Fire Dancer (Spellbound in Sedona #2)

Chapter Seventeen

INGO

It was dark by the time I drove home from the Blue Moon Saloon. A universe of stars lit the sky, but I kept my eyes on the road rolling under my tires. On and on in an endless cycle. Lifeless. Bleak.

Passing Paige Springs, I continued to Sedona. My pulse rose at the turn to Painted Rock Ranch, but I forced myself to drive past it. Half a mile later, I cursed, pulled a U-turn, and headed back.

It was a bad night, and I was in a bad place, but I had to see Pippa. I had to know she was safe.

The dirt road to her place was full of ruts, twists, and turn-offs. I counted carefully, then looked for the big stone on the right a few miles down the road.

There. I stopped and peered into the darkness opposite it. Pure darkness, solid brush. Not a sign of a road or a ranch. Still, I eased the Jeep into gear and turned left with my heart in my throat.

Entering Painted Rock Ranch with Pippa, Erin, or even Nash was easy. The road just appeared, clear as day. Entering alone was harder, because an ancient spell cloaked the place. It was a lot like driving up to that cliff Pippa had taken me to on our Jeep tour. I was sure I would plunge into an abyss.

But my tires crunched over smooth gravel instead of crashing through prickly pears, and a few anxious minutes later, I could not only sense but also see the road. I exhaled, following it through the next couple of bends, where the cloaking spell fell away completely.

My knuckles went white over the steering wheel. What would I say to Pippa? How to break the terrible news? The police had agreed to keep the news of the victim under wraps for forty-eight hours, so Pippa couldn’t have heard.

Yet.

The Jeep creaked past the main house, where a single light still burned. Dogs barked, and a curtain moved. I pictured Abby inside, rushing to the window while Claire slept. I hoped she would recognize my car and take my slow speed as an indication that all was well.

I jutted my jaw. If only that were the case.

Continuing slowly, I pulled up to the converted barn Pippa lived in, then stopped and slid to the ground. Pippa emerged a moment later. The light inside cast a halo around her fair hair, giving her an angelic glow as she stood in the doorway.

She frowned, spotting me. “Ingo?”

I nodded and stepped closer, though my legs were full of lead.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

I forced myself to meet her eyes. My gut lurched, because for a moment, those were Stacy’s eyes, and Bridget’s and all the other victims I’d been too late too help.

My hands curled into fists. Sometimes, I hated my job. And sometimes — like this — I hated myself.

Pippa’s face went slack, and she paled.

“No…” she whispered, reading my mind.

Silent as the grave, I took another step.

“No…” She sank into a chair beside the doorway.

I stopped in front of her as she dropped her face into her hands, then glanced up with a look that gutted me.

“Stacy…?”

I nodded. Once.

“Is she…?”

“Her body was found out near Clarkdale.”

Pippa whimpered, burying her face in her hands. A moment later, she was rocking, crying, and murmuring that awful word in an endless loop. “No. No. No…”

I was a pebble. A blade of grass. An inanimate, unfeeling object at Pippa’s feet.

When my knees finally unlocked, I sank down beside Pippa and wrapped my arms around her.

“No… Please…” She rocked, and I moved with her, unable to speak, act, or think.

Around us, the darkness was a blanket, providing more comfort than I could.

“What happened?” she whispered through her tears.

My voice cracked as I relayed what Kyle had said, using the same clinical terms. No sense in putting a flowery frame around a picture no one wanted to see.

The body had been found about thirty minutes west. Her throat had been slit, her blood completely drained. The police were calling it a secondary scene, which was probably right. But if they were counting on tracking a trail of blood…good luck. Not with vampires involved.

Pippa hunched over her knees, still rocking. “Why?”

I didn’t know, but I swore I would find out.

“Was it whatshisname? Jananovich?”

“Same old, same old,” I said grimly. “No evidence. But it makes sense.”

And, ugh. Bad word choice. Nothing about a young person’s death made sense.

“I mean, my gut says—”

Pippa stood suddenly, wiping her tears. “ My gut says we hunt him down and kill him, right now. As slowly and as painfully as he deserves.”

The glimmer in her eyes said she meant it, but I had the feeling she wasn’t thinking through the practicalities. Jananovich was a vampire, and they were notoriously hard to kill. Plus, there was no clemency for killing murderers. And judging by the shitty way the universe worked, Pippa would be the one who got caught.

I looked at her silently until her shoulders slumped.

