“Oh, gods,” Phina whispers, her eyes darting to mine. “Do you think she’s a ghost? Some sort of cryptid?”
“I’m not a fucking cryptid,” Tara snaps, looking first to Phina, then to me. “Aren’t you supposed to be all body-positive and shit? Why are you talking about what I look like?”
“Just tell us what’s going on!” Val shouts, stepping toward her. “You were always like this! So slippery, like you can’t just say what you want.”
Tara lowers her chin, her eyes darkening. “You know what I want.”
“No, I really don’t,” Valerie states. “I’m supremely confused about everything that’s happening right now.”
“I want our group back together,” Tara says, like we’re all stupid. Then, she drops the anger as though it never mattered and switches right into that pouting expression. “I’ve really missed you guys.”
“You could have called,” Phina says, crossing her arms. “Instead of waiting until now to just pop out of nowhere.”
“I’m not popping out of nowhere,” Tara says, swinging her gaze to me. “Maeve was looking for me.”
“I recognized your scent,” I say. “I smelled it in the ash and soot. And I thought you might have something to do with the fires, especially since they’re still happening.”
Tara sighs, turning and walking up a fallen log like she’s walking the plank, her arms up to her sides to hold for balance. “Well, at first, it was me.”
“It was?” I ask, shocked to be right about this.
“I mean, that first night, it was all of us,” she says, cackling a bit as she turns and sits, staring at us. “Right, girls?”
We say nothing, staring right back at her. She rolls her eyes. “Then, for a while, I was having a good time with it. Every fire made me stronger, and after you all left me, I needed something.”
“But how did you…survive?” Phina asks, squinting at her. “Up here in the woods by yourself?”
“The fire made me feelgood,” Tara says, like that’s far more important than how she was able to find shelter, clothes, and feed herself. She leans back, laughing again. “And then, something else happened—someoneelsestarted up with the fires!” She laughs, looking to the sky for a moment. “You guys know Xeran’s uncle? Slimy guy. He was out here starting fires left and right. From what I could tell, he was really into burning down houses.” Tara looks at Phina. “Like your grandmother’s house.”
Phina stands tall, but I see her fists tightening at her sides.
“Anyway, after he died—yeah, I saw the day your guy killed him, Phina, all great fun—I thought it was going to be all on me again. But here come these other fuckers, all trying to pull the daemon energy out from the ground. That didn’t start fires on its own, but it was enough for me to get them going—and Idid!”
“What the fuck?” Valerie hisses, sucking air through her teeth. “Do you know how much damage those fires have caused?”
“Uh, yeah,” Tara says, knocking her lollipop against her teeth. “Kinda the whole point, girl.”
“So, why did you go so long without starting a fire?” I ask, glancing at Phina and Valerie, who both look ready to fight Tara at this point.
But I don’t want to fight her—I want to get information. To understand how she’s alive. To understand what could possibly be the point in living up here in the mountains, starting fire after fire. There has to be something more to it than just having fun.
Tara was always eccentric, but she was never mean. In the time we were friends, she would poke and prod, but she never hurt us. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Not until that night at the ridge.
“I just didn’t have the energy,” Tara says. She glances at Valerie. “I loved that fire you started at the motel, but I just couldn’t get to it in time. There was no daemon energy there. And after those Sorel brothers died, it was harder for me to draw the energy up and out. I didn’t have help anymore, and my power has been getting weaker and weaker since that first night. That’s why I called you all up here.”
“You didn’t call us here,” Phina says, her jaw set. “We came looking for Maeve.”
“And why do you think Maeve is here?” Tara asks, cocking her head, then dropping it back against the bark. “This is getting soboring. Can’t we just get to the good part?”
“What’s the good part?” Valerie asks, and my heart starts to race when Tara turns, hopping down off the log and coming toward us, her eyes drinking us in. She looks like a vampire, ready to taste blood.
“The good part,” she says, grinning, “is when I take your power from you, just like I used to do back then.”
Chapter 30 - Felix
The second that bitch takes a step toward my mate, I’m not waiting for a signal from Xeran to move. I’m on my feet, driving forward, shifting in mid-air, my paws thundering against the ground as I launch toward them.
