Fire and Fantasy: a Limited Edition Collection of Epic and Urban Fantasy Page 41

  “Your turn,” Noah said, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “My turn?”

  “To tell me a secret.” The blush had left his face for the most part, but I could still see the embarrassment written in the smile he was trying to hide.

  “I don’t really have any secrets.”

  “Right,” he said sarcastically with a nod.

  I was, of course, lying. I was still holding onto the secret of Tristan, but it didn’t seem like I could open up about that. And then there was the dream I had last night. But that wasn’t exactly a secret, was it? Was it really that big of a deal that I’d dreamt of kissing Noah? No, I told myself, but I still couldn’t tell him. If he once had feelings for me, what would happen if he thought I was starting to develop a crush on him, too? I couldn’t get involved, not when we were planning to head our separate ways after getting our magic back. Or were we? We hadn’t exactly discussed how long we’d hang out together.

  “Why’d you get booted out of Sea Haven?” Noah asked boldly.

  Crap. I shouldn’t have offered to share secrets. If I didn’t tell Noah about Tristan, then no one could hurt him if we got caught. He could plead his innocence. I couldn’t tell him, at least not until we knew we were in the clear.

  “A secret for a secret?” I asked with a raised brow.

  “That’s the way it works.”

  “Then I get to choose which secret to share.”

  I swallowed hard, contemplating what to share with him. His secret deserved a good one in return. The one about me breaking my mom’s vase when I was a kid and lying about it wasn’t good enough. It’s not like that was exactly a secret, anyway. I was ninety-five percent sure my mom knew I was lying and chose to ignore it. What else was worthy of rivaling his secret?

  “Okay, I’ve got one,” I said excitedly, straightening up. I immediately lowered my voice after realizing how loud my statement had come out. “When we were in middle school, I was the one who tied your shoes together during the first day of school assembly.”

  Noah’s jaw legitimately dropped. “You’re kidding me.”

  I shook my head and pressed my lips together, the blush returning to my cheeks. “I was late getting into the gym because I was in the bathroom. You were sitting on the end of the bleachers, and I noticed your shoes were untied. I snuck under the bleachers and tied them together. Honestly? I feel pretty bad about it now.”

  “You should,” he said harshly, but the look on his face told me he was only teasing. Noah glanced at the door and kept his voice low, speaking between gritted teeth. “I chipped a tooth because of you.”

  My hand instinctively shot over my mouth in shock as my eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

  A lopsided smile that sent my heart flipping in my chest again stretched across Noah’s face. “Yeah, I am.”

  “You jerk,” I teased, tossing a pillow his way.

  He simply caught it and threw it back at me, but it missed and landed on the floor next to the bed. “I think I’m going to have to retract what I said before. You don’t deserve the crush I had on you.”

  “You can’t just take that back! It’s fact. You liked me.”

  “I shouldn’t have, knowing you were the one who sent me falling down the bleachers on my first day of eighth grade.” His words made it seem like he was angry at me, but his smile said he was having fun trying to make me feel guilty.

  “Whatever,” I laughed. “It’s still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”

  Noah blushed. He wouldn’t admit it, but I had a sneaking suspicion he agreed with me.

  Just then, the door creaked open. The instinct to hide fell over me so quickly that I ended up rolling off the bed and crashing to the floor.

  “You guys need to be quieter,” Liana scolded.

  Realizing it was only her, I let out a laugh and attempted to stifle it with my hand. I noticed Noah’s body convulsing in giggles as well, though his weren’t audible.

  “You’re lucky the rest of my family is in the kitchen,” Liana hissed, “because I can hear you two laughing from down the hall. You need to keep quiet. I’ll be back in a bit, and I don’t want to hear another peep out of either of you. If you get caught, we’re all dead.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Noah replied, sending me into another fit of laughter. I had to bury my face into the pillow next to me on the floor to keep from being heard.

  Liana turned and shut the door in a huff.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, peeking up from behind the bed.

