“Oh my god,” I yelled. I broke my way into the throng on the street. Police cordoned off a group of spectators that had gathered to watch as firemen hosed down Into the Woods from the outside. “Let me through!”
“Hey, you have to step back.” An officer stepped into my path, blocking me from the front door. “It’s not safe.” He was young and shockingly attractive, with hair as dark as the soot rising into the night sky.
“My aunt is in there!” I shouted at him. “You have to let me in! Please, you have to get out of my way!”
“I can’t let you do that, it’s not safe. There’s all kinds of structural damage in there. The firemen are inside; they’ll find anyone who didn’t make it out.” He looked me in the eye, and there was something off about him. Familiar—and yet I’d never seen him before. I shivered despite the intense heat.
Raven ran up alongside me. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she hissed, grabbing my arm. She noticed the look in my eyes. “Oh, no. No. I know what you’re thinking. Do not go in there.”
“I have to. She needs me.”
“Skye, there are trained professionals in fire suits. They have gas masks.”
I stared into the flames, looking for the best way in. “But none of them have powers like mine.”
“Skye, you really are crazy, aren’t you? If you go in there without any kind of protection, they’ll come looking for you. What are they going to think if you make it out alive?”
“We’ll just have to change the way they think, then, won’t we?”
Raven squinted at me. “You know,” she said. “I think I may have underestimated you.”
We ran together to the nearest police officer. He, too, had a strangely familiar look to him—but in the chaos of smoke and flame I couldn’t place it.
“Have you ever done this before?” Raven whispered.
“I’m part Gifted. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out.”
The officer looked down at me, the fire reflected in his black eyes. And I stared right back into them. All I had to do was influence his thoughts. Make him forget he ever saw me—or what he was about to see.
His eyes grew vague, far-off. He whispered something I couldn’t hear, and then turned his back to me, walking away in the other direction.
Raven and I looked at each other. I was just as surprised as she was.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Raven said. “I couldn’t even do that. Only the most powerful, the Gifted—”
“Flatter me later,” I said. “I have to go.” I should have felt panicked, but what I felt instead was a fierce determination to save Aunt Jo. And so I did the only thing I could think to do. I ran straight into the fire.
It was just like in my vision. The tin ceiling had peeled back in an evil grin, revealing a mouthful of smoldering wooden beams. Flames licked the walls hungrily, leaving a trail of char and soot in their wake. The floor beneath my feet was so excruciatingly hot, it felt like the soles of my shoes were melting.
But I was half Rebel. And I’d learned how to handle fire ages ago.
As I stretched my hands out, I could feel the cooling liquid silver pour through me, forming a protective barrier of some sort around my skin. Then before I knew it, the barrier erupted into flame itself, creating a fiery suit of armor that somehow kept me cool and dry.
“Aunt Jo!” I called. My vision began to swim, and my eyes watered. “Where are you?” I could hear glass shattering in the distance, and the sound of someone screaming. I booked it in the direction of the screams.
Amid the snap and crash of falling wood, someone called my name. And I used it like a beacon, homing in. I found her crouched behind the counter, with her arms over her head. The fire was closing in around her, jumping out, licking at her arms and legs and face—but remarkably, it hadn’t engulfed her completely. The area behind the counter was untouched by flame. Aunt Jo was okay. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said Aunt Jo was working some similar powers to mine. There were definitely some otherworldly forces in action, keeping the fire from encroaching on the small circle of floor where Aunt Jo sat.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. “You have to get out!”
“I came back here to save some papers!” Her eyes were watering from the smoke, and tears streamed down her face. “But now I can’t get out.” Through the smoke, she stared at the strange force field of fire I’d surrounded myself with. “How are you . . . ?”
“Come on.” I extended a hand to her. “I can get you out.”
Aunt Jo eyed it dubiously, then took a deep breath and grabbed it. The minute she made contact the cooling silver snaked up her arm, spreading over her entire body. The fire-armor enveloped both of us.
“Skye,” she said hoarsely. “You continue to amaze me.”
Together we made our way back through the smoldering store. Firemen were just beginning to pour in, spraying water over the flames. When we came trudging over the doorstep, I focused on the crowd and let my mind penetrate theirs.
Nobody saw us leave.
I took Aunt Jo down the street to her truck, where we knelt on the ground and I grasped her hands in mine—healing her minor scratches and burns with my touch. I couldn’t help but flash back, one more time, to the night when the boiler had exploded at Love the Bean during my seventeenth birthday party. Cassie had knelt beside me in the snow behind her car, clasping my mittened hands in hers. And I had tried to explain how I felt. The panic, the fear—knowing something was happening, that I was changing, but not knowing how or why.
The last time I’d knelt in this spot, I had been so lost, helpless. But as I held Aunt Jo’s hands in mine and felt the power surge from my fingertips into her wounds, closing them, healing them completely, all I could do was marvel at how far I’d traveled since that freezing January night.
I might not have known everything about myself yet, might not have known every bit of truth about my parents, who they were and what they were trying to do. But I knew who I was. I was a force to be reckoned with.
“You saved my life,” Aunt Jo wheezed, looking up at me with a shaky smile.
“And I’d do it again, Aunt Jo,” I said. I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I would do anything for you.”
“There you are!” Raven’s blond hair flew behind her in a sheet of corn silk as she ran to us. “What am I feeling? What is this? It’s not good. I feel . . .” She put a hand on her chest and stopped for breath.
“Worried?” Aunt Jo said drily.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” Raven said. “Come on, I’ll drive us home.” She paused for a second, as if realizing what she’d just said.
Home.
In a way, it was something we were all searching for. I smiled, and then Raven smiled too. She reached out her hands to help us up, and Aunt Jo and I each took one.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile, Raven,” I said as she pulled me to my feet.
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.” But she grinned awkwardly, and I could tell that she was blushing.
Raven got in the driver’s seat of Aunt Jo’s truck, Aunt Jo squeezed in next, and I followed. The blond fallen angel revved the engine. I leaned my forehead against the window and watched the last glowing embers of the fire float up into the night sky, fade to ash, and float away on the wind.
As we pulled away from the curb, the hair on my arms stood on end, and a shiver went up the back of my neck. I looked out the window. A familiar silhouette stood in the shadows, partly obscured by several police cars. He turned to face us as we drove off, and there was no mistaking those flashing dark eyes, the sense that he wasn’t just inhabiting the night—he was a part of it.