A week later, Ember stared at the text on her phone.
This is Cai Wyvern. Look, I’m sorry about all these texts and about last week. I hope you liked the jewelry. I just can’t seem to help myself.
Ember frowned.
Cai must be talking about the other jewelry that had arrived since the earrings.
Boxes of it.
Boxes and boxes of it.
Every day.
Once, two boxes in one day.
Some was relatively normal, like gold-chain necklaces and bangle bracelets that she could wear anywhere and had begun wearing around her apartment because they did make her feel pretty.
But there had been another set of earrings: dark lavender Tanzanite drops on chains encrusted with white diamonds, and Ember had nearly dropped the teal Tiffany & Co. box when she’d tried to assess them with her elemental powers. Everything about the stones and platinum was flawless, and a quick perusal of Tiffany’s website had netted her only a phone number to call if she were interested in them, not a price.
Whoa.
She’d set those earrings aside to return to him, because why would a guy who’d bolted out of bed send her such ridiculous, extravagant gifts?
Maybe he was on the down-low and was paying her off so she would say that she’d slept with him.
Ember could be bribed. She had student loans to pay off. She could totally be bought to tell all kinds of stories and be a well-compensated beard, if that’s what Cai Wyvern needed.
But they needed to talk about that, which meant a real conversation, not just texts and some expensive gifts by delivery dudes.
Ember would not allow herself to be bought off and dismissed like that.
Cai texted, The concert that is in rehearsals has a problem with a fire elemental. Could you come and take a look at it? We’ll pay whatever consulting fee you want on top of your usual salary. I’m sorry. Please. Before it sets the casino on fire. More than it already has.
Dammit, that guy thought that he could order her around like nothing had ever happened because he was the boss? Well, she’d show him. She’d go pet the sea serpents for a while and let Cai Wyvern’s casino burn down around his ears.
Another text from an unknown number arrived. This is Dragon’s Den Casino’s HR Department, Smedley O’Tentacle. VP Wyvern informs me that you’re an elemental witch. There is a problem with a fire elemental in the arena’s stage area. If you can contain it, the casino will pay standard consulting rates.
Well, that’s what she got for almost-sleeping with the boss. A boss can order other people to order her around.
Another text came from Cai, I need you.
Yeah, she just bet he did. Now that a fire elemental was toasting his butt, now he needed her. Before, he just sprinted out of the bedroom like she had the sea serpent farts.
And his texts over the last week had been less than satisfactory. Yes, he’d apologized, but he hadn’t explained.
Still, making a couple of hundred dollars on top of her usual salary was nothing to cry about. With the extra money, maybe she could buy one glass of that expensive champagne she’d put on Cai’s tab last week.
Ember started trudging toward the big arena in the back of the casino. If she were any angrier, she would be dragging her toes on the thick carpeting and leaving lines in her wake.
A sparse crowd of guests—you had to be holding a VIP pass to get into the Dragon’s Den Casino before the gala opening—punched slot machine buttons and drank complimentary booze. A few people hung around the two poker tables that were staffed, laughing and playing cards. She recognized quite a few of the guests from movies and TV. Usually, they couldn’t hang out and mingle with the bourgeoisie because they were too famous. They’d get mobbed. But with a VIP pass in a mostly empty casino that was only admitting other celebs, they could prance around with abandon and not worry about anyone stalking them. Ember saw two ladies who’d won Oscars a few months ago, and one woman was arguing with her agent about whether she was going to do an HBO mini-series “for the exposure” or whether they were going to pay her what she was worth. She said, “That offer is missing a zero. You go find it. That’s what I pay you for.” She pulled the handle on the slot machine, grimaced at it, and fed it another coin.
Well, if Ember was still mad when she got home, she could drink another bottle of that Moet & Chandon Dom Perignon by Karl Lagerfeld champagne. She still had four magnum-sized bottles left from the six-pack she’d ordered through Cai’s room service. Sold separately, each bottle was worth two thousand dollars. He’d probably gotten a little price break on the case she’d put on his tab.
She was still cackling about the room service bill she’d signed his name. It served him right.
Ember stomped into the back of the arena that seated over ten thousand people, her huge purse bonking on her butt as she walked. She emerged on the floor level, behind the expensive seats. The fluorescent house lights drew glowing lines in the ceiling far above her.
A flaming tornado wheeled around the stage, bending as it changed direction.
Black-clad stage technicians chased the fiery tornado. One threw a rope at it.
The elemental was scorching a black, looping track into the wooden floor of the stage.
Every time it touched a drape or set piece, fire licked at the material. Technicians sprinted over with fire extinguishers and sprayed white foam at the flames. Some of them were even shooting the flame retardant foam at the fire elemental like they were trying to put it out.
Ember rolled her eyes as she marched down the center aisle. “Stop! Stop it!” she called. “You’re making it mad!”
