Chapter 18
Smoke was wafting up from Central Park West like steam from a boiling pot.
Jumping down from the van, Yasmine brought her sleeve up to cover her mouth, but she still found it hard to breathe. The acrid plastic smell was burning up her nostrils.
She squinted through the smoke. It was almost impossible to make out her house. All that was visible were charred patches of wood falling off the sides of it like sliced kebab meat. A huddle of firemen pushed past her, sprinting toward it.
Her nails dug into her palms. If she were a human being, she probably would have felt sad about this.
But Yasmine had learned better than to become attached to the inanimate.
Plus, all her items of actual value were distributed across the globe in various vaults, better protected than any president—Rebecca made sure of that.
All this house had contained were some pictures of her and Wallace, eclectic eighteenth century art, and some exceptionally beautiful chandeliers.
Her cheek twitched as something wet trailed down from her eye. She winced, scrubbing all evidence away, likely ruining her mascara.
Get a hold of yourself.
She cleared the thickness in her throat and turned to Rebecca.
“What am I looking at? Is it arson?”
Rebecca shot her a half-pitying frown, and Yasmine considered firing her for it, but her assistant knew better than to keep that kind of expression on her face for long. She quickly schooled it into something more sensible.
“Definitely,” Rebecca said. “There’s been a string of identical house fires in the past month. This would make the third.”
“Several?” Yasmine’s obsession with Bella really had kept her out of the loop. “And they haven’t found the perpetrators yet? There’s no video footage?”
New York City was full of street cameras. Committing a crime on a public street, especially a crime as vibrant as arson, seemed like it’d be difficult to do completely out of view of the surveillance state.
That’s why she always advised Sylvia to try and restrict her murderous impulses to private, unsupervised places. Not that she ever listened.
“No. There’s plenty of footage. All the tapes feature these two young women, but they’re always wearing masks.”
“Masks? Like ski masks?”
“No, no. Think masquerade ball.”
“That is so tacky,” Bella groaned as she hopped out of the van, pushed past Yasmine, and headed towards the fire. The delayed part of Yasmine’s mind immediately worried about Bella’s feeble little human lungs, but then she remembered. Right.
She jogged after her. “Where do you think you’re going? Don’t think for a second that our conversation is over just because someone burned down my house.”
They both disappeared into the haze, and even though Yasmine’s lungs could filter air better than her mortal counterparts, they still weren't miracle workers. She covered her mouth and blinked through the burning air as she tried to keep the quickly disappearing shape of Bella in her sights.
“Yes, yes, I’m happy to play twenty questions later! But don’t follow me!” Bella shouted. “Just wait outside until the smoke clears. I need to get something.”
Yasmine balked. Who did she think she was ordering around? And more importantly—“Do you have a death wish? Whatever lipstick you left in there is not worth cooking yourself alive for.”
The heat grew more oppressive as they neared the house. Yasmine had no idea how Bella was walking so brazenly through it, but she was—she stepped easily through the ashes of the front door, calmly shouldering past a fireman who stared after her in complete horror.
Yasmine scowled.
What the hell does she think she’s doing, exposing herself like this?
It wasn’t easy to explain away a woman strutting through a burning building in blue jeans. God, did she have another Sylvia on her hands? She’d assumed Bella would be less reckless, with all the effort she’d put in keeping her identity a secret so far…
A cold, vacant feeling filled her stomach when she realized how quickly she was positioning Bella as someone who would stay around. She was supposed to be furious with her—she was furious with her—she was no Sylvia. She was no friend.
“Sorry about this. You really don’t deserve it,” Yasmine said, facing the fireman.
She looked him right in his baby blue eyes, holding his gaze until it darkened.
Every person reacted differently to their nightmare, but most screamed or ran or both.
It was a testament to this man’s character that only his eye twitched.
Yasmine waved over the other firemen in her smoldering foyer.
“I think your friend is having a seizure. Best to get him out of here,” she shouted.
They quickly came to help, one or two insisting that she get back outside, that she’d die if she inhaled any more of the air, and she agreed.
She made a show of leaving, but once she was out of their line of vision, she slunk back inside, using the smoke as cover.
