by Sonja Bair
There was a patch of grassland to the side of the church that I aimed for and by the time my feet reached the ground, my whole body was shaking from the exertion. I practically dropped David and collapsed into a pile, gasping for air. Sweet, sweet non-smoke-filled air.
“Freya, are you hurt? Where are you hurt?” I felt David’s hands frantically skimming over me, looking for damages. I wasn’t able to reassure him yet; I was still trying to catch my breath. Before I could, the world lit up with light, noise, fire, and a huge boom. David scooped me up in his arms and sprinted away from the building. Sparks rained down from the sky and bits of timber flew by. I looked over David’s shoulder. A massive chunk of roof had collapsed into the church.
David stopped and lowered me to the ground, then knelt beside me. I gradually pushed myself up on my elbows and even more gradually sat up. The church was well on its way to burning down to its foundation. The fire had progressed much faster than a natural fire would have.
“Holy Smokes, Batman! That was a crazy fire.” I whistled through my teeth. David just made a noise of disbelief and shook his head. I took stock of my injuries. Hands cut in several places; a natural human would need stitches, but my supernatural genes should heal it soon. Wings were scratched and bloody, but they, too, would heal quickly. Then I noticed I had red, angry blisters running from the joint where my left wing met my back down to the waist of my jeans. It looked like I had run into something that was on fire, although I had no memory of anything happening. Up until I noticed the burn, I hadn’t felt it, but now it started to throb. I exhaled a long breath. I would have to treat it soon, but it should heal within a couple days. Unfortunately, being supernatural didn’t mean that I felt pain less.
Fire trucks, sirens blazing, poured into the parking lot. I was surprised that it had taken them this long to show up. Was it that they took a long time to show up, or was it that my sense of time had been skewed while fighting to get out of the building?
Pedro and Philip appeared out of nowhere. Philip jumped into professional medical mode and immediately started to look David over for injuries. David shook him off.
“I’m fine. Nothing that won’t heal by itself in a day. Check out Freya. I don’t like the burn down her side. Pedro, get my clothes back by the parking lot. Avoid being seen by the firefighters.”
Philip shifted from David to me and, without missing a beat, pushed back my wing to better see the burn. Pedro, however, seemed to be caught off balance by my new appendages and stood staring at me. I realized that I was very naked on my top half and crossed my arms over the front of my chest.
“Move, Pedro! Now!” The second command worked—Pedro turned and loped off toward the parking lot.
“It’s a second degree, superficial thickness burn. Do you heal at an expedited rate as well?” Philip briefly glanced up at me. I made a noise of confirmation. “It will need to be cleaned and dressed soon, but I’m guessing if you heal like a werewolf, it should be gone within a few days.”
He checked over the front of my wings and then moved on to the back. “You got lucky. Your wings are comparatively thin and have a high surface area. I’m surprised they didn’t get scorched.” I shrugged a shoulder and folded the wings against my back. I got trapped in a burning building by a supernatural who seemed out to get me. Luck was relative. By this time, Pedro had returned with David’s clothes and tossed them his way. David sifted through his clothes, grabbed his button-down shirt, and handed it to me. I closed my eyes, exhaled, and shifted the wings away. I would have to expose them again soon to let the healing happen, but for now, it was better to be fully human. I carefully put on David’s shirt and buttoned it up, mindful to not let the material touch my side. I looked ridiculous, the shirt hanging to my knees and the sleeves flopping way past my hands. I rolled the sleeves a couple of times, but it didn’t help much.
I looked up; David was buttoning on his jeans, still barechested. I realized how naked we both had been in the church and how close we had held each other. I blushed scarlet and looked away. The firefighters were pouring everything they had onto the fire, but even I could tell that it was a hopeless endeavor. The church was gone. Only ashes would remain.
