Page 53 of The Fire Went Wild

But the biggest masterpiece of all will be the Hunter I’ll awaken in Charlotte when I slide my knife into her palm and guide her hand to deliver the killing blow.

“You want to dowhat?”

Ambrose’s voice bursts out of the phone, and it occurs to me that maybe I was better off not asking for his advice in this particular instance.

“She’shuman,” he adds, which makes the muscles in her shoulders tense up. All I’ve told him so far is that I want to take Charlotte with me on my kill. I was putting off telling him why.

“Yeah,” I mutter, pacing around the sofa. “About that.”

My two offerings, Ada and Henry, watch me with their glass eyes. I crafted them two decades ago when I finally came back home after years away. Now they bear witness to everything that happens in this house.

Including me having to explain Charlotte to Ambrose.

“Tell me, Jaxon.” Ambrose’s voice is firm. “Stop fucking around.”

I take a deep breath and seek out Charlotte; she’s still upstairs, breathing softly. Asleep. “I think Charlotte is a Hunter.”

Ambrose goes quiet, and I stare at Ada and Henry and wait.

“That’s impossible,” he finally says. “Even if you were too pussy-addled to tell the difference?—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

“You shut the fuck up. Charlotte is Edie’s friend, remember? And Sawyer would have said if Edie had a Hunter friend.”

I push my hand through my hair. He’s not wrong. “She smells human,” I tell him. “Feels human. But then, she, uh, she killed me.”

“Bullshit. It’s been, what? Three days since I talked to you last? You wouldn’t have revived so fast?—”

“Will you shut up and listen?” I snap. “I’m trying to explain things.”

And then I do, as best I can. I tell him what I felt when Charlotte was strangling me, and how the gods came to me and told me what she is, and the quick revival and how she has some kind of magic on her that’s smothering her nature. And I’ll give Ambrose credit because he does listen to all of it without interrupting.

By the time I’ve finished explaining, I’m sitting on the couch between Ada and Henry, my palm sweaty against my phone, and Ambrose is dangerously quiet.

“Taking her to kill seems drastic,” he says.

“The Unnamed said it would break the spell.”

Ambrose laughs, and even with me being a Hunter it chills me a little. He’s so old. So experienced. “It’s not a spell,” he says. “It sounds like a protection charm. The person who did it—if it’s even real—would probably never call themselves a witch.”

“It’s real,” I say. “I sensed the Hunter in her. We have to do something, Ambrose.”

“We don’t, in fact, have to do anything.Youfeel a religious obligation.” He pauses, and there’s a mocking tilt in his words when he asks, “Or is it something more?”

“The Unnamed told me to do this,” I snap back, grateful we’re on the phone so he won’t see the embarrassed blood rising in my cheeks. “And it’s not just a religious obligation. It’s an obligation to another of our kind. One who’s trapped.”

“If she really is a Hunter, she’ll break,” Ambrose says flatly. “She’s Edie’s age, right? Thirty years is a long time to deny what you are.”

“Exactly!” My voice rises dangerously loud, and I reel myself back in. I don’t want Charlotte overhearing. With the way this block or charm or whatever it is has her brain all addled, she’ll never agree to go with me if she knows what we’re doing. “She should have killed by now. And I told you, shefeelshuman. Just not when she was attacking me.”

In the crackling silence, I can feel Ambrose thinking. Then he sighs, an ocean-rush sound on the phone’s speakers. “You’re right that there are—strange things in this world,” he says. “Stranger things than us.”

Like the gods. If anything, I know better than he does.

“I’m not going to stop you from doing this,” he continues. “Just be careful. And if it doesn’t work?—”

“It’ll work.” It’s an edict from the gods. It has to work.

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