Darkfire Kiss (37 page)

Thursday April 4, 2024—Chicago

T
here was a guy in my bedroom.

It was six in the morning and I didn’t know him.

I’m not much of a morning person, but that woke me up fast. I sat up and stared, my back pressed against the wall, sure my eyes had to be deceiving me. No matter how much I blinked, though, he was still there.

He seemed to think my reaction was funny.

He had dark hair and dark eyes, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Just jeans—and he had one heck of a sixpack. His arms were folded across his chest and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

But he seemed insubstantial. I could see through him, right to the crowded bulletin board behind him.

Was he real?

I was going to try asking him but he abruptly faded, faded and disappeared right before my eyes.

As if he’d just been an illusion. I jumped from the bed, then reached into that corner. My fingers passed through a chill, one cold enough to give me goose bumps. Then my hand touched a pushpin holding a wad of drawings, and everything was perfectly normal.

Except for the hair standing up on the back of my neck.

I took a deep breath and looked around. My room was the pit it usually is. There were some snuffed candles on my desk and bookshelves, a whiff of incense lingering in the air, and the usual mess of discarded sweaters and books all over the floor.

No sign of that guy. If I hadn’t seen him, if I’d woken up two minutes later, I wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong at all.

I shuddered one last time and headed for the shower. Halfway there, I wondered, Had Meagan’s plan worked?

The visioning session had been my best friend’s idea. Her mom calls herself a holistic therapist, which makes my mom roll her eyes. I was skeptical too, but didn’t have any better ideas. And Meagan, being the best friend ever, had really pulled out all the stops. She’d brought candles and mantras and incense for my room, and even though I’d felt silly, I’d followed her earnest instructions.

When the candles had burned down and she’d left—and my mom had shouted that I should open a window—I’d been pretty sure it hadn’t worked. Nothing seemed to have happened.

But now I didn’t know what to think. Who had that guy been? Where had he come from? And where had he gone?

Or had I just imagined him? I think if I was going to imagine a guy in my bedroom, it wouldn’t be one who thought I was funny when I wasn’t trying to be, never mind one that didn’t kind of creep me out.

I’d have imagined Nick there.

In fact, I frequently did.

I heard my mom in the kitchen and my dad getting the newspaper, and knew I had to get moving. I did my daily check in the bathroom, but nada. No boobs. No blood.

Four more zits.

At its core, then, the visioning session had failed.

I’m probably not the only fifteen-and-a-half-yearold girl who’d like to get the Puberty Show on the road. Even Meagan had gotten her period last year, which was why she was trying to help. But my best friend didn’t know the half of it.

That was because of the Covenant. I couldn’t confide in Meagan because I’d had to swear to abide by the Covenant of our kind. I come from a long line of dragon shape shifters—
Pyr
, we call ourselves—and we pledge not to reveal ourselves in dragon form to humans.

That would include Meagan.

And we teenage
Pyr
had to pledge to the Covenant after Nick tried to impress the twin girls living next door, and his dad caught him.

I still thought it was funny that they hadn’t been impressed.

I, in contrast, was awed by Nick in dragon form.

The trick is that the dragon business is all theoretical when it comes to me. I’m the daughter of a dragon shapeshifter, so I should also be a dragon shape shifter. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Except it’s not happening. Nothing special has happened to me. I can’t do it and I don’t know why—much less what I can do to hurry things along.

Dragons are by nature patient. That’s what my dad says. He should know, seeing as he is about twelve hundred years old. That’s supposed to reassure me, but it doesn’t.

Because dragons are also passionate and inclined to anger. I know that from spending my life around all those dragon shape shifters who are my extended family. And the fact that my dragon abilities were AWOL—despite my patience—was seriously pissing me off.

The
Pyr
are all guys—men and their sons—except for me. The story is that there’s only one female dragon at a time, that she’s the Wyvern and has special powers.

Yours truly—I’m supposed to be the Wyvern.

