Chains of Fire

  “I never thought you were. You know I didn’t. I told Mother to stop having you work at my parties, but she said—”

  “She said it was Darren who insisted. Yes, it’s true. He believed I would realize how truly honorable a job it is to serve and serve well.” Samuel showed his teeth in what looked like a snarl. “I did not.”

  “I know.” Isabelle looked down at her hands.

  Eventually Mother had put a stop to using him to wait on Isabelle’s guests. It happened at Isabelle’s eleventh birthday party. One of the little girls wasn’t little anymore and she reacted to his dark beauty by flirting with him and he flirted back with a natural aptitude that upset the parents, upstaged all her mother’s carefully planned entertainment . . . and made Isabelle rigid with a tension she didn’t comprehend. “My mother’s a snob. I know that. But not as bad as your father.”

  “No one’s as bad as my father.” Samuel was still reclining, but he was no longer relaxed. His whole body vibrated with suppressed fury. “My father honestly thinks that being a butler is the best I can aspire to. Doesn’t understand why I don’t. He won’t even listen to me.”

  “But still I don’t understand what this has to do with your quitting school. Surely if you want to improve your lot in life . . .” She realized how patronizing that sounded, and stumbled to a halt.

  “No. I’m determined to go to hell in a handcart,” he said bitterly.

  Her temper flared. “You’re going about it the right way. Mother said you got a tattoo!”

  Turning his head, he showed her. Five black marks on his skull, spaced like fingerprints from the back of one ear to the other. “It’s not a tat.”

  “It is, too!” How stupid did he think she was?

  “I got it last year. It came naturally. When I got my power.”

  That froze her in place. “What power?”

  He stared at her as if not sure how to explain. Finally, he said, “Do you remember the first time we met? Here in the window seat?”

  She shook her head no, although the faintest memory niggled at her mind.

  “You made me feel better. You healed me.”

  “I shouldn’t have, I suppose, but I was little and didn’t know better.”

  “I know. Your mother doesn’t like you to be different.”

  “For my sake! So I can fit in!”

  “Believe me, I know about not fitting in, and you fit in fine.”

  For the first time she looked at him, really looked at him, stretched out there on the cushions.

  He was tall, well over six feet, and fit, with muscled shoulders that strained at his short-sleeved T-shirt, thick wrists, and powerful, long-fingered hands. His nose was squashed from the soccer ball hit he’d taken full on the face in fourth grade, and his lips pouted like a young Jagger’s. Long, dark lashes fringed his brown eyes. His lids drooped with a knowing, cynical cast—and he was only seventeen. When had he turned into a man who viewed the world so scornfully?

  “I do fit in,” she acknowledged. “I work at it. What about you?”

  “Not so much. Remember last year, when my voice changed overnight? That wasn’t the only thing that happened. Not by a long shot.”

  She arranged the pleats on her plaid skirt. “You don’t need to spell it out. I know about the other stuff.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you all that stuff. Prude.” He laughed at her, but kindly. “The thing is, every other guy at the gym had already hit puberty, so I was glad to finally stop squeaking when I talked. For lots of reasons, but mostly because there was this kid. Little, skinny shit with a smart mouth that never stopped, and he picked on me all the time, razzing me about being a Gypsy orphan.”

  “What was he?”

  “Greek, I think, but his parents were married, so in his opinion, that made him hot shit.” Those beautiful lips, the ones she had just noticed, folded into a grim line. “I couldn’t do anything about it; he was too short for me to beat up and he knew it. So after this overnight transformation, he saw what was going on and he was just relentless.” He imitated a falsetto voice. “‘Hey, Faa, did the hairy fairy visit you?’—and that was the cleanest of it. So I very politely suggested he beat himself up. And I really, really, really”—he put his fingers on his forehead—“wished he would.”

  She leaned forward, intent on his face. “And he did?”

