Forgotten Fires

by Sara C. Roethle

  Lucy put a hand on my shoulder. “Unless he's already lost you?” she asked like it was a question.

  I shook my head. “I don't know. It just feel . . . weird. Chase has become one of my best friends, and he's okay with how I handle things.”

  Allison raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about Chase?”

  I snorted. “Oh please, you were both already thinking it.”

  Lucy scrunched her face up in thought. “Do you think Chase would still have that attitude if you got together?”

  I shrugged. “I can't even think about it right now. Jason was protective from the start. We both went into the relationship knowing who the other was. I don't understand why it suddenly became a problem.”

  Allison looked at me like I was being silly. “Are you blind? It was a problem from the start. He's always tried to talk you out of danger. If it were up to Jason, you'd run and hide at the first hint of things going wrong.”

  I hunched my shoulders, feeling miserable. Had that really been the case? “What ever happened to good ol' compromise?” I asked.

  Lucy snorted. “You happened, Xoe. You wouldn't know a compromise if it bit you on the butt.”

  I glared at Lucy, but knew she was right. Compromise wasn't my strong suit, and it apparently wasn't Jason's. Really, most of our problems probably came not from our differences, but from us being too much alike.

  Allison sighed at my expression. “I have to ask, Xoe. Are your feelings for Chase solely based on things being easy with him, about him being willing to compromise with you, or do you actually care about him?”

  I felt the first tears slide down my face. I didn't have time for this. Devin would be here soon, and I needed to shower and get ready to meet with Sasha. I had a murder to solve, for crying out loud. I shouldn't be sitting around crying about boys.

  I stood abruptly and started walking toward the door, ready to dismiss the entire conversation.

  “Just answer the question,” Allison called out.

  I took a deep breath and turned partially to face her with my hand on the doorknob. “I think I love him,” I said finally.

  “And do you love Jason?” she pressed.

  I looked down at the ground, then up again to meet her earnest brown eyes. “Yes.”

  Allison flopped back on the bed with a sigh. “Well, shit.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” I mumbled as I opened the door and escaped toward the bathroom. My suitcase was already in the upstairs hall since I'd needed it to get ready for bed, so I grabbed it and hustled the rest of the way to the bathroom before anyone could stop me.

  Unfortunately I ran into Chase right as he was coming out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. We stood staring at each other blankly for a moment.

  “I, um, forgot to grab my suitcase,” he mumbled.

  I looked down awkwardly as he moved out of the way so I could enter the bathroom. I almost made it too, but the sound of Chase clearing his throat stopped me. I turned to face him again.

  “If you want me to leave . . . ” he began.

  My eyes widened in surprise. “Why on earth would I want you to leave?”

  He blushed and looked down. “I just thought,” he shook his head. “I really don't know what I thought.”

  Confused by his meaning, but not really wanting to push him on it, I raised my eyebrow playfully. “You'll still be here when I get out of the shower, right?”

  “Well somebody has to keep you from getting kidnapped by witches again, so I guess I'm kind of stuck,” he joked.

  I snorted. “I got kidnapped by witches one time. What are the chances of it happening again?”

  “You don't exactly have the best luck with these things,” he countered.

  I laughed, but it sounded weak even to me. Chase left me to find his suitcase, and I was finally able to be alone behind a locked bathroom door. I sighed as I pressed my back against the wall. I had no idea what I was going to do, and I wasn't referring to Claire's murder. For once my biggest problem was one that normal teenagers might face, yet somehow it was more terrifying than all of my demon problems combined.

  Solve a murder? Sure. Lead a werewolf pack? No sweat. Follow my heart, and do what was right for me? Not so much.

  8

  By the time I showered and dressed in jeans and a lightweight, crimson blouse, Devin had arrived to go over our game plan. I would have much preferred a tee shirt, but as my dad had packed my clothes I didn't have much choice. At least I wouldn't feel like a total ragamuffin when I faced Sasha again. The thought of her perfectly manicured appearance almost made me wish I had something more dressy than jeans . . . almost.