“Well, we can’t sit around and do nothing,” she said.

“We won’t. But we have to think. We need the why, the how, the when.”

Easier said than done. I huffed in frustration, making my breath swirl in the cold night air.

I looked at my car, then the sky. Experience told me I needed a clear mind to think, and that wouldn’t happen tonight. Maybe it was time to go. Not that either of us would get a wink of sleep.

Pippa must have read my mind, because she laced her fingers through mine.

“Don’t go. Not yet.”

I didn’t have it in me to say no. She needed the company, and I did too.

We held each other for a long, long time. Long enough for the stars to turn a couple of degrees, until Orion keeled over like a drunk and Scorpio scuttled halfway beyond the horizon.

“Better get you inside,” I finally murmured. “It’s freezing out here.”

She managed a little smile. “I run warm, remember?”

My lips quirked. Pippa had the internal furnace of a pyromancer — or a dragon, like her mother. Way back when, we’d driven her dad’s car up a mountainside for a stolen hour of sloppy teenage sex, and it had been me shivering in the cold afterward, not her.

In another time or place, I might have chuckled at what had once passed for good sex. We’d come a long way since then.

Then it hit me. Maybe we hadn’t, because we’d broken up.

I swallowed hard and followed Pippa through the open barn door.

Inside, I glanced around the cavernous space. I’d heard the sisters call it a converted barn, but the only part that looked even halfway converted — unless fairy lights counted, because Pippa had those strung all over the place — was the bathroom I spied through an open door. Otherwise, the building was still packed with farm equipment, stalls, and cobwebs. At some point, someone had driven the tractor out and replaced it with a worn red couch. But that was pretty much it.

On the other hand, the place had potential. Even I could see that.

Pippa took my coat and hung it on a whimsical rack in the shape of a moose head, made completely from horseshoes. A housewarming gift from Abby, no doubt. Then she pointed me to the “living room” — the red sofa with a crate for a table in front of it. A second — or third or fourth — hand wood-burning stove had been installed, with a chimney rigged to a hole in the wall, the cracks roughly plugged with fireproof insulation. The firefighter in me couldn’t help checking it for flaws. Aesthetically, there were plenty. In terms of safety, though, it worked.

I sat while Pippa headed to the “kitchen,” a corner with a microwave, electric kettle, and a tiny fridge. There, she turned her sad, red eyes to me and offered me a drink. She stared at the kettle until it boiled, and my eyes drifted to the wall beyond her. The exposed beams doubled as shelves, and they were all lined with glass. Glass baubles. Glass flowers. Even a rabbit made of fused shards of glass. Each piece exploded with color and life.

So, there it was again — that reminder. For all the bad things in the world, there was beauty too.

My breath caught when I spotted the glass sculpture on a higher shelf. A dark wolf pointed his nose to howl at the moon as a second, gold-hued she-wolf wound around his body.

I swallowed hard. Was he howling in joy or sorrow? Were the two forever bonded or damned to an eternity of near but so far?

“Here,” Pippa murmured, handing me a mug.

We settled on the couch — me with a coffee, her with a tea — and I watched as she fumbled with a match and candle.

Pippa. Fumbling with fire. If that didn’t indicate how upset she was, what did?

On the third try, the match lit in a burst of sulfur. With shaking hands, Pippa brought it to the candle. For a moment, two tiny fires twisted, burning together. Then the match died, and the candle flared a little brighter.

“For Stacy,” she whispered.

For a long, quiet minute, we contemplated the dancing flame. I expected Pippa to murmur something like rest in peace when she blew it out, but instead…

“I promise I’ll get him for you.” Her whisper was fierce. “I swear, I will.”

Her words scared me, because I didn’t want Pippa tangling with Jananovich. But I was glad too, because maybe she finally understood what drove me.

Together, we stared at that empty spot where a bright light had burned just a moment before. My chest went tight, and again, I wished I could turn the clock back.

I would bet anything Pippa did too.

She slammed a hand on the couch, sending up a puff of dust. “You were right. And I didn’t listen.”

I knew how she felt, because I’d tried that trick a hundred times — replacing grief with anger.

I touched her shoulder. “What could you have done?”

Yeah, kind of hypocritical, me counseling someone about regret.

She puffed out her cheeks, and another long minute went by.

Yeah, I knew that feeling too.

“Okay. Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me everything — what you know and what you suspect.”

That second category was packed. The first…not so much. But I did my best to summarize, touching on the same points I’d explained to the leaders of Twin Moon pack.

