A Phoenix First Must Burn

by A Phoenix First Must Burn (retail) (epub)

  He reached for my hand and squeezed it gently.

  We sat like that, side by side, hand in hand, until my mom got home.

  “I was out looking for you,” Mom said, looking more harried than I had ever seen her.

  “I’m sorry I worried you,” I said. I was still mad at her for keeping the secret, but some part of me understood she had wanted to wait until I was ready.

  Mom hugged me and spoke to Reid over her shoulder.

  “Thank you for this,” she said.

  He nodded, understanding.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  When I walked Reid out, I had so many questions about where he got his blood from, about whether he had ever killed anyone, about daylight. When blood rushed to his cheeks in a blush, was it his own? But he spoke before I could ask him more.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I mean, of course you’re not okay . . . but . . .”

  “I will be,” I said firmly.

  “What do you do when you find out everything you are isn’t what you believed?” I asked, after staring at the new space between us for a beat.

  “I’m so sorry your mom didn’t tell you. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you either. I’m sorry about a lot of things,” he said, his words coming out in an apologetic rush.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was scared to leave Hearts because I was scared that someone might find out about me. I was also scared to leave without telling you—” he said. He glanced down, looking more vulnerable than I had ever seen him, as if he was afraid that when I looked at him again, I might reject him.

  “Telling me what?” I asked.

  “How I feel about you. How I always have.”

  I had missed this huge thing about Reid. But the thing that really mattered . . . who we were to each other. I hadn’t missed that. And, finally, after all this time, he was confirming it.

  He stopped himself. “I know there could not be a more inappropriate time for me to say this.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And when he joined in, I knew it was going to be okay between us.

  I leaned in, ready to kiss him.

  He leaned back.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked. The porch light flickered, mirroring my anxiety.

  He shook his head. “When you kiss me, I want it to be about us.”

  “Well,” I said, “we’ll be kissing in front of the whole world on Monday when the studio is back up and running.”

  “No we won’t,” he countered firmly.

  “Wait, did Michael tell you he’s firing me?”

  “He’s not going to fire you—everyone loves you. The audience loves you. And I . . . I just meant that we aren’t having our first kiss in front of the whole world. Rhiannon and Wolfe are.”

  “Oh,” I said. Had Reid just come close to saying he loved me?

  “One day, if I’m lucky, I hope we have our first kiss,” he said, squeezing my hand gently.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  On Monday after a long weekend, Rhiannon and Wolfe filmed their kissing scene six more times. Reid was right—it didn’t feel like a real kiss should feel. It felt like work, but I was glad I got to do it with a friend anyway.

  When the cameras weren’t rolling, Reid and I got to know each other as our real selves, girl and boy, witch and vampire . . . But Reid was right, it took time to adjust to my new light.

  Reid and I didn’t have our first kiss until three months later, after the season ended. We spontaneously met for coffee and talked and then walked down to the pier. It was something we’d done a hundred times. It wasn’t planned. But it was good. It was sweet and funny and awkward.

  It was my real first kiss.

  And it felt like magic.

  THE CURSE OF LOVE

  By Ashley Woodfolk

  Aunt Gigi always told me that for women in our family, red lipstick was a weapon.

  “Don’t wear it unless you ready for the attention that comes along with them lips, Bree,” she says as she steps into the bathroom behind me. I lean closer to the mirror and smooth the crimson-tipped wand across my lips again, defiantly applying a second coat. Aunt Gigi raises her eyebrows and peels her sheer mahogany pantyhose away from her thick brown legs inch by inch.

  I purse my scarlet-stained lips and turn to face her. “Yeah, I know. With great power comes great responsibility, or whatever.”

  Aunt Gigi finishes undressing and twists the knob to run her bath, standing in her bra. With her hairless arms crossed over her big boobs, she watches me as I finish getting ready, the way she always does. I brush my fringe of black lashes with even blacker mascara, just the way Gigi taught me. I twist my thick braids into a messy bun, the way Gigi used to do for me when I was small.

  Gigi looks proud, smug, or maybe a little bit of both. I wink at her reflection in the mirror.

  “You liable to drive them boys crazy,” Gigi says with a smirk, and I know her words are as much a joke as they are a warning.

  “They can look but they can’t touch,” I reply. Aunt Gigi’s own rose-tinted lips slip into a wide grin. She’s stunning when she smiles, even to me.

  “That’s my girl,” she whispers just before dipping a red toenail into steaming, lavender-laced bathwater.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Giselle was usually just getting home when Aubrey was heading out for school, and that morning was no different. Aubrey didn’t know where her aunt spent most nights, but the gorgeous woman and beautiful girl regularly collided like stars in the single bathroom of the one-story bungalow they shared.

  Despite her aunt’s warnings, Aubrey often made light of the darkness that lurked in the prettiness of her face, but the absence of the other Dunn women in their too-empty house was a haunting they both tried, and failed, to ignore.

