Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series) (9 page)

Jade grabbed my hands and shifted her body to face the next bookcase, to the right of the fireplace.  More blue flames and popping noises followed.  The heat flowed between us in intense and almost unbearable waves.  I hoped I was absorbing the majority of it.  Holding my hands on her shoulders, she turned again.  We worked this way for only
a few minutes before the entire room became engulfed in blue flame.  The smoke made our eyes water and stung with each breath we inhaled.   I could feel the air in the room growing dense and choking my lungs with its impurities, but we had finished the job.

When I lifted my hands from Jade’s shoulders, she collapsed onto the floor.  I bent down and scooped her up into my arms, taking a deep gulp of the air near the floor, which was relatively smoke free for the time being.  I stood back up, the only way I could carry her and the backpack to the door
, and plunged into the thickening smoke, finding the door only by memory.  As we burst into the hall, I heard Amy’s screams from the back rooms.  They had not made it out yet, but I couldn’t go back there.  I had to get Jade out of here first, and I had to rescue my aunt.

Every step was an effort of physical strength and courage.  Jade, passed out in my arms, was dead weight, but at least she was countered by the weight on my back from our family book.  The smoke poured out of the office and into the hall.  I had forgotten to buy us time by closing the door.  I looked back down the hall and saw the smoke creeping its way to Professor Michaels, Amy, Justin, and Madilyn, if any of them were still alive.

I dragged myself and my younger self back to the black door.  I reached out for the handle when I saw Professor Michaels come around the corner.  He stopped for a moment and stared at us.  It looked as if he would lunge forward—intent on reaching us and ripping Jade from my arms.  Honestly, I was so weak he could probably do it if he tried, but he diverted his eyes to find the source of the smoke.  I knew in that moment I had wounded him.

“No!” he screamed, and he set a new course for the burning office.  Good.  He would burn in there with his books and his contracts.  “Cameron!” he yelled, “Come here!  We’re leaving!”

Before I could escape through the portal, Cameron came barreling through it.  His father had already plunged into the office.  Cameron stared at me, his eyes moving from each version of myself to the smoke billowing in the hall.  He was within inches from me, and if he was going to kill me, I would do what I could to protect my younger self.  I set her down on the floor and stood in front of her.

He pushed me back to the wall, ignoring the limp little body on the floor.  His arm pinned me to the wall at the shoulders.  He glanced quickly down the hall—empty. 

“You weren’t quick enough.  It wasn’t enough,” he growled, his breath hot against my cheek.  I closed my eyes, sure he intended to kill me.  Someone else must carry little Jade through the portal and out of this burning inferno.  With his other hand, Cameron pressed something into my palm.

“Come and find us if you really want your revenge,” he hissed at me.

“Now, Cameron!” came a yell from the burning office.  I stood for a moment as Cameron let me go and ran into the burning room.  I looked down at the paper in my hand. 
Salem 1692.
  I tucked it in my pocket, not that the place or date would be hard to remember, but I didn’t know what else to do with it or what it meant.

Two more figures emerged from the end of the hall.  Madilyn dragged Amy, who was fighting her grasp in between heaving sobs.  They reached me as I picked up little Jade and found the handle of the black door in the growing smoke.  I looked back one time to see an orange flash from the burning room.  Then Madilyn pushed me forward as she dragged Amy behind her.

Swirling pots and pans and dark, grey smoke filled the space around us.  We tripped over each other and fell in a pile into Aunt Lynn and Jeffrey who were waiting for us in the bar, Aunt Lynn no longer petrified, at least not literally.

“Where is
my sister?” Aunt Lynn asked, looking at me.  I looked at myself, still unconscious, and answered quietly.

“Dead.  It was Evan.”

“Justin?” Aunt Lynn asked next.  She was expecting for my mother to be dead.  She had already heard the conversation between Cameron and I as she sat like a stone in the booth of one of the bar tables.

