Burn (33 page)

Dominic
Savedra
lives up on the second floor according to my paperwork. I walk boldly up the steps with Gage tucked close behind and give a power knock on the door. We give it a few minutes before walking downstairs and pounding on the main entry.

A beautiful woman with skin the color of cinnamon emerges.

“Do you know where we can find Dominic?” I point upstairs.

“Working.” She says in broken English. She flicks a finger just past the farmers market.

We cross the street in haste. I don’t know if we’re going to find him. The fact this is all happening in real time, and that we have school in the morning, is starting to make me feel like we’re sort of up a creek. Just as I’m about to question a vendor picking through his lot of green peppers, Gage nudges me.

He points over to a sign that reads Dominic
Savedra
attorney at law in plain English right beneath the Spanish rendition.

I rush up the steps and burst into the office.

“Dominic?” I ask the petite secretary filing her nails. She picks up the phone, but I don’t wait for her permission. Instead, adrenaline propels me—cheers me on to complete this very first mission on the war against the Counts.

I burst into the back room and find a heavyset man reclined at his desk, staring off at the television mounted on the wall.

“Dominic
Savedra
?” I ask a little too loud.

“Yes.” He sits up at attention, spreading his fingers flat across the desk.

“Are you a Count?” I ask stupidly.

Gage doesn’t hesitate. He plunges his knife in through Dominic
Savedra’s
hand, deep and settled, the way Holden pinned me in the forest. The blue illumination from the dagger quickens through the man’s body. And with that, he slumps over onto his desk.

It was the first Count causality in the civil war evoked in my name, and it was Gage who killed for me.

Chapter Forty-
Four

Love Like Ours

Venice, Geneva, Cape Town, Taipei, Prague, Tonga, Perth, Dublin, New York City, Cleveland, we hit them all in just one night. There were five more cities we couldn’t get to. Five regional leaders who get to see tomorrow because Gage and I were staring down the barrel of first period.
 

In the morning,
Gage
picks me up, and we head out to school without saying two words. There’s a strangled tension between us as though we were both somehow hoping it were all a bad blood-soaked dream.

A dauntless charcoal cloud stretches across the breadth and width of Paragon.

At school—we move around stiff as robots. It’s not until second period that I realize for the first time how much bloodshed we are suddenly responsible for—stunned that I let Gage kill for me. It was Gage who wanted the blood on his hands and he did it for me.

It all feels surreal, too heavy to process correctly. I want to run to Dr. Booth and tell him what a mess I’ve made of everything—how I’ve dragged Gage in, yet again.

“Ms. Messenger, can I see you a moment?” Marshall asks with a forced smile. He instructs the students to go over their homework before leading me out into the hall and securing the door behind him.

“Do you love your limbs?” There’s a great intensity in him I haven’t seen before.

“Yes,” I manage to squeak out.

“Do you love your life?” His eyes sweep up and down over my person.

“Yes,” my voice is hoarse from being up all night.

“You’re covered in blood and have no alliance with me whatsoever.”

“I think I need you.” I let my gaze fall to the floor. I’ve done something huge, something horrible, and now I’m going to pay for it. Maybe Logan was right, maybe there was too much to lose going off halfcocked and massacring almost a dozen Counts.

He lifts my chin with his finger. “You’ve proven yourself a noble warrior,
Skyla
.” He produces a dry smile.

“I changed the future,” I say. “The vision never happened.” All it took was for me to bat Gage’s hand away from the butterfly. It never animated and floated up to the ceiling in a trail of sapphire glory.

“Believe what you like. Are you interested in knowing what the payment for stealing my dagger is?”

“What?” I’m sure it has something to do with spending the rest of my days in
Sectorville
.

“Why don’t I show you?” He pulls me in by the face and indulges in a wild, uninhibited kiss as I try halfheartedly to push him away.

A picture emerges of Mia and Melissa laughing in a crowded room. Mia jumps from off a table and falls into Tad’s waiting arms, Melissa does the same. My mother lingers beside them, with Drake and Brielle at their sides.

Table diving? That’s what’s going to happen?

I pull away breathless.

“I don’t get it.” I struggle to read his expression. “Is it because I wasn’t there—in the vision? Is that what it was about?”

“You’ll know when the time comes. Just rest assured it creates a barrier between the lot of you—an impenetrable chasm.”

“I’m going to die.” My hand comes up to my throat. Marshall is going to remove me from the planet because I stole his dagger. “The chasm is death, isn’t it?”

