Firebug

by Lish McBride

  Lock supported me with both arms now, keeping me steady as I peered at Venus. I was suddenly so tired. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. To collapse where I was and let Lock handle the rest. But it wasn’t his job.

  It was mine.

  “Just one last time, cupcake,” he whispered, his lips moving against my cheek.

  “Pull the tree back,” I said, my words thick and slow. I could do this. Oh how I hoped I could do this. Because if I went nova, I was taking everyone here with me. But I trusted Lock. I had to. This was going to end tonight—I’d promised myself that earlier.

  The tree released her, and Venus was coherent enough to catch herself on her hands and knees. So I knew she was awake. I knew she felt it when I started.

  The flame was slow. I was fighting exhaustion, wind, and soggy tinder, after all. That didn’t stop it; at this point nothing short of my death would stop it. This fire had been a long time coming. I kept seeing flashes of memory—the bloodied back seat of a car, the chant of cicadas as my mom fought for her life, the warmth of her lap when she held me. Her laughter. Her voice as she told me stories while we hid in cheap motel rooms. The way she looked when she saw Cade, like she was lit up from the inside, not like a candle but a beacon, a lighthouse, the blaze of a forest fire.

  I thought of these things and I burned. Venus screamed. I’m positive. But that wouldn’t save her. Nothing would. Like I said, that flame was a long time coming.

  It was the kind of spark that you put so much of yourself into that you lose control. Later I would realize that if Lock hadn’t been there, I really would’ve gone nova. There would have been nothing left of half the damn island, probably.

  But Lock was there. And the flame didn’t stop until I heard his voice, soft in my ear.

  “Enough, Aves. Enough.”

  18

  SCORCHED EARTH

  THE TRIP HOME is only snapshots—short flashes of vision sandwiched between long stretches of darkness. The jarring, rocking motion of being carried as someone ran. Blackness of trees outlined against a red sky. The charcoal and earth smell of a forest fire. Then rain. So much rain. Me shivering from the cold of it.

  Then nothing for a long time.

  I WOKE UP in Grandma Rose’s cabin, which is not really where I expected to wake up. I’d rated a bed this time, a somewhat dubious honor. Across from me, a battered and bruised Cade slept. I felt a tension in me ease at the sight. A rather scruffy Lock dozed in a chair by the window. He snored softly, and I smiled. I sobered when I saw who was perched on the end of my bed, glowering at me.

  “Hello, Angela,” I said warily. “To what do I owe this honor?” My voice rasped, dry from abuse.

  Lock’s mom was the only one who hadn’t been beat with the exhaustion stick. She sat there, goddesslike, and examined me. Her lips were pursed, and I don’t think she liked what she saw. “You could have killed him, you know. If things hadn’t gone well.”

  “I know.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I sat there. The silence stretched between us, getting thinner by the second. Was I supposed to apologize? It would come out false. I felt bad for endangering my friends, but given the same situation, the same choice, I’d do it again in a fast minute.

  “You nearly killed yourself.” She gestured toward me. “As it is we had to borrow clothes from one of the girls to fit you, you lost so much weight.” Her disapproval was almost palpable.

  “Thank her for me.”

  She folded her hands primly in her lap. “There’s no way to get you to understand the magnitude of what just happened, is there? To get you to realize how close you all were to destruction? The fox hasn’t even regained consciousness yet.”

  “What happened to Ezra?” My voice cracked. “Is he going to be okay?”

  She poured me a small glass of water. “Rose says so, and I trust her judgment. He’ll have a long road ahead of him. With proper care…” She trailed off.

  “Proper care? He’s a were-fox. Why would he need proper care?”

  “He stepped in a trap with a high silver content. The silver is slowing the healing process. We had to cut away some of his calf—the silver had turned the flesh necrotic. We’re not sure how long he was in that trap before Ikka and Olive pulled him free, but he’d lost a great deal of blood. He’s quite lucky he didn’t lose his leg. He’ll have a scar, but he’ll regain use of the leg if he listens to Rose.”

