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The very instant he acquiesced I ripped my hand free from Leo’s head and raised every psychic protection I had. My hands were trembling, and each breath clawed its way out of my lungs so painfully my chest rattled with the effort. The first white-hot pinpoints of a migraine were starting to blossom into pain flowers inside my skull.
And I hadn’t even done the hard part yet.
Finally, when I thought I could do so without throwing up, I opened my eyes.
Leo was pitched forward on the seat, his head cupped in his hands, taking fast, ragged breaths. His skin shone with sweat like he’d just finished running a marathon.
“Never again.” He shook his head without looking up. “You’re never doing that to me again.”
He must have felt it all too. What would that be like, having that kind of insight into your father? To know he was just a jumble of animal passions and ego.
I doubted it felt great.
“Never,” I promised, hoping it wasn’t a lie.
I glanced out the car window, which had gone foggy from all our breathing, and wiped a clear patch so I could look outside. Then I gently nudged Leo and waited for him to lift his head and see what I was pointing at.
The sky had become so dark it looked as if night had come early. Fat, rain-heavy clouds loomed overhead, like too-full gray balloons waiting to be popped.
Guess that made me the needle.
Chapter Twelve
I. Was. Soaked.
My T-shirt clung to me like a second skin, and my jeans were so heavy from the rain I thought they’d either fuse to my skin forever or fall down from all the extra weight.
What’s worse, the temperature had dropped sharply after the sun set, meaning I was not only drenched, I was also freezing my ass off. At some point several hours earlier, one of the firefighters had offered me his huge jacket, but my arms got so lost inside the sleeves I couldn’t work properly.
So I stood in my short-sleeve shirt and my water-logged denim.
I’d been managing the storm for about ten hours.
After the first hour, Rhys and Yvonne had fled back to the shelter of their cars. Two hours after that they’d left altogether. Leo had never bothered to get out of the Charger after our long-distance call to his father, but when I’d looked back a few times, he was still there, watching me.
Five hours in, the firefighters had pulled back, ceasing all their efforts. A couple of them had come to stand with me, as a sign of solidarity maybe, or more likely because they couldn’t believe what was happening. But even they had drifted off to drier pastures, most returning to the motel. Probably to take well-earned showers and drink well-earned beers.
Me, I was turning into a giant human wrinkle.
My hair had gotten so wet it defied being held in a ponytail any longer. Strands clung to my mouth and neck, tangled in my lashes, and generally made it impossible to see anything.
Thankfully, all I needed to see was the fire.
Over the course of the day the flames had gone from a raging tempest of smoke and skin-melting heat down to the burning embers of a grudge. The fire was dying. It wasn’t being quick about it, but it was taking its last gasps.
Had I just started the storm and left it to do its own thing, there was a good chance the clouds would have naturally drifted away, giving only the most minor reprieve from the wildfire. The bulk of it would have turned to steam before it could do any good. Real rain didn’t care whether it helped or hindered. It ran on its own schedule, had its own whims.
So I stood here, anchoring the storm in place. I held it down like a wild stallion that refused to be broken, and it fought me the whole time. The clouds wanted to move. The rain was ready to go, but I wasn’t ready for it to head down the road yet.
I couldn’t stop. If I took a break, sure I could call up the storm again, but only if I had the physical strength. And the second I let myself rest, I’d be dead to the world.
My entire body was numb. I was so fully exhausted that I might very well have been asleep on my feet the whole time and not noticed. Except the pain was real enough that I knew this wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t pain like in the car, where my nerves were exposed and then rubbed raw. This was more insidious. This was deep-inside-the-bone pain, the kind of ache that becomes a part of you to the point you doubt you could live without it, like it’s part of the glue holding you together.
At last, just before midnight, the rain doused the last of the fire.
I waited longer, until the firefighters—who had returned by then—could make sure that any flare-ups were under their control, and then I let the storm go.
The clouds didn’t break up immediately, but the rain did dissipate into a fine mist. The air was still choked with smoke, in spite of the downpour, and the mingling scents of burnt wood and fresh rain were enough to make a person dizzy.
