Page 91 of Ash Fall

"Her and her light trick would know, I guess." That's the wiry one, Dwight or Dewey, I've never cared enough to keep it straight. He leans forward on the table with his elbows. "Since her kind is the reason the door opened in the first place and we lost all our families."

"That's not what she said." Cody's protest comes out at half volume.

"Naw, I bet it's not." The man grins around his food, and the grin turns mean. "You know what else I heard, though? Little Miss Sunshine over there keeps all four of those boys on rotation. All of them chasing her skirts, isn't that what she told you?" He whistles low. "Whore math, kid. Dress it up in sunshine all you want. If it walks like a whore and acts like a whore…"

"She's not like that." Cody says it to the table, unable to look at any of them. Then he goes quiet, and he stays quiet, and that silence tells me everything about the kid and his character. I already know enough about that mother fucker running his mouth that I'm tossing aside my lunch and across the distance in seconds.

"Stand up." I order harshly, and the table goes silent and tense as they look up at me. "Say it again standing up, so I can hear you better."

The wiry one looks up at me and the grin dies on his face. I reach for the dark out of habit, the way I have since they first showed up, and I wait for it to come up around my boots but the concrete under me stays bare. There's no buzz behind my ribs and no cold coming up through my boots. My heart slams into my throat while I stand there as nothing but a guy in a dusty shirt with his fists ready. What the hell? It’s like the other day with the boulder. I reach for it again and the floor stays empty. So be it, then. I got through most of this life defending and fighting without magic. I can easily take on this fucker without it.

"I'm waiting." I take one more step in, close enough that he has to tip his head back. "You've got a lot of shit talk for a man who needed to be given a home to survive in."

"Easy." Tanner is on his feet, both palms out. He puts himself between us without hurrying, which I'll give him credit for. "Dewey talks garbage on his best day. It won't happen again."

"If it happens again, he'll need somebody to chew his food for him, and it won’t be inside this mine."

"Understood." Tanner's eyes stay steady on mine, and there's no fear in them but something else sits in there instead, patient and buried deep, and I can't put a finger on what it is before he turns away. "Back to work, boys. Frames don't bolt themselves."

The table clears out fast with Dewey the first to skitter away. Cody goes with them without looking at me, but I can see a touch of shame on his face as he passes me. Penny stares after the kid with a small whine so I grab what’s left of his sandwich and toss it to her. When I turn to go back to my own lunch, I find Marlene standing there with her arms folded over her cardigan. She must have crossed half the bay to get here.

"He sends His warnings in plain sight," she says like she’s preaching in a church. "An abomination doesn't hide what it is. It can't."

She heads off toward the visitor centre with her chin high before I can answer, which is for the best, because nothing I'd have said would be fit for a church setting. Fucking Jesus nut job.

I stand there and watch her walk away thinking of that word…abomination. Yup, that’s me. I try to pull my shadows one more time just for myself and they come out from under the table around my boots on the first pull. I'm left standing in the middle of the bay staring down at my own feet in surprise. This magic that we have needs to be worked with more. We need to learn to control it so it doesn’t fail when we might need it the most.

By evening everyone has emptied out for supper and showers. I'm doing the last walkthrough to tidy up any tools left out when Luna comes down the aisle with her hair untangled from the braid it was in earlier. She's changed out of work clothes into one of her soft cotton dresses, and the sight of her hits me low in the chest.

"We're short trays for the top row." She points her thumb at the maintenance room off the north wall where we stacked the overflow of supplies on day one. "I'm grabbing another set before I lose all ambition and crash."

"I'll carry them for you." I fall in beside her before she can argue. She gives me a sideways look, halfway between amused and suspicious but doesn’t stop me.

The maintenance room smells like machine oil and fresh soil, but her lilac and lavender scent is all I can concentrate on as I hold the door open and she slides past me. She finds the tray stacks and starts counting out what she needs while I stand there doing nothing but watching her. Stray strands of that cinnamon hair with white streaks keep sliding forward into her eyes and she keeps hooking them back behind her ear without losing her place. I forget every reason I had for coming in to help her except the real one. I needed a minute of her. One minute of being close to her, even if all I get out of it a chance to help her and have her attention in some small way.

She catches me staring and pink climbs up her cheeks as she wrinkles that cute little freckled nose at me.

"What?" Her voice is breathless in a way that undoes me. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because for two years I tried to remember your face right, and I was off." I say it before I can think better of it. "My memory of you was never this good."

Her breath catches but she turns away to the shelf, fast with her shoulders up, and I know I've done it wrong, said too much, pushed where I shouldn’t have pushed.

"Hey. I'm sorry." I touch her shoulder and turn her gently back to face me. "I didn't mean to..."

The apology dies right there, because my shadows have made a decision without my consent. They lift off the floor in slow ribbons and reach for her, curling around her wrists, sliding up her bare forearms, barely touching her at all as they slide higher. She goes completely still as under her skin, pale light rises to meet them, faint at first, then brightening to a soft white glow that spreads out from everywhere my dark touches. The shadows twine through the light and the light threads back through them, and all we can do is watch.

"Mars," she whispers my name into the space between us. Her throat moves in a long swallow as her teeth press into her bottom lip, and her eyes drop to my mouth and stay there.

A rough groan pulls out of my chest. "Don't look at me like that, baby."

Her chin tips up an inch, glowing and defiant and gorgeous. "Then stop looking back."

Every good intention I own dies with her challenge. I crash my mouth down on hers, one hand fisting in her hair, and the noise she makes against my lips wipes out two years of pretending I remembered this. My memory was never even close. She's warm and real and kissing me back, her fingers grabbing my shirt to haul me closer instead of pushing me off. Another heavy weight I’ve carried in my heart since the night I ran lifts away as the smell of her and her cherry taste floods my senses like a homecoming.

Her arms wind around my neck as I lift her against me and her legs come around my waist on instinct, both of us moving on a memory of what we once had. Three steps puts her back against the wall and my hands slide under the cotton hem of her dress and fill themselves with her ass, guiding her hips while she rocks against where I'm already aching for her. The friction rips a curse out of me that her mouth swallows whole.

The sounds she makes will end me. Breathy little moans, small gasps timed to every roll of her hips and my name broken into pieces against my neck. I'm one more rock of her hips against my cock from finishing in my jeans fully dressed, which would be a new personal low and completely worth it.