Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two (22 page)

“Okay. I’m not an expert. I might be off by a day or two. But I have studied this practice. Go ahead and stand up and face me.”

He stepped close to her and placed his fingers behind her head, interweaving through her hair as he did—the exact position someone might take before they pulled you into a kiss.

“You know, you don’t have to stop breathing…or you know, blinking,” he said.

“Oh…right.”

“Does that hurt?” he asked.

“No.”

“I’ve never tried this on a winter. It’s different. But I think I can find it.”

He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow in concentration. Her head felt warm and tingly at the spot where he touched her, and she felt lightheaded. But no, it didn’t hurt. It felt wonderful. His touch drew out all her happy memories. They rolled through her mind as if he called them.

She thought of the day in the winter before everything got weird, when the roads iced over and the power went out. No one could go to work or school, and the whole family stayed inside, played board games. and drank hot chocolate. She thought of the day Samantha and Emmy skipped school and jumped the fence at a neighbor’s house to spend the day at their pool, and sipped wine they hated, just to feel grown up. And she thought of little things, like jumping off the high dive. Watermelon snow cones. Sprinting toward the castle at Magic Kingdom as a little girl, with Dad running after her, trying not to lose her in the crowd.

“I think January 22
^nd
.”

“What?” She had almost forgotten why they did this.

“January 22
^nd
, maybe 23
^rd
.”

“Oh.”

He unraveled his hands from her hair. “You look disappointed. Did you expect something else?”

“You mean about my date?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess not. A friend of mine told me I was a January. What does it mean?”

“It means you’re a winter witch, but more than 30 days after the winter solstice, so you’re not that dark. Since you’re on the spring side of the solstice, we say you’re a winter witch, tending towards spring. Which means you may have some spring characteristics too.”

Emmy scrunched up her nose.

Nathan laughed. “It’s not a bad thing. And I’m sure it’s no surprise to you. It means you’re a little…stormy. Impetuous. Passionate. You follow your heart. And you’re not afraid to live life with abandon. I don’t have to know you well to know that’s true.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m June 5
^th
, so I tend towards spring too.”

She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She liked that they had at least one small thing in common.

“What does that mean about you?” she asked.

“Well, according to my parents anyway, it means I can get lost on my way from the driveway to the front door.”

She laughed. “Is that true?”

“I don’t get lost. I might decide to go somewhere unexpected at the last minute. Or, I might get distracted by something shiny.”

“I know what you mean about…shiny things.” By
shiny things
, she had meant him, but she wished it hadn’t been as obvious. He blushed, which made her blush five times worse. He smiled as if he couldn’t help himself, which made him shine even more.

“Since we both have that crazy spring in us, I think we should made a pact,” Nathan said. “We have to avoid wandering into oncoming traffic or off cliffs for at least a couple more years.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I want to kiss you. But you’re too young.”

“You’re saying you’re going to wait a couple more
years
before you kiss me? I don’t think so.”

“All right. You convinced me.”

Emmy’s heart leapt into her throat. She couldn’t believe it was really happening. Right in that moment. He put his hand in her hair again, as he had done before, but this time he did pull her close to him. He kissed her as if he wanted to make it count. Slowly, and with great attention, as if he wanted to memorize every cell of her lips. Emmy didn’t know what she was doing, but kissing Nathan turned out to be easy. Natural, as if she’d done it a million times before. She thought their opposing energies might fight against each other, but they didn’t. They complemented each other like hot apple pie and ice cream. A perfect fit.

Nathan had to pry Emmy off him, because she had no plans to end the kiss.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“No, you definitely should have done that.”

“Why do you have to be so young?”

“Why do you always have to do the right thing?”

“I know I was joking when I said we shouldn’t walk into oncoming traffic, but I’m serious, too. You put yourself in too much danger. And you’re too strong-willed for me to put any long-term spell on you that would make you be safe. Can you please take care of yourself, so someday I can do that again?”

Emmy didn’t respond. She didn’t like the terms of the agreement.

But he didn’t make her agree. He pulled her into a hug, a hug that somehow made him feel big and her small, but in a good way, as if he had her wrapped in a warm cocoon.

She knew the hug meant goodbye, and she tried to think of ways to make it not be. Maybe she could use magic to make him stay. She didn’t want to go back to her winter world.

Apparently, she could not force him to do things, because way too soon, he dropped her off again at the grocery store.

