Page 6 of The Sinner and the Gunslinger
Lei Ling is dead.
Or...
Have I been so caught up in my pity party that I didn’t recognize the miracle before me? I face her so slowly that my heart thuds in my ears. And words... what are words? My throat is dry. My lungs feel like an elephant sits on them. But I force myself to look upon the stunning beauty’s face with fresh eyes, hoping against all hope that I didn’t imagine her last words.
“Wh-what did you say?” I murmur.
“You heard me.” Her scowl deepens, and she jogs down the stairs, passing me without a second glance. But as she goes, I see her scratching her inner wrist—the same wrist that used to wear the bracelet. Her hair is shorter now, but from this angle, I can imagine she and Lei Ling are the same person.
“Wildcat?” I stumble down a step, but she doesn’t stop.
She keeps walking, and I wheeze out a pained breath. I’m unsure which hurt more—the day I thought she was dead, or today, when she looked at me with nothing but hate.
Five
The Past
Screams woke the boy from his sleep. He smelled smoke. Fire. His first thought was that it was back—the fiery-eyed demon. It had burned his baby sister before his eyes, and now it had returned to burn him too. But it wasn’t the bed beside him on fire. This room was the same as before he went to sleep.
Through the window, moonlight shone bright enough that he could make out the rows of beds and orphan boys still sleeping in them. Smoke curled from beneath the door.
The screams and fire were out there... where the girls slept.
Wildcat.
His heart leaped into his throat as he tossed his blanket and stumbled out of bed. When he wrapped his hand around the doorknob, it sizzled against his skin.Hot. He hissed and shook it. Eyes darting about, he searched for another exit—the window.
“Get up!” he bellowed. “FIRE.”
The boy was almost a man now. His voice had deepened, and his body had changed. Too old for adoption, but too young to live on his own. So he stayed here in the group home with the other rejects. It had never bothered him because here, he had her. His wildcat. Like two peas in a pod, they’d gravitated toward each other upon meeting. And, although she was half a decade younger than him, they’d found so much common ground.
She was a fighter. She was his only friend. For the better part of a decade, she was his life.
They tried to adopt her out, but she always returned because the fire followed her too. And now it was here, for both of them. He would age out of the system in a year, then he would take her, and they’d leave together. He’d find a way to take care of her.
He broke the glass with a chair and then tossed his blanket over the shards. They were two stories up, but he’d climbed down the drainpipe many times before.
“You did this,” snarled one of the boys behind him. “You and your evil pet.”
He didn’t bother defending himself. They never believed. So he climbed out of the window and didn’t look back. The moment his bare feet hit the ground, he ran.
“Wildcat!” he shouted, his throat already hoarse as he jogged around the large house.
The front door burst open with a plume of smoke. People spilled out. One. Two. He tried to catch their identities as they screamed and ran past him. So hard. Too many shadows. Too many screams.
“Wildcat!”
“I’m here,” a feminine voice piped up. He turned and located her in the chaos. They locked eyes, and she ran into his arms.
“Huckleberry.” Her nickname for him sent shivers down his spine. Her thin body trembled in his arms. “It found me. It found me.”
He put her down and smoothed her dark, sweaty hair. Bright eyes full of fear glimmered at him.
“We’re safe,” he said, tugging on her red bracelet. “It can’t get you out here.”
“But Snug...” Her bottom lip trembled. She swallowed her words and sucked in a breath, trying to be brave. The other kids teased her for keeping Snuggles at her age, but it was the only link to her past.
“Where?”
