Playing with Fire (Book 1 of the FIRE Trilogy)

by Devika Fernando

Hadn’t it been enough turmoil? Now this. He wanted to talk. Was this it? The end to a relationship which had barely started but meant the world to her? Was the one person who meant almost as much to her as fire going to give up on her?

  Joshua had the right to do so, no doubt about it.

  Felicia sank down on the ground, the headache and the load of negative feelings pressing down so hard it was impossible to stand any longer. Hugging herself and registering with barely an inkling of wonder that her dragon had come from nowhere to join her, she waited for the hammer to fall, for the punch to be delivered.

  There was only silence. When she looked up, she met his gaze roaming her face. It was strangely searching, and his face more distant than a minute ago. He looked like a man weighing his words carefully, and it added to her mounting anxiety.

  “Tell me exactly what happened. What woke you up, and what made you lose control?”

  Cold, commanding, cutting at her like a knife.

  She hated it when his voice was like this, making her feel like a thing, as if they were back to their odd teacher-and-student start. It grated on her nerves to be treated from up above and far away like this, but for once, she thought it justified. As calmly as she could, hating the way her voice shook, she described what couldn’t be described.

  By the time she was finished, he mirrored an ice sculpture. His gaze slid off her face and into nothingness, and she could sense his mind whirring and buzzing with activity, cogs and springs and wheels click-clacking while he processed whatever big issue was at stake here.

  His sigh caught her by surprise. It sounded so…resigned. And were his shoulder slumping ever so slightly?

  “I’ve been meaning to have this conversation earlier. I shouldn’t have waited so long, as though I needed another confirmation. It might have spared me impressive burn marks if I hadn’t chickened out on confronting you.”

  He lifted one corner of his mouth in a mirthless grin, and ran a hand back through his hair in a gesture that belonged to a man more normal and less self-assured than him. Her stomach tied itself into knots, the dragon hissing in discomfort and staring with eyes as big as hers must be.

  Preparing himself with a deep breath, he went on, his gaze returning to her, closed-off and cold.

  “I don’t know whether I was fearing your reaction or my own. I don’t know why I was and am behaving this way. But now the time has come to tell you something that might change your life. Again.”

  “Oh, spit it out, for Christ’s sake!”

  She lost her nerve, and wished she could have swallowed the words back down.

  He narrowed his eyes and stared her down, an art he had mastered to perfection. With another sigh, he went on, the words running together in a stream of information. They hit her like the proverbial avalanche, and buried her beneath suffocating layers of doom.

  “You have never asked me about my job, but it’s time to fill you in on some details. Yes, I work as a private investigator. I have specialized in travelling the country and helping out in cases where the police is stumped or where they can’t enter into the grey areas because of the law. My clients are usually well-paying, and on the right side of the law. I hardly work for attorneys in civil cases, though. I was ordered here on a mission. One that quickly turned from professional into personal. Do you have an idea what it was—and is—about?”

  Felicia frowned, suspicion rising like bile in her tight throat, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “I was hired to find an arsonist with a scary reputation in the area, without any face or information to connect with,” Joshua said. “You should know that arson cases are a criminal offense which is rarely prosecuted and even more rarely solved. The police can achieve clearance in less than 10% of the cases. In other words, about 99% of arsonists never get caught and carry on with their often deadly, always costly crimes. Hardly any crime causes such high financial losses, is so hard to solve and so relatively easy to commit. Most arsonists hatch clever plans and think long before they act, only to vanish back into their dark corner and live a normal life. You hardly get eyewitnesses or more than circumstantial evidence to get a grip on the criminal. If you take damaging fires in general, roughly 50% of them are not caused by technical fault or negligence or accidents, but by an arsonist on the prowl.”

  He let that sink in, watching her closely for any signs, but she kept her expression neutral and her feelings at bay.

  “More often than not,” he continued, “the arsonist is somebody who either takes joy in fire and wreaking havoc or somebody who hopes to profit from an insurance claim by setting fire to his own house or property. Of course there are those lunatics who burn their family to cinders or turn an enemy into a living torch. These get caught easily. What is so difficult to figure out are the cases where empty buildings or buildings in use go up in flames and smoke. These take place in the bigger cities, usually in the business district or in areas where rich people are found. In most instances, there is some kind of profit in it for the person deliberately starting the fires.”

