Liquid Fire (24 page)

“That’s
bullshit
,” I barked. “You really want to make it right? Make it
two
million.”

Alex’s mouth fell open. Cinnamon’s did too.

“Fuck,” Cinnamon said at last. “That’s ballsy, Mom—”

“It’s crazy,” Alex said, voice slightly high pitched. “There’s no way we can—”

“
Quit dicking around, Alex,
” I snapped. “I am
not
stupid. I’m not fooled by misdirection. The network
doesn’t care
about your conscience—it’s paying a million dollars for me to appear
in the show
, not for winning the Challenge, and the Foundation gets off scot-free—”

“Damn it, Dakota,” Alex said, jerking away from me. “Yes, you’re right. The
network
agreed to pay you a million dollars, and . . . I hoped to get the Foundation off the hook on what it owes. But if you’re that fucking mercenary—fine. We’ll make your cut
two
million. Happy?”

I stared at him. I hadn’t expected him to say yes. This was insane.

The Valentine affair was a horrific mess. I’d tried to put the pain behind me, but Alex was dredging it up again. I’d been trying to build walls around the avarice spawned by the prize money, and now Alex casually rolled up to my gates with a two million dollar battering ram.

Three words occurred to me: quid pro quo. I didn’t need two million dollars; hell, I didn’t need
one
million. God only knew when I’d see any of it; Alex was King of the Welsh. What I
really
needed was a second source of info about fireweaving—and Alex was my best shot.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it, for two million, though I’ll believe that when I see it. But even though you just put Cinnamon through college, I’ll have you know I’m not doing it for the money. I have another price in mind—a price from you,
personally
. Call it my quid pro quo.”

“All right,” he said, resigned. “Hit me.”

———

“You teach me fire magic,” I said. “
Everything.
Top . . . to bottom.”

25. Dungeons and Dancing

When Cinnamon and I left the Valentine Foundation three hours later, I at last felt free. Not because we’d negotiated a better future—that would take some lawyering to finalize—or even because I’d shot all the trailer shots they needed.

No, it was because our
schedule
was finally free.

Our stay in the Bay Area was bookended by unpleasantries—wizards and vampires on Tuesday, and another meet with the Wizarding Guild Friday. But today was Wednesday, and we were free to enjoy ourselves until Cinnamon’s award ceremony at Stanford Thursday evening.

Personally, I wanted to go visit the Taido dojo at Stanford—unless I wanted to hop on a plane to Japan, there were so few places I could practice Taido that I wanted to sample all of them—but that wasn’t fair to my daughter, who’d never before seen all the sights of San Francisco.

So we took a brief driving tour, mostly to see the twin orange monoliths of the Golden Gate Bridge, then rejoined our vampire friends just as they were rousing themselves. Nyissa was the first up, chatting with Jewel, who had spent the day touring San Francisco incognito.

“Hi,” I said, flopping into a chair next to strawberry-blond Jewel and violet-dyed Nyissa, who looked at me, a little shocked, as if they’d just been talking about me. I felt my ears—were they burning? “I just sold my soul for two million dollars. How was your day?”

“Good as can be expected,” Jewel said. “You look happy, Cinnamon.”

Cinnamon flopped down next to me, grinning, as she’d been doing since I’d shook Alex down and he’d unexpectedly folded. “Mom’s gonna . . .” she began, and from the drive over, I guessed she’d say,
Mom’s gonna learn fire magic
, which interested Cinnamon
far
more than two million dollars. But Jewel had refused to teach me, and didn’t need to know, so I shook my head. Cinnamon caught my glance and said, “Mom’s just . . . cool. She took me to the Golden Gate—”

“I was there too,” Jewel said, smiling as she pulled out her phone. “Must have just missed you—ah. Molokii’s texted; he says he’s coming by later. Mind if he joins us for dinner? No. Good. Afterward, I was wondering, ‘cool Mom,’ if you’d be interested in going—”

“Excuse me,” Vickman said, grumpy and haggard. I gathered he’d been up all day and night guarding the vampires on almost no sleep. “The Warlock called. He ‘requests’ we join him for dinner, privately, with the ‘Commissioner.’ It sounds innocuous, but also required.”

