Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic Read Online Free Page B

the Librarian had warned him about Chinese predators, and Dorothea Franklin was the only live Chinese clue he could find. Gypsy woman hadn’t looked like a predator, but Dragon Lady did.
    When she opened a box of boiled shrimp in garlic sauce, he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Cantonese?” he asked without looking up.
    “Good nose,” she replied with just a hint of humor. He could be mistaken about that. She still didn’t invite him to share.
    She was tormenting him with food instead of smacking him. He understood the reaction. He wasn’t exactly an agreeable, polite sort. With a sigh, Conan shoved back his chair and crossed the room to examine the packages without being asked. He’d grown up in a household of men. Aggression, not politeness, was second nature to him.
    “Oyster sauce?” he asked appreciatively, helping himself to the second plate and the broccoli.
    She arched her eyebrows, and it finally sunk in that her eyes were not only almond-shaped, but green. He’d been too busy checking out her ass to register details. But then, he was here because of her ancestry. Except, like her brother, she wasn’t full-blooded Chinese.
    “You know Cantonese cuisine?” She pointed at one of the boxes. “I ordered beef in black bean sauce for you, but we can share the shrimp, if you prefer.”
    “Beans and beef are fine.” Usually when he was working on a problem, he didn’t take time to eat, but he was suddenly starving. If she was part of the problem, he ought to study her. He filled his plate and rolled a desk chair over to the table. Yeah, he was pretty sure there were breasts under that jacket. Nice high ones, too. Some parts of his job were more interesting than others. He tried to catch a glimpse of the pendant on her necklace, but the chain disappeared beneath her white collar.
    “I haven’t found anything useful yet in your brother’s email account,” he told her between bites. “You want to tell me what you know about the crash?”
    “What, you can’t wave a magic wand and learn what you want without me?” she asked dryly.
    All right, she didn’t like being ignored. He got that. “I know computers,” he informed her, stabbing at the tender beef—not shredded leather but moist beef. “Generally, I can open a system and find the problem without wasting time listening to paranoid explanations. Helicopters are different territory.”
    She swiped his box of beef before he was done with it, dumping it onto a plate and looking under the table for her dog.
    He was hungry, dammit, and the food was too good for a dog. Conan grabbed the plate back. “Drama is preferable to passive aggression. So go ahead, yell at me, then tell me why you’re questioning government officials over a crash they have no reason to lie about.”
    She did the inscrutable thing while she studied him, but she let him keep his food. He preferred being the observer, not the observed. Itchy under that green-eyed scrutiny, he concentrated on his beef.
    “I didn’t feel Bo die,” she replied. Then waited.
    He worked that through his head, failing to find the logic. “I didn’t feel Magnus die either,” he offered. “But then, I’ve never felt anyone die. Should I?”
    Her lovely arched eyebrows rose a fraction. “No, I don’t expect you should. But I do.”
    “How? A thousand people probably die every second.” He wasn’t scoffing. He was just curious. She didn’t look crazy.
    Well, she had looked crazy a bit earlier with her hair in a nimbus around her head and water dripping off her nose.
    He liked to keep an open mind.
    For a moment, she looked as if she’d retaliate by taking his food away again. He surrounded the plate with his arm.
    “I don’t feel everyone die,” she said with disdain. “Just people I know. I recognize their energy patterns, their harmony with the earth, and if one goes missing, I know it. I don’t feel that Bo is missing. And I didn’t feel the helicopter crash.”
    Conan