Angel Fire (16 page)

When I tentatively poked my head into the kitchen, I was shocked to see Neil at the table.

They both looked up as I entered, smiles on their faces.

“Neil?” I said.

“You didn’t forget our date?”

I had. “Of course not,” I stammered. “But you’re a little early, aren’t you?”

We all glanced at the clock hanging over the door arch. It was nearly six o’clock. Where had the day gone?

“Oh, sorry about that,” I said. “Did you make reservations somewhere? Are we too late? I can’t go like this. I have to get ready.”

“No problem. Your aunt has offered to cook dinner. It’s been more years than I can count since I had anything that wasn’t out of the microwave.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I said to my aunt, mildly embarrassed. There were so many questions I had for each of them, I wasn’t sure I could quell them long enough to make polite conversation through a whole meal. Each of the three knew my secret, but the last thing I wanted was everyone to talk about it together. I needed to work through how I was feeling about having this affliction; but I wasn’t ready to put myself up as the topic of discussion.

“Pish-posh,” Aunt Martha said with a cluck of her tongue. “I already had everything prepared for three; what’s one more? Besides, we all want to get to know your new man better.”

I flushed a deep crimson.
New man?
“Aunt Martha!”

She winked at Neil, who managed to smile through his own beet red complexion.

“We’re just friends,” I said, and my gut clenched when I thought of Uncle Edward; he wasn’t known to hold back an opinion, right or wrong, and if for whatever reason he and Neil didn’t hit it off, things could get uncomfortable. I needed time to figure out exactly what my relationship was with Uncle Edward, and with Neil, and I wasn’t looking forward to adding any complications to that.

“For now,” Aunt Martha added teasingly. And both Neil and I tried to find something interesting in the direction of our shoes.

* * *

Aunt Martha sent me off to make myself decent (she actually said it that way) and enlisted Neil to help with the last minute details of the meal. I was too excited to stay embarrassed, and broke records showering and getting into a change of clothes.

Dinner was roast with potatoes, carrots and all the extras. I could smell it from my motel room door once I stepped out, and my stomach gurgled in anticipation.

When I arrived, the table was filled to overflowing with the main course as well as buns and butter, glass bowls of green tomato chow, Dijon mustard for the roast, and—to my astonishment—a bottle of red wine. I raised my eyebrows at that, but Aunt Martha said, “I won’t tell if you don’t. What we do in the privacy of our own home is our business. Martin Burke can blow it out his hindquarters.”

Uncle Edward showed up just in time to dig in, and aside from shaking Neil’s hand when I introduced the two, the only words he spoke were to complain about the Cardinals failing to hold on to their fourth quarter lead again. It seemed he had spent the afternoon down at The Trough watching the last of the game and shooting some billiards.

He never met my eye once.

The entire event went much better than I had expected, and I was starting to feel somewhat normal.

When dinner ended, Neil got up and helped with the dishes without being asked, and that gave him quite a few brownie points with Aunt Martha.

Uncle Edward, in his usual gruff way, excused himself from the dinner table. “Gotta go make the rounds, make sure everything’s locked up.”

Feeling like a fifth wheel, I stood and offered to help him, but he waved me back down. “No, don’t bother yourself. I’ll most likely have a long list for you tomorrow anyway.”

With that, he was gone, and I was left trying to help Aunt Martha and Neil until they both shooed me away.

Idly, I wondered what had become of my great-grandmother’s journal, and wandered into the living room to snoop for it. I found the dusty old book next to a photo album on the shelf of my aunt’s curio. Aunt Martha must have put it there.

I glanced into the kitchen so see if Neil was looking in my direction…

But he was occupied, so I took the journal down and re-read that last entry.

Control
. It eluded me. Beatrice had found a way to bend the power to her will, rather than be its puppet. How?

The pages held no more clues, and Uncle Edward’s revelations only served to frustrate me more.

