Singe

by Casey Hays

  He doesn’t question me further. Within seconds, his compelling force flows in. It’s a waterfall rushing downward, taking over each molecule, each pore, each crevice and motion and rhythm of all my parts. The shutters close in around me and my own skin tightens, smoldering out my fire, and I sense the “me” I’ve always been rising up within my bones, familiar.

  My exhaustion magnifies, weighing me down, but it feels good to be human. To know I’m going to sleep—hopefully dreamlessly. I embrace the ordinary. Kane sits still, a hand propped on his thigh, watching the Fireblood in me disappear into the human girl. I crawl around him, giving him a quick kiss on the lips before I settle in, snuggling deep into the folds of the bed.

  “Sleep tight,” he whispers, patting my leg.

  “I plan on it.”

  I don’t remember anything after this.

  Seventeen

  It’s well past noon when I wake. I roll onto my side, reaching for Kane. He’s gone. But the sound of steaks sizzling in a skillet fills my ears. I sink deeper into the mattress as the air floods with charred deliciousness, and everything is wonderful for this one minute.

  Another ten minutes, and I force myself out of bed. I’m a little groggy, but I feel rested too. Finally. I glance at the nightstand clock. I’ve been asleep for six hours. Beautiful, mindless sleep.

  I shower, dress, and saunter into the kitchen, running a comb through my wet hair. Kane, spatula in hand, tosses me a dimpled smile, flips the steaks, and wipes his hands on a towel.

  “How are you feeling?” He kisses me.

  “Good,” I take a seat on a barstool across from him, dropping my comb to the side. “I needed a nice, long dreamless nap.”

  I twist my ring once, drawing Kane’s attention to it. I placed it right back on the second I got out of the shower. Kane is fully camouflaged too, and a strange sense of relief at seeing this washes over me. It brings things down a notch. Takes me back to Carson City just a few weeks ago when this is who Kane and I were. A couple of awkward kids navigating through our ordinary teenaged lives. I buckle my lips together with a sigh. Kane knits his brows and adds a dab of salt to the meat.

  “I take it you’re leaving your ring on,” he says.

  “Maybe.” I study it, shifting my hand so that the light catches the ruby just so. “How long have we been here?”

  “It’s Wednesday.”

  That’s it? It’s been two days since Rylin left with his dad? It seems like ages.

  Kane slaps a steak on a plate along with a side of fried potatoes and slides it over to me. Its aroma wafts up, making my mouth water.

  “Any news about Rylin?” I try to sound indifferent as I cut into my meat. But this is easily becoming our question of the day.

  “Nope.”

  I lift my fork, pausing a few inches from my lips. “I think we need to find him.”

  Kane doesn’t answer at first. He prepares his own plate, runs water in the skillet, and skirts the bar to sit down next to me, his plate clinking against the marble.

  “How are we supposed to do that?” His voice is flat.

  I know he wishes I’d just forget about this. In his mind, Rylin abandoned us. The end. But Kane wasn’t in my head last night; he can’t know what I experienced. And maybe that’s the only thing that keeps him silent.

  “Do you know where Headquarters is?” I ask.

  “That’s not a good idea.” He eyes me. “And we don’t even know if he’s there anymore.”

  He’s right. I chew on my first bite, letting the juices consume me for a minute.

  My dreams have me walking in a circle that keeps getting wider and wider with each step while taking me nowhere. My head gets more wacked every night, my brother sits in a cell waiting for me to get my crap together, and this business with Rylin?

  Don’t even get me started.

  But… Rylin is in trouble. I know this in my gut… and in my dreams.

  “Rylin is trying to reach me.” I pick through my pile of potatoes with the tongs of my fork. “I know he is.”

  “Okay.” Kane blinks his long iridescent lashes at me, and his tone is more than a little exasperated. “So what do you want to do?”

  I lay my fork against the side of my plate.

  “Find him,” I repeat.

  His whole face tightens.

  “He left, Jude.” And here it comes.

