Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1)

by Jessie Thomas

  “Do you want a drink? I need a drink.” The bottles clanged together, loud enough to trigger the headache I knew was on its way when my hands fumbled with them.

  Javier called for me, softly. I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t get my hands to stop shuddering long enough to grab one of the bottles. It felt like something more, like I couldn’t get my grip on anything else.

  “I thought it would leave,” I found myself saying before I had the chance to keep my racing thoughts crammed inside my head where they should’ve stayed. “I thought when I saw Marcus’ ashes—once he was finally gone, it would stop. That it would make me feel better about something, maybe close that wound. But it still hurts. It still fucking hurts and it’s like I feel it even more now that the anger’s not there. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it. I don’t know. I just—I want to stop. I want to be able to breathe again.”

  “Nix…”

  The old floors groaned under Javier’s approaching footsteps. I continued rummage through the bottles to find a glass—not so much a glass, more of a questionable mug—in a vain attempt to stop myself from vomiting out every single thought. One of the bottles tipped over, setting off a noisy chain reaction. Something light and thin fluttered onto the floor at my feet. With one hand steadied against the lower cabinets, I abandoned the idea of a drink and lowered to a painful crouch.

  It was a photograph. Glossy and slightly rumpled, a crease worked over one corner. I didn’t have any memory of how it got there. But I could make a guess that it’d been left in the wake of that lost time I’d had after getting discharged from the hospital. Clutching the picture in my hands, I eased myself back to my feet, leaning most of my weight on the countertop. The tiniest of gasps left me, a small, broken sort of noise that barely held its own against the fans.

  One of our graduation photos. Moretti and I were both making weird faces, cheesing for the camera. He was squinting against the sun. I had a paper plate in one hand with a half-eaten piece of cake, the other arm looped around Moretti’s neck. Both of us young and new and so, so unaware of how easily this city could swallow us whole.

  Something in me finally snapped.

  The dam I’d built up with the fragments of debris from that abandoned house, held together by all of the rage and vengeance and numbness finally broke. I couldn’t shove it away anymore.

  A sob tore itself free from my chest, raw as it clawed its way from the back of my throat. The photo fluttered back onto the counter and I bent over it, hands clenched around the edge, the only thing keeping me upright. The sound of my sobbing filled up the apartment, so foreign to my own ears that I thought I was having some kind of dissociative experience. Maybe I was. The world still didn’t feel quite right.

  “Vic.” Javier’s hand rubbed a slow circle on my back, and I finally turned around, sniffling, salty tears winding down my cheeks. He didn’t say a word except for repeating my name, softer, taking my tear-stained face in his warm hands. Searching my watery eyes with his own, I recognized the look in them. I knew that he understood what I felt because he carried around the same hurt, too.

  When he swept some of the tears away with his thumb, I only cried harder, my throat and lungs aching with the effort. And then he drew me into the warmth of his chest—the good kind of warmth, not the suffocating heat of fire. He let my tears soak into the front of his shirt and held me close. His fingers raked through my hair, a calmer rhythm than my pulse.

  But I couldn’t stop. I’d opened the dam and it wouldn’t slow until I had nothing else left to give. We ended up on the floor of the kitchen, Javier’s back against the lower cabinets with me curled up against his chest, my face nudging his shoulder. Unaware of how long we were there, I was sobbing too hard to know whether or not I’d imagined the feather-light press of his lips to the top of my head.

  Javier didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He just held me as my incoherent weeping tapered into heaving breaths and quiet sniffles, until the last of my tears dried on my face and I drifted off to a dreamless, painless sleep.

  Golden late morning sun hit the back of my closed eyelids. I’d resisted it for what I thought had been at least an hour, waking up and falling back to sleep a few times before I decided it was probably time to get up for real. Squinting, the thin rays of sunlight pierced right through my skull. I sat up and realized I had no recollection of how I’d ended up on my couch.

