Forgotten Fires Read online

  Forgotten Fires

  Xoe Meyers - Book Five

  Sara C. Roethle

  Copyright © 2014 by Sara C. Roethle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  1

  “So how does it feel to be a high school drop-out?” Chase asked as we both stared at the ceiling.

  I squinted at the white plaster, then arched my back slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position on the carpet. “I just keep hearing every teacher and adult I've ever known telling me that high school drop-outs are destined to become life-long failures.”

  Chase turned his head and laid his cheek against the carpet so he could look at me. “You're going to get your GED. That's all I have.”

  I snorted as I let my head drop over to face him. “You're twenty-two and you don't even have a job.”

  Chase glared. “I work for your father. That's a job.”

  I laughed and turned my attention back up to the ceiling. “All you have to do is hang out with me. That is not a job.”

  “That's debatable,” Chase replied. “Since we met I've been bitten by a vampire, held hostage in the lair of a psychotic, cannibalistic demon, and I killed my ex-girlfriend. Xoe, you are a lot of work.”

  I sighed. “At least I'm charming enough to make up for it all.”

  Chase laughed. “Also debatable.”

  My dad appeared in the doorway of Chase's room, causing us both to lift our heads from the carpet to look at him.

  He looked down at me with green eyes the exact color of my own, and crossed his arms, wrinkling the corners of his pricey dress-shirt in his best responsible parent impression. “You should be studying, Xoe. You're going to take that test whether you like it or not.”

  I let my head fall back to the carpet with a soft thud. “I suffered through two and a half years of high school, only to come away with nothing. Let me mourn in peace.”

  “It was your choice to drop out,” my dad replied, his words heavy with disapproval.

  “I live in the demon underground, my mother barely speaks to me and doesn't want me in her house, my boyfriend has disappeared, and . . . I just can't go back there,” I finished.

  “You've still heard nothing from him then?” my dad asked, replacing his disapproval with sympathy.

  My arms scratched across the carpet as I shrugged my shoulders on the ground. “Not since I forced him into a vehicle full of werewolves so he wouldn't get himself killed.”

  Chase moved his elbow across the ground to nudge my arm. “Jason loves you,” he comforted, though there was a hitch in his voice as he said it. “He'll come back.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to turn off the strange feelings pulsing through my mind. I'd never been an anxious person, but in the past few months, I'd learned what true anxiety felt like. I took a deep breath and tried to think of a reply for Chase. Normally I'd be having such a conversation with Lucy and Allison, but with them busy with school and normal life, Chase and my dad had to be my stand-in girlfriends. They tried, but couldn't quite fit the bill.

  I pictured Allison in my head. Given the chance, she would tell me to stop whining, and Lucy would be hard at work figuring out a solution to my problems. If the boys had taken some lessons from the girls, I probably wouldn't still be moping about on a bedroom floor of questionable cleanliness.

  “You both need to get up and get out of this house,” my dad announced.

  With an exaggerated sigh, Chase stood, towering over my prostrate form at 6'1”. He offered me a hand up, which I took grudgingly. We then stood looking at my dad, waiting for an explanation.

  My dad rolled his eyes. “Go. I will not harbor slugs in my house.”

  “Gee dad, love you too,” I quipped.

  My dad stood aside and pointed a stern finger in the general direction of the front door.

  Great. I'd already been kicked out of my mom's house, and now I was being kicked out of my dad's. At least in this situation I'd be allowed to come back . . . probably.

  I followed Chase down the hall toward the front door, trailing my fingers along the freshly repainted walls as I went. A few weeks prior I had practically destroyed my dad's house by making a portal. My grandmother was the only other known demon with the skill, but she didn't leave destruction in her wake. I was strictly banned from portal making until we could figure out what I was doing wrong.

  I'd destroyed my mom's house too, but my dad assured me that the damages had been repaired. I'd probably never get to see for myself if the house was okay. My throat tightened at the thought. I knew the events in my life were difficult for my loved ones to cope with, but I never thought I'd see the day when my mom couldn't bear to be near me. I knew she was just afraid, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier for me to deal with.

  Chase helped me into my well-worn, brown leather jacket (a hand-me-down from Allison), to cover up the soft white tee shirt I was wearing, then put on his faded green, military style jacket. It would be cold outside because it was still snowy back in Shelby, and the demon underground tended to mirror the weather in the real world. Still, a few months ago I would have been fine going out into the cold in my light-weight, hunter green tee shirt, but my demon hot-flashes had finally settled down.

  I breathed in the cool air as we stepped outside and started walking. The exact mechanics of why it was currently cold in the underground still confused me, but I'd learned that the demon world was actually a parallel plane to the world of humans, like if the earth had a vast underground cave system filled with demons. Only, if you dug down in the real world, the demons wouldn't actually be there. You couldn't see humans from the underground, and humans couldn't see demons unless someone summoned one of us. The whole summoning thing was another confusing convention that I didn't quite understand.

