My body finally protested my insistence on standing upright after days of being unconscious. I leaned on the mahogany bannister of the staircase for support, not used to my muscles giving out on me. I hadn’t been prepared for the weakness that had seeped in the first time I climbed out of my hospital bed. They wouldn’t let me leave until I was able to hobble around on my own.
Shower and sleep. Like the slow creep of a glacier, I dragged myself up the elegant curved staircase to my old bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway. I thought about grabbing painkillers for the dull ache that had grown into a mild annoyance in my side, but I was already halfway up the stairs. It didn’t seem worth the effort.
I could deal with a mild annoyance.
Aunt Meg had transformed my old room into a guest bedroom since I moved out, prying the layers of Polaroids and band posters from the walls. The sunny yellow theme was a bit too cheery for me—and my current mood wasn’t having it—but there were still some of my things lying around that I hadn’t packed away. A dusty pile of CDs stacked on my dresser. The ancient high school Polaroids that I uncovered in one of the drawers where I kept some extra clothes. My soccer trophies, now forgotten relics at the back of my closet. And the most comfortable oversized shirt I’d ever worn in my entire life, which I never returned to a girl I’d dated while at the fire academy. The hem had been frayed from the heavy rotation in my wardrobe.
I crawled on top of the bed, wincing at the flare of pain, not bothering to pull back the pristine blankets and sheets. My phone, which Ramos had dropped off at some point along with my duffle bag, tumbled onto the yellow paisley bedspread. The screen illuminated from the short drop, my lock screen cluttered with notifications I didn’t have the mental energy to check. Once I got myself propped against Aunt Meg’s collection of decorative pillows in the most comfortable position my body could manage, I knew a shower wasn’t going to happen.
Sleep won this round.
Fire.
Racing up the walls, chewing a line across the floor to my feet—everything around me hot and bright, a wind tunnel of flames licking at my exposed skin. Heavy columns of black smoke curling at the edges just beyond. Choking the oxygen out of the room. Suffocating my lungs. An alarm chirps somewhere in the dark, the sound warbled, sluggish, like it’s melting. Searing heat burns my fingertips—was it from the fire or was it me? It travels upward, setting my veins alight until my flesh turns to embers. Until my fingers crumble into pale gray ash—
I woke with a strangled gasp, drenched in sweat.
I can’t breathe. Something’s sitting on my chest. There’s a chance I might be dying.
My pulse said otherwise. But drawing in a full breath felt impossible. The warm, stale air in the room crowded too close. I need to get out.
Whatever it took for me to get from my bedroom to the back porch happened in a blur. Considering the circumstances, I was lucky I’d made it down the stairs without breaking my damn neck. I didn’t even realize night had fallen—I thought I’d woken up half-blind and delirious—until I found myself staring up at a few weak stars in the middle of the garden.
Thank fuck there’s a cool breeze. I’d been dangerously close to stripping down to my bra and panties in a panic-fueled haze.
The scent of Aunt Meg’s flowers seemed to hold off the strong feelings of impending doom for now. The backyard was mostly porch and deck and concrete with a small rock garden and a few potted plants that had obviously fallen into neglect during my hospital stay.
My breaths still came in futile, ragged pieces, and my body shook from the rush of adrenaline. As the world around me started to become less of a blur, I focused on the crickets humming in the shadows. A dog barking somewhere down the street, never mind whatever the hell time of night it was. The engine of a car, the bounce of its tires while it passed by the house.
Breathe. You’re alive.
That was the problem, though, wasn’t it?
I paced around the backyard in mind-numbing circles, letting the sweat dry on my skin and my pulse slow down. In my anxious travels, I came across the fire pit abandoned on the side of the garage. The “bonfire gone awry” calls we responded to were one too many. I’d seen families lose their homes because their kid wanted s’mores during a heatwave.
I never said these people were smart.
The city tried to ban outdoor fires at least every year but controlling the rampant pyromania was a lesson in futility. But maybe now I understood why. Whatever existed inside me, whatever I’d done—were there other people who had this, too? And people like the guy who’d disappeared, did others in this city have that same power to create fire with their hands alone? It seemed far-fetched, but this place had more than enough bizarre energy to warrant the possibility of it being true.
I wanted to deny it and move on, explain it away with the confusion and grief, but I couldn’t. I knew what I saw that night. I hadn’t slept without reliving it and waking up with the pain like the wound was reopened every time I closed my eyes. Seeing the unused fire pit gave me a sudden, irrational need to recreate what had happened, to prove that what I’d done wasn’t a one-time thing.
The fire pit wouldn’t have been much of a problem if it hadn’t been a questionable hour and my body was in proper working order. The neighbors likely heard metal scraping across concrete until it was a safe distance from both the house and the garage. The alternative might’ve sent me back to the hospital. I broke a sweat just digging buckets out of the garage and slogging the garden hose across the yard.
Fuck this, honestly. I needed to get my strength back. I shouldn’t have been this fatigued from a simple task when I dragged around pounds of gear on my back any given day of the week. Being made so useless was frustrating.
“Safety first.”
