Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series)

Table of Content
s

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

My first
year on my own officially ended with my last exams earlier in the day.  To celebrate, my friend and foster brother, Zach, threw a party at his apartment.  To be truthful, Zach would throw a party for just about any reason.  My final classes were just another excuse to fill his apartment with music and underage drinking.  I arrived around ten and pushed my way into the living room.  Sweaty bodies crowded the room, all grinding to the music in a mass of flesh and color.  Several couples pressed themselves closer together than the rest. The music already screamed in my head, and I hadn’t even had a drink yet.  I made my way to the kitchen bar, and Zach passed me a red plastic cup. 

“Jade! 
My latest creation!” he boasted above the roar of a hip-hop song I didn’t know.

“What is it?” I yelled back.  Zach just grinned, which meant I had to try it before he was going to tell me.  I
brought the plastic to my lips.  The icy-cold mixture of rum, pineapple juice, and pureed berries swirled over my tongue.  Even in the midst of a keg party, Zach had to be a health nut.  I smiled.

“Not bad!” I screamed, a little too loud since the song changed at exact
ly the same moment.  The lull in the deafening beat lasted only a second, but I cringed at the volume of my voice.

“It’s a
rum and fruit smoothie!” Zach called out as he turned back to pour drinks for the girls gathered in the tight space around him.  I left Zach to his following.  The girls around him were all ordinary college girls.  I sipped on my drink and sat down on the worn arm of the couch.  The potent concoction tasted like a gourmet dessert.  I felt like I had been watching the bodies dancing for only an instant when I realized I had emptied my cup.    I sighed and decided one more would not be a bad thing tonight.  I had been keeping my guard up for an entire year of living on my own.  I could always crash on Zach’s couch if I couldn’t drive to my apartment.  I had no pressing plans for that evening, or the weekend for that matter.  I never did.

I spotted Zach on the makeshift dance floor, in the center of three different girls, each with a cup like mine.  Zach’s blond hair fell over his face just a little.  Even though we were no longer near the ocean, he kept up the appearance of a sun-bathed surfer.  I made my way to the blender and squeezed past a couple making out by the keg.  The mixture did not look at all appetizing, a purp
le color on the verge of being brown.  I poured the last drops into my cup and took a big gulp.  The coolness went straight to my head as I realized this portion contained more alcohol than the last. Zach was probably looking out for me when he poured my drink.  He knew I came here alone.  He probably thought some guy might try to take advantage of me.  Zach didn’t know just how capable I was of taking care of myself, and I preferred to keep him and everyone else in the dark about that.

That was
also why I lived solo in a tiny apartment.  Crowded dorms really prevented a girl from having a completely private life.  Zach and I were friends, but I didn’t have any others.  I convinced myself friends would only complicate my life.  Of course, I knew this concept contradicted my desire to be normal.  The delicate balance of my life kept me on continual alert.             

By the time I finished my second cup, the colors on the dance floor
began to blend together.  The red cups mixed with auras of blue, gold, green, and pink.  I thought I saw black in there as well, but it must have been the alcohol.  A dark color like that would not make sense.  On clothes, on furniture, on people, fine, but not in the air like that.  I hadn’t seen a color that dark in the air since, well, it had been a very long time.  I had been able to read people’s auras since I was very young, but no one knew about it.  It wasn’t the kind of thing you used as a party trick, especially when you were trying to be normal.  Besides, you couldn’t exactly prove a gift like aura reading.  I just kept it to myself.  Over the years, I had become pretty good at interpreting the colors I saw.  Darker colors indicated a darker spirit—whether from depression or dark purposes was sometimes harder to tell, but when I factored in people’s body signals, speech and eye contact, I could generally figure it out. 

The two drinks
flooding my system made it more difficult to distinguish which aura matched which person.  I felt the alcohol going to my head, and it felt good to let go for once.  Usually, I preferred not to drink at Zach’s parties, but I had made it through my first year with no catastrophes.  Tonight, just this once, I could let loose.

Despite the fact I abhorred the existence of my gift, it still could entertain me.  I spent my free hours observing people’s auras. On the living room floor at Zach’s party, the colors continued to blend, the red cups streaking through them in the air.  I didn’t see
a black aura anymore, so I must have been wrong.

I got up from the couch and almost stumbled over a girl sitting on the floor.  She giggled and lifted her cup to her mouth
in a clumsy arch, spilling half of her beer as she did so.  I saw the red color of the cup flowing through the air as icy beer hit my leg, just above my sandaled foot.  Yuck.  I wiggled my toes in my now squishy sandal and thought about the pair of shoes I kept in Zach’s closet for when we went running together.  I made my way to Zach’s room.  He kept it locked during parties, but I knew where he hid the key in the tiny hall closet.  On the top shelf, I found the key inside the Transformers washcloth folded and placed back towards the wall.  I sometimes teased Zach about holding on to this remnant from his childhood, but really, I was jealous.  I hadn’t held on to any remnants from my childhood.

