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Her reaction was different, but I'm not easily deterred, so I grab my stuff and follow my Firefly. I jump over a desk, skipping the line to do it. I don't know exactly where she's going, but I catch sight of her darting down the hall, her red-and-gold hair disappearing and reappearing between the bodies.
She's moving in an odd zigzag pattern like I'm a freaking alligator and she's trying to lose me, which is stupid. One, because that doesn't actually work for alligators, and two, because I am me and she should be sprinting away, screaming as fast as she can.
But she's not doing either. If anything, she looks lost or like her vertigo is acting up, hitting one side of the hallway and then the other. Why not just tell the other students to move instead of going around them? She veers off course suddenly and disappears behind a tall wooden door.
It's damn laughable. I know where she went, straight into the girl's bathroom. Either she thinks I won't follow her in there, which is fucking crazy, or she truly believes she's lost me. Both options significantly underestimate me, and like a frog drawn to a firefly, I follow her. I take my time. After all, the hunt is one of the best parts of the chase, and I slip between oblivious bodies that don't automatically get out of my way. Normally, such behavior would have earned them a shove to the shoulder or an order to fucking move, but I'm enjoying the torment at the moment, drawing out the inevitable win.
I open the door to the girl's bathroom and slip inside, cutting off one of the new transfers as I do. The girl looks at me, all wide-eyed and tosses a coquettish grin in my direction that I don't return. Instead, I glare at her, and it's enough to make her recoil and ensure that my Firefly and I won't be disturbed. The girl acts like she wasn't going into the bathroom anyway and does a ridiculous-looking about-face in the hallway and heads in the other direction, nearly colliding with three people on her mission to get away from me.
I'm silent as I walk inside, sticking to the shadows near the wall as I walk into the bathroom, my hand catching the wooden door and shutting it quietly behind me. I find my Firefly in front of the mirror looking at her eyeliner or what's left of it, at least. It's messy and kind of smudged. It looks like she's been crying, and she fixes it as a girl flushes a toilet and exits the stall. I continue watching them from the shadows, and I swear the girl must be a caricature of a person in the way she makes duckface to herself in the mirror. I almost laugh when I catch my Firefly trying not to lose it herself. The girl abruptly heads toward the exit, sees me, and walks a little faster.
It's an unspoken rule around here.
You don't interrupt me. Well, not unless you want to end up sizzling on the floor.
I have the patience of a man on his deathbed, and I do not like to explain myself. It makes for an unpleasant combination.
Finally, after the girl is gone, my Firefly looks up and freezes when she finally sees me. I lean against the wall and wait for her to talk first.
"You going to say something?" she asks after a long moment, giving me a cute raised eyebrow. "Or are you going to just stand there and try to remember your words?"
Fuck, I like her sharp tongue enough that I might just have to save it before I burn the rest of her. Will her hair turn fire-engine red when it blazes or crumble instantly to ash? My fingers twitch with the urge to grab the lighter and regain control. She's not the one in charge here. I am.
Saint's pet walks in a second later and looks between us. Back and forth and back and forth again, like she's trying to figure it out, though, I know she already has. She's being nosy, and I'll make sure Saint gives her something extra later to pay for it.
She leaves, and I push off the wall as my Firefly almost turns to face me, but stops herself. She might say something else, but I don't know. I haven't really been paying attention. I've been too busy imagining all the ways her skin will blister when it burns. A pyromaniac turned pyrophiliac, how lucky am I?
She grips the sink like she's going to fall over if she doesn't, which by the looks of it, she might anyway. She's currently the color of clouds and whipped cream and when she says, "Uh oh," I'm not even sure it's a voluntary utterance.
Her sharp glare finally locks on me again, and I have no doubt that if she could, she'd shoot a torpedo at me and sink me with her eyes.
"What are you doing?" she asks me, sounding utterly annoyed by the fact that she has to ask.
The question makes me smile because she really seems to have no idea of what's coming, but I'm quick, much quicker than she is given that she doesn't even react before she is against the decrepit tile wall, one of my hands around her throat and the other at her waist.
Her eyes go wide, probably because I'm pushing on her windpipe hard enough to test how hard I need to press before it crushes beneath the pressure.
"What are you doing?" she croaks at me, and she can't be this gullible. She's my Firefly. I won't accept it.
I cock my head and silently dare her.Study hard, baby girl, and figure it out.
"Let go," she says, swallowing—or trying to, at least—against my palm. By some miracle, she turns even more pale, so void of color that I can see the veins spiderwebbing at her temple and snaking down toward her ear. Even the freckles that bridge her cheeks and scatter across her nose like ashes in the wind are a shade lighter. I relax on her windpipe a little, but I'm enjoying it too much to let go completely.
"I don't appreciate being ignored," I tell her, keeping my head cocked at her like I'm confused and not pissed. Iampissed, but it is confusing too. I don't normally have to give chase, but this is different, and it's nice and it reminds me of . . .
Don't think of her.
Never think of her, Gabriel.
She's the girl who almost proved I have a heart, even if it is black, ugly, and charred to a crisp.
She brings her hands up between us, shoving at me hard, but it's not hard enough. I barely tip back on my heels, and her gaze widens even further.
That's it, I think, maybe you're getting it now, Firefly.
At that moment, ever-annoying Oliver something, I don't remember his last name—we just call him the peepster—barrels into the bathroom. God knows what they have him on this time because he hits the door so hard that it slams into the wall and sticks, catching in the hole worn into the tile by many, many people who have done the same.
"Lucy," he calls to the room, "I'm home!!"
