Liquid Fire Read Online Free

that had no need of a coffin. Then I remembered how complicated vampire politics was with its secrets and factions—and suddenly, I got it.
    “You’re not from the Wizarding Guild,” I said. “You’re from a faction within it.”
    “The only faction you need worry about,” the wiry man said. He shot his hand toward the inside of his jacket, then stopped just short, a grin spreading across his face as Vickman convulsed. “May I? I have a present but I wouldn’t want to, you know, spook you.”
    I caught a flash of white inside his biker jacket. While the wiry man’s attention was focused on Vickman, I shot my long arm out. The wizard jerked back like he’d been stung, but not fast enough, and my hand came back with a white envelope plucked from his map pocket.
    “Fuck me!” he said, raising his fists in what looked like a karate stance—Tae Kwon Do or something Korean-derived. Huh. I was actually starting to recognize the subtleties of the different martial arts. Interesting.
    “I take it I’m to open this?” I asked. The envelope was hand addressed, simply to “Frost.” I passed my tattooed palm over it, but the yin-yang didn’t absorb any stray magic. “There’s no live magic on this, but if it’s filled with powdered anthrax or whatever, Vickman—shoot him.”
    Vickman scowled, nodded, and put his hand inside his jacket, as if there really was a gun in there he’d managed to sneak past security. The wiry little man’s eyes bugged and he started to back up, but he found himself penned in between Cinnamon and Saffron.
    Fists still raised, the little man made a shrugging move to back them off, and I expected Saffron to show her fangs—but Cinnamon reacted first, growling quiet but deep, staring up at him, chin set, never taking her eyes off him for an instant—like a cat in a challenge.
    The little man’s face went ashen. “Now wait a minute,” he said, looking around for help—but everyone was still ignoring us, passing our zone of silence in quiet blurs. And if he popped the bubble and cried for help, the TSA would be all over him, too. “Don’t you—”
    “You’re the one who materialized in the middle of a crowd of Edgeworlders,” I said, cautiously cracking the envelope open. “If you wanted to play this nice, you should have waited for us with a sign that said ‘Frost’ rather than playing stupid wizard tricks.”
    The man cursed, but relaxed slightly as I pulled out . . . tickets, back to Atlanta. I thumbed through them . . . and found one for almost every member of our party, right down to my daughter: FROST, CINNAMON. Only Nyissa was left out. Disturbing.
    “So,” he said, folding his arms, not looking at Cinnamon, even though she could take his throat out. “Now you know the score. We told you not to come. You came anyway. So we’re giving you an out. Take the tickets, put a leash on your pet tiger—”
    “Oh, you did not just say that,” I said, as Cinnamon’s growl deepened.
    “—leave your vamps in their coffins, and fly with them back to your little hick hellhole!”
    At “vamps,” Saffron chuckled, glancing at Darkrose, and the little man raised an eyebrow, not getting it. I was looking over the tickets; there was indeed a shipping ticket for one coffin, but apparently he didn’t know that—or hadn’t been told that. Even more disturbing.
    “You’ve been misinformed,” I said. “First, my daughter doesn’t wear a leash. Second, Atlanta is very advanced—its metro is larger than San Francisco and San Jose combined. And third, most of the vampires in our party don’t travel in coffins. Only our . . . enforcer.”
    Saffron dropped her hand on the little man’s shoulder, baring her fangs, and a second later, Cinnamon did likewise, half a snarl, half a grin. The man tensed in fear, glancing back and forth between them—and then I heard a pair of clicks behind me, and turned.
    Startled travelers were backing up as the latches on the coffin at