Angel Fire (9 page)

“Darcy, are you all right?” he asked, concern chiseled into his eyes. Barry, unable to comprehend what was happening in the bar, took a step back. “What the hell is going on?”

“My eyes can see,” I said.

Neil turned his head. “What?”

“My tongue can taste.”

“What?” he said to me.

Just then, Barry grabbed Neil’s shoulder and pulled him away. “What kind of crap is—?”

But as Neil spun, he made a fist, put all of his momentum behind it, and punched Barry square in the face.

Blood gushed from Barry’s nose and he windmilled his arms to keep from falling on his backside. A veteran of dozens of fistfights, Barry powered through the pain, recovered quickly, and charged.

Before he got more than a step, Jack Creel and one of his bouncers intercepted. Barry tried to break away, but old Jack growled at him and pointed to the door.

“That’s it, Barry,” Jack growled. “You’re out of here. And if you don’t leave now, I’ll ban you for good!”

Frank and Troy rushed in to save their friend.

“We got him,” Frank said. The two of them dragged Barry away.

“This ain’t over,” Barry yelled at me from the door. “I promise you that. And you know I keep my promises.”

Once the trio was safely off the premises, the bartender and his staff set about cleaning up the mess on the dance floor. Jack signaled the band to resume their set and gradually, everything returned to normal.

Everyone seemed completely unaware how close they had come to disaster. I had lost control for a brief moment.

I let Beth pull me back to the table. I was appalled at myself.

“Hey, that was a pretty good punch, Neil,” John said in a shaky voice as the two followed behind. “Both the giving and the taking.”

“Shut up, John,” said Beth. She was staring at me as if expecting me to burst into tears at any moment. The truth was I was very close to it. Beth put her arms around me in a hug.

“Come on, honey,” she said in a calming voice. “Sit down. Have something to drink.”

She held my glass of water to my mouth, and I automatically grabbed it and took a sip. The left side of my face was growing numb from Barry’s hand.

I said, “I think we should go.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Beth countered. “Barry’s gone; he won’t be back. Don’t let that ass ruin the rest of our evening. Look, everyone’s moving on as if it never happened.”

But they weren’t. I could tell. Nervous eyes darted in my direction from all corners of the room. There was no way anyone could lay blame on me for shattered glasses and spilled drinks. In the heat of battle, events can be confusing. Your mind plays with timelines if it can’t remember exactly the sequence of events. And without facts to fill in the blanks, imagination and rumor takes over.

There’s the girl who killed her folks. Everywhere she goes trouble follows.

And then there was Neil. Only he and Barry had seen the look on my face as the power overcame me, as I lost control of the fire inside. What would he think of me? That was twice now that he’d seen me at my worst.

Furtively, I glanced up at him. There was an inscrutable look on his face.

It was all too much for me to process, and I couldn’t think with everyone looking at me. I needed to get away and be alone.

“Beth, I think I’ve had enough excitement for one night. Can you get John to take me home?”

She fixed me with a level gaze, and then finally shook her head.

“Nonsense,” she declared. “We’ll all go together.”

We gathered our purses and filed out of the bar.

Neil was silent on the trip home. He rubbed his jaw a few times, and winced whenever he poked a particularly sensitive spot. I didn’t initiate any conversation and neither did he. I was far too vulnerable and uncertain, and I didn’t want to hear what he thought about me. His impression of me was certainly colored by now, and I wouldn’t blame him if he never wanted to talk to me again. Whenever he and I were together, he ended up in a fight. That was two strikes against me, and I wasn’t sure I was up to chancing a third.

When we reached the motel, Beth stepped out of the van and gave me a hug.

“You going to be all right?”

I put my hand to my face. It had to be blazing red by now. “Yeah. Maybe a pack of ice and a few aspirins.”

She gingerly touched my cheek. “No, I meant about Barry.”

“I know. I almost think I should never have come back.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she told me. “Listen—get a good night’s sleep. I’ll come over tomorrow and we can hash this through. We’ll figure something out. Don’t stress. You know you’ll always have me.”

“Thanks, Beth.”

