26. Quinn
QUINN
BURN DIMITRIS!
Running toward the heart of a phoenix’s mansion after kissing a dragon in a room full of thieves was not, strictly speaking, part of my career plan.
Then again, neither was “intern accidentally locates missing war relic on rich-person television,” so at some point a woman had to accept that her five-year plan needed to be more flexible.
Rafe moved ahead of me through the hall, all hard focus and barely leashed heat.
The kiss had changed something. It was a ridiculous thought to have while following a retired military dog past shattered glass and disabled security panels, but my brain had chosen a terrible time to become a scrapbook.
His hands on my face. His mouth on mine. The instant he had stopped holding himself back.
I tripped over a fallen frame and caught myself on the wall.
Rafe whirled around. “Quinn.”
“I’m fine.”
“You nearly fell.”
“Gravity has been hostile toward me since childhood.”
His eyes moved over me, fast and assessing, before he faced forward again. “Stay close.”
Max pulled us toward the back of the house, nose low, body tight and purposeful.
The mansion had gone wrong around us. A few minutes ago, it had been all polished stone and smugly arranged history.
Now the emergency lights painted the halls in red, turning marble floors slick-looking and strange.
Smoke curled faintly along the ceiling, thin enough to see through but sharp enough to taste.
Somewhere nearby, water dripped in a steady, nervous rhythm, and broken glass crunched beneath Rafe’s shoes as we passed a display case that had been emptied so quickly one velvet stand still rocked in place.
The fire hadn’t spread far. Whatever blast had opened the east gallery had been meant to breach, not burn. Someone had planned this carefully. They had known where the cameras were, where the alarms fed, which rooms mattered and which priceless things could be shoved aside like clutter.
We passed a bronze mask lying face-down on the floor, its placard still neatly upright beside it. A carved screen had been knocked crooked against the wall. One of Dimitris’s flame fountains sputtered behind a glass door, throwing orange light over the smoke.
Then Max stopped short.
We found Dimitris at the entrance to the lower gallery. Young, beautiful, furious, and holding what looked like a bronze spear pulled from one of his own displays.
Two masked thieves were unconscious at his feet.
His cerulean suit was torn at one shoulder. A smear of blood ran from his temple to his jaw. He looked personally insulted by the concept of injury.
“There you are,” he snapped.
I stopped beside Rafe. “You’re welcome?”
Rafe looked past him. “The secured room.”
Dimitris’s mouth tightened. “They know where it is.”
“Because you showed half the world your house on television,” I said.
His eyes cut to me.
I lifted one hand. “I’m not saying this to be cruel. I’m saying it because someone has to, and apparently your staff is too scared to speak.”
He looked genuinely blank, then realization moved across his face. “Oh,” he said.
Rafe’s expression didn’t change, but something about him seemed deeply satisfied.
Dimitris recovered quickly because men with that much money never stayed embarrassed long enough to learn. “The secure room cannot be opened without me. They’ll steal whatever lesser pieces they can carry. I’ll hunt them down later.”
“Your lesser pieces are being thrown into crates by men using crowbars,” I said. “They’re not exactly wearing cotton gloves and whispering apologies.”
That got him.
His gaze sharpened toward the hall as another crash sounded below.
Dimitris went very still.
“Move,” Rafe said.
Dimitris listened.
The three of us and Max descended a narrow staircase behind a panel that looked like decorative woodwork and absolutely was not. The air grew colder. Lights embedded in the floor led us to a steel door at the end of a short corridor. The panel beside it hung open, wires exposed.
Dimitris made a sound that belonged in a more expensive opera.
“They disabled the silent alarm,” Rafe said.
“No one can disable my silent alarm.”
“Well, clearly, someone did,” I hissed.
Dimitris glared at the panel. His phone rang. No one moved.
It was such an ordinary sound that for half a second my brain refused to place it inside the moment. Dimitris took the phone from his pocket, looked at the screen, and answered without speaking.
A man’s voice came through, smooth and close enough to hear. “Open the room, Dimitris.”
Rafe’s shoulders squared.
Luke.
I knew it before Dimitris said, “Gildstein.”
The name moved through the corridor like a draft.
“I have been patient,” Luke said. “You have collected irresponsibly. You have displayed your wares irresponsibly. You have hidden behind guards, codes, myth, and that ridiculous documentary smile. Open the room, or I remove the room.”
