“I’m not afraid, and it’s not the key.” I tried to snap my arm down, but he held firm. Tightness tugged at my chest. I felt cornered, like a rat scrambling to escape a maze with no exit. “We’re talking about a cosmic deity that’s older than time. I’m not going to hurt it with a little flame.”
“That’s assuming what you wield is ordinary fire,” Deborah muttered as she flicked through another book.
“Hazel.” Trey didn’t beg. He knew that wouldn’t work on me. What he did was fix me with an icy stare that said a hundred things neither he nor I knew how to say.
I swallowed hard. Trey let go of my arm. I dropped it into my lap, my fingers instantly pressing into my scar. A tremor started at the base of my spine and shook my limbs. “I’ve been able to call up fire ever since I could remember.”
“And it’s tied to your emotions?” Deborah asked. “How much control do you have?”
I held out my hand. My fingers trembled a little as I summoned a small flame. The orange orb danced on my palm as I moved my hand in a slow arc. Deborah followed the flame with wide eyes.
Trey stepped back, his shoulders rigid. He sunk his hand into Leopold’s fur for comfort.Of course, he’s afraid of fire. Fire took his life and the lives of all his friends. He sees this flame and he remembers smoke filling his lungs and pain burrowing into his skin.
I’d have to be extra careful to keep it in check around him. Luckily, now I had more control.
“I’ve only recently learned how to do this.” I commanded the flame to flare into a column of fire that reached nearly to the ceiling. Deborah’s pen clattered to the floor. Leopold whimpered and barreled for the kitchen. The other dog loped after him. Quickly, I commanded the flame to shrink, and I closed my fist, snuffing it out. “I can control the fire when it touches my body, almost as if it’s an extension of my skin. I can command a fire to start anywhere, or I can give a fire fuel and direct its power. But I had to teach myself how to do that. Before… I had no control.”
That’s putting it mildly.
Deborah clutched the edge of her book so hard her knuckles turned white. “It might be nothing. It might be a coincidence.”
“What is?”
She shook her head. “It’s probably nothing. I’m almost positive I’m wrong, but it’s just too much of a coincidence not to explore further. There’s so much here for you both to take in. I won’t concern you with my theory until I’ve had the chance to run some tests. Trey might be right, Hazel – you may be the most important piece of this puzzle.”
Chapter Twelve
Deborah made up an air mattress for Trey and me in the living room, covering it with more duvets and quilts than was necessary for an arctic winter. She only made up the one bed for both of us, assuming we were a couple. Neither of us corrected her.
What are we?I wondered as I watched Trey peel off his shirt and socks and lay them down in a tidy pile beside the bed.Are we a couple?
I’d never spoken aloud what had gone on with the Kings – Quinn and Trey touching me together during the movie night, Ayaz kissing me in the grotto like he needed me to breathe, and then taking my virginity the night he saw his sister again. Everything in my life was so fragile, so easily burned away to ash. I wanted to hold on to the three of them for a little longer. I wanted to live in the delusion that we all had a future together.
It was as though speaking my desires would take everything away again. Because, of course, I couldn’t keep all three of them. If Deborah was right, I wouldn’t even be able to keep any of them. If I set them free, I’d have to say goodbye three times over, and I’d never even told them how I felt—
I squeezed my eyes shut. No. I wouldn’t accept it. They wouldn’t die on me.
I opened my eyes, my gaze falling on Trey’s face as he punched his pillow. The mattress sank where he lay and I rolled against him.
I bet he’s never slept on an air mattress.
Leopold slunk over and claimed a position on Trey’s feet, pinning him in place. His sister, Loeb, curled into his armpit. Trey tried to shift Loeb toward her brother, and she responded by covering both of us in slobbery kisses. Despite myself, I laughed. Trey looked so ridiculous with his rich-boy pout as he wiped slobber from his cheeks.
“I always wanted a puppy,” he said as he patted Loeb’s head and allowed her to settle back into his shoulder. “Dad wouldn’t allow it.”
Trey rarely offered details about his life. From the way he looked now, like he wanted to claw back the words, I knew this tiny detail had rarely – if ever – escaped before. I took this proffered piece of his heart (I’d say soul, but apparently he didn’t have one) and turned it over in my mind, slotting it into place as another puzzle piece in the mystery that was Trey Bloomberg.
“I bet if Wilhem had asked for a puppy, he’d have got it,” I ventured.
“Yes, but then he’d have forgotten to feed it, or worse – deliberately starved it. Either way, it would die, and neither he nor my father would shed a tear.” Trey’s arms tightened around me, and I felt the tug of a boy who had wanted to love and to be loved.
Wasn’t that what we all wanted? In Trey’s pain, I felt a kinship. I remembered all the nights Dante and I climbed into bed together, warm bodies pressed tight to fight off the chill of freezing Philly winters with no heat. Our breath hung in the air as clouds of mist, my heart rigid and my fingers desperate to explore him. But I was too afraid to destroy our friendship, as if what we had was so fragile that it could be broken with a single kiss.
Turns out, it was.
And that memory made my head fill with images I never wanted to see again. Dante’s fingers laced in her hair, his lips brushing her shoulder. Her leg curled around his back. Smoke curling around them as I—
No.
