Fire And Ash (14 page)

“Did you have a good time?” I hear Mrs. Jensen say.
 

“Yeah I guess,” Cassie answers.

“I think
Ash
had an especially good time.” My head snaps up at the sound of Derek’s voice.

His lips twitch facetiously. He is mocking me and it pisses me off.

“I had an
okay
time,” I say to her but look directly at Derek. “It could have been better.”

His lips still mid twitch.
Ha!
Glad to knock your ego down a notch or two,
my eyes say to him when he narrows them at me across the table.
 

For some reason while glaring back at him I notice how incredibly long and thick his lashes are and start thinking how they make his intensely dark eyes look even more sexy. I catch the thought and shut it down looking away from Derek abruptly.

I go back to focusing intently on my food. I don’t dare make eye contact with him for the remainder of the time we sit across from each other at the table.

Later while Derek is helping his mom with the dishes and Cassie and I are finishing cleaning up, Mrs. Jensen gasps from the kitchen. The volume of the television that has been sounding softly in the background immediately gets louder.

“The victim attended Laurel Springs High School,” I hear a female voice say. “She’d just started her senior year and as we are told by her friends, she was on her way to meet them at a party she never made it to. Her body was found in the early hours of the morning lying beside her car on Route 68. Its left passenger tire was flat and we can only assume that is what drew her out of the car. Authorities report the cause of death to be massive blood loss resulting from several lacerations to the throat and upper chest areas. Authorities were also quick to state that the victim’s death is in no way related to the string of abductions nearby Highland Village experienced earlier in the summer. They have concluded her death to be the result of a vicious animal attack. Nearby Red Creek State Park is home to several thriving populations of wolves and coyotes.”

I recognize the girl’s picture on the television screen. It’s Camille Ford, the senior who was talking to Derek at his locker on the first day of school.

Cassie, Derek, Mrs. Jensen and I all stare at the television screen from our various places around the kitchen.

“Do you think what they say is true?” Cassie asks her mom. “That her death isn’t related to the killings from the summer.”

She nods her head. “I’m pretty sure. The Council seemed pretty confident that Derek successfully dealt with the small group of rogue phoenix that popped up in the area. What do you think Derek?” She asks him.

“I think you’re right. A rogue phoenix wouldn’t kill that sloppily. The Council no doubt knew about the details minutes after Laurel Springs Police Department arrived on the scene. They have a contact on the force that passes information to them. If they thought rogue phoenix were behind it they would have contacted me already.”

Mrs. Jensen’s mood turns angry when Derek mentions the Council contacting him. “I don’t like that you are becoming their first point of contact. You’re too young Derek. And you should be doing the things any other teenager would do not filling the shoes your father left behind. I never should have listened when the Council asked us to relocate closer to it or when you insisted that we tell them yes.”

The muscle in Derek’s jaw ticks the way it does when he is particularly frustrated or irritated. “It’s what Dad trained me to do Mom. It’s what we always knew I would eventually end up doing.”

“The key word in that sentence Derek is
eventually.
Not at seventeen!”

“When Dad died he left them with one less Enforcer. You know there aren’t many of us who are strong enough to do the job.”

“I don’t care about the job Derek! I care about you! And that you don’t end up like your father and that Cassie doesn’t share Bethany’s fate because of you like your sister did because of him!”

Ouch.
Derek visibly flinches. I see the hurt flicker in his eyes. I get the feeling that the argument they’re having isn’t a new one.

Derek makes his way out of the kitchen and towards the front.
 

“Im going out. I’ll be back,” he mutters right before he walks out of it.

Mrs. Jensen stares after Derek then her eyes shift to me standing off to the side of the doorway that leads from the kitchen to the living room.
 
She immediately blanches like she only then remembers that I am there. “I am so sorry you had to witness that Ash.”

“It’s okay,” I say lamely because I have no idea what else I am supposed to say.

“Come on,” Cassie tugs at my arm. “We’re finished with the living room. Let’s start on what little we have left outside. I did most of it before you woke up.”

We clean up in silence. She doesn’t mention what just happened between her mom and Derek and I don’t either out of politeness.
 

I leave Cassie’s in time to stop by my house to change clothes and make it to Mick’s gym before four.

When I get there I see Derek at the front of the gym wailing on one of the punching bags that hang from the ceiling. I don’t know what makes me do it but I have fifteen minutes until my beginner’s MMA class starts so I walk over to where he is and hold the bag steady while he continues to punch and kick it. A steady bag absorbs more of an impact and makes for a better instrument to work out pent up frustration on than one that moves every time you strike it.
 

“Feel better now?” I say when he finally lets up.

I say it even though I know he is going to respond with some dickish or snarky comment because well he is Derek and that’s what he does when it comes to me. He surprises me when all he says is “a little.”

He surprises me even more when he asks if I want to grab something to eat with him. That would be something friends do and Derek and I are not friends. I’m pretty sure us making out last night was a fluke or a calculated move on his part to have something to use against me later.
 

“Sorry,” I tell him. “But the MMA class I teach is about to start in a minute.”

He shrugs his shoulders apathetically.“That’s cool.”

“But if you want you can stay and help me out with it and we can go get food after it’s over.” The words rush out of my mouth and I have no clue where they come from.
 

He looks at me curiously. I wait on the mortification that is going to come from his rejection. After a beat he picks up the gym bag sitting beside him on the floor and says “okay.”

I discreetly pinch myself because I am pretty sure the whole ordeal has to be a dream. None of what just happened would really happen in real life. It’s either that, hell has frozen over, or pigs are flying outside.
 

During my class I find myself concentrating more on Derek than the actual instruction I am giving. I use him to help me demonstrate several basic moves and counter moves. But every time he touches me I think about last night and then I have to fight back the flush that wants to spread throughout my entire body. I quickly regret opening my mouth and suggesting that he stay and help me.
 