  Besides summoning, the only other way for full-blooded demons to see the human world was portals. Portals could allow full demons to travel above ground, or to any other realms for that matter, without all of the pesky drawbacks of summoning. Without portals, only those with a portion of human blood running through their veins could go to the human world, and even then only a few of them had the power to do so. My dad was one such demon. I, on the other hand, was currently stuck unless my dad sent me up, or I wanted to destroy his house again. We really needed to figure out the problem with my portals.

  Chase grabbed my sleeve and pulled me aside as I nearly walked right into a mailbox. Yes, demons get mail too.

  “Did you just venture off into Xoe land again?” Chase asked jokingly.

  I'd been spacing out a lot lately. I couldn't help it. I had a lot on my mind.

  “Where do you think Jason went?” I asked distantly for the billionth time.

  Chase shrugged as we continued walking. “He's a big, scary vampire, Xoe. He can take care of himself.”

  I looked down at my sneakers as we walked. “I know. I just don't understand why he left. You'd think he could have at least written me a letter so I would know what's going on.”

  Chase sighed. We'd had this conversation many times before. “He'll come back.”
/>   I glanced over at Chase as we walked, feeling guilty for making him listen to my incessant whining about Jason, when he was probably the last person that wanted to hear it. He'd finally cut his black hair, and it was now short enough that you could barely tell how wavy it could be. My pale blonde hair fell limply past my shoulders, longer than I'd had it in years.

  I wanted to ask Chase if he thought that Jason had somehow found out about our kiss, but I bit my tongue. I still didn't know what the kiss meant to me, and I was so not ready to talk about it with Chase. He'd let the whole thing go regardless. I'd been delirious with blood-loss, and he had saved my life. End of story.

  We reached the steps of the large, gold-brick library and sat down side-by-side. The library's front steps had become our regular hangout since I'd been banished to the underworld. It was probably a strange place to choose, since we'd killed Chase's ex-girlfriend behind the building, but I liked it anyhow.

  I leaned my shoulder against Chase's and watched the demons as they walked by. Most looked like normal humans, but there was the occasional red pair of eyes, or set of full-body scales mixed in with the crowd. No one paid us much mind, which was a comforting feeling in its own right. Sometimes it was nice to feel invisible.

  My phone buzzed obnoxiously in my jacket pocket, disturbing the peaceful moment. It's strange, but I get perfect reception from most places in the underground. Maybe the demons had their own cell phone towers.

  I checked my texts to see a new one from Allison. I almost ignored it, not feeling in the mood for talking, but went ahead and opened it. I could always just reply later.

  The message read, “Hey Xoe, do you remember that girl Claire that was in our Biology class?”

  I let out a huff of frustration, then replied facetiously, “Gee Allison, no hey, how are you doing? I know your mom disowned you and your boyfriend is missing, but what's important now is if you remember a girl named Claire.”

  I pushed send, then rolled my eyes at Chase as I waited for a reply.

  My phone buzzed again and I looked down. “She's dead. She was murdered.”

  I paused for a few heartbeats, unsure of how to reply. I didn't actually remember who Claire was, and now I felt awful for not remembering.

  The phone buzzed again. “This feels weird to me, Xoe. Too much has happened.”

  The reply was cryptic as best, but I understood. It probably wasn't wise to admit over text that we had been involved in a few . . . disappearances. Nothing had come back to bite us yet, but a part of me was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “I'll try to come up,” I replied finally.

  My phone buzzed again almost instantly. “Good. I'll be home.”

  Chase watched my expression, worry clear in his dark gray eyes. “What's going on, Xoe?”

  I smiled weakly at him. “Sometimes I forget that you don't just read texts over my shoulder like Allison and Lucy do.”

  “Um, sorry for not reading your personal conversations?” he offered.

  I stood. “A girl was killed in Shelby, and Allison has a bad feeling about it . . . but when we ask my dad to send us up we're just going to say that I want to see Allison and Lucy. Deal?”

  “Maybe we shouldn't-” he began, but I had already started walking.

  I really wasn't being arrogant in thinking that this girl's murder somehow involved me and my twisted little world. There was at least a fifty-fifty chance . . . no, make that sixty-forty . . . seventy-thirty? I shook my head as I walked. A demon's work is never done.

  2

  “Absolutely not,” my dad said without even looking up at me.

  He was sitting at what had replaced his little alchemy table. The new one had metal legs and a smooth glass tabletop, and looked horribly out of place with all the arcane-looking apparatus covering its shiny top. I had no idea what my dad was making, but it was probably just a special order from someone. He sold his concoctions in the underground for an insanely high price.

  Dorrie was standing at his shoulder, handing him components without him having to ask. Her sparkly, white skin and long, translucent hair glistened as as the contents in the mortar went up in flame. She still wore the white jumpsuit I'd first met her in, though we'd convinced her to wash it a few times.

