When the rage within threatens to destroy everything...
As if firestarter wasn't bad enough, adding assassin to her resume isn't exactly the teenage life Halen Windspeare always imagined. Facing a sinister demon, Halen must unleash her power to van...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Tage scanned the room for anything useful to bind her spell, but her jumbled nerves fractured her focus. Halen's sketchy behavior didn't help either. Something irked her about the way Halen avoided her by scurrying off to the shower when she questioned her further about Asair. Halen wore her heart on her sleeve—easy for an empath to read. But ever since Halen returned from Asair's dimension, Tage couldn't felt nothing from her.
Tage didn't like it one bit, which only fueled her theory—Asair had hijacked Halen. Still, Halen swore he died, and Dax had backed her up. But why hover then if he was so sure?
Through the crack in the door, she watched Dax flip through a magazine, then toss it on the bed. Did he really need to sit outside the bathroom door while Halen showered? His nervous energy made her skin crawl. She bit her lower lip, gnawing on the silver loops.
"Do you trust him?" Ezra leaned forward.
"He's holding something back. I feel it." She rubbed her arm. "When someone isn't telling the truth, my bones ache."
"Is he lying about Asair?" he asked.
"I don't know what his secret is, but Halen is lying about Asair for sure. Every time I press her about Asair, she averts the question."
He lowered his voice. "Why would she lie to us?"
"To save her life." She stood and walked to the side table where a marble pot sat with a plant trailing over the sides. She pressed the leaves between her fingers. Fake. She dug under the leaves, finding pebbles shimmering with quartz. She scooped a handful and returned to the coffee table.
"We wouldn't hurt her," Ezra said.
She lowered her voice. "But what if it's not her? What if Asair's taken possession of her and is pretending to be Halen?"
His eyes widened as he considered the possibility, but then he shook his head. "You can't think like that. We have to trust Halen."
"Yeah, okay, that might be a little easier if the entire Bay Area wasn't an inferno."
"You do have a Plan B—right?" He thrummed his fingers on the glass table.
Tage sprinkled the rocks onto the tabletop and stood once more. She scanned the room and spotting an ice bucket, smiled. She shoved the bucket against Ezra's chest. "Make yourself useful."
"Is this Plan B?"
"Do you have to question everything? Just get the ice."
He sighed, snatched a key card from the desk, and headed out the door.
She should have been nicer to him. He could have taken off as soon as they returned from Elosia, but since she had woken from her trance, he was always but a whisper away. Perhaps, when the world wasn't in flames, she would want more from him. Then again, death had an obsession with those closest to her. He was safer if her heart shut him out.