  Joshua stared at her even harder.

  “In my particular case, however, the police were flummoxed because buildings burned here and there and everywhere, but there was never anything to profit from. The houses were empty, they were in the same city, and the fires happened at night. For a long time, nobody suspected a case of arson because if you have so many houses, it’s nothing out of the ordinary that there’s a fire now and then. There wasn’t more than one incident a month, but recently, a house would catch fire once a week or more often. When the numbers increased rapidly and a central investigation was started, one big shot of Fairview’s—and the country’s—most successful insurance company saw a thread connecting the cases, and he contacted my superior to hire my service.”

  Running a hand through his hair, Joshua took a moment to collect his thoughts. Felicia resisted the urge to swallow, her own spit tasting bitter with foreboding.

  Joshua spoke again, “In none of the incidents were the police able to find a natural explanation or the usual traces of arson that give the criminal away. No leaking gas pipeline, no oven left on, no overheated electric item. No petrol or kerosene, no carelessly thrown away match or cigarette or lighter. Nobody had seen or heard anything out of the unusual. It was as though the building itself decided the time was right to spontaneously erupt into flames. Each case was examined and re-examined to no avail—until a bus driver returning from his night shift said he spotted a person walking away from the area where a fire had broken out, leaving in a strangely calm way, not alerting anybody to the danger or appearing in any way fazed by it. A women with startlingly red, long, curly hair whom he insisted he hadn’t seen in his district before. This was the one lead they had when they called my boss—I work as a freelancer but under an agency—and he dispatched me. To find a woman with beautiful flame-colored hair who might or might not be involved in the biggest case of arson this city, if not the whole province, had ever seen.”

  The silence rang loudly in her ears, punctuated by the rapid thudding of her heart against her ribs, and the dull rush of blood inside her head.

  Oh, God. Oh, no.

  He pushed himself to his feet and walked away a few paces, staring into the night where a glowing dot and a hint of siren sound provided a perfect background to his story. When he turned around to face her again, pain marred his features before he close them off. Bridging the endless distance to squat down close to where she sat rigidly, nails digging into her arms, he fixed her with his inescapable gaze.

  With his voice as monotonous and low and deliberately calm as before, he continued, “There have been mysterious and horrific arson cases before that still shock the world, although some of them happened decades ago. If you search the web, you’ll find the Himatangi Murders in New Zealand, or the New Orleans Fire destroying the UpStairs Lounge frequented by gay people, or blaze in the Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago that wiped nearly 100 people off the earth, among the
m nuns and students. Knowing that, and having only a tit-bit of a clue to work with, I saw this assignment as a waste of time. Still, I threw myself into research, I dutifully stared at portraits of red-haired women to memorize their features, and I marked places on the city map where the arsonist might strike because there was an empty, old building to be found.”

  By now, her heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear him.

  “I don’t think I would have come far—but I hadn’t so much as settled down a day or two in this place when strange things started to happen,” Joshua said. “I felt this odd…connection, of somebody moving around in Fairview, waiting for me. As if the person and I were connected by an invisible string attached to a hook deep inside the heart, so that a tug in this or that direction would pull the other one along. I knew something special was going to happen, and I had an idea what.”

  He sought eye contact, but she refused, hanging on by a thin thread.

  “You’ve told me you suspect there are others like us,” Joshua said. “Mutants. Freaks. People with special gifts and mysterious talents. I know for a fact that they exist. I know it because some years ago, this connection was established, and I ended up following the invisible magnetic draw to find a woman who claimed to be a pharaoh’s concubine, re-awakened by a grave robber and walking the earth like a creature of flesh and blood. Throughout the years, this was repeated a few times. I’ve watched a vampire from afar who was revered as a genius painter. I found out there are real mermaids hiding away in a sunken Atlantis ocean-city of sorts. And I’ve met a shape shifter who was raised among wolves and is probably the role model for many a werewolf tale.”

  He sighed, though she didn’t know why exactly. His ability sounded fascinating. If she weren’t in such a state, she’d be envious.

  “I feel a magical pull,” he continued. “I give in to it, I encounter somebody astonishing… and I move on. But this time, it was different. This time, I was led to you. The fateful night when I pulled you out of the burning house, I had no idea who you were and what made you special. I couldn’t resist, I played my detective game, because never had the pull been stronger and never had I been so affected by an encounter. One step led to another, and soon I realized that by following the connection, I was also doing my duty. I had found the infamous arsonist. You.”

