“WOW,” NATE SAID after a few moments of awed silence. Then he looked at me anxiously. “That’s not . . . I wasn’t trying to do that. I wasn’t even thinking about your power. I meant what I said about you not being an experiment, I was going along with your ‘funny wordplay’ idea—”
“I know. I got it.” I smiled and thought back to what he’d said earlier.
I want you to see that, too. That extraordinariness.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I could see it. Or at least I wanted to. The more I figured out about my fire, the more control I gained, the more I wanted to learn about how my power worked.
I couldn’t believe I actually wanted that.
But I did.
I fixated on the fireball, orange shot through with streaks of molten gold. It was beautiful. It was glorious. It . . . was just sitting there. Steady, steady, steady. As if awaiting its marching orders. I gently batted my hand back and forth. It remained stuck to my palm, as if affixed with glue.
“So that’s different,” I murmured.
“Why is it not . . .” Nate mimed the fire exploding out of my hand and flying across the room.
“I’m not sure.” I closed my fingers around the fireball and felt the heat vanish. When I opened my hand, it was gone. I flexed my fingers. Suddenly, I had an idea for an experiment of my own.
I felt emboldened by the need to see some extraordinariness.
“Let’s see if I can bring it back.”
“I could kiss you again.”
“No. I mean . . . maybe later.” I smiled at him. “Let me try something else.”
I closed my eyes and summoned the feeling I’d had yesterday: the pure, unadulterated rage toward Aveda. No other thoughts, no inhibitions. I let the anger flood through me, drowning out everything else.
When I opened my hand, the fireball was there again.
“Still awesome,” Nate said. “How do you think this is working?”
“You mean, what’s my hypothesis?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
I studied my fireball. “These past few days, I’ve gotten accustomed to feeling things,” I said slowly. “I’m used to having a suppression reflex: kill a big emotion as soon as it starts. But ever since Tommy—ever since I let the rage out—that reflex has been breaking down.” I met his eyes. “Just now, with you and, uh . . .” I gestured at the empty ice cream dish. “I was completely in touch with what I was feeling. I was focused on that feeling and nothing else. Does this sound insanely stupid yet?”
He held my gaze. “No.”
“It’s like catching the feeling. Grabbing on to it and letting it overtake me. That brings the fire.” I looked at my little fireball again. “But this thing seems to be stuck to my hand. I want to try throwing it.”
“Where?” Nate surveyed his precious lab, apprehensive.
“Out a window?”
“You might hit an innocent passerby.”
“Into a bucket of water?”
“We own a bucket?”
“How about over there?” I nodded at the lab’s basin sink. “That’s like a bucket.”
He considered it then nodded. “Okay.”
Before I could say anything else, he scooped me up and carried me over to the sink.
“Hey!” I gave him a look. “I can manage. This fire thing doesn’t impede my ability to walk.”
“You should focus on keeping your hand still.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “And maybe I like carrying you.”
I rolled my eyes at him. We made it over to the sink and he set me down on the counter and turned on the water. I whipped my wrist back and forth, trying to separate the fireball. But it stayed stubbornly stuck to my hand.
Hmm. If pure emotion was the key to forming these fireballs, maybe pure emotion would also help move them?
I cleared my mind and tried to focus on a single feeling. I dredged up my exchange with Bea from the day before, when I’d said she reminded me of Mom: the happiness that surged through me when she smiled. Warmth, contentment. A sense of relief that maybe I hadn’t fucked her up for life.
The ball floated in my palm, unmoving. I bit my lip in frustration.
Oh! That was a good one—frustration! I summoned it up: the impotence I felt over this new breed of demons. The flicker of rage that flashed through me whenever I got one of Dad’s useless postcards. The burning need for Nate to rip the rest of my shirt off, exposing my attention-starved nipple . . . no! Bad example. I felt my collarbone area flush pink.
After several more seconds of deeply feeling every feeling I could think of, I shook my head.
“Shut the water off. Not happening.”
I closed my hand over the fireball, extinguishing it, while Nate turned off the sink.
“Okay,” I said. “So apparently I can now call my fire up on cue, which does indicate a further level of control. Which means I don’t have to worry about it shooting all over the damn place. Which is pretty amazing.” I paused, considering. “And just like last night, I think that level of control means I can also still . . .” I closed my eyes, channeled my frustration, and felt my palm heat.
No, I thought to myself. Not now.
The fire didn’t appear. Triumph surged through me.
“I can keep it from coming out, too!” I crowed. “Like, regularly. Last night wasn’t just a fluke.” I flexed my fingers and frowned into space. “But if I can’t figure out how to make my fire move, it takes my power from horrifically destructive to possibly useless.”
“Not useless,” Nate countered. “It is still fire, after all.”
We shared a few moments of contemplative silence. Then he leaned in. “We don’t seem to be getting much further with this hypothesis.”
“Just like our new breed of demon hypothesis.”
“So why don’t we try that kissing thing again?”
“For science?”
“For fun.”
I had no objections.
He had just managed to get my shirt almost all the way off when the lab door flew open and a very pissed-off Aveda Jupiter hobbled in on her crutches. Lucy, Bea, and Scott trailed in behind her. When they saw us, they came to a standstill.
“What?!” Aveda squawked. She gave us a once-over. “Whatever you two are doing cannot possibly be sanitary. This is supposed to be a scientific laboratory.”
“We’re aware,” I said, rearranging my shirt so it sort of covered my torso. “Do you want to tell me why you all just barged in?”
Aveda glared at me. “Just when I think there’s no possible way you can make things worse, you go and . . . and . . .”
“And what?”
“Oh . . . em . . . gee . . .” whispered Bea, her eyes widening as she stared at me and Nate. I realized I was still tangled up in him and made a move to extricate myself, sliding down from the counter. So much for keeping our sexperiment a secret.
Weirdly I found I didn’t care. Given how much I’d exposed myself the past few days—both literally and figuratively—getting caught in a hot, heavy, possibly unsanitary make-out session seemed like small potatoes. Although my baby sister probably didn’t need to be seeing this. I gave Scott a meaningful look, trying to silently tell him to get Bea out of the room. But he just grinned, clearly enjoying my discomfort. Lucy snickered.
My friends were so awesome.
“Evie,” Bea began, holding up her glittery phone. “You need to look at . . .”
Aveda snatched the phone from Bea and shoved it in my face. “Explain this, Evelyn.”
The screen displayed Maisy’s blog, her sickeningly cute logo splashed across the top. Below the logo was one of her typical headlines. Only, for once, the headline wasn’t about Aveda.
It was about me.