“I’m a firefighter.” He raised his eyebrows. He didn’t need to tell her what he was.
Asking was the rudest thing you could do in shifter society. Ever since the Erie coven outed shifters to the world over twenty years ago, it had become impolite to ask a shifter or other paranormal being what they were. What they were was none of your business.
The general rule had started to keep the government from poking and prodding shifters. Did they need to know how many types there were? Absolutely not. Some types continued to hide, pretending to be one of the big three—bears, wolves, or lions—when they were really coyotes, pumas, panthers, and of course, the most elusive of the shifter world, dragons.
Flint didn’t have any plan on answering her question. Most of the town were wolf shifters. Except for the newcomer and bear responsible for the masterpieces in the woodshop. He’d met the male down at the Easy Rabbit a few weeks ago. He could keep a secret, like the time his cousin had shoved a pea into his ear and he’d had to spend the afternoon with his mother and aunt in the emergency room up the hill at Palmer regional hospital. He’d never told who had done it. She didn’t waste her time asking.
An exasperated sigh hissed from Emma, and the soot-like blush on her face called at him to reach out and rub it off. His thumb did exactly that. His sisters were going to kill him. He didn’t touch random females. But Emma leaned into it. “This is a lot of ash for no fire. You want to show me where you caught this well on fire?”
“Fine.” She tilted back her head and led him down the corridor. A few steps behind her, he noticed her touch her own cheek too. His heart took off on a solo race.
3
Emma stopped outside of her white room, where she peered into the well of visions and saw fated mate matches—among other things. She pulled the door shut every time she left, and an invisibility spell popped up to keep humans out. Humans didn’t know about witches. Shifters, yes, but witches, no, and Emma wasn’t going to let the secret escape.
“Here’s my room.” Emma ushered him in.
He had his last name, Larsen, stitched onto the front of his coat and hat. Firefighter cranky pants had dark hair and brown eyes. And to him, the door she revealed should have appeared out of nowhere. When she’d showed it to Mia, a human who was working in the new company, she’d bounced around the hallway like a kid on a birthday party trampoline.
Was he hiding who he was from his coworkers? Why, she didn’t have a clue, but at least it gave her a little leverage over him.
She pushed the door open the rest of the way. “See, no fire.” Emma pulled off her wet socks and left them out in the hall. “Okay, Mr. Cranky, you can go now. Bye-bye,” she said in her best flight attendant voice. “See-ya-around-town.”
He cocked a smile, and she almost forgot about not letting him into her space. Carter had told her more than once, “If we’re going to have a successful company, Emma, you can’t let anyone know. Not your family. Not your friends. If you don’t say anything to anyone, you won’t forget who you’ve told what to.” Carter was annoyingly right. Because now she was going to have to keep track. And keeping track of things like that was her least favorite thing to do. Right behind her ex-fiancé and lying.
During her wiggling thoughts, she’d moved closer to Larsen, and his coat scented of smoke, but underneath was sunshine, like oranges maybe. When she’d been in Florida last year, she’d stopped by a roadside stand next to an orange grove. The crackling sun heated the grove, and the wind coming from the trees made her want to roll in the grass beneath them. Right now, she wanted to roll all over the brown-eyed hunk next to her. Her insides did a big flop. It was a good thing Mr. Cranky wore suspenders—they kept Emma from pulling his pants right off.
The smile slipped off his lips. “Miss Davis, Emma. Show me where the smoke happened.”
“Fine. Take off your boots.” If he was human, she could use a memory spell on him to make him forget everything about the room. But he clearly wasn’t human, and she was going to figure out what to do about it. Because she couldn’t let him go back to his department and blab about it.
The room was almost empty. The dot on the floor represented her focal point for the well, though there wasn’t a well in the room. She watched his reaction to the white space.
In the last month, Carter’s crew had come into the old school and ripped out the little cubbies, the bulletin boards, and the old-fashioned chalkboards, too. The chalkboard from the room currently sat in the living room of her new little townhouse, taking up the entire shared wall with the neighbors.
The ceiling tiles were gone. The only things that remained were the old, low, crank-out windows. Which were all open. The cool not-quite-spring air circled through the room. The cyclone wind from the well had dissipated, along with the offending smoke that had set off the fire alarm.
Mr. Cranky took off his hat, tank, and coat, dropping them next to the door. Then he undid his overalls, the suspenders dropping to his sides.
Emma gawked at him. “What are you doing?”
“You told me to take my boots off. They’re inside the pants, so for them to come off, the pants have to come off too.” He pointed with his thick fingers at his feet.
“Right, well, leave your pants on. I’ll mop later.” She scowled. Her heart was trilling like hummingbird wings, and she was half a second away from letting him strip down for her.
“Okay, whatever you want, little apple.” He smirked at her.
Emma held her eyes still to keep from rolling them. Did she like people referring to her coloring? No. But little apple wasn’t too bad as far as calling her out went. Far better than carrot head or ginger.
He stalked past her into the room. “Holy hell.”
“Right? It’s a big transformation.”
He turned enough to cock his square jaw over his shoulder. “What? Oh, the white room, sure. You’re into that minimalist Scandinavian vibe or whatever. I’m talking about the window. This was Mr. Thompson’s science classroom.” He walked over to the crooked window. “This window was stuck closed the entire time I went here. Mr. Thompson called it the Arthurian Excalibur window. Whomever could open it without breaking it would get an automatic A in his sixth-grade science class.”
Emma sauntered over to him. “Why didn’t the town just fix the window?”
“Because the story was more important than having an open window.”
A tug of guilt pulled on her. Should she not have opened the window? “Oh.” Emma reached up for the crank, and the window screeched closed as she did. Why was she feeling guilty about opening a window? In her own work room?
“Of course, you didn’t know; you’re not from around here.” He said it casually, so it almost didn’t offend her.
“No, I’m not.” She wished she could use her magic to close the rest of the windows and usher him out. But she was running on empty. Especially with the power she’d leeched into him. Which meant she wouldn’t have any more power for a while to try the well again. He hadn’t stepped back from the second window. Emma squeezed in next to him and closed the first one.
He shook his head and closed the rest without her asking. “Now, where did the smoke that set off the alarm come from?”
He honestly didn’t have a clue. There was a big orange dot on the middle of the floor, and the dude didn’t have any idea that it was a focal point to the well of visions. She had the gift of sight. A seer. Well, not a seer yet. To be a seer, you had to pull your visions from the well. She had most of her visions while she slept. Which wasn’t fantastic because they faded to nothing when she woke up. She also didn’t have someone to write them down for her. Or enter them into Carter’s database. She wasn’t a seer yet, but she would be, could be, with some more time. Her best friend Shiori believed in her, and Shiori had never believed in any of her short-lived careers before. No, the cheerleader of their trio of friends was Daphne. But Daphne didn’t go far from home, not with her newborn baby. Emma was out here doing it on her own; this new business of Carter’s hinged on her being an amazing seer. If the firefighter didn’t know what a vision well was, he didn’t know how to give her power back. So what was he, besides super private?
“I made the smoke.”
“A spell?”
“Yes, but no.” Emma didn’t want the zing of attraction that pulled her glance to him.
“It’s not going to happen again.” He pulled on one of his suspenders.
“Is that a question or a statement? Because I’d like for it not to happen again, but the reality of it is that it most likely will—no, probably will. I hope I don’t set it off again today, okay? But I won’t blow anything apart or burn anything down. At least, that’s not the plan.”
