Flashfire Read Online Free PDF

glimpsed.
    The seats were cushy and upholstered in black velvet. They were scrupulously clean, as if they’d been upholstered just that day. The carpet was black and thick underfoot, unstained as far as she could see. There wasn’t so much as a stray kernel of popcorn. The curtains on the stage looked like real velvet, black with a line of metallic orange along the hem. That line etched the glittering outline of flames.
    Trial by fire. She got it.
    There were sconces spaced along the walls, each looking like a brass bowl that held a flame. Of course, they couldn’t have been real flames, not with fire codes, but they looked real. The temperature in the theater was cool but not cold. It felt like a refuge, both from commercialism and the noisy bustle of Vegas.
    She listened to the audience as they took their seats and murmured to each other. She felt their wonder and knew that Lorenzo had them believing in him even before he began his show.
    Cassie folded her arms across her chest, less willing to be persuaded. All of this magic stuff relied on trickery, on making people look left when things happened on the right, for example. She was determined to see the truth of whatever this guy did.
    Her BlackBerry vibrated again and she glanced at it. Again they had doubled the price they’d pay for shots of those shape-shifting dragons. Melissa Smith’s television show about the
Pyr
must have really good ratings. Cassie scrolled through the message, eyeing the specifications for what they wanted.
    A suite of shots, documenting the change from man to dragon.
    That would be tough to fake.
    Of course, if the
Pyr
were real, the shots wouldn’t be fake.
    Cassie dismissed that possibility. She wondered what the editor would pay for proof that the
Pyr
were a hoax. Well aware of Stacy’s disapproval, Cassie sent a message to ask.
    Her BlackBerry received a reply almost instantly. This story was hot. She wasn’t totally surprised that the editor would pay the same price for proof of a hoax, but was surprised that the price had increased again.
    But where would a person find one of these supposed dragon shifters?
    “Off,” Stacy muttered. “You promised.”
    Cassie turned off the device and put it away. It would be enough money to retire. To leave the business of illusion for good.
    She was surprised by how appealing that idea sounded.
    Cassie was still thinking about that money as the lights began to dim and music started from all sides. The flames in the sconces leapt higher and that line across the bottom of the stage curtains began to glitter.
    As if it were burning.
    A trick, but a good one.
    If she were pretending to be a dragon shifter, where would she hide?
    Maybe, just maybe, in a place where nothing was what it seemed to be.
    A place like Las Vegas.
    Hmm.

    Lorenzo nodded at his staff and strode to his place at center stage, where he would await the rising of the curtains. He fought his awareness of the slow burn of the eclipse, teasing at the edge of his thoughts. He felt the firestorm light for some poor
Pyr
and ignored it, just as he had a hundred times before.
    Even though it was close.
    It was
not
his problem.
    Lorenzo was in the act of donning his top hat when the music swelled. One pair of curtains swept back and the other curtain rose skyward.
    Right on cue.
    Perfect.
    The audience stared at him in expectant awe. Lorenzo had a moment to think that everything would be just fine.
    Then he raised his hand in a welcoming gesture, and the light of his own firestorm sparked from his fingertips.
    Lorenzo was astounded.
    His firestorm launched an arc of fire that illuminated the space between him and a woman in the front row. She was lit suddenly with radiant golden light.
    The audience gasped.
    Lorenzo wanted to swear.
    The woman had been sitting with her arms folded across her chest, reluctant to be impressed. Her skepticism would have made his eye skip over her under other circumstances. The blonde beside her was more