Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1) Read online

  My head was spinning. “With feathers?”

  “Well, it was really bad in the beginning. I looked like a fucking bird standing on two legs. Do you have any idea how itchy feathers are? I couldn’t wear clothes, and I couldn’t even get them to fall off for days at a time. Infernals still laugh about it.” She flinched, a distant look on her face as she remembered. “But over time, I learned to control them. For the most part.” When she said that, her skin began to stretch on the back of her neck, and a colorful peacock feather came out of it. It fell on the back of my couch, and if she noticed, she didn’t react.

  “Interesting. I didn’t know maggots could do spells.”

  “We can’t up here. Down there, there’s a lot of magic waiting to be used,” she said, almost sadly. “If I could have done spells here, the bitch would have been dead by now. Witch.”

  “So, sprites have enhanced senses, too?” Like I said, I never read about this anywhere, and I was pretty sure Daddy never told me about it, either. He only ever told me about dangerous creatures, and sprites weren’t considered dangerous.

  “Not really. I have enhanced magical senses. I can sort of sense magic, especially if I know it well, and track it sometimes. I don’t know—I never tried it before I came up here. It took me three days to find her the first time.” She stopped to take a breath for a second. “So why Sassy? What’s your real name? Who’s your dad? I’ve never seen you in Hell before.”

  She came at me with the questions so fast, I automatically just answered them.

  “Sapphire’s the name. My dad’s a dick, and I’ve only ever been to Hell twice. I’ve lived up here my whole life. But how exactly does that work? How do you sense magic?”

  “Much like I’ve been sensing good emotions from humans the past few days. I think it has something to do with the spell the bitch put on me. Witch. I can understand music like it’s all broken down in numbers. I can actually see the patterns of a melody in my head when I hear it—it’s crazy. Everything I ever wanted before I died. Maybe the heightened sense spilled onto magic?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. But you’ve got a lot of it, by the way.”

  “You can sense mine, too?”

  “Oh, yeah. You’re brimming with hellfire, but it’s different from the other offspring of the Fallen. They’re…” She didn’t know how to finish the thought, but I had just the question to ask her. I jumped on the couch and turned to her, legs tucked beneath me. Only when I moved like that did I realize how much my arms were hurting from the fight.

  “Please, please, please tell me you could feel Lexar’s power, too.” She nodded. I smiled. “Give it to me. Who’s stronger?”

  “Well, I…”

  “C’mon, just give it to me. I can handle it.”

  “He is.”

  Motherfucker. “What? No way. Just no way in hell. I am much stronger than him!”

  “Sorry,” she offered and stuffed another cracker in her mouth. “But it can be residue from Hell’s magic hanging onto him. You said you’ve only been twice, and you don’t have any on you. It tends to stick to one’s skin for a while.”

  That certainly sounded better. “I’ll take it.” I sat back down and ate another cracker. “You might be the smartest maggot I’ve ever met, you know.”

  “Why do you call me maggot? I’m not a maggot.”

  “No, just a Feel Good Leech,” I said with a grin. “I call all of your kind that. Nothing personal.”

  “Right. Sassy Pants,” she whispered under her breath. I wasn’t even mad.

  “Let’s back up for a bit. How fast can you find the witch again with your magic senses?” That was the reason she was there in the first place. As cruel as that sounded. But I was doing her a favor, too. She wanted revenge, and that was exactly what she was going to get when I killed that witch.

  “I don’t know. Right now, I can’t feel anything. She must be in hiding.” I raised my brows. “She did this before, too, but it slips. Whatever she’s hiding under, it disappears sometimes, and I get a very strong sense of where she is. Like in which direction.”

  Oh, shit. “Direction?”

  “Yeah—like east or west. And then I follow it. The closer I get, the clearer the feeling.” She pulled her lips inside her mouth and looked down at her lap. “I can still totally help you, though.”

  I sighed. “So, we’re just going to walk around the city blind?”

