“I’m going to see him at school tomorrow,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, and every hard consonant hurt, but she ignored it. “I told him we need his help to discover the other Elementals in town. He agreed.”

Silver’s eyebrows went up. “Well done.”

The praise took some of the sting out of the way he’d hit her in the hallway. She repeated everything Hunter had said about his father, and Calla, and the Merricks.

“And what do you think?” said Silver. “Is he working with them? Is he a threat to us?”

“I think he’s confused,” she said honestly. She remembered the lost look in his eyes, the true emotion when he’d talked about his father. “He doesn’t know where he belongs.”

“I don’t like that,” said Silver. “His presence in that house makes them a perfect circle. One for each element, including the Fifth? They could be unstoppable.”

“He swears they’re not behind the fires.”

“They could be behind a lot more.” Silver’s eyes flicked up. “You sound as though you have feelings for this boy.”

“That’s insane. I resent him. He’s working for the enemy.”

Silver kept studying her, and she held his eyes. He finally looked away.

She could breathe again.

While she did resent Hunter for living with the Merricks, there was a tiny part of her that was intrigued, too.

And maybe a little bit jealous. Gabriel Merrick had risked his life to drag Hunter to safety.

Would Silver do the same for her?

She didn’t even entertain the thought for a moment. Of course he wouldn’t. If she’d been there, wounded, Silver would have pulled out his gun and finished her off.

Kate shook herself. She needed to keep her mind on the task at hand. Hunter Garrity was just an assignment.

And she knew just how to handle an assignment.

CHAPTER 18

Hunter pulled his jeep into the Merricks’ driveway and almost threw his vehicle into reverse.

His mom’s car was sitting in front of the house.

It was like life kept pelting him with curveballs and he couldn’t swing his bat fast enough.

Well, he sure couldn’t leave her sitting in there. God only knew what the Merricks might be telling her.

He took his time getting through the front door. He didn’t have a key, and part of him hoped the door would be locked just so it would take an extra couple minutes before he’d have to face her. But the door was unlocked, so he eased inside, closing the door gently behind him.

He recognized her voice immediately. She was in the kitchen, talking to Michael, it sounded like. Then another woman was speaking. He was too far away to make out the words.

He fidgeted with his keys for a second before telling himself to stop being such an idiot.

Why was she here? What if she demanded that he come home? What would he do—throw a fit and demand to stay at the Merricks’? Like that would work.

He slid down the hallway silently, but Michael was by the counter, pouring a cup of coffee.

“Hi,” Michael said. “You have a visitor.”

Hunter took another step, feeling his shoulders hunch. He found himself wishing for a weapon.

And what would you do with one?

Nothing, really. But he’d felt half-naked since his grandfather had confiscated them.

Half-naked ÅÇ confident.

His mother was there, at the table, next to a blond woman he vaguely recognized. Hunter couldn’t look at them. He already felt like he was going to pieces; eye contact would clinch the deal.

Instead, he leaned against the door molding and jingled his keys in his pocket. “What are you doing here?”

“The fire at the school carnival was on the noon news, and after last week—I thought—I didn’t know—”

Now fury poured across his shoulders, hardening them in place. She’d just heard about the fires? He’d been shot last night, and she hadn’t known anything about the carnival until like an hour ago?

Even though it was something completely out of her control, he couldn’t help but blame her for it.

“I’m fine,” he said evenly. “You can go back home. You should have just called.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d answer.”

Well, that was honest. He wasn’t sure he would have answered, either.

A chair scraped against the floor, and he glanced up, wondering if she really was leaving. But it was the blond woman, young and slight and wearing the local fire station’s T-shirt.

This had to be Hannah.

“We’ll just give you some privacy,” she said quietly. Then she moved toward Michael, took his arm, and practically dragged him out of the kitchen.

Hunter moved out of the doorway so they could pass, but he still didn’t look at his mother.

“Did you go through the boxes I left you?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged. “I haven’t had time.”

That, at least, was the truth. He hadn’t bothered to go through them before the carnival, and the last thing he’d cared about today was a box full of old pictures and his gaming system.

She was silent for a while. Then she said, “Well, go through them soon, so you can make sure you have everything you need.”

He was clutching his keys so tightly, they felt like they might bend between his fingers. He wanted to snap at her to demand things like How could you do this?!

But he was scared of the answers. As much as he didn’t want her here, he didn’t want her to leave, either.

He cleared his throat and stopped clutching his keys. But then his hands wanted something to do. He settled for folding his arms across his chest. “Fine.”

She didn’t move. He didn’t, either.

He wished he knew how to fix this.

He wanted to tell her the truth about Calla. He wanted to demand to know how she could have thought he’d ever do something like that.

