Kiss of Fire (30 page)

“I agree,” Erik said, sparing a pointed glance at Quinn.

Quinn ignored them both. He got a mug out of the cupboard and poured Sara a cup of coffee, placing it on the end of the counter near the fridge and sugar bowl, then returned to the juicer.

“You're making yourself at home,” she teased as she got out the cream and he smiled at her.

He fed another carrot into the juicer. “A guy's got to keep up his strength,” he teased in return, liking how she flushed.

“Wheat germ?” she asked, holding up a jar from the fridge. “It's really good in carrot juice.”

“I'll take all the vitamins I can get,” Quinn agreed easily. He took the jar from her and their fingers brushed in the transfer. There was no spark, no kindling of heat. Sara didn't seem to notice but Quinn was shocked to see evidence of what he already suspected.

Erik nodded once slowly, looking wise as he sipped his coffee. Sara meanwhile was stirring raw sugar into her coffee, blissfully unaware of what was lacking.

That wouldn't last. The woman was almost observant enough to be
Pyr
. Obviously, she was feeling a lack of caffeine.

Quinn returned to making his breakfast. He'd known the connection with Sara would be fleeting, but still. He supposed that the firestorm had to burn hot, so it couldn't last long. All the same, it seemed unfair to wait so long for something that endured only a couple of days.

He should have taken longer to court her.

On the other hand, the urgency of the firestorm was undeniable. Maybe it would have been over by this morning, anyway.

The next carrot had a rougher time going into the juicer.

“So, when do we save the Wyvern?” Sara asked brightly.

“Ask Quinn,” Erik demurred.

Quinn gave them both a dark look, disliking how readily they looked like coconspirators. “The Wyvern told me to leave her behind.”

“Time was of the essence,” Sara agreed. “Now we have to go back.”

“I don't think so,” Quinn said with force. “She said it was more important to ensure your safety, and I'm inclined to agree.”

“She can't have meant that she wanted to stay there.” Sara was dismissive. “How long do you think it will take to assemble the other
Pyr
?” she asked Erik.

Before he could answer, Quinn interjected. “This isn't going to happen, Sara.
We
aren't going to save the Wyvern.”

She looked between him and Erik. “Are you?”

“Possibly,” Quinn said. Erik said nothing.

Sara's lips set. “I think you need me there.”

“I think it would be smart for you to stay safe.”

“I think you're forgetting that she's surrounded by
Slayer
smoke. Who else can cross it but me?”

Quinn glared at Sara because he couldn't think of a reply.

“She's right,” Erik said mildly when the silence had stretched long.

Quinn shoveled wheat germ into his juice with undisguised irritation. “No, Sara's
not
right. She's not going anywhere near the Wyvern, seeing as the Wyvern is guarded by a team of
Slayer
s determined to kill Sara.” He glared at the two, and threw back a swallow of juice.

“You could all work together the way you did before,” Sara began but Quinn interrupted her.

“No. There will be no working together. Erik has his team of
Pyr
: they have their agenda and I have mine. Our goals intersected and while I'm grateful for the help of the
Pyr
, it's not a long-term alliance. Understood?”

“Perfectly,” Erik said tightly.

Sara pushed to her feet and came to face Quinn over the counter. “You still blame Erik for Elizabeth's death, but he didn't kill her. It was Ambrose. I saw him laugh when Elizabeth called him Erik.”

Quinn nearly dropped his glass of juice.

H
e stared at Sara but saw complete conviction in her eyes. “You've been dreaming again.”

She nodded. “I saw it. I was there. It was awful and I can't imagine how you felt when you came back to the farm you had shared with her and found it in ashes.”

Quinn looked away, his throat working in silence.

“But it was Ambrose who killed her,” Sara whispered urgently.

Quinn studied Erik, who was listening avidly but didn't seem to know what Sara was talking about. Quinn couldn't sense any guile in him at all.

Was it true? He turned to Sara, who watched him with sympathy in her eyes. “Her last thought was that she would make the choice to love you again,” she whispered, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Her only regret was that she hadn't bore your child.”

Quinn had to turn away. He paced the length of Sara's small kitchen, his chest tight with emotion that he'd long pushed away.

“You had a firestorm already?” Erik asked with obvious surprise. “I should have felt it. I should have been able to find you.”

Quinn shook his head. “There was no firestorm,” he said gruffly and stared out the window. “She wanted a child so badly. I couldn't tell her that it was impossible.”

Erik sighed, as if sympathetic with that view. When Quinn glanced his way, the other
Pyr
was sipping coffee and looking out that window, lost in his own thoughts.