One of the floorboards creaked as someone entered the living room, and I quickly put the journal back where I found it. When I turned, Neil was standing in the doorway, drying his hands with the dish towel.

“All done?” I asked.

He smiled back. “It was the best meal I’ve had in a decade,” he said loud enough for Aunt Martha to hear.

“It was nothing, my dear,” she called back, but you could hear the pride in her voice. “I should have hot apple pie ready in about forty minutes, or whenever that old Edward gets himself back inside.”

Neil patted his stomach. “I don’t think I could eat another bite.”

“Don’t be silly,” she countered. “Why don’t you two take a stroll down Canyon Creek; take a walk in the park? Burn off dinner. It’s cool out; take a jacket,” she added, always the mother hen.

With a questioning look at me, Neil reached for our jackets hanging over the back of the Chesterfield. I muttered thanks as he helped me put mine on, and we headed across the highway to the creek.

Chapter Twenty

“I was sure
you had forgotten about dinner,” Neil said when we crossed the highway and started walking down the grassy slope toward the river. “When I showed up at your aunt’s she had no idea where you were.”

I blushed, and put a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry about that. I just had a rough afternoon. Sheriff Burke got himself all worked up over last night and came to put me in handcuffs. Uncle Edward really stepped up to the plate for me, and made the sheriff back off.”

Neil turned his head toward me. “Your uncle did?

“Yeah. I know. He comes off like he hates everyone in the world, but when it hits the fan, he’s the kind of person you want on your team.”

“So it’s all good now?”

I nodded. “For now. I had to cool off, though; think things through. I lost track of time.”

“Come to any conclusions?” he asked after a moment.

“Actually, I had sort of given up.”

“Given what up?” He sounded surprised.

“Well…” I was uncertain how to tell him about the discovery that someone in my family tree had had this curse, and had learned to control it. He would ask me how I knew that, and then I would have to confess that I had stolen the journal.

I hated bending the truth, but I found myself reluctant to tell him everything.

I gathered up my courage and said, “I had a long talk with my uncle—both he and my aunt know about my … affliction—and he mentioned that he once saw my great-grandmother summon the power at will and set the lake behind our motel on fire.”

“You’re talking about controlling it,” Neil prompted.

“Yes.” It struck me as odd that he focused on the issue of control rather than the fire.

“Is that what she wrote in her journal?” he asked.

My breath caught in my throat when I looked at him. He knew! But he winked to let me know he wasn’t upset.

“It was kind of obvious what you were doing in the lockup,” he explained. “And I’m not a complete idiot.”

“I’m sorry, Neil. I didn’t mean to deceive you about that.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure if we get it back into lockup before anyone takes inventory, no one will be the wiser. Did it help? Did you find what you were looking for?”

I gave a half nod. “I got some answers, but many more questions. And now I’m completely frustrated.”

“Yeah, I understand that part.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “You do?”

“Oh, God, yeah. It’s like a boiler deep inside you; the pressure building and building. You just have to let off the steam once in a while.”

My step faltered. “Neil? What are you talking about?”

He said, “That internal power, of course.”

I stopped completely and stared at him, unblinking, until my eyes hurt. Very slowly, I asked, “Are you telling me that you—?”

“It’s not what you think.” There was a hint of a smile on his face, but it was a bitter smile without any humor. “I don’t have the power of fire; I have something else…”

My mind blanked. I couldn’t process this revelation. I didn’t believe it. But somehow it made sense. He had never been shocked when my powers showed, and had not even batted an eyelid when I confessed that I was afflicted with angel’s fire, as my great-grandmother called it.

“We’re different,” he said, “from each other, but we are not like other people.”

It was as if he could tell that I wasn’t nearly as prepared to believe his story as he was mine. He gestured for us to sit on a bench by the walkway.

On the creek, illuminated by a three-quarter moon, a mother duck showed her ducklings how to swim in a straight line as they made their way back to their nest after a long day of scrounging.

I sat down as if the bench would come alive any moment and bite me.

