected grudgingly, as if he hated to agree with anything Sean said. “The electronic accelerant detector came up with nothing. Even the dogs—nothing. Nada. Zip.”
That didn’t make sense.
“You used the hellfire hounds?”
The chief shook his head. “No, O’Malley, we couldn’t use them. They were on loan from Demon Rift, and they went back yesterday. I’m trying to borrow them again, but considering they’re the only mated pair of hellfire hounds known to exist, the demons are understandably reluctant to let them out of their sight until the hounds throw their first litter.”
Sean nodded. He understood but hated to hear it. Hellfire hounds were the best in the world at detecting fire starters and tracking them down, but even they had been thrown off at the first three sites. There’d been something fascinating about watching the powerful dogs race around and around the sites, but fascination had turned to empathy as the hounds grew more and more frustrated until they finally surrendered and sat down next to the truck, whimpering.
“The arson investigators are out there now, interviewing everybody and doing their best to discover motive, means, or opportunity,” Ledbetter continued. “But we all know that motive is usually just sheer crazy in cases like this.”
“We need to find him,” Sean said, seeing that baby in his mind. “What if we don’t get to the next fire in time?”
The chief’s face hardened and, for a moment, Sean saw the shadow of the firefighter the man had been before his internal politician took over. “All available resources are focused on this case, as of right now. Anything else is cancelled. All nonemergency le
ave is revoked.”
There were a couple of halfhearted groans, but nobody made any real protest. They were all focused on the same goal; it’s why they’d become firefighters in the first place.
“Pyromania plus pretty strong magical ability,” Sean said. “A match made in hell.”
After that, the meeting broke up, and everybody who’d worked the night shift headed out to get some sleep. Castilho stopped Sean with a look, and the witch nodded toward an empty corner of the room.
Sean ambled over to meet him, but before he could say a word, Castilho turned around and pretended to study a poster on protective eyewear.
“Look, I don’t have any evidence of this, so I didn’t want to put it out there,” Castilho said quietly. “But since you mentioned the magic, I’m going to tell you what I suspect. I know it’s going to sound crazy, because we haven’t seen one around Bordertown in years, but I’m worried that there might be a fire demon behind this. They’re all insane, and they have the ability to set fires magically.”
Sean’s gut clenched, and he schooled his face to impassivity. “I don’t—”
Castilho glanced around, as if to make sure nobody was near enough to overhear. “Hey, I know it sounds nuts. I know it’s all just rumors, but that’s my hunch, and I wanted to tell somebody.”
Before Sean could say a word, Castilho laughed a little too loudly and then clapped Sean on the shoulder.
“You’re a riot, man. Smokey Bear walked into a bar. Too much,” the witch said, grinning at the two guys standing across the room at the coffeepot as if he and Sean had just shared a great joke.
“Yeah, I’m a riot,” Sean muttered, watching Castilho.
The witch suspected a fire demon. Of course he did. After all, everybody knew that fire demons were evil—devils incarnate, right? It was why the O’Malleys had kept their secret all these years. Sean was half fire demon, and his secret identity might even make him the prime suspect, if anybody found out about it.
Now he just had to make sure that nobody did.
* * *
When Sean arrived at his mom’s house, Liam was walking down the steps from the front porch, frowning so hard that Sean could almost hear his brother’s teeth grinding. The thunderous expression on Liam’s face was the same one that often reduced even the most belligerent drunks at O’Malley’s into submission.
“Didn’t you buy a new car yet?” Liam said, all but growling as he studied Sean’s latest piece-of-crap ride.
“No point, since they all wind up smelling like smoke, but I’ve told you that before, so why don’t you let me in on what’s really pissing you off?” Sean shoved his hands in his pockets to avoid the temptation to smack his brother in the head. Funny how the childhood roles always came back so easily at this house.
He rocked back on his heels and stared up at the pleasant front of the old Colonial. They’d grown up here, the house always full of the sounds and smells of boys. Shouts and laughter, grass-stained and mud-spattered sports uniforms. The O’Malley boys had been a formidable force on the neighborhood baseball and football teams, always ready for a pickup game, not so great about doing homework on time, except for Yeats, who’d been the studious one.
Through their childhoods and the turbulent teen years, his mother had been the center of the home, dispensing hugs, chocolate-chip cookies, and wisdom as needed. Even after their dad died, when Sean, the baby, had been only eight and Liam, the oldest, had been fourteen, she’d never faltered—or at least never where the boys could see it. She’d been strong enough for all of them, even managing to tame Blake’s wild rebellion because she’d been able to see the pain where nobody else could see anything but the anger.
She was the strongest woman Sean had ever known, and now her boys needed to be strong enough for her.
“She wants us to meet with her lawyer,” Liam said, biting off the words. “Get her affairs in order. What the hell is that about? She’s still fine.”
“We don’t need to do that now,” Sean said, instantly going into full-on denial right alongside his brother. “She’s got plenty of time.”
