Page 76 of Fire Peak

Solomon pulled some peepers from his shirt pocket to take a look.

“I don’t have any reagent here, it’s out at my claim. But to me it looks like perilium. It’s one of the softer minerals, and see that silvery-white color? Oh yeah, that’s perilium, all right. Where’d you find it?”

They definitely had the old miner’s interest now.

“In my thigh,” Charlie explained.

“Your thigh? Perilium can be toxic. What was it doing in your thigh?”

“We think it was on the arrow I got shot with.” Charlie went a little pale.

“Did you feel a burning sensation?”

“Yes! It was terrible. It went away as soon as we got this out.” She shot Nick a panicked look. “Am I in trouble?”

“Well, it’s a small amount,” said Solomon. “You’re probably fine. Us miners, we’ve seen it all. Did you ever know Petey Brown?”

Charlie shook her head.

“He accidentally ate some sodium cyanide while panning for gold. He’s not with us anymore, RIP.” He crossed himself. Charlie didn’t look reassured, but at least she didn’t seem to be panicking.

“I was really lightheaded and woozy. Is that because of the perilium?”

“Could be.” He peered at the baggie again. “It’s a trace amount, so you don’t have to worry. If they’d intended to harm you—beyond shooting the arrow—they could have smeared it all over the arrowhead and then you might’ve had some problems.”

In Nick’s opinion, he sounded a little too gleeful about those possibilities. Were miners always so morbid?

“You’ve been really helpful, thanks.” He rose to his feet, ready to move on to the next phase of this investigation. April had some explaining to do.

But Solomon apparently had other ideas.

“Sit back down.”

The old miner pulled a pistol from his belt and pointed it at Nick. Nick didn’t move. He was busy analyzing that gun, which was so ancient it had a pearl inlaid handle and looked like it came from an auction house. What were the chances it actually worked?

Charlie tugged at his hand. “Sit down, Nick. Come on.” She sounded scared for him, and he appreciated that.

Also, an old gun might be even more dangerous than a newer, more accurate one. He sat back on the lawn chair.

“I’m gonna need to know everything about that little piece of magic you have there,” Solomon told them. “I don’t want to shoot you, I like you. But I’m a miner and if there’s perilium around here, I want to know where.”

33

Why had she ever thought that Nick Perini—aka Dad—was cool? She’d been wrong, so wrong. A cool new dad wouldn’t turn you into a prisoner for no good reason. He hadn’t even explained anything. He’d just marched into the cabin, laid down some random new rules, and bolted off with his new crush.

For the first time—okay, maybe almost the first time—Hailey was second-guessing her summer social media ban. She missed her friends. It was hard not knowing what boba shop they were popping into at any given moment. Or maybe they weren’t into boba this summer. Maybe it was something different this year, and she knew nothing about it, and she’d get back to a million inside jokes about coconut popsicles or whatever.

Ugh. Where was Elias? He was supposed to come pick her up so they could hike out to this lake he knew where there was a tire swing. First he was going to show her how to handle a knife, which was awesome but not something she was ever going to tell her mom. Then they were going to try out the tire swing.

It sounded kind of corny, a tire swing. She’d seen them in the movies, but not in her Tucson suburb. Would her friends laugh at her, if the highlight of the summer was a tire swing?

What would her friends think of Elias? Some of them got the whole neurodivergent thing, but some didn’t. They might think he was too weird, especially if you threw in the fact that he’d never been to a city, never seen a movie in a theater, never been to a mall.

He was so different from her, but she liked hanging out with him. She liked to rant about the world, and most people got fed up with it. But not Elias. Elias just listened to her talk as if her words were rain falling from the sky.

Also, Elias was low-key hot.

But where was he?

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