Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series) (6 page)

Both Megan and Evan had signed the bottom of the page.  Megan had dated the contract—May 16, 2000.  A small marking at the bottom of the page seemed to change continually.  I couldn’t make it out, but it looked like a countdown of some sort, like on some Internet sites. 

None of this made any sense to me on several accounts.  One, how was there a contract here in 1995 with a signature from 2000?  Two, why had Megan Harper given her abilities to the professor?  This started a slew of questions in my mind. 
Was this something my mother was working on with the professor?  Maybe they were taking the abilities of Unknowns who did not want to be witches as a way of protecting them.  Did my mother also have the ability to travel in time?  Maybe time travel was genetic.
  I pictured my aunt and my mother gawking over me as an infant.   “Aww, she has her father’s nose.  Do you suppose she has her mother’s time travel gift?”  That, of course, was ridiculous.  I had to stay focused. 
Most importantly, why did Cameron want all of these books, and thus this and any other hidden contract, burned by a firestarter?

As I saw it, if I convinced myself to burn the books or the contracts, I would hurt these
Unknowns by re-exposing them.  I would be undoing all of my mother’s hard work, and for what?  She would die in the fire with this contract and these books.  I felt lost.  I didn’t know what the solution to the problem could be, and I found myself stuck between a wall of fire and an uncertain rewrite of history.

From my vantage point on the floor, I now realized I had company in the room after all.  From underneath the oak writing desk, two little feet poked out.  I put the contract back in the book somewhere in between the American Civil War and World War I.  I closed the book and placed it carefully upon the cushion of the chair.  Slowly, I crawled over to the desk and peered underneath at myself.  My child self looked mildly bored, but as we peered into our eyes, I sensed a measure of anxiety within her small frame. 

“Don’t worry.  I won’t tell anyone about your hiding spot,” I comforted myself.  “Why don’t you come out and we can talk?”

Little Jade just shook her head and continued to peer at me with those piercing eyes.  I had never looked into my own eyes for quite so long.  I wasn’t the type to stare into a mirror.  This was really all too much for me, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat back down on the floor, drew my legs to my chest and mirrored my child self.

“Why are you hiding?” I asked her.  I wasn’t sure yet if she knew she had called me here.  I/she was so young; it may not have been a conscious act.  Actually, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a conscious act.  Either I had blocked myself out of my memory or I had no idea I had ever traveled through time to save myself.  Little Jade did not know she and I were one and the same.  I sighed.  That, of course, was the whole point of this journey.  It wasn’t to save my mother, though I was going to try; it was to save myself.  The concept of time travel stuck its participants in a constant loop.  I had to call myself here at the age of three; I had to come back here at the age of seventeen; I had to save myself so that I could survive to come back and save myself.  I suddenly remembered part of what “somewhat free to travel through time” meant.  You were only allowed to interact with your own timeline once.  No wonder; this kind of calculating could confuse even a NASA analyst.

“Something feels bad.  I’m scared,” little Jade finally whispered to me. 

“It’s okay,” I assured her, “that’s why I’m here.  I’ll keep you safe.”  As I said the words, I knew they were true, and I knew this smaller version of me took priority over everyone else tonight.  I hated knowing that.  It seemed so self-serving, but I couldn’t let anything happen to little Jade.   Even though she was I, she was also a small, frightened child, but not a helpless child. As a firestarter and one of few witches with any abilities left in the Professor’s Pub, Jade was like a tiger cub—cute and vulnerable in some situations, but lethal in others.  I would have to coax her into using her firestarting gift if it became necessary.

“Why are you looking at the books?” little Jade asked.

“Well,” I wasn’t sure what to say.  I could lie, but there didn’t seem to be a point.  “Cameron asked me to do something with them,” I ended up telling her.  I seemed to be full of half-truths tonight.

“Cameron?” she whispered again.  I wanted to hear fear in her voice.  I hated him already, but it wasn’t fear I heard.  She sounded star-struck.