Liam’s bleak expression was enough to call out the lie. Their mom didn’t have plenty of time, and they both knew it. They’d tried doctors, Fae healers, and even wizards, but cancer didn’t play by any rules but its own, and this time the O’Malley boys were on the losing team to the most merciless opponent they’d ever faced.
Liam studied the lawn. “Hedges need trimming. House could do with a coat of paint. Barbecue time?”
Sean nodded. “Day after tomorrow good? I’ll have the afternoon and evening off.”
“Yep. I’ll spread the word.”
They got together at least once a month for a barbecue, bringing all the food and manning the grill, and used the occasion to plan any and all upkeep the house needed. Their mom always baked her famous apple and pumpkin pies for them, but for the first time ever, Sean wasn’t sure she’d be up for baking. Pain scorched through him at the thought, and he clenched his hands into fists at his sides but then forced them to relax.
He needed to chill. Try on a smile. Be brave for his mother, even when the eight-year-old boy inside him wanted to sit down right there on the sidewalk and howl.
“I’m going to go in and see her for a while before I head home for some sleep,” Sean said.
“She’s sleeping now. I got her settled into her recliner in the sunroom out back, and she threw me out so she could nap.” A ghost of a smile crossed Liam’s face. “She’s still pretty tough for such a tiny little thing.”
Sean grinned. At five feet, two inches, their mom had been rapidly outgrown by all of her boys, but there had never been a moment’s doubt about who was in charge.
“I’ll never forget the time she backed you up against the refrigerator and told you that you were, too, going to have the condom talk with your mother, or you were never going to go on a date as long as you lived under her roof,” he told his brother.
Liam threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, man, I thought I was going to die. My face was still purple by the time she finished and I escaped to my room. ‘You are responsible for your actions, Liam, and if I ever find out you’re having unprotected sex, I’ll beat your arse all the way down the street.’”
“She had the exact same conversation with me,” Sean confided, shuddering. “That talk scared me out of the backseat of more than one car, let me tell you.”
“Exactly as she planned. She had the same talk with Blake, Oscar, and Yeats, too, believe me,” Liam said, his gaze trained on a pair of small boys riding their bikes at the end of the street. “Seems like not long ago, that was us.”
Sean turned to watch the boys. It was less painful than staring at his childhood home and wondering how long his mother would still be able to live there. “And now we’re all grown up.”
“No wives or kids, though,” Liam said darkly, kicking a stone off the sidewalk toward the street. It thudded softly when it hit a tire on Sean’s car and bounced back. “Trust me, she brought that up, too.”
Sean’s mouth fell open. “She what?”
“She wants us to get married. All of us. Soon. Doesn’t want us to be alone.”
For some reason, the image of Brynn’s face as she’d enjoyed her pancakes flashed into Sean’s mind, but he pushed it away. She was obviously a complicated woman. The last thing he needed in his life was more complication.
“If she wanted grandchildren, she shouldn’t have married a fire demon,” Sean growled. “I never want to pass this heritage on, and I can’t imagine any of us feel any differently.”
Liam shrugged. “We managed to have a pretty damn happy childhood.”
Sean, who’d started to head for his car, whirled to stare at his brother. “Yeah, until Dad flamed on when that drugged-up wannabe burglar broke into the house.”
The druggie hadn’t been alone, and his accomplice—who’d also been on drugs and who’d been scared to death by the sight of a fiery demon blazi
ng brighter than the noontime sun over the Summerlands—had been carrying a gun.
Sean and his brothers had called 911 and used the fire extinguisher to put out the blaze while their mother kept pressure on Dad’s wound, but it had been too little, too late. Their father had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, leaving Mom to run a pub and raise five boys on her own.
“I’m never going to subject a woman to anything like that.”
When Liam didn’t reply, Sean shrugged and headed for his car. “I’ve got to get some sleep. I’ll check on Mom this afternoon.”
“It would have to be the right woman,” Liam said, so quietly that anybody without fire demon hearing would never have heard it.
Sean paused, but this time he didn’t look back. They’d been down that road before, and he was surprised that Liam, of all of them, had even a glimmer of hope left.
“There is no such woman.”
FIVE
After six hours of sleep and a quick lunch at a neighboring deli, Brynn opened her tiny shop and looked around, smiling. Scruffy’s Pet Spa wasn’t much of a business, but it was all hers. She tailored her hours to fit her late nights, and she wouldn’t take a pet twice if the owner was a pain in the butt. The animals were never a problem for her, even though she’d once worried that dominant or aggressive dogs and cats would try to push her around, somehow sensing her inner swan.
Swans weren’t exactly predators, after all.
Instead, it was as if they recognized a kindred animal spirit or were able to understand that she only wanted to help them. In five years of running the grooming salon, she’d only been attacked once, and afterward the vet had discovered a tumor the size of a lemon in the dog’s brain. Poor guy hadn’t been able to help his fear and aggression. She’d always have the scar on her left arm, but at least the experience hadn’t left her traumatized.
Brynn, of all people, understood the dog’s plight. There’d been a time when she, too, had been afraid and angry due to events beyond her control. She was never able to think back to her first several nights as a swan without shuddering.