With a furtive look around
, I unlocked the door.  Another couple stood in a tangled knot, engrossed in each other’s lips nearby, but they didn’t notice as I replaced the key and slipped into the room.  I locked the door behind me.  As I expected, an empty room greeted me.  I could hear the music reverberating through the apartment, slightly muted by the wall and the closed door.  I took my soggy sandal off and then the dry one and threw them in the corner of Zach’s room, next to his dirty laundry.  I grabbed my sneakers.  No socks, but better than beer soaked sandals.  I had no idea how important it was that I had a good pair of shoes on this particular night.

As I bent down to lace the shoes, I felt strange.  The laces seemed to have an aura of their own.  Everything in the room seemed to have an aura and all of the auras were spinning and blending together. 
The blue of Zach’s laundry hamper shimmered and blended with the creamy gray of his carpet.  The white of the closet doors flashed through the navy of his comforter.  I had never felt this way before.  My head pounded as dizziness made it impossible for me to stand.  My skin felt clammy.  I looked back down to concentrate on my shoelaces, but the floor beneath my feet concerned me.  Zach’s room had wall-to-wall carpet, not asphalt.  I put my hand down on the hard, black surface.  I could feel the grit of the road and the dampness it had after a rain, but it had been a beautiful night without a cloud in the sky.   Sprinklers maybe?

Suddenly a piercing light shone in my face and a horn honked in warning.  I looked up in time to see a shiny black mustang heading at me.  I jumped out of the way
, staggering from the feeling of vertigo. 

“Hey, baby!  Looking good,” called an obnoxious voice from the passenger side of the car.  I could hear
familiar music echoing from the windows, something from my past, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I quickly moved on to something I could put my finger on.  I was now sitting on a concrete sidewalk in a shopping complex.  Strange things had always been a part of my life, but never anything like this.  Unsure if anxiety or the experience itself caused my reaction, I tried to steady myself before I could stand up.  A wave of nausea overcame me, and I vomited a little onto the road.

Wiping my mouth on the corner of my black blouse,
I closed my eyes.  I had a feeling I knew what was going on.  I knew this place, but I didn’t want to look up.  I stood in the middle of a nightmare.  I had too much to drink, and I would look up and find myself back at the party in Zach’s apartment.  Maybe I drank so much that I fell from the second story window, and I was really lying on a sidewalk, injured and delirious, with an ambulance on its way.  That would be better than the reality I was about to live.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I willed the pain of the fall or the bass of the music in the next room.  None of it came to me.  Instead, I heard cars on a road nearby.  I felt myself sitting on the pavement, not lying on the apartment complex sidewalk with blood oozing from my head, and certainly not sitting on the carpet in Zach’s apartment.    I suspected this would happen one day, but I avoided trauma and danger simply so I could avoid this moment. 
I could only be in one place, only one time.  Before I looked back up, I finished tying my shoelaces.  The laces no longer had auras of their own.  Everything seemed painfully ordinary.

With a deep breath, I rose from the sidewalk and placed my hand on the concrete pillar next to me.  Everything felt so real.  The crisp, cool air did not feel like the late Florida Spring I had been in the midst of o
nly moments ago.  It was still Spring; I was sure of this, but it was a different Spring, in a different place and a different time.  A time I did not want to face. This night, the night I had returned to, had changed that for me.  This night changed my entire life.

I stood up and turned around, looking at the strip mall with the storefronts and the bar and grill.  All of the stores were closed, and the exterior bar lights were off.  A faint glow streamed
onto the pavement from a few cracks in the darkly tinted glass.  Four doors covered the length of the bar and grill.  The electric sign reading “The Professor’s Pub” hung ominous and dark.  Although the bar was closed, I knew there were people inside.  I took in the dark glass and the strange padlocks on the outside of three of the doors.  I saw those padlocks in my nightmares—lying broken on the pavement in the charred remains of a fire I started.  This place no longer existed, yet here I stood outside, contemplating whether or not to cross the threshold of the fourth door—the only one without the padlock, and the one closest to me.  I knew the main entrance was the door furthest from me.  I knew the people inside would be sitting at the bar directly across from the main entrance.

“No.”  I heard my own voice, small and weak.  “No, no, no.  I can’t be here.  I need to go back.”  Tears flowed down my cheeks, creating paths of mascara and salt. 

It was horrific to be in this position.   I did not want to face what hid behind the dark glass.  I did not want to face my past, and I did not want it to be a part of my future. 
What use had it been to live by myself and to avoid danger and trauma if I was destined to be called back to this moment in time anyway?
  This was the only traumatic and dangerous time in my life, and I was the one who caused the trauma. 
Why now?
  

As
I stood outside the very bar where my mother was killed, I tried to remember the rules of time travel. The gift of time travel had to be activated by a great traumatic event or danger.  I could not avoid the trauma of my past.  How old was I tonight?  Just barely three.  My mother and aunt had only just begun to introduce me into the mysterious world in which we lived.  My first gift had been a part of my life for two years already, but I didn’t understand what it meant.  I also didn’t understand I was different from other people.  I vaguely understood that my gift made my father disappear.  I couldn’t remember him, just strong arms and a musky cedar scent.