He stared at me. I focused, trying to re-create the lasso of magic that had clamped Mad Rogan and squeezed the answers out of him. Nothing happened.

“Compel him to answer,” Mad Rogan said.

“I’m trying.”

Mad Rogan picked up the knife the woman had dropped. “We can always go to Plan B.”

“Give me a minute.”

“Nevada, you’re wasting time.” His voice turned cold and precise. “Be useful for a change.”

Useful? You asshole.

“I’m tired of dragging around your dead weight.”

Nothing stirred inside me.

“Do something, don’t just sit there.”

“Has anybody told you that you’re a colossal asshole?”

Mad Rogan grimaced. “Apparently anger isn’t your trigger, and we don’t have time to figure out what it is. Oh well.”

He jabbed the knife into the man’s leg. The fireman screamed. I winced.

“Is this what you came here for?” Mad Rogan barked.

“Yes.”

True.

“Is it magic?” I asked.

“No.”

“Lie,” I said.

Mad Rogan yanked the knife out and jabbed it into the man’s leg again. The man howled.

“I’ll keep cutting you until your leg turns into hamburger,” Mad Rogan told him, his voice light. “Then I’ll put a tourniquet on it and start on your other leg. Answer her questions, or you’ll never walk again.”

“Are you working with Adam Pierce?” I asked.

“No.”

“Lie.”

Mad Rogan stabbed the man’s leg again.

“What does it do?” I asked.

The man stared at me.

Mad Rogan jabbed his leg again, methodically, calmly, the knife going in and out, in and out . . .

The man cried out, “It opens the gate to enlightenment!”

“True.”

Mad Rogan glanced at me.

I spread my arms.

“What time is it?” the man groaned.

I looked at the electronic clock above the elevator. “Five thirty-nine. No, wait, five forty.”

The man smiled. “Three . . .”

Mad Rogan spun around.

“Two . . .”

Mad Rogan lunged at me, knocking me off my feet.

“One . . .”

An enormous fireball erupted from the side entrance. Orange flame boiled, raging toward us. Heat bathed my face.

That’s it, flashed in my head. I’m dead.

The floor surged up and swallowed us whole.

Chapter 10

I was lying on my side. Darkness surrounded me.

A hard arm was wrapped around me. Someone’s body pressed against my back, curled around mine.

“Am I dead?”

“No,” Mad Rogan said.

Mad Rogan was spooning me. The thought blazed through my head. I tried to scoot away. My chest met hard rock. My back met an equally hard surface, which had to be his chest. There was nowhere to scoot away to.

“What’s happened?”

“Well, they must’ve rigged an explosive device to cover their exit. It detonated.”

“I get that. Explain the not dying part.” And the spooning part. He was touching me. Oh my God, he was touching me.

“There was no time to escape, so I broke through the floor and pulled it on top of us.”

His voice was quiet, almost intimate. He sounded so reasonable, like it was just an ordinary thing. I broke through some solid marble and then built it into a shelter over us in a split second. No big. Do it every day. Just thinking about the amount of magic it would take to do this made me shiver.

“There was an explosion,” Mad Rogan said. “Some debris fell on top of us. I had to shift things around, but it’s relatively stable now.”

“Could you shift things around so we could escape?”

“I’m spent,” he said, his voice the same measured calm. “Shifting a few thousand pounds of rock drained me. I need time to recover.”

So there was a limit to his power. Good to know that occasionally he was mortal. “Thank you for saving me.”

“You’re welcome.”

My brain finally digested his words. “So we’re trapped underground with the building on top of us.” We were buried alive. Fear welled in me.

“Not all of the building. I’m reasonably certain it’s still standing. I activated the beacon, so my crew is en route. It’s just a matter of getting us out.”

“What if we run out of air?”

“That would be unfortunate.”

“Rogan!”

“We’ve been here for about fifteen minutes. There is probably about twenty cubic feet of air here, about what you would find in an average coffin.”

I would kill him if I ever got out of here.

“There are two of us and your breathing’s elevated, so I would estimate we’d have about half an hour. If we weren’t getting the air from somewhere, we would be feeling the CO2 buildup already.”

I clamped my mouth shut.

“Nevada?” he asked.

“I’m trying to conserve oxygen.”

He chuckled into my hair. My body decided this would be a fine moment to remember that his body was wrapped around mine and his body was muscular, hard, and hot, and my butt was pressed against his groin. Cuddled up by a dragon. No, thank you. Let me off this train.

“If you keep wiggling, things might get uncomfortable,” he said into my ear, his voice like a caress. “I’m doing my best, but thinking about baseball only takes you so far.”

I froze.

We lay still and quiet.

“What is that smell?” he asked.

“It’s my jeans. A bag of food court trash broke when I climbed through the Dumpster.”

A minute passed. Another.

“So,” he said. “You come here often?”

“Rogan, please stop talking.”

He chuckled again. “The air isn’t stale. We’re getting oxygen.”

He was right—the air wasn’t stale. At least we wouldn’t suffocate. Unfortunately that left all the other problems, like being buried alive and being wedged against him.

“Can you turn so you’re not pressed against me?”

“I could,” he said, his voice amused. “But then you would have to lie on top of me.”

My brain said, “NO.” My body went, “Wheee!”

I gave up and lay still.

And waited.

Buried.

With tons of debris on top of us.

If something gave, we’d be crushed. I strained, listening for the slightest noise of things shifting overhead.