Wind swirled Rogan’s dark hair. He turned his hands palms up.

The recording blurred. To the left and right, the buildings adjacent to the rubble, a red tower and a brown apartment high-rise, fractured and fell. The sound was deafening.

“Stop him!” the man screamed.

“He can’t be stopped,” the original woman howled over the roar of the falling buildings. “He can’t hear us or see us! We have to wait it out!”

Mad Rogan’s feet left the ground. He rose two feet above the pavement.

“It’s not me,” the levitator screamed. “It’s not me, I can’t reach him!”

The recording blurred.

The camera trembled. The heavy truck parked on the left slid toward it.

“Jesus Chri—” a man yelled.

The recording stopped midword.

Bern and I stared at the dark screen. I sat, shell-shocked, not sure what to do next. I’ve studied many Primes. I’ve never seen one who could do that. This was inhuman.

“I think we should reconsider getting involved,” Bern said.

“It’s too late,” I told him. My voice sounded dull. “I took the job.”

We looked at the screen some more.

“We can’t tell Mom,” I said.

“Oh no, no, we really can’t.” Bern clicked the video off and went to erase the browser history.

“Leon?” I guessed.

“Mhm. He likes to snoop, and he’ll blow our cover.”

The video disappeared, but my dread didn’t.

“What kind of magic was that?”

“The consensus is, he’s an inorganic telekinetic.”

“Telekinetics move things. They don’t cut buildings in half.”

“He does,” Bern said.

“What’s Mad Rogan doing now?” I asked.

“He left the military four years and eight months ago. Nobody has seen him since. By all indications, he became a shut-in. The chatter on the House groupie forums says he was horribly disfigured in the war.”

“Yes, and he’s waiting for just the right woman to come and love him as he is.”

Bern gave me a small smile. Primes, like any celebrities, had their admirers, especially the young, handsome, male, unmarried Primes. They spawned a whole subculture on Instagram, Tumblr, and Vine. They even had their own social network—Herald. Most of the content consisted of photos of Primes, fanart and fanfiction, often with a romantic bend, and wild speculation about who was going to marry whom and what sorts of powers their kids could possibly have. Usually powers carried over from generation to generation, but when two different magic bloodlines mixed, there was always a chance for some mayhem.

“Does he love his cousin?” I asked.

“The Lanceys disowned Kelly Waller when she turned twenty-two.”

Wow. Being thrown out of the family was the worst kind of punishment. Having financial support severed was hard enough, but being disowned also cut you off from all family contacts and connections. It made you an outcast. You couldn’t go to your family’s friends or to your family’s enemies, because neither would trust you. Members of the Houses almost never suffered being disowned, even when they were complete screwups. Case in point, Adam Pierce probably murdered a man and injured a woman and two children, and his House was falling over itself trying to bring him back into the fold. Members of a House were simply too valuable. The Lanceys weren’t the main branch of House Rogan, but still.

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know,” Bern said. “But she hasn’t had any contact with either Rogans or Lanceys. Three years ago her bakery went under.”

Rogan had gotten out almost two years prior. “He didn’t help her?”

Bern shook his head. “Also, she and her husband, Thomas, repeatedly borrowed against their house for Gavin’s tuition. They’ve been hanging by a thread for the last two years.”

“How much did she need to keep the bakery open?”

“According to her bankruptcy filing, eighty-seven grand would’ve paid off her debts.”

Eighty-seven grand would have been chump change to Mad Rogan. He was the head of the House. Poor Kelly Waller. All my life I knew that my parents loved me unconditionally. Oh they let me suffer the consequences of my mistakes, but they always loved me. I could go on a wild shooting spree and murder a dozen people, and my mother and my grandmother would be horrified, but they would fight for me to the bitter end. They would be confounded, but they would still love me, and get me the best attorney, and cry when I would go to the sacrificial chair. If my father had still been alive, he would have done the same. Ms. Waller’s family jettisoned her out, and they didn’t lift a finger to help her no matter how desperate she got. It was tragic and painful for her, but encouraging for us.

I phrased my question carefully. I would need Bern in my corner for this investigation. “Have you seen any indications that Mad Rogan is taking an interest in what happens to Gavin?”

“No.”

“Neither did Montgomery, or it would be in the file. Look, he didn’t bail her out during a bankruptcy, when it would’ve cost him next to nothing. This arson smells so bad, everyone is running away from it as fast as they can. Nobody wants to be Adam Pierce’s friend right this second, let alone help Gavin Waller. We might be okay.”

Bern sighed. “What happens if we back off?”

“MII will call in our loan. We will default. They will seize all of our professional assets, including the warehouse and any equipment we have claimed as exemptions on our tax returns, which includes two of the cars, the weapons, the office equipment, and everything in this room.”

“We would be homeless and penniless,” Bern summarized.

“That’s about right.”

Bern’s eyebrows came together. His face went hard, his grey eyes turned to steel, and for a second I got a hint of what kind of man my cousin would become in a few years: determined and unflappable, like one of those medieval knights in armor. “That’s fucked up.”

“Yes.”

“Did you . . .”

“I explained our situation. They don’t care. They don’t want to offend House Pierce, and we look good on paper, so they are giving it to us, knowing we will fail. We are the cheapest option for them.”

“Let’s do it,” Bern said. “Let’s get Pierce and shove him down their throats so they’ll choke on him.”