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“He could still be inside,” Axel pointed out.
“Maybe.” But she wasn’t convinced. The place looked deserted.
Hand in hand, they walked to the front porch and kicked the door in. The smell of gas was instant. It watered her eyes.
“Nope.” Axel tried to drag her out, but she tugged him back in.
“We have to check.”
There was something urging her in, and she couldn’t explain it. A gut feeling. An instinct.
“Fuck.” Axel gritted out and propped the door open to let air gust in. “I’ll see where the leak is coming from.”
He moved, but her fingers tightened around his hand. For some reason, she couldn’t move. The sight of the house assaulted her. Inside, her childhood remained.
Nothing was out of place.
Unlike the yard, in here it was frozen in time. From the foyer entrance with its fake flower arrangement, to the living room beyond and the leather couches facing each other, a scratch down one almost invisible in the dust of time. Vases and knickknacks on the buffet were also dust ridden. Cobwebs laced between flower stems.
Those couches facing each other.
She vividly remembered the day she arrived. She’d come from a second lab where Julius had put her after the fire. He brought her here to give her a home, he’d said. But she’d sat across from him, looking up at him from the far side of the coffee table separating them, and all she could think was that he was over there, and she was on this side.
Little did she know she would never succeed in crossing that divide. Daisy cleared her throat.
“I’m okay.”
Axel glanced down at their joined hands. “Come with me to the kitchen. If the gas is on, I need to turn it off.”
She nodded and stayed with him, squeezing his hand. He made short work of checking the stove top, found all gas knobs had been turned on, and promptly switched them off.
“Deliberately switched on,” he mumbled. “From the concentration of the smell, it’s been on for a while.” He shot her a concerned look. “Like someone was waiting for you. We need to be careful. I need to open windows and flush the gas out.”
He leaned across and opened the window over the sink, then tried to leave her—she assumed to open more windows. Another nod from her but she felt helpless. Her training went out the window. She didn’t want to let go of him.
“We’ll go wait outside until it’s safe,” he suggested, eyes stark. “Together.”
She could sense he was concerned.
“I’m okay,” she told herself as they walked back to the entrance, intending to leave as he’d suggested, but she stared through to the living room once more and frowned at a clean spot on the buffet. A dark ring in the dust stood out. Odd. “Something’s missing.”
With her eyes locked on the buffet, she stepped forward and wished she hadn’t.
Trip wire.
An explosion ripped through the house, shaking its foundations. Her gift surged outward, protecting them. Two kinetic powers clashed—one natural, one her—causing a second blast of force. They jerked backward and fell. Their hands broke apart. The sense of despair suddenly strangled her. She gasped and clutched herself, curling into a ball.
“Daisy.” Axel held her up. “We have to get out. The kitchen is on fire. It’s spreading. It’s a miracle we haven’t been fried, but I think you saved us somehow. I saw the explosion come and then hit an invisible wall.”
“Ungh.” She shook her head, unable to focus on the fire or what she’d inadvertently done. “Something else is wrong. I feel… I feel…”
She tried to focus on the despair. On the bone chilling darkness spreading from her gut. So many… she glanced up, moved around a few steps, and homed in with pins and needles prickling the back of her neck.
“There are people here,” she blurted.
Her eyes stung as the fire heated up the house. Flames licked up the walls, propelled by the gas leak. With supernatural speed, it spread throughout the house and try as she might, she had no idea how to repeat what she’d just done to protect them from the blast.
Axel glanced up. “Fuck. I can hear them.”
