Fire Dancer (Spellbound in Sedona #2)

Chapter Eleven

INGO

I’d borne witness to lots of Greg’s bonfires, but that was truly a doozy. Especially since I had the feeling Greg wasn’t the only one orchestrating the show.

Pippa had refused to meet my eyes afterward, and she’d hung back when the time came for me to go.

“You come back soon, son.” Greg had left me with a fond smack on the back.

Pippa, meanwhile, was still staring into the last embers of the fire.

I’d driven home, then gone for a good, long run through the desert in wolf form. Which led me — again — to the viewpoint over the ranch.

I gazed at Pippa’s barn for a while, then circled around three times and settled down right there on the mesa, my nose nestled between my paws and aimed at the ranch. As if Pippa might come out and call to me, as I always dreamed she would.

She didn’t.

My night watch only lasted an hour or so, because nights at this altitude were cold, even with thick wolf fur protecting me. Eventually, I shot a last, longing gaze at Pippa’s house, then headed back to my cabin.

I woke up cranky, with a whirlwind of thoughts competing for my attention. A double helix, actually, with one strand made up of Pippa and all the emotions that brought, and the other occupied by the case of the young woman found at Gunnery Point.

By nine a.m., I was in my office in town and calling the police for an update.

“We got confirmation on the initial ID,” Jimenez reported. I heard her flip through a few sheets of paper. “Janet Sullivan, aged twenty-six. According to the coroner, there were no drugs in her system and no signs of foul play. None at the scene either.”

None except the bear scent all over the area.

“So, all indications point to an accidental death,” she concluded. When I snorted, she sighed. “My thought exactly. But we’ll be pursuing it until we have a clearer picture.”

I hung up on that call, then steeled myself for the one I’d been putting off.

“Captain Edwards, please,” I told the agency operator.

Soothing music played while I was put on hold. Then came a click, and the phone practically exploded in my ear.

“What the hell are you doing putting a trace on Jananovich’s car?” my boss hollered.

I winced, holding the phone away from my ear. “Putting a trace on what?”

“Don’t you play games with me,” he blustered.

My mind spun but remained blank. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.

Then it hit me. “The Utah plate I called in is registered to Jananovich?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Kemper,” Edwards barked. “And if I find out you took the Sedona position because you somehow anticipated Jananovich moving there…”

“He’s here?” I sputtered.

Wow. It was one thing to have a gut feeling, but another to have it confirmed.

Edwards snorted again, then took a different tack. “His whereabouts are no business of yours. Restraining order, remember?” He sighed, then muttered more to himself than me. “I should never have assigned you the Sedona office.” The line went silent as he thought it over. “All right. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. But stay away from Jananovich and any of his holdings.”

My mind stuttered. Did that mean TTC Limited, the company name on the invoice I’d seen?

“I had enough of him and his lawyers last time,” Edwards grumbled.

I grimaced. Last time, three young women had been found dead, plus a fourth who might have survived if only I had acted faster. But my hands had been tied, as Edward liked to put it.

“My hands are tied, kid.”

I rolled my eyes. Yep. I’d heard that before.

“Focus on what you’ve been assigned to do,” he continued in a more measured tone.

Like detecting and monitoring supernatural activity? I nearly shot back. Like the suspicious bear shifter driving that car? Like the bear shifter scent at the scene of the crime? Like possible links to Jananovich?

“We opened an office in Sedona to investigate reports of witchcraft, and that’s where your focus should lie,” Edwards continued.

I’d covered those bases in my first week in town, but the only witchcraft in town was so amateurish, it was laughable.

Totally laughable…except Pippa and her sisters. But technically, they lived outside city limits, right?

Yeah, I might have a minor conflict of interest. One I didn’t plan to mention to Edwards.

“You know as well as I do that our resources are limited,” Edwards lectured. “So don’t go wasting your time on what will only cause you grief in the end.”

I bit back a comment about the grief caused by senseless, preventable deaths.

“It’s just not possible to investigate all supernatural activity in every area, and unnecessary too. Just the activity that causes concern or harm.”

Like bear shifter scent in the vicinity of the dead woman at Gunnery Point? I wanted to yell.

“And it’s certainly not our mission to harass law-abiding citizens without reasonable suspicion. Operative word — reasonable,” Edwards emphasized. “So you will cease and desist from anything involving Jananovich, even remotely, starting yesterday. Is that clear?”

I kicked the chair opposite mine, and it skidded over the cool tile floor.

