Page 10 of Shattered Magic
“Damn.”
“Well, it is only mid-morning. What shall we do with the rest of your sleeping time?”
“Don’t you have to sleep?” She had asked the question before but could not remember the answer.
He nuzzled her neck. “Some days I do, some days I don’t.”
She gasped and turned her head. “So, what are you anyway? You aren’t a demon. They feel different.”
He chuckled and kissed her deeply, his tongue teasing as he tasted her and coaxed her into participating.
By the time she straddled him, she forgot all questions and just closed her eyes to feel.
Hari jerked awake and coughed. Smoke. So much smoke in her apartment.
She grabbed a tee and shorts from her clean gym bag and dialled her phone. “Emergency, how can I help you?”
“Hi. My name is Anhara Venker, and my apartment is full of smoke. The door is hot, and the smoke is thickening. My address is Nineteen Lever Avenue. I am in the apartment upstairs.” She coughed and talked to the speaker as she got dressed. “It’s getting hot in here, and the urge to open the window is becoming overwhelming.”
“Don’t. The fire department is on its way. Stay away from your door and keep low to the ground. Can you see the fire anywhere?”
“No, just a lot of smoke. It seems like they lit the gym beneath me on fire.”
“Keep low and keep talking to me.”
“I am going to wet a towel and put it over my mouth.”
“As long as you don’t get closer to the smoke or fire.”
She got to her knees, grabbed a tea towel, and turned on the tap. Green fire shot out of her faucet. She shouted and tried to turn the flow off, but the fire was filling her sink.
“Oh, shit. This is mage fire. It’s filling my sink and coming toward me. I am about to backdraft the shit out of this place.”
“Miss, please. Stay calm. The fire engine is there.”
Hari grabbed the fire blanket and lined up with the window. “I am calm. There is about to be broken glass and a projectile on fire. I am coming out.”
She inhaled through the tea towel while the dispatcher was trying to tell her that she needed to stay still. The fire was spilling toward her, seeking her out. Fuck that.
She focused and screamed at the window, watching it crack and shatter as she came flying out through the shards. Her room exploded in a ball of green flame behind her.
She fell. Arms caught her and moved her to the ambulance. Hari looked left and right to find the man she was looking for.
“Easy, miss. That is quite the blaze.”
She was sucking air in and coughing wildly. The medic gave her an oxygen mask, and the second one checked her skin and body. There was a clip on her finger, and she sat in the shadow of the vehicles while everything she owned burned with eerie green flames.
She looked around and hummed. She rasped out, “Do you have any isopropyl alcohol?”
One of the medics paused. “Why?”
“Pour it on the ground. About a cup should do.”
The medic went into the truck and brought out the bottle. He poured half of it on the ground. The pool waved and flickered, and then the vapour caught light with the eerie green flame. The flame traced to a man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, who was staring at the blaze.
One of the firefighters was on the ball and jumped the mage and pounded him into the pavement.
Hari looked at the apartment, and the fire died out. “Damn it.”