And while I’d wanted a shower more than I wanted my next cup of coffee, I just couldn’t manage it. I didn’t have the energy. And I was scared it would hurt. So come morning, my sheets would smell like gasoline even though most of it had burned off, and the whole room would have a singed, crispy aroma to it.

I could feel Reyes’s anger, a red-hot rage that simmered just below his steely surface. He probably wanted to sever Tidwell’s spine. He certainly had my permission, not that it would do him any good. Then again, he sent Garrett to hell and then wrenched him back out. Just how far did his powers reach?

But that wasn’t what I dreamed about when I slept. I dreamed about fire. I dreamed about Kim and her recent hobby. I dreamed about Tidwell and his resoluteness that I burn alive. And I dreamed about the man sitting beside me. His fire. The fires in which he’d been forged. How hot would they have had to be to create such a spectacular being? How bright that initial spark?

And then there was the fire I’d consumed. I’d absorbed it. Bathed in it. Breathed it in and swallowed it.

I was a dragon. Strong. Tenacious. Lethal.

Still, the f**ker tried to rape me.

I had to admit, that was a little hard to get past, even in my dreams. But I felt him there, hovering in the shadows. Reyes. Watching over me even in the turbulent realm of my unconscious mind.

When I opened my eyes, his gaze had not wavered. And my hair could not possibly look good. But there was more. I could see the darkness that surrounded him. It swirled like a gathering storm, building and churning. But in the center of it, where Reyes sat, burned a blue fire that licked across his skin like wispy cerulean snakes.

“You shouldn’t look at me from that place,” he said.

I tried to sit up but couldn’t quite manage it. “From what place?”

“From the realm you’re in now. You’ll see things you probably shouldn’t.”

“How am I in another realm? I’m right here.”

“You’re a portal. You can be in whichever realm you choose at any time and be in both at the same time. You should leave it now.”

“I consumed a fire tonight.”

“Yes, you can do that,” he said. He laid his head back against the wall. “And I’m made of fire.”

I could see that now. Of darkness and fire.

“Is that how you’ll kill me?” he asked.

A zing of surprise darted through me.

“Will you consume me?” he continued. “Extinguish my fire with a breath? Suffocate me?”

“I would never kill you. Why would you even say that?”

A sad smile crept across his impossibly handsome face. “I told you a long time ago you’d be the death of me. Surely you know that by now.”

Did he know about Rocket’s premonition?

I pondered asking him about it, but another movement drew my attention to a woman standing beside me. Blond. Dirty. But standing. Not curled into herself or rocking back and forth. She was beautiful. African American with long hair that had been bleached to match the landscape at White Sands. She smiled at me as another appeared beside her. Then another and another as all twenty-seven of Saul Ussery’s victims stood beside my bed. They surrounded me, their lovely faces full of warmth.

I felt bad that their first impression of me was one of a shivering pile of injuries.

One of them stepped closer. The African-American woman who smiled. I could see the chipped red paint on the tips of her fingernails. Then I felt something. Her. Her essence. She stepped forward and crossed and in that instant I saw her brother spraying her with a water hose in front of the boy she liked in grade school. I saw her sixteenth birthday cake and the mint green gown she wore to the ball her parents threw in her honor. I saw her first child being born. A boy named Rudy. And I saw her appreciation for what I’d done. I’d caught the man who stole all that from her, and she was grateful.

And Renee, her name was Renee, left me something in parting. As did the next.

I blinked past the dizziness I still felt and watched. Another woman stepped to my side, held out a foot, and dropped as though she were walking off the edge of a diving board. She fell through me, Blaire was her name, and I saw her tie-dyeing T-shirts at summer camp, riding horses on her grandfather’s farm, and kissing a boy named Harold under the bleachers at a football game.

Next came a woman named Cynthia. She baked apple pies for her mom when she was little but got into drugs after her dad left them. Lisa had a turtle named Leonardo and dreamed of being a ninja. Emily had been born with a mild case of autism. Despite the obstacles life had thrown at her, she had made it to college. Her mother cried her first day there. She cried more on her thirtieth, when Emily had forgotten her room key and a nice maintenance man named Saul opened her door for her.

LaShaun. Vicki. Kristen. Delores.

I breathed in their gift, and it rushed through me like a tidal wave.

Maureen. Mae. Bethany. One by one, over and over until only Faith stood beside me.

Their gift was strength. They’d given me all they had left, all the power and energy to heal they could conjure, they left it behind for me. It coursed through me, warming and mending.

When all but Faith had crossed, Reyes stood and walked to the bathroom. Faith petted my hair, then ducked back under my bed, unwilling to follow the others just yet. I heard water running, felt his arms as he lifted me, his chest as he carried me. He peeled my clothes off gently. I had some minor burns, but they didn’t compare to my back and my injured leg. When I was completely undressed, he lifted me again and lowered me into the water.