It didn’t take long for the warm feeling to disappear and the sense of dread to return. The cold seeped back in, from her core, out to her extremities, burning and prickling as it went.

avid combed his fingers through Amanda’s hair, gently removing the tangles. Since she had gotten sick, they had more moments like this. The cancer slowed her down. She had become a quieter version of herself. Normally, she wouldn’t stay this still for long, her head resting on his chest while they lay in bed in silence.

He felt the warmth of her body, the rise and fall of her breathing, the heaviness of her head, very aware of the heart inside her—a heart, far too flimsy. That small beating thing kept all the energy and life and beauty that was Amanda. How could something so precious be snuffed out so easily? These moments felt bittersweet now. He couldn’t enjoy them. Every time he was reminded of how much he loved her, he couldn’t help but think about how it would feel to lose her.

I don’t want to think about it. Please, God, just stop me from thinking about it.

“I wish we were ordinary,” David said. In a way, continuing his prayer, talking to God and Amanda at once. “I want us to complain about things like traffic and the heat. And fight about money, and the kids. I want normal.”

“If it makes you feel better, we do all those things,” Amanda said.

“You know what I mean. I don’t understand why I can’t have that. I don’t want much. I don’t need wealth or power or anything I didn’t earn. I just want my wife and my kids, and for all of us to live to be old. Why can’t God give that to me? Is that really too much to ask?”

“So, this is the, ‘why does God let bad things happen’ question?”

“I suppose.”

“It’s a stupid question.”

“How is it a stupid question?”

She intertwined her hand with his and fiddled with his wedding ring. “I don’t pretend to understand God’s plan. But clearly, the world is meant to be horrible, and cruel, and unfair. It always has been. Always will be. Life is supposed to be that way. That’s what God intended. The world is horrible…but it’s also beautiful.”

The ceiling above him faded away. At first, he panicked, thinking he must have gone mad. But it didn’t take him long to realize what Amanda had done. She had done the same thing when she first told him he was a wizard. She immersed them in one of the “sticky” memories she had kept. She wanted to show him “beautiful.”

The ceiling blew away to reveal a thick blanket of stars. He had never felt so close to the sky. He knew this moment right away. Their honeymoon. They had lain together in the warm, white sand, in almost the same position they lay in now. Music from the nearby cabana drifted through the sound of the waves. He dug his toes into the warmth of the sand and inhaled. He could smell the salty ocean, and he could smell Amanda, with a hint of coconut on her skin and rum on her lips. He pulled her face toward him to kiss her, but the image faded.

“No,” he said. “Please, no. I want to stay.”

“It’s just a memory, David. We’re here, not there.”

“I know.” The room and Amanda went back into focus. She peered up at him with her pale blue eyes, and it hit him hard. She was twenty years older, and they lay under a bland white ceiling instead of stars and on a lumpy mattress instead of sand, but he loved her as much as he had in that moment. The contrast made that clear. Life had been filled with more hope then, but the love felt the same. In fact, now it felt exponentially stronger.

So he leaned in to kiss her anyway.

When he pulled away, she was crying. He hated to see her cry.

“I don’t want to die,” she said. “I want to stay here with you.”

Her blue eyes pleaded with him, as if he could grant her request. He didn’t think he could say anything back without crying himself, so he squeezed her tighter.

“Please don’t stop praying for me,” she said. “I don’t want you to stop praying.”

“If there is only the slightest chance there is a God listening to my prayers, I’ll pray for you. I won’t stop unless someone proves to me there is no God, and probably not even then. I’m stubborn like that.”

Patrick woke up coughing. His lungs burned. His eyes burned.
What the Hell? What was wrong with him?
The dark bedroom seemed normal. No smoke. No fire. In contrast, the room seemed oddly still, perhaps magically so. He couldn’t hear Xavier breathing, or the gentle tick of his alarm clock, or crickets outside. But he did smell…

His stomach lurched. Gasoline. He smelled gasoline.

This was no nightmare. This was a vision. And not the distant, blurry kind. The right here. Right now. The
you have seconds to spare
kind. He hoped he hadn’t spent his entire advance warning coughing.

Despite his coughing, Xavier didn’t stir. Patrick flew out of bed and shook Xavier as violently as he could. He opened his eyes, but didn’t react, so Patrick dragged him out of bed and kicked him in the stomach.