Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy #1)(80)

He slid the photograph toward me. “You have discovered something potentially devastating and you can’t just walk away now. You have a moral obligation to them, to me, and to your own family. By virtue of possessing this dangerous knowledge, you are now partially responsible for our survival. Please keep that in mind.”

We left his office and walked across the evening-sun-drenched parking lot to our car.

“Do we go to the authorities?” Bern asked.

“If we do, we’ll only get one shot at convincing them this is serious. If we’re right and Adam wants this artifact and somehow gets his hands on it, it could mean mass evacuation. They’re not going to do something like that without some serious evidence. Right now all we have is a theory from a never-published senior thesis and a picture of some sort of jeweled doohicky. I’m all for going for broke, but we have to have something to go with.”

“So what now?” Bern asked.

“We go home and do our research.” In the morning, if all else failed, I would ask Rogan to see about getting the documents from the Emmens family. Professor Itou was right. The family wouldn’t speak to him or me, but they would speak to Huracan.

I looked at my family gathered around the kitchen table. My two sisters, my two cousins, Mom and Grandma Frida. I’d just explained in broad terms the story of the Great Chicago Fire and the artifact that could be tied to it.

“I need your help searching for the artifact,” I said.

“I have homework,” Catalina said.

Arabella glared at her. “Seriously? Can you not be so anal once in your life?”

Lina bristled. “Are you going to let her talk to me like that?”

“I’ll write you whatever excuse you want,” I said. “But we are short on time, and I really need your help.” I pushed the laptop toward them. “This is a map of the British Empire in 1850, when Emmens was probably in the military service.” I put the phone with the picture of the jeweled thing next to it. “This is what we’re looking for. It’s probably a part of something else, some sort of artifact. We each are going to take a region and try to look for an artifact that resembles this. Catalina and Arabella, you take China. Leon, India. Bern, Egypt. Mom, Turkey and Arabia. I’ll take the Far East. Grandma Frida, pick a team if you want. And not a word about this to anyone. No Facebook, no Instagram, and especially no Herald.”

They scattered.

I holed up in my office. It was nice and quiet. I put a candle under my oil warmer, dripped in some rose geranium, and went to work.

Needle in the haystack was putting it mildly. I tried image search. I tried historical search. I looked through Wikipedia and online museum galleries.

Nothing.

Eventually my head began to hurt. I pushed away from the desk, rubbed my eyes, and glanced at the clock: 9:17. I’d been at this for two hours, and I had exactly nothing to show for it.

At least the artifact part, if that’s what it was, was safely locked up somewhere in the bowels of Rogan’s dragon cave.

A ghostly memory of him touching me flickered across my skin. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d almost made out with him in the Galleria. After what he had done with Harper, I should’ve run for my life instead. It was one thing to be attracted to bad boys, something I usually didn’t suffer from. It was another to be attracted to bad men. Mad Rogan was a really bad, bad man. If he wanted something, he bought it, or persuaded you to give it to him, or just simply took it. I had to make sure he didn’t want me. Because if he decided he did, it would be on his terms, and I wouldn’t like it.

No, I would like it, which was even worse. If Mad Rogan suddenly appeared in the middle of my office, picked me up out of this chair with those hard, muscled arms, carried me into a bedroom, and threw me on the bed, at least 50 percent of me would be totally fine with whatever followed. It would be awesome. Just to see him naked, to see that honed, powerful body, to touch him, would be the highlight of my adult romantic life.

The other 50 percent of me would be livid. That jerk. No “Thanks for saving my life.” No “Are you okay?” No acknowledgment of a near-death experience. Oh no, no, he decided to critique my chalk drawing while I sat there on the pavement, bleeding and trying to catch my breath. I’d had it with all of them. I’d had it with their fires and their flying buses and exploding buildings. Had it.

It made total sense that Mad Rogan, a man who was rich, handsome, athletic, and a Prime, would turn out to be a self-centered bastard. What made absolutely no sense was why every time he said my name or looked at me, I needed ten seconds to snap back to reality.

It wasn’t just the physical pleasure or the intoxicating mental thing he’d done today. It was that terrifying, single-minded intensity he radiated when he focused. I just felt, with some sort of feminine intuition, that when he had sex, he committed to it completely. He would have sex the way other men made war. I wanted to be the only thing in the entire world he cared about, even if only for a few minutes. I wanted all of him, mind and body, to be mine.

And that was the sticking point. Mad Rogan would never be mine. I wasn’t the kind of woman he would eventually settle down with. It wasn’t even a matter of me not having money. I lacked the right pedigree. Primes married for magic. My magic wasn’t on the same level as his, and it definitely wasn’t the right kind. His power was primarily telekinetic, and his telepathy was slight. He would look for a telekinetic or a telepath. My magic was primarily will based and didn’t fit neatly into any category. I could get Mad Rogan only if he actually fell in love with me. The concept of being in love probably wasn’t even in his vocabulary.