“Where are we going?”
“Common room back at Iron and Bone. You need to be someplace warm, and you should probably eat something, too.”
“You’re not going to carry me a whole mile.”
“You’re right.” I take her a few steps away from the party, the last of the revelry fading behind us. Two jagged boulders jut up beside the river, forming a sort of gateway. Before we step through, I smile at her and give her a quick wink. “Hold tight.”
Stevie opens her mouth to speak, but before she can even get the first question out, we’re standing in the middle of the Iron and Bone common room which is, for the moment, empty.
“How the hell did you do that?” she asks now, her eyes wide.
“Earth-blessed. Me and rocks? We go way back.” I laugh, then set her in the big chair by the fireplace. It’s down to embers now, so I throw a few more logs on, get the thing roaring again. “Just a little teleportation spell I whipped up my first year here. Maybe I’ll show you sometime.”
“I’d love that. I’m still trying to perfect my witchfire.” She holds out her palm, calls up a bright silver flame.
“Looks pretty damn perfect to me.”
Once the fire’s good and hot, I find a blanket for her. “Probably best to get out of those wet pants and boots. You can use this.”
She shoots me a glare, her lips pulling into a cute smirk that’s doing nothing for the semi-hard-on I’ve been rocking since she told me about that damn dream.
“Slick, Baz,” she says with a laugh. “If you think it’s going to be that easy to get me out of my pants…”
I cock an eyebrow, return that flirty little smirk of hers. “I’m just trying to spare you some hypothermia. But clearly your mind is somewhere else. Anything you want to tell me, Little Bird?”
“Oh, there are a few things I’d love to tell you,” she says. “But I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead. Now turn around so I can disrobe like the proper lady I am.”
I laugh, then head into the common kitchen to see if I can find her something hot to eat. Pickings are pretty slim—most students eat in the cafés these days—but I manage to find some instant vegetable noodle soup. I boil some water, mix it all up in an oversized mug.
By the time I get back to the fireplace, she’s all wrapped up like a mummy, her face small inside the hood of my sweatshirt, firelight glowing on her cheeks.
“It’s not the best meal I’ve ever cooked,” I tell her, handing over the mug, “but it’s hot.”
She takes a sip, a soft moan escaping her lips.
“Better?” I ask.
“Amazing.” She smiles, probably the first one I’ve seen tonight, and I try not to sigh in relief. She’s still a little on the pale side, but overall, I think she’s okay. Physically, anyway.
I pull up another chair across from her, hold my hands out toward the fire. She’s awful quiet over there, knees pulled up to her chest, her face half-buried in the big soup mug.
“So, you… wanna talk about it?” I ask.
No response, and for a minute I worry she’s sinking back into that damn dream again. But then she shifts in her chair and says, “I don’t like rushing water.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame you.”
“No, I mean…” She looks down at her soup, stirring it around in the mug. When she speaks again, her voice is so soft, I have to lean closer to hear it above the crackling flames. “A few years back, my parents drowned in a flash flood.”
“Oh, fuck.” I knew they’d died awhile back—Devane told us as much. But he left out the details, and now I feel completely out of my element. I don’t even know what the fuck to say. “Stevie, that’s shit. I’m sorry. I mean… fuck, I’m making it worse. It’s shit. That’s all there is to it.”
She offers a sad smile, then says, “We were hiking in the slot canyons and it just… it came out of nowhere. I got caught up in it too, but there was an opening in the canyon wall just above the waterline—looked like a cave. My dad basically shoved me into it. He and my mom tried to climb in after me, and I tried to reach for them but the current was too strong and it just… it swept them away. It happened so fast, Baz. I kept watching the water, screaming their names, waiting for them to pop back up on the other side, but… but they never did.”
The fire pops, a log tumbling against the grate. I grab the poker, push it back in, trying to figure out what the hell to say to someone who experienced something so horrible. But I can’t, and eventually, she sighs and says, “The water didn’t stop. It just kept rising, and I had to go deeper into the cave. A day passed. Another. All I had with me was a daypack with a couple of soggy granola bars and two bottled waters, and I knew things were getting dire. The water had reached the cave, and it was getting higher by the hour. I thought I was going to die. I thought Iwantedto die.”
She sips her soup, and I’m still holding the fire poker, afraid to move. Finally, I work up the nerve to speak.
“You didn’t die,” I say, eloquent as fuck. “How? I mean, how did you finally get out?”