I filled up a couple of buckets and kept the hose on standby. Aunt Meg still had some wood stacked on the side of the garage covered in spider webs. I’d yell at her about that later if I remembered. It must’ve been at least a little damp from a passing rainstorm because it took a few tries for it to catch the flame from the lighter. The wood crackled and snapped as it finally embraced the flames, that acrid, warm scent blossoming into the night air—the kind that reminded me of backyard barbeques and gooey, toasted marshmallows—that I probably would’ve found enjoyable if it didn’t make me so nauseous.
That was going to be a major problem for future me if it continued.
I backed up away from the direct heat. While it wasn’t nearly as hot as the conditions of the house fire, I could still feel it prickling at my face, stinging my eyes. Breathing in deeply, I curled my hands into light fists at my sides. The backyard was still, the song of crickets and the distant traffic mingling with the gentle hiss of the fire. But my guard was up. The neighbors’ houses were close enough to cause complaint, and the threat of being questioned by Aunt Meg or my cousins loomed over my shoulder. Alexa was a notoriously light sleeper, her bedroom window perched over the backyard.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s see what we can do.”
I had no idea how any of this was supposed to work. What started it the first time, other than the terror of being killed? Did I have to wave my arms around to wake something up? Flip some kind of internal switch?
I put my hands up in front of me, palms outstretched toward the fire like I’d seen the arsonist do. Come on. I waited, pushing my hands, fingers straining in the flicker of orange light like it would help smother the flames. Do something already…
When those strange embers failed to show beneath my skin, I closed my eyes and forced myself to concentrate harder. I wasn’t even overheated, burning from the inside out like I had that night. It just felt like standing in front of your average bonfire, which shouldn’t have been as disappointing as I thought it was. The fire continued to eat up the chunks of tree branches undisturbed except for the breeze floating through the yard.
Go out, damn it. Maybe that night had been an accident. Maybe I’d burnt myse
lf out knocking down a whole house fire and had nothing left to offer. That was all right, wasn’t it? Nothing felt normal, but maybe I was, after all.
Then why did I still feel so empty and deflated?
“Vic?” Alexa was right on time, stage-whispering in the darkness of the backyard. “What are you doing out here?”
I dropped my arms and turned around, too disappointed to have a reaction to being caught. If it had been anyone else, maybe I would’ve put a little more effort into it. Alexa padded over to me barefoot and sleepy-eyed, her blonde-streaked hair in a messy bun.
“Making s’mores,” I deadpanned.
She settled next to me, rocking back on her heels in front of the fire pit. “And you weren’t going to share?” There was a grin on her lips, but the crease between her eyebrows told me that she knew the feeble excuse had been complete bullshit. She was seventeen now; sniffing that out was like her job. Creating her own had become her superpower.
“With you? Maybe,” I said. “But Levi’s on his own.”
Alexa shook her head, yawning. “Pretty hard to make s’mores without marshmallows, you know. And chocolate. And…graham crackers.” She tugged her attention away from the flames to look at me. She had her mother’s knowing stare, those expressive Phoenix blue-gray eyes. “What’re you really doing? It’s one-thirty in the morning.”
“Nothing important.”
I went to grab one of the buckets to snuff out the fire, but Alexa beat me to it. Dusky smoke coiled into the air around us as the water finally smothered the flames that I couldn’t. I waved it out of my face, wrinkling my nose at the smell, my insides recoiling at the sight of the ash left behind in the bottom of the fire pit. I managed to hold back the overwhelming urge to throw up the nonexistent contents of my stomach. But the face I’d made hadn’t gone unnoticed by my perceptive teenage cousin.
She set down the bucket. “Are you okay? Because you can like…talk about it if you want. I’m not gonna judge you or anything.”
In the days since I’d woken up, I’d considered telling Aunt Meg about that night. The words had almost rolled off the tip of my tongue—the guy with fire dancing across his palms and in his wicked eyes, the flames that burned hotter than they should have. Moretti, murdered in the time it took for me to breathe.
Would anyone believe me? I knew how the system would see it: a symptom of trauma, an exaggeration constructed from grief. I’d sit through evaluations and talk to therapists and they’d all claim I was misremembering. That what I saw every time I closed my eyes wasn’t reliable. They’d shuffle me around desk jobs and firehouses and the whispers follow. That is, if they even allowed me to return to work.
And, for the first time in my career, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
“I don’t know,” I admitted softly. A shiver ran down my spine as the embers buried in ash glowed a molten red. “Don’t know if I’m ready to.”
“What you went through was super fucked.” Alexa recoiled at her own honesty, rubbing at her arm out of habit rather than the temperature. “Sorry.”
You don’t even know the half of it.
“Why? You’re right,” I agreed. “It’s been a weird week and a half.”
“Weird?” Alexa asked, as if the word wasn’t quite enough, as if I should’ve added more. She almost sounded curious. I nearly found the words on my tongue again, but I didn’t want to force her to share my pain when all I’d done tonight was interrupt her sleep.
“Very.”
“Well.” Alexa said after a pause. “That’s the city for you, I guess.”
