CHAPTER SEVEN

IN THE PANTHEON of Comforting Smells, I ranked McDonald’s french fry grease in the top five. Maybe top two, even.

In seventh grade Aveda and I went on fry runs every Wednesday after school, cramming piles of those golden grease sticks down our throats while gossiping about the latest developments in our social circle (which was mainly just us and Scott). I hadn’t eaten fries since converting to my Lucky Charms-only diet. But I still liked the smell.

I awoke to that french fry scent, a sleepy smile spreading over my face as the greasy aura invaded my nostrils. Then my eyes snapped open and panic replaced comfort.

Aveda had banned carbs from HQ, my Lucky Charms arsenal being the one notable exception. Therefore the presence of that smell indicated something was very wrong. And speaking of wrong . . .

The events of last night came flooding back. My freak-out. The fire. Aveda’s plan.

Shit.

I rolled out of bed. Bea’s side of the mattress was rumpled but empty, which I hoped meant she’d already gone to school. I opened the door to the hallway and looked back and forth, attempting to discern where the mysterious fry smell was coming from.

“Morning, love!” Lucy bustled down the hall and snagged my arm, pulling me along with her. “Aveda wants to see you.”

“And I want to see her,” I said, my brain diverting from the fry smell to the speech I was preparing. All I had to do to talk Aveda out of her plan, I reasoned, was play on her vanity. There was only one Aveda Jupiter. Accept no substitutes! Remember Highlander! Etcetera! There was no way I could step into her formidable shoes, and not just because the five-inch heels would send me sprawling. And if we had to call on a lesser hero like Mercedes for a bit . . . well, that would make the public appreciate Aveda Jupiter even more.

“Luce,” I said, as she dragged me toward the stairs, “you’re very peppy this morning.”

“Aren’t I always?”

“Yes, but . . .” I hesitated. “Last night, you seemed kind of scared? Of me?”

“I was momentarily shocked, but I’m over it. I think your suppressed power is rather cool.” She flashed me a devilish grin. “I’m devising a Total Superheroine Workout Plan for you: running, kickboxing, Pilates. Piloxing. It will be intense.”

“Intense?” I was pretty sure I’d never exercised. Like, in my life.

“If we’re going to pull off Aveda’s scheme, we have to get you into tiptop shape,” Lucy said. “Scott’s glamours might help you look the part, but you also need to be able to run up a flight of stairs without losing your breath.” She cast a sidelong glance at me. “And,” she added, worry creeping into her voice, “if we’re going through with this, I need to keep you safe.”

I couldn’t help but feel touched. Underneath all the bravado and ill-timed flirtations, Lucy was a softie.

“Now let’s talk about something more important,” she said, veering back to perky. “Like: have you had any sex since this horrible-sounding Richard person? I know we’ve joked about your Dead-Inside-O-Tron and surely you would have confided in me about any recent exploits. But three years of vaginal hiatus seems extreme.”

“Lucy! No. Nothing since then.” I hoped she’d let me leave it at that. I did not want to discuss Richard. The truth was, sex with him had never been that exciting. He’d often insisted on discussing “the way mainstream fictions reinforce dated gender roles” right in the middle of the act, claiming nothing was quite as stimulating as “robust academic conversation.” I disagreed and faked more than a few noises of passion just to get him to shut up. In retrospect I wasn’t sure why a person who’d failed to inspire my libido went on to inspire so much rage. Maybe in addition to being pissed about his secret second girlfriend, I’d been furious he’d never managed to give me an orgasm.

“Three barren years. So tragic,” Lucy said. “Speaking of tragic, Letta isn’t responding to my texts. I still need you to help me pick out that deal-closing karaoke number.”

We reached the bottom of the stairs and she gave me a shove toward Aveda’s room. “In the meantime, I’m going to put the finishing touches on your workout regimen. And it’s going to involve honing your own deal-closing skills. You must use this whole fake superhero thing to get some.”