He wanted to talk to her, to tell her everything his father had said before he died. To tell her that he felt lost, directionless, trying to figure out just who he was supposed to be now that everything he knew had been crushed under that rock slide.

He wanted to ask why she was only looking at him now, when he would have given anything for one minute of her attention since the day his father died. He wanted to ask how she could sit there and watch him walk out the door, how she could sit here now, motionless, and not say anything to him.

The longer she sat there, the more she seemed to prove his father’s words, on the day before he died.

She was weak. She was ignorant. She was easily manipulated.

It made him want to rip the stupid stones off his wrist and fling them at her.

She’d been the one to give them to him, after all.

When her chair scraped the floor, he flinched but then stopped his body from making any further movement. His fingers were digging into his biceps now.

When she stopped in front of him, he didn’t look.

She put her hands on his arms and looked up at him. He wanted to shove her hands off.

No, he didn’t.

He finally looked at her and sandbagged all that emotion. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are.” Her eyes were heavy with feeling. “I wish you would talk to me.”

How could he talk to her when she didn’t understand him, not even a little bit?

“I miss him, too, Hunter,” she said softly, so quietly that he almost couldn’t hear her.

It was the wrong thing to say—or the last thing he wanted to hear. He slid out of her hands and turned away. “That’s your problem, isn’t it?”

God, he sounded like such an ass**le. But the alternative was breaking down right here in the Merrick kitchen—and he’d had enough of that.

She let him go, and he almost called her back and apologized. He felt like he was keeping his father’s dirty little secret, and it was clawing at him from the inside out. He wanted to tell her, but that would cause her more pain than anything he was doing right now.

Dad never told you the truth. About anything.

He was only using you.

She stepped past him softly, just resting a hand on his arm as she moved past. Her fingers were warm, gentle, the same hands that had tended his scrapes when he was little.

He almost put his hand over hers, not wanting her to leave.

But then she let go. “Call me if you need something. I can bring over anything else you want.”

“Fine.”

And just like that, she walked out of the house.

He had to stop himself from going after her. It didn’t help that he knew the Merricks were in the house, had heard every word, and were probably waiting for him to come out of the kitchen.

He went out the back door and dropped into one of the porch chairs.

The air still held a chill, and the clouds overhead suited his mood. He closed his eyes and tried to let the tension drain out of his shoulders.

The solitude left him with too much room for thinking, however, and he felt worse out here. Again, he found himself wishing for a pair of wraps and a heavy bag—or an opponent and a set of mats.

When the sliding door opened, he braced himself for another lecture from Michael.

So he was surprised when a woman’s voice said, “Can I join you?”

His eyes snapped open. Hannah, the girl from the kitchen. The firefighter. Michael’s new girlfriend.

She was pretty, slender and casual without looking delicate. Hunter could see solid muscle in her arms, and he knew from his escapades with Gabriel that using firefighting equipment was no joke. She wasn’t old, but there was nothing young about the weight in her eyes.

She’d seen a lot. He could tell.

She’d been at the carnival last night. Gabriel had said something about her wanting to put him on a helicopter to shock trauma. Had she seen Calla? Would any of the bodies be identifiable after the fire?

He didn’t want to ask.

She was still looking at him, a hand on the back of the adjacent Adirondack chair.

“Sure,” he said.

She dropped into the chair beside him and stared up at the same sky. Her breathing was calm and even. He had no idea what she was doing out here.

“You know,” she said without looking at him, “we once got this call for a guy whose girlfriend ripped all the piercings right out of his eyebrow.”

“Sick.” He paused. “What did it look like?”

“Blood everywhere. He had a safety pin or something run through four hoops, and she grabbed it and yanked it off. They all came out.”

He glanced over, intrigued that her voice held the same horror and fascination that he was feeling. “Were they fighting?”

“Ah . . . no. In the ‘moment,’ I guess you could say.” She was smiling.

He looked back at the sky. “That’s a hell of a moment.” “There was another guy who’d pierced his . . . ah . . .”

“I get it.”

“Yeah, that was ripped out during a fight. I think I learned a whole new vocabulary on that call. But that’s no comparison to the guy who took a Sawzall to his—”

“Not that I’m complaining or anything,” said Hunter, trying to stop that particular story. “But did you really come out here to tell me ambulance stories?”

“I’ve got some really good ones.” She paused. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Your mom was pretty upset when she got here.”

“Good for her.”

He was ready for a lecture, but Hannah shrugged. “I didn’t want to worry her more and tell her what you looked like last night.”

He wondered if that would have made a difference and decided he didn’t care one way or another.

Oh, who the hell was he kidding? He cared.

“Are you going to take the EMT course with Gabriel in the spring?”

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