  Noah and I both fell silent, and I crawled back onto the bed in disappointment. At the very least, the last few minutes had taken my mind off things. In the silence, I let my thoughts drift back to my magic. Glancing out the window, I noticed the sun had fallen low in the sky. It wouldn’t be too long now before darkness settled and we’d be on our way to getting our magic back.

  Twenty-Five

  It was just past midnight when we decided it was safe enough to begin sneaking around town. Noah and I decided to walk to City Hall because we could sneak around better without a vehicle, and we really didn’t want Liana’s parents’ vehicles to get involved anyway. Noah and I dressed in our darkest clothes to minimize the risk of being spotted.

  I stopped Liana when she began digging through her own dresser. “No,” I said with so much conviction that it surprised even me.

  Liana dropped the shirt she was holding back into her dresser and looked up at me.

  “You’re not coming,” I stated flatly.

  “Huh?” she asked quietly as to not alarm her family.

  “You’re not coming,” I hissed back. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t discussed this earlier. I thought it was just something we all silently agreed on. “I already got you involved earlier today, and I don’t want you involved any more. You’ve helped enough.”

  Liana’s face fell. “You don’t want my help?”

  My shoulders dropped. I didn’t mean it that way. “If we get caught… I just don’t want you to get hurt. It’s one thing for us to get caught. It’s another for you. You still have your magic, and they can take that away if they know you’re involved.” I paused. “We’ll be back shortly to drop off the keys. You’ll have your fun tomorrow returning them. But this…it’s more risky.”

  I could see Liana swallow hard in the dim room. As much as I knew she wanted to tag along, I think the idea of losing her magic frightened her. She couldn’t deny my insistence.

  “Okay,” she whispered back, her voice cracking.

  I crossed the few steps over to her and pulled her into a hug. She squeezed me back.

  “I’m really going to miss you,” I whispered into her ear.

  “Me, too. You’ll stay in touch, right?”

  I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it didn’t work. “I’ll try, but I think it’s best if I lay low at first. I don’t want to know what they’ll do if they find out I took my magic outside of Sea Haven.”

  Liana pulled away from me. “It’s a dumb rule anyway. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that to you.”

  This time when I swallowed, it helped a little bit. “I know. Bye, Liana.”

  “Bye, Bree. Bye, Noah,” she whispered back.

  Swinging my backpack over my shoulder, I turned to the window and crawled out, followed by Noah.

  “You ready?” I asked, turning back to him.

  He had his own bag strapped to his back and was struggling to fit through the window. Finally, he landed on solid ground and stood up straight. “Ready.”

  “Let’s do this.”

  Even though I’d stepped out of the window first, Noah ended up being the one to lead the way, taking alleys and dodging street lamps wherever we could. The closer we came to City Hall, the more nervous I became. Something’s going to go wrong. This isn’t going to work, the pessimist inside me repeated.

  No, I told myself. This has to work. I’m not leaving Sea Haven without my magic.

  It took me several blocks
before I realized I was clenching my fists. If I did have my magic right now, the ocean waves nearby would be going mad. At least, I liked to think so. I didn’t actually have that kind of power. Noah didn’t notice when I pulled the vial of ocean water out from under my black shirt and gripped onto it as we zigzagged ourselves through the streets of Sea Haven. Though I knew I couldn’t influence the water inside, something about keeping it close to my heart left me with a sense of comfort.

  I let the vial fall back under the collar of my shirt. By the end of the night, I thought, I’ll be able to control that sea water again. Then all of this will be worth it.

  The nervous patter of my heart returned when I spotted City Hall ahead of us. Street lamps brightened the parking lot on the side of the building and at the front entrance, but the lights didn’t matter when the rest of the place was deserted. Noah and I rounded to the back of the building, making sure to stay in the shadows. We stopped at a metal door complete with a silver door knob.

  “Ready?” Noah turned toward me, wiggling his eyebrows and dangling the keys in front of his face.

  “Ready,” I agreed.