  It looked like many more words wanted to hurl themselves out of his mouth to attack her, but he pressed his lips firmly shut and stared at her a moment longer before averting his eyes because whatever he read in hers must have shocked him.

  Reeling with the impact of what he had revealed, she fought the urge to shout—anything—and run. Instead, she drew her knees up in an instinctively protective gesture, hiding behind them as though it could make her forget. As though it could make her think a clear thought.

  She had never known, never suspected a damn thing.

  Her mind grappled with the stones he had thrown, frantically trying to get a hold on at least one and maybe hurl it back.

  Fires. Too many buildings in Fairview burning, and they—he—thought it was her fault. She, an arsonist? A criminal? It couldn’t be! They had it wrong, of course.

  Felicia was about to uncurl herself and launch into an offensive defense speech when an onslaught of doubt made her choke on the unspoken words.

  Hadn’t she found herself in front of burning houses increasingly in the past? Always close by shortly before it happened or after the flames had been lit, never remembering how or why she was there.

  What if it was true?

  What if she wasn’t the spectator but the cause, what if the flames didn’t beckon to her, but she to them?

  Her worst fears came crashing down on her. The reasons why she had shied away from being different in the first place. Fear was at the root of it. Plain, old, ugly, smelly fear. So, it turned out that being in control was only an illusion. She was the kindling, the torch, not the fire itself or at least the active torch bearer.

  She hadn’t cried for ages, couldn’t remember the last time. But right now, right here, crying was the best thing to do.

  She was nothing more than a twisted arsonist to the world. And what was she to him? A job assignment gone wrong yet miraculously right too?

  She had trusted one person, and this one person had betrayed her.

  The thought made her head shoot up.

  She would not be the victim.

  Hell, if he thought she was a criminal, why not go ahead and give it to him? She might not have a spotless vest, but neither did he.

  Hardening herself and forcing the sobs back down, she ground out, “Congratulations, James Bond—or should I say, Sherlock Holmes?—on solving the unsolvable case. Looks like I’m the 1% among the arsonists that does get caught. I’m sure you’ll get a badge to wear with which you can impress any other outlandish mortal who might cross your way in the future.”

  Rage had taken a hold of her, making her tremble as much as the held-back hurt, making it possible to keep her chin up, although she felt like disintegrating in a heap of disillusion.

  Joshua drew back as if she had slapped him hard, rage mirroring her own visible on his stony face for an instant. Before she knew it, his hands gripped her arms, so tightly that the dragon and fire inside her soared dangerously high.

  For the first time in minutes, emotion crept into his voice when he bit out each of his words. “I don’t want a bloody badge, I don’t want a solved case, and I don’t want to meet any more special people. I want you!”

  She laughed mirthlessly. The cheek of the man! “Yeah, you’ve made that perfectly clear. Listing my crimes and assessing things like a doctor reads out a cancer diagnosis to a patient he doesn’t give a damn about. Pity you kept me from running down to the village. You could have shot some in flagrante photos and earned yourself a promotion or the front page of the newspaper.”

  Felicia yanked herself free of his grasp and jumped to her feet, feeling as if she might explode at any moment. “You know what? I’d rather be exposed as an arsonist and admit it than lead a life like you that is built on lies and more lies piled up.”

  She spat the last words at him before turning away to rail herself in, the look on his face hurting her despite being deeply disappointed by his behavior.

  Knowing she had been nothing more than his duty, albeit a fascinating and challenging one, cut her to the quick. And yet… she couldn’t deny that somewhere deep down, she wanted this to have an explanation, she wanted them to find a solution and stay together because they were meant to be.

  How pathetic that she couldn’t imagine a life without him, when he had proven how little she mattered in his life.

  Before she could lose steam and wallow in self-pity, he was right by her side, again grabbing her arms. He pressed her close, and she felt the magical sparks fly which contact between them inevitably caused.

  “Listen to me.”

  When she opened her mouth for another insult, he sealed it with a kiss, completely disregarding that she struggled in his hold before instinct took over and her mouth danced with his. It was a kiss of fury and dueling wills and hurt, rough and needy, leaving her lips sore and swollen and her mind and heart in tatters.