  That day, Aubrey walked quickly past the portraits of her other aunts: Claudette and Madeline, Elizabeth and Abigail. She’d studied the paintings for hours when she was younger, taking in the women’s bushy, black hair and dark, flawless skin, their pouty lips and luminous eyes.

  It was the last portrait she always avoided—the one of her own mother, Josephine. But that day, for the first time in nearly a year, she looked right at it.

  The whole town told stories about the Dunn women. And Giselle had told Aubrey the truth as soon as she was old enough to understand.

  Aubrey used to wonder how they could give up their beauty—something that was so tangible, so . . . powerful. But she was starting to realize that it wasn’t that simple. They forfeited their youth, too, and eventually their very lives.

  She stared at the portrait of Josephine, remembering what her mother had said the day before everything changed.

  He’s worth everything, Bree.

  “How did you know?” Aubrey whispered, looking for answers in her mother’s flatly painted eyes.

  “How did you know?”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Get in, loser,” Talia yells in my direction the second I push open my front door. I skip over to her car, which is idling at the curb, and Talia smirks as I climb inside.

  “Hey, jerk-face,” I say, unzipping the front pocket of my backpack and dropping my house keys inside. I reach for her radio and turn up the song that’s playing. I bounce a little in my seat.

  “About time things got back to normal,” Talia says as she shifts the car into gear. It’s the first time I’ve ridden to school with her in weeks.

  I’d been avoiding her for more reasons than one. But I called her last night, and things are good now. Though it’s difficult for people to be angry with anyone in my family for long, Talia seems to have a special talent for it, at least when it comes to me.

  It’s why I love her so much—I know her anger (and her
affection) is real.

  “Sorry, boo,” I say. I lean over and kiss her cheek. “Love ya, mean it.”

  That’s when it happens—the familiar rush of warmth. The prickle along the back of my neck that can only mean one thing:

  He’s close.

  I had no idea he was in the car before I climbed inside, because Talia has darkly tinted windows. But I can feel him.

  He’s one of the many reasons I’ve been keeping my distance the last few weeks, and he’s sitting in Talia’s back seat.

  “Hey,” Vince says, and his voice is heat, melting all the ice in my veins. In that one word I hear I want you and I need you and I love you.

  I wish I couldn’t hear him at all.

  Against my will I remember how hot his breath was when I nearly let him kiss me last month, at that party. I remember how his eyes and skin shimmered bronze, like a key, in the golden glow of the porch light, and I could imagine him unlocking the cage around my heart that Aunt Gigi had always warned me to keep shut tight.

  Talia had failed to mention that her brother would be riding to school with us. I wouldn’t have worn the red lipstick if I’d known.

  I’m a little pissed, but she and I are so newly mended, I don’t want to break us again by scrambling out away from her just to get away from him. I swallow hard and find his eyes in her rearview mirror so I don’t have to look at him directly.

  “Oh,” I say. “Hi.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The whole ride to school, Aubrey thought ceaselessly about her aunts and her mother and all they’d given up. She did everything she could not to think about the boy in the back seat, for whom she might be willing to make the same ultimate sacrifice.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  When Talia pulls into the school parking lot, I hop out of the car so quickly I nearly trip over the untied laces in my boots.

  “Later,” I mumble, without looking at Talia or Vince as I walk away. But I don’t get very far before I feel Talia’s warm hand encircle my wrist. She yanks my arm back hard to stop me, and I scream, “Ow!”

  “Seriously? We’re back to this already?” Talia nearly shouts. Other kids leaning against their parked cars turn to stare, and Vince lingers by the still-open back door of Talia’s 4x4.

  Things have been uneasy between me and Talia ever since she realized I was keeping a secret. I’d never kept a thing from her before this thing with Vince.

  So as soon as I left that party without saying why, everything changed. And while I thought I’d patched things up with a phone call and the Dunn charm that had yet to let me down, things aren’t as “fixed” as I thought. Talia’s clearly still full of sparks, a wildfire just waiting to be stoked. I try to tread lightly.

  “Back to what?” I ask, lying with a question that only seems to make Talia angrier.

  My friend crosses her arms. “You think you’re too good for my brother. That’s it, isn’t it? You think you’re too good for both of us. That’s why you haven’t wanted to ride with me to school, right? That’s why you’ve been avoiding Vince since that party.”

  “That’s not it,” I say. And then I try to explain. But when I tell her that I smell like lavender and honey, and that I’m wearing red lipstick, I can tell I’m not making any sense. When I explain that I’m blessed with beauty and bleeding desire, Talia actually laughs.

  “Riiight,” Talia says, rolling her eyes. “Conceited much?” There’s a venom in her tone that poisons the comment, turning the would-be tease toxic.

  I wish I could laugh it off, but I can’t. Because Talia is a friend I love too much to lose. She’s angry about something she doesn’t even understand; something I’m only just beginning to.