  Chase, Devin, and I sat around the kitchen table while Allison and Lucy did homework in Allison's bedroom. At first I'd felt a little smug that I didn't have to do homework too, but my smugness was soon erased by the thought that I wouldn't be getting a high school diploma either. Suddenly homework didn't seem so bad.

  Devin snapped his fingers in front of my face to bring me back to reality. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

  I glared at him, even though I had not, in fact, heard anything he'd just said. I was saved by the bell, as it were, as my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I retrieved it as I stood, turning my back to Devin and Chase.

  Seeing my dad's name on the caller id, I answered the phone without a second thought. “Hey dad, what's up?”

  “It's me, Pop Tart,” Dorrie's voice whispered. “You need to get down here. I'm scared.”

  “Dorrie?” I asked, confused. “Why do you have my dad's phone?”

  “Please come,” she whispered. There was a loud crash in the background, then the line went dead.

  I turned to look at Chase with my mouth agape, feeling sick with the thought that something had happened to my dad, and might at that very moment be happening to Dorrie.

  “We have to go,” I said numbly.

  “Who is Dorrie?” Devin demanded.

  Ignoring Devin, Chase rose and gripped both of my arms in his. “What happened?” he asked calmly. “Where's your dad?”

  I shook my head as the numbness wore off, only to be replaced by the dire need to act. “I don't know,” I tried to say calmly, but it came out more like a sob. “Dorrie was whispering like someone might hear her, and she said she was scared. I think my dad is in trouble. We have to get underground.”

  “But your portals . . . ” Chase began.

  “Who is Dorrie?” Devin asked again.

  “It doesn't matter!” I snapped, answering both of them at once. I looked up at Chase. “We'll just have to go as far into the woods as possible and hope for the best.”

  “What about Sasha?” Devin snapped back, either not understanding the gravity of the situation, or else not caring.

  I took a deep breath to keep from losing my temper. “You meet with her. I have to go.”

  I grabbed Chase's hand and ran out of the kitchen, leaving Devin cursing behind us. Lucy and Allison were coming down the stairs to see what the commotion was, but there was no time for an explanation. I reached the front door, flung it open, and hit the ground running. Chase followed as I circled to Allison's backyard and made my way toward an open expanse of woods, nearly slipping on patches of ice as I went. I ran until my lungs couldn't take anymore of the icy air tearing through them, then came to a skidding halt.

  Chase reached my side, and turned wide eyes to me as he panted. “Are you sure we're far enough? We don't want to hit Allison's house.”

  “It will have to do,” I panted back, looking over my shoulder to see how much space we actually had. The damage done by my portals was fairly localized, at least it had been so far. If the radius remained the same, I shouldn't hit any houses.

  I gripped both of Chase's hands in mine, envisioned my dad's house, and braced myself for the almost-violent feeling of traveling by portal. Just as the world began to shift, Lucy came out of nowhere and grabbed onto our joined hands. I had a moment to look at her in astoni
shment, then we were airborne.

  I felt incredibly dizzy, then we were standing in the middle of my dad's kitchen. Lucy stumbled away from us to throw up in the kitchen sink.

  I glanced around the room cautiously. I would have liked to yell at Lucy for being so reckless, but it would have to wait. Everything seemed still and normal.

  With a nervous look at Chase, we both crept forward. Everything seemed normal in the hallway as well. We walked along in silence, checking each room for my dad, but they were all empty, and there was nothing out of place that I could see. After a few minutes Lucy joined us, looking a little green, but otherwise unharmed.

  The last place we checked was the bathroom, and that was where we found Dorrie. At first I'd thought that the room had been covered in glitter and concrete dust, then my mind put together the pieces. First I saw one glittering hand on the bathroom rug near my feet, then the other pieces began to take shape. I gagged, and almost lost my breakfast on the remains. She'd been shattered. Dorrie had told me once that she was hollow, and didn't have any insides, but I hadn't realized just how true that had been. The pieces of her body looked like pieces of a ceramic mannequin.

