Page 58 of The Fire Went Wild

“Are you okay?” Charlotte’s voice startles me.

“I’m fine.” I keep my gaze fixed firmly ahead even though I can feel her watching me. Taillights flare red, and I slam on the brakes too hard, making the car jitter to a stop.

“Not used to driving in the city, huh?” She shifts, the handcuffs zipping along the seatbelt. “You want me to take over? I drive in Los Angeles all the time.”

We’re stopped in traffic, so I risk looking over at her. She’s smirking at me.

“Why?” I ask. “So you can escape?”

She shrugs, eyes glittering with amusement. I can almost pretend she’s flirting with me, which is a weird feeling. “How can I escape with you in the car?”

Traffic jerks forward. Taillights blink around us like the lights on the Christmas tree I wasn’t allowed to have as a kid. “You could kill me again.”

I mean it as a joke, sort of, but Charlotte just frowns. “Yeah, and you’d come back. Because you aren’t?—”

I jerk the car forward as the traffic clears up a little, and Charlotte says, “Human,” in a kind of vague daze.

“I probably wouldn’t come back as fast as I did a few days ago.” Whatever block in the road has vanished, and I pick up speed, my heart thudding as the cars press around me. I can sense every fucking human inside every fucking one of them, and it makes me feel hot and itchy, like I’m coming down with a fever. This is why I stay in the marsh.

“Oh yeah? Why not?”

I pull the car into a clear spot on the highway. I don’t technically know where I’m going. I don’t know these freeway names or these exits. I don’t recognize the gaudy strip malls crowding up against the highway. But at the same time, my gods are guiding me forward. I know I won’t be on this freeway much longer.

“That’s complicated,” I say, cursing myself a little. I’m distracted by everything. The driving. The upcoming kill that I’ve done absolutely nothing to prepare for. The kill that I’m not even supposed to execute.

I glance over at Charlotte, curled up against the door, arm at an angle to account for the handcuff. Staring at me. “You always do this.”

I put my focus back on the road. Move over to another lane. Our exit is close. I can sense it the way I can sense the humans, an invisible trail leading me to my prey.

“Do what?”

“Tell me just enough to be annoying.”

I smile. She doesn’tsmellthe way a Hunter should, but she does sort offeellike one. A human would be terrified right now.

I wonder, vaguely, if she even realizes how strange she is.

“Because these are things you aren’t supposed to know,” I finally say. A sign flashes by—Gessner Road, 2 miles—and my heart sings. That’s it.

“Because I’m not like you?”

The question shoots straight to my heart, and, just for a moment, my Guardian rises up above the roar of humanity to shriek one word:Wait.

I know what it means. Don’t tell her yet. Let her discover it when she sinks the knife I brought into the chest of her first real victim.

Don’t tell her anything until she’s broken her binding.

But at the same time—I don’t want to lie to her. I’ve never wanted to lie to her.

Thankfully, our exit materializes ahead, and I swerve hard to get in the lane. Charlotte shrieks and grabs at the dashboard with her free hand.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Let me drive!” she shouts.

“We’re off the freeway.” I pull up to the light. I need to turn left and slide under the underpass and disappear down a winding, leafy street that will lead us to the human heart that beats louder and more urgent than all the rest.

Well, except for one—the one in the seat beside me.

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