Page 9 of Firefly

She reached up, picked an apple from the tree beside them, and bit into it, relishing the mix of bitter and sweet.

Relaxing back on the blanket, she sighed. It had been two nights since their encounter in the kitchen. Two nights since Simon had pressed a kiss to her cheek, left her a note, and vowed never to see her again.

After assuming him dead for half a year and spending another six months knowing he wasn’t but hearing nothing from him, she was tired of letting him make all their choices. She believed he had found himself in some sort of trouble with her father, and it was just like her father to twist the situation to suit him.

Why had he chosen to exclude her from his life rather than enlist her help? Because he was a man.

Rebecca huffed out another breath.

Leaning back, she glanced over at Sarah and smiled.

Floating lazily overhead were a dozen semi-translucent butterflies. Tentatively, she stretched her finger toward the creatures and marveled as one popped as if it were a bubble made of dish soap.

Sarah’s tiny body shook with laughter as she clapped her hands together in delight. Rebecca popped another of the butterflies, and something in her chest warmed as Sarah’s laughter intensified.

When she had popped all the bubbles and the pair were red-cheeked from elation, she lifted the cherub into her arms and fluttered her lashes over her face.

“Rebecca. I need you.”

A sliver of ice slid down Rebecca’s spine. She fluttered her lashes over Sarah’s skin again, using the time to school her features into calm. Had her father seen what Sarah could do? She’d hoped and prayed Sarah wouldn’t have her gifts, wouldn’t be another person he could use for his own ends.

It hadn’t been the first time Sarah showed her abilities, and it wouldn’t be the last. Rebecca felt time flying by at breakneck speed, and she was helpless to slow the inevitable end she knew was coming.

It was only a matter of time before Alexander learned Sarah had magic and used her, too. Until Rebecca had a better plan, she would let him take her own magic. When the time was right, she and Sarah would run. She only hoped her tired body would be able to keep up.

She moved past her father, into the house, and up the stairs. “I’m tired tonight, father. Could we do it tomorrow?”

Alexander’s dark brows drew together, bunching at the bridge of his very long nose. “All the more reason to do so tonight, Rebecca.”

She bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from voicing her thoughts and kept walking. “Very well. I’ll just put Sarah to bed.”

She held her breath, waiting for him to disagree. When he said nothing, she continued up the stairs, her pace slower than the night before. When she reached her room, she set Sarah in her crib and laid a stuffed cat beside her.

“Go to sleep, my love. I will be back in a moment.”

Sarah didn’t protest; her large blue eyes only blinked up at Rebecca, too wise for her two years.

Rebecca hummed softly, a tune her older sister Margaret used to sing to her when she was very little.

Sarah’s eyes fluttered, and she wrapped chubby fingers around the cat, a contented smile forming on her pink lips.

Rebecca pressed a kiss to her cheek and continued humming as she backed out the door. She turned and started as she nearly smacked into her father’s lanky form just outside the door.

“You coddle the child. She’ll be too soft when you’re gone.”

The words were a slap. A vicious reminder she was dying and Sarah would have no one in the world to care for her. Swallowing, Rebecca moved around her father, heading toward the stairs.

“Not that way. Let’s take the back stairs,” Alexander said from behind her.

She balled her fists at her sides but said nothing, turning to follow her father to his room and the staircase leading off of it that led to his secret underground room. In his bedroom, painted in horrid shades of red and black, her gaze darted to the bookshelf in the room’s corner, untouched after so many years.

It was the one thing that hinted her father may have a heart buried somewhere deep within the folds of his vile chest.

She followed him into the room he’d built to hide most of his spell books and artifacts gathered on their family over the years.

Her father flipped a light switch on the wall and pulled a rope beside it to let Alice know they were going down. Rebecca wrapped her arms around herself tightly. Even with the dim illumination in the back stairs, she hated going down them, imagining she would tumble to her death every time.

Although her father had built a second set of stairs on the first floor, he seldom went that way, preferring to go between his bedroom and his secret underground room unnoticed.

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