“Yeah.” I decided to tiptoe around it instead. Alexa and I had an established history of sharing secrets, and if she knew anything was off, she’d tell me even if Aunt Meg didn’t want her to. “I know your mom’s probably trying to shield me from a lot that’s been going on. And I know she means well. Those first few days, she was right to just let me heal.”
“But…?”
“I can’t be left in the dark anymore.”
“You just got out of the hospital,” Alexa replied. “Okay? Whatever you were doing out here…you need to slow down, or mom’s gonna freak. I know patience isn’t our thing in this family, but maybe you should like…try it. For once.” That crease appeared between her eyebrows again. “What are you even talking about?”
“While I was out, did anyone come by to ask me about what happened at the fire? From the department, or fire investigation?”
“Not that I know of,” Alexa said. “You had a lot of visitors, but no one like that. It was all over the news for a couple of days, though.”
“They say if there was anything unusual about it?”
“No.” She shook her head. “There’s always so many. They only ever report on them if someone gets hurt or—”
“I know.”
Alexa nodded. “But they did open an investigation. I mean, they had to, right? They just didn’t find anything. The chief and the commissioner talked to the press and they were like, ‘it was an unfortunate accident.’ Their words, not mine, for the record. You’d think those lazy shits would try a little harder.”
I groaned.
“Vic,” Alexa said slowly, her eyes wide, “did something…shady happen? Was Moretti—” She cut herself off before I could, the shock in her eyes exchanged for solemn disbelief and maybe a hint of remorse.
“And your mom, or the firefighters on my shift? Anyone mention anything out of the ordinary? You’re absolutely sure?”
“No—nothing,” she insisted. “You know I’d tell you if I did.” Silence passed between us for a long moment, my gaze pulled to the last of the glowing embers. The smoke had finally dispersed. “What the hell happened?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
5
Leftover steam swirled around the upstairs bathroom, tinged with the scent of soap and floral shampoo. I navigated the old black and white tiles, slick from condensation and water droplets under my bare toes, to heft open the window. The gust of lukewarm wind that blew through the room to dispel the muggy steam felt like somewhat of a reprieve. A hot shower had been worth the risk of near suffocation. At least that charred wood smell had finally been washed out of my hair. I felt a little more human, a little less like a monstrosity that had clawed its way free from the ashes.
The hot water helped to soothe the pain that had found its home in my muscles. For the first time since I’d regained consciousness, I saw the toll that night had taken on my body. Beneath all the aches and fatigue, a network of bruises marked my pale skin from the fall through the floor, from being effortlessly tossed by a stranger’s nonchalant hand. The splotches of browns and greens and purples across my legs had started to heal. But there were a few nasty ones in the middle of my back and a massive reddish-purple spot on my left shoulder that actually made me wince out loud as I examined it in the fogged up mirror. I changed the bandage on my wound—it was uglier than I imagined, and though it was taking its sweet time to repair itself, I realized I would carry that scar with me forever.
As if I needed another constant reminder.
Once I toweled off and put my hair in a loose braid, I decided I should probably look presentable today. I didn’t have the mental energy to wear anything resembling a uniform—and some of it wasn’t clean, still trapped in my duffle bag—so I threw on a pair of dark denim jeans cuffed at the ankles. While rifling through my spare clothes for something decent that wasn’t a tank top or plaid, I gave a passing glance to the notifications clogging my phone.
30 missed calls.
And an embarrassing amount of unanswered text messages.
I scrolled through them, hoping to spot a notification from the department about some kind of meeting, even a vaguely familiar administration number, but there was nothing. The missed calls were a combination of Aunt Meg, my cousins, friends, and coworkers. The texts were pretty much a barrage of well wishes and polite check in notes and condolences.
Two calls wer
e from Ally Moretti. There were a few text messages from her, too, all variations of the same thing, none any less genuine. The most recent had come this morning while I was in the shower. When you’re feeling up to it, I’d love for you to visit. Aidan and I miss you.
My heart gave a painful lurch.
At the bottom of a seemingly endless well of notifications, there was Moretti’s number—the picture messages of his son that he’d sent to my phone minutes prior the fire.
Before the tidal wave of loss could rear its ugly head again, I opened Ramos’ message from last night instead.
Hey, girl. Just checking in on you. Need anything? Love you. She dotted her texts with an abundance of emojis. This one was full of hearts and suns and a rainbow.
There was another from fifteen minutes ago. Brunch date on me? Or drinks if you need something stronger. A winking face punctuated her sentence.
Maybe soon, I texted back. Love you.
I pocketed my phone and finished buttoning the floral patterned blouse I found in one of my drawers. It was well past noon by the time I made it downstairs, the house quiet and undisturbed. With my cousins at school for another few hours and Aunt Meg at work, I had the place to myself.
Which made leaving a hell of a lot easier.
Aunt Meg’s neon Post-It notes slapped onto the refrigerator did not get overlooked. In loopy cursive, she’d left me everyone’s schedule and important numbers just in case, even though I knew all of this already. She reminded me of the leftover pizza in the fridge with an exaggerated smiley face drawn in metallic Sharpie. My insides still didn’t agree with food, and I honestly didn’t feel like eating, so that wasn’t happening yet today. Maybe later.
Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1) Page 5
