"Hey!" a strong male voice shouted.
I turned to see two men at the end of the alley. They yelled something. Concerned strangers looking to prevent an altercation? They began to walk toward us with intention. Their eyes widened when they saw my face.
"Madonna," whispered one to the other and put a hand on his friend's elbow.
I cursed inwardly.
A handful of pebbles pelted my side and skittered across the stones. The man in the green sweater scrambled to his feet. He dusted a hand on his pant leg, braced his other palm on the ground, and exploded away from me like an Olympic sprinter out the starting blocks.
The pebbles didn’t hurt, but they made me even angrier. I took off after him. The other men must have decided to stay out of things after all, because no one followed.
We raced down the narrow calle, our pounding footsteps echoing against the stones. He elbowed his way through a crowd, and people cried out sharply as he jostled and shoved at them.
"Sorry! Scusa, scusa," I yelled as I followed the path he'd cut. I dodged and darted, my eyes never leaving those yellow stripes. I put my hands up like blinders around my eyes in a futile attempt to hide the glow heating up my eyeballs. This was not good.
Stop, Saxony.
But I couldn't. The culprit was within my grasp. A conversation ensued as two voices jousted in my brain.
What are you going do when you catch him?
I'm... well I'm going to...
What? Burn him?
No.
Why don't you just let the police handle this?
Because I'm here now!
Are you turning vigilante? The fire is making you reckless. Just stop.
The banter stopped when the man disappeared in through a doorway. A metallic bang echoed through the alley. A second later I was there with my fingers around the bars of a gate. A flash of terrified eyes, the inner door slamming in my face, and he was gone. My chest heaved. Hot anger licked through me. A pillar of invisible swirling flame was spinning and roaring around my body. I’d nearly had him.
What were you going to do with him, Saxony? Beat him up?
I slammed my hands against the gate. Startled pedestrians backed away from me and skirted around me nervously. I rested my head on my hands, took deep breaths to coax the heat from my eyes.
Taking my phone from my back pocket, I snapped a photo of the door and the address. My teeth ground together in my head as I walked away. I had to fight not to turn back and unleash fire on the gate.
As I got farther and farther from my quarry, the heat burning inside me evolved. It licked up the back of my neck and curled around the front of my throat, warming me like I had taken a shot of moonshine. It spread down into my belly and thighs, wrapped around my waist, and crackled up my back. It turned liquid and rolled down my calves like lava. Under my heels. Across the arches of my feet. Into each toe. It spiralled around my forearms and energized every finger, fed into every fingernail. It sizzled under the surface of my skin.
I had lost him. The fire was not happy, and neither was I.
My limbs continued to load up with power, fuelled by my anger and as tightly strung as a piano wire. I arrived at the corner where I'd set down my grocery bags. They weren't there. I slammed a hand against the nearest wall, drawing a few curious glances. What had I expected? That no one would pick up two bags of fresh food left to rot in the sun? My face flushed, my eyes were simmering in their own juices. I patted the top of my head and found my sunglasses, then dropped them into place over my eyes.
I wished desperately that I was alone. The need to expel the energy I now had coursing through me increased with every angry thought, every breath. My limbs began to twitch like I had taken in too much caffeine. I looked around for an escape. The sea.
I zig zagged my way through the calle toward the water. Energy coiled in my limbs like so many venomous snakes ready to strike. Running would help. I broke into a sprint, winding my way through a crowd - avoiding baby carriages, dogs on leashes, people taking selfies. A busker played violin in the corner of the courtyard and a semi-circle had formed around him. Music echoed off the stone walls of a church and filled the courtyard with Bach. I passed the tourist trap, ran over a narrow bridge and down a shadowed calle. Blue sky. Ocean. I passed the park where I had broken Dante's nose.
The running only made me feel more energized, more powerful. I was an explosive about to go off. I couldn't wait to be alone anymore—the water here would have to do.
A gap under a bridge ahead yawned darkly, offering privacy. I took a moment to stash my shoes, phone, and wallet under a bush. Then I took a running leap off the sidewalk and into the water, feet first. A sizzling sound filled my eardrums.
I swam underneath the bridge and then sank until my feet hit rocks. I opened my eyes, and the world was a dark blur. I aimed my palms toward the open ocean and released a string of fireballs. Poof. Poof. Poof. The sound was a series of muffled explosions. The water lit up around me, flashing with every shot. Relief was palpable with each release until the need to expel the fire was gone.
I pushed off the bottom and surfaced, gasping. I peeked out from under the bridge. People walked by, taking no notice of the strange girl drifting in the shadows. It was illegal to swim in the canals, so I had to get out fast. A few people glanced at the oddball girl swimming in the polluted waters in her clothes, but no one said anything to me, not even to ask if I was okay. I swam to the nearest set of stairs and climbed out of the sea, slipping on the mossy steps.
Once on the top step, I caught my breath, relieved that the need to blow something up was over. It was the first time I really felt like the fire was controlling me.
"I guess you won that one," I said.
The heat crackled low, demure. It had been satisfied.
Shame filled me at the recklessness I had given in to. I wondered if this was how recovering addicts felt when they backslid. I put my face in my hands, fighting back tears. This couldn't be how fire magi functioned, could it? At the beck and call of the energy inside?
I can't live like this.
Twenty-Eight
As soon as I got home, I called Officer Zambelli. Dispatchers redirected me twice, but finally I reached him.
"Prego," came the familiar voice.
"Yes, Officer Zambelli. It's Saxony Cagney, the Canadian..."
"I remember you," he said. "Tell me."
"I know where you can find one of the men responsible for the fire."
"Tell me," he repeated.
Leaving out all magus activity, I told him what happened. My cheeks burned as I recounted how I had chased Green Shirt through a crowd. It sounded even more foolish when I said it out loud.
"You ran after him?" he interrupted me.
"I did. I know it was stupid."
"Very." He made a single tsk sound. "Don't ever do anything like that again. I know you're a hero type, but you can't take the law into your own hands."
The fire flickered at his words and several retorts came to mind, but I clamped my lips against them. Instead, I apologized and promised I wouldn’t.
Moving quickly past the topic of my stupidity, I gave him the address and told him I'd be willing to ID the man if I had to. I reminded him that I was leaving Italy at the end of the summer. He thanked me for calling and said he'd probably have to call me back.
The moment I hung up, my phone chirped twice in rapid succession.
Targa had sent through an image of beautifully dressed people waltzing in a ballroom, with the caption: My mom's wind-up party is like a fairy-tale.
It really did look like a fairy tale. Huge chandeliers with what looked like real candles illuminated a ballroom filled with gowns and tuxedos. Jealousy clenched at my gut. Targa was having an amazing summer. While, I... well, I wasn't even sure I was human anymore. I tapped out a response: Holy crap, Targa. Why wasn't I invited?