“Bella!” Yasmine hissed as she stepped over cracked glass. She dared not look down, lest she find the remains of her favorite Rembrandt. “Where are you?”
Silence. Even though she was growing dizzier by the second, she pushed into the living room.
It was wrecked; the ceiling sagged so far downward that the chandelier dangled just above the floor.
The couch was as black as an overcooked steak.
There was still an active fire at the top of the stairs spewing heat.
Still, there was no sign of Bella on this floor. Had she actually gone upstairs? Yasmine began to grow anxious.
She had only just begun to unstack Bella’s matryoshka dolls. She wasn’t ready to lose her to something as stupid as this. No, if Bella was going to die, it was because Yasmine was going to kill her. She would not accept anything short of that.
“Bella!” Heat filled her throat, and she coughed violently.
Vampires could withstand high temperatures much better than mortals, but walking through an active fire was a touch too far. Yasmine had experienced it herself once. She’d lived in Massachusetts for a stint during the witch trials era, and some dimwit teenager had tried to torch her house.
She’d survived, obviously, but the burn marks took weeks to heal.
“Bella!” she shouted again, rounding the staircase and taking an apprehensive step upward. She could hear someone talking up there. It was muffled by the gusts of wind blowing through the blown-out windows, but it was distinctive.
“Where are you two? Where are you hiding?” This time, it wasn’t Yasmine asking the question: it was Bella. She was shouting it over and over as she stalked the second floor. Yasmine could hear her footsteps hectically crunching overhead.
How was she doing that, pacing through the fire like she was on a phone call? Did she not feel any pain?
Groaning at the extreme heat, Yasmine forced herself up the stairs. Once she’d breached the second floor, staring out at the crumpled stacks of charred wood that used to be her display tables and drawers and painting frames, she finally caught sight of Bella.
The blonde had stopped her incessant walking and yelling, and was now sitting on the floor, knees to her chest, hands in her hair. Flames were raging on all sides of her.
What the hell?
The flames were raging, but they didn’t swallow Bella; on the contrary, the fire halted a few inches from where she was sitting.
It was like watching a pack of trapped wolves salivating at a piece of meat.
Whenever the fire dared to encroach a centimeter further towards her, it quickly guttered and died, turning to smoke.
Can she control fire, somehow? Yasmine thought the heat might have caused her to imagine it, but then Bella reached out, pushing her hand straight into the fire, and it recoiled.
Any flame that grazed her fingertips immediately smoked out.
Bella frowned, as if annoyed by the reaction, and tucked her hand back in.
“Is this your power?” Yasmine choked out. “You’re, what, the vampire version of firefighter foam?”
Bella’s head whipped in her direction, eyebrows flung high.
“Yasmine. You shouldn’t be in here,” Bella said, clambering to her feet. Looking at Yasmine, she was suddenly pale with concern. “You’re so red. You’re going to have heat stroke. Or a heart attack.”
Yasmine pushed Bella’s hand off her forehead.
“What else can you do?” Yasmine said, ignoring her. Then, realizing she had a more pressing question—“And who were you shouting to?”
“People who clearly aren’t here anymore,” Bella said with an annoyed slant to her voice. She latched on to Yasmine’s right arm. “I thought I might be able to catch those arsonists that Rebecca was telling you about, but it seems they’re gone.”
“If they were still up here, they would be corpses.”
Bella licked across her lips.
“If only. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Bella hooked her arm around Yasmine’s midsection, keeping her steady as they began to walk back down the stairs.
Yasmine wanted to swat her away. She had to remind herself of her fury that had been doused so quickly—did Bella have that effect on everyone?
—but when she tried to, she felt a wave of dizziness pour over her.
Her heart started pounding madly in her chest.
“Ah, there it is,” Yasmine murmured, feeling her vision darken. “Heat stroke.”
“I told you, idiot.”
“Don’t call me idiot,” Yasmine slurred. Oh, there went the last of her vision.
Complete darkness now. At least she could still hear.
“You’re the one who ran into the burning house in complete view of the public.
If you come back outside without a blemish on you, people are going to talk.
There might even be video footage. You could be on television, you big, dumb vampire. ”