The issue with there only being one female dragon shape shifter at a time is that the last one died before I was born. And it’s not like anyone has her diary. Zero references for me. Zero advice.

Zero anything.

Just an expectation from my family and friends that I’ll become the font of all dragonesque knowledge and lead the next generation to wherever the heck we’re going.

Sooner would be better.

No pressure, right?

My dad says that I was a prodigy, that I was already showing special powers before I could walk. Then I started to talk and all the Wyvern goodness went away.
Poof.
Instead of being special and a prodigy, I was just a normal kid.

It’s been fourteen years, and I’m still waiting for the good stuff to come back.

No sign of it yet.

Some incremental progress would be encouraging. It’s one thing to be a disappointment to everyone you care about, and quite another to just sit back and accept that inadequacy. In fact, I was starting to think that those dragons who believed I wasn’t really the Wyvern might have it right.

Thus Meagan’s session.

An act of desperation.

Because the one thing I did know was that the other dragon teenagers like Nick had come into their powers with puberty. Their voices cracked and bingo, they were shifting shape like old pros. So, being a late bloomer has bigger repercussions for me. Meagan thought we were doing the ritual for my period to start. She didn’t need to know I was after a little bit more than that.

Instead I got a guy mocking me in my own bedroom at the crack of dawn.

Like I said, it wasn’t the best way to start the day.

The dissolving guy was at my school.

Still shirtless.

Still mightily amused by me.

He was leaning against the brick wall, away from groups of other kids, gaze locked on me as I walked up to the school. I could still almost see through him. I felt a blush rising from my toes. Would he talk to me here? Would he tell me what the deal was?

What exactly would be the best opening question to get him talking?

Meagan caught my shoulder and I jumped. “Well?” She pushed her new glasses up her nose, almost bouncing in excitement. “Did it work?”

I glanced over at the smug, half-naked dude. “Who is that? Do you know?”

“Who? Mark Smith?” Meagan rolled her eyes. “Be serious, Zoë.”

“No, the other guy. The one leaning on the wall.”

She gave me a stern look. “There is no other guy, Zoë.” She nudged me. “Come on, tell me. Any
results
?”

“Nothing.”

The guy waved at me, smirked for a minute, then sauntered away. He had to be freezing without a shirt on. It was even starting to snow lightly. I watched Meagan follow my gaze, scanning the school yard.

She couldn’t see him.

Neither apparently could anyone else.

Bonus. I was delusional as well as a failure and a disappointment. I’d lost my powers at the ripe age of two and, some fourteen years later, was losing my mind.

“Nothing?” She wrinkled her nose. “No change?”

“None.”

She exhaled heavily and fell into step beside me. “Not even a cramp?”

“New pimples. Does that count?”

“It could.” Meagan bumped my arm and whispered, “Did you have any dreams, at least?”

It was on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to tell her about the guy, and I would have, if she hadn’t been unable to see him. When you’re going crazy, I think it’s better to keep the news to yourself for as long as possible.

“Nope.” I shrugged and smiled.

I felt like seven kinds of a rat for lying to my best friend.

“I really thought it would work,” Meagan said, so disappointed that the whole session might have been for her benefit. “Maybe we should try again.”

I could do without more strangers showing up in my bedroom while I was asleep. “Maybe it just takes time.” I smiled. “See you in gym?”

Meagan groaned. “Highlight of my day.” She rummaged in her backpack and nearly spilled textbooks all over the floor. “Hey, draw me a dragon on my new notebook?”

Now she was trying to cheer
me
up. “Sure. Any preferences?”

“Whatever you want. Surprise me.”

I took the book and tucked it in with mine. “Don’t scare them with your brilliance in math class.”

Meagan laughed, flashing a mouthful of hardware. She was good at math. Truly genius. Meagan’s destiny was in the realm of the brainiacs.

Mine? Apparently in the land of liars and losers.

I was thinking that my day couldn’t get any worse.