She made a not-at-all-subtle hip-thrusting motion.

Was this part of being Aveda? Your friend ordered you to have sex via X-rated mime?

Another reason I wanted no part of it. That and the exercise. And the whole “I could possibly kill people with fire” thing.

Seriously, of all the people in all the world, I was probably least equipped to be a superhero. Or even impersonate one.

I squared my shoulders and marched into Aveda’s bedroom.

“Oh, there you are!”

Aveda beamed at me from her perch on the bed and waved me over with a french fry. Which was inexplicably clutched in her hand. As I entered the room, my eyes darted to another unexpected element: Scott. Sitting in a rocking chair next to the bed.

I looked from the fry to Scott and back again. It was hard to say which element of this little scene weirded me out the most. Nate, at least, was ever reliable, leaning against the dresser with his usual scowl in place.

“Scott,” I said. My brain grasped a possible explanation. “Are you here to do a healing spell on Aveda’s ankle?”

“No,” he said. “You know that sort of thing is way outside the range of my abilities—”

“Scott and I have come up with a most excellent plan for you,” Aveda interrupted. She popped the fry in her mouth and rooted around in the McDonald’s bag sitting next to her.

“Plan?” I stared dumbly at her and Scott and couldn’t help but flash back to them sitting side by side in our junior high cafeteria. He had always reveled in needling her, in trying like mad to get her haughty exterior to crack. Usually this translated into something like stuffing his mouth full of grapes and offering advice for her sixth-grade presidential campaign in a garbled cartoon voice (“Free nuts for all, Annie! Capture the rabid squirrel vote!”). I’d egged him on by giggling until my sides hurt. She’d responded by giving us A Look and going back to her work. In retrospect, it had probably seemed like we were ganging up on her by refusing to take her seriously.

And now they were ganging up on me.

“You two don’t even get along,” I blurted out. I picked irritably at the cupcake demon bite on my wrist. It had already almost healed.

“We’re getting along for your sake, Evie,” Aveda said sternly. “Isn’t that generous of us?”

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all morning,” Scott cut in. “Annie called me—”

“Aveda,” Aveda corrected through a mouthful of fries.

“Annie. She has an idea.”

“An idea I strongly oppose,” Nate grumbled.

“It’s the spell!” Aveda shrieked. “The one you’ve been begging him to try for years. I’ve convinced him to give it a go!”

That pretty much stopped my entire thought process.

“The depowering spell?” I said, my voice small and quavery. I turned to Scott. “But you always said—”

“Everything I’ve always said holds true,” he said. “I still think it’s too dangerous.”

“At least we agree on something,” muttered Nate.

I ignored him. “Then why now?” I asked Scott. “Why are you willing to—”

“Because you and Annie clearly need some kind of intervention,” he interrupted. His voice was low, tight, controlled. He frowned at me and suddenly it felt like we were the only two people in the room. “How could you let her convince you to go through with that charade at the party? How could you . . .” He shook his head, as if he still couldn’t quite believe it. “Maybe if I finally give you what you want, you’ll feel less tethered to this version of ‘stability.’” He gestured to our surroundings. “And maybe that will make the two of you reevaluate this toxic, codependent bond you’ve got going on.”

“Since when are you so melodramatic?” Aveda said. She rolled her eyes and poked him with a french fry. “What Scott’s not getting to is the fact that I made him see the spell in a whole new light.” She thwacked him in the arm with the fry. “Go on, tell her!”

Scott batted her fry away. “Annie and I have an idea that might make the magic that goes into this less dangerous. Normally this kind of spell—like a healing spell—is beyond the scope of what I can do. I can manipulate small bits of magic to create equally small things—the glamours, the love tokens—but I can’t just up and eliminate something. Especially something as huge as an injury or a superpower.”

“But?” Aveda prompted.