  “Not blind. I have my magic sense, remember?” She smiled and batted her lashes at me.

  I was going to ask her what was up with her bangs and how she got them not to move like that, but I was cut off by the knock on the door.

  My entire body became tense. I didn’t get many visitors. I didn’t do boyfriends, and I didn’t really have anyone who’d come and visit me at this time of the day.

  Could it be the witch? I wasn’t that lucky, was I?

  I looked at Feather Girl. She must have thought the same thing because she shook her head to tell me that it wasn’t the witch. Or Lexar.

  Since it wasn’t those two, there was only one other person it could be. Curious, I went to open the door, and I was right. Chelsea stood right in front of me.

  That wasn’t all of it. She had two suitcases at her side and a really flushed look on her face.

  “That’s it,” she informed me and pushed me to the side to walk into my apartment. I looked at the hallway, both sides, to make sure nobody else was there. “That’s it—I am done.”

  I turned around and looked at Chelsea, who was now in the middle of my living room, hands on her hips.

  “You’re done?”

  She nodded. “For good this time.”

  Right. I grabbed her suitcases and dragged them inside before I closed the door. “And what are you done with?”

  “Not what—who,” she said, and it all became crystal clear. “I am done with Andrew. By God, I am so done with it I can’t even…” She put a hand on her face for a second, then composed herself. “Who’s that?” She didn’t even turn around, just waved her hand toward the couch.

  “Feather Girl,” I said, while she just stared like she had no idea what the hell to do. “Feather Girl, this is Chelsea, my best friend.” Who was done with her boyfriend, apparently.

  “It’s actually Annabelle. That’s my name,” Feather Girl said and stood up. She offered a hand to Chelsea, and she shook it.

  “Good luck with that. I was Cheetah Girl for the first year after I met her,” Chelsea said.

  She’d been Cheetah Girl because she’d worn a cheetah print shirt in college. She kind of had it coming, don’t you think? Plus, when a name gets stuck in my head, it’s very hard to unlearn it.

  “Why are you Feather Girl, anyway?” Chelsea asked after a second.

  Feather Girl looked at me, eyes wide with panic.

  “Oh, Chelsea knows.”

  That surprised her. “She knows?”

  “Yep. All of it. C’mon, show her your feathers.” It was actually a bit exciting for me, too. I didn’t have a lot of paranormal friends, just a couple witches that I sometimes hung out with, and Chelsea rarely saw anything really cool aside from my fire. You could tell she was excited, too.

  Feather Girl looked like she was about to pass out any second. She actually stared at the door for a bit, like she was contemplating making a run for it, but in the end, she raised her hand and reluctantly let a colorful feather slip from under the skin of her palm.

  “Holy fuckitty fuck!” said Chelsea, hands on her cheeks. “That is so cool!”

  “It is now. It wasn’t in the beginning,” Feather Girl said, crumbling the feather in her hand. The next second, it was gone.

  Chelsea turned to me, eyes glossy with awe. “Why can’t you do something as cool as that?”

  “What? I can make fire with my hands,” I reminded her, then showed her for good measure. I raised my hand and flames ignited on my palm. I let them dance around for a bit like they were trying to seduce Chelsea into thinking they were a lot cool
er than Feather Girl’s feathers.

  “Show me again,” my best friend said to Feather Girl and ignored me completely.

  “Whatever,” I mumbled and put out my fire.

  For the next couple minutes, she made Feather Girl demonstrate her coolness over and over again, and she even asked if she could sprout feathers out her eyeballs. I was interested in that, too, but it was a negative.

  That wasn’t the end of it. “What about your vagina? And your butthole?”

  “Ew! No!” Feather Girl said, wrinkling her nose. That would have been pretty cool, though.

  “Are you done?” I asked them and went to sit on the couch by my crackers. They both sat, too. “Chelsea, mind telling me what happened with Andrew?”