I gave her a firm hug, and stepped back as she got into the van. With a wave, John smiled and put the vehicle into gear.

When they were gone, I slowly turned to Neil, who waited a few steps away. His eyes were smiling gently, but his lips were drawn tight.

“You must think the worst of me,” I finally said. “A walking disaster.”

“Hey, no. This isn’t your fault at all. It’s not like you went looking for trouble.”

“No, I don’t have to,” I said in a dry voice. “I’m like a magnet for trouble.”

“I know it’s easier said than done, but you can’t let it get to you.” He gave me a look of deep concern.

“Yeah.” I took half a step closer to him, then changed my mind and stepped back.

“Look,” he said, and was brave enough to close the gap between us and put his hands on my arms. “Maybe you just need some time to work this through. I’d still like to buy you that cup of coffee.”

I laughed, though it sounded dry to my ears. “Thanks. I guess I just need to sort things out. Hey, and thanks for coming to my rescue again.”

“Not at all.” This time both his eyes and his mouth smiled. “I think I’m going to take your advice,” he said. “A couple of ice packs would do me good.”

He didn’t kiss me goodnight, and that was a good thing. In my frame of mind, I would probably have reacted badly. At that moment, I needed friends more than anything, and knowing that I had Beth and John, and now Neil, on my side might have been just enough to get me through the next few days.

But it wasn’t enough. After Neil gave my arms a final squeeze and went inside, I raced to my room and pulled the duffel back out of my closet.

In no time, I had all my clothes and toiletries packed.

* * *

I had two choices, when it came down to it. If I stayed in Middleton, Barry would never leave me alone. This farce would continue until one or the other of us was in jail, the hospital, or the morgue. Bullies invariably backed down when they knew they knew they couldn’t get their own way with force. But Barry had gone beyond this; he had come to a point where he was ruled by animal jealousy.

Staying meant disaster, and that was a certainty. Or I could hit the road and try to build a life somewhere else; start over. It meant leaving behind my friends, abandoning what was left of my family, and that was the toughest part of it. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I packed, but I knew I was making the right decision.

With a deep sob, I wiped the tears from my eyes, threw on my jacket, and walked out.

I got three steps into the parking lot when a familiar voice sliced through the night and stopped me dead in my tracks.

Chapter Thirteen

“So you’re just
going to cut and run?” Aunt Martha asked me, her voice tight. I could sense her disappointment, and for that I felt a deep shame.

She sat on the wooden bench outside the office that Uncle Edward had hand-carved twenty years ago. Wearing a light red jacket over her nightgown to protect her from the chill air, she looked homey and comforting. Narrowed eyes and pursed lips told me she was anything but relaxed.

In her hands she held two steaming mugs.

Tentatively, I approached the bench. Aunt Martha scooted over and made room for me. When I sat down with a heavy sigh, she handed me a mug. It was hot chocolate—with marshmallows.

A teardrop fell into my drink; I wiped the next one away with the back of my hand.

“It’s just too hard, Aunt Martha. It’s not working out.”

“Pish-posh,” she declared. “What’s life without a little adversity?”

When I glanced up at her, her eyes had softened. She winked and took a sip of hot chocolate.

I said, “You have no idea what happened tonight.”

“I don’t?” she asked. But I could see in her face that she did. The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. “No need for a newspaper in a small town,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, alarmed. I could only guess what she had heard.

Aunt Martha said, “I’ve known old Jack Creel for years. He called not ten minutes ago.”

“What did he say?”

The hot chocolate was cooling quickly in the night air, so I gulped it down before it got too cold.

“He said you were pretty much minding your own business, just having fun with your friends, and Barry showed up and made an ass of himself again.”

“Yeah. I kick myself every time he comes around. Whatever possessed me to marry that jerk…?”

“Your mother was impetuous when she was a teenager,” said Aunt Martha. “Trouble was her middle name, and you inherited that. There’s a wild streak runs through your side of the family.”

“Not Uncle Edward—”

“No. He’s the total opposite of his sister.” She shook her head and smiled. “When she spent that summer away, I’m sure your grandparents were as much relieved as they were distraught.”