“You’re probably wondering why it was so easy for me to accept what you told me this afternoon.”

At the time, I didn’t think about it twice; but now that I thought about it, it was highly suspicious. If I hadn’t been so distracted by my own concerns, I might have paid more attention to the signs.

“Let me tell you a bit about myself,” he offered.

I was all ears.

“I grew up in Maine,” he began. “Winters there were harsh, but as a kid, I loved to play in the snow. When I was four years old, I was running across a frozen river with my older brother. The ice couldn’t take our weight. We fell through. He drowned.”

I put my hand on his arm gently. “Oh my God!”

Neil spoke in a harsh whisper. “But I lived.”

He stared off into the distance. “No one came to save me that day; no one knew we were playing there. I saved myself, not by crawling out of that frozen river, but by making the river
push
me out.”

I gasped. “What do you mean, you ‘made’ the river push you out?”

“Water,” was his answer. “Fire, earth, air. I’ve spent the last few years studying the basic elements. People are fascinated by them, even if they don’t consciously think about them. They are the primal powers of the world. Entities all on their own.”

I struggled to catch up. I had spent years, not thinking about fire, but worrying about how it controlled me, and how to hide from it.

“Water—like fire—is a living thing, both powerful and destructive. Fire and flood. Infernos and tidal waves.”

“Neil,” I started to say.

“No, let me finish. This is the hard part, for me. I’ve never told this to another living soul. You’ve shared your story with three people. I envy that. I can never share this secret with my brother, or bring him back from the dead and apologize for not saving him. I would gladly trade places with him. My parents never forgave me for surviving.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, keenly aware that he suffered a pain as deep as my own.

He said, “It took me a long time to admit that it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have known that I had that power until I needed it. And at four years old, how could I have the wherewithal to control it? For years, I tortured myself with guilt. My downward spiral bottomed out when I was twenty.”

He took a deep breath and glanced at me to gauge whether I was still with him; whether I believed him. Of course I did. My own story was not unlike his.

Neil clenched his fists. “I grew up angry at myself, and I often lashed out at my parents and anyone else who was unlucky enough to care about me. But as I grew older, I realized I had to make some kind of effort, or I would forever be alone.

“I started dating, and one night while walking a girl home from the movies, and trying my hardest not to be a jerk, we were jumped by a couple of muggers. I had put myself out there, emotionally, and had made an effort to be a nice guy, but then these jokers come along and make me look bad in front of her.”

His eyes grew dark as he remembered. “I think it’s both anger and self-preservation that triggers the power. My anger that night was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The humiliation at being made to look like a fool was too great.

“It was raining lightly, you see, but the next moment it was raining
hard,
like a hail storm. Those hard pellets of water were focused on one spot on the earth: where one of the two muggers stood.”

Neil glanced at me again, to guage my reaction. He did not turn away as he finished the tale.

“It was me. I directed the rain to pound him relentlessly. A million needles of water pierced his flesh. The screams he made … I can still hear them in my dreams.”

Neil fell silent a moment, then took a deep breath. “The next thing I know, he’s running away as fast as he can, covering his torn face with his hands.”

I put my hand on his. I didn’t know what to say.

Neil’s voice was quiet, but firm. “I can tell by the look on your face you believe me. Or, should I say, you don’t disbelieve me.”

“I—” I started to say.

Then I stood up. Truth was, I didn’t want to believe it. This was impossible. I had struggled to accept my condition for the past ten years, and in the space of a day, I learned that not only had my great-grandmother had this same affliction, but that an unrelated person also had an elemental power. How many more people had this affliction?

My rational brain knew it made sense, that it all fit together; but my gut instinct was to deny it all and run like hell.

Neil grabbed my arm before I could flee from the truth of it.

He said, “You did the same thing to Barry, twice. He threatened you, and your power defended you by setting his sleeves on fire the other night. And last night you tried to deflect the power by boiling those drinks and that chair. It was you; your will. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s not my will!”