David finished dressing and gently put his arm around me, careful not to touch my burn. He pointed me to the parking lot where we had left his car. Luckily, it was parked at the other end of the parking lot from the fire trucks. But David’s SUV had attracted some attention and a firefighter was standing by the car, marking down the license plate.
Pedro grumbled, “How are we going to explain this?”
I gave a half-hearted smile and replied, “Don’t worry. Let me do the talking and stay a couple feet behind.”
Our small troop trudged up a small gravel hill to the car, and the firefighter caught sight of us. I gave him a little wave. “Hi there. We have some new information for you.”
The firefighter’s jaw dropped when he saw us and he gave us a thorough up-and-down stare. We must have been a rag-tag group; I felt sooty from head to toe. “Are you guys okay? Were you in that fire?”
“Yeah, we got too close. Good thing you yelled at us to stay back or else we would have gotten toasted when the roof collapsed.” I tried for a wobbly smile, but gave up. Honestly, I was a lot closer to crying than smiling and my next move was going to cost me energy I didn’t have. “You told us to not follow that woman, but we didn’t listen. I couldn’t help it. You saw that she was carrying those containers that were probably full of some sort of fire accelerant, and I wanted to be a hero and find the arsonist. You focused on the right thing and told me to stay clear until the fire was contained. But my teenage Asian friends and I got too close to the fire. Good thing none of us got hurt.”
He was a short but powerfully built man, complete with required fireman’s bushy mustache. He watched me carefully, with a touch of confusion on his face. I didn’t break eye contact and pressed on harder. “You were right, this was a crappy night and location for stargazing. We’ll put the telescopes back in our 2002 white Toyota Camry now. I’m glad you got the joke on my license plate. STARLIT.” The fireman rubbed the back of his head and grimaced but didn’t look away. Good. I knew that I was probably pushing too hard too fast, but it needed to be done in a hurry. “Can I have the piece of paper you were writing on? I need it for something.” Without question, he tore out the paper with David’s license plate and handed it to me. I pocketed it. “Thanks. Isn’t it strange how that thirty-year-old Asian woman with black, medium-length hair could disappear so quick? I hope she’s okay even though it looked like she was the one that set the fire. Thanks for letting us go back to the hotel. I really want to go to bed. Oh look, I think you are needed at the fire now.”
I broke eye contact and motioned to the others to hop in the car as quick as possible. The fireman turned away from us and briskly trotted back to the fire. Poor guy was probably going to have a raging headache tomorrow. I sighed. So would I. And I was about to fall asleep on my feet, but we still weren’t out of trouble. We needed to be gone now.
The guys were still standing behind me. “Let’s go.” I jogged to the car and hopped in the passenger seat. The seat beat had barely clicked into place before my eyes closed of their own violation. I heard the other doors open and shut and the car engine start, but I was asleep before David shifted the car out of park.
The rest of the night was a blur. There is a memory of David carrying me out of the car and putting me on a bed. Then a hazing remembrance of Philip gently peeling David’s shirt off my body. And a gasp as someone, I presume, saw the scars that were there before the fire. The pain from cleaning my burns and lacerated hands brought me to consciousness for a few minutes, but then the memories fade after the bandages went on. At some point, I remember arguing with them about waking me up in time to get ready for school, even though they protested that I needed to stay home. And then there was a foggy sense of someone lying down beside me and strong hands softly touching my neck, my ar
ms, and gently smoothing the hair away from my face.
Chapter 13
I awoke to a furious Elin standing at the foot of the bed, holding some of my clothes and a bathroom kit. She was spitting bullets. I bolted up upright, disoriented by my location. David’s house, I finally decided.
“Are you kidding me? Once a day, you are getting attacked by something! I know you heal fast, but this is pushing your luck! Be more careful!” And then she burst into tears. “You scared me, Freya. David called me last night, and I about had a heart attack. Getting trapped in a burning building by a madwoman? How do you do it? You are a high school teacher and just moved to the happiest city in America. Your adventures should be trying out the new bar or hiking a mountain, not nearly getting killed two days in a row!” She threw the clothes at me and glared, wiping away her tears. “I love you. Don’t scare me like this.” She collapsed onto the bed and pulled me into a big hug.