After the longest sixty minutes of my life the class ends. I am glad for the reprieve that driving our respective cars to Cal’s Diner gives me.
 

I order a double cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate milkshake. Derek adds bacon to his and asks the waitress for a Coke. We sit in semi-awkward silence until the food arrives. I am glad when it does because it gives me a non-awkward excuse for not talking. Cal’s cheeseburgers and shakes are way too good to eat and to talk,

Halfway through my meal I catch Derek looking at me in amusement.

“What?” I ask defensively.

“You don’t eat like a girl?”

“What? I wasn’t aware there was any specific way girls are supposed to eat.”
 
The space between my eyebrows wrinkle together because I’m trying to figure out if I should be offended or not.
 

He swipes a fry from my plate.
 

I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t steal my food because you’ve already scarfed yours down.”

His lips tug upward into a smile. “See, that’s what I mean by you don’t eat like a girl. Most girls wouldn’t care because they’d be too busy trying not to look like a pig in front of me and most girls wouldn’t swallow a double cheeseburger whole for the same reason.
 

The bunch of fries that are headed towards my face stop mid way. My mouth hangs open.
He did not just say that. Now I know I should be offended.
 

“Nice to see you’re in better spirits. Back to your normal jackass ways,” I tell him in a sickly sweet way.

He laughs and swipes another fry off my plate. The next time he does it I am going to put the fork lying untouched beside me to good use.

“I am actually…thanks to you,” he says after a beat.

“You’re welcome I guess. Though I think I liked you better when you weren’t.”

He laughs again.
 

“Not to be nosy but how does hunters killing your dad and sister relate to you being an Enforcer for the Council?”

He sighs. “In Mom’s eyes the level of danger is the same. It was hunters that attacked us and killed them but it could have easily been rogue phoenix too. She fought with my dad about being an Enforcer all the time because she said it was too dangerous and he was unnecessarily exposing himself and the family to an additional risk. I get her point, but it’s something she knows I have to do. It’s my duty just like it was Dad’s duty and his father’s duty before him. Enforcers are generational. That is the way it has always been since back when phoenix were organized into tribes and the Enforcers were initially picked from the strongest of the bloodlines. Since they were the strongest of the phoenix the Enforcers were also usually the Alphas of the tribes too. I can’t just not be an Enforcer. It would be a betrayal to my dad’s memory, everything he lived and died for, and everything he taught me.”

“I understand,” I say. “He would never admit it, but I know my dad feels similar to that about being a hunter. It’s his duty and something he has to do, except he doesn’t really want to. Him and my mom used to argue about it a lot when she was alive. She was okay with it until my cousins’ mom who was also her best friend was killed by a phoenix. Then I think she started feeling like your mom does. She would beg him to walk away from it, he would tell her he couldn’t, and then a fight would start up. When I was six I was the one who found my mother with her neck broken in our backyard. She wasn’t a hunter, but she got caught up in the middle of my dad’s duty all the same. Her death was what made me so adamant about wanting to be a hunter even though my dad has always kind of tried to shelter me from it. My grandfather is the complete opposite. He lives and breathes the lifestyle to a militant extent. I was more influenced by my grandfather’s attempts to make me into the hardcore hunter my dad has never really been than by my dad’s attempts to coddle me because of a sense of duty to help protect innocent people, like my mom was, from the monsters that prey on them. But after meeting you and Cass and your Mom my conviction in that duty isn’t so clear anymore. I grew up being told all phoenix were like the rogue phoenix and now I know that isn’t true. From what you say the majority are not and it is only the minority that is. That makes you all more like the human population I took it as my duty to protect and hunters more like the monsters that prey on innocent lives. Your dad was innocent and so was your sister. If my family ever found out about yours, my dad might not act on it but my grandfather and my cousins wouldn’t hesitate to kill you, your mom and Cassie for wrongs none of your have ever committed. Maybe my Dad struggles with being a hunter so much because he has always felt the same way I do now.”

I realize that I’ve been talking for probably a long time and that I’ve gone on more than one tangent while doing so.
Oh God,
I think.
Who is sitting at the table across from Derek and what did she do with the real Ash? I just told him things I have never and would never tell anybody else. Becca hasn’t even ever heard any of what I just said.
 

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I didn’t mean to unload like that.”

Derek looks at me in a weird way. Like he is seeing something he thought he knew more clearly or in a different light for the first time.

“It’s cool,” he says. “Seems like we both have a lot we’re dealing with. You maybe more than me.”
 

We’re both quiet for a beat. I’m trying to think of something to say, but Derek talks first.
 

“I’m planning on going to Lake Leeland when I leave here. You want to come?”

 
“Why?” I say more abrasively than I mean to but the questions throws me for a loop as much as him asking if I wanted to get food with him did.

“To go fishing. It always helps me feel less…weighted down,” he says ignoring my knee-jerk response.

I arch an eyebrow at him. “You fish?”

“Yes.” The look he gives me challenges me to say something negative about it.

It is too good of an opportunity to pass up. I owe him for the you don’t eat like a girl comment.

I snort for effect. “You know that’s something a seventy year old man does right?”

“Whatever. Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s actually fun.”

“What could possibly be fun about sitting in a boat or on a dock for hours dangling a pole in the water?”

He arches a brow at me in challenge. “I could tell you or I can show you.”

I find myself agreeing to go to the lake with him and telling myself that it is not at all because I want to spend more time with him. It’s only because I have nothing better to do with the rest of my day.

******

“I am not touching those!” I recoil from the bucket of worms Derek bought from the same outpost store he rented a small motorized boat and two fishing poles from.