Wicked Flames (Solsti Prophecy) (6 page)

They were wrong.

Lying in her bed now, Gin stared up at the ceiling. Why couldn’t it have just been Nicole? She’d liked her power. Acted like it was so cool. Never worried about it. And Brooke had the same attitude about hers.

Later that summer, they were at the beach with their parents. Shrieking and splashing, Brooke tried repeatedly to squirt water through her clenched fists like the neighborhood boys had done. After a dozen attempts, she couldn’t master the trick.

She’d huffed in frustration, glaring at her hands resting at the waterline, and suddenly a thin stream of liquid shot through her clenched palms, hitting Gin square on the forehead. “Hey!” Gin yelled. “You said you couldn’t do it!”

“I couldn’t.” Brooke’s mouth hung open.

“Well, you just did. Duh,” Nicole said.

“I didn’t squeeze my hands. I-I didn’t move them at all,” Brooke said in a low voice, her face pale.

Gin and Nicole waded close to Brooke in the waist-high water. “Then what did you do?” Nicole asked.

“I just thought about it,” Brooke whispered.

Gin and Nicole exchanged a glance. “Like I did with the wind?” Nicole asked.

Brooke nodded, eyes wide.

“Do it again,” Nicole ordered.

“Okay.” Brooke peered at the water swirling around her clasped hands. A second later, another spurt of liquid bubbled up from the surface.

“Wow,” Gin breathed.

“What does it mean? And what about Gin?” Nicole pushed her wet hair out of her face.

“Hey, maybe you can do it too,” Brooke said to Gin. “Try thinking about the water, what you want it to do.”

“Maybe,” Gin murmured. She gazed at the water in her cupped hands and visualized it spouting toward the sky, but nothing happened.

“Maybe it doesn’t start to work til you’re older.” Brooke shrugged and smiled.

Gin rolled her eyes. “You’re only twelve.”

Nicole smiled. “And you’re only ten. You never know. Let’s keep trying. Maybe not today, but like, later. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could all do some kind of trick?” Even at thirteen she was pretty. She skipped right over the gangly, awkward stage.

“Yeah, it would.” Gin frowned. “What could it be?” She wanted to be able to do
something
. Whatever her sisters were doing, she wanted in.

“Maybe you can, like, freeze time. That would be cool,” Brooke trailed her fingers across the surface of the lake.

Gin imagined everyone at the beach stopping in mid-motion. Still nothing. “Nope.”

If only she
could
freeze time. Gin flipped to her side and slid a hand under her pillow. That would be better than what she’d been cursed with. The idea held endless possibilities. Preventing crime, for one. And halting the progression of diseases until cures could be found. But no, Gin’s ability only consumed and destroyed.

Ever determined, Nicole was at it again a few weeks later. She and Brooke sat at the desk in her room, lighting a candle and extinguishing the flame with the sharp little breezes she summoned.

“Try it, Gin,” Nicole said. “See if you can make it go out. Focus your mind on the flame.”

Gin did as told and looked into the tiny yellow flame. It bobbed above the wick in a beautiful dance, its orange center seeming to pulse with life. She actually didn’t want it to go out. She stared, lulled, until the flame was all she could see. Its warmth tickled her face as it shaped and re-formed itself. So pretty…

The flame shot up, flaring two feet into the air. It expanded to a column as wide as her hand, with little tendrils reaching out and going back to the center. All three girls screamed and jumped back in horror.

“Gin! What are you doing? Make it stop!” Nicole shrieked.

“I don’t know how! I don’t know what I did!” Gin cried. Her hands shook and her breath came in choppy gasps.
 

One tendril dipped toward the surface of the desk, seemingly of its own accord. It landed on the stuffed pony Nicole had recently won at an amusement park.

Gin’s horrified eyes stayed riveted to the toy. The fire paused for a second and retracted, but not soon enough. The pony’s ribbon mane smoldered, the satin strands melting into ugly clumps. Then the pink fur beneath started to sizzle.

“I’ll get some water!” Brooke dashed out of the room.