“Evan killed him!” Amy wailed, “Let me go back!”  She struggled against Madilyn and almost broke free.  Aunt Lynn looked to Jeffrey.

“Get her out of here,” she instructed him.  He took Amy’s arm and when it was obvious that was not enough, he hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her out of the bar.  The door I had come through already had a broken lock.  They went out the way I had come in. 

“Let Madilyn carry Jade out of here,” Aunt Lynn instr
ucted us. “Take her out.  We’ll be with you in a moment.  We have to make sure Evan can’t follow us.”

I handed my limp, exhausted child-self over to Madilyn.  She glanced quickly from Aunt Lynn to me and then carried Jade out after Jeffrey and Amy.  I looked to Aunt Lynn.

“Okay, what do we have to do?” I asked her.

“Nothing.  I imagine they
’re gone already, but I needed a moment to talk to you.  You have to leave.  I think you’ve done what you came to do,” she placed her hands on my shoulders and kissed my forehead.  Her lips felt cool compared to the heat I had just come from.

“I don’t know how,” I admitted, too exhausted to care what she thought of my lack of knowledge.

“Concentrate on where and when you want to go,” she told me, “the same way you concentrate on your other gift.  Concentrate on one spot in the room and a portal will open up through time.”

I pulled the piece of paper out of my pocket and stared at the place and date.  Is this where they had gone?  Could it be a trap?  I wasn’t sure, but either way, I knew I wasn’t ready.

“But there’s so much I want to talk to you about.  So much I want to ask,” I pled.

Her eyes crinkled at the corners.  She looked at me with pity and exhaustion and grief she had not yet had a chance to feel
.  She was not around in the time I was returning to for me to have this conversation with her.  This was the last time I would see her.

“You can’t stay any longer,” she said firmly.  I looked down, not knowing what to say in this moment.  I could feel the room heating up.  I would have to leave my way, and she would have to leave hers.  Then I remembered the backpack.  I took it off and held it out to her.  She looked
perplexed and hesitated to take it from my grasp.

“It’s the family book,” I explained. “I saved it from Evan’s office before we burned it down.  You’ll need it, but I will be difficult.  I won’t want to study.”

“Thank you,” she said.  She hesitated again before walking away.

“What is the last street we live on?” she asked me.

“Magnolia Avenue in…”

“Don’t tell me the city,” she cut me o
ff. “I’ll figure it out, but I don’t want too much information.”  She smiled at me now.  “I’ll leave something for you in the far northwest corner of the backyard.  Dig about three feet down.  I love you, Jade.”  Then she was gone.  Leaving me in the burning building of my past.

I stared at the booth I had been trapped in earlier.  I concentrated on Zach’s party, May 2010.  Instead of willing fire, I willed a portal.  To my astonishment, one appeared.  I could see Zach’s room, just the way I left it.  I heard the roar of a fire truck getting closer.  I felt the heat of the building.  I heard timbers from the roof falling all around me.  Then I stepped through the portal and collapsed onto Zach’s bedroom floor—the fire and the sirens filling my dreams.

Light filtered through Zach’s blinds and hit my face where I lay on the floor.  I opened my eyes just a bit.  I didn’t want to face another day.  I wanted to go back to the bar and the fire and just breathe in the smoke—let the flames consume me.  It was bad before, knowing, or thinking, the fire I started killed my mother.  I never thought anything would hurt more than that.  Even when Aunt Lynn’s doctor diagnosed her with cancer, and even when she finally died, I still carried my guilt from
that fire around with me heavier than the burden of becoming an orphan once again.  This was different.  This was worse.

Knowing the truth--I had not caused my mother’s death--did not lessen the pain of having been there and been powerless to save her.   I closed my eyes, but each time I did so, I saw the agony on her face, the knife disappearing and her blood dripping to the floor.  It didn’t matter I wasn’t the one to cause her death.  Seeing her last moments was far worse.