Victor Jananovich, vampire and criminal warlord with a tendency to drink his staff dry — and not in a good way. Drugs…murders…pricey escorts…

“Escorts?” Pippa whipped around at that.

A minute later, it all clicked in my mind. “The vials…”

Jananovich hadn’t been using them for couples. He’d figured out a way to combine his business interests with escorts who provided blood. Fresh from the vein, I gathered, plus a “to-go” version. Hence the vials.

I cursed the agency for the hundredth time. If it weren’t for the restraining order, I might have had enough evidence, if not to convict Jananovich, then for a search warrant, at least.

“I gave Kyle the billing address you showed me. The one for the vials,” I said. “TTC Limited is True Tastes Consortia, Limited.”

“Owned by Jananovich?”

“I think so, but if so, it’s hidden under a dozen shell corporations.”

Pippa went over to her desk — a board laid across two sawhorses — and returned with a flyer.

“Stacy gave me this.”

It was for the glass contest, giving a PO Box in Sedona as the address. I left that as a message on Kyle Williams’s phone.

As I hung up, Pippa cursed.

I leaned in to read the contest guidelines.

“I thought that was a strange way of phrasing things,” she murmured, then read aloud. “‘The winning contestant will submit four beautifully crafted glasses and a decanter. All must allow for proper aeration and visibility of the liquid inside.’” She tapped the last part. “Liquid, not wine.” She shook her head bitterly. “God, they make me sick.”

I could relate.

Then she looked at me expectantly.

I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Tell me what I have to do to bring down that slimeball,” she grunted, all angel of revenge.

“I’m working on it, believe me. But it’s not that simple.”

“Sure it is. We sneak into La Puebla and kill his sorry ass.”

She started stalking around, thinking. Candles stood all over the place, and any one she passed flared to life of its own volition. Some fizzled and died again, while others remained flickering.

I watched her move. Was she even aware of what she was doing?

No, I decided. The woman was a walking fire hazard.

Then again, I’d bet she also had the power to snuff out any ensuing blaze.

Hopefully.

“Sneaking into La Puebla won’t be easy,” I warned. “Jananovich will have security. Plus, he’s a vampire. They’re hard to kill. And even if we could, what’s to stop the agency from prosecuting us as murderers of an ‘innocent’ businessman?”

She thought it over for exactly five seconds before launching into a new plan. “Okay, so we sneak into La Puebla, grab incriminating evidence, and then kill his sorry ass.”

I let her contemplate that for a minute or two.

Suddenly, Pippa sat straighter, and every candle in the place burned higher. “Oh! I know how to get in without sneaking at all.”

“How?”

“Catering.”

I shook my head. “There’s no way I’m letting you get close to Jananovich. If anyone goes in, it will be me.”

She snorted. “Ha. I can just see you serving canapés.”

I frowned. “Serving what?”

“I rest my case.” She sighed.

“Well, you’re sure as hell not going,” I declared.

Bossy? Yes. But that was nonnegotiable.

“Erin and Abby can be my backup,” she said.

When I shook my head, Pippa stuck a finger at my chest. “Admit it. You want him dead just as much as I do. We both know he deserves it. Why bother going by the books?”

“Tell that to the judge prosecuting you for murder,” I said.

In truth, my wolf was all for her plan, and my human side was definitely tempted. But the agent in me knew better.

I took a deep breath, willing her to do the same, then announced, “Okay, we’re there.”

She looked around, confused. “Where?”

The nearest candle flickered and swayed.

“At the point where we need to stop, get some rest, and reevaluate.”

“Reevaluate what? Stacy is dead. I can’t just accept that and move on.”

“I’m not saying you should. But if we don’t think this through, things could get even worse, and Jananovich could get away with more than murder.” I did my best to hit a note of finality. “So, we’ll reevaluate our options — tomorrow.”

I looked at the door, trying to work up the resolve to go. Not really succeeding, though.

She must have read my intent, because she took my hand, and her voice softened. “You’re not going, are you?”

I held her gaze. Was there another option?

Her throat bobbed. “Stay,” she whispered. “Please.”

Stay the night, her eyes begged.

Good idea? Bad idea? I was too worn out to decide.

“To think things through, I mean,” she added. “Once we’re ready.”

I looked toward the bedroom, then at the couch. Which was she offering?

Every candle in the place burned a little brighter, giving me a hint at her reply.