  Andrew Cortez had been her boyfriend for the past year and a half. I never really liked that guy, but it had to do with the fact that I got to see Chelsea half as much as usual when he came into the picture, not because I had anything against him personally. I hadn’t even minded his existence for the past couple of months. Guess you could say he was starting to grow on me. Like Feather Girl’s feathers.

  “What always happens. The fucker was flirting with about seven girls online. I read it all and my eyeballs are still bleeding. ’Member when I caught him talking to this chick five months ago? He said it was his boss and he was after that promotion, and I didn’t even believe him. I should have left his ass then,” she said.

  I didn’t need to look at her face to know how angry she was. The tone of her voice said it all. Then she pointed her index finger at my chest.

  “And you are a terrible friend!”

  “What? How am I—” She didn’t even let me finish.

  “How could you let me not dump him five months ago? What the hell is the matter with you?”

  My jaw touched my lap. “How dare you?! I told you he was an asshole, didn’t I? Since the day you met him, I told you. And then when he moved in with you, I told you it was a mistake!” I had told her this many, many times. They dated for a year before he moved in with Chelsea—that wasn’t nearly enough time for decisions like that, but did she listen? Of course not.

  “But you didn’t stop me,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s your job to stop me from making stupid decisions. It comes with your job description.”

  First of all, I had no idea there was a job description for best friends. And second… “If I’d tried, you’d have slapped the shit out of me, and you know it.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So what? That’s too high a price to pay for your best friend?”

  Ugh, I hated when we did this. It was so exhausting.

  “Let me rephrase that: you would have slapped the shit out of me and done whatever the fuck you wanted afterward. What did you want me to do, chain you in my bathroom?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Chelsea said. “A much better idea than letting me go back to him, you bitch.”

  “How the hell am I the bitch here?”

  “You’re the bitch here,” said Feather Girl. I had almost forgotten she was sitting there, at the edge of the couch, right behind Chelsea. I murdered her in seven different ways with my eyes. “What? It’s the truth. You shouldn’t have stopped trying to at least talk some sense into her. You’re her best friend.”

  “Thank you!” Chelsea shouted and turned toward her. “See? You get it. Maybe you should be my best friend from now on.”

  For the love of everything holy…

  “I totally would, but your best friend is going to kill me as soon as we find the bitch. Sorry—witch.” Feather Girl even smiled apologetically.

  Chelsea spun around again. “You’re going to kill her?”

  “She’s a maggot.” She wasn’t going to blame me for that, too, was she?

  “But she’s a nice maggot.”

  “Yes, I can see that. It makes no difference. She’s from Down There.”

  “I suppose it’s pointless to ask you to stop calling me maggot?” asked Feather Girl, but we were a bit busy at the moment.

  “Of course, it makes a difference. It’s hard enough to find people who are nice, let alone maggots.”

  “She feeds off people’s good emotions!” I said incredulously. “She’s a Feel-Good Leech!”

  “Leech is better, I guess,” Feather Girl said, looking down at the floor for a second. “Actually, no—it’s worse.”

  “So what? You feed on cows, don’t you? And chickens. And fish, too. How’s that any different?”

  My best friend, ladies and gentlemen.

  “Because they aren’t people!” You guys see where I’m going with this, don’t you? Cows are not people.

  “Leave the girl alone, Sassy. She’s done nothing to you,” Chelsea said.

  “But she will do something to you once she gets the chance.” Maggots couldn’t suck feelings out of me because technically, I was like them, but Chelsea wasn’t.

  “That’s cool. I won’t be having any good emotions anytime soon,” Chelsea said. “I’m staying over, by the way, until Andrew finds a place of his own.”

  “Yep. I got that.” From the two suitcases by the door.

  “I gave him two weeks. Then, I’m kicking him out.”

  “Why two weeks? Two hours sounds more reasonable. It’s your place, isn’t it?” Feather Girl asked.