  “Because he was forced to.”

  “Everyone has a choice.” He stabs at a potato. “He made his, and you’re making yourself crazy worrying about him.”

  I let his words wash over me, but then Rylin’s voice, the way he trembled, the blood running down his face—all of it flashes through my memories, and I can’t just let it go.

  “The night of our fight back in Carson City?” I hate bringing it up, and Kane turns quickly, not liking that I mention it either. I’m not sure where my brain is headed yet, but somehow, revisiting that night matters. “I was thinking about you as I fell asleep. Hoping that you would show up so I could make you see why we needed to run.”

  The muscle in his jaw works as he attempts to hide his emotions. We come to the same thought at the same time. I read it all over him, from his tense shoulders to his taut lips.

  “You want to fall asleep thinking about him,” he jabs.

  “You know what I mean. To find him, I need to deliberately let him in.”

  “I don’t like it.” It’s hard to tell if he’s angry or sad until he throws out the rest of his thought. “It’s like… sharing you with him.”

  We’ll go with more sad than angry. I open my mouth to protest, to assure him once again that there’s nothing to fear, but he holds up a hand, beating me to it.

  “No, I get it. It’s not the same with him. You’ve said it a million times.”

  “And you still don’t believe me.”

  “No… it’s not you. It’s—” He gathers his thoughts. “I know you love me, and I know I don’t have to worry. I mean, you had ample time with him in Portland, and if something were going to happen…”

  His voice trails on a sour note, and for a minute, I have to work to keep myself planted on this stool. Because everything in me wants to end this conversation right now and storm off before it gets really heated.

  “I’m not stupid, Jude,” he whispers. And his suddenly quiet demeanor holds me in place. “I know you’re a lot closer to Rylin because of the Portland trip. I know he’s important to you. I just… I don’t like him being in your head or your dreams, and I definitely don’t like you talking about deliberately letting him in—even when it’s necessary. I’m never going to like it.”

  I look at him. Every single word he just said is spot on. So spot on that I let my anger pass over me. I don’t feel the need to respond. I just let it be what it is.

  There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought twice about blocking Rylin from my head if I could, and now, I’d give anything to hear that Irish accent one more time inside my head and know for sure it was him behind the voice—alive and safe.

  “Do you think it’s that simple?” Kane asks, and I sense a warming to the idea in his voice. “That all you have to do is visualize what you want, and it happens?”

  “Maybe.” I abandon my meal and twist on the barstool until my knees bump up against his thigh. “How does an invite feel?”

  He frowns in thought, running the handle of his fork through his fingers a couple of times before dropping it. “It kind of feels like… indigestion at first.”

  “What?” I laugh.

  “Yeah, like a tug in your chest that burns. And then, for me anyway, a tunnel opens. If I walk into it, just a few inches, I can see the other end. And then, it kind of becomes real. Solid, you know? In a dream kind of way, I guess.”

  “What’s on the other end?”

  “Depends on whose dream it is.”

  He props his elbows on the bar’s edge and leans a cheek against his clasped hands, and Mindy Cantwell comes to mind. The girl who’s been
after him for years. I feel my own jealous growl. Kane lifts a brow. Okay, he did that on purpose. Message received.

  “When we were trying to get that damned tracker out of my neck,” he continues, “There were roses everywhere. They kind of spilled into the tunnel, sticking to the walls and stuff. I could smell them. They were wet with little droplets of water.” He nudges me, a crooked smile slipping in. “And suddenly, I popped up in the middle of a field of roses, and there you were, smelling just like them.”

  I smile. He spins the stool, situating one of his knees between mine and leaning in.

  “When you dreamed about that hearing…” He lets off a shudder, reliving it. “The tunnel was black at first. Pitch black. I didn’t want to go in. I was kind of angry, so the tunnel felt angry… and then scary. And then…” He pauses, trying to remember. “Yeah… I do remember smelling wet roses.”

  “I don’t remember any roses in that dream. There was nothing pretty about it.”

