Софи Джордан - Firelight

“Sure,” I reply. “When?”

“It’s hot now.” She shuffles inside.

After a moment, I follow.

The next day, I don’t wait for an invitation. I head over to Mrs. Hennessey’s soon after Mom and Tamra leave.

Mrs. Hennessey doesn’t talk much. She cooks. And bakes. A lot. She wasn’t kidding about always making too much food. She feeds me like I’m an invalid who needs fattening up. It’s kind of nice.

The company helps keep my mind off Will.

Over a breakfast of French toast sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar and dripping syrup, I hear a sound. Knocking. I lower my fork to my plate.

Mrs. Hennessey hears it, too. “That your door?”

I shake my head, rising and moving to her living room window. “I don’t know who it could be,” I say as I peer through the blinds.

Will stands at the pool house door.

I freeze, weighing my options. Can I drop to the floor and hide without him catching the movement? I’m not ready for this. For him.

“Is that your boyfriend?”

I angle my head. “No…yes…no.”

Mrs. Hennessey laughs, the sound rusty. “Well, he’s something to look at, that’s for sure.

Why don’t you go talk to him?”

I swing her a glance.

“What? Bad idea?” she asks. “What’re you afraid of?”

I shake my head a little too fiercely. “Nothing.”

But it’s a lie. Yes, I’m afraid. Afraid of what he’ll say. Afraid of the words that he failed to say in the girls’ bathroom but were there, in his eyes. And now, he would have them solidified, ready to fling at me like barbed arrows.

I scoot to the side of the window, peering out. Watching him knock again.

He calls my name through the door. “Jacinda?”

Mrs. Hennessey squints through the open blinds. “If you’re not afraid, why are you hiding? He’s not abusive, is he?”

“No. He wouldn’t hurt me.” At least I don’t think he would. He didn’t the first time we met. But now…I snort. Bury shaking hands in my shirt.

My skin tightens. I scan the backyard as if I expect to see his cousins hiding in the bushes, waiting to pounce. I glance upward through the blinds. No buzzard-circling choppers.

I remember him in that bathroom. Looking over the stall at me. I haven’t been able to shake off the expression on his face. The wide-eyed horror. The shock as he looked down at me—a girl he liked—transformed into the very creature he’d been raised to hunt. Such a contrast from the last time he saw me in draki form. That difference is what makes my stomach twist into knots.

“Well, then what are you waiting for?” Mrs. Hennessey asks.

For it to get easier. For life to stop being so hard.

Since that’s not going to happen, I send Mrs. Hennessey a shaky smile and step outside.

“Hi, Will,” I say softly.

He spins around. Looks me over like he’s checking for something. What? Does he expect me to stand before him in full manifest? Wings, fiery skin, and all?

His gaze shifts over my shoulder and I know he sees Mrs. Hennessey in the window.

“Let’s go inside.” I quickly walk past him into the pool house, into the blast of icy air that acts like a salve to my steaming skin. I turned the thermostat lower when Mom and Tamra left, craving the coolness, the frigid air on my skin.

I’m especially glad for it now. With him here.

I hear the door close after me. In the middle of our small living room, I turn and face him.

Dig my hands deep into the pockets of my shorts. The waistband rides low. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

He stares at me. His eyes intense. Bright. More gold today than brown or green, and my heart pinches a bit as I’m reminded of the amber Mom sold, a piece of my soul lost. His eyes have always been piercing, but this is different. It’s like he’s seeing me for the first time.

And I guess, in a way, he is.

It’s there in those expressive eyes. The hurt. The betrayal. I did that to him and can’t hide from it. Hurting him hurt me. More than I could ever expect. The pain is up there with losing Dad. With leaving the pride, leaving Az and Nidia. With feeling my draki slip away like mist between my fingers. And betraying my kind…even if they were planning to clip my wings and betray me.

“I took the day off,” he announces. Like I asked.

“Your dad just lets—”

“I don’t ask my dad. For pretty much anything. As long as I don’t flunk out, he doesn’t care.” The grooves along his cheeks deepen. “He cares about other things.” He nods slowly at me. My stomach cramps. “You can guess what those things are.”

The cramping takes a severe twist. Here we go. I might as well say it. Get it out there. He knows I know.

“The family business,” I volunteer.

His lips press into a grim line. “Yeah. My family business is hunting your family.”

I inhale, hate to ask, but have to know. “Did you tell them about—” His voice bites out, “Do you really think you would still be alive if I had?” His angry eyes claw me.

I sink onto the couch, pluck at the edge of my shorts. “I guess not.”

He shakes his head. “You saw that room at my house—”

“Yes,” I say quickly, not wanting to discuss his family’s trophy room. It haunts me every time I close my eyes. “I know what your family is capable of.”

“And you still came to my house?” he snaps. “Do you have a death wish?”

“I didn’t have much choice!” I hug myself, squeeze tightly as if I can shield myself from his anger.

Sighing, he lowers himself beside me. Closer than I expect. Closer than I want him right now. I smell his soap. His skin. Slowly, the smolder builds in my chest until I taste heat in my mouth. Smoke in my nose.

“Guess you’re not an enkros,” he says. “You’re a…dragon.”

I can tell he has a hard time saying this. I almost smile. “No. I’m not an enkros. And we’re not dragons. Not in a long time. We just descend from them. We call ourselves draki.”

“Draki.” He nods slowly, then leans in close, eyes angry. “You’ve had a good laugh over all this, huh?” His voice is as soft as a feather dragging across my waking skin.

“No.” I tremble. From dread or pleasure, I don’t know. Maybe both. He really shouldn’t be this close to me. “None of this has been what I’d call amusing.”

“I guess not. You know, you could have told me—”

“Could I?” I rub a hand over my forehead, directly at the center where it’s starting to throb. “Like you were so open with me.” At least my voice is strong, even as my insides quiver.

His expression hardens to stone. “What did you expect me to do? Tell the girl I can’t get out of my head that my family hunts mythical creatures? That they’re obsessed with the chase? The kill, making money by butchering up—”

“Stop!” I hold up a hand, working my lips, trying to chase down the bad taste from my mouth, stop the churn of my stomach. Because I don’t want to know all the details. Can’t bear hearing about what his family does to my kind. What he’s witnessed them do…maybe even had a hand in it. Standing in that shop of horrors he calls home is a memory I’ve yet to erase from my head.

“But you knew,” he says. “You saw me before.” His eyes are fierce, his words a savage rush—each one like the sharp dig of a knife. “You knew me from the mountains. That first day in the hallway, you recognized me.” His eyes feast on my face, dropping to my neck, down my body. Again, like he’s seeing me as he did in that cave. In the bathroom.

Seeing through my human skin to the draki underneath. “You had to know I could never hurt you. I didn’t then. How could I now?”

I get up and move into the kitchen, desperate for distance from him just then. But he’s not about to grant me that.