“Ow, ow, ow. The burn still hurts. And my head hurts. And my hands hurt. I love you, too, but let go.” I tried to squirm away, but Elin wouldn’t let me. “Fine. Fine. I promise to never again get stuck inside a burning church, or let myself get clobbered in the head with a piece of firewood, or get into a brawl with two unknown werewolves.”
Elin released me from the hug so fast, I nearly fell over. She burst off the bed and stormed out of the room.
“Which of you mangy, flea-bitten werewolves got in a fight with my sister?” Her roar echoed down the hallway. I buried my face in my hands; this headache was splitting my skull apart. The noise from Elin rose into a crescendo. Shaking my head weakly. I grimaced. Good luck handling that temper storm, Pedro and Philip.
I risked a look at the clock. I had to get ready and be at school in an hour. That would be a rush on a good day, and today wasn’t a good day. While Elin was still reaming into the werewolves, I found the bathroom and raided David’s medicine cabinet for painkillers. I doubted that they would make the pain go away, but hopefully, they would take the edge off.
It would have to be a washcloth bath for the next few days; the thought of a shower on my burn made my body hurt. Luckily, David had a removable showerhead that I used to wash off sections of my body at a time. It took awhile and a lot of body wash before the water turned from sooty black to ashy grey, and after a few minutes to clear. By the time I was mostly done, Elin had calmed down and was sitting on the edge of the tub. I asked her to clean my wings and back since it was difficult to twist my midsection with the burn.
“So what now?” asked Elin while the warm water trickled down my wings. I was trying hard to keep the water in the tub, but my large wingspan made it nearly impossible.
“Go to school. Teach. After that, I don’t know.” I sniffed my arm. I smelled vaguely like pine trees, with a hint of citrus mixed in. David’s smell. Because I was as clean as I was going to get, Elin stopped the water. I heard the pull of fabric off a metal rack as Elin grabbed a towel. She gently started patting down my wings. The towel was plush and absorbent, unlike my old, scratchy towels at home. I could have dried myself off, but I let my sister’s actions tell me how much she loved and worried about me. I dressed in the clothes that she had brought and allowed her to use her own makeup to cover up any visible bruises and draw me some nice eyebrows. I didn’t look my finest, but the kids wouldn’t run away screaming.
There was a soft knock on the door. Philip poked his head in. “Can I take a look at your bandages, Freya? I’d like to redo them before you go to school.”
“Thanks, Philip. They got wet, even with my best efforts.”
He surveyed my bandage and tape before he even touched me. With one precise motion, he peeled off the covering. The blisters which had formed around the edges of the burn were now pink skin. But the middle of the burn still looked nasty; it was red and weepy, with deeper patches of angry crimson. There was a retching noise behind me, presumably from Elin, who beat a hasty retreat out of the bathroom. Philip moved with quick efficiency, spreading the burn cream from David’s first aid kit and re-bandaging it with one smooth motion. He moved on to my hands, which only needed some butterfly bandages. The whole time, he asked me questions about life in San Luis Obispo and comparing it to Santa Fe. The conversation was perfectly pitched to take my mind off what was he was doing. He even got me laughing at one point with some dirty jokes. Philip had a combination of impeccable bedside manners and capable professionalism that was not easy to achieve. He undoubtedly was an excellent nurse practitioner.
Only when I was fully dressed, both in clothes and bandages, and ready to go to go to school did I brave entering the kitchen. I knew there were going to be three werewolves and an overprotective sister waiting to pounce on me with questions and concerns. So I breezed into the kitchen like there wasn’t a care in the world, grabbed a banana from the counter, and carefully placed my purse over my tender shoulder. “Let’s talk after school, shall we? Got to go or else I’ll be late.” I didn’t look back as I bolted out the door.