  We were yet to figure out how to get Dorrie back to the dream realm. She was a driver, sort of a golem made by demons, and was never supposed to leave the dream world to begin with. I had stolen her accidentally, though she didn't seem to blame me. I sighed as she watched my dad's work, her eyes sparkling in excitement. Yet another innocent person's life I had screwed up.

  “Dad, you said you wouldn't harbor slugs,” I argued. “I just want to see my friends.”

  “We could bring them down here?” he offered as he ground up what looked like a piece of coal in the basin of a little iron mortar.

  “I'd love to meet Lucy, Dumpling,” Dorrie chimed in happily, turning her brilliant blue eyes to me.

  I offered Dorrie an apologetic smile. She'd met Allison during a brief visit, but could only meet Lucy if she came down, since Dorrie was confined to my dad's house. Given that she looked like she was made of ceramic and diamonds, Dorrie couldn't really blend in with a crowd. If the other demons found out she'd left the dream world, even unwillingly, she would be unmade. I wasn't sure what “un-making” entailed, but I knew I didn't want it to happen to Dorrie.

  “We'll just be at Allison's house, I swear,” I pleaded as I turned back to my dad.

  When he didn't respond, I crossed my arms and began tapping my foot on the carpet until he put down what he was doing and faced me.

  “Why won't you let me go?” I asked, my face hot with irritation.

  His shoulders sagged as he sighed. “It's not safe.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “You'll let me wander around the demon underworld on my own, but the human world isn't safe?”

  “It would be very difficult for Jason to get down here without demonic help,” he replied in frustration, though his answer only served to add to my confusion.

  “We want to find Jason,” I replied a little shrilly, “not hide from him.”

  My dad looked at me like I was being stupid. “He disappeared for a reason, did he not? I'm not sure what happened between the two of you, but I'd venture to say that he's probably angry. Angry vampires can be dangerous.”

  “Jason would never hurt me,” I answered, shocked by the implication. “And wait, why is he automatically the angry one? I could be the angry one, you know.”

  My dad smirked. “Of the latter I have little doubt, but you've known this vampire for a relatively short period of time. He could very well have just been behaving because he had you. Now without you, who knows?”

  “I know,” I stated firmly, pointing a finger at my chest. “I know Jason, and he would never hurt me.”

  My dad turned back to his work, and I almost thought the conversation was over when he asked, “Would you be able to hurt him to protect yourself or Chase?”

  I paused for a moment as I considered his question. “I wouldn't let him hurt either of us, if that's what you're asking. Though he would never try in the first place.”

  My dad stood and put his hands on my arms, forcing me to give him my full attention. “Promise me, if you see him, you will be cautious.”

  “Yeah, yeah I promise,” I mumbled as Chase came into the room. His timing alluded to the fact that he'd been eavesdropping out in the hall the entire time. So much for not snooping into my private conversations.

  My dad let go of my arms and grabbed my hand, not looking terribly happy. I held out my free hand to Chase, who took it without a word. My dad's hand felt clammy in mine. If I didn't know any better I'd say he was nervous, but nervous about what? I had the sudden feeling of vertigo, then we were standing in front of Allison's house.

  “I'll be back to get you in two hours,” my dad said before disappearing in another puff of gray smoke.

  I walked up the gravel driv
eway with Chase in tow to knock on Allison's bright purple front door. I looked up at the rest of the house while I waited, hoping that she was actually home and hadn't left because I took too long to come up. The house was three stories, rising far over our heads with its perfect white siding reflecting the sun. Growing up, the house had seemed like a mansion. Now it seemed somehow smaller. Funny how that happens.

  The door swung inward to reveal Allison, looking tidy even though she was still wearing her red silk pajama set. Her normally long, honey-blonde hair now ended just above her shoulders.

  “I think I have the wrong house,” I joked as she posed, obviously wanting me to comment on her drastic haircut.

  “Short hair is in,” she explained before grabbing my hand and pulling me inside with a quick nod hello to Chase.

  Everything in Allison's house is expensive looking, and I'd always felt slightly uncomfortable because of it. The familiar fear of breaking something that I couldn't in a million years pay to replace settled itself into the back on my mind as I glanced around at the creamy white walls and shiny, expensive furniture. The monstrous, flat-screen TV had been muted, but still played some show that seemed to be focused on food.

  We went to sit on the cushy leather sofa in the middle of the room, leaving Chase to take the recliner. He didn't seem upset about the seating arrangement in the least as he pulled the lever on the side of the chair so he could lean back and close his eyes.

  Realizing I had been watching Chase for longer than was normal, I turned to face Allison. “Now tell me about what happened to Claire,” I pressed.

  Allison tried to do her normal hair flip, but it fell short since her hair could no longer fall behind her shoulder. “Gee Xoe, no Allison how are you? Allison how have you been since I abandoned you and Lucy to finish high school without me?”