A maudlin silence hung between us then as we remembered my mother. The conversation wasn’t helping me; I was feeling even more downhearted than after the run-in with Barry.

“So, tell me,” Aunt Martha said in a measured voice. “What else happened tonight?”

A cold chill ran down my spine. “What do you mean? With Neil?”

“No, though anytime you want to have a birds and bees talk, or even a gossip, I’m not too old to chew the fat. No, I meant with Barry.”

There was a very distinct and recognizable tone in her voice. She always used that tone when she knew the answer to a question before she even asked it.

My gut cramped. Did she know my secret? Of course she wasn’t talking about that, I told myself. How could she know?

I raced through my memories, searching for any sign or reference that Aunt Martha knew about this power that had afflicted me for the past ten years. As far as I could remember, I had not breathed a word of this thing inside me to any living soul except one: my cellmate, Kyra Michelson, and she had taken my secret to the grave.

No. Aunt Martha had no clue about my inner demons. I had admitted nothing during the trial. I said nothing when I set Barry’s wrists on fire the night before last, and I had kept silent about the shattered glasses and boiling drinks at the bar tonight. I had kept my mouth shut every time I’d had a flare up. I took the label ‘firebug’ and didn’t deny it. At least with a pyromaniac there was a natural explanation for what they did. In my case, I had no explanation for what made me do the things I did.

Aunt Martha was a good soul. If she had any idea of the destruction I had caused, or was capable of committing, she would turn me right back in to the authorities. Who wouldn’t?

“What do you mean, with Barry?” I asked.

“Old Jack. If there’s one thing you can say about him, he never exaggerates. If anything, he’s known for his lack of detail. I remember once he had a cast on his arm. When I asked him what happened, he just said, ‘Got me a cast.’ I asked why he got a cast and he said, ‘Broke my arm, why else would I get a cast?’ So when he kept on and on tonight about your little to-do with Barry, I knew he wasn’t making it up.”

“…Oh?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Glasses don’t burst and shatter unless they’re dropped, or if some opera singer screams her head off. Or if it reaches a certain heat.”

“Aunt Martha—”

“Plus I heard about the other night, and I saw the bandages on Barry’s hands earlier today when I went grocery shopping.”

My mind raced. “I—”

“And I know, deep in my soul, it wasn’t your fault what happened to your parents.”

I couldn’t breathe. My mouth opened, but there was no air in my lungs to make the words come out.

Aunt Martha said, “I had hoped it would skip you. But I guess not. Darcy, I think it’s time you knew some of your family’s history.”

“What?” My mind raced in a hundred directions.

“Now, your Uncle Edward, bless his soul, has no clue about this, and it doesn’t concern him. So what I tell you here stays between us. All right?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t ask me if it’s genetics or any of that scientific stuff,” she said. “I don’t know for sure one way or another; I only know what I’ve been told and what I’ve read. Your family bloodline is … special. It doesn’t happen in every generation, but once in a while, certain circumstances arise and…”

She took a sip of her hot chocolate while she considered her words. “Maybe it’s the hand of God, or the Devil. Maybe it’s a blessing, or a curse. Maybe it’s just a quirk of nature. I don’t know.”

“My mother—”

“Whatever it is, it didn’t happen to your mother or uncle. It didn’t happen to your grandmother. But
her
mother had an ability not found in normal folk.”

I blinked. “My great-grandmother? She died before I was born. In her sleep.”

“That’s right.” Aunt Martha nodded.

I searched my memory. “My mom talked about her some. But I never heard anything … about any affliction she had.”

This was the first time I had heard about or even imagined anyone else having this power. At the best of times I found it hard to believe that I had this condition; more than once I thought I was simply insane and my mind was making this up because I couldn’t face the truth. Hearing that someone else—a member of my family, no less—shared this burden was even more difficult to believe. Half of me thought I had stepped into a nightmare of my own making. This thing affected other people?

“Ability,” Aunt Martha corrected me. “She managed to control it; and she kept the secret to herself. Well, mostly.”

“How do you know about this?”

Aunt Martha lifted her mug and finished the last of her drink. After wiping her lips with the back of her sleeve, she answered me.