Fire Kissed by Erin Kellison Page A

known. Room must simply be made for them on this fair earth, or the mages will take it.”
    “It will come to war again,” Bastian said, as controlled and implacable as he’d been from the first. “And for exactly the reasons you just gave Ms. Brand. Magekind knows no limits, no constraints. You, most of all.”
    “You seem old to me,” Khan said to Jack. “Are you old enough to remember that I was among the fae to assail the great wall of Heaven? I know war. I know war the likes of which you could never conceive. I say again, I will not help you.”
    Khan settled that black gaze back on Kaye. She made very sure not to flinch either. He spoke of her childhood fairy tales, Shadow rising against Light.
    “Kaye, will you come?” the dark mage said.
    Did she dare refuse him?
    Yes.
    Years ago she’d wandered from town to city afraid of everything. She would have done anything to feel safe again. And it would have been a great relief to find others like her who had no ties to the mage families.
    But today? She was angry at herself for not facing the truth, when she’d always known it. She’d run for so long, for so many years, but the only thing that could ever really save her was to stop. And to turn. And to face the monsters behind her—both the wraith and the Grey who’d commanded it. She knew better now. Her monsters were not at Segue.
    “I’ll stick with Bastian for now, but thank you very much for the offer.” Besides, the limits she lived by were imposed by herself. She’d said she’d do Bastian’s job, and she would. That was her word.
    Khan stood, looming dark above them. “If you reconsider, you may come at any time. You are needed.”
    Kaye and Bastian stood as well. That word needed made her feel strange, especially coming from him.
    “I’ll remember,” Kaye said. And after matters were settled with the Greys, she just might. Segue meant a shift from one state to another. She needed a change, a new life. When this business was over, Segue might just be it.
     
     
    When Jack left the conference room for the work center, he found Adam Thorne waiting at one of the computer stations. The screen before him showed a map—looked like Washington, D.C.—little red dots speckled throughout the metropolis, concentrated in some areas, more widely dispersed in others.
    “Jack,” Adam said, waving him over. “What do you make of this?”
    Jack was still trying to curb his frustration at Khan’s absolute refusal to work with him. But then, Jack had been among the host of angels who’d decided that the life of Khan’s Layla was not worth the dangers she represented to Earth. The Order had not wanted to hurt her, but no other way had been open to them. There were never easy solutions to problems concerning Shadow.
    Khan exited the trailer entirely, and suddenly the space seemed much larger, the air less static. Shadow and light did not mingle well.
    Jack felt Kaye follow him to the workstation to look over Adam’s shoulders at the wide display. This close, she was like a sun blazing next to him, hers a light very different from his own. Her scent, which he tried not to inhale through his nose, had the mind-fuzzing markers of Twilight, of magic. It was subtle on her, but too much of that dark stuff and he knew a man could forget who he was.
    All mages were difficult, each in his or her own way.
    Jack focused hard on the screen before him. A time signature at the bottom of the map said that the dots reflected wraith attacks over the past six months. Adam touched a finger to part of the city, a part with no red dots whatsoever. It was an amoebic shape of urban peacefulness where only mundane violence reigned.
    “No wraiths,” Adam said. Mentally, he followed with, But why? which Jack thought was directed inwardly, and not to him.
    Very good question. Adam and Segue were never far behind The Order’s own findings. There were indeed oases of safety from wraiths within several major cities, a development