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mean?”
    “You know, when he came into his power. How it slipped his control.”
    Actually, I didn’t. Cora had once implied that something had happened, but she hadn’t given me the details.
    “Oh, right,” I said. “I know his family suffered…”
    “Not really. I doubt they felt anything.” Era looked down at the coffee cup she held. “Except his niece. He incinerated the house and everyone and everything in it. I suspect he recognized her at the last moment and tried to pull out.” She shook her head. “I guess she lingered in a burn clinic for months.”
    I swallowed. Oh, Rowan. “Who all was in the house again?”
    “His parents, younger brother, and his sister, her husband, and daughter. I guess they got together every Christmas.”
    I remembered again when Era had burned her arm and Rowan had nearly freaked out. He was the one who told me to take my burn salve to the medical profession. I was trying.
    “It’s always amazed me how he could lose control like that, then go on to become what he is.” Era looked up, meeting my gaze once more.
    “I suspect that is what made him what he is,” I said. A control freak without peer. “He knows what happens when he loses it.”
    The limo had reached the hospital and pulled up near the curb. It had begun to rain on our way over, but that didn’t deter the protesters. Near the far door, a small cluster of rain-soaked folks stood holding their smeared and drooping signs. I had to admire their persistence.
    The limo door opened, and I glanced up to find Marlowe shielding the opening with an umbrella. “Thanks.” I gave him a smile and started to climb out.
    “Let me walk you in,” Era said. “I don’t like the look of that mob.”
    I stopped and glanced back at her. “It’s hardly a mob and what would you do?”
    She arched a brow and her amber eyes took on a metallic sheen.
    “That won’t be necessary. Besides, they don’t let nuts like them inside. Thanks for the ride.”
    “I’ll give you a ride back.”
    “Era—”
    “I insist.”
    I decided not to argue.
    Chapter
3
    I t took the entire elevator ride and the long walk through the sparsely populated hospital hallways to get my mind around what Era had told me. My heart ached for Rowan, but it also made me even more determined to see my burn salve accepted by the medical profession. It wouldn’t help his family, but maybe it would give him some comfort to know that burn victims would no longer have to suffer the way his niece had. I could do that much for him.
    Ian’s concerns on the earliness of my visit proved to be unfounded. I caught Dr. Albright just fifteen minutes before he needed to be elsewhere.
    “Thank you for stopping by,” he said once we’d exchanged greetings and a handshake. “This won’t take long.”
    I sat in the chair across from his desk, an uneasy flutter in my stomach. Why did I suddenly feel like I’d been called to the principal’s office?
    Dr. Albright settled into his chair with an ease that belied his apparent years. He folded his weathered hands atop a manila folder, and his intelligent blue eyes bored into my own.
    “I’ll come right to the point. The last batch of salve you sent us failed to have any positive effect as a burn treatment.”
    “What?” I sat up straighter in my chair. I’d been expecting a request to increase his order, or maybe some repercussions on the questions the protest had raised. This wasn’t anything I’d even considered.
    “The salve failed. We need to—”
    “No,” I cut in. “That’s not possible. My formulas don’t fail.”
    “Miss Daulton, I’m not saying it’s a personal failing, but these things happen.”
    “No, they don’t. I’m a master alchemist; my formulas never fail. That’s what makes me what I am.”
    Dr. Albright frowned. He didn’t look like he bought it, or he thought me the most arrogant person on the planet. Clearly, he hadn’t spent much time around the magical.
    “Something’s