“I like Cameron,” she said.  I cringed.  I know she was just a child, but she was also me, and I didn’t want to hear myself say anything positive about the man who was holding an ice pick to my aunt’s throat.

“You probably like everyone,” I retorted.  How odd to be mean to yourself.  It took a few minutes before she replied.  She got very quiet and pulled her knees in closer to her chest.  Her eyes showed a glimpse of anxiety and
apprehension again.  I felt bad for upsetting myself.

“I don’t like Pro
fessor Michaels,” she whispered.  I could barely hear her.

“Profess
or Michaels?  But he’s a friend of Mom’s…I mean, he’s a friend of your mom’s.  Why wouldn’t you like him?”

“His color is wrong,” she confided.  She was talking about his aura, but I hadn’t
been able to get a good look at his aura before I drank the elixir infused lemonade.  I hadn’t even made note of its color.  She had to be wrong.  Maybe my gift of reading auras had not fully kicked in when I was three.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“Don’t tell,” she whispered again, “I see colors around people.  I don’t think other people see them.”

“Why don’t you want anyone to know?” I asked.  I knew the answer to this already, but the question just came out, a natural part of the conversation.

“My fire made Daddy go away.  I don’t want Mommy or Aunt Lynn to go away if they know,” she voiced the fear I kept with me until my teen years.  After that, I didn’t tell Aunt Lynn because I knew the more rare gifts a witch had, the more special other witches considered her.  I didn’t want to be a witch at all, so I let Aunt Lynn think I only had one rare gift.  Of course, she must have known about the time traveling, but none of that mattered now.

“Your mommy and aunt Lynn love you.  Having more gifts won’t make them go away,” I reassured myself, but I didn’t look convinced, so I changed the subject.  It was better I not tell anyone about reading auras anyway.  “What do you mean that Professor Michaels’ color is wrong?” I asked her, “I didn’t see anything wrong with his color.”

“You can see them, too?” she asked me, scooting a little bit closer, my small green eyes getting a little bit wider.

“Yes,” I schooled myself.  This must be where I learned what they were called. “The colors are called auras, but very few witches can see them.”

“I wish I wasn’t a witch,” she said.  I sighed.  Keeping a three-year-old on topic proved to be difficult.

“I know, I wish the same thing,” I told her, “But sometimes you just have to deal with the hand you are dealt.”  She looked at me quizzically, and I realized a card analogy probably didn’t make sense to a small child.  “It means sometimes we can’t change things.  We just have to keep moving forward.”  She frowned at me and tightened her arms around her knees.

“So,” I started again, “What is wrong with Professor Michaels’ aura?”

“It looks normal most of the time, but it isn’t real,” she was whispering again.

“Not real?” I had never seen an aura that wasn’t real.  This made less sense than time travel.  “I really don’t see how someone can have an aura that isn’t real.  I’ve never seen an aura like that, and I have been able to see them for a long time.”  There.  The matter was settled.  Cameron was the bad guy, and Professor Michaels worked with my mother to protect Unknowns by taking their abilities.  Okay, that didn’t make much sense either. 

“Why don’t you think his aura is real?” I asked.

Little Jade frowned at me again.  She looked like she wasn’t sure if I could be trusted.  I rested my head on my knees and tried to look as trustworthy as possible.  I closed my eyes, trying one last time to will this world away and return to Zach’s party.  I could almost hear the thump of the music in the next room.  Jade startled me back into my new reality when she began to talk again.  She had come out from under the desk and knelt right next to me, whispering in my ear.

“I’ve seen his real color.  It comes through from behind the fake one every once in a while, when he doesn
’t think anyone is around.  It’s dark.  Very dark.  Darker than Cameron’s.  Dark like the night with no moon and no stars and no lights,” she stayed hovering near my ear.  Then she scooted across the room and sat in the armchair with the history book on her lap.  I sat still.  Her words sent a chill through my whole body.  I remembered seeing that aura, that deep, depths of a coalmine black she described.  I remembered seeing it on this night and never again.  She was right.  It wasn’t just Cameron who was a Shadow Ruler; it was his father, too.