  I closed my eyes. “Poor Ez.” I tried propping myself up on some pillows, noticing as I did that Angela was right—I had lost a lot of weight. I could feel my hip bones through the thin blanket. “You accuse me of not getting it,” I said as I struggled. “But I think you don’t get it.”

  “What don’t I understand?” she said, her hands returned to her lap, her face clearly set to “humor the patient” position. “Pray, enlighten me.”

  “You think I wasn’t aware of what the risks were—that I’m still not. But I was fully aware of my chances.”

  “And you did it anyway?” she said, a faint hint of disgust apparent in her curled lip.

  “Yup.” All my wiggling made my pillow fall off the bed. Damn.

  She threw her hands up in frustration before getting up and snagging my pillow from the floor. “Here, let me help you. You’re just making things worse.” She gently pushed me forward and jammed the pillow behind me before sitting on the bed, this time closer to me. She reached down to adjust my pillow and pull my blanket up.

  “Let me make this clear, then. I take protecting my family very seriously. You endanger it again, and trust me, it won’t end with a nice, friendly chat.”

  This was her version of friendly? I didn’t want to see her furious, then. I crossed my arms and sank back into my pillow. “I take protecting my family seriously too.” My voice softened, whether with weariness or residual fear I’m not sure. “Venus would have killed Lock eventually, you know,” I said. I was sure of that. He wouldn’t have remained in Venus’s employ unscathed for much longer. He was too soft. Too nice. She saw that as weakness. I didn’t remind Angela that Lock had become a tithe to spare her and the other dryads. Maybe she was fine with playing dirty, but I saw no reason to do so.

  But even though I was talking about her son, trying to appeal to her maternal side—the part of her maternal side that didn’t want to eviscerate me like the right hand of Shiva—she looked at Cade instead. Her face lost its angry hardness. Her lip uncurled and her posture relaxed.

  “I suppose saving your father was as important to you as my son is to me. In my anger I forgot that you had family at stake as well.” She gave a long sigh. “And my son no doubt chose to throw himself into the fray with you.” She smiled softly. “He’s like his father in that way. Never could pass up a damsel in distress. You know, when we met—”

  “Guardian,” I said, smoothing the blanket over my lap.

  “Excuse me?” she said, startled by the interruption.

  “You said ‘saving your father’ just now. Cade is my guardian. Family, yes. Related, no.”

  We stared at each other; Lock muttering in his sleep was the only sound in the room. And she just kept staring.

  My stomach plummeted. “He’s not my father,” I said. “He’s just … Cade.”

  She rested a hand over the one I had wrapped around her wrist and the image of her was suddenly blurry as my eyes welled. “You didn’t know?” she asked.

  I couldn’t take the gentleness in her voice. Suddenly I wanted her to go back to being overprotective and rude. That I could handle.

  “He’s not my father,” I said again. “It’s not possible. I’ve done the math—my mom wasn’t anywhere near Cade for at least a year before she had me.”

  She patted my hand. “And who gave you that time line?”

  “My mom. Cade.”

  “And who told Cade?”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but my throat became ever drier. “Mom.”

  “And who told you when your birthday was? Humans like to g
ive out those little pieces of paper when their babies are born. We had to get one for Lock so he could go to school. Do you have one of those?”

  “A birth certificate,” I said. Angela helped me take a sip of water. “I don’t have one.”

  “So really,” she concluded, putting the glass down, “all you have is your mother’s word for it.”

  I could feel the tears falling as I shook my head. “No,” I said. But in my mind I was already tallying evidence in favor of her statement. I’d always wanted Cade to be my dad, but as I grew older I was sure my mother would have told me if he was.

  I mean, why wouldn’t she?

  And then it hit me: She’d lied to us for the same reason she’d left him. To protect him, of course. Even from me. Because if we’d ever been captured, my mom couldn’t trust a child not to tell. And what you didn’t know, you couldn’t be tortured for. She was trying to protect both of us—I knew that. But it still felt like a stab in my chest.