“Well,” Jewel said halfheartedly, “have fun—”

“Required of all of us,” Vickman said, “
including
you and your friend.”

“You mean . . . me?” Jewel said, hand going to her breast. “Oh, crap!”

“Ah, hell,” I said. “So much for a relaxing evening.”

THE COMMISSIONER’S favorite restaurant was a charming little Italian joint in a flatiron building in San Francisco’s Italian district, an area called North Beach—though, like Cathedral Hill’s missing cathedral, there was no beach in sight. We were ushered up to a private dining room in the building’s narrow prow, and found the Commissioner waiting at the far end of a long table, silhouetted by the lights of Columbus Street rising behind him.

Uneasily, we joined the Commissioner, seating ourselves while he stood. The man was dark-haired, solid, and broad enough that if someone fired a missile through the glass, he could have simply stood and shielded us with the bulk of his black pinstriped business suit. There was something off about him, like he was a throwback to an earlier time, and when he spoke, I got a strange tingle of magical resonance . . . both feelings I’d gotten from the Warlock.

“I have asked,” the Commissioner said, “the kitchen to spare us the garlic.”

Beside me, I felt Saffron twitch. “Thank you, Commissioner,” she said.

The vampires sat in polite silence, their guards standing behind them. I’d given up asking them to eat with us. Jewel and Molokii sat on the side of the table to the Commissioner’s right; Cinnamon and I sat on the left, and the Warlock took the opposite end of the table.

“So, Ms. Frost,” the Commissioner said gruffly, cutting open a roll, then buttering it with long, slow, methodical strokes that implied patience more than indulgence. “I understand we have you to thank for thwarting that little business in Union Square last night.”

“Yes,” I said, trying a grin. “All part of the service.”

The Commissioner looked up at me, blue eyes glinting from behind horn-rimmed glasses. “Of course it is,” he said, eyes turning toward Jewel. “And I understand that this is the young lady who was the apparent target of the attack?”

Jewel swallowed, and I nodded on her behalf.

“Apparently,” I said. “The precise nature of the attack, its intent and ultimate goal, is yet to be determined. However . . . it certainly
looked
as if she was the target of the attack.”

“You understand things are not always as they seem,” the Commissioner said. He took a bite of his roll. While he chewed, no one spoke; not even the Warlock. “But things are usually just as they seem. Why might someone take offense to you, young lady? What do you do?”

“I—I’m a firespinner,” Jewel said, uncomfortably. “A performance artist specializing in fire magic. Fire magic can be dangerous unless handled properly, and my Order is somewhat secretive. Apparently some fire magicians . . . object to my public performances.”

“Understandably so,” the Commissioner said, “though I doubt it is for the same public safety reasons that might concern my office. But it does seem a bit much, do you not think? Can you think of no other reason someone might want to hurt you?”

“I’m . . . a Hawai`ian political activist,” Jewel said, even more uncomfortably. “I know people who object to that as well, but . . . I’ve never gotten so much as a death threat in Hawai`i. I can’t imagine that my political opponents would travel to attack me here.”

“Neither can I,” the Commissioner said. “Still . . . I am a bit disturbed to find both your names on two police reports in two days, Jewel Anne Grasslin and Dakota Caroline Frost.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Jewel said, swallowing again. Her delicate hands were not visible; her arms were held straight at her sides, as if she was sitting on her hands.

The Commissioner stared at her. “What is your relationship?”

Jewel and I stared at him blankly, then at each other.

“We . . . met on the plane,” I said.

“I gave her a card to my performance in Oakland,” Jewel said. “Then, after she saved me that time, I told her about the performance in . . . in Union Square.”

“An illicit performance of magic,” the Commissioner grumbled. “Well. From the reports, even though the later unpleasantness eclipsed it, it was spectacular. Like a fountain of liquid fire. Too bad I did not see it.” His eyes glinted at her. “Do you plan other performances while here?”

“
No,
” Jewel said. “We, uh, canceled our schedule after the second attack.”