Quinn turned to face Sara across the kitchen, liking how she stood straight and proud. She was so fearless, and he thought it was because she didn't understand. “I can't do it, Sara. I can't take you toward the
Slayer
s.”

She grimaced and put down her mug of coffee, looking as if she was choosing her words. “You think I don't understand how awful it is to lose somebody,” she said, her words thick.

“Not like that.”

“Wrong.” She impaled him with a glance. “My parents were burned to death. Their rental car went off the road, and turned end over end until it exploded. The military sent dental records to the consulate for their bodies to be identified. The final identification came from this.”

She crossed the kitchen and opened a drawer near Quinn. There was only a padded mailing envelope in it, one that had already been opened. Sara opened it again, dumped two rings into her palm, then showed them to Quinn. They were blackened and bent, and her hand shook as she held them out.

The breath was stolen right out of him, not just by the power of her anguish but by the parallel with his own.

Not to mention the similarity of the mementos they had.

“My father's West Point graduation ring and my mother's plain sterling wedding band, although you can hardly tell now,” Sara said. “It was all they could afford when they got married and she would never let him buy a fancier one.” Her tears fell then, splashing on her hand as her words caught. “She said it would be like saying the original model wasn't good enough anymore.”

“I'm sorry, Sara.”

“Yes. So am I.” She spoke quickly but there was no sting in her voice. He wanted to touch her but wasn't sure that he should. Her grip on her composure seemed tenuous and he knew it was important to her to appear strong.

If Erik hadn't been there, he would have worried about it less.

Sara meanwhile touched her lips to the rings, then put them back into the envelope. She placed the envelope back in the drawer, which she then closed, her hands remaining across the front for a moment. “I don't know what to do with them,” she admitted softly, her hands moving in a helpless gesture. “But I have to keep them.”

“Of course you do,” Quinn said. “But it's your memories that are more important.” Her breath caught at the truth in that, and then Quinn knew what to do. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. She turned into his embrace easily, intuitively, and laid her cheek on his chest as she quietly cried. Quinn held her close, feeling her arms steal around his waist. He wished more than he'd ever wished for anything that he could erase the ache of her loss.

Erik cleared his throat. “Your parents were killed, with fire?”

“It was a car accident,” Sara said, glancing up but not moving out of Quinn's embrace. “The consul said those roads near Machu Picchu are dangerous.”

“And they're isolated.” Erik drained his cup, frowning. “There are seldom witnesses to what happens in the mountains. When did this happen, if you don't mind me asking?”

“In March. Just this past winter.”

“After the seventh?”

Sara seemed confused. She looked at Quinn before turning to Erik. “It was later in the month. My mother wanted to see Machu Picchu on the equinox.”

“After the eclipse that signaled your firestorm then,” Erik said without surprise.

“What are you saying?” Sara asked.

“When the moon is devoured once not twice,”
Erik quoted quietly. “There was a lunar eclipse on March 7, the first one after the moon's node changed. The second one will be in August, and I knew that there would be a firestorm between the two eclipses.”

“But what about the bit about the Dragon's Tail?”

“The moon's node changed in June 2006. It moves backward through the signs and moved from Aries into Pisces then, which has long been considered a time of reckoning and karmic balance. The ascending node is called the Dragon's Head and the descending node the Dragon's Tail.”

Sara was fascinated. “So, an astrologer could date that prediction pretty accurately.” Erik nodded as if this wasn't any big deal.

Quinn supposed that it wasn't. He was still horrified by Erik's earlier implication. “Sara's parents had their accident right after the eclipse that marked our firestorm,” he said and Erik nodded. “She was supposed to be with them.” The other
Pyr
's gaze brightened.

“I was,” she agreed easily. “But we had a potential deal come up and I changed my mind on the day of departure. I met them at JFK to tell them and my mother wasn't happy…oh!” She lifted a hand to her lips as she followed the direction of Quinn's thoughts, and she looked between the two of them. “You don't think that they meant to kill me?”

“They hold the Wyvern captive,” Erik said curtly. “They could know your name.”

Sara turned pale. “She apologized to me for telling them my name.”

Quinn swore and held Sara more tightly. Erik looked grim. “You must know what this means, Quinn. You are your father's son.”

Quinn's gaze flicked to the coin still on Sara's counter. He knew what it meant. Sara would never be safe as long as Ambrose was alive, and for once, he knew exactly where to find the
Slayer
that had killed so many people and
Pyr
dear to him. Ambrose wasn't going to survive to do that again.

He had to avenge the past to ensure the future. Sara had given him this gift of a fresh perspective, by compelling him to reexamine what he believed to be true. Resolving the past was the only way to move forward, to begin anew.

Later, he'd tease her about auditing and balancing his books. First, there was work to do.

