Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
EMBER
Whether casting fire, water, earth, or air, it’s fire that will flare an Elemental’s passions, fire which consumes them.
— Hector Ambrosia, Echelon to the
School of Elemental Magic
Skye and Rayne left for the tavern forty-five minutes before our reservation.
The walk was only thirty, but Skye, who would rather back out of plans at the last minute than show up to an event five minutes after its start time, always padded her commute times.
Because of this, Belinda and I were the last to arrive.
We found them at a ten-person table in the back corner of the dimly lit dining room, where a dozen foam-stained, glass tankards had been abandoned in front of empty, untucked chairs. Clearly the aftermath of what appeared to be a large, rowdy friend group, but it was just the two of them.
“Skye! Rayne!” Belinda shouted like she hadn’t seen them in hours, running up and hugging them. A few patrons glanced out the dark window behind them, as if expecting to find the always dry streets of Creatus blessed by a sudden summer rain.
I walked steadily forward, flexing my hands in the long sleeves of my blazer, my thoughts roaring louder than the din of the busy restaurant.
I didn’t see Leland, but that didn’t stop me from being all too conscious of his presence, somehow knowing instinctively that he was somewhere in the communal, laid-back atmosphere of this building.
“Who else is here?” I asked casually, handing Rayne the birthday card Belinda insisted I sign.
“Many people.” Skye took a slow sip from her tankard and smirked at me over the rim. “I’m not sure who would be of interest.”
I braced myself with a tight breath and sat in the chair next to Skye, leaning forward a bit for her to sling her arm over my seat back.
She was awfully at ease tonight considering she was sitting the wrong way.
She never put her back to an entrance, not unless Nova was watching it, but Nova wasn’t there.
Yet there Skye was, thighs parted in a relaxed position, nodding casually along as Belinda explained why my face shape was perfectly suited for my new curtain bangs.
“Are you feeling okay?” I muttered sideways.
“No,” Skye answered in a low voice. “Our moonale was laced with a guard-lowering potion called Uninhibitor that Belinda wants us to drink for her game. I think there’s going to be questions for like — I don’t know — getting to know each other or some shit?”
I stared out the window and said, “Super.” Drinking more Uninhibitor was the second-to-last thing I wanted to do, beating out only a fun game of taking turns giving each other forehead brands.
Skye pushed a tankard in front of me and whispered, “This one’s nonalcoholic and there’s no Uninhibitor in it, so basically it tastes like lead.”
Skye: my favorite person in the room. Maybe all of Everden. A question about the Echelons, Leland, or Nova, the Familiar Skye pretended didn’t exist, and who knew what would come flying out of my mouth and shooting all the way across the tavern.
Then I tasted it. My cheeks contracted, their one line of defense to prevent me from swallowing down more of the horrible, bitter-tasting liquid.
Second favorite person in Everden, I amended.
“Okay!” Belinda clapped. “Ready for rules?” She glanced around the table, and we all mumbled our replies in varying levels of enthusiasm.
“Everyone rolls a ten-sided dice at the same time. Whoever rolls the highest number gets to ask the lowest number any question they want, and the lowest has to answer it. Everyone get it?”
I nodded, figuring if two people got the same number, we’d learn the new rule when it happened.
“Okay, now roll!”
Our four dice clattered across the table.
Probably on purpose, Skye claimed her dice was cocked every time her number was low.
Belinda was too sweet to stop her from re-rolling.
I never got the lowest number. My dice rolled five every time.
Belinda, already hiccuping, didn’t question it, even as she had to answer her favorite breed of cat was a house cat, her second favorite cat was a lynx, her third favorite cat was . . .
Rayne knew — both the game Skye was playing, and that I was only half in it.
She caught me every time I turned to see if it was his voice I’d heard rising above the hum of light rock music, and every time I twisted back to the table after concluding it wasn’t, the right corner of her mouth twitched.
“Looking for someone?” she asked.
Skye yelled it was not her turn.
“Is Leland here?”
“He is,” said Rayne, her smile soft and supportive. “He went to play pool in the cellar.”
Belinda hiccuped. “Pool was supposed to start at eleven.”
“It was a wonderful agenda you made,” Rayne reassured her.
I rolled another five, and Skye explained Belinda couldn’t say cougar because she’d already said puma, plus mountain lion, which was incorrect.
“They’re really all the same?” Hiccup.
“Yes.”