I looked up.  Jade was flipping through the pages of the book, no doubt examining the illustrations and charts.  I didn’t learn to read until I started school.  She came to the loose page, the contract, and held it up. 

“What’s this?” she asked with genuine innocence.

With a deep breath, I stood up.  I would have to help Cameron, but I had to do it my way.  I couldn’t have Jade set the whole place on fire.  I scanned the room.  Books lined the walls like hundreds of sentinels guarding a fortress.  Then there was the fireplace.  She could burn the books there and not set the whole place up in flames.

“That,” I told her as I walked over to the chair and propped myself up on the arm next to her, “is something Cameron wants you to take care of.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed with that same awe in her voice.  “What does he want me to do with it?  Should I keep it safe?  Hide it someplace else?”

“No, Cameron asked me to have you burn the books in this room.  I think you might be right about his father, and I think that burning these books might upset Professor Michaels, but Cameron said it was very important.  I know you don’t want to start a fire…”

“Cameron wants me to?  I’ll do it,” she interrupted me. 
You could at least key down the eagerness,
I thought
.

“Well, let’s try to do this as safely as we can.  I think it may take a while, but we should be able to burn the books in the fireplace.”  I took the contract from her and the book and walked
over to the fireplace.  It would be easier to just burn the contracts, but I didn’t know how many there were or how long it would take to find them.  I pulled the metal mesh covering to the side of the fireplace and checked to make sure the flue was open.  I threw the book and the contract in.  Jade already sat at my side.

“Can you do this?” I asked, “Can you focus your gift just on the inside of this fireplace?”

“I think so,” she replied as she knelt on the hearth.  She stared at the book with concentrated intensity, and she no longer looked like a small child.  She transformed into a miniature adult.  Her body was tense with purpose, and her eyes had a glare to them that would frighten the most villainous criminal.

I looked at the fireplace, wishing I could be the one to do this instead of her.  If this didn’t go well, she would be scarred by this night.  I knew it probably would not go well, but maybe I could alter this night and protect both of us in the process.  A small wisp of smoke rose from the book.  It burst into flames, but the contract resisted the first licks of the flame.

Glancing back at Jade, I could see she was no longer with me.  She was in another universe, all alone with only the purpose of starting this fire.  I felt the heat radiating off her increase, and suddenly more light emitted from the fireplace.  I watched as the contract dissolved in waves of blue heat.  Jade crumpled next to me, breathing hard. 
How can she do this?
 
There are so many books.  She’s just a child. 
I had to think of something else.

“Jade?  Are you okay?”  I lifted her shoulders gently, and she leaned in against my side. 
She couldn’t do this.  It would kill her, and by default, me.

“I’m…okay,” she forced the words out, but I could tell the eagerness she had only moments ago had escaped her.  I held her by the fireplace while I thought.  If I left her in her hiding spot, I could go back to Cameron.  If I explained what I knew about his father and how we had tried to
carry out the task he had given me, maybe he could make an elixir to give me back my abilities and gifts.  Then I would start the fire.  I would get Jade and my mother out, but no one could see Jade the way she was right now.  She looked like the lone survivor of a train wreck—bewildered and beaten down.  If Professor Michaels saw her, he would know immediately what we were up to; I was sure of it.

“Jade?” I looked down at the weak child next to me, but she seemed to be recovering with the speed of Superman when the kryptonite draining his powers
had been thrust out into the emptiness of space.

“I’m starting to feel better,” she said, with only a hint of the weakness of moments before in her voice.

“I still think you should rest while I think about this,” I told her.  “Can you stay in your hiding space for a little while longer?  I want to go and talk to Cameron.  Maybe I can get him to help us.”