  The last thing I remembered was being pressed up against Javier’s chest on the floor of the kitchen, listening to the steady beat of his heart and trying to match its even rhythm. It wasn’t until I swung my legs over the side of the couch—bare feet, which meant my shoes had gone missing sometime in the night—that I noticed him still asleep in the chair opposite me. He had an elbow propped on the arm of the chair, his fist tucked just above his chin. And he was snoring gently.

  I couldn’t help the smirk that found its way on my lips. His mouth was parted slightly, his hair and clothes tousled from what I knew had been a very uncomfortable night’s sleep in a creaky armchair. His waistcoat was undone, the sleeves of his soiled shirt pushed up to his elbows. My wandering gaze came to rest at the delicate, dark line of his eyelashes resting against his cheeks, the way his brow had furrowed a little while he slept. I didn’t have the heart to wake him. He’d earned his sleep. He needed it as much as I did.

  I stood up to stretch and regretted it almost instantly, every muscle fighting a battle as I tried to work off the stiffness. My head had a dull throb that some painkillers and coffee could fix. A sore, swollen feeling had settled around my eyes from the endless crying bout, the salt from my tears still a phantom on my skin. It was like having a hangover with none of the fun benefits of ever having been drunk.

  But it did have the satisfaction of a successful demon kill.

  If only I could enjoy that. It would take a while.

  After I was actually off the couch and a little more coherent, I left Javier a note in case he woke up in the short time I’d be gone. I stopped on my way out the door, lingering next to the chair. My fingers were poised to reach out and smooth the unruly strands of his hair. But I stopped myself before they could, thinking better of it, and left for the coffee shop downstairs.

  No one behind the counter judged my haggard appearance. They were probably used to it by now. So much so that they didn’t even question my ripped clothes and the ash and dirt that was still plastered to me. They could probably smell how desperate I was for caffeine, if the ghostly scent of brimstone wasn’t too overpowering.

  Javier was awake when I got back, phone in one hand, the other attempting to rub the remnants of sleep from his eyes. He offered a weak smile once he lifted his head and saw the steam coiling from the lid of the cup I held out to him. It seemed to be a habit between us now, using coffee as a balm for a shitty night’s sleep.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Didn’t have to do that.”

  “And you didn’t have to stay last night. That chair is the worst.” I popped the lid off my cup, unleashing the steam. “But thank you.”

  “Couldn’t leave you,” Javier answered quietly. His eyes darted away from mine back to his phone. “I didn’t want to—wanted to make sure you were okay. That first demon takedown, it’s rough.”

  I felt his pause, felt the millions of questions that buzzed around us like static. But there would be time for them later.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m feeling it.”

  He slid his phone onto the table. “Lieutenant’s trying to schedule a meeting with the team. I told her your phone’s out of commission.”

  “Are we…still a team?” I asked. “With Marcus gone, I can’t imagine Gemma and Ozias would want to hang around and see how this all shakes out.”

  “Don’t know.” Javier took an experimental sip. “Guess it depends on who shows up.”

  I sunk back into the couch with a long sigh. The two of us drank our coffee in comfortable, demon-free silence.

  If you lived in Perdition
Falls long enough, you could pick up on certain unique sounds from a distance, like the distinct sizzle of an egg frying on the pavement. It wasn’t an uncommon sight in other parts of the country where the temperatures climbed into the mid-100s, but it was still a trick that you couldn’t do anywhere else near the Canadian border. That was how you could tell the tourists from the locals: the locals would have to step over abandoned egg whites smeared on the sidewalks at least once a day and moved on without so much as a glance. The tourists took videos and asked if they could sample this miraculous delicacy of sidewalk food.

  And all this time, as kids, we’d been cooking with the strange heat below our city, never knowing it had been Hellfire.

  The wind swept over the shore and fluttered against the umbrella over our picnic table, bringing the aroma of fried egg and what I thought might’ve been bacon with it. Gemma craned her neck to find its source, then waved it off and went back to her phone as she absently toyed with the SATAN CALLED, HE WANTS HIS WEATHER BACK pin on the front pocket of her shirt. Ozias peeked over the top of her head to watch the cluster of teenagers across the street gathered around a metal baking sheet. He had a fond smirk, the kind that accompanied good memories.