I gritted my teeth against the pain and let the anger I felt toward Cameron and Evan fill my veins, silencing the part of me that longed for the release the flames of that night could have given me.  I had a purpose now I had never possessed before.  I was a time traveler, so I had all the time in the world.  I knew where they were and when, at least approximately.  I could find them as soon as I was ready.  I would stay the summer in my apartment, and I would study.  I avoided becoming a powerful witch my whole life, but now I would focus every fiber of my soul on this one achievement.  Then I would hunt them down.

I opened my eyes to the sunlight and slowly sat up.  Zach snored from his bed, still exhausted, no doubt, from his party.  The alarm clock next to his bed shone brightly in the dim light of the room—11:30.  My head pounded as if a whole tree took root and now pushed all of its branches against my skull in an effort to escape.  I had never experienced a hangover, but I
didn’t think this was one.  There must be a side effect to time travel.  I pulled myself up using the window ledge for support and being careful not to wake Zach.  I needed time to think if he decided to ask me questions about my whereabouts during the party or how I ended up on his floor, and thinking was certainly not something I was equipped to do with a tree trying to escape from my skull.

Grabbing my sandals, which were still slightly damp, I moved to the door and slowly turned the handle.  Just this act, opening a door, filled my mind with images of flying pots and pans and entering a house that no longer existed.  Actually, it hadn’t existed for fifteen years, but to me, it existed just last night.  I took a deep breath and slid my body through the small opening I had created and into the hallway.  Zach’s apartment was a mess.  Red plasti
c cups littered the floor and an empty keg lay on its side in the kitchen.  There were footprints on Zach’s couch and the whole place had the smell of spilled beer.  Several exhausted partiers lay on the furniture and floor sleeping off the previous night.

If it had been any other day, I would have started cleaning up while Zach and his roommates slept, but this would have to be their problem.  I had
bigger problems of my own to worry about from here on out.  I thought dimly of the few moments I spent in Zach’s party and wondered about the black aura I had either seen or imagined.  If I had actually seen it, that meant there might be trouble closer than I thought, and when I started practicing my skills, I would need to be extra cautious.  Mainly, I thought I had imagined it.  Perhaps my psyche was trying to warn me of what was about to happen, of the trip I was about to take through time.

I carefully stepped over a girl sleeping on the floor
and reached the bowl full of keys.  After fishing through the bowl for a minute, I finally found my set and turned to leave.  I had to step over the same girl to get to the front door, but when I looked down, her eyes were open, and she was staring at me with a seriousness I at first read as illness from the partying she had done.  I tried to step back, to avoid the vomiting that would surely begin at any minute, but she grabbed my ankle and continued to stare at me.

“We need to talk,” she said sternly, and I knew instantly she was not drunk or even hung over.

“I really don’t have time.  I’m in a hurry,” I muttered, jingling my keys and pulling my leg away.

“Then I’ll come with you,” she stated matter-of-factly as she stood up and brushed off her clothes.  I recognized her as the girl who had spilled her drink on me last night.  She had seemed quite intoxicated then, but if she had been, she certainly wasn’t feeling the effects of it now.

“Ugh.  Listen, I have important things to do today, and like I said before, I really don’t have the time for whatever this is.”  I stepped around her and unlocked the front door, but she followed me out into the hall.  As I started down the steps, she stayed right at my heels.

“This is important, too,” she told me at the bottom of the stairs, stepping in front of me so I had to look at her.  She had a rose-colored aura—very pretty, but not very intimidating.  Before she said anything else, I saw her lips begin to move without making a sound.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I tried to stop her from casting the spell, but it was too late.  I could feel the pull of her spell and knew she had just bound herself to me.  This was one of the spells my mother used when she found an Unknown to make sure the newly discovered witch stayed near her until a decision could be made.  I knew the feel of the spell like an old habit.  My aunt had used it many times in my childhood to keep me safe.  She could reel it in so tight that we were like one person or let it go slack so I appeared to have free reign on the world while I explored the beach or a new park.  I asked her where she learned the spell once, and she explained it was my mother who created it as a way to keep her Unknowns safe.