Page 8 of The Fire Went Wild

So when he says, “Never seen it before,” the disappointment feels like a gut punch.

“Really?” I ask before I can stop myself. Jaxon looks at me, his expression unreadable.

“Yeah,” he says. “Really.” Then, a beat later: “Sorry.”

He doesn’t sound like he means it.

Well, at least I tried. Maggie gives me an apologetic shrug and goes back to flirting with the cowboys. I drop my phone in my bag and dig into my burger, which is, in fact, fucking delicious. Or maybe I’m just hungry.

Halfway through my meal, Jaxon slides out of the booth again, this time with his stuff all stacked up against his chest. He’s clearly leaving, but he stops by my booth and stares down at me until I look up at him. I swallow my curly fry. “Yes?”

“What was that thing?” His eyes are blue laser beams burrowing into me. The bright spot flares behind my eye again. “In the picture?”

“I don’t know.” I sip my water. “My friend, the one who disappeared—the last time I talked to her, she was standing in front of it.”

It’s the first time I’ve ever said that out loud to anyone. These past three months, I’ve kept everything with Edie close to my chest. My snotty artist friends never understood why I wanted to hang out with her, and, just like with the assholes on CrimeSolvers, Scott’s disappearance is more interesting to them anyway, although for different reasons.

This is something I have to do by myself, finding Edie. But still, it feels nice to say it to someone, even if that someone is a weird redneck asshole.

“I see.” He keeps staring at me in a way that feels like entrapment. I curl my fingers around my water cup. The hairs prickle on the back of my neck. A wave of vertigo washes over me, although it dissipates almost as fast as it comes on. “Well, I hope you find her.”

And then he’s gone.

CHAPTER THREE

JAXON

Fuck, fuck, fuck,fuck. This is bad.

This is really bad.

I pull out of the Bandit’s lot and park my car on the little dirt road across the highway, hoping the fans of palm leaves hide me well enough that the red-haired woman won’t notice me waiting for her. I need to know where she’s going. I need to stop her.

Don’t kill her.

The Unnamed’s command is loud. It’sbeenloud, blaring in my head from the moment she walked through the door and I looked up, my eyes drawn first by the bloody red of her hair and then by the lush curves of her body and the gauzy, vintage sundress wrapped around them. Every single atom in mysystem erupted at the sight of her, and my fingers twitched and I had an onslaught of images of all the ways I could pose her corpse after I was finished, turning her from one work of art into another.

But it all came crashing down with a single command.

Don’t kill her.

Don’t kill her, but why did everything feel like she was marked by my gods? Why did the winter sunlight in the windowstwinkle and flash around her as she strode across the diner like the gods were blessing her? Why did my skin thrum when she came and sat behind me? Why did she smell like dying roses and dark incense, my two favorite scents in the whole world?

It made no damn sense.

And then it got worse.

She had a picture of the sigil of the Unnamed, but it’s not just any picture. It’s the picture of the one I painted for Sawyer right after he revived, right before he blew up his whole damn life for that human girl, that survivor he fell in love with. Edie. The one I said might have been chosen for him by the gods.

And maybe she was, if her friend is striding into Bandit’s glittering like a fucking angel from on high right when I happen to be there,

Still, I don’t like this. I don’t like any of it. The gods are telling me I can’t kill her. Even if I didn’t listen to them and did it anyway, Sawyer would dismember me if he found out I killed his girl’s friend. Dismember me and spread me in six different states so it would take decades before I could pull myself back together.

But I can’t just let her go. Not if she knows what the sigil looks like. Not if she’s sniffing around and investigating Edie’s disappearance, which wassupposedto look like her death. Sawyer explained the whole thing to me and our friend Ambrose because he was clearly pleased with himself for pulling it off.

I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, staring through my windshield. The palm blocks most of my view, but it does let me watch Bandit’s entrance. When that red-haired woman comes out, I can follow her to wherever she’s going, and then?—

Do something.

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