  Samuel sat up, crossed his legs, and stared back into her eyes. “Yeah, he did. At first we all thought he was trying to be funny again, but then he started crying and he had bruises, and I wished he would stop, only this time I didn’t wish it so much as command him with my mind. And it worked.”

  When Isabelle heard Samuel’s confession, she knew she should say something comforting. Something about him. Instead she blurted, “Thank God I’m not the only freak in this world.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” He grinned at her.

  She punched him in the arm.

  “Good shot.” He rubbed the spot. “I did the research. Do you know who we are?”

  “Who are we?”

  “We’re the Abandoned Ones. We were given gifts because our parents, our real parents, threw us away.”

  Each word was like a stab to her tender heart. “Why do you think that?”

  “Ever heard of Joseph Campbell?”

  “Of course. He did research on pervasive myths that cross cultural boundaries and appear to be part of the human psyche regardless of background or geological location.”

  “So they taught you a few things in that fancy school of yours, huh?”

  He didn’t seem to expect an answer, which was good, because she didn’t have one. She was the Masons’ only child. He was the butler’s only son. She went to a posh private school. He went to one of Boston public’s finest. The disparity made her uncomfortable, but what could she do? Her mother told her she’d offered to pay for private school. Darren had refused. And Patricia Mason had said she’d interfered enough when she urged the reluctant Darren to adopt Samuel.

  Isabelle had hotly replied that Darren should give Samuel the best start possible, but Patricia said that was a line she could not cross.

  “The thing about the Abandoned Ones,” Samuel continued, “is that it’s an ancient legend that crosses cultures. Trust me. I’ve read a lot about that legend now. Supposedly, our gifts make us possible recruits for the Chosen Ones, which is this ancient society of do-gooders.” Samuel’s cynical face was abruptly more cynical. “We can also be recruited by the Others, which is this ancient society of assholes.”

  He was distracting her. Or she was pretty sure he was. “What does this have to do with your hair?”

  “After I made Jermaine beat himself up, I got this itching on my head. I reached up and my hair was falling out in clumps. So I got Steve to look, and he said it looked like fingerprints on my skin.”

  “Let me look at them.”

  He turned around. “I was . . . well, I was scared. I covered up the bald spots no problem, my hair was long enough but Steve told one of the guys, and pretty soon it was all over the school that I was a . . . freak.”

  His head looked like the sheets she used when she volunteered at the school carnival to fingerprint little kids for their parents’ records, except these marks weren’t made by small fingers. It looked as if a man’s hand had pressed hard to make these prints, even leaving little indents in the skin.

  “This is so weird. Did you tell your father?”

  Samuel laughed, a short burst of nasty amusement. “Oh. Cara. Like he would understand or believe me.”

  She bit her lip. Samuel and Darren had always been at loggerheads, more so now that Darren’s wife had left him and blamed the divorce on Samuel.

  “Have you compared these prints to yours?”

  He sighed in exaggerated exasperation. “It’s a little tough for me to get a good look at them.” He held his right hand up. “You do it.”

  She did, examining each finger and comparing it to his head. “They’re your print
s.”

  “So I am a freak.”

  “I guess we both are.” She returned to the subject at hand. “But that’s no reason to quit school.”

  He turned. Leaned in until they were nose-to-nose. “I’m not stayin’. They haven’t taught me a damned thing for years, and the whole world is out there calling me.”

  She leaned right back. “No. No! You can’t do anything without a high school diploma.”

  “I can’t do anything with that high school diploma. People don’t get into college from that school.”

  “Listen to me!”

  “I will.” Putting his hands on her arms, he smiled at her. No . . . he smirked. “If you tell me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “What are you wearing under that extremely hot skirt?”

  Chapter 16

  Isabelle stared at Samuel. Was he kidding?

  Of course he was.

  Huffily, she said, “You’re making fun of me.” She started to flounce off the window seat.