Dimitris’s face changed. “You cannot breach it.”
“No,” Luke said. “But explosives can make your confidence very expensive.”
Rafe’s gaze found mine.
I looked down at Max.
His ears were forward. His body had gone rigid. He wasn’t looking at the door.
He was looking behind us.
My heart dropped.
Dimitris said, “If you destroy my collection, you destroy pieces older than your bloodline.”
“You should have thought of that before you bought things people would kill to possess.”
“Oh, spare me the morality,” Dimitris said. “You’re stealing stolen goods and calling it justice.”
A soft laugh came through the phone. “Open the fucking door.”
The call ended.
Dimitris turned to Rafe, outrage bright in his face. “Say something.”
Rafe stared at him. “To whom?”
“To him.”
“He hung up.”
“About the principle.”
“The principle is that your arrogance invited a sorcerer into your house.”
Dimitris pointed at him. “You understand this. These are my things.”
Rafe’s expression went colder. “Your things?”
“My collection.”
“Objects acquired because you liked owning them, not because they truly belonged to you.”
Dimitris spread his arms. “And now a thief wants to take them. Surely, as a man obsessed with reclaiming family objects, you can grasp the agony of being wronged.”
Rafe and I stared at him in disbelief. Even Max looked unimpressed, and he had once tried to eat a receipt.
“You’re comparing your trophy room to Rafe’s stolen family heritage?” I asked.
Dimitris lifted his chin. “I am saying the wound has similarities.”
“No,” I said. “It does not.”
Rafe looked at me then. It was the worst possible time for his eyes to do anything to my knees.
A thud sounded above us. Then another. Footsteps, coming fast.
I looked from Rafe to Max to the open alarm panel. My brain snapped through the pieces we had. Explosives outside. Luke hiding somewhere. Thieves inside. Dimitris needed to be alive to open the door. The corridor was too narrow for Rafe to shift. Max was alerting behind us, not at the vault door.
We were boxed in. Unless we stopped behaving like we were.
“Okay,” I said. “We surrender.”
Dimitris recoiled. “Absolutely not.”
Rafe’s eyes stayed on my face. “Explain.”
“No time.”
“Quinn.”
“I need them to bring us where Luke is.”
Dimitris gave a high-pitched laugh. “What a marvelous plan. Shall we also gift-wrap ourselves?”
“You already did that with the documentary,” I said. “Try silence as a growth exercise.”
His mouth opened, but before he could say anything, Rafe growled. “Trust her.”
Dimitris turned to him. “You cannot be serious.”
“I’m always fucking serious.”
“I can attest to that,” I said.
Rafe didn’t look away from me. “Quinn is brilliant. She has yet to lead me wrong.”
The words hit so cleanly I almost forgot people were coming to kill us.
Almost.
I swallowed. “Then hands up.”
Rafe didn’t like it. I could see how much he didn’t like it. His whole body had gone tense with the effort of allowing a plan that put me anywhere near harm.
But he raised his hands.
So did I.
Dimitris muttered something ancient and rude-sounding, then raised his too.
Dimitris opened the vault door and the thieves rounded the corner seconds later. Four of them, masked, armed, efficient. One had a knife. One had an electric baton like the one that had hurt Rafe. Two carried compact rifles that looked modern until the metal shimmered faintly around the barrels.
Olden Folk weapons.
One of them jerked his chin. “Move.”
We moved.
They took us through a wider passage into the main lower gallery, where the scope of the operation finally became clear.
Not an army. Worse, in some ways. A small crew that knew exactly where to stand, what to guard, and how little time they needed.
Gray explosive blocks had been placed at structural points near the secured room entrance. Wires ran back to a detonator unit on a folding table. More crates sat open nearby, already packed with smaller objects wrapped badly in foam. A painting leaned face-down against a chair.
Dimitris made a wounded sound.
“Focus,” I whispered.
“That was a thirteenth-century?—”
“Shut up and focus.”
The thieves pushed Dimitris toward the safe panel. Rafe, Max, and I were kept back by two guards, one of whom put a knife to my throat before Rafe could take a step.
The temperature changed.
Every person in the room felt it.
Rafe’s eyes went gold at the edges.
“Don’t,” the guard said.
I felt the blade against my skin.
Rafe stopped.