  When Noah turned back to the door and slipped one of the keys inside, a layer of confidence settled over me. This wasn’t so bad. I’d already snuck into someone’s house today, and I hadn’t been caught. I’d snuck into the pool and the gymnasium in high school, and I turned out fine then. Just because my magic was at stake didn’t mean this would be any different. We’d get in and out unnoticed.

  I glanced around at high places on the outer brick wall, into corners where I could, looking for any sign of security cameras. I had been right; in a town like Sea Haven where crime rates were nearly non-existent, nobody bothered with security cameras. I was almost surprised they locked the place up, but I guess that was because it was a public place and not somebody’s home. I didn’t know anyone who locked their houses.

  My gaze sprung back to Noah when I heard the sound of the back door creak open. Excitement sizzled in my bones. I was so close!

  Noah led the way into a dark hall.

  “I can’t see anything,” I whispered. Reaching out my hands, they met cool cinderblock walls. I used the walls to guide my way.

  “Me, either,” he whispered back. “Stay close.”

  Apparently I was too close because in the next step I took, my toes caught his heel.

  “Not that close,” he teased.

  “Sorry.” I reached out to rest one hand on his shoulder so I wouldn’t lose him—or bump into him again. His body was warm, inviting. I almost wanted to be closer to him. You should not be thinking that type of thing in a moment like this, I scolded myself.

  “Any idea where we’re going?”

  “Hold on.” Noah slowed, and I was glad I was touching him to feel it, otherwise I would have rammed right into him.

  The sound of Noah’s hand running over a solid surface reached my ears. Then I heard a click of another door, and suddenly, there was enough light to see into the hallway we were standing it. It wasn’t much, only light spilling into the next hall from open doorways that had windows leading out near the street lamps. Noah pulled the door open further so we could both pass through.

  Once we could see the shadows of the walls in front of us, I dropped my hand from Noah’s shoulder. It suddenly felt incredibly cold.

  “We need to find the stairs or an elevator,” I whispered his way. I didn’t know why I was whispering. I didn’t think anyone would be here at this time of night, but instinct told me I should whisper when sneaking around like this.

  “Yeah,” Noah agreed. “Where do we find one of those?”

  “Uh…” I glanced around. In the darkness, it was difficult to find my bearings. I tried to imagine where the door we’d come in would have led us. Most times when I’d been to City Hall, I’d only been down the hallway my father’s office was in.

  “I think the stairs might actually be the way we came,” I said.

  Noah twisted toward me, but I couldn’t read his expression in the dark. “You sure?”

  I bit my lip, though I didn’t think he could see that, either. “No. I never had to worry about leaving the main level whenever I visited. I think it is…it looks like…yeah.”

  The longer we stood in this hallway, the more I recognized my surroundings from the times I’d passed through the building to visit my father while he was at work. It wasn’t like I’d been into City Hall often, but I remembered one time when my father took me to show off my swimming trophy to his co-workers. It was just a dumb participation trophy for a kids’ fun swim when I was seven, but he’d walked me through almost every hall in the building so I could show off my “accomplishment.” Whatever. But at the very least, I remembered bits and pieces of the building enough to get my bearings.

  “Yeah,” I repeated. “I think the door we walked in led to the stairwell.”

  Noah turned and pushed past me back the way we came. I followed behind and reached for his shoulder again so I wouldn’t lose him. This time when we found our way to the pitch black hall, my fingers clamped around a railing on the opposite side of the hall instead of a wall.

  “They should really have some sort of emergency lighting in this stairwell or something,” I complained in a whisper.

  I could practically hear Noah’s eyes roll. “They should, but I bet no one comes down here during off-hours. Maybe they did and the bulb burnt out.”

  Thanks to the railing, I wasn’t surprised when we began to descend. I let go of Noah again, using the sounds of his feet against the stairs to guide me. The stairs hit a landing and then turned in the opposite direction. I kept my hand locked on the railing until I felt it end, indicating that I’d reached the bottom.