“But if I can take something that already exists and, rather than eliminating it, move it somewhere else—”

“Scott’s going to put your power in me!” squealed Aveda, no longer able to contain herself. She dragged a pair of fries through a ketchup splotch on a napkin. “I told you: freakin’ brilliant! I’m saving your life again!”

“But it will take some time,” Scott said. “I have to make sure all elements of this spell are going to work and that means—”

“He estimates it’ll take four to six weeks!” chirped Aveda. “Perfect timing. I’ll be all healed up by then. So you only have to be Aveda Jupiter for a little bit longer.”

She looked at me expectantly. I gnawed on my lower lip, my brain awhirl.

Scott was going to try the spell. The spell. The one I’d been begging him to try forever. If he succeeded, I’d be free of my long-held curse.

In short, he’d finally make me normal.

But was “normal” enough of a reason to risk calling forth the fire I couldn’t really control? To willfully put myself in danger?

I opened my mouth to tell Scott that I was, in fact, not intent on going through with this and was about to successfully talk Aveda out of the whole thing and—

“I know you’re worried about going out there as me, what with the demons and all,” Aveda said, as if reading my thoughts. “I know you, Evie. And while I may have gotten carried away in my thrill over seeing you finally fulfill that Michelle Yeoh-an heroic promise after all these years, don’t worry: I realize you don’t actually want to be Michelle forever, and I will do everything in my power to protect you.” She gave me a smile that actually verged on reassuring. “Rest assured, Lucy will take a more active role whenever there’s actual danger or demon-fighting to be done. She’ll keep you safe. She has all those weapons and she knows all my best moves, even if she’s not as skilled at them. You won’t even have to use your fire power. The public’s already seen it in action; now it’s just a matter of keeping up the heroic Aveda Jupiter appearance while my ankle heals and Scott figures out the transfer.”

Normal. Normal. Normal. That single word pulsed through my brain, overwhelming any further protests I might have had. “Normal” was something that hadn’t been even remotely within my grasp for years. Now here it was: a beautiful possibility. I could already anticipate the sweet, crashing sensation of relief I would surely experience once I didn’t have to worry about the fire ever again.

God, what would that even be like?

“When you think about it, Evie, this whole fire thing is more suited to my superheroing lifestyle, anyway,” Aveda said. “Imagine how much more awesome my spinning backhand will be with a fist of flames.”

That was probably true. The fire was nothing but wild, unpredictable danger to me. To her, it would be a new weapon in her artillery, a powerful force she could use to enhance her already kickass moves and level up her demon slayage. Although . . . she would need to rein in those diva mood swings. Maybe once Scott figured out the transfer, I could delicately recommend some good therapy.

Okay. I could do this. True, the party the night before hadn’t gone as planned, but it had at least given me a little practice being a fake superhero. Lucy would be there for me the whole way through, and at the end of this little adventure, I’d finally get what I wanted more than anything.

Normal.

“I don’t know why we’re even considering this.” Nate’s rumble of a voice cut into my thoughts. “Evie hasn’t had a chance to think about the ramifications of—”

“Evie thinks this is a fine plan,” I interrupted. “And it’s my decision, isn’t it?”

He gave me an exasperated look. “Which is one of the many reasons you should take some time to think it through.”

“I have thought about it. I’ve thought about pretty much nothing else for the past three years. And I know this is right.”

“But Scott himself correctly points out that it could be dangerous,” Nate pressed. “And he’s never tried anything like this before.” He turned his scowl on Scott. “What makes you think you can go from treacly love spells to pulling an incredibly complicated power out of a human being?”

“As I already explained—” Scott began.

“We need to look at this from every possible angle,” Nate interrupted. “To collect more data, to—”

“No.” My voice was clear and firm. “We don’t need to do anything. I trust him.” I inclined my head toward Scott. “And this is the perfect answer for both me and Aveda. End of story.”

Scott nodded, his eyes unreadable. “Then I’ll get started,” he said, standing and striding out of the room.