“Good,” the Commissioner said. “Let this blow over, and then we would be glad to have you back in San Francisco. With the appropriate permits, of course. You
can
get permits for fire performance in Union Square, you know. There is no need for you to break the law.”

“Yes, sir,” Jewel said.

“As for you, Dakota Frost,” the Commissioner said, picking up another roll slowly, “are
you
planning any demonstrations of magic?” His eyes scanned my tattoos. “Your clan inks are as vibrant as I have been told, but inking tattoos of
any
kind in California requires a license.”

“I know,” I said. “Magical tattooing requires an elaborate setup. I don’t travel with it. Nor would I trust someone else’s setup—I make my own needles, and prefer my clan’s own inks. I . . .
am
supposed to give a talk in San Jose on Friday, though, on magical tattoo safety—”

The Commissioner waved his hand dismissively. “No license needed for that,” he said, “and safety is something I hope more people would consider when attempting these dangerous manipulations. Back to the matter at hand. I understand you are assisting the police.”

“Yes,” I said. “In my experience, three incidents of misuse of magic in just two days is an extremely bad sign. I’ve offered my expertise to the police—”

“Three?” the Commissioner said sharply.

“Oh, hell,” I said, and explained the magical mark we’d seen at Liquid before the battle of Union Square. “I assumed the bar staff would have reported that. I assumed wrong.”

“Stop assuming,” the Commissioner said, leaning back in his chair. “Pass on all the information you have to the police. Cooperate to the fullest, but back off if they tell you to—you understand the complications involved with having a magician on the scene of a crime.”

“I do. Fortunately, no one has died—yet,” I said. “That makes things easier.”

“Yes, yes it does,” the Commissioner said, eyes looking up past me. “Let’s try to keep it that way. And now, I believe the first course is arriving. Let us put this awful business behind us for the moment, and enjoy the simple pleasure of sharing good food in good company.”

And then, surprisingly, we did enjoy a good meal in good company. The Commissioner relaxed once food arrived, and successfully steered the conversation away to safer topics. He and Cinnamon hit it off well, and Jewel and I watched with amusement his twinkle-eyed attempts to follow her explanation of just exactly what “the twisty snake function,” was, why its zeroes were so important, and how she had gotten into higher mathematics in the first place.

“Quite the bright flame,” Jewel murmured to me.

“Whispering won’t help you,” I said, trying to ape that wry smile of hers that I loved so much. “She’s a werekin. She can hear you anywhere in the restaurant.”

Jewel smiled. “It’s OK if she hears it,” she said. “It’s just stating the obvious.”

“What about your friend?” I asked, nodding at Molokii. He was ignoring the rest of us completely, deep in conversation with Nyissa via American Sign Language (and sneaking glances at her deep décolletage whenever he could). “Shouldn’t you be translating for him?”

“Molokii?” she asked, elbowing him. He looked, and she flicked her hands.
«You OK?»

Molokii smiled, tilting his head at Nyissa; then he made a curious gesture, thumbing his chin with his right hand, then letting both hands out, wriggling his fingers, blowing as if on a flame—and then gestured at me and Jewel, again with a knowing smile.

My mouth fell open. I couldn’t have read that right—either he’d called me a mother of a dragon, or told us to set a bed on fire. But my ASL is rusty, and before I could “speak,” Jewel had already had a whole mini-conversation with Molokii and turned back to me with a half smile.

“He says he’s all right, and told us to ‘go have fun,’ ” Jewel said, rolling her eyes—and while I don’t think that’s
quite
what he suggested we do, I’d take it. “Sad as it is, I think he’s used to being left out—and I think he’s digging having Nyissa to stare at. I mean talk to.”

“She is good for that,” I said. I was still a little miffed that Jewel and Molokii felt like they could have private conversations right in front of me in sign language, but I didn’t press the issue—if they didn’t want to share, it wasn’t my business. “No doubt about it.”

“Soooo. . . ,” Jewel said. “Having fun . . . what are your plans for this evening?”

“Stay out of trouble, have a good time, and get a good night’s sleep,” I said, smiling again. “Why do I have the feeling that you can help with only one of those?”

“You know me too well,” Jewel said, with a wicked grin. “Care to go dancing?”