  “Nothing but you,” he states. You’d think I’d be beyond blushing by now, but the heat races up my neck to flood my cheeks. “When those executioners were coming for my wings, and you stood between them and me, you reeked of roses.” His fingers are in my hair. He makes a fist, taking some of the strands prisoner. “And I mean reeked. You were like a floral barrier.”

  “Really?” I crinkle my nose.

  “Really.” He lifts the chain that slithers down the front of my shirt and pulls on it until the key appears. He clenches it. “They were kind of nauseatingly strong. I like you much better like this. Toned down to the perfect level.”

  I breathe in his scent. Every Fireblood I’ve ever met has one. I wonder if it means something.

  “So the dream where the roses were floating all over the room,” Kane surmises. “Maybe… you did invite Rylin in.”

  “I was awake,” I insist.

  “Oh, yeah?” His tugs on the key, drawing me closer. “You thought you were awake when the maid was knocking at the front door earlier too, but you weren’t.”

  “She was knocking on the bedroom door.”

  “No.” He kisses the end of my nose and drops the key. It lands against my chest with a small thump. “She was in the hall outside the suite.”

  That’s not right. She was there. Right there at the bedroom door. And then, Rylin was out there and—

  My thoughts pull to a halt. Okay. I see where this is headed.

  But dream or not, Rylin wouldn’t let me open that door. And I’m the one who’s supposed to be in control?

  “Maybe I was dreaming,” I admit. “Either way, I feel like Rylin is sending me a message. I feel it in my gut.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do?” He tucks a wild lock of my hair behind my ear. “Because I know you’re planning something.”

  He knows me so well. I rub at a spot on his jeans just at the kneecap where the dye runs a little darker.

  “I’m going to open that door.” I stab him with all my seriousness. He’s silent a few seconds.

  “Do you think you should?”

  “No. But I’m going to anyway.”

  He presses a finger into my ruby where it sparkles up at him between us.

  “You’d better take this off, then.”

  I glance at it. The first time I let Rylin into my dream, it wasn’t intentional. I’d only had my ring off for a couple of hours, and the dream was mild. In fact, I never would have known what I’d done if he hadn’t taken it upon himself to slip through my window to tell me—uninvited by the way.

  The last couple of days, I’ve been decamouflaged for much longer—twelve or more hours even—without Kane’s help. And my dreams have been intense, full of a kind of panic. But, am I dreaming… or awake?

  It’s time to put the question to rest for good. I pluck the ring free and hand it to Kane.

  “Don’t decamouflage me,” I order. “It’s better to wear off naturally.”

  He closes his fingers around the ring, and for a second, I think it’s vanished forever, and a wave of anxiety overwhelms me. I’m mindful once again of how crazy my life has become over the last few weeks.

  I miss my simple life… just a little. Except I forget: that simple life disappeared when my dad died. I forget that going back to my life and my neglectful mom and my big empty house is not simple at all. But compared to this?

  It doesn’t matter. I’m a Fireblood. Regardless of my qualms at the moment, I’ve already embraced this truth. There’s no going back.

  But I can wish for a day when Kane will never have to compel my ring again. A day when I will be free to be me… all the time.

  Eighteen

  We clean up together, our hands bumping into each other as Kane passes off a plate or a glass for me to rinse and dry. It feels nice to do something ordinarily human for once. It feels even better when Kane stops right in the middle of it all and takes me by the waist with two sopping wet hands for a sixty second kiss.

  This is nice. Just Kane and me… washing dishes and stealing kisses, and I allow myself to bask in it.

  We end up at the aviary an hour later, not exactly Kane’s first choice. What he really wanted to do was climb onto the back of his motorcycle, ride out across the desert toward the sunset, and eventually fling himself into the moonless sky off the edge of a mesa—with me in his arms, of course. That idea sounds wonderful. But…

  The aviary will have to do.