  He lunged, wrapped his arm around her waist, rolled, and put her under him. He stared into her indignant eyes and with slow emphasis said, “I am so not laughing at you.”

  I don’t know what you mean. But abruptly, she did. She was young, she was a virgin, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d read the books. She’d checked out the Internet. She’d talked to her friends. And even if she hadn’t done all that stuff, her instincts jingled insistently. Her voice quavered as she said, “Well . . . good. Because I don’t like to be laughed at.”

  She and Samuel, they hadn’t ever made out. In fact, after they got to be teenagers, their early, easy affection had changed, become a distance that didn’t encourage contact. When their eyes met, her gaze slid away. When they bumped into each other, she leaped back. She thought people—people like her mother and father—saw how uncomfortable she was, because they never allowed them time to be alone anymore. Having anyone see her discomfort . . . well, that just embarrassed her. So did the dreams she had sometimes.

  Now Samuel’s body was hard against hers, his skin warmed by the sun. He pushed her hair off her forehead, tucked it behind her ear, yet his brown eyes were hot, intense, focused on her as if he wanted to dive into her soul.

  He made her nervous. He made her aware of every breath she took, of every breath he took, of the way their chests moved against each other.

  She wanted to look away. She wanted to push him away. She wanted to pull him close. She didn’t dare move, except to chew at her lower lip.

  His gaze dropped to that betraying little movement. His head dipped. Paused.

  He was thinking about kissing her.

  Her heart thundered in her ears.

  She wanted him to kiss her.

  She lifted her head a little.

  Their lips met in the middle.

  Samuel. Her first kiss. Samuel. First kiss. With Samuel.

  She didn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known him. Loved him. Now this . . . her first kiss. Their two mouths, pressed together . . .

  Lifting his head, he smiled at her, darkly satisfied. “There. That’s done.”

  Wait. “We’re done?”

  “Do you want to be done?”

  “No! Yes! No!” She frowned at him. “Did you do it wrong?”

  “Kiss you? I don’t think so.”

  “You’ve kissed other girls?”

  “A few.”

  She didn’t like knowing that. But he had experience, so she guessed he knew what he was doing. So it was her. “Is there something wrong with me? I . . . wasn’t I supposed to . . . ?”

  “Supposed to do what?”

  “You know . . . experience overwhelming passion?”

  All of a sudden, he was fighting a grin.

  Which made her mad. He didn’t need to act like she was dumb. “I’m just saying, in the books, when a guy grabs a girl and kisses her, the girl always experiences overwhelming passion.”

  He lowered his head again, until his mouth was barely above hers, so she felt his breath and the brush of his lips as he spoke. “Let’s see if we can find out about that.”

  This time when he kissed her, he pressed his lips to hers more firmly, then used his tongue to tease her with little wet touches that made her stiffen in alarm because that felt really, really . . . real. She wasn’t hearing the music swell. She wasn’t behind a camera watching, or holding a book reading; she was here, on the familiar window seat, with Samuel, whom she had known forever, and his mouth was opening over hers, and she was opening her mouth back, and there was no overwhelming passion, just this shaky kind of panic. . . .

  Then.

  Wow.

  It was weird, but she remembered kissing him when she was little. She remembered the taste of him. This was Samuel. She hadn’t simply known him forever. Long ago, she had healed his fears and absorbed a part of him.

  And she relaxed.

  He smelled good: clean brown skin and muscles over strong man bones.

  As she let his tongue move freely in her mouth, a faint scent of sweat or something so intimately Samuel made her press her knees together. Not because he was making any moves on her—his fingers were tangled in her hair—but because sensations rushed at her: hurried breathing, heart pounding, blood thundering in her veins, and need, burning need.

  This was just like the books. Overwhelming passion . . .

  Which was . . . overwhelming. It wasn’t what she expected. Being swept away sounded romantic. It felt . . . frightening. She hadn’t realized that she would want to . . . to forget the morals her mother had so carefully instilled in her and do things with him. Almost of their own volition, her hands stroked his neck, his shoulders, his arms. She explored his muscles rippling under his shirt. Rubbed her legs against his.

