Read Online Pyromancist by Charmaine Pauls - Free Book Online Page A

effect. She stayed
put, stealing another glance at the man in the brown leather jacket
behind her. Josselin kept the message in his eyes clear as he moved
them from Clelia to the man. Fuck with me, or her, and you’re dead.
He was a step away from his ‘suspect’ now. The man with the brown
jacket was probably a holidaymaker, an early riser, attracted by
the helicopter that had landed on the broad end of the jetty. The
stranger now tilted his head, regarding the scene, and then, as if
sensing that he was in danger of having his throat slit for
witnessing what he wasn’t supposed to, he walked briskly in the
direction of the square.
    The woman removed the hood of her rain
jacket. She looked young, fragile, vulnerable, and too damn pretty.
He took everything in with a practiced eye. There were bruises and
cuts on her knees, which stabbed at him like a thorny irritation.
He didn’t like seeing her white skin marred. And he was probably
going crazy because he experienced an unjustifiable sense of
responsibility for those injuries.
    He stopped a step away from her so as to not
intimidate her, aware of the difference in their height. He felt
like a giant next to her. This in itself should have scared the
magic out of his bones, as he had never felt particularly
charitable toward his ‘suspects’ before. She lifted her head and
blinked up at him. For a moment, he didn’t say anything as he
stared down at her. She was too damned delicate. Too damned
perfect. She was like a Japanese bird with skin as white as the
inside of a shiny oyster shell, and her eyes were dark pools of
frightened innocence that brimmed with salty tears. Her nose was
delicate and small, her features beautifully proportioned, but it
was the quivering of her full, bottom lip that caught and held his
eye.
    What the fuck was wrong with him? Resisting
the urge to reach out and trace her lips, wipe her tears with his
thumb and taste the salt of her sadness and fear, he kept his hands
by his sides.
    The SUV pulled up in the road behind them,
and Maya Martin, the team’s hydromancist, got out of the vehicle,
weapons concealed under her jacket.
    Painfully aware of time running out, Josselin
said to her in French, “Clelia d’Ambois. You should have been
called Clelia of the fishermen, not Clelia of the brewers.”
    His words somehow seemed to upset her,
because her expression was wounded.
    “I’m surprised you didn’t call me Clelia the
witch.”
    “Ah, yes. I remember you, little witch.” His
eyes travelled over her. “But you’ve grown up.” When she didn’t
reply, he said, “Do you remember me, Clelia?”
    “I know who you are,” she said.
    Her answer didn’t please him. He wanted her
to say his name, to hear how it sounded on her angelic lips.
Shocked by his thoughts, he frowned, and she must have read
something menacing in his expression, because she took a cowering
step back.
    He tried to keep his voice reassuring when he
said, “I need you to come with me. I need to ask you some questions
about the fires.”
    “Strange coincidence,” she said, her voice
accusing. “You’re the second one this morning.”
    He didn’t like that statement either. “Who
was first?”
    “A journalist from a Paris newspaper. Am I to
take it you work for a television station?”
    He let the sarcastic comment slide. Anyway,
he could see it was all bark and no bite, although, he had to
admire her courage for putting up the show. No one else from his
team had made contact before he had, and the fact that someone else
had approached her was worrisome, but Josselin merely had time to
deepen his frown and his concern before Maya walked up.
    In her typical no-beating-around-the-bush
kind of way, she said, “There’s another fire, Joss. Île de la
Jument. Boss wants you at the site. Details will come through in a
sec.” She nodded in Clelia’s direction. “I’ll take her back to
base.”
    Josselin had a second to register the unease
he felt at leaving