In the front row, Cai spun. “Ember! Thank the Dragon Lords you’re here!”
She held one finger out at him and did not turn her head toward him. “Do not even talk to me, Cai Wyvern. I am not here for you. This poor baby needs me.”
Ember climbed the steps and rummaged around in her purse until she found an empty metal bottle about the length of her hand with the stopper jangling from a piece of string. She set it in the middle of the stage floor, right by a livid scorch mark in the wood, and stepped back a few paces. “Yo! Dude with the rope! Set it down and get off the stage. The rest of you, move slowly and extinguish the fires, but quit trying to hurt it. It’ll settle down in just a minute.”
The theater technicians backed off and extinguished fires instead of chasing the elemental around the stage.
Ember sat down, cross-legged, near the bottle. It was a good thing she’d worn slacks that day. Besides, no use wearing a skirt to work if Cai Wyvern wasn’t going to be there to admire her legs.
Ember rested her wrists on her knees and drew a deep breath, settling and centering herself.
Okay, wild elementals were just like tamed elementals. They were just friends she didn’t know yet.
Ember released the anger and anxiety with a long exhale, allowing worry and anger to flow out of herself. Another inhale, and then she opened her soul. Calm energy flowed out of herself and over the stage.
The fiery whirlwind tottered and slowed, watching her.
She had its attention.
Ember lifted her hands into the air and twisted her fingers into complex positions that she had learned from her grandmother’s grimoire. With her hands forming the arcane shapes and held in just the right places, Ember’s body turned into a lens and magnified her usually shaky magical powers. With her next breath, Ember blew her magic at the bottle, forming a magnetic vortex from its mouth like a funnel.
The vortex would not suck the fire elemental into the bottle. The fire elemental had to choose to enter the vial.
Ember began to hum. The song was a hymn from her childhood, from when her mother used to drag her to church constantly. It didn’t matter what the song was, only that Ember imbued the music with her magic and with emotions that would convince the fire elemental to allow itself to be tamed.
Her focus on the fire elemental sharpened.
The chaos of the stage—with the technicians running around to extinguish small blazes that had popped up in the elementals path and the non-supernaturals freaking out and screaming about ball lightning or a demon, not that any of them knew what a real demon looked like—faded away from her senses.
Within seconds, the fire elemental became Ember’s whole world.
Slowly, the flaming, whirling dervish settled, feeding off Ember’s magic and serenity. The fire elemental ceased its restless wandering around the stage and hovered on the other side of the bottle from Ember.
Ember unspooled more calming magic into the fire elemental, soothing its anger. Before she had gotten there, they’d been doing all sorts of things to it, trying to frighten it away or kill it. The poor thing, no wonder it was so upset.
With her magic and her music, Ember enticed the fire elemental into climbing into the magnetic vortex and containing itself in the bottle.
She leaned forward without breaking her song or her concentration and gently dropped the stopper into the bottle’s mouth.
The vial bobbled and then stilled.
Ember blew out one last breath, and the arena and stage slowly came back into focus around her.
Cai Wyvern was standing near her, his phone in one hand by his side as he watched her. His phone squawked, and a face moved on the screen. His eyes were still full of green fire when he looked at her.
Cai asked her, “Is everything okay now?”
She nodded, still a little blissed out from emptying herself to gentle the fire elemental. “Yeah. He’ll be fine now.”
“I needed you,” he said, and then he shook his head.
“Well, I’m glad you had an elemental witch near. Where did this guy come from, anyway?”
“He? It’s a he?”
“Definitely a he.”
“He just popped up. The show we were loading in swears that they had nothing to do with it, but they didn’t say it very convincingly. I think they were using elementals instead of pyrotechnic effects. Luckily, only a few people got singed.”
“Oh, yeah.” Ember picked up the bottle and held the warm metal in her palms, still sending soothing vibes to the fire elemental. “Captured elementals can break free and wreak havoc. It’s dangerous to use them like that, especially if they’re forced to perform. They’re much happier in bottles.”
“Let me take you to lunch, Ember,” he said.
She glanced at him. “I’ve heard that from you before.”
“I promise I won’t turn chicken and run away.”
“From what I’ve heard, the turning-chicken flu is going around.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. My lunches have already cost you enough.”
“I thought it was funny,” he said.
She braced her fist on her hip. “You thought a fifteen-thousand-dollar lunch was funny?”
He laughed. “It was! It totally served me right.”
“We have nothing in common,” Ember told him.
“I’m sorry for running out. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“What on Earth could have happened to make that seem like the right thing to do?”
“Nothing to speak of. Let’s get lunch.”
Her stomach growled. She dropped the fire elemental’s metal bottle in her bag to cover up the sound. “I’m okay.”
“Come on. I know a great restaurant.”