  Then Vince is there, and my heart is suddenly trying to beat its way out of my chest. I don’t want to leave things unresolved with Talia. But I can’t stand to be this close to Vince.

  Don’t wear it unless you ready for the attention that comes along with them lips, Bree.

  You liable to drive them boys crazy.

  Before he can get any closer—before he can look at me for longer than I’m able to hold his gaze, or worse still, brush a fallen braid from my shoulder—I move away from his tender eyes, his dangerous hands.

  “Wait for me after school,” I call to Talia, who still looks pissed. “I’ll explain everything, I promise.”

  But that afternoon, goddammit, it’s Vince who finds me first.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  It happened when she wasn’t watching—a slow kind of falling for Vince.

  It all started with him noticing.

  He noticed the way she spoke softly, so one day he stepped closer to hear her when they were talking in the dense and crowded halls of their high school.

  He noticed that she was often cold, so a week after their close conversation, he offered her his scarf as they stepped out into the crisp afternoon air.

  A month after that, when they and a few of their friends were gathered in a dimly lit basement, he noticed her cautious eyes. He saw the way she made herself small until she couldn’t anymore and all her loveliness burst forth in a brilliant grin or a dazzling look or a charming comment. He noticed how she steered clear of the boys who threw themselves at her, and how she manipulated some of them, but only the ones who refused to listen to her very firm nos.

  He waited until Talia skipped up the stairs for another drink. He waited until the other guys scattered. He stepped closer to Aubrey and asked, “Why do you hide?”

  Though she didn’t—couldn’t—answer, she looked him right in his eyes and said, “It’s for your own good.”

  He believed her. And it was then that she began noticing him, too.

  It stayed that way for quite a while—each of them noticing, and quietly appreciating the other. They found a delicate balance, and they loved each other, but never too much and never at quite the same times.

  But it all went to hell the day Aubrey made a joke in Talia’s car, and the rich sound of Vince’s laughter, the unexpected light in his eyes when he looked at her, the warmth of his hands when he gently touched her shoulder—all caught her off guard. She gasped and he stopped laughing and Talia stared at the two of them until she began to grin.

  “You into my brother?” Talia asked Aubrey that night on the phone, and Aubrey denied it all.

  Then, at a party that weekend, Vince touched the back of her hand, the back of her arm, the delicate skin on the back of her neck. And she got lost in the softness of his fingers, the lingering sound of his laugh, the way he noticed every part of herself she tried to bury.

  “Can I kiss you?” he asked. And Aubrey felt herself lean in too easily. She was too ready, too eager to say yes.

  She couldn’t let herself love him. Not without risking everything.

  So she ran.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  He’s waiting for me by my locker, his messy black hair somehow flickering like a flame of dark fire. And while I know loving him can hurt me, when he’s standing there, looking like that, I don’t know if I can keep him at arm’s length for much longer.

  “Bree,” he says, his voice deep, deliberate, and a little bit desperate. “I just came to say I’ll disappear, if you want. I’ll change schools. Go live with my dad. I won’t ever come close to you again.”

  But that isn’t what I want. That was never what I wanted. I shake my head and step closer to Vince, afraid the longing alone will eat me alive if I’m not careful. I place my palm flat against his chest and let out a shaky exhale. I can feel that his heart is beating as hard and fast as mine.

  “I need to talk to Talia first,” I say, because Vince already knows my deepest secret, and he’s somehow still here. “I have to make her understand. I have to figure out what to say to Aunt Gigi, too.”

 
; He nods and lifts my hand from his chest to his mouth. He kisses each of my knuckles and then presses my hand to his heart again, like he doesn’t want to let me go.

  “Are you sure I’m worth it?” he asks. And I look past him to see Talia coming toward us. I wish I had more time to come up with a plan, more time to decide exactly what to say and how, but I can feel something starting, like a fire in my veins, so I have to act now.

  I look back at Vince and I think of my mother. I grasp one of his warm hands, and trace the kind curve of his lips.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure. You’re worth everything.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  That night, before Giselle got home, Aubrey told Talia the ugly truth of her family.

  Of Claudette, who had affairs with dozens of men and women, until she fell in love with a man named Rudy, and the second they began their affair, her skin began to wrinkle.

  About Madeline, who loved a man called Loren so deeply that she nearly went mad trying to stay away from him. On the day of their wedding, when they shared their first kiss, she lost nearly all of her teeth.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Talia frowns. She sits farther back in her seat and asks, “Are you shittin’ me?”

  And I shake my head. “I swear, Talia. I’m telling you the truth.”

  “But, I don’t get it,” Talia says. She takes out her phone and I get nervous she’s going to leave. So I keep talking.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Aubrey told her the story of Elizabeth next. How she hated every man she met, but fell suddenly and completely in love with a woman named Esperanza after years and years of living alone. She was so enraptured that she didn’t even notice when she began losing fistfuls of her curly black hair the second their lips touched.