Page 70 of Star-Crossed
The slanting rain. The asphalt as curvy and slick as a snake’s back. The kaleidoscope of diamond-like raindrops catching his headlights as his car somersaulted into the ditch.
The strange, muffled interval that followed the terrible din. How he’d hung there upside down by his seatbelt, curiously detached from the whole scene.
How the sound and the pain came together in a flash of screaming red.
Just like the ones he was seeing now.
Glancing down the hill, Cy followed the emergency vehicles, their lights flashing as they raced past the driveway while others peeled off to ascend the winding road leading to Townsend Manse’s immaculate property.
“There you are.” In the cacophony, Cy had seen neither the back door of the main house open nor Ethan crossing the sprawling Italianate piazza behind the manor.
But now he was marching across the unnaturally green lawn as if the devil had a molten meat prod aimed squarely at his ass.
“Why didn’t you pick up?” Ethan asked, eyes shadowed by his glowering brow.
Cy blinked at his friend, feeling a strange sense of detachment.
He hadn’t seen his phone. Couldn’t even remember the last time he’d looked at it. He’d been so sunk into the vibrational Zen of a chainsaw that even Lyra’s presence had taken an inordinate amount of time to register.
He stepped closer to her without quite knowing why and didn’t miss the surprise that crossed Ethan’s face when Lyra reached out and rested a hand on his forearm.
He cleared his throat. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a wildfire—”
The screeching of brakes swallowed the rest of the word as Gabe and Fawkes came roaring to a stop, each in their respective service trucks. But not before scattering leaves Cy had spent a good portion of the afternoon corralling into orderly piles after assuring Caryn Townsend that she wasn’t being charged for the extra time.
Time Cy had needed to kill while Jack worked on the old ash at Star-Crossed. Immature? Definitely.
Effective? Apparently.
Both men jumped out and began tossing gear on the lawn as more private vehicles came careening up the drive.
The sound seemed to summon the manor’s owner, who stormed out of the house, her platinum bob uncharacteristically mussed and her eyes flashing.
“Look at those tire marks! I just had a new concrete drive put in, and now look at it!”
Ethan gave his mother a sharp look that reset her attitude almost immediately. Clearing her throat, she smoothed her hair and voice simultaneously.
“I mean, while I’m more than happy for our property to be used during volunteer fire department drills, I was told that I would be given advance noticebefore—”
“This isn’t a drill.” Ethan bent to grab a bundle that Gabe had chucked at his feet. “There’s a wildfire at Myrtle and Vee’s.”
The tang of adrenaline was metallic on Cy’s tongue as he was suddenly aware of the column of dark smoke rising from the direction of Vee and Myrtle’s land.
He’d smelled what he thought was burning leaf smoke earlier. A far from uncommon scent this time of year, but he’d been so wrapped up in his feverishly immature fantasies of high school vengeance against her imaginary suitors that he hadn’t even noticed.
Caryn’s complexion paled, and she reached out to grab her son’s arm. “Is everyone all right?”
“They’re fine,” Ethan said grimly. “But the wind is blowing the blaze right toward town.” He stuffed his legs into the heavy canvas pants and yanked them up his hips. “If that old barn goes up—”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t need to.
They’d tried to convince Myrtle to demolish the decrepit building despite her insistence that—like her—it was a historic structure. Cy had even pointed out that they could rebuild it using the trees on their property that had been felled by last winter’s storms.
Myrtle, however, had been adamant. She wanted to restore it, and the time and effort she’d already put into the project made it difficult for Cy to argue with her.
