Burn (34 page)

Her left thumb hooked through her belt loop, Cinder
was comfortable in nothing more than jeans, a thick
s
weater, and her cross trainers, even with her hair still
slightly damp from her shower. She took a deep breath as
she walked past Kenary Florist, A-1 Printing, and the
other shops lining Lockwood Avenue. Webster Groves
smelled like . . . Webster Groves. Fresh and pleasant with
the smell of snow, the air was bereft of the scents Cinder
most loved: burning leaves, pine trees, crushed crabap
ples, and wood fires.

She sighed, not unhappy, but not entirely happy,
either.

New England was home and always would be.
Webster Groves had yet to engender that level of comfort
and contentment within her. She turned right at the
corner of Lockwood and Elm, proceeding south on Elm.
Dense canopies of tall sweet gum trees still partially
dressed in their fall colors obscured the light from the
street lamps. She made a game of her last block home,
deliberately stepping into the puddles of light dappling the sidewalk.

Webster Groves might not yet feel like home, but Cinder was closer to that feeling than she’d ever been.
Zae, certainly, had done her best to welcome Cinder into
her world, to help her start living her own life again.
Sheng Li had been Zae’s greatest gift toward that. Gian
and his team were like family. Chip, the older brother
she’d never had, was protective almost to a fault. Cory
alternated between annoying younger brother and
amusing cousin. Aja, now that Cinder had finally met
her, was the wise matriarch, someone who existed outside
the day to day relationships yet remained an integral part
o
f everyone’s life. Sionne defied explanation, but Cinder
knew that he would kill or maim to protect her, just as he
would for any other member of the Sheng Li family.

Cinder paused on her front porch. That was it, really.
With Gian at its helm, Sheng Li had become her family.

She didn’t rush right into the house and up to her
apartment. Instead, she set her gym bag on the narrow
planks of the wood floor. She swept dead leaves from the
porch swing, then sat to wait for Gian.

The porch swing gave her a great view up and down
Elm and of the house across the wide street. The family
inside had their dining room drapes tied back, so Cinder
had a front-row seat to their dinner hour. A modern-day
Norman Rockwell scenario played out before her, with
an attractive, smiling mother using oven mitts to set a
steaming casserole dish in the center of the dining table.
Three children, two boys and one girl, sat around the
table. The older boy, surely a high-schooler, talked to his
father, who sat at the head of the table. The other two
children seemed to be bickering.

Cinder imagined that the scene before her was occur
ring in dining rooms throughout the world. What made
this one special to Cinder was its proximity. Right before
her, she saw everything she had ever wanted, everything she could have for herself. It was near enough to touch.

Perfect might be too much to ask,
Cinder reasoned.
I
could be happy with good enough.

God, Fate or some other divine force must have been
listening in on her peaceful musing, because at that
moment, snow began to fall. Cinder went to the porch r
ail. She stuck her hand into the night and let the dry,
sparkly flakes collect on her palm. More like flecks of ice,
the snow glittered in the yellow-gold glimmer of street
lights transforming the quaint, tree-lined street. It looked like a scene in a snow globe, until she heard quick foot
steps pounding the sidewalk. Gian came into view in his
faded jeans and beat-up leather car coat, and right then
Cinder realized that she had better than good enough. She had perfect after all.

She met him with a kiss on the walkway to the front
door. She smiled into it, the cold tip of his nose giving
her a tickle as it brushed hers.

“Hey,” he greeted her, his hands at her waist. “Why
didn’t you wait for me?”

“I didn’t know how long you’d be.” Holding his hand,
she led him to the front door of the Victorian. “It’s a nice
night. I had a good walk home.”

“Are you just getting here?” Gian blew on his hands
while Cinder unlocked the door.

“No, I sat out here for a while.” She opened the door,
allowing Gian to enter the brightly lit foyer first. “I was
watching the family across the street.”

“Gettin’ the hang of small town life, huh,” Gian said
and laughed.

Cinder closed the door. “I guess.” She bolted the
deadlock. “They—” She stopped short, hooding her eyes
with her hand to better see into the night. She thought
she’d spotted a thread of reddish-orange light zig-zagging
within the tall yew bushes lining the front lawn of the
house she’d been spying on.

“What is it, honey?” Gian stood atop the first stairwell leading to the attic.

Cinder spent another silent moment watching the
yew bushes shudder as something within them moved
from one end of the house to the other and around the
corner. The hairs on her back of her neck and arms stood, and not because of an autonomic response to the cold air.
She strained her eyes, trying to make out the creature
moving in her neighbor’s front yard.

Was it a cat in the neighbor’s tall hedgerow? A
possum? A person . . . ?

Her mouth went dry. Her hand trembled on the
doorknob.

“Cinder?” Gian walked down a few stairs. “Are you
okay?”

She might have shared her sudden apprehension with
Gian if she hadn’t seen a big gray body with a long, bushy
striped tail weave out of the hedgerow and back into it.

