"Thank me by finding out how that bastard got a cross bow and white ash in here. I thought we had spells set in the foyer to detect such things?"
"We do, but all spells can be countered if you know how." What they had to find out is how someone like Lenny, who had no apparent knowledge in magical law, had managed it. And what his connection to Nadia might be. Michael had no doubt that there would be a connection. Two attacks, both using magic to get around the spells interwoven in this building, and both performed by people with no talent in magic—that was more than just a coincidence.
"You need a hand up?" he added, offering Jon a hand.
Jon's good hand clasped his, and Michael hauled him to his feet. "You'd better head to medical for a checkup, just in case those arrows were tipped with something." Jon nodded and walked away. Michael pulled back from Nikki and brushed the sweaty strands of dark chestnut hair from her forehead. Her skin still burned with the heat of the flames she'd directed at Lenny.
"You'd better get down to medical, too."
She raised an eyebrow. "You're not coming with me?"
His smile was grim. "I have a vampire to question."
Surprise and relief flitted through her eyes. "Then he's not dead?"
"No." And he was no longer screaming. Either he was unconscious or the flames had stopped eating his flesh—though this second option suggested that Nikki had retained some control over her fire. It had not been so when the flames had first appeared in the sewers of San Francisco. Then, they'd cindered all that they'd touched. "Did you mean to kill him?"
"No."
"Then that's surely a good sign that the lessons have been of some use."
"Perhaps." Her expression was dubious as her gaze searched his. "But how did I raise the fire when this room is supposed to be a psychic dead-zone?"
"The fire must fall into the zone of personal magic rather than psychic abilities. Same as the connection between us must be personal magic."
Her frown deepened. "I thought personal magic was something you were born with. My pyrokinetic skills are a leftover from the time the flame imps inhabited my body."
"Suggesting, perhaps, that for the brief time they were in your body, they became a part of you spiritually."