Burning in a Memory (17 page)

             
Clearly reluctant, he offered her his hand again.

             
“If there’s any more glass out there, I’ll carry you up the stairs,” he said.

             
She shook her head, feeling something between embarrassment and exhilaration. They walked together into the living room that had been cleared of debris. It held the faint smell of smoke that the air conditioning worked furiously to filter.

If walking through the living room had been slow and painful, ascending the stairs was virtually agonizing. Every time Adelaide tried to quicken the pace, Adam would slow her down. Only when they reached the third floor landing did she slow on her own accord. Adam finished the walk to his brother’s room without her.

“Leon, I’m coming in,” Adam said as he knocked on the door. There was no response so Adam opened the door anyway. Leon’s room was just as dank as Adelaide remembered it and the dust exploded into the hall.

Adam cringed as Adelaide did
, but forced his way in regardless. The room was dark and the blinds were shut. Adam stopped at the edge of the bed. Adelaide gained enough courage to take a few extra steps and look inside.

Leon sat on the bed but
she did a double take before she saw him. For his large figure, he appeared tiny. His knees pressed against his chest and his shoulders turned in. 

             
“How are you feeling?” Adam asked first.

             
Leon raised his face from his knees and peered across the room as if noticing their presence for the first time. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin was pale, and a thin layer of sweat clung to his forehead. Leon let out a grunt of response to his brother before his attention shifted to Adelaide. She stiffened when their gaze met, but she didn’t back away.

             
“You must be Adelaide,” Leon suddenly croaked. Adam signaled her to come inside. She took only two steps and stopped in the doorframe.

             
“Yes, this is Adelaide. Have you two met?” Adam asked slowly.

             
Leon seemed more interested in looking at the sheets than at Adelaide now.

             
“Yea, just briefly,” Leon said. He cleared his gravelly voice with a few coughs, and suddenly sounded like a different person from earlier. He actually sounded normal. “Not to be rude, but who are you exactly?”

             
“She’s my friend Adelaide, Leon. She just came to stay for the weekend. She’s a human,” Adam answered for her. Leon looked unimpressed and luckily appeared to give it no more thought.

             
“I’m sorry about earlier, Adelaide. I don’t know what I was thinking…” he admitted. “It’s nice to meet you officially.”

             
Adam glanced back at Adelaide when she said nothing. Only with his prodding did she remember how to be polite.

             
“Yes, it’s nice to officially meet you, Leon,” she said. It sounded more forced than she intended but she couldn’t get over the fact that she was saying it either. Neither Leon nor Adam seemed to notice or care.

             
“Leon, are you hungry? You should eat.”             

             
Adelaide wasn’t sure Leon would ever move. He looked so morose in his tiny ball, but apparently the promise of food gave him energy. He threw his legs off the bed and lumbered to an awkward stand. She saw no apparent injuries but he walked like his entire body hurt.

             
The trip downstairs passed quietly and Leon sat at the long table before he was asked. Once he sat, Adam hurried to the kitchen while Adelaide hovered in the corner.

             
“Do you need help?” she called to Adam.

             
“I’m good. Sit!” Adam called back.

             
When Leon set his eyes on her, Adelaide felt like she couldn’t run away. She chose the nearest chair at the end of the table. Leon was looking more coherent by the second, but she couldn’t decide yet if that was for better or worse.

             
“Adelaide, how did my brother and you meet?” he asked.

             
“I was out rock climbing and there was a slide. Adam saved my life.”

             
“With magic?” Leon cued.

             
Adelaide twitched.

             
“Yea. It’s how I found out that he’s a mage.”

             
Leon grinned.

             
“Leave it to Adam to save a pretty girl rather than keep the secret of our race,” he laughed.

             
Adelaide found her hand itching to touch her pendant beneath her shirt, but she grudgingly kept her hands at her sides.

             
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” she said quietly. Leon’s full attention was on her again and it made her skin crawl.

             
“You don’t need to convince me. I’ve revealed our secret to more people than I can count. It’s a hard secret to keep—there aren’t that many mages. If you want to have a relationship, you have it with a human.”

             
She nodded but couldn’t have felt more out of place. The scent of eggs crept into the room, but Adam didn’t have enough time to finish any food yet.

             
“I’m sorry,” Leon suddenly added. He moved quickly to put his hands out in a begging gesture. “Sorry. I just assumed that you and Adam were together. I assumed that’s why you came here with him.”

             
He looked genuinely apologetic so she tried to look casual in return.

             
“It’s okay. I understand why you’d think that…”

             
“Who’s being stubborn? Is it you or him?” he suddenly asked. Something in her face must have given it away because he answered his own question. “It’s him. Adam is too protective for his own good.”

             
She nodded madly. Leon was far from the person she intended to have this conversation with but he nailed the issue on the head. Adam was probably overly protective of Leon, too. She glanced backward at the hall linking to the kitchen. He would be back to check on his brother soon. If he wasn’t within earshot, he was very close.

             
“Whatever is going on with you two though, we should not tell him about earlier. That didn’t count. I didn’t know what I was doing,” Leon whispered.