“It means we have to save the Wyvern,” Quinn said with determination. “And we need to do it today.”

“You're not going without me,” Sara said, lifting her chin in that stubborn way she had. As much as Quinn wanted to protect her, he knew he could do that only if she stayed with him.

And that meant that she was right, again.

Saturday was the first morning that Sara hadn't heard the Wyvern cry for help and that made her nervous.

It troubled the other
Pyr
when she told them about it.

The
Pyr
discussion to which they were all summoned that morning had been short but not sweet. They all recognized that they might not return from this attempt to save the Wyvern. They all knew that they had no choice. The Wyvern needed their aid, and hers was a call no decent
Pyr
could ignore.

The bulk of their argument had been persuading Quinn that Sara had to be the one to go through the smoke to get the Wyvern. Quinn wanted to go himself, but there was consensus that passing through a thick wall of smoke wasn't the same as being touched on the shin with it. Quinn hadn't been able to persuade the others that even dragonfire could heal him of that, and Sara had seen that he wasn't sure himself. The others likely sensed his doubts.

It made no sense to Sara to risk Quinn and his skills, when she could walk right through the smoke. Seeing that Quinn hadn't had another alternative to present, and that the
Pyr
similarly valued him, Sara's view had taken the vote.

When the vote was in, Quinn had become even more grim and silent. He had closed the meeting by insisting that Rafferty teach Sara about blocking any attempt to beguile her. That was the last thing he'd said to her, and she certainly hadn't seen him smile since.

It was more than their being separated by their tasks. There was a rift between herself and Quinn, although Sara hoped it was just because he had lost his argument in their council that morning. She knew he would have preferred to have left her secure elsewhere, but the ugly truth was that there was no such place.

The other
Pyr
spent the day strategizing, perfecting Quinn's skills at folding away his garments, working out signals between each other. They'd speculated on the nature of Lucien's claws and how they could be replicated. Quinn hadn't set up his booth, even though it was the last day of the show.

Sara knew that Quinn's time in Ann Arbor was pretty much at an end. What next? Would he go back to his land near Traverse City? She had a keen sense that Quinn was slipping into the world of the
Pyr
. He was taking up the responsibility that was his, but at the same time, he was less a part of the world she knew. She still felt him watching her, but she had a sense that something had ended.

Or changed.

Maybe it hadn't been such a great idea to remind him of his lost wife. Maybe Sara had reminded him of his love for Elizabeth and that had put an end to their relationship before it really started.

She wished there was a way to know for sure. Part of what she admired about Quinn was his code of honor, but she would have liked to have remained on the right side of it.

Sara remembered the Wyvern's words and wondered. Was the transformation in Quinn the product of their relationship that would save the
Pyr
? It was undeniable that the
Pyr
were stronger with his abilities, and that he was stronger with their tutelage. That would only increase with time.

In the middle of the afternoon, Sara watched Erik brace himself for a hit of dragonfire and heard the others cheer as he managed to deflect some of its force. The
Pyr
huddled closer to review what had happened and listen to Quinn, who spoke to them with authority. In one way, she yearned to be a part of their group and hear what he was saying. In another, she knew such knowledge wasn't hers to have. She wanted Quinn to be all that he could be and to embrace what he was.

Rafferty had to summon her attention back to his lessons repeatedly. When she made excuses, there was sympathy in his gaze and patience in his tone. Sara could have asked him about the firestorm, but instead she turned to a voice she could trust.

At her request and with Quinn's approval, Rafferty escorted Sara back to The Scrying Glass. The sight of the mermaid door knocker, all black and cold, made Sara a bit sad, as if the mermaid spoke of something past. She felt a bit funny talking to Magda in Rafferty's presence. “I have to talk to the ghost,” she said to him. “It's my aunt Magda.”

Rafferty smiled and leaned against the cash desk. “Little surprises me after so many centuries, Sara.”

“Then you believe in ghosts?”

“There is little that I disbelieve. What is more important is what you believe.”

He had a way of answering questions that left Sara with more questions, much like the Wyvern, but Sara didn't say as much. It was an annoying trait, and one she was glad that Quinn didn't share.

“All right, Magda,” she said to the empty store. “Give me a clue.”

She waited for a book to fall.

Instead, the air conditioner, which had been silent, whirred into action and ran efficiently. Rafferty looked up at the ceiling. Meanwhile, something seemed to be fidgeting in Sara's purse. She opened it, beneath Rafferty's bemused gaze, and found the red velvet bag of Magda's tarot cards at the very top. She'd been sure that they'd sunk to the bottom, along with the breath mints. She pulled them out and went to the cash desk, putting her bag down there while she shuffled.

“I think Magda likes to play games,” she told Rafferty.