The guard smiled. That was his mistake.
Max pressed his nose against my leg. I lowered my eyes without moving my head. He was looking to the left of the folding table. At empty air.
My pulse steadied. There he was.
Luke was close, shielded by some magic. Watching them force Dimitris through the long process of opening his vault, staying near the detonator because men like him enjoyed being physically close to power while pretending they were above it.
Dimitris placed his palm on the first panel. The system hummed.
“Voice,” said one of the thieves.
Dimitris uttered a phrase in a language I didn’t know. A second panel lit up.
The guard’s knife stayed at my throat.
Max looked at me.
I had one chance to get the command out before anyone understood what I was doing.
“Suchen,” I said, snapping my fingers.
Max moved like a missile launched from a silo. He leapt at the empty space beside the detonator.
For one impossible second, he hit nothing.
Then the glamour tore.
Luke Gildstein staggered into view in a dark coat, one arm raised, face twisted with shock as Max’s teeth locked around his forearm.
Chaos ensued.
The guard holding me flinched.
I stomped down hard on his foot, drove my elbow back into his ribs, and twisted out from under the knife. Pain sliced bright along my collarbone. Shallow, I thought. Probably shallow. It was a problem for later.
Rafe saw blood, and I forgot how to breathe.
“Rafe!” I shouted before he could become a dragon in a room full of explosives and murder everyone by accident. “Burn Dimitris!”
Dimitris’s head snapped toward me. “I beg your pardon?”
Luke, wrestling with Max, screamed, “Do not ignite him!”
There it was.
Confirmation.
I pointed at Dimitris. “Phoenix reset. Fire makes him stronger, right?”
“Yes,” Rafe said, already understanding.
Luke shoved at Max, trying to reach the detonator with his free hand. “The charges?—”
“C4 doesn’t detonate from fire alone,” I shouted. “It needs a detonator. Max, hold!”
Max held.
Rafe moved.
Gold washed through his eyes. Scales pushed over his forearms and up the side of his throat, dark and gleaming under the emergency lights.
His hands lengthened into claws as he stepped between the guard and me, caught the man by the front of his jacket, and threw him backward hard enough to send him skidding across the stone.
Then Rafe turned toward Dimitris.
The heat hit first.
Dimitris stared at him, still held at the vault panel, his expression caught somewhere between outrage and anticipation.
“Oh,” he said, and for the first time all day sounded genuinely delighted.
Rafe opened his mouth. Fire roared across the space and wrapped Dimitris in gold.
The thieves shouted. One dropped his weapon and stumbled back. Another fired, but Rafe had already turned, putting his body between the shot and me. The round struck his shoulder and sparked against his scales.
I grabbed the nearest crate lid and swung it at the shooter’s knees.
He went down hard.
“Sorry,” I gasped, shocked at my newfound propensity toward violence. “That was instinct and also feminism.”
The fire around Dimitris climbed higher. His laugh rose inside it.
Luke screamed another spell.
Max released and leapt back at my whistle as the air snapped blue around Luke’s hand. The spell hit the floor where Max had been and shattered the stone.
Rafe turned on Luke.
Dimitris burned brighter.
The room filled with gold light and smoke and the smell of ancient magic waking up angry.
For one second, I saw Rafe in profile, blood on his shoulder, flame in his mouth, eyes fixed on the sorcerer who had threatened me.
The part of me that had been terrified all day went suddenly, strangely calm.
Because I knew him now. He would not run from this.
Neither would I.
Dimitris stepped out of the fire changed.
Still young, but no longer polished. Larger through the shoulders, hair burning at the ends without being consumed, eyes bright as coals. He looked down at himself, flexed one hand, and smiled with pure, vicious joy.
“Well,” he said. “That was rude.”
Luke backed toward the detonator.
Max growled.
Rafe moved to my side.
Dimitris’s smile sharpened. “Do you know, Rafe, I think I’ve been too restrained.”
Rafe’s gaze didn’t leave Luke.
I picked up Max’s leash as he leaned against my leg. “I don’t believe anyone has ever accused you of that.”
“I know. Isn’t it wonderful to surprise people?”
The sorcerer raised both hands, and the lights went out.
For half a second, darkness swallowed the gallery.
Then Dimitris burned brighter, illuminating all of us in gold.
Across the room, Luke smiled.
The real fight had arrived.