             
His words made sense the second he touched his finger to his lips and Adelaide immediately blushed. She almost forgot about the kiss and the sensation of it came back to her now. Lips tingling, she bit them and averted her face. Within moments, Adam returned to the table with an omelet and hash browns. He slid the plate in front of his brother and dropped into an open chair.

             
“Adelaide, did you want any?”

             
She shook her head so Adam faced his brother instead.

             
“Eat,” Adam commanded. Leon obeyed and shoveled the food down. He barely chewed but did slow down to pick out the onions.

             
“No seconds?” he asked his brother.

             
“If you hadn’t picked out half the vegetables, you wouldn’t be hungry.”

             
“I need protein—not healthy crap,” Leon said with a face that would have put a puppy dog to shame. She resisted the urge to laugh, feeling bizarre. The mage notorious forty-nine states over didn’t want to eat his vegetables. Bradley was the same way. He seemed so innocent now that she wondered why people were so terrified of him. Where had his reputation come from? Bradley was wrong about him. Her mission would be easy.

             
Adam let out an overdramatic breath when he swept up his brother’s plate, but he never made it back to the kitchen. The front door slammed open, and the shock reverberated through the foundation of the house. Footsteps rushed in before Adelaide could spring from her chair and the furious voice of Tony reached them quickly.

             
“What’s going on?” he hollered.

             
“Tony, relax,” Adam tried immediately. Tony stopped short of the table. Dirt spotted his face but did little to hide the red cheeks beneath. Adelaide noticed his disheveled clothes and limp in his step before she caught the light whiff of smoke he trailed in. She gagged immediately.

             
“What’s wrong?” Leon asked and perked up.

             
Adam shifted quickly until he stood between the two men.

             
“Nothing is wrong,” Adam hissed.

             
“Nothing sounds like you haven’t looked outside lately!” Tony snapped right back.

             
“What’s going on?” Leon asked again. Adam held a hand out in an effort to silence the room.

             
“Nothing, I’ll go out and deal with it,” Adam said.

             
Tony grunted. He ran a hand through his wild hair and his palm came back spotted with blood.

             
“Deal with it? I’ve been dealing with it and they keep coming. I don’t know what’s attracting the shades here, but it’s either the man at the table or the one in the basement. Either way I don’t care to wait and find out.”

             
Leon stood abruptly.

             
“There are shades outside?” he asked.

             
Adam hurried to put both hands on his brother’s shoulders, but Leon broke the contact.

             
“It’s no big, I’ll deal with it,” Leon said.

             
Adam hollered and protested, but his words went ignored. Leon already made his way to the door, and, once he opened it, the scent of smoke exploded into the room. Leon marched out unaffected, leaving the other two men chasing him.

             
Adelaide followed at a slower pace. Fear of the unknown hit her hard, but curiosity overwhelmed it. She opened the door and stopped when she spotted them. Tony and Adam stood just off of the porch. Beyond them, she could just make out the hint of a figure—or multiple figures. It took a minute for the shades to come into detail and she gasped. At least two dozen of them stood less than half a mile away.

             
The sheer sensation of their combined auras left her ready to run but Leon marched toward the group and Adelaide watched him go. Tony cursed violently on the porch, voicing the thought they must have all had. This many shades were dangerous. It was almost impossible to fight a massive group and it only took one shade to kill.

             
“Leon!” Adam called out pointlessly. If his brother heard him, he did not turn around.

             
She danced in nervousness but edged back to the door. Her fingernails bit into the wooden frame as she anchored herself there.  Outside the shades stood and waited. One finally broke from the group. That’s when Leon’s aura flailed. His magic erupted and then all the shades were dead.

Fifteen

             
“Son of a bitch,” Adam swore. He was a blur as he raced to his brother’s side and disappeared in the subsequent dust storm. Adelaide backpedaled into the house, and struggled to catch a breath of fresh air. Her toes clipped the carpet and she felt the brick wall behind her before her knees gave out from under her. She met the hard wooden floor and rooted her back against the wall, but still felt as if she floated.

             
The time that passed felt surreal, but Tony’s arrival helped snap her from the daze. He came inside with dust and smoke trailing him before he slammed the door shut. Tony stopped in front of her for a minute before he offered his hand.

             
“Come on, get up,” he ordered but the gesture was still a helpful one. She accepted his hand and he hauled her to her feet.  Together they staggered into the living room and Adelaide broke away in time to collapse on one of the sofas.

“Were you hurt?” Tony asked
while watching her carefully.

             
“No, I wasn’t hurt.”

             
She didn’t have a word for what she felt.

             
“Did Leon just…” she began to ask but found her words lacking. Did he just kill all of those shades, she wanted to ask. Did he do it so easily and so quickly? Adelaide had never seen anything like that in her lifetime. She’d never heard anything like that from books or movies or other mages.

             
“He did. Welcome to mage life, girl.” Tony laughed bitterly but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. She looked up to meet his gaze and saw his face flash with an emotion that she couldn’t place.