Burn for Me

Mad Rogan tapped his phone. “Diego? He used children. Yes. No. Just let me know.”

He hung up.

Two young boys had skated by our house, holding a bomb. What if one of them had fallen? What if someone had been in the car? What if one of us had gone to the mailbox? Then we would have had more dead bodies. The death count for today would have been more than six. Six was more than enough, especially because three of those six deaths happened because of me.

My chest hurt. I killed people today. I took their lives. They would’ve taken mine, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter right now. My grandmother barely survived. My house had almost been burned to the ground, then two children threw a bomb under a car parked next to it. It all crashed down on me like an avalanche.

“Are you alright?” Mad Rogan focused on me.

“No,” I said.

Bern was looking at me too. “I can make tea,” he said. “Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you.” I turned to Mad Rogan. He was a Prime, and right now we couldn’t afford to pass up on whatever protection he could offer. “Can you do any magic at all, or are you completely dry?”

“It’s coming back,” he said. “I’m not helpless.”

“Can you stay the night?” I asked.

“I can,” he said.

“And if Pierce shows up or something happens . . .”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

True. He meant it.

“Thank you,” I told him. “I’ll see you both in the morning.”

I left the kitchen and went to my room, almost running. I closed the door, sat on the bed, and pulled my knees to my chest. There was a big, gaping hole inside me. It was growing bigger, and I didn’t know how to close it.

A knock sounded on my door. It was probably my mother. For a moment I considered pretending that I didn’t hear her. But I wanted her to come in. I wanted her to hug me and tell me everything would be okay. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” my mother called.

“It’s open.”

My mother walked in carrying a tablet. She was moving slower than usual. Her leg was really hurting and I felt it because she climbed the stairs. She sat beside me on the bed and swiped her hand across the tablet. A video clip came on. It had been taken with someone’s phone. On-screen, Adam Pierce, his phantom spikes and claws glowing, belched fire. The side of the tower where Rogan and I had our little adventure loomed on the right.

The front entrance of the tower blew out with an ear-splitting thunder. The building shook. A man gasped, “Holy shit!”

The video switched to a view of a hand. Whoever had been filming had grabbed his phone and hightailed it out of there.

“Were you inside?” Mom asked.

I nodded. “Adam was a diversion. While he was spitting fire, a team went into this building to retrieve some sort of trinket hidden in the wall. We stopped them.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mom asked.

I shook my head.

“Can I help?” she asked softly. “Can I do anything?”

I shook my head and leaned against her. She put her arm around me. I wouldn’t cry. I was twenty-five years old. I would not cry.

“Rogan’s people are analyzing the jewelry we found,” I said, my voice sounding dull. “I sent a picture of it to Bern. He’s looking too. There is something really big and nasty going on, Mom. I feel like I’m on the edge of it. It scares me. I scared myself today.”

“You’re doing what needs to be done,” Mom said and hugged me to her. “Remember the rules: we have to be able to look ourselves in the mirror. Sometimes that means doing terrible things because there is no other choice. Are you doing the right thing?”

“I think so. It’s just spun out of control so fast. Pierce was willing to burn down a building to get that thing. He gave a bomb to a kid Leon’s age. Who does that?”

“Someone who needs to be stopped.”

“I keep thinking, if MII didn’t get involved and call me into their office, this would be happening to someone else. We would be watching all this on TV and going, ‘Oh my God, isn’t that crazy?’”

“You can’t go there,” Mom said. “That’s how you’ll drive yourself nuts. Trust me on this: wondering, What if this didn’t happen? never helped anybody. It just drowns you in self-pity and makes you less alert. There is no backing out now. Nevada, view it as a job. As something you have to do. Get the job done and come home.”

“I think Rogan is using me as bait,” I said.

“Use him back,” Mom said. “Throw him at Pierce and let him take him down.”

“What if he kills Pierce?”

“Bigger problem if Pierce kills him,” Mom said. “But if he kills Pierce, it becomes a matter between House Pierce and House Rogan. Let them sort it out. Your primary objective here is to survive. Then to bring Pierce in, if possible.”

I rested my head on her shoulder. “I’m going to need more ammo.”

“How was the Ruger?” my mother asked softly. She’d figured it out.

“I hit my target,” I told her.

Chapter 11

I awoke early. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the sky had turned a pearly, pale color. I peeled Band-Aids off my face and arm, shook a few drops of lavandin and rose geranium into the oil warmer, lit a candle under it, and took a long shower. I was still clean, but a shower usually made me feel better. I stood under the cascade of hot water, hoping to wash away the remnants of yesterday. I’d dreamed of shooting people. In my dreams I killed them again and again, each bullet punching their heads in slow motion, the blood blossoming like a revolting red flower. It hadn’t been like that at all. The whole firefight had probably taken three or four minutes, if that. In the dream, my gun had sounded like thunder. In the lobby, it had sounded dry, like a firecracker. Boom-boom. A life ended. Boom-boom. Another one down.

I let the water run over me and tried to figure out how my mother survived it. How could she look through the scope, squeeze the trigger, and end someone’s life and do it again and again and still hold it together? I wanted to ask her about it. Was there some secret to it?

But two years had passed since my mother went to her last group meeting. She was better. Stirring up old demons wouldn’t do her any good. I had to deal with it on my own.

I stood under the shower until the guilt got the better of me. Using up all the hot water wouldn’t be cool. My sisters and cousins still had to shower. I got out, wrapped a towel around my hair and another around my body, and looked at my reflection. The shallow cuts on my face and arm had survived without bleeding. The cut on my ribs was worse. I smeared an antibiotic ointment on it. Wincing and making sucking noises didn’t seem to make the pain any less. I slapped a Band-Aid on the gash and another one on my arm, just in case that cut decided to open up and make a mess.