That kind of cherishing might be hard, like Ruse had suggested last night. It might even be impossible. But an hour ago I’d thought it was impossible that a human being like me could manipulate fire with my mind, so maybe I shouldn’t draw any conclusions just yet.
If I was going to be that woman, I knew where I’d need to start. Hiding under a blanket wasn’t going to cut it. I couldn’t stand by my lovers properly if I was denying who I even was.
“Let’s hope you’re right about that,” I said, tugging Snap upright with me. “I’d better see what Omen thinks he can teach me.”
17
Sorsha
Saying my first official training session didn’t go well would be like saying the Pacific Ocean was a teensy bit damp.
Omen marched me out into the deserted yard next to the funhouse, where a stray Ferris wheel car had been pummeled almost out of recognition. I guessed that was how Thorn had produced the crashing noises I’d taken as part of a Company attack earlier this morning. A rusty old delivery truck parked nearby seemed to hold a look of relief that it’d been spared in the slant of the dust smears on its windshield.
Omen clapped his hands together. “All right. We know you can work this power. Let’s see if we can get you working it on purpose.”
I thought of last night’s failed experiment with the popcorn bag. “I’m not sure I can, at least not out of the blue with no real reason to. Didn’t you say it’s activated when I get ‘worked up’? I can’t make myself panic over nothing.”
The hellhound shifter’s expression suggested he thought I’d been pointlessly overwrought plenty of times already, but he managed to keep at least a little of his disdain to himself. “You’ll need to get familiar with the specific feeling of manipulating—or producing—fire until you can summon it up without a bunch of panic around it. But for now, we’ll start by triggering it first.”
He gave me a thin smile, and then he started pelting me with beanbags he must have found at an abandoned game stall.
Having the bags smack into my chest and legs—oh, and that was the side of my head—definitely pissed me off. I snatched one out of the air and flung it right back at Omen. It clocked him in the nose.
“That’s not what we’re looking for,” Bossypants snapped. “Focus on the projectiles, not on me. They’re what’s hitting you. If you light one up, I’ll stop.”
“Promises, promises,” I muttered, not really believing him, but it didn’t matter anyway. I squinted at the beanbags as they whipped toward me until I thought I was going to go cross-eyed, but my irritation didn’t come with the rush of energy that’d coursed through me a few times in the past. If that even was the feeling I was looking to stir up. I hadn’t exactly been meditating on my inner state while I was dashing to save Pickle’s life.
After a while, Omen gave up on that tactic and ushered me back to the funhouse rooftop. He shoved a slip of paper into my hand and motioned for me to get up on the low railing that circled the roof’s edge. “Walk along there and see if you can get the paper burning.”
I took a brief glance at the ground a couple dozen feet below. No biggie. With nimble steps, I crossed from one end of the building to the other in less than a minute. I looked back at Omen, my heartbeat barely elevated. “This is supposed to work how?”
He was glaring at me, a few tufts of his tawny hair poking up from the smooth surface he’d slicked it into. He swiped his hand back over them, failing to tame them, and stalked over. “Most people would be a little unnerved walking along up there.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You watched me pilfer that flower pot for you, and you still thought I might be afraid of heights?”
“Come on then, Disaster,” he said in a growl. Apparently that was my new nickname—oh, joy.
After several more exercises that all seemed to involve battering or tripping me in some way, Omen resorted to getting into the camper van and roaring toward me at full speed. I watched him come with a slight hiccup of my pulse, but even as my body tensed, nothing supernatural woke up inside me.
He hit the brake just in time to screech to a halt a foot from where I stood. I waved my hand with the slip of paper that was now grayed and creased, and it proceeded to remain as unburnt as it’d been when he’d handed it to me.
The shifter threw open the van’s door and loomed on me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I stared right back at him, my jaw clenching. It wasn’t as if I’d been having a ball with what he’d put me through over the past several hours. “I thought we’d already determined that none of us has any idea.”
“That’s not what I— For fuck’s sake, can’t you get a little nervous even with that thing barreling toward you?” He waved toward the van.
I shrugged. “I knew you weren’t going to actually run me over. That would kind of go against the whole ‘use Sorsha to turn the tables on the baddies’ plan, wouldn’t it?”
An inarticulate noise of frustration spilled from his mouth. “How are you so fucking aggravating?”
The retort shot from my tongue automatically. “Because you’re fucking infuriating and it’s contagious?”
But this wasn’t just some annoying jerk at the office. This was the highest order of shadowkind with multiple centuries of honing his might. He really did growl then—the sort of dark, grating sound I’d have expected his houndish form to emit, with a flare of his eyes from blue to scorching orange and a baring of his teeth to reveal fangs that hadn’t been there a moment before.
I’d almost forgotten just how much coiled power that compact human frame contained before it hit me. A slap of otherworldly heat lashed my skin, and my pulse really lurched for the first time since I’d leapt to save Pickle.
So naturally, I did the thing any sensible person would have done: I set Omen’s shirt on fire.
It was only a little fire—a flicker of flame that shot up from the hem and disappeared the second he’d whacked it with his open hand, leaving only a tiny scorch mark on the maroon fabric. It happened so quickly, like always, that I couldn’t have said what exactly I’d been feeling when I’d done it, other than both incredibly frustrated and abruptly sure the guy was about to rip my head off, grand plans thrown to the wind.
When Omen raised his head from examining his shirt, his shoulders had come down, though they were still rigid, and his eyes had returned to their usual piercing blue. His voice came out tightly controlled. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to do that again, preferably to something other than me.”
I splayed my hands in a helpless gesture. “It just… happened.”
Running his fingers over his hair, which was now utterly ruffled, he let out a brusque huff of air and turned away. “Take a breather. I suppose you need to eat something by this point anyway.”
I had wolfed down a few snacks here and there in between his various torture sessions, but I wasn’t going to argue with the chance to indulge in a proper meal, even if I didn’t totally understand his decision to retreat. Maybe he’d decided I was hopeless after all.