I looked away, suddenly unsure what an appropriate social response might be. The feelings that ripped through me were too jagged and confusing to sort out now, and the exhaustion wave was cresting inside me, drowning me in a need to lay my head down and rest. He felt that, of course; it was almost impossible for me to hide that sort of exhaustion from Luis, as closely as we were connected. He hugged Ibby and stood up, with her hand in his. The light from the fire caught and flickered on his skin, especially his bared arms, where flame tattoos twisted in skillfully inked patterns.
I watched the tattoos flex and move as he walked closer. It was easier than looking into his face.
“You’re tired,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “I’m taking you home, Cass.”
I nodded, because it sounded like a very acceptable idea. Isabel and I were almost on eye level, since I was sitting down, and when I glanced at her I saw she was watching me with wide, luminous eyes. I couldn’t read a thing from her expression, and her emotions were closely concealed within as well.
Until she threw her arms around my neck and hugged me.
I embraced her in return and put her on my lap. “Hush,” I whispered, even though she was making no sound at all. “Everyone’s all right. Even us.”
“I’m sorry,” Ibby said. “I tried—He was so mad, Cassie. I couldn’t make him stop. He thinks you want to hurt us. Hurt him. I just couldn’t make him understand.”
“Nor should you have to,” I said. “It was brave of you to try, little one. And to get the others to safety.”
She shrugged that off. “It’s only fire,” she said. “That’s easy.”
“For you. Not so for others.” I nodded toward the firefighters and their hoses. “They risk their lives against fire daily, without a scrap of power to protect them. Don’t underestimate how dangerous your element can be, Ibby. Even to you, if you lose control.”
She nodded, but not in a way that meant she really understood. I wondered when she’d learned to be so diplomatic; it wasn’t a child’s usual response. I supposed that part of the training—no, the abuse—she’d undergone had taught her how to avoid conflict. It was sad, because Ibby had been such a forthright girl when I’d first met her.
I sighed. “Yes, I believe it’s time to go home.” I kissed Ibby’s clean, sweet-smelling hair, all too aware that I reeked of smoke, singed cloth, and very human sweat.
Luis lifted Ibby off my lap and offered me his hand. I took it, and felt an immediate surge of fresh energy cascade into my body. “Stop,” I said. “You need—”
“Don’t tell me what I need, chica,” Luis said. “I know, believe me, and it involves a beer, a shower, and a bed, in that order. But anyway, this will keep us both going a while longer.”
Luis’s truck was parked a few blocks down—a big, black, shiny thing, with painted-on flames down the sides. Still flawless, even after all the damage the two of us had heaped on it—or else it was a new replacement. I wasn’t sure. Likely the latter, I decided, since the interior smelled and felt fresh. He hadn’t told me, and I hadn’t bothered to ask.
My motorcycle, a new Victory Vision in smoky silver, was parked just a little distance away. Luis, without a word to me, slid a ramp down from the tailgate of the truck and walked the bike up into the bed, carefully laying it down on a padded blanket. When he got into the cab with Ibby and me, he caught my stare and shrugged. “What?” he asked. “You’d just get up in the middle of the night and come back for it anyway. Better do it now so you don’t wander around scaring people at four in the morning.”
He was right about that. I loved my motorcycle with a devotion I reserved for only a few things, and I knew I wouldn’t rest easy unless I’d made sure it was taken safely with me. Having successfully second-guessed me, Luis was almost grinning. I schooled my face to its customary mask of indifference, and wiped my hands again with a moist cloth from the package sitting on the dashboard. My pale skin still looked ashen with grime. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get clean.
Luis started the truck, and the engine caught with a deep rumble. Air-conditioning blasted out of the vents and bathed me in a soothing chill, and I sighed in pleasure. Instead of putting the truck into gear, Luis reached for the cloth in my hand. “You missed a spot,” he said, and gently wiped my face with the moist fabric. It felt ... unexpectedly intimate. I blinked, and found myself smiling, just the smallest amount. He stared at me for a few long seconds, then handed the cloth back. “That’s better.”
“Yes,” I said. “Better.”
I was acutely aware of him—his warmth, his strength, his power—all the way home.
I lived in an apartment—a spare, empty place with only a few sticks of furniture and the occasional mistaken gifts people had given me to try to “warm it up.” I didn’t understand the need to stamp a personality on a set of rooms that was, essentially, temporary. It was shelter, and a place to rest. A storage unit with a bed and some hanging space for clothing.
For instance: I had no idea why I would need a ceramic statue of an angel (a gift from a well-meaning neighbor who’d been moving away), but Luis had said it was polite to accept. It was, in fact, the only thing I possessed that was of no practical use, which made it seem awkward and singularly strange. I thought often of throwing it away, but the more I stared at the thing’s serene porcelain face, the more irritated I became with it. Becoming human, I’d discovered, seemed to come with a thousand invisible strings tugging at you, and each and every one of them conferred an obligation, and unexpected benefits.
Luis didn’t take me back to my apartment after all, so I didn’t have to gaze at the blank-eyed angel and wonder how long the grace period would be before I could safely dispose of it.
Instead, Luis took me home—to hishome. This home had once belonged to his brother Manny Rocha, my first Warden partner, and in contrast to the awkward sterility of my apartment, it felt ... warm. Permanent, and saturated with the loving life of those who’d inhabited it. Manny’s and Angela’s deaths had stained it, but Luis was slowly repairing that psychic damage, and the house now felt ... welcoming. Even to me, even with the guilt that always struck me when faced with the reality of Manny’s and Angela’s absence from the world.
“Yo, Ib,” Luis said as we entered the front door. “You want some dinner?”
“No, thank you,” she said, primly polite. “I’m tired. I just want to sleep.”
“Right there with you, kiddo.” He kissed the top of her head. “You need me to tuck you in?”
“I don’t need tucking in, Tío,” she said. “I’m almost grown-up.” His smile faded, and I saw the concern in his eyes as she walked away.
It wasn’t, I understood now, the correct developmental behavior for a child of Isabel’s age. And yet it didn’t seem there was any way to undo what had been done to her, body and soul, during that time after she’d been taken from us. We still didn’t know all that had happened; Ibby was reluctant to talk about it, and Luis wanted to respect her wishes.
But it worried us both, deeply, that she seemed to have aged so quickly.
She was almost to her bedroom door when she spun around and ran back to Luis, threw herself into his arms, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Good night, Tío,” she said, and then wiggled free to run to me and receive a hug, though I could tell that she did it more from duty than enthusiasm. “Good night, Cassie.”
“Sweet dreams,” I said, which was something I had heard Ibby’s mother, Angela, say to her once. I missed Angela. She would have known what to say, what to do ... but it appeared I had not done so badly, because Ibby smiled and kissed me on the cheek, too.
Then she ran down the hall, suddenly acting her age, and shut her bedroom door with a slam. Luis winced and shook his head. “Kids,” he said. “They don’t know how to shut a door without breaking the hinges, but I guess I shouldn’t complain; at least she’s not breaking my heart so much as she was. So. Food?”