coming. There’s no way for you to escape.”
The phoenix circled once more, before letting out another angry cry and swooping down to the ground. In a swell of flames, she became the white-haired woman she had been before.
To Annie’s surprise, the first thing she did was laugh.
“All right – fine. You got me. I’m not so stupid as to not know when I’m beaten.”
She held her hands up, a smile twisting her lips.
Annie’s first instinct was not to trust her – there was something in her expression she didn’t like at all. Beau swooped down a moment later, shifting back into his human form. Annie could see his own mistrust writ large across his face. He shook his head.
“There wasn’t any need for you to get humans caught up in your mess,” he said, his voice grave. “And the gambling – let me guess, you built your fortune using your telepathic abilities to cheat and influence the games?”
Rosalind laughed. “So what if I did? You think casinos don’t cheat people and rob them blind? What I did was merely redressing the balance a little.”
“Maybe so,” Beau said. “But you still ordered the destruction of an innocent man’s life’s work just because his son owed you money. How is that different?”
Rosalind shrugged. “That young fool shouldn’t ever have gotten involved if he couldn’t balance his ledger. He knew the consequences. You reap what you sow.”
Annie frowned. Even if that were true, how could Rosalind justify her actions? And wasn’t she running exactly the same kind of place here as the casinos she’d just been deriding?
It seemed like she was adapting her outlook to suit herself, no matter what.
“It’s a pity – I liked this body,” Rosalind continued after a moment. “It was quite fun while it lasted. But I don’t intend to spend the time I have left in it in jail. Congratulations – you almost had me.”
Annie blinked. What does she mean?
She could see the confusion on Beau’s face too, at least for a moment, until comprehension suddenly seemed to dawn across it.
“Declan – stop her, she’s going to –!”
Annie gasped, lifting her hand to shield her face as a sudden blast of heat exploded through the room. Parting her fingers to peek through them after the initial heat had died down, Annie saw – Oh my God!
Rosalind’s body was engulfed in flames, flickering and dancing in a long, fearsome column. None of the others in the room could get near her, so intense was the heat. And then, after a moment, there was a loud fwoomp! and the flames died down as quickly as they’d come.
Blinking, Annie cautiously lowered her hands. On the floor where Rosalind had once stood, there was now only a pile of ashes – and two brilliant, long, dazzlingly golden feathers, just like the ones Annie had seen trailing from Rosalind’s tail when she’d been in her phoenix form.
She – she burned up?
Annie didn’t know much about mythical creatures. She’d never even heard of a hippogriff until she’d met Beau. But she would’ve had to have been much more ignorant than she was not to be aware of the legend of the phoenix, the immortal bird that was reborn in flames once it reached the end of its lifespan.
But if she was, uh, reborn, then… then shouldn’t there be a baby around here? Or a little phoenix chick?!
“Dammit,” Beau said, shaking his head. “She was too fast.”
“Not much we could’ve done anyway,” Declan said. “You can’t stop a phoenix from rebirthing.”
“But where did she go?” Annie cut in, walking on shaky legs toward the pile of ash and feathers. “Shouldn’t she still be here?”
Beau shook his head, his expression grim. “No – that’s not quite how it works. When a phoenix rebirths, they rebirth in the nest they first hatched in, no matter where that is or how far away they are from it at the time they end their life cycle. I don’t know how it works, but that’s ancient shifter magic for you. Rosalind could be literally anywhere right now – the next county over, in another country, on the moon. Not that it would really matter.”
“Why not?” Annie asked.
“Because a rebirthed phoenix doesn’t carry any memories from its past life with it,” Declan explained. “Or at least, that’s what they claim. They say the new life really is a new life. So Rosalind, wherever she is now, is just an innocent little hatchling again. We couldn’t arrest her for crimes that, technically,