  “What is all of this?” Lucy asked, confused.

  She had never met Dorrie. Suddenly the magnitude of the situation hit me, and I spun around. My intent was to run to the kitchen, but I ended up collapsing to vomit in the hallway. The next thing I knew, Chase was there rubbing my back, then helping me to stand once I'd finished.

  I let him pull me in against his chest as I began to sob. A slight trembling took over my body, and I felt my legs give out. Chase gripped me tighter and kept me standing, then I felt Lucy's arms grab me from behind as Chase handed me off. It was an awkward position, as Lucy is several inches shorter than me, but she managed.

  I watched numbly, tears streaming down my face, as Chase bravely went back into the bathroom. It wasn't right. I'd seen death before. Heck, I'd caused death before, but it had never been someone that I cared about. I'd only known Dorrie for less than a month, but her death hit me like a semi truck.

  Shaking my head over and over, I pushed away from Lucy to stand on my own. If Chase could bear to look at the scene, then so could I. I owed Dorrie that, at least.

  I stumbled back into the bathroom, gagging again as the scene came into view. The majority of Dorrie's parts had ended up in the bathtub. She must have been hiding behind the shower curtain when they found her. But who were they? As I watched, Chase reached down into the basin and lifted my dad's glitter and dust covered cell phone into his hand.

  “Why would anyone want to hurt her?” I asked weakly.

  Chase shook his head as he began pushing buttons on my dad's phone. “I don't know, but your dad was making a lot of phone calls over the past hour. Whatever happened went down right before Dorrie called you.”

  “You're saying this was a person?” Lucy asked, gesturing at the dust as she came to stand beside me.

  “More than a person,” I replied. “She was my friend.”

  A look of grim determination came across Chase's face as his eyes met mine. “We'll find who did this, Xoe, but first we need to find your dad.”

  “Where do we start?” I asked weakly.

  Chase put my dad's phone in his pocket, then moved to guide Lucy and I out of the bathroom. “I recognize the last number your dad called,” he explained as we went. “We'll start there.”

  “We have to take Lucy back first,” I argued as we followed Chase down the hall.

  “I'm not going back,” Lucy argued. “I can help.”

  “There's no time regardless,” Chase replied without looking back at us.

  I lunged forward and grabbed Chase's arm to make him face me. “What aren't you telling me?”

  Chase's expression was calculating. “The last number your father called was the Wizard.”

  I shook my head. “Is that some sort of Lord of the Rings reference?”

  “Wizard of Oz,” Chase corrected.

  He started walking again, and soon we'd gone through the front door and out onto the street.

  “Who is the Wizard?” I panted as I tried to keep up.

  Lucy followed close behind me, looking around nervously. We weren't supposed to bring non-demons underground, and it was seriously a bad idea to let Lucy follow us out in the open, but we couldn't very well leave her at my dad's house. Not after what happened to Dorrie.

  “He's a record keeper,” Chase explained. “Or at least, he's supposed to be. Really he deals in black-market information.”

  “So he might know where my dad is?” I asked hopefully as we hurried along.

  We were taking mainly back streets, avoiding the more populated areas of the demon city. Lucy sniffed the air frantically, glancing over her shoulder at every sound.

  Chase nodded, but didn't look over at me. “He was the last person your father called, so at the very least we can find what information he was looking for. The Wizard's services come with a high price, so whatever it was, it was important.”

  I stepped to the side as a normal-looking demon child went running past us, oblivious to our dire situation.

  “If his services are so pricey,” I panted, “then how will we get him to tell us anything?”

  Chase shook his head. “He'll talk. He'll make it a miserable experience, but he'll talk.”

  I wanted to stop Chase so that he would actually look at me, but I knew we couldn't spare the time. “How do you know he'll talk?” I asked instead.

