Page 92 of The Fire Went Wild

“And what do you think?”

That darkness in me tightens. My throat is bone dry again. I dig my nails into my palm and listen to the wind and wish that the answer that comes to my mind isn’tJaxon’s right.

“Charlotte.” Edie grabs my hand, her palm cool and dry. “I faked my death so I could start over with Sawyer fucking Caldwell. You can be honest with me.”

“Sawyer’s different.” I look away from her, squinting into the wind. “You said yourself. He saved you from Scott.”

Her fingers tighten. “So did you.”

I jerk my gaze over to her, and she smiles. “You’re the only reason I was able to get out of California,” she says. “But even before that, you saved me. Why did I go into recovery? Because of you. Why did Istayin recovery?” Her eyes glitter. “You, Charlotte. You saved my life.”

Tears form along my lashes, and I try to blink them away. It doesn’t really work. All the pain and confusion from the last few days pour out of me, and Edie pulls me into an embrace, squeezing me in close.

“If you’re like them,” she says against my hair, “if you’re a Hunter, a killer—it doesn’t matter.”

I sob, because it’s true. I am a Hunter. I can feel the truth of it pounding through me. It took seeing Edie with Sawer Caldwell to accept it, but I can’t deny it now.

“You’re still my best friend,” Edie whispers.

And that’s exactly what I needed to hear.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

JAXON

Sawyer and Edie have a spare room in their house, and that’s where they put up me and Charlotte for the night. I half-expect Charlotte to protest or claim she needs to sleep on the couch or something, but she just tells Edie, “That’ll be great,” and helps her fix up the bed.

Something’s shifted in her, it feels like. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I also don’t have a chance to ask her, because she and Edie are attached at the hip all damn day. They spend most of it at the beach, even though it’s too cold to go swimming. They disappear through the dunes after setting up the spare room and that’s the last I see of them until they come back in the afternoon, with pink cheeks and windblown hair.

I don’t mind, though, since it’s a chance to hang out with Sawyer one-on-one. We share a couple of beers in the living room and swap stories about our latest kills. But then Sawyer says, “What exactly is Charlotte?”

I stop, the beer halfway to my lips, and glance sideways at him.

“She doesn’t feel human,” he says. “But she can’t be a Hunter. Edie would have known.”

“She’s a Hunter.” No point in lying about it. “She had a spell on her that repressed it.”

“A spell?” Sawyer laughs. “Ain’t no way that’s real.”

“Ambrose confirmed it,” I shoot back, somewhat defensively. Sawyer just harrumphs. He doesn’t go in for the mystical. He thinks we all evolved this way or something. As if there’s an evolutionary reason for us not to fucking die.

“So did my gods,” I add.

Sawyer ignores that, though. “Has she killed?”

“Yeah.” And then I tell him everything. He listens, nodding along, sipping his beer every now and then. He’s done by the time I’m finished, and I watch him rub the condensation away as I wait for a response.

“Sounds like a Hunter to me,” he finally says. “Does Edie know?”

“You’d have to ask Edie.”

Sawyer nods again, then stands up to get another beer. “Honestly,” he says, “I hope she is a Hunter. Edie needs friends she doesn’t have to hide from me.”

“She is.” I’m confident in that. Maybe she still doesn’t feel like a Hunter the way Sawyer does, but I can sense the darkness in her, now more than ever. It’s contained. Bound. Almost to bursting.

Our conversation turns to other topics, and by the time Edie and Charlotte come back, Sawyer’s grilling pork chops on the back porch for dinner. Afterward, we all settle down in the living room, the girls splitting a bottle of red wine. I actually wind up going to bed early, even though I’m not really tired. I’m just not used to being around so many people at once. It’s good to see Sawyer, to talk shop a little, and Edie’s sweet and thoughtful and makes Charlotte happy—all good things, no doubt. But she’s human. I hear her blood pumping, and it makes my blood pump, too.

So I go to bed, lying there in the dark, listening to them out in the living room. I can smell weed smoke drifting through the house. Maybe Charlotte won’t even come to bed. That’s fine. I brought her here to see Edie—and Sawyer, to a lesser extent. To show her that Hunters can protect humans when we want to. Can love them. That we’re notjustmonsters and boogeymen.