  “It’s in the little pieces—but then, when isn’t it? The shape of your chin, your nose. Over the years, I’ve become quite good at these things. May the rot take me if I’m wrong, but I’m not. That man is your father as sure as the oak grows.” She tilted her head the way a curious squirrel does sometimes. “Neither of you guessed?”

  I shook my head. At least, I didn’t think Cade had guessed, and I was positive my mom hadn’t told him. If she had told him, he wouldn’t have stood back and let her run on her own. Not Cade. He would have taken on the entire Coterie for us without even thinking about it. So, of course, she’d lied to him. She would have done so easily—anything to keep him safe.

  I sobbed then, and Lock’s mom, who mere moments before had wanted to throttle me, held me while I cried.

  WE STAYED at Grandma Rose’s for a few days. Most of our injuries would heal on their own, but we needed the rest. Ezra soon woke, asking for food and demanding that all of us do his bidding. He had color in his cheeks and he looked better, but he still couldn’t walk without help. Ryan was also a wreck. Venus had held him in thrall for several days, and she’d really done a number on him. Rose said it was like watching someone come down off of heroin. He was shaky. Sick. Sometimes screaming. I sat there and listened to it, even though it hurt.

  I was only allowed to see Ryan once after he woke up, before Sid and Ikka took him home. Ryan had missed some school and he’d probably get into trouble, but at least he was alive. I kept telling myself that as I stared at him. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost weight. Venus had been feeding off him, obviously, and I’m not sure she’d been doing too good of a job making sure he ate too.

  Deep, poisonous-looking bruises bloomed under his eyes. Someone had brushed his hair and cleaned him up, but you could tell he didn’t care.

  “Why?” I asked. “I want to ask if it was all a lie, if you ever liked me at all—but that might sound pathetic, and really, you won’t be honest anyway.”

  “Ava—” he said, reaching a hand out. When I made no move to take it, he dropped his hand into his lap.

  “So I’m just going to stick to ‘why’ and leave it at that. I don’t think it’s asking much after what you put me through.”

  He looked away, the walls suddenly becoming really interesting. “My biological mom’s a selkie,” he said. “She got her skin back and left a long time ago. My mom, the one I call my mom, is actually my dad’s second wife.”

  Growing up, Lilia had told me stories about selkies. They looked like seals but could strip their skins and become human. In a lot of those stories, someone managed to steal the skin and hide it, trapping the selkie. Someone like Ryan’s dad, apparently.

  “I’ve only seen her once since she left. She walked out of the water, took one look at me, and realized that I take after my dad. Human,” he spat. “She told me I was suited for land and had to stay where I was. Then she left. No apology, no tears, nothing. She just walked out.” He looked down at his hands as if he could change them if he stared long enough. “I just want what you have.”

  Creatures bred with humans—not a lot, but it happened. Sometimes the child took after the human parent. While I hated what being a firebug had done to my life, how would things have been if I had taken after my human parent? Knowing about a world, being able to see and touch it, but never being part of it. I’m not sure how I would have felt. I would be normal, but not like my mom. Sometimes it felt like my sparks were all I had left of her.

  “A couple months ago, I heard about the Coterie from another kid like me—another dud half-breed. And I went to them,” Ryan continued, snapping me out of my reverie. “When I said where I was from, Venus told me about you. What you were.”

  Venus must have felt like she’d struck the jackpot. A pretty human boy offering himself to her, the perfect bait for her wayward firebug. “So I was your ticket in?”

  He curled his fingers, making loose fists. “I was supposed to watch you,” he said.

  “Spy, you mean.”

  He shrugged, as if one word were exactly like the other.

  “If you were just supposed to spy, why take me to the Inferno? Why drug me?”

  “Venus changed her mind—wanted me to bring you in unprepared. I thought maybe if I could give her more, it would speed up my initiation, so I said sure. Then everything went sideways, and I was supposed to help salvage it. Get you drunk. Make you more compliant and bring you back down to fix things. Only you don’t drink. There was no way to get you to drink.” He wrapped his hands around his shins, using his knees as a pillow. “And you kept trying to leave,” he said, his voice quiet.