  But she didn’t really know Chelsea. Her heart was as big as her mouth. She’d never kick somebody out in the streets like that, not even Andrew. He’d sold his place when he moved in with her, so he had nowhere else to go.

  “Yeah, but he has nobody here. Not even friends he could go to.” Chelsea flinched. “Guess that should have been a red flag since the beginning.”

  “Let me guess—he’s hot, isn’t he?” Feather Girl said with a grin.

  Chelsea returned it. “Hotter than Hell’s fire.” She pointed her thumb at me.

  I rolled my eyes. Yeah, Andrew was hot, but that’s not the only reason why Chelsea had been with him. He adored her, it was easy to see. I didn’t get why he even talked to other women at all when his eyes literally sparkled when he looked at Chelsea.

  “Nice,” Feather Girl said and hi-fived my best friend. Me? I just stuffed another cracker in my mouth.

  Was it just me or were they bonding? I already felt like the third wheel.

  “Okay, enough talk about Andrew. Chelsea, you can stay here as long as you want. Feather Girl, I’m going to need you to do your thing now and start searching for the witch. In the meantime, you’re going to help me do some research on evil spirits.”

  I stood up and went to my library, ignoring the pain in my limbs. It had lessened, but it was still there. Another couple hours and I would be brand new. The library was a tiny room next to mine, probably meant as a closet, but I didn’t need it and I had a lot of books I’d gathered the past few years, so I just put them there and called it a library.

  I left the girls talking about Lexar, of all people, because Feather Girl was telling Chelsea about what had happened at the house with the witch. And, of course, he came up. I tuned them out while I searched the titles of the books, most of which were interpretations of Books of the Fallen, but some held information about different creatures, too. Like the one I’d gotten from the sea witch who lived across the street. Food was not her magic—water was—but she still made a mean sourdough bread and I’d never eaten a better jerky since that time she brought me some after Christmas. She hadn’t had use for the book of creatures her aunt had left her, so she’d given it to me. I’d never read it, but I had the feeling I’d find something about evil spirits in there.

  I took the book and a few others back to the living room, only to be caught off guard again.

  “Did you know this, Sassy?” Chelsea asked, completely serious.

  “Know what?”

  “That Nevermore doesn’t hang out in Hell all the time.”

  “Of course, he does. Where else would he hang out?”

  “He doesn’t. He comes a
nd goes, but most of the time, he’s up here,” Feather Girl said. “Why Nevermore?”

  “Edgar Allan Poe’s raven. Lexar means raven in the language of the Fallen,” Chelsea explained. Realization registered in Feather Girl’s eyes, and her mouth opened into a perfect O.

  “How do you know so much? And how are you not freaked out by it?” she asked Chelsea. “I would have been. I was the whole first year in Hell.”

  “Eh, it’s no big deal.” Chelsea shrugged. “Sassy told me everything. It wasn’t that much of a surprise—I read a lot of fantasy as a teenager, so I was kind of ready to believe. But wait, so where does Lexar live? Because we’d have known if he was here.”

  “This is a big city,” Feather Girl said with a shrug.

  “No, I would have felt him.” I’d have come across him at least once in the past year. I went all over the city searching for maggots.

  But wait a minute. Nevermore didn’t live in Hell?

  I dropped the books on the coffee table and sat back down on the couch. “How accurate is that information? I need you to think very carefully—how much time does he spend up here in a year?”

  “More than half, I’d say. And word spreads fast in the Underworld. They don’t lie about these things. All the other children of the Fallen live there. Well, except one of Samayaza’s sons. He lives somewhere in San Francisco, I think.”

  Huh. We’d never really talked about it, Lexar and I. Not even the first time we met. I just assumed he lived close to his dad, and he never really said otherwise. Just like he never mentioned his ex-girlfriend. Ugh.

  What the hell did he even do up here?

  “So, what’s it like in Hell? Do you guys have food and such?” Chelsea asked, but it had already gone far enough.