“Wonderful!” Aveda clapped her greasy hands together. “I’m glad you decided not to be a stick-in-the-mud about this, Evie. See, Little Sis: she’s not always a stick-in-the-mud.”

I realized Aveda was grinning at a spot beyond my shoulder. I turned to see Bea standing in the doorway. Well, Bea trying to back away from the doorway.

“Beatrice, what are you doing here? ‘Here’ not being anywhere near school?” I said.

She gave me an insolent look. “It’s an in-service day.”

“Right.” I narrowed my eyes. “In-service.”

Ignoring me, she crossed over to Aveda’s bed and plopped herself down, snagging a fry.

“So, Evie,” she said, feigning nonchalance, “I hear you’ve become an overnight master of superheroic disguise. But I guess that wasn’t worth mentioning to me, huh? Can’t trust your frakballs crazy Little Sis with important info like that.”

Goddammit. There hadn’t been a good moment to relate my adventures to her last night. And I’d planned on getting out of further adventuring until the whole spell thing came up. But if I tried to explain this convoluted bit of waffling, she’d never believe me. For her, it was always easier to believe I was trying to make her life difficult.

“Anyway,” Aveda said, glossing over the sudden tension in the room, “tonight’s gonna be a blast for you, Evelyn.”

“Tonight?” I mentally scanned my to-do list bulletin board. What was on Aveda’s schedule for tonight?

“Aveda,” said Nate, “under the circumstances, considering that you aren’t . . . you, I think we should—”

“No cancelling.” Aveda gave him a cool look. “League of Social Betterment Through Bettering Oneself events are crucial to the Aveda Jupiter image. And it’ll be fun for Evie. She gets to wear an amazing dress.”

League . . . dress . . . Oh, right.

“The benefit,” I said, the event finally coming into focus in my mental calendar. “Aveda, I can’t. Bea and I have plans tonight.”

I tried to meet Bea’s eyes, hoping this would get her to cut me some slack. Instead she shot me a full Tanaka Glare.

“Not a problem,” Aveda said. “I can take care of Beatrice. She and I will have this place all to ourselves. She already did a great job fetching me breakfast.” She waved a fry around. “Since I don’t have to wear that dress tonight, I can indulge a little, right?”

“Hanging out with Aveda sounds good to me,” said Bea.

“But—” I started to protest.

“Stop right there.” Aveda held up a hand. “Aveda Jupiter must attend the benefit. And people.” She frowned at her now-empty fast food bag, then picked it up and waved it around like a grease-soaked flag of surrender. “Someone get me more of these.”

I had forgotten about the dress.

It was an odd thing to forget. While Aveda claimed League of Social Betterment Through Bettering Oneself events were crucial to her image, they also tended to be packed with self-congratulatory types. This brought out her competitive edge even more than usual. And that meant her dress had to be the best.

Aveda usually loved nothing more than shopping for beautiful clothes, but her demonbusting/promotional appearance schedule had been more packed than usual lately, so the task had fallen to me. I’d dedicated myself to the quest for the perfect dress, scouring vintage shops and the internet and even the ninety-nine cent bin at Goodwill. I’d finally found just the thing at an out-of-the-way estate sale in San Leandro: a daring gown that had once graced the body of some eccentric old lady whose overflowing mansion of possessions clearly belonged on Hoarders.

As I admired my pre-glamoured self in the mirror, I had to admit: the dress was pretty great, a confection of glittery beads sprinkled over pearly tulle, like a swirl of Cake My Day’s sparkly icing. The tulle wrapped itself around my body like a second skin and plunged low in the front. I wouldn’t wear anything like this of my own volition, ever—but I was literally not myself.

I was incredibly, irrefutably, uncharacteristically hot.

Or I would be, once I put the glamour token to use. Because I’d be at the benefit for longer than three hours, Scott had given me an extra one. At some point I’d have to slip off to the bathroom to refresh my Aveda-ness.