  His whole body became so rigid she might have thought it was rejection.

  But she could feel his heart slamming against his chest, taste his hurried breath, and he kissed her as if he wished to feed her his whole self.

  Never in her life had she felt so much a part of another person.

  Then he broke it off. Simply lifted his head and stared down at her, his eyes wide.

  “Don’t stop.” Then she was embarrassed. She had whimpered.

  “Your mother’s calling you.”

  “What?” Isabelle wasn’t quite processing his words.

  “Your mother’s calling you.”

  “I didn’t hear her.”

  “Trust me. I have good ears.”

  She did trust him. But she didn’t want it to be the truth.

  “Come on.” He got onto his knees, pulled her into a sitting position. “You don’t want her to catch us.”

  “Right!” He was so right. She didn’t even know what her mother would do if she realized Isabelle had been kissing Samuel.

  Make Isabelle feel guilty.

  Make Samuel leave the house.

  No!

  “Right.” She catapulted off the window seat, then discovered she had to steady her legs. They were shaking. She was shaking. With anxiety, with sexual need.

  How had she come so far so quickly?

  Had she been ready? And waiting for Samuel? Was he all she needed?

  She whirled and looked at him.

  He stared at her, so much passion in his gaze her knees buckled again.

  She backed away from the window seat, then turned and stalked to the door. Yanking it open, she yelled, “Coming, Mother!” Then she turned back to him. Her chin trembled with nerves, but she spoke clearly. “White cotton panties.”

  He froze in place, staring at her as if the three words had scrambled his brain.

  Then she saw him remember his earlier question.

  What are you wearing under that extremely hot skirt?

  “White cotton panties,” she repeated.

  Color surged in his face. His long, dark lashes fluttered closed. He groaned as if he were in pain.

  She walked out the door, slammed it behind her, and smiled.
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  Quit school, would he? Leave Boston, would he?

  She had given him something else to think about.

  Chapter 17

  “Do you mind not hogging the whole tent?” Isabelle rolled over in frustration, digging her elbow at Samuel, then realized that his down sleeping bag protected him.

  “How can I hog the whole tent? This bag is keeping me confined.”

  “Then scootch your bag over.”

  “There is no over. It’s a two-man tent.”

  “What two men could fit in here?”

  Neither Samuel nor Isabelle slept very well. They weren’t as tired as the night before. It wasn’t her dreams of Samuel that kept waking her. No, not at all. The lingering pain from Samuel’s injury made them restless. That was it.

  And five and a half years ago, when they had slept together . . . they slept together. So for Isabelle, the forced proximity proved irritating and . . . tempting. If there was one thing she knew from past experience, being tempted by Samuel led to two things. Great sex. And heartbreak.

  So no. No. And no.

  “What are you muttering about?” he asked.

  “Is it time to get up yet?”

  “What difference does it make? If you want to get up, we’ll get up.”

  “True. It’s not like we have a full schedule.”

  “Actually, I have an idea. . . .”

  Which was why Isabelle found herself side by side with Samuel at the double doors, digging a tunnel through the snow toward the surface.

  Samuel and Isabelle slept that night.

  And she didn’t dream of him at all. Not at all.

  Chapter 18

  Samuel and Isabelle woke groaning as they dragged their aching bodies out of the tent and back to their tunnel. They had agreed they had to make the tunnel big enough to use a shovel effectively. At first, in a hurry to succeed, they both dug using the ski patrol’s folding shovels. A minor cave-in set them back—and scared them—and they agreed that one would dig while the other placed the snow onto a tarp (the ski patrol rudely did not include buckets in its supplies) and dragged it into a pile between rows of lockers. That way, if a cave-in occurred, the dragger could come to the rescue of the digger.