  “So drugs seemed like a good solution.”

  “You kept trying to leave! You wouldn’t listen! Wouldn’t do what I said.” His voice got louder with each statement.

  I closed my eyes, like somehow that would stop the answer coming next. “The earrings? Were they bugged?”

  “Brittany’s idea. She’s like me. Her dad’s an incubus, but she bred human.” The room fell silent as we studied each other. “We thought things would go better if we worked together.”

  “Well, you wanted to be a monster, Ryan. I’d say mission accomplished.” I cupped my hands in front of me and called a spark, willing Ryan to not notice how it sputtered when it came to life. I was still worn thin from Venus.

  “I almost lost everyone I love just so you could join the supersecret clubhouse.” My flame got bigger. “You…” I shook my head. “You know what? I’m not going to waste my breath on you.” I made the flame shift hotter so that he could feel the warmth of it, even curled in the corner of his bed. “Except to say this: If you ever come near me or mine again, I’ll make you understand just how human you are. Understand?”

  He didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes and turned his face away from me. I’d made my point, so I let the flame go out. I wondered if he’d ever be close to the old Ryan again, or at least what I thought of as the old Ryan. Who knows what he’s actually like. No matter what, he’d never be the same. He’d have nights where he’d wake up in a cold sweat, screaming. He’d dream of fire. Of blood. Venus would be the goddess she was named after. I’d be the dark thing trying to pull him into the cellar.

  Ryan was tainted now.

  I made for the door, but the sound of his voice made me turn back to him.

  “He’ll come for me.”

  “Who?” I asked, my hand on the knob.

  “Owen. He’ll come for me.” Ryan wrapped his arms around himself and hugged tight. “Owen will take me to her. I won’t go back. Not to my father’s. I can’t.”

  A chill crept through the room. “She’s dead, Ryan. Venus is dead.” So was Owen. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that. Not yet. He wouldn’t believe me anyway. “And you are going home. Back to where you belong.”

  When Lock carried me out of the forest that night, I’d seen the bright orange blaze in the sky. I hadn’t realized what it meant at the time: Owen had gone nova. Venus’s death was too much for him. He’d
been her pet, and without his master, he’d skipped the slow-pining-to-death thing and gone straight to self-immolation.

  Owen hadn’t had a Lock to stop him. He’d only had an Alastair to put out the flames before the whole island went. A wave of gratitude for my friends welled up in me. My new ones. My old ones. My oldest one. I would be dead without them all. I guess sometimes it pays to let people get close to you.

  But, then, sometimes it doesn’t. I left Ryan mumbling to himself in Grandma Rose’s bedroom. I didn’t know who he was talking to, but it wasn’t me. It would never be me again.

  I got all the way outside before I realized that he’d never once said he was sorry. It was probably the most honest conversation we’d ever had.

  19

  THE MORE THINGS CHANGE …

  ALISTAIR GAVE ME a whole week off to recuperate. I guess almost dying doesn’t buy you much time in the Coterie. I’d thought my part in the organization was done. No Venus, no pact. But I was wrong.

  At the end of the week I received a summons from Alistair: My presence was requested at the Inferno. I thought about ignoring it, but then I remembered how Alistair had looked walking across that clearing, storm clouds building up behind him, his short hair whipping in the wind as lightning flashed and thunder crowed.

  Ignoring him probably wouldn’t work out well. Cade drove me down in the pickup. Angela had told him that he was my dad before we left her forest. We’d been sort of dancing around each other all week. We hadn’t been able to talk about it yet. I think we were still processing. All those years I wanted to meet my dad and now here he was and I didn’t know what to do. And knowing each other so well was actually making it more awkward. We already had a set relationship—a nice, comfortable one—and now that had suddenly shifted. And since there was no bookshop to go to anymore, there was nothing to get between the awkwardness and us.