In the meantime, I needed to figure out the buttons. The gown fastened up the back in a series of tiny pearl beads that started at the tailbone and snaked up my spine. No matter how much I bent my body into various twisty positions, there was no way I could reach them all.

I contorted my torso, my fingers scrabbling at the minuscule buttons and the even more minuscule loops they were supposed to fit into. I tried turning my head, but that just made my neck cramp. After a few moments of attempting to twist myself into a button-reaching position, I gave up. I was getting sweaty, and sweat, as Aveda would be quick to remind me, definitely didn’t go with this dress. I stretched my right arm around to my back so I could hold the dress semi-closed. Then I slithered over to the doorway, each small step reminding me that the hip-hugging skirt restricted movement in a way that bordered on painful.

Between this and the corset, I was starting to wonder if all Aveda’s outfits were so cumbersome.

I needed . . . well, I needed me. A version of Assistant Me to help Aveda Me into these binding clothes.

I made it to the doorway and peered into the hall. I’d opted to change in one of the vacant upstairs bedrooms. Because Aveda currently couldn’t do stairs, this ensured me a moment of peace to collect myself. But I hadn’t counted on the buttons issue.

I looked left, looked right, hoping Lucy or even Bea would magically spring out of the woodwork.

Nothing. Silence. Well, silence interrupted by the swish of tulle rubbing together as I adjusted my grip, trying to keep the back of the dress closed. Then I heard something else: a heavy footfall connecting with the stairs.

Clomp. Clomp, clomp!

Unless she was flinging her entire tiny body quite forcefully against the stairs, definitely not Lucy.

Clomp, clomp.

And despite her noisy state of teenage rebellion, probably not Bea, either.

Clomp!

Scott?

No, of course not, I thought as the large, scowly figure emerged at the top of the stairs. It would have to be him.

Given my current state of near immobility, I couldn’t afford to be picky.

“Nate!” I waved to him from the doorway. “Can you help me with . . . wow. What are you wearing?”

Like me, Nate had a uniform of sorts: black, black, and more black. The idea that he owned clothing in other shades was completely foreign, yet here he was in a beautifully cut charcoal gray suit. The jacket hung nicely off his broad shoulders, softening his thuggish appearance and giving the shock of dark hair falling onto his forehead a rakish cast (as opposed to its usual cast, which translated to “I do not own a hairbrush”). For a second, I could almost see the off-kilter attractiveness that Lucy was always going on about.

I mean, almost. Let’s not get crazy. This was still Nate we were talking about.

“A suit,” he said.

I cocked an eyebrow, indicating he needed to elaborate.

“I’m . . . escorting you,” he relented, shoving a hand through his hair and taking it back to hairbrush-needed land. “Aveda decided you could use some extra security. In addition to Lucy.”

“So she’s forcing you to leave your lab for the night?”

He met my gaze. “I volunteered.”

He volunteered? I tried to keep the shock from registering on my face. Nate never went anywhere. He was a total hermit. The only instance I could recall of him actually standing outside was the day he’d shown up on Aveda’s doorstep two years ago. I’d mistaken him for a bodyguard hopeful (Lucy had snagged that position several days earlier), but as he’d been quick to inform me, he was the illustrious Nathaniel Jones, the renowned physician and demonology scholar whose paper on the science of superheroism had caught Aveda’s attention earlier that year. Given his unique combination of talents, she’d simply had to have him on staff. I’d known about all this, of course, but I hadn’t known what Nathaniel Jones looked like; unlike other famed demonology scholars, he shunned public appearances and lectures and his photograph never appeared alongside his published papers. I suppose all of this contributed to some kind of self-aggrandizing air of mystery. I mostly just found it aggravating, especially since his need to stay indoors meant he always conveniently “forgot” when it was his turn to do simple household errands. You know, all that “get groceries” type of minutiae that might seem beneath his notice, but was key to keeping HQ up and running.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Your first escort duty is to help me with these buttons.”

