The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,38

keystrokes. “I’m shutting it down now. We won’t need it again.”

So saying, the door sudden clicked, the bolt sliding back. Then her screen went blank. She folded it into its casing and tucked it away in the leg pocket she stored it in. Then let herself into the house.

“This was your home?” he asked as he followed her inside. Then jerked to a halt at the sight that greeted him.

The door led into a small galley kitchen with yellowing linoleum countertops and faded wallpaper sporting what must have once been bright-blue flowers. The place had obviously been ransacked. Broken dishes strewn throughout. Every cabinet and drawer gaping wide-open.

Meira sighed. “Yes. The last one, at least. We lived here a few decades. After pretending to go through school—again.” She made a face. “We all worked as waitresses at a diner not far from here.”

The irony in her voice when it came to schooling wasn’t missed. Repeating basic human schooling must’ve been torture. He didn’t see her handling boredom happily. Quietly, maybe, but definitely not happily.

“This way,” she said.

Indoors, the house was stuffy and warm, with a lack of moving air in an unlived-in, abandoned way. They passed through a small living space with couches that buckled in the center sitting on thick brown carpeting, all also ripped to shreds. Knives, he guessed. Not dragon claws, or the roof would’ve been ripped off.

A small squawk of sound reached his ears. Some kind of rodent in the walls, at a guess. Samael ignored it. They walked down a hallway past a series of smaller bedrooms. Each one he passed sported a single twin-size bed and basic dresser and desk. Nothing more. Once again, these rooms appeared as though a large predator had slammed through, ransacking the place. No doubt in search of any clue as to where the phoenix might have gone.

What would they have thought when they found multiple beds? That more than one phoenix existed at all was nothing short of miraculous, leaving an unending list of unanswered questions when it came to their legend and lore.

Samael paused at one bedroom with what appeared to be computer parts, though no computer. “Was this your room?” he called after Meira’s retreating form.

“Yes,” she answered over her shoulder, not stopping.

“Don’t you want to pack up some clothes or go through drawers for keepsakes?”

Meira paused in a doorway several down. “No. He already took anything of value.”

“He?”

“Pytheios. The video showed him going through the house.” She shrugged, but he got the impression that she was holding herself together by sheer will. “We weren’t allowed keepsakes, anyway.”

Nothing? Not a single thing to remember her life by? Remember her mother by? “And I thought I had a rough childhood,” Samael mumbled to himself.

Another tiny sound from one of the rooms down the hall, and Samael held in a sigh because now he recognized it. At the same time, a glint of glass catching sunlight streaming through the window snagged his attention, and he stepped inside to inspect it more closely. Caught in the thick carpeting, the same ugly brown as the rest of the house, was a silver ring with a small, polished gem of orange amber.

Not wanting to upset Meira more, Samael slipped it in one of the pockets of his borrowed pants. He’d give it to her another time.

Still following her lead, they made their way to a slightly larger room. Their mother’s room, no doubt. Meira had stopped before a tall free-standing mirror.

“Here. By me.” She pointed and he took up his position.

“Are you ready—” She paused and cocked her head, listening.

Samael had already caught the small sound again, much closer now, and grimaced.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I know you heard that.”

“We don’t have time.”

That only got him a narrow-eyed scowl.

Samael sighed. “Under the bed.”

Meira dropped to her hands and knees, colorful hair spreading out on the brown carpet as she looked underneath.

“Oh, baby,” she cooed. Then slowly reached out, carefully and gently lifting something out from under the mattress.

A tiny, scruffy, skin-and-bones kitten. Difficult to tell its color under mud-matted fur. “You were just going to leave her here?”

Samael gritted his teeth against both her judgment and the guilt that she seemed to so easily elicit in him. “Cats are resilient.”

She held up the scrawny body and he—hardened dragon shifter warrior that he was—flinched inwardly. “Obviously not,” she said, still accusing.

Dragons might have protective instincts, but they had nothing on this woman. She collected strays wherever she went, it appeared. “What are