Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,38
car to head back to the estate. “We should do first contact.”
She slanted an angry glance at him. “Because it could be a bride for some Tritonyri warrior?” A new thought occurred to her. And she opened her eyes wider. “You think this could be whoever’s sneaking around in that unidentified ship? A Tritonan enemy?”
He seemed unfazed by her anger. “Or your mother.”
All the misplaced fury drained from her. “But what if it’s not?”
His silver eyes reflected nothing back at her. “But what if it is? You said she was lost or gone on the Last Tide.”
She let out a shuddering breath. “I thought… I thought maybe she was. Why else would she not try to find me even after…”
He waited a beat. “You never told me why you fear your power.”
Just a statement of fact, not pushing her for details. The breath she sucked in was even shakier. “When I was seventeen, there was a boy in my art class. Jason. He asked me to prom—which is a special dance for young Earthers. It was the first time I’d ever been asked to a dance. Mom and I moved around a lot. It wasn’t a bad life, and she always had work at a bar or wherever. But it never really gave me a chance to put down roots, to get to know anyone. So when this boy seemed to like me…”
Sting didn’t move. “He hurt you?”
“No! No,” she said more softly. “Quite the opposite.”
“Tell me.” In his rough voice, the words might’ve sounded like an order. Instead, they were an offer.
“There’s something of a, um, tradition after prom that the couples might—if they are so inclined—go somewhere else, somewhere private, and, uh…”
“Mate?” Sting watched her.
Her cheeks heated. She couldn’t believe she was telling him this. Still, of all the people to understand what happened next, he might be one of the few on Earth. “Yes, right. Mate. But not for procreation with offspring, just for…”
“Pleasure?”
She definitely couldn’t believe she was telling him this. “Exactly.” She let out a hard breath. “I just wanted to have a lovely night for my first time with a boy who seemed to like me. So we left the dance, parked his car outside a fancy hotel, and he kissed me. But then…”
“Your zaps.” This time it wasn’t a question.
She nodded her miserable reply. “When my mom burst into the car, the electricity was crackling all around the windows. I hadn’t even noticed because I was…so lost in kissing him. She yanked me off him, threw me outside, smothering the flames on the hem of my dress. She told me to run, not to look back, and that she’d be right behind me.”
Her throat stung almost as bad as that long-ago night. “It wasn’t just the car. The whole back of the hotel was burning.” She swallowed the confused horror of the memory. “We were too nervous and too broke to try to rent a room, but there was a courtyard full of little lights that shined over the privacy wall into the remote parking lot and they were so pretty.” She pressed her heels of her palms to the back of her closed eyes, hard enough that she could see the white fairy lights again—pale against the static blue electricity and the rising sparks of scarlet-gold flames. “All the people were streaming out, confused and milling everywhere, so it was easy to get lost. I couldn’t find Jason or my mom, and the fire trucks were coming. And the police. I ran away.”
“You were in danger.”
She let out a forced laugh at the understatement. “We’d had some problems before—with electricity that mysteriously went out in our various crappy apartments, scorch marks on my blankets like I’d been smoking in bed, little fires sometimes, but I never realized…” She raised her miserable gaze. “I think she guessed. Back then, I think Mom knew it was my fault.”
“Not your fault.” This time, his voice was even flatter, no question, no doubt. “If she had suspicions, she should have told you, given you a chance to know what you are.”
Lana grimaced. “And what is that exactly? Fire-witch? I still don’t know what that is, even now.”
“A weapon. Like me.”
“Like a short-circuiting flamethrower without an off switch that I can never put down?”
“Never. So you must get strong to carry it.”
She gave him a sour look. “Oh? Is that why they built you so big?”
But he didn’t bristle back. “Big enough to carry it all.”