I shuffled back into the bedroom without waiting for his response. After a moment of silence, he clomped in after me.

I stood in front of the mirror and gestured awkwardly toward my back with my free hand. “I can’t reach.”

He took the back of the dress from me hesitantly, contemplating the buttons.

“I’m not sure . . .” he said, his gruff tone wavering. “Perhaps Lucy would be better at . . .”

“It’s not that hard,” I interrupted, irritation pricking my sweaty skin. “Aren’t you always dissecting demons and stuff? Compared to that, this should be a piece of cake.”

He adjusted his grip on the tulle. “First you might want to . . .” He gestured at something.

“I might want to what?” I tapped my foot, my impatience rising. That nyah quality crept into my voice. He always seemed to bring the nyah out.

“Your, um . . . bra. Is showing.”

He ducked his head, focusing on the buttons.

“Oh.”

My cheeks flushed as I glanced down at my chest, which was encased in hot pink lace. While my T-shirt/jeans uniform was pretty basic, I liked to make my own fun via neon underwear. After setting the library on fire, brightly colored unmentionables were about the biggest thrill I could handle. They were cute, they did not induce anxiety, and no one ever saw them except me.

Well. Usually no one except me.

Anyway Nate was right. A faint pink outline was visible through the thin material of the dress. I might as well have pasted a flashing SEE BOOBS HERE sign over my chest.

“Thanks,” I said, pulling the front of the dress against me. I unhooked the bra with my other hand and tossed it on the floor. “I guess I can go braless with this dress, right? It doesn’t leave much to the imagination anyway.”

I twisted back and forth, trying to determine if there was visible nipple. It was borderline. The effect of my bigger-than-Aveda’s breasts would be softened by the glamour, though.

Nate suddenly seemed even more preoccupied with staring at the buttons.

“Hold still,” he said, some of that signature gruffness creeping back into his voice.

I forced myself to stop moving and he started doing up the buttons. My foot tapped again and I hastily stilled it, trying to remain immobile while he worked.

“I pulled some of my recent analyses for you,” he said abruptly. “Regarding common factors in the last two months of demon attacks.”

“Uh . . . what?”

While I understood the medical doctor keep-Aveda-healthy side of Nate’s job, the demonology scholar part seemed as gibberish-riddled as his precious portal stones. In addition to dissecting whatever demon specimens came our way, he was always running various technobabble-y tests with names like “multiple regression analysis” and “structural equation modeling,” claiming this would help him discover links between the portals. As far as I could tell, the only link he’d come up with so far was that the portals appeared in totally random fashion and produced scary, hungry demon swarms. Which I could’ve told you without the fancy tests, since I was always there on the scene.

“You mentioned observing oddities in regard to the Aveda statue demons last night,” he said. “I thought looking at my recent data might give you further insight. Perhaps you’ll see a connection.”

I shivered, remembering the statues advancing on me and Bea. “Last night you didn’t seem to think I was clear on what I saw.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” he said. “But you were describing your impressions of the event, and impressions are not exact data. Additionally, because you were in a heightened state, your thoughts were a bit . . . muddled. I am merely trying to eliminate various possibilities to get a better idea of what you deemed out of the ordinary.”

I bit back a retort about my “muddled” thoughts and tried to call up a more detailed memory of the statue demons. Maybe my stressed-out brain had imagined the weirdness. Anyway, last night’s mess seemed like it had happened forever ago and I had plenty to think about at the moment without fixating on whatever I thought I’d seen.

“It was probably just a fluke,” I said.

“Sometimes a fluke can be the first sign of an important pattern—”

“This is really not important right now,” I said. Not when I had to worry about going out in public as Aveda without setting anything on fire again. “And if you want to collect more data, then seriously: come with us when the demons attack. Check out the scene, observe them in person, analyze what you see with your own eyes. I mean, if you’re going to break the seal on the whole going out in public thing, that seems like it would be way more useful than attending some silly benefit.”

That shut him up, at least for the moment.