Terror squeezed Gin’s heart and tears streamed down her face. The fire looked huge and menacing. Not pretty anymore. It looked lethal. Its edges spread out wider. The pony’s cheap fake fur blackened under the flames, giving off a burned chemical smell.

Oh no, oh no. How had she done that? The last thing she wanted to do was hurt anyone. She only wanted to be like her sisters.

“Gin!” Nicole grabbed her arms and looked into her eyes. “The wind listens to me. Maybe that fire will listen to you. Tell it to get smaller. Or…or think at it. Try it! Try
something
!”

Gin blinked thorough her tears. This was her fault. Just go away, just go away, just stop, please, she begged silently at the fire.

And as quickly as it had flared up, it abruptly went out. Every flicker, every flame.

Nicole and Gin collapsed on the floor in a heap as Brooke darted back into the room clutching a Big Gulp plastic cup brimming with water. “Oh my gosh, it went out? Thank God!” She set it down and joined them in a sisterly group hug, squeezing tightly.

Gin sobbed and shook uncontrollably, sitting with her sisters for what seemed like hours. They rubbed her back and reassured her that she was okay. But the image of that huge flame burned before her eyes, blocking her sisters’ soft words.

And if her mind ever allowed her to relax, to push the fiery memory away, she still had the pink pony. Gin pushed up in bed so she was leaning against her headboard, her eyes darting to her closet. She’d kept that poor toy as physical evidence, laying hidden in an old shoebox. The thing looked like a bomb victim. With melted polyester globs along its neck, and hard blackened streaks on its back, it was a stark, tangible reminder.

She had done that. She had put her family in danger. Never again.

And she hadn’t tried it. Had never told anyone else. While her sisters occasionally used their unusual talents in secret, Gin never let fire enter her mind. But when high school hit, teen angst and hormones overrode her mental control.

She was walking home from school with Michelle. They’d been friends for a few years and always ended up falling for the same guys. Now their current crush had asked Michelle out, and Gin was jealous. She knew it was immature, but she wished Colby had asked her out instead.

They took a shortcut through an empty park, their sneakers swishing against the grass. Michelle lit a cigarette and prattled on and on about what she was going to wear on their date, and how cute Colby’s dark hair was. Gin muttered some supportive words, but she wanted Michelle to shut her gloating mouth.

“I heard he likes blondes.” Michelle tossed her long pale golden hair over one shoulder. She flicked her red plastic lighter on and off. On and off. It grated on Gin’s nerves. “So that’s probably why he asked me and not you.”

Gin stared at her friend in disbelief. Some guy would pass her by because of her hair color? And Michelle was happy about it? I thought we were friends. Shock and hurt fought for control of her thoughts. Just cut me with a knife, bitch.

Gin’s anger built and she gritted her teeth. Her gaze unconsciously dropped to the stupid lighter. Stupid guy. Stupid date. Bitch friend.

The flame flicked on and flared huge, billowing three feet into the air.

“Shit!” Michelle screamed, dropping the lighter to the ground in front of her.

Gin gaped in horror. Shocked into stillness, she could only stare at the lighter. A tendril of fire licked upward and swayed, seeming to sense…what? Fire isn’t sentient.

Flames spread faster than she could blink. They split and raced in two parallel lines away from the girls, dancing and crisscrossing in the grass.

Oh God, it’s spreading. No, no, no! Icy panic numbed Gin’s arms. Stop!

In the time it took to suck air into her too-tight lungs, the flames died down, leaving a scorched pattern in the green grass.

“What the hell? That could’ve like, killed me!” Michelle shrieked.

“Oh my God.” Gin stared, mesmerized, at the grass. The lines weren’t random. They formed a distinct shape.

Michelle tilted her head, peering at the ground. “What the fuck is that?” She took a step back.

A knife. Black lines seared the ground, outlining a blade. The lighter rested at the tip. The charred drawing pointed to Michelle.

Fighting through a fog of molasses in her head, Gin found her voice. “I don’t know.” What was she supposed to say? You pissed me off and I unconsciously created a fiery knife outline on the ground? “Uh, your lighter must be, like, defective. Are you okay?” She didn’t have to fake the sick feeling in her stomach or the dread weighing on her limbs.

I did this.