  “Youths,” Gemma grumbled.

  “C’mon, Gem,” Ozias said, still watching, a hand propped under his chin. “Don’t be like that. We’ve all done that shit. You’re gonna sit here and tell me you didn’t crack eggs on the sidewalk? We made it a game—we made omelets on those sidewalks. These kids got smart. Though it loses something when you don’t cook directly on the concrete.”

  “We used to bake cookies,” I offered, and Javier turned his head next to me, a slow smile working its way onto his face, reaching his eyes. It was an old memory from a time that predated my living arrangements with my aunt. Aunt Meg had done it with me and my cousins, too, but this memory felt nearly ancient. “They were messy as hell, but they were still the best.”

  “I remember those cookies,” he said. “Chocolate chip and M&M.”

  My stomach rumbled, and it wasn’t the eggs and bacon it was now searching for. Aunt Meg had stress baked the night of the fire at the gala, the news on a loop in the background, worrying over the unanswered text messages she’d sent me every ten minutes since the story broke.

  I hadn’t told her I was going, but as things started to unfold, she made an educated guess about what we’d been up to that evening. I had no landline in my apartment, so I’d used Javier’s phone to call the house and let her know I was safe. I hadn’t given her the whole explanation yet—it only seemed fair, since she owed me a few untold stories—though she’d seemed appeased knowing I was all right. Mostly.

  “Where’s the suit?” Gemma asked. “She’s the one who called this team meeting, and we’re waiting on her.”

  “She’s got a job,” Ozias said. He chanced a look at his watch. “I’m on break. Hate to say I agree, but I can’t afford to lose more business if this meeting drags. Gotta make back what I lost from the Firebrand gigs.”

  I scowled. “They—and I don’t mean the pun—fired you?”

  Ozias frowned. “Yep.”

  “You’re too good for them, anyway, Oz,” Gemma said.

  I pulled an envelope from the bag under the table near my feet and slid it over to Ozias.

  He lifted his head from his fist. “What’s this?”

  “Santos and I wanted to make up for all the gear you lost,” I told him. “You put your ass on the line for us when you didn’t have to. If that doesn’t cover everything, just let us know.”

  Ozias let out a stunned exhale after peering inside the envelope. “That’s…that’s more than enough. Thank you. Both of you. Thank you.”

  Javier nodded. “Don’t mention it, man. You think you’re gonna be able to find another gig?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard,” Ozias said. “Hell’s Gate’s got plenty of clubs and bars. Always looking for musicians. Between that and my shop, I’m set.”

  “At least you own the place. You make your own rules, your own schedule,” Gemma said. “I have a manager who’s going to make it a whole Broadway production if I’m late again. He’ll give his speech and then he’ll make some baseless threat about cutting my hours even though we both know he’ll never do that because no one who still has a soul would want to work there.”

  She glared at her phone screen as if it had become an incarnation of her boss. “And then he makes me clean up the sidewalks, as if I’m not already busy dealing with other crap. You know how many times I have to watch eggs getting cooked outside the store? Too many. Enough. We get it, it’s hot. Stop wasting food.”

  “You know,” a new voice, with a sweet, rasping lilt cut in, “I think you would complain a lot less if you worked for the PCU.”

  Gemma laughed, all of it drenched with sarcasm, not a trace of genuine humor to be found. She pretended to look annoyed when Detective Rashid chose the empty space of picnic bench next to her. She wasn’t really fooling anyone. If anything, I think she actually enjoyed whatever antagonistic repartee they had going on.

  “You don’t know me at all.”

  “Don’t I?” Zahira asked, one eyebrow lifting. “You spend enough time in the holding cells. I think I know a thing or two about you by now, Gemma.”

  “You’re the best informant in PF,” Javier told her. “Why work a job you hate when you can get paid to do what you’re already good at?”

  “I have standards,” Gemma said. “And a policy against working for any law enforcement agency in this city, pyro or not. They’re all dirty.”

