AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nick didn’t say anything, torn between protesting and thinking she had a pretty good point.
Quinn snuggled more closely, resting her head on his shoulder. “It’s not like you care, right? If you want me to move, I will.”
“No.” He hesitated. “I guess it’s okay.”
“Can you still fix my face?” Her voice was sleepy.
“Sure,” he murmured. At least her sleeping position made that easy. He turned his head and eased a breath along her cheek.
She relaxed into him, so he fished for information. “You never told me how you ended up with Tyler.”
“I walked to the 7-Eleven. He was there.”
“You walked there alone?”
“I walk there all the time. Stop being such a mother hen.”
“Why did Tyler start hassling you?” For an instant, he wondered if Quinn had walked up and started hassling Tyler. She wasn’t exactly subtle.
“He wants to know what happened at the carnival. He said something about the Guides.” She paused. “The news said those explosions at the carnival were due to poor wiring.”
“No. That was Calla Dean. She started those.”
“Calla Dean!”
“Shh. Yeah. She was behind the arson attacks, too.”
Quinn’s house had burned down in one of those arson attacks—it was the whole reason they were living in that damned apartment. “I thought that was Rick Stacey!”
“He helped, but she was the mastermind.”
Quinn was silent for a minute. She knew Calla Dean from school—but she didn’t know her well. Calla had been one of the students who’d disappeared after the carnival, and everyone thought she was dead. There was still a memorial of notes and pictures taped all over her locker.
o;I’m not going to the cops.” Quinn flung her tangled blond hair back from her face. “Drive, Nick, all right? Drive the f**king truck.”
He took a long breath and blew it out through his teeth.
She punched him in the arm. Hard. “Drive!”
He shifted into gear. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“No.”
Nick listened to the air threading through the cab, cataloging her injuries as his element fed information to him. Mostly cuts and bruises, nothing more serious than that.
As he thought it, his senses picked up on something else, an unnatural heat making the air jitter around her.
She was cradling her arm.
“He burned you?” Nick asked.
“How did you know that?”
“It’s his MO. He’s a Fire Elemental. I’ve felt the effects before.” More than once, too. Tyler and his best friend Seth used to wait to trap Nick alone. They’d pin him down and threaten to burn his skin off, knowing Nick wouldn’t use his abilities to stop them.
Only they didn’t always stop at threats.
Nick should have let him suffocate in the driveway.