  Drawing back hardly more than inch, he stared into her eyes, his cold seeping into her pores, her flames subdued for the time being.

  With a groan of frustration, he gave her a shake as if to drum some sense into her.

  “Listen. I didn’t do this well. I was… I should have told you everything. This is only one side of the coin. The other side is that I saw it as a job assignment in the beginning. The more I found out about you, however, and the closer we got, the more personal it became. It wasn’t about finding and catching an arsonist, it was about you, about you and me.”

  Joshua shook, but held himself in check.

  “I found a dozen reasons to convince myself that it wasn’t you who caused the fires. When the evidence against you grew, I told myself you didn’t know what you we
re doing, and that with my coaching and you getting in touch with your gift, things wouldn’t get out of hand anymore. I was never away those times when I seemingly left you alone. I stayed hidden to watch you, but not to collect evidence. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you and that if it was you, we’d find a way to control it. I wanted to protect you, protect our future together. I told myself, what the hell if she does burn houses to the ground, there’s never any person harmed. I killed somebody with my oh-so special talent while you merely turned lifeless things into truly dead things.”

  Felicia opened her mouth to say something but snapped it shut, letting him continue.

  “I stopped reporting the truth to my superiors shortly after we… became friends and more. I fed them a spoonful of half-truths off and on, and told them I hadn’t found a single trail. But you and me both lost control over the situation when the house with the little girl inside caught fire. Sure, you saved it, but that’s exactly the problem.”

  Again she meant to barge in, again something held her back.

  “You turned the spotlights onto yourself, and played into the insurance company’s and police’s hands. They might have treated you like another victim or witness that day, but to them, the fish has swallowed the bait. They have the net ready and they’ll catch you any time soon. They haven’t told me because they suspect something is amiss. They don’t trust me anymore, and I don’t want to fake cooperation, so we’re fighting a losing battle now. If I could have laid a false trail, I would have.”

  His grip on her arms had softened, and his thumbs were stroking over her skin as if he wanted to let the truth flow from his body into hers.

  “I’m on your side. Believe me when I say that. I’ve never acted like this. I was always the sensible loner, distant from everything and everyone. Before you came along, I didn’t have a real life. I had my power and I was so proud of it, but that was all. Like you, I led a useless life until we met. But I can’t ignore the facts that are becoming clearer and clearer. You’re anything but an arsonist in the official sense, but I can’t doubt you’re responsible for the fires. Give me a chance to hear me out, give the truth a chance to be heard, even if you don’t want to. And give us a chance, because I certainly won’t give you over to the police.”

  His words burned himself into her, as though he were the one wielding fire power. Like her hands had marked his skin before, his words branded her, bound her to him. She wanted to resist his powers, she wanted to resist the temptation that he was telling the truth and they could find a way out of this mess.

  But could she? Should she?

  When Felicia remained silent, wide-eyed and almost-crying, he pressed her to himself in a desperate embrace. Stepping back and letting go, he gave her room and composed himself, but his eyes remained open and readable, which must have been hard for someone who prided himself on his detachment from the world.

  “Give yourself and me a chance, because I love you, and you love me too.”

  This was the last stroke. With a hiccupping sob, she sank to her knees and cried. She couldn’t help it. As much as she hated becoming a blubbering fool, there was nothing else for her to do right now. Shock after shock, the greatest of them being not the accusations and the explanations, but this confession of his love, had been her undoing.

  While she cried like she never had before, her mind went blank. She dimly registered that he crouched down by her side and enfolded her in a strong embrace.

  Felicia didn’t know how much time went by, but eventually there were no more tears to cry. And with it came clarity.

  She was being prosecuted by the police for crimes she might or might not have committed. She had destroyed several buildings, caused trouble in who knew how many people’s lives, been responsible for hurting—though also saving—a child, and was capable of causing greater damage. But she was not alone. And she was not normal. There had to be a way for them… for love.

  She lifted her head and allowed him to wipe away her tears, not before he had turned the remaining drops into ice crystals that shone like diamonds and reflected the hint of feeling lurking in his eyes, filling her with hope.

  Squaring her jaw, she sought for the last vestiges of confidence left inside her, settled on the fire dragon which hadn’t lost its beauty, clung to love, and asked, “What shall we do?”

  Chapter 17