“I’m fine,” she finally answered, relaxing. Joining
Gian on the stairs, she wanted to kick herself. No one had seen Karl Lange in days, not since he’d been fired
from Grogan’s. She realized how absurd it was for her to
think that Karl would sneak onto her neighbor’s property
to spy on her.

Wasn’t it . . . ?

“Aja was wonderful.” Cinder took off her sweater and
slung it over the back of a dining room chair. “I learned
so much from her. The hour just flew by. I think I might
sign up for her class. ” She ran her fingers through her
hair to discharge the static electricity the removal of her
wool sweater had put there.

“I think that would be a good idea,” Gian said. “But
you’d better do it soon. I’m going to have to set a limit on
class sizes, because we were swamped tonight. Although
at least a quarter of my new students will quit within
three weeks and another quarter will stop showing up
within two months.”

Cinder took his jacket and hung it in the foyer closet.
“Don’t be so pessimistic.”

Gian wearily sank onto the sofa. “I’m just stating a
fact. That’s why I give the free trial classes, so that poten
tial students can see what they’re getting themselves into
before they make the investment.”

Cinder sat beside him and let him fold her into his
side. “I think you’re going to be surprised. You won’t lose
many students. You run a really good shop.”

“I try.”

“You’re going to have even more students after the
International Martial Arts tournament.”

“
Speaking of that,” Gian started, “you have to think
up a name to use in the exhibition match. Zae chose
Hippolyta.”

“She’s getting a lot of mileage out of her fascination with Amazons.”

“I’m trying to get her to change it to something a
little more crowd-friendly.” Gian ran his hand over
Cinder’s hip.

“Why do we have to use pseudonyms anyway?”

“It’s part of the fun of the exhibition matches.”

“Why didn’t you put me in the fight round?” Her
head on his shoulder, she tipped her face to look at him.

“Because most of the competitors in your weight class
won’t have been taught one-on-one by a seventh-degree shodokan for six months,” he explained. “You’re better
trained than ninety percent of the people who’ll enter the
tournament.”

“What about the other ten percent?”

Gian’s abdomen jumped as he chuckled, lightly
jostling her. “They’d probably play with you for a while
before wiping the mats with you.”

“What’s Aja’s skill level?”

“She’s probably forgotten more fighting techniques
than I’ll ever learn. As good as her physical skills are, her
mental skills are even better. Her greatest weapon is her
ability to focus. Aja is the perfect example of lethal calm
when she fights.”

“She says that the home is an arsenal,” Cinder told
him. “There are at least a hundred weapons in my
kitchen right now.”

“
When it comes to combat, most people are ignorant.
Not defenseless,” Gian said.

“She showed me how to use a broom handle to
defend myself.” Cinder sat up and faced Gian. “If an attacker came in here, I could throw salt, sugar, even
vinegar or coffee in his eyes to buy myself a few crucial
seconds to escape. I could hit him with a frozen jug of
milk, or club him with a ketchup or salad dressing bottle.
The bathroom has even more potential weapons. Will
she teach me how to use throwing stars or samurai
swords?”

“I don’t allow my instructors to teach the use of any
weapon that could easily be turned against them. If you
own a gun, you’d better be prepared to shoot to kill if an
intruder gets into your home. Because if you’re not, and
he gets the gun from you, you’re the one who’ll end up
dead.”

“I don’t want to own a gun, Gian. I would like to
know how to use one, though.”

He mulled over her request. “There’s a place in
Maplewood that could help you out. It’s run by good
people, and the instructors are excellent.”

“Why can’t you teach me?”

“Cinder, if I never pick up a gun again in my life, it’ll still be too soon.”

“I’m sorry.” She remembered that Gian knew better than most how lethal guns were. Cinder had no problem
with ordinary citizens owning guns. Her problem was
that so many of those ordinary gun-owning citizens were also dumbasses.

C
inder hugged him. “I’ve learned so much from you.
Thank you.” She settled into his lap and kissed him.

“Now these are lethal weapons.” He stroked her lower
lip with the pad of his thumb. “My heart stops every time
you kiss me.”

Gian was impressed by the change in her confidence
level. Five months ago, she’d looked like a frightened
kitten when she first came to Sheng Li to learn how to
fight. Though she had never asked him to, she had been
overly grateful when he offered to walk her home after
class. He’d made certain that if he couldn’t do it, that
someone else did. Tonight, she’d gone home alone. Not
only that, she’d enjoyed it. Convinced he was seeing the
Cinder he would have known had she never been tem
porarily diminished by Sumchai Wyatt, Gian asked her
the one question he’d most wanted to ask her since Labor
Day.

“Will you marry me?”

“You already asked me that once.”

“No, I asked you what you’d say
if
I asked you to
marry me. I never officially proposed.”

She brought her fingertips to her mouth in surprise,
her eyes wide. “I’m so embarrassed. I told Zae a long time
ago that you’d proposed. And that I’d said yes.”