  It’s actually pretty cool. A huge, domed room similar to an enclosed botanical garden and equipped with all sorts of rocky inclines and plateaus for taking off and landing. Plenty of room. One other Fireblood, a young girl around twelve, dips and twirls, disappearing behind a large tree in a blaze of light and reappearing one second later. She giggles and zooms out of sight toward the other side of the enclosure.

  “Well, she’s having fun,” I point out. “I wonder who she is.”

  Kane studies the area, not quite on board. But my camouflage is fading, and I hear the excited thrum of his mantra in the back of my mind. That’s what it’s like with Kane. When he’s excited about something, or anxious, or nervous, he can’t contain the emotions that correlate with the sound of his song. I’ve become adept in picking up on this. And every time he shares another piece of it with me, I’m more in tune. It’s the same for him concerning mine.

  “Do you want to give it a spin?” He glances at me sidelong, a dubious expression mounting his face.

  “You go first. I’ll watch.”

  “Okay.” He lays on the sarcasm. “But… you just might be missing the ride of your life.”

  He slings an arm around my shoulders, kisses the top of my head, and releases his wings. They spread up in a gust of air, tall and black behind him. One step, and he sails over the edge.

  The momentum sends him falling downward, and my heart leaps with a little bit of fear. Just a normal human reaction to watching someone jump. I step to the ledge, looking over. There he is, hovering a couple yards below. He surges upward, pulling in eye level with me, and so close that I don’t have time to prepare for the kiss he lands on my lips.

  “I love you, Gallagher,” he whispers. And he’s off in a midair half-twisted back flip. He soars straight up to the very top of the dome, embers flickering off the ends of his feather. I watch, a little jealous.

  The place is full of flora and fauna in greens and blues and pretty turquoises dotted with white flowers. Ivy crawls up the sides of the dome, and the ground far below is covered with sand and patches of lush grass. It really is beautiful.

  “He’s something to see.”

  The voice comes from my right. I turn.

  A boy about my age sits on a flat, gray rock, tucked into a copse of low bushes, his tee shirt and dark spiky hair blending into the cliff-like wall behind him. One knee propped up against his chest, the other dangling off the rock, he tosses me a lazy smile.

  “He really is,” I agree.

  In unison, we watch Kane dip into a low dive. He straightens his legs,
pulls his arms in as close to his body as he can, and shoots toward the ceiling, fire streaming off his wings. I toss my gaze back at the boy, who, by the way, has a pair of dark wings of his own. I squint at him.

  “Why aren’t you out there?” I thumb toward the flight area.

  “Yeah, right. With these useless things?” He ruffles up his feathers until they actually look menacing, then relaxes.

  I take a step, and on closer inspection, notice one of his wings is bent awkwardly. Jarron flashes through my thoughts.

  Wait a minute…

  “Aren’t you… a Fireblood?” I sound so cautious, like I’m tiptoeing in to rob someone’s house while they sleep. For some reason this metaphor seems fitting.

  “More like a boy with broken wings.” He peers at me. “I’m a hybrid.”

  “What?”

  “A... hybrid.” He says it slowly, like someone trying to teach a foreigner his native tongue. “And why aren’t you out there?” he counters.

  “I’m a hybrid.” I gawk at him. “And I was told I was the first one to be brought into the lab.”

  “Oh yeah, you probably are.” He rocks back propping his elbows behind him. “I was born here.”

  Stumped, I sink onto the rock, leaving a foot between us, and just stare at him. After a second, he smiles in an attempt to break the sudden tension.

  “I’m Adam, by the way.” He leans across his body offering his hand, and I take it in a daze.

  “Jude.”

  “Jude.” His hand is firm, warm. “I thought you might be her. The dreamer that has the lab in such a frenzy, huh?”

  “Oh. So you know about that.”

  He gives off a small laugh. “I hear things.”

  “Jude!” Kane whizzes by, does another mid-air backflip and shoots both fists in the air. “This rocks!”

  I give him two thumbs-up. Adam rubs at a small space of stubble on his chin, working to hide his amused reaction.