I itched my forehead through my new fringe, and fast as a reflex, Skye’s arm shot out, her fingers closing over my hand to stop me.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to touch it,” she said softly.
Sighing, I lowered my hand and switched to rolling my dice on the table, but it didn’t do much to distract me. Constant fives weren’t very interesting.
“Oh my Goddess!” Another hiccup. “Are your dice spelled?”
I was about to say probably when a server stalked over to us.
“Why is there a rabbit on the table?” he asked with hostility. Nova was back in our room, and Rayne’s Familiar — a bee named Honeybug — lived outside. But whether or not Pepper would come tonight was never a question. Belinda and Pepper never missed a meal together.
“Heh, sorry,” Belinda said, hoisting Pepper up and snuggling her to her shoulder.
“It’s just that it’s hard for her to resist the moonale foam.
You’re just a little froth addict, aren’t you, Pep?
Really, if you think this is bad” — she turned to the server now — “you would not believe the things she’ll do for a cappuccino. ”
“Just keep her off the table,” the server grumbled.
The second he stomped off, Pepper hopped back to where she’d been on the tabletop, shoving her small head in a full tankard at the same time as something artificially sweet wafted toward me.
I turned to find the entire restaurant mesmerized by Vyra strutting across the sticky, knobby floors in a nearly sheer slip.
It was the kind of dress with dainty straps that delicately skims the body, beautiful, but I could never get away with it.
She flung Skye’s arm off the back of my chair and put her hand there. “Leland’s looking for you in the washroom,” she said.
Skye muscled Vyra’s hand off and put her arm back.
“In the washroom?” I unlocked my transmitter. When he was looking for me, he messaged, but he hadn’t since telling me to run in the gym. And, I suppose, there was the one after that that said, In the city if you need anything. Regardless, I didn’t believe her.
Vyra Vanished my chair as I was still sitting in it.
I would’ve fallen, except in the split second I detected her saccharin-sweet magic mixing with the stale, beer-scented air, I remembered her hand on the back of my chair, memorizing the object, and thought it would be a good idea to stand.
Skye stooped to gather my fallen satchel as I drank from the nonalcoholic moonale, pretending Vyra wasn’t there.
“I said he was looking for you,” Vyra said.
Belinda did not do well with conflict and was on the verge of tears, Skye was glaring at Vyra on my behalf, and Rayne’s face was subtly suggesting I go to him. Only because I didn’t want to ruin the party with drama, I relented.
“Down the stairs to the left,” Vyra instructed.
I carefully ventured down the narrow stairwell to the basement, wishing I wasn’t sober as my blood chose that moment to remember Leland’s hands deftly sliding under my sweatshirt. Healing my nausea. His fingers locking around my ankle. I shut out the thoughts, warm as ever.
I didn’t have to push on the washroom door. How would Vyra know what I did down here? I could go back upstairs and say I didn’t find him without lying, unless she specifically asked where.
Tingling in my spine overpowered all reason, though, and I entered the washroom.
I froze.
The washroom door swung closed, narrowly missing me. Everything was a moonstone blur as my eyes locked on Leland’s back muscles, taut under his thin sweater, as his powerful form pinned Case to a section of tiled wall directly under a torchlight.
Leland. Angling a jaw with an assertive hand. Kissing. Case’s fingers digging into the shifting muscles of Leland’s back to pull him close.
Leland. My Leland. Never mind that Case and Leland looked good together, their body types so similar, their passion so frenzied, so natural. I stared so long I didn’t feel my wrists heating. I stared until Case came up for air, jerking his chin for Leland to look at me.
Leland turned, his hazel eyes narrowing. Confused. Perturbed. Having a hard time adjusting to my slow blinking and shocked expression.
A pain in my chest gutted me like a stab wound. I was warm, getting warmer, and desperately hoping no one noticed the steam coating the washroom mirror.
Case said, “You going to join or — ”
The cuffs, blazing furnaces wrapped tight around my wrists, singed and stripped the tender areas of skin. It was only a matter of time before they left nothing but bone.
No time to run somewhere private, I dashed into the closest stall and tugged up the sleeves of my blazer, biting down on my cry. The damage was worse than it felt. Inflamed red welts. Charred and blackened spots of necrotic skin.
“Give us a minute,” Leland said softly, and footsteps — Case’s — trailed out, the main door to the washroom audibly locking with a bolt sliding behind him.
Water filled my eyes and sweat poured from every pore.