Diamond Fire (Hidden Legacy, #3.5)(24)

Rivera smiled. “We will tell him that he passed with flying colors. You already got them to sign the NDA.”

Rogan had emailed me a nondisclosure agreement that forbade Valentina and Carlos to even mention the word poison for the next two weeks. If they broke this agreement, we would immediately terminate our contract. If they managed to stick to it, Rogan would pay for the smashed wine bottles. I had to explain to them in excruciating detail that they, their online communications, and their phone calls would be monitored until after the wedding. It made me feel like a corporate gangster. Like I had come into their shop and smashed it demanding protection money, but it was all legal and binding.

“I think I would like to go now,” I told Leon.



Leon drove, while I fought my way through my text messages. Mrs. Rogan wanted to know if there was any progress on finding Sealight. There wasn’t, so I told her we were working on it. Rogan wanted to know if I was okay. I wasn’t, so I told him I was fine. Mom wanted to know if we were coming home for dinner. We were, and I said yes. Arabella wanted to know if she could put a piece of duct tape over Nevada’s mouth and fingers, so she would stop changing the stupid wedding. I told her no. I got a very nice email from Mia Rosa typed by her mother, which thanked me for the bedazzler. Which was awesome. Someone had asked me for something, I did it, and they were happy and said thank you.

The last text was from Bern. “Where are you?”

“In the car, with Leon.”

“Are you going back to Mountain Rose?”



“Yes, but only for a minute.” I needed to make sure they finished the tent like they were supposed to.

“I need you to find a safe place to pull over. I’m sending you some footage you need to see before you get there.”



What? “Send it. I’ll just look at it while Leon is driving.”

“No, I need you to pull over.”



I sighed. “Your brother is being weird.”

“And this is news how?”

“Can you take the next exit and find a good spot to pull over?”

Two minutes later, Leon pulled over from 281 into a gas station lot and parked. I sent Bern a text. My email dinged, and I started the download on my phone. It was taking forever.

“That was awesome back there,” Leon said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I didn’t know I could either.”

“Does it feel good when you use your magic?”

“It feels good to not hide it.”

If we weren’t in a parking lot in public, I would open my wings and just rest. I was even afraid to do it while we were driving. I couldn’t take a chance on someone fixating on me and wrecking their car.

“He was going to poison all of us, Leon. When I think about it, it kind of freaks me out. Anybody, everybody who ate that cake would have died. Little kids would have died. And he didn’t care. I could tell when he was talking, that part of it was the money but not all of it. He did it because he hates us. He doesn’t even know us. He didn’t feel bad about it, Leon—he was proud of it.”

Leon leaned back in his seat. “Everybody in our family has magic. Aunt Penelope, Grandma Frida, you, your sisters, Bern . . . I thought I didn’t have magic. I thought I was a dud. I used to climb to the top of the warehouse. There is a way to get to the roof from the attic. I would walk on the edge of the roof.”

“Why in the world would you do that?”

“I thought maybe if I got scared enough, my powers would come out.” Leon grimaced. “You can practice and get good at sports. You can study and get good grades. But with magic, you have it or you don’t. That’s it. And it’s so fucking unfair. Here you are, and an accident of birth, something in your DNA that you have no control over, decides, before you’re even born, how your life is going to go.”

I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have magic. It was this scary thing that ruled my life. I had so much guilt wrapped up in it. I never told Leon about it, because I knew he would have given up half of his life for some of that power.

“But you didn’t poison people,” I said.

“Who would I poison? You’re my family. I love you. I wouldn’t even poison Mom if she showed back up. I did hate her, you know. Still do. First, if she had slept with Bern’s dad instead of whoever my dad was, I would have had magic. Some magic. Second, she is a piss-poor mom.”

I tried to look for the best things in people. There was nothing good about Aunt Gisele. I used to think that she was just misunderstood but then she showed up and wrecked our life, and now I hated her too.

“Jeremy is a scumbag,” Leon said. “He’s too stupid to realize he isn’t smart. But he sees all the Primes in the news and on Herald, and he envies them. The jealousy is eating him alive. Once the wedding is over, Rivera will make sure he’s turned over to the proper authorities.”

Rogan could make Jeremy disappear, but he wouldn’t. I once asked Nevada about things like that and she said that being a House meant projecting a show of strength. If someone like Jeremy attacked a House, they would want to make a very public example of him.

The file downloaded. I tapped it. The feed from one of the hummingbird cameras filled the screen. Xavier was walking toward his cousins. I turned the sound up.