***
Second days of school are generally much better than the first day. I make it a point to remember as many student names as possible and congratulated myself with about a seventy-five percent success rate with all of my classes. The students were kept busy with a lab about scientific accuracy, which required balancing balls on spoons and then hopping backward. It was a good lab I had done for several years, and most of the kids found it fun as well. But by the end of the day, I was worn out and the pain increased to a roar in my brain. After the last student left my room, I flopped my head down on my desk.
A hand on my back startled me out of a dream about pumpkins. I jerked up and grabbed a pencil.
“Easy now. Don’t stab me with the pencil; I don’t want lead poisoning.”
It was Alrik.
“There’s no lead in pencils. It’s graphite,” I said grumpily.
Alrik ignored my correction and knelt down beside me. “How are you?”
“Fine. Why do you ask?” I was feeling irritable, so I asked the question in my most innocent voice.
Again, he ignored my answer, grabbed my hands, and flipped them over to look at my palms. He removed the butterfly bandages with a quick rip. “Ouch! Give a girl a warning next time.”
There were only faint pink lines on my hands; the cuts had almost completely healed. He made a noise of satisfaction. “Have you heard or seen anything from Jia today?”
No apology and straight to business. That was Alrik’s style. “Nope. And I haven’t heard anything from the police, either.”
“Any talk from the students about the fire?”
“One of my students has an aunt who is an assistant pastor, so she was pretty torn up, but she said that the police seemed to have a lead.”
“I did a little snooping around, and your trick with the fireman seems to have worked. The police have an arrest warrant out for Jia. David and the rest of the werewolves are fully prepped to vouch for your location last night. The story is that you and the rest of the pack drove out to Elin’s house last night to show David’s friends the new ranch house. Elin and Drew are in on the story as well. I checked to see if there were any security cameras and footage, but there weren’t, so we lucked out on that front. No physical evidence seems to have been left at the fire, and no one is reporting seeing you at the scene. I’ll keep up with any findings in the case.”
“Thank you. I don’t want to start out my life in SLO known as an arsonist.” It was nice to have someone on my side who knew how to keep supernatural evidence off the books and the police off our backs. “How did you get involved today, anyway? Why are you in town?”
“Elin called your mom last night, and your mom called me. This sort of thing falls into my role as Arbitrator for the Flock.”
“Oh. Good.” I was oddly a little disappointed by his answer.
“How is the burn?” His sandy-colored eyebrows knit together in concern. He looked up from my hands into my eyes. His tone may have been all business, but
I detected some other emotion registering in his eyes.
“Painful, but getting better. Do you have any ideas about what is going with Jia?”
“I have a feeling that there is more to the story than we are picking up on.”
“I do, too.” I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. “We are missing a piece of the puzzle. She is acting in very deliberate ways, but I can’t figure out the common thread. I would like to get David to do some emotion tracking at the church. Perhaps he can pick up on something that way.”
Alrik stood up. “David is in even more trouble now. Perhaps the Santa Fe Alphas would have left him alone if it was only him, but now he’s forming a new pack, whether he wanted to or not. And from what I understand, the other packs don’t like the precedent he is setting. There may be a werewolf war coming this way. Stay away from him. There’s enough problems with Jia as it is.”
I sighed. We were back to the same argument.
He continued, “Besides, Ambassador Alma was able to get visas for two people from the Sun/Moon tribe to come to America. Another Yin and Yang couple, in fact. They arrive tomorrow. I’ll be staying in town as well, so there is going to be plenty of people on the case. Jia will be brought in soon. You need to focus on staying out of trouble.”
I didn’t say anything but I did give him The Look. He shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, is it?”
“Jia attacked Drew, attacked me, and tried to kill me by burning down a church with me inside. I used to feel bad for her. Now I’m angry. And it’s personal. Don’t try to push me to the side, because it’s not going to work.”