  Noah’s hands made that sound again, as if they were running along the wall in search of a door. When he found the handle, he opened it to an almost equally dark hall. This one, at least, had working lights. The main ceiling lights weren’t on, but there were a few dim lights set at the corner between the wall and the ceiling to just barely light the way.

  I hadn’t been into the basement of City Hall before except for a few days ago when Carson Ray led me down here to steal my magic. Looking up and down the hall at all the dark wooden doors, each with their small window in the middle, made it look like an impossible labyrinth. Each door looked the same as the last. I could walk around down here for hours without realizing I’d passed the same door twice. Then I noticed the numbers on the doors. What had the numbers been when Carson had dragged me down here last time? I tried to remember, but I couldn’t. The numbers all jumbled together in my mind. Would I even recognize the door we needed?

  “Which way?” Noah asked, almost in desperation.

  I glanced up and down the hall. It stretched in both directions, each taking a turn at the end. I again tried to picture where we were at inside the building. Which room were we standing under right now? To our right was closest to the edge of the building, and I was pretty sure we wanted to head toward the middle of the building.

  “This way,” I said, nodding my head to our left.

  Noah walked in front of me, going the way I suggested without question. Before we reached the end of the hall, another hallway cut through to the right. That looked like our best bet to reaching the middle of the building.

  “Let’s try this,” I suggested.

  Noah stopped in his tracks and looked back at me. He seemed to accept that I had a better idea of what I was doing and let me lead the way this time. Sure, I could pretend I knew what I was doing, but I honestly had no idea.

  At the end of the hall, it split into two directions again. I was honestly starting to wonder if we’d find our way out of this maze. Looking to my left, I felt a sudden wave of déjà vu.

  “This is it,” I whispered, not necessarily to Noah, but I could tell by the change in his pace that he heard me.

  “You sure? These halls all look the same.”

  I nodded, my gaze still fixed on th
e hall in front of me. I didn’t know what it was about the hallway. Maybe it was the spacing of the doors, but I knew I’d been there before. “You mean you don’t remember?”

  Noah remained silent for a moment as he followed behind me. “I remember,” he said slowly. “It just all looks the same.”

  We passed a hall to the right, and I noticed the elevator at the end of it. This was definitely the way they brought me last time. We both slowed the closer we came to our target. “This is it,” I stated, turning to the door I was sure led to the room with the red chair in it.

  My breathing grew shallow knowing I was this close to my magic. Noah turned to the door and tried one of the small, silver keys. I bounced on my toes. I wasn’t sure if it was out of nerves or out of excitement. It was probably a little of both.

  The first key didn’t work. While Noah tried another, I glanced toward the room across the hall. This time, the light wasn’t on. Is Tristan still in there? I wondered. Without the light on, the room looked pitch black, and I couldn’t tell. They could have moved him by now…or worse. A shiver ran down my spine just thinking about it. What can I do to help Tristan? I owe him something for getting him into this mess, don’t I? But if I did try to save him, they’d know I was here.

  “Hurry up,” I mumbled under my breath so quietly I wasn’t sure Noah heard me.

  Apparently he did because he huffed in my direction. Before he could shoot some sarcastic comment back at me, the key in his hand twisted in the knob, and the door popped open. Excitement surged through me. Only one door left. We both hurried into the room, eager to finally have our magic back.

  Noah pulled the golden key from his pocket. Time seemed to slow in the following seconds as he slid the key into the lock. My pulse pounded against the sides of my skull, drowning out the sound of the key twisting in the lock and the door clicking open. When Noah turned the handle and swung the door into the small room, adrenaline spiked, coursing through my body. I could hardly breathe I was so overcome with joy. Rows of glowing vials lined the walls of the room, and I could feel the energy of it all when I stepped inside. Gazing around at the blue hues dancing across the walls, I went speechless in shock. It was all so beautiful, so mesmerizing. When I managed to pull my eyes off the beautiful vials and glance back at Noah, I saw his face showed a similar expression to mine: jaw slack, eyes filled with wonder.