  Zahira’s jaw lowered a little, affronted. “We keep things very clean, thank you.”

  Gemma glowered. “Thin fucking ice.”

  “Sure,” Zahira teased. “Why are you here, then? You can’t hate it that much.”

  Jodi finally made it, approaching the table and cutting off what I was sure would’ve been a witty lover’s spat between Zahira and Gemma. She was back in the safety of her uniform, not a hair out of place, though she looked tired. I imagined she hadn’t had much time to herself while on clean up duty the past few days since the gala. Her gaze rested on all of us gathered together as she stood at the end of the table. She let out a satisfied exhale.

  “I’ll keep this brief, since I know we all have places to be, and I can only spare a few minutes away from work with everything going on,” she prefaced. “Fire investigation has done all it can to make sure the public gets a story, but things are bound to slip through the cracks. We can’t catch everything. We can’t contain this secret forever.”

  “Why bother?” Gemma asked. “Maybe if everyone knew, our jobs would be easier.”

  “Because our job is to keep everyone safe,” Jodi said. “And if that also means keeping this secret, dealing with it so others don’t have to, then that’s how it has to be. Zahira’s going to continue working with us at the risk of her own job. If she finds anything that she suspects is tied to the incendiaries, she’ll pass it onto us. Same goes for me at fire investigation. I tend to see a lot. Now we have a means to fight them.”

  “Victoria,” Jodi said, and the name burned my ears. “Have you heard anything from Cassia?”

  “No surprise visits,” I assured. “I haven’t seen her lurking around The Raze, either. She’s in the wind. Or, if I had to guess, back safe and sound in the Devil’s Spire.”

  “Can’t believe she dragged us into a sibling rivalry,” Javier muttered.

  “Hell of a rivalry,” Ozias remarked. “Must be some messy family drama in that tower.”

  Gemma looked up from her phone. “Oh, to be a fly on those walls…”

  I crossed my arms on the tabletop. “I’d rather not.”

  “If I hear anything, see anything, I’ll pass it along,” Zahira said. “But in the meantime, you might want to be careful.”

  Jodi’s eyes flittered to me and Javier. “You two, especially,” she warned. “As far as we know, you killed the only son of the oldest incendiary
in Perdition Falls. Titus owns this city. There’s not a place in it where you’ll be able to hide from him if he finds out you’re the ones who murdered his son. An attack like that doesn’t come without consequences.”

  In the days since, I’d thought of everything except that. The grief was still there, like the phantom of the ashes once plastered on my skin. I swore I could still feel them sometimes even though I’d taken more showers than was probably healthy to wash them off. And the aftershocks of killing my first incendiary were still running their course through my system. The consequences of watching him crumble into dust had been an afterthought nagging at some dark corner, and every time it had tried to grab my attention, I’d shoved it away so I could process it later.

  Killing Marcus didn’t mean the end of my personal vendetta. It was only the beginning of a longer, more dangerous fight. A fight that Javier and I had inherited.

  I had the blood of a demonic mob boss’ son on my hands now.

  I would be hunted.

  The Camaro idled at the curb, the engine growling underneath me as it waited. This street was notoriously quiet, only the ambient noise of clogged downtown traffic a few intersections over battling against the distant birdsong and a howling dog in a yard next door. Everyone knew that dog. I didn’t even live here and I’d become so used to his signature howl that it was nothing but background noise.

  “Moretti would throw treats over the fence to get that dog to quit howling.” I stopped picking at the loose thread on my jean shorts and looked up. I thought I’d keep the memory to myself, but I set it free and found that I could talk about him without the tremble in voice overwhelming me. “They didn’t even have a dog. He would just…buy them anyway and keep them in the cupboard. It backfired on him, though. The dog would make all of this noise and expect treats. The neighbors weren’t too happy.”

  Javier hadn’t said a word since he’d parked his car. I’d watched him out of the corner of my eye, how he leaned back in his seat with a barely-there exhale, the thin sunlight edging his dark hair with gold. He’d sat here with me, the minutes passing us by. Waiting patiently for me to make up my mind.