“Why did you volunteer anyway? To escort me?” I pressed. “You never escort Aveda.” I sounded vaguely accusatory.

“I’m concerned,” he said.

“That I’ll fuck everything up like I did at Whistles?” I said.

“Your power is unpredictable. If I go with you, I can monitor your moods, your reactions. See if we can figure out a trigger.”

“So you want to make me an extra-toasty lab rat. I should’ve guessed.”

I tamped down on my irritation. Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone? We’d already come up with a perfect solution: remove the power from me, put it into an actual superheroine, cut to me fulfilling my long-held dream of being normal. I didn’t need to spend time delving into the hows and whys and wherefores of the fire power. I needed to get the fire out of me—and into someone who could actually handle it—as soon as possible.

Not that he’d ever understand that. He never seemed to understand anything that didn’t involve a nice, neat little column of numbers.

“Why aren’t you more interested in finding the exact trigger?” he countered. “‘Crazy bursts of emotion’ is maddeningly unspecific.”

I shrugged, causing the tulle to shift in his hands. He pulled it back into place.

“That’s the best way I can describe it. Haven’t you ever had a feeling you couldn’t define? Or articulate?”

He didn’t respond, so I barreled on. “It’s a certain kind of heightened feeling, like an emotional burst that overwhelms all logic and thought. It takes over to the point where I’m unaware of anything else. I don’t really know how else to say it. I just know when it’s happening.”

“But we could try to quantify it—”

“Quantify it? You want me to do tests with my feelings?” I snorted. “Now there’s a recipe for disaster. Anyway, if Scott’s spell works, I won’t have to deal with this much longer. So what’s the point in trying to ‘quantify’ anything?”

“The point is, you could really do something with it if you wanted to. Learn to control it. Act like a naturally curious person who wants to figure out why you are the way you are.”

Wow, really? My irritation flared. He’d been aware of my fire for less than twenty-four hours, and already he thought he knew better than me. As if I hadn’t spent the last three years locking myself down, controlling my impulses, and establishing my safeguards. As if I didn’t hear all those terrified screams ringing through the library whenever I allowed my mind to wander during cold, sleepless nights. As if I didn’t know myself all too well.

But that was his way, wasn’t it? To immediately assume he knew everything about everything without actually experiencing it in real life.

“I know why I’m the way I am,” I snapped. “Demon portal, freak occurrence, maybe you’re familiar? I know. And I also know I don’t want to be this way.”

“But you haven’t even tried it,” he said, his voice twisting in frustration. He frowned at me in the mirror. “You’ve wasted all your energy suppressing it. All of these years, and you’ve never even—”

“Wasted?!”

I yanked myself free from his grasp and whirled around. He wasn’t done with the buttons and the dress hung half open. How dare he judge me from behind those cold, clinical scientist glasses? He was supposed to be helping me. And helping meant contributing to the whole Get the Fire Power Out of Evie ASAP plan, not asking five million irrelevant questions and acting all superior when it came to dealing with my own actions and feelings. When it came to the very real danger I posed to people. My stomach knotted just thinking about it.

“All that ‘wasted’ energy means I haven’t burned anything down since the library,” I growled. “How has this not penetrated that supposedly gigantic brain of yours? I destroyed an entire building. I could have destroyed people. I don’t want something that allows me to do that. I don’t.”

I willed my hands to relax at my sides. I would not allow myself to flare up over him.

He stared back at me, his eyes unreadable behind those damn glasses. I slid forward, the dress still restricting my every move, and jabbed my index finger into his chest.

“You want a tip on how the fire power works?”

I leaned in closer, giving him a glower that was as good as the ones he usually gave me.

“Don’t make me angry.”

I turned on my heel and shuffled indignantly out of the room, my half-buttoned dress flapping behind me. I’d like to think I accomplished this with at least a little bit of dignity and a touch of haughty attitude.

Maybe Aveda was rubbing off on me after all.