The image of the immense candle flame sprung back to her mind. Her sisters could do cool tricks, but she had been cursed. What kind of a freak was she?

“Um, yeah, I’m okay. I guess I threw it away in time,” Michelle said, wrapping her arms around herself. “You look like you’re gonna hurl. Let’s go home.”

Later that night, sitting on her bed with Nicole and Brooke, Gin told them what had happened. Cold apprehension still coursed through her veins as she relayed the events. She couldn’t shake the knowledge that she was cursed. “I don’t know what I did or how I did it, but I am never doing that again,” she vowed.

“Maybe you just need to learn how to control it,” Brooke said. “Maybe you and I are supposed to work together. You know, water can douse fire if it’s out of control.”

“I don’t want to try again,” Gin whispered. A tiny voice told her she needed to explore this new ability, but she slammed that door and triple-locked it. No way. There was no room for any reaction to today’s incident other than horror.

That night she stared at her ceiling for hours as sleep evaded her. When she finally drifted off, her subconscious mind hijacked her hopes for any peaceful rest. She awoke, gasping, from a dream of a crescent moon consumed by flames. A female voice intoned over and over, “You did this.”

But how? Dreaming or not, she didn’t know where the power came from or how to control it.

After that, she never looked at lighters or cigarettes. She never looked at candles, and if she happened to dine at a restaurant that placed candles on the tables, she blew hers out. She begged off friends’ fall bonfires and chose college apartments that had electric ranges, not gas.

Now, lying in her bed in her cozy apartment, Gin gave her duvet one last irritated kick and got up. She’d tossed and turned so long her stomach was growling. Padding to the kitchen, she grabbed a banana from the counter and ate it, accompanied only by the soft ticking of her wall clock.

Wandering into the living room, she paused in front of the two photos on her corner table. One frame was silver with squiggly edges and the other was cherry red wood. Both said “Sisters.”

One held a photo of the three of them when they were in grade school, all pigtails and missing teeth. The other was from last Christmas, when she had stayed at her sisters’ condo for the holiday. They put the camera on a timer and stood, beaming, in front of the tree, wearing red Santa hats. Big matching smiles, two brunettes and one blond.

Gin sighed. So much had changed in the last year. Brooke and Nicole were convinced they were part of some important supernatural plan. And deep down, to her surprise, Gin had no argument for that. She’d always felt like their weird abilities weren’t random.

Maybe it’s not random, but that doesn’t mean I want it
. She picked up a throw pillow and hugged it to her chest, looking out the window at her quiet parking lot.

Wind and water didn’t destroy property and harm people as much as fire did.
Tell
that to victims of hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods
, she chided herself. She sank into her red microfiber couch and leaned back, staring at the popcorn ceiling. Thank goodness she had other skills that would enable her to help people. Because deep down, she knew she could cause tremendous pain.

No.
Never, never, never.
With her curse, there was no room for error. One slip could be disastrous.

She’d run to every corner of the earth before she’d let her inner monster out. And wherever she ran, she’d always have water. The fire in her soul would stay where it was. Unseen. Forever.

C
HAPTER
7

M
ATHIAS
NAVIGATED
THE
QUIET
MORNING
streets of the college town, the Tahoe’s tires rolling over a new dusting of snow. No one was out.
Must all be sleeping off their hangovers
. He parallel parked outside The Coffeehouse, hoping these kids knew how to brew a good cup of java. He loved coffee. One of the best things to come from Earth.

Stepping inside, he inhaled the enticing aroma of a dark roast.
Perfect
. And a second later, layers of cinnamon and orange wove through the coffee scent, combining them into a sweet sucker punch to his gut.
Gin’s already here
. An image flashed unbidden in his mind, of Gin naked and sated, wrapped in the sheets of his bed.

Coffee and Gin.
Good Christ, how hot would it be to breathe this in every morning?
The thought made the tip of his cock tingle.

Whoa
. He blinked. Where the hell had that come from? He had a job to do.

A frizzy haired older man walked in behind him and Mathias stepped aside, pretending to study the menu. He bit back a grin. The man smelled like old library books, a combination of binding glue, paper, and dust that seemed completely appropriate in a college town.