“I said, is that clear?” he growled over the phone.

“Yes, sir,” I forced myself to say.

* * *

I did some serious soul-searching — and chair-kicking — over the next few hours. But I didn’t truly calm down until about an hour into my visit to the glass shop that afternoon.

“Grab that and hold it still,” Pippa instructed, intent on her work. “A little higher…higher…right there.”

Minutes earlier, that mass had been a brown lump. Now, it was shaping up to be a beautiful wineglass.

“Higher,” she prompted, her brow knitted into parallel furrows.

I was making good on my promise to pay her back for her time, though she’d been reluctant to accept. But she was crunched for time — or better put, desperate , considering the pace she worked at — so she’d agreed.

Even so, I found the work calming. Or maybe that came from working beside Pippa and inhaling her sweet, soothing scent.

Nothing like being home, my father liked to say, slowly settling down after days away with his job — one dominated by gritty, life-and-death days in the middle of a burning forest.

He would come home, shower, eat, and settle down, keeping my mother close like she was home, and that would calm him right down.

Home, my wolf sighed when Pippa’s leg bumped mine.

“Hold it there,” Pippa murmured.

My leg or the glass? I decided to keep both where they were.

Apparently, the owner of Sedona Glass let Pippa work on her own projects when she was finished any outstanding orders — like now. That meant she had a window of opportunity to work on her entry for a glass contest with a $25,000 prize. Which sounded like a long shot, but with Pippa, you never knew.

That window was short, though — a single afternoon — because she’d previously committed to help a friend with a catering job later on. Typical Pippa — helping a friend even when her ranch was in serious jeopardy.

So, time was at a premium. I did my best to help, though it didn’t feel like much.

“Closer…” Pippa murmured. A drop of sweat fell from her forehead.

Outside, people were bundled in warm jackets. In the hot shop, I was down to a T-shirt and sweating up a storm, even with the back door propped open and a fan blasting. Moist fabric clung to my skin, and salt stung my eyes.

“Get me that pad, please,” she asked.

When I did, our hands brushed, and my wolf side hummed.

“Okay. I’m going to tap the glass here so it breaks from the stem, and I need you to catch it. Ready?”

I pulled on oven mitts that would fit an elephant — if an elephant needed oven mitts — and waited.

“On three,” Pippa said.

I held out my hands, sweating buckets, and not just from the heat. Pippa had spent ages on that wineglass. If I dropped it now…

I swear, I would have been less anxious if I’d had to catch a premature baby.

“One…two…three!”

Pippa tapped, and, ping! The wineglass separated from the rest of the rod. I caught it — thank goodness — but disaster still lurked, because now I had to rush it across the hot shop to the annealer.

“Watch the bench,” Pippa warned, racing ahead to push things out of my way.

Why the shop hadn’t been designed with the annealer next to the workbench, I didn’t know. But I was definitely ready to suggest it.

The annealer looked like a giant cooler, where the temperature of worked glass was gradually reduced to prevent it from shattering. And that was just one way Pippa’s delicate work could break. My mental notepad was full of dire warnings, all bold and underlined.

The moment Pippa opened the door to the annealer, I lowered the glass gingerly, then stepped back so she could close the door. Whew. One piece down. How many more to go?

She high-fived me. “Good job.”

My inner beast wagged its tail joyously, less wolf than golden retriever at that moment.

She pulled two cold drinks from a tiny fridge, handed me one, and held the other against her forehead, rolling it slowly back and forth. Her head was tipped back, her chin up, and her golden hair stirred in the breeze of the fan.

I gulped my drink, desperate to cool down in more ways than one.

“Did you make that?” I asked, motioning to a vase on a shelf.

“No, it walked in off the street.” She shot me a rueful look, then went on. “Yes, I made it. I made that, too. And that and that and that. Everything on those four shelves.”

I looked them over, struck by the colors, the delicacy, the smooth, light-catching shapes — everything from vases to flowers and vibrant hummingbirds. There was even a whimsical piece in the shape of a prickly pear cactus, but my favorite — so far — was a globe filled with fire. Glass fire.

“Wow. My mind is officially blown,” I murmured.

Pippa chuckled. “No pun intended, I hope.”

I gave her a look, then went back to admiring her projects.

All those years she’d devoted to making glass, I’d only ever pictured bowls and vases, because glass was just glass. But these were works of art, full of skill and passion, and every piece exuded movement and life.

I have an exhibit coming up on Friday… I remembered Pippa telling me with bright, hopeful eyes, way back when in Colorado.

