I grinned at Jess. “Sounds great, let’s do it.”
Jess shoved the flower in my hand. “By the way, this is for you too. Happy birthday, Seph.”
I took it gently. “Thank you.”
She shrugged and mumbled something incomprehensible.
**
The course was as fun and painful as Jess had suggested. I hung wildly from a bar at least twenty feet off the ground, swooping my way across.
Jess was already sweeping through, the muscles in her arms pronounced.
When I finally made it, I dropped to the ground beside her gasping loudly.
“How the hell are you so good at this stuff?”
She shrugged. “I always liked sport. I used to run track and play hockey before my incarceration. I had to stop once Jack came to live with us.” She looked away.
“I wish I could hurt him for you,” I said softly. “I hate what he did.”
“You and me both.” Jess pulled her lighter from her pocket and started fiddling with it.
Click.
Click click
I watched her carefully. “Do you need to burn something?” I asked her.
She quickly looked at me. “I’ll do it later.”
Click
“You can do it now. I don’t mind.”
Jess fidgeted with the lighter again. She bit her lip. “There’s a place Sable showed me…”
“She did?” I asked carefully.
“Do you want to see it?”
“Ok.”
Jess led me to a basement room with a large pit in the centre. To the side was a pile of discarded papers and photos. The walls were stained with old smoke, the air faintly smelling of ash.
“What is this?”
“This is the room for the fire users. These,” she picked up some documents, “are records, photos and items that we burn to purge our past. Like permanent records. Forced contracts. Photos of abusers. They get dumped down here by the people who live here. And each day, someone comes down and burns stuff.”
She picked up a leather whip that smelled of old blood. Then dropped it.
“Do you have a pile?”
“We share it. All of this is free to take.” She picked up a catalogue for the Council of Light. The symbol of the sun almost filled the front page.
On the cover was a picture of my father.
“Here. You can try it.”
