caught the bottom edge of the particle board. With the lit cigarette still in hand, I set it off to the side, just out of reach of the fire, but close enough for it to appear to be the source of the flames.
As the edges of the door became charred, my brother yelled, “Smoke!” Before the women even knew what the hell was happening, he ran around the corner and I switched places with him.
Slipping out of my coat, I slammed it against the flames like I was trying to beat the fire out, but my shearling coat caught on fire too.
My one regret was the women’s fear. Their terror wasn’t my intention, and their screams of fright were real, so I stopped playing the hero and leaped over the fire to help them scramble over the counter to safety before I followed them.
I caught my brother’s eye, and saw he’d shifted and was running off to the woods. With him gone and the attendants thinking I was my brother, I dragged the women back as the flames tore through the cheap door and caught onto the rest of the painted particleboard that made up the stall.
Within seconds, someone appeared with a fire extinguisher, but even though the small blaze was quickly destroyed, I knew the combination of the leaves and my coat would scorch the grass, shielding the bloodstain from untrained eyes.
“Thank you for saving us,” one of the stall workers whispered, staring up at me with big blue eyes. She batted her lashes, making me want to laugh at the flirtatious move, before the other woman cuddled into me.
“You’re more than welcome,” I replied, but I wasn’t interested in the doe eyes she was shooting my way.
Austin liked to tumble anything in a skirt, but I didn’t.
Untangling myself from their clutches, I waited on the town’s one fire engine to appear, saw the sheriff bustling through the crowd that gathered in the aftermath, and disappeared through the throngs of people.
They recognized me, but most of them were pack, and if they did register who I was, they knew to ignore me.
Everyone ignored us.
That was what fear did to people.
What they didn’t, couldn’t understand, they didn’t trust.
Austin and I had long since come to terms with that fate when we were younger and excluded from every aspect of pack life for the simple fact that we were twins. Only Eli had ever stood up for us, only he’d ever had our backs.
It was why we were loyal to him.
Not the pack, never them. But Eli? He’d hold our loyalty until the day we died, even if that day came sooner rather than later because of the shit he had us doing.
When I rounded the crowd until I was at the back of the candy stall once more, I watched the one permanent firefighter poke through the mess I’d made with a stick. When he found the tiny butt of a cigarette, I saw him shake his head in irritation.
Knowing he credited that for the fire, I moved to the shadows, shifted too, then rushed off to find my twin.
He wasn’t far away, and as a pair, we dashed through the woods to the back of the carnival where the carnies lived in trailers.
Austin went one way, and I went the other, each of us seeking the unusual apple pie scent we’d discovered earlier.
It wasn’t much to go on, but over the stench of blood, we didn’t have much else on our side.
There was a ton of crap everywhere at the back, and I used that to my advantage. The fire hazard of all the boxes would have the council clamping down on the organizers, and to be fair, it was warranted. They didn’t give a damn about public safety—who on Earth used particle board to build stalls? Any health and safety inspector would have a field day when they were assigned to the carnival.
Then, I registered the likelihood of that ever happening—they’d just move on first. Faster than a squall until they were away from us, in another county, Mother, maybe another state.
Inadvertently, we’d shortened our timeline.
A soft yip had my ears pricking up as I rounded one rusty camper after another. The only advantage to the fire was that this place was deserted, and I darted across the clearing, passing more boxes—the kind you saw in attics loaded with stuff from a hundred years ago. Particle board was evidently their wood of choice for their storage boxes, except