Page 86 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“Cass, what are you doing? We have to go!””
Jonathan bent toward me, watching with a puzzled expression as I flattened myself against the coarse wood floor. I pressed every part of myself into the boards, nudging my nose, my eyes, my chest, my skin into the warming, familiar surface.
“Come on,” I murmured, pushing my mind to open up further and absorb any remnants of what I had lost. The memories I could gather only came in patches. The touch of a hand, a whiff of a hemlock bough, and a brief melody. He hadn’t taken much, but my earliest memories involved my father. The wood boards grew hotter beneath my touch. On the other side of the counter, the couch burst into flames.
“Please,” I begged the floor, but my assailant had taken most of my lost memories with him over the water. A few more scattered images sank into my mind, but soon I was just a person lying on a burning floor.
“Cassandra, come on!”
A loud pop sounded as a pipe broke in the kitchen. Vaguely, I registered that I was moving— hoisted over someone’s shoulder. Jonathan’s. He carried me out of the house like a sack of wheat and set me down in the passenger seat of the Prius, some fifty yards from the fire.
“No, no, no!” My voice returned with a vengeance. “What are you doing? I wasn’t done!”
But my protests sounded more like sobs as I watched the flames grow higher and turn to thick black smoke. A light drizzle was falling, keeping the fire from jumping into the tree branches and swallowing up the forest too. But the house was gone. Memories were gone. Gran was gone.
Tears burned my smoke-reddened eyes and flowed down my cheeks. The house, too, burned—oh-so-brightly as vivid flames danced in and out of the windows, cracking and shattering them all. A symphony of glass.
“Gran,” I whimpered. “Oh, my home.”
“Cassandra.”
The voice was Jonathan’s. His hand found mine, and compassion bloomed through my grief along with remorse and shame as he pulled me close and wrapped an arm around me, tucking me into his safety and warmth. He murmured something under his breath, something that again sounded like but just wasn’t quite Latin.
The drizzle thickened to a hard downpour, and we watched, clinging to each other, as the flames gradually began to give to the wet. A siren sounded in the distance. I pressed my head into Jonathan’s shoulder and keened loudly, allowing my cries to come as they might.
Rage, I discovered, burned as brightly as any fire. Perhaps my tears, like the rain outside, could start to put them out.
27
THE FIRST GOODBYE
She is the pride and I give her the branch.
— ANTHONY RAFTERY, “RAFTERY’S PRAISE OF MARY HYNES”
On Jonathan’s advice, I told the police and firefighters that we had been sleeping when the fire caught, a result of forgetting to open the flue on the fireplace plus some sparks catching on the rugs and upholstery. I didn’tthinkhe was suggesting that I force them to believe me—even if he had, inception of that sort was nearly impossible. Wasn’t it?
Besides, just like his spellcasting, mindwork was in the moment.
A brief incantation from Jonathan ensured that the flue was, in fact, closed, making it that much easier for the fire chief to come to the same conclusion we did. After they had gone, Jonathan drove us back to town.
I sat numbly in the passenger seat of the Prius as we passed Jonathan’s car, parked on the 101 about fifty yards past thedriveway entrance. It must have been where he regained control of himself. Parked the car…and did what? Turned into a cat and rescued me?
I still wasn’t sure what had just happened before the house had gone up in flames.
He pulled to a stop in front of the inn where he was staying, just off Laneda Avenue. We sat in the car for a minute. Numbness descended.
He reached down and covered my hand.
So sorry. I should have told you. I promise I don’t know him.
Again, it was primarily concern that flowed through his fingertips, but as my senses began to sharpen again, I could see that wasn’t all. A jumble of memories filled my mind. Jonathan wasn’t close to his father. In fact, he hadn’t seen him in a very long time, something like fifty or sixty years…
Wait, what? No, that couldn’t be right. My mind was still muddled. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut, then pulled my hand away from his.
“Are you all right?” His voice, burred from the smoke, was tentative. Almost soft.
I sniffed. He smelled of fire, but also something else I had never noticed before. Something extremely feral. Something…feline.
