THE FIRE SAGA

FLAME 86 - ELUSION

Kiley whines pitifully, and I grab her hand tighter, needing some validation to negate what I'm seeing, or not seeing as the case is. She doesn't look like anything I could've imagined. I can't see her at all. She's invisible.

"I'm nothing," she confirms.

"You're far from that."

She puckers up. She's growing more upset than she needs to be. How can I help her feel better about the limitation? Is it even a limitation? I can physically feel and see her. I can smell her Coreopsis and Bottle Rockets. That's enough. If I could make myself scarce, I'd have done it long before the Keanes or Connells arrived in my life.

"All the cool kids want that superpower."

She sniffles. "What superpower?"

I elbow her playfully. "Invisibility."

She barks a humorless laugh. "I thought that at first. It didn't take long to change my mind."

"You figured out how to appear eventually," I remind her.

"That's my worst fear."

"What?"

"No one noticing me," she admits.

"With your talent?" I scoff dramatically. "Impossible."

"You've got the impression I want you to have."

"No, you're truly special. Declan couldn't see you, but it didn't stop him from looking for you, and that couldn't have been easy with Tally tormenting him you didn't exist."

She calms down considerably at his mention. "He's my landmark."

"Your landmark?"

"No matter what happens to me, as long as I can see him, I won't disappear." She smiles dreamily. "He's such a strong part of me now. He makes me feel real again."

"He's your light."

"Exactly."

I can't fault her reasoning. He's been important to her from the moment of their collision. Before that, technically.

I try not to look at the mirrors. Her visual absence is disconcerting. When she reaches out for my hand, I take hers gratefully, squeezing gently. "How have you not met Dreyna? Haven't you known Matthew a long time?"

"I have," she replies uneasily. "He kept that side of him as a private pain he had to endure. We were separated from it."

"His pain isn't private," I grouse. "He exudes discontent."

"He's never been this unsettled. Seeing what you can do made an impression."

I'm not after making anyone feel worse about what they're facing. I want to help people, but like normal, my efforts seem to have the opposite effect. "I understand his self-loathing gig, but he has the option to change now. He refused it. I don't get how that could justify him being more bitter."

"He can't keep believing this is something he's stuck with," she guesses. "Now it's his choice. Any of his blame will inevitably fall on him. Accountability is tricky."

Dreyna motions us forward from the end of the hall. What would it take to bring back her luminescence? If I have one good deed left in me, she's due a new filter. Special order or not, hers is clogged up.

We're halfway there when her eyes widen, then she screams. "Run!"

A group of men start toward us. Dreyna pushes out a wall of water, the width and height of the hall. It barely slows them down. While I should be running, my legs won't cooperate. Kiley has her hands pressed to her head, trying to coax them away. They hesitate for a moment but resume their forward advance.

The fire is gluttonously gnawing on my veins, and for the first time since it actively made an appearance, the experience is painful. It whips where it touches, snapping at my insides with an intensity that brings me to my knees. Thick smoke chokes me, leaving me to gasp as it prevents my lungs from receiving precious oxygen.

Voices come from behind as several people approach from the opposite end of the hall. They gradually increase in size with each labored lift of my eyelids.

I'm blazing, burning through the last of the restraints that'll protect my family, who have no idea they're running to the end of all life as they know it. Both my enemies and friends will be destroyed in the blast. They can't reach me fast enough to stop my explosion.

As it is, they won't need to. His arms wrap me in Kevlar and fiberglass, and I'm just able to hiss out his name as he draws the excess flame from me. "Brody..."

"Easy," he hushes me. "I won't let them hurt you."

Brody throws down four colored stones: red, blue, green, and gray. In an instant, a light show erupts in the hallway, reflecting off the mirrors and nearly blinding me. Four corners of light ignite where the stones connect with the ceramic tile, each array matching the stone at its base. The single streams spread out, combining in the middle to create a wall between my friends, my enemies, and me.

"Derry." I cough out the smoke remnants from my still-heated lungs.

"He can't come with us," Brody commiserates. "They won't allow it."

My plan to ask where we're going is thwarted by a large crash that draws my eyes to the far rainbow wall keeping me from him.

"Let her go!" Derry demands.

Does he think I'm in danger? It's the only explanation that might excuse his behavior. I feel his rage through the protective shield. Hopelessness, regret, and fury blended into complete disarray. It's like he's losing me. Is he?

Certainly, Brody intends me no harm. He's my fire blanket, protecting me from myself and protecting them from me. The strange shield is keeping everyone out. There's only silence as the thickness of the wall doubles, skewing my view. I can't hear anything beyond it now.

Hey, what's that? It's Barry, charging onward like a rampaging bull. He enters the bubble, impervious to its magical properties.

Brody grunts. "Guess you're coming, too."

The rainbow lights, which have effectively burned holes in my retinas with their glorious display, vanish entirely. There's only darkness strangling me in its cool, unwanted embrace. No hands are holding me, no ground holding my feet, and I'm motionless. There's no up or down movement. There's only a state of weightlessness. I've lost my gravity. I'm drifting hopelessly into the nebulous.