  Chase didn't answer, but kept walking forward, clearly a man on a mission.

  “Chase!” I rasped.

  “He's my brother,” he snapped.

  I was so shocked that I stopped walking, causing Lucy to run into my back as she was too preoccupied looking at our surroundings. When Chase didn't stop, I had to jog to catch back up.

  “Say that again?” I said as I reached him.

  “He's my brother,” he repeated, but not like he liked it.

  “How did I not know you had a brother?” I questioned. As far as I knew, Chase had mostly grown up on his own.

  “You never asked,” he said as he turned down a dark alleyway.

  “That's not the type of thing I should have to ask to know,” I whispered, feeling the need to be quiet in the unnervingly quiet alley.

  Chase stopped in front of a dilapidated door in the brick of a tall building. Before I could press him further, the door opened inward without us even having to knock. Chase took a deep breath, then walked inside. With a nervous glance back at Lucy, I did the same.

  “First the father, now the daughter,” a voice called out from the darkness within the building. The air of the place was ice-cold, and smelled like the inside of a cave.

  “We could do without the spooky atmosphere, Sam,” Chase said tiredly.

  A light switched on, revealing someone who looked eerily like Chase, except that the color of his eyes was almost white, making the pupil look like it was stranded in the middle of each of his eyeballs.

  “Oh you're no fun,” he chided.

  He stepped closer to reveal that his irises were in fact white, and his face was slightly more masculine than Chase's with a wider jaw and larger brow.

  “Why did Alexondre call you?” Chase asked impatiently.

  “You know my information comes with a price, brother,” Sam countered as he circled us like a shark.

  “You owe me,” Chase replied through gritted teeth.

  Lucy let out a small yip as Sam poked a finger into her side like he was testing whether or not she was real.

  “It's not very smart of you to bring a werewolf down here,” Sam commented casually, making Lucy gasp.

  Chase sighed. “Just tell us what we want to know, and we'll all be out of your sight in no time.”

  Sam tsked at him. “I've been waiting all of this time to meet the illustrious Alexondra. I've heard so many interesting things. I don't want you out of my sight in no time.”

  �
�We can get together for tea later,” I cut in sarcastically. “Right now, I need to find my dad.”

  Sam stopped his circling to stand in front of me. He was a few inches shorter than Chase, which put him at about 5'10”. “I can help you with that, but nothing is free.”

  “What do you want?” I snapped.

  “Well I see the rumors of your ill temper are true,” he commented. “I want you to owe me a favor.”

  “No,” Chase said sternly at the same time I said, “Fine.”

  Sam looked between the two of us irritably. “Which is it, no or fine?”

  “I'll owe you the favor,” Chase replied before I could answer.

  “Nope,” Sam said cheerfully. “I want my favor from Alexondra. She holds a little more sway down here than you do. Plus, brother, you've proven time and again that you are not terrible reliable when it comes to favors.”

  I looked up at Chase, whose face had set into angry lines. “You wanted me to extort other demons for money,” he countered coldly.

  Sam smirked and turned to me. “What about you Alexondra, are you squeamish about extortion?”

  I smiled sweetly at him. “No extortion, no violence. You give us information now, and I'll give you information in the future.”

  “He already has access to everyone's information,” Chase explained, but Sam held up a hand to stop him.

  “No, no,” Sam replied with an odd smile. “I like these terms. If I help you now, I can come to you at any point in the future, be it in a week, or in a year, and you will have to answer a question truthfully in any setting I deem fit. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  I didn't like the way he had worded the terms so specifically, but I was more than ready to get out of the dank smelling building to find my dad. With how things had been going, I probably wouldn't live long enough for him to collect on his side of the deal regardless.

  Chase bit his lip in frustration, but didn't argue.

  Sam took a step back from us and closed his eerie eyes. Suddenly the energy in the room picked up, and barely perceptible, shadowy forms began to creep forward from the corners of the room.