A fire in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains had made me miss that one — her very first show. Yet another fire had made me miss the next one — her first solo show. And the next one, and the next one…

I raked through every corner of my memory, but I couldn’t unearth a single occasion I’d made the time to see Pippa’s work. And it really was work, not just a hobby or an anybody can do it handicraft.

Another thing about her work struck me. Every piece was cheery, colorful, and upbeat. Not at all like real life.

But when I glanced out the shop window, the sun shone, and the red-tinted cliffs practically glowed. A young couple walked by, pushing a baby in a stroller. A singer-songwriter strummed her guitar on the corner, and a couple of people sang along.

I took a deep breath. My job might plunge me into the darkest, meanest pockets of society, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t pop up and see the bright side of things too.

A lump formed in my throat — for what I had become, and for what might have been.

Pippa glanced at the clock, re-clipped her hair, and strode over to the supply closet.

“Okay, next one…”

I straightened quickly, following her like a faithful mutt.

Faithful mate, my beast side whispered.

Half an hour later, Pippa was well into the next piece for her project.

She stuck out a hand. “Calipers.”

I handed it to her, channeling assisting nurse at an open-heart surgery.

“Paddles,” Pippa murmured.

I whipped out a couple of chunky cork things.

Ha. I was getting good at this.

When Pippa had said she was making a wine decanter set, I’d nodded gravely. Eventually, I figured out that meant wineglasses with a matching pitcher. Really, really nice ones with a fishnet design that took an incredible number of steps to make. Pippa mentioned something about the technique dating way back to the Middle Ages in…um…Florence? Venice? Something like that. Tiny air bubbles appeared in each “hole” in that fishnet, though I had no idea how she managed that.

Magic, maybe?

I’d been watching closely for signs, but there was a fine line between skill, talent, and magic. In this case, I was willing to give skill and talent the credit.

Last night, on the other hand…

I was still reeling from the sight of a fiery pegasus galloping into the sky — and I bet Pippa’s father was too. I was sure he hadn’t conjured it. Pippa had. Pippa, who’d always bemoaned the fact that she had no supernatural powers.

How could I be sure? Other than Greg’s shocked expression was the fact that I’d been by to see Nash on the ranch a week earlier, and Claire had run over to show us her new pegasus book.

“Wow. Pegasus, huh? With wings and everything?” Nash asked, suitably impressed.

Well, duh. Wings kind of defined a pegasus, right?

But he wasn’t playing dumb. He was giving Claire the excuse to set off on an enthusiastic ten-minute lecture about winged creatures.

Yes, an eight-year-old lecturing a dragon shifter on flying.

Key point: all that had taken place last week. There was no way Pippa’s father could have known about Claire’s latest infatuation.

But Pippa did.

So many questions. Did Greg’s presence awaken or amplify his daughter’s hidden magic? Was Pippa a Fire Dancer like him? Was last night a first? And, how was it possible for her to smell so good?

That was my wolf side, chiming in with that last question.

I watched her closely in the shop, but it was hard to know. Glassblowing seemed to be part art, part science… Part magic too?

She stuck out a hand. “Blowtorch.”

I pressed it into her hand, and she sent flames licking over the glass. Although she kept the blowtorch centered, the flames had a way of reaching exactly the place she needed at exactly the right intensity. A little hotter on the left, where the glass had warped a tiny bit, a little shorter on the right, where the glass didn’t need adjusting.

When she handed the blowtorch back, I turned away and gave the trigger a quick squeeze. The flames were a fraction of what they’d been for Pippa and far less pinpointed.

The agency classified witches and warlocks into five levels, and what I’d just witnessed was about a class-four on the pyromancer scale — low, in other words. But the fiery pegasus was the work of at least a class-two pyromancer, with one being the highest rating.

So, Pippa was all over the scale.

Witches and warlocks, like shapeshifters, typically come into their skills in puberty, I remembered the agency lecturer saying, way back when I’d first joined. But their skills often emerge in fits and starts…

Pippa had been a late bloomer in terms of developing…er, girl parts. But, boy. She was a super late bloomer if her supernatural powers were only coming out now.

That, or something, had suddenly accelerated the process. Maybe that recent run-in with Harlon Greene? The sisters had been pretty tight-lipped about how they’d defended themselves against a powerful warlock, but I’d overheard hushed references to tapping into a nearby vortex.

Could that have been the catalyst that finally made Pippa’s powers start to emerge? And, hell. How far did they still have to go?