He drills into me with his stare, unwavering—hard as nails. “It will feel like death. Most certainly.”

***

After cheer, Gage gives me a ride to my routine mental exam.

Dr. Booth nurses his coffee, cradles it with both hands, never taking his eyes off me.

“So Logan left you.” He reiterates after my lengthy explanation of how it all went down—Marshall with his foresight into the future, by way of his tongue.

I don’t nod, or blink—just wait for something profound to come from his lips letting me know this will all work itself out. I want to hear him say that
maybe Logan is the love of my life, and that in the end, somehow
,
it will be OK
.

“Fate seems to favor Gage.” He indulges in a quick sip. “He knows you’ll marry.” He shrugs as if to say there is nothing here to mourn, move on,
be
done with it. Dr. Booth is a
Levatio
, he shares the gift of knowing—he understands the finality of it all. “And the body count?” He asks as an afterthought.

“I’d rather not say.” I lack the proper enthusiasm to own up to the carnage I’m responsible for.

His head tilts as he stares pensively at me. “You will pay for this
Skyla
. I’m sorry.”

“Everyone has to pay for what they’ve done, that’s why I did it.”

Dr. Booth considers this, while pinching at his chin. “Slow steps—you don’t run into a war.” He folds his hands and pushes out a complacent smile. “You might find the thick of the battle a little too long, a little too painful. Better to assess that now before there’s no turning back.” His eyes rove all over my face as if memorizing it one last time. “There’s no turning back now, is there?”

I shake my head.

No turning back.

***

That night, I curl up with Chloe’s diary while waiting for Gage in the butterfly room.

October 11
^th
,

It kills me to see Gage in the quad, Gage on the field, Gage in my biology class, and have to pretend that I’m in love with Logan. I thought by now he’d go insane. I thought maybe because he knows I’m going to die he’d have pity on me and maybe spare one heartfelt kiss. I can’t stand to see his face in the halls at school.

 
Maybe that’s what’s going to do me in? Maybe I’ll die of a broken heart.

October 13
^th
,

I let Logan in through the butterfly room and lured him into my bed. I know for a fact that he and Gage talk about me because Logan mentioned he doesn’t keep anything from Gage. He said he’s his brother in every way. So, brilliant
me,
attacked him. Logan was defenseless to my womanly wiles. He was easier to take down than I could have ever imagined.

Invisible idiot visited again. Hi you!

Idiot? Gee thanks.

My stomach turns at the thought of Chloe with Logan—using him like that. Although a selfish part of me feels relieved she didn’t love him. I wish she didn’t love Gage so damn much either.

***

Gage shows up in the butterfly room near midnight. I’m beyond exhausted, so when he snatches a butterfly off the wall, and it takes flight in a quiet blue spiral up to the ceiling I don’t have the energy to try to change it. Instead, I find a strange comfort in the very secure nature of not being able to alter the future.

“We were destined to kill those men,” I speak it softy to him. I think the two of us are going to need Dr. Booth’s services for years, psychotherapy, and at least a dozen shock treatments to get over the trauma of ending near a dozen lives. Not to mention we don’t know what the fallout will be, but we do know it’s coming—consequences that will strike like lightning. This is the storm of our own making. It’s going to touch down in our lives and inevitably burn something to the ground—we just have no idea what that might be.

“Come here.” He pulls me over. I wrap myself around him completely with my arms and legs around his person as though he were a tree trunk.

I start in with slow measured kisses, then, something inside me gives. It submerges me in the knowledge that Gage will marry me one day. It’s a slow build up that pushes me forward in a lust filled haste—Gage, who waited for me, who took me to the Counts to avenge
Celestra
blood, who ultimately killed for me.

His breathing becomes erratic as he gently lays me down on the floor. I shred the buttons off my blouse in an effort to tear it open—lift his shirt up over his head to feel his bare flesh against mine. It feels magical like this with Gage. Like it was always meant to be.
 
 
  

The overhead latch to the butterfly room bursts open and the hard thump of tennis shoes lands just shy of our heads.

“Whoa!” A voice shouts from above.

Freaking Ellis.

I pluck Gage’s t-shirt from off the floor and hold it over my bra. For a dreadful second, I thought it might be Logan—believed it with all of my heart. I think I wanted it to be.

“What?” I hiss perturbed.

“Counts had an emergency faction meeting tonight.”

“Are they coming after me?” Everything in me loosens with fear.

“They’re coming after all of you.”

***