more, had probably been tailored to his specific physiology; a jacket of his, which I shrugged on despite not feeling cold the way true mammals do; and my own backpack, still tucked into the front footwell. I went around the car and leaned in through Artie’s door for that, not feeling like participating in the seat-climbing Olympics twice in one night.
Artie’s phone was in the cupholder. I took that as well, tucking it, his keys, and the phone charger into the pocket of his jacket. There was glass everywhere in the front seat, pooled around the spaces where his body had been. My seat was oddly clear, like the glass had been somehow shunted around me, rather than slicing into me when it went flying. That was odd. I brushed it carefully aside to make it easier for me to get out of the car without cutting myself.
Annie was waiting outside; Artie was nowhere to be seen. I must have looked alarmed, because she held up her hands and said, “Relax. Elsie is hauling him up to her car; you’re going to have to ride with him in the backseat. Hope you’re okay with close quarters.” She wiggled her eyebrows, a broad motion that needed no nuance to be understood.
“Don’t be weird,” I said.
“Being weird is, like, ninety percent of my day,” said Annie. She raised both hands, palms once again turned upward. “Move away from the car, okay? This is pretty cool, but you’re not fireproof.”
“Are you?”
Annie nodded distractedly, most of her focus on the air above her hands. “As long as the fire remembers how to be mine, I am. Once it grows into something else, it can hurt me, but when it starts, it starts in my bones, and it loves me too much to do me any damage.”
The world seemed to tense for a moment, and I got a flash of what I could only describe as calculus, like someone was revising the equations that made up the universe. My eyes itched the way they usually did when I was actively using my powers. And two small balls of fire appeared above Annie’s hands, burning white-hot despite their apparent lack of fuel.
“All sorcerers are elementalists,” she said, as casually as if she weren’t holding two impossible fireballs with her bare hands. “Not the classic ‘earth, air, fire, water’ gig, but sort of physical forces. Heat, cold, gravity, that sort of thing. I got heat. So did Grandpa Thomas. His journals are full of useful tips about how to make your own burn cream from things you probably have in the herb garden, and how to convince the chaperones you need new sheets because of ‘nocturnal emissions,’ not because you set them on fire in the middle of the night.” She sounded amused and disgusted at the same time. “Guess growing up a Covenant boy makes suddenly becoming one of the things you were raised to hunt a little hard on the psyche. He was an amazingly good liar.”
I took a step back. She might not have been bothered by the heat boiling off her palms, but I could feel my hair starting to frizz, and had no desire to be caught in what she was about to do.
“Almost ready,” said Annie. The fire above her hands grew in both size and heat, edges becoming blue-white, crackling growing louder. She rolled her hands over, the fire dancing along the backs of her fingers, before flicking the balls into the car. They balanced for a moment on the seats, like they were going to go for a drive. Then they burst, spreading flames everywhere, transforming the interior into an inferno.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“I’m getting better at it,” said Annie. “It used to be pretty random whether I got fire when I asked for it or not. Go help Elsie, okay? I’ll be up in a minute.”
There was something in her voice that told me not to argue. “Okay,” I said, and turned and fled, leaving my cousin and her pet conflagration behind.
Elsie had her headlights on, as well as the light inside the car itself, creating a safe oasis of civilization in the middle of the deep dark woods. She was leaning against the hood, texting furiously, when I came scrambling up the incline. She raised her head, nodded to me, and turned her attention back to her phone.
“Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Kevin are standing by for our arrival,” she said. “Mom and Dad are on their way here,