Page 84 of The Fire Went Wild
“They were charms to protect us from being taken over by demons.” My voice rises, shrill and panicked. Tears line my eyelashes. “And what’s more demonic than a murderer that can’t fucking die?”
Jaxon finally looks at me, his face unreadable in the dark.
Then he jerks the car sideways, sliding across the empty traffic lanes, and pulls into the shoulder. Turns on the hazard lights, the mechanical clicking a metronome against my racing heart.
My tears spill over my cheeks.
“Charlotte.” Jaxon says my name with such an unexpected tenderness that I burst into a loud, choking sob. For a second, he regards me with alarm.
But then he unbuckles his seatbelt and reaches across the gear selector to unbuckle my seatbelt, too.
And then he pulls me into him. It’s awkward, the gear selector jutting up between us, but it also feels so good, so right, to have his strong arms wrap around my shoulders. I bury my face into his neck, my tears loud and ugly, and he runs his hand across my upper back. Kisses the top of my head.
“What if those charms—” I whisper hoarsely. “What if I’m really not hu—” I can’t say it. I still don’t know if I believe it.
“You’re not a demon.” Jaxon nuzzles against my hair. “But you’re not human, either.”
His arms tighten around me before I can protest, and he says, “You’re something better.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
JAXON
Ipull the car into a rest stop right on the other side of the Mississippi border, the street lights garish and bright. It would be a pretty spot during the day. Lots of big winding oak trees. As it is, I park in one of the darker corners, kill the engine, and turn to Charlotte.
“Thanks for the food,” she says, clutching the McDonald’s bag in her lap. Her eyes are still red from her crying jag earlier, when I wasn’t sure what to do so I just held her on the side of the road, eighteen-wheelers rumbling past us every few minutes. She’s calmer now.
“Hey, I’m starving, too. Hand it over.”
She grins at that, even though her smile’s kind of sad. Still, she does as I ask, pulling out the two burgers and then propping the bags of French fries up on the dash.
For a few minutes, we just eat, not saying anything. Iwantto say something. Everything she told me about her parents, the adoption, them kicking her out—it sends this weird hot anger surging through me. She didn’t deserve that. Not just because she’s a Hunter. Even if she was human, she wouldn’t have deserved it.
I wash a bit of burger down with a swig of Coke and stare out through the front windshield. “Are you feeling better?” I finally ask. It seems the safest thing to say.
But Charlotte doesn’t answer right away, and I cringe inwardly, knowing I fucked up. Where are my gods when I need them? The Unnamed has no problem helping me fuck her like I’m some kind of sex demon, but the second I want to actuallytalkto her, it disappears, and I’m on my own.
But then she says, “A little,” and when I look over at her she smiles at me. Another sad smile, but I’ll take it. “I—I appreciate you listening to me.”
“I’m always happy to listen to you.” More cringe.
But Charlotte’s smile brightens and finally works its way up to her eyes. Then it fades, and she bites into another fry and stares out the window. “I’m still trying to work through things,” she says. “What it means. What—what I am.”
My heart clenches, and I nearly tell her where we’re going. But I stop myself. I wanted to surprise her, and it’s not a surprise if I tell her in the middle of a rest stop parking lot.
She looks over at me, eyes dark and intense. “What was it like?” she asks. “Growing up knowing that you’re a Hunter?”
Her question catches me off-guard. I wasn’t expecting to have to talk about myself. In fact, I was fully prepared just to listen to her some more. I never talk to my dead lovers—I figure their ghosts, if they’re around, don’t want to hear my shit. And a living woman like Charlottereallydoesn’t.
But she’s staring at me expectantly, slurping her Coke up through the straw, and the attention makes my face hot.
“I don’t have anything to compare it to,” I finally say. “It just felt normal.”
Disappointment flashes across her eyes, and I scramble to correct. “I mean—I always knew what I was. My dad talked to me about it as long as I can remember. My grandparents, too. Theywould tell me stories about their kills when they were trying to get me to go to sleep.”
“No wonder it’s so easy for you,” Charlotte mutters.
I shrug. She’s not wrong. “Ambrose was more like you,” I offer. “I mean, he knew what he was, too, but he told me once that he struggled with it.” I pause.