Gabriel shook his head. “No way.”
“You’re one lucky kid,” she said.
Gabriel snorted and looked at the woods, the smoke pouring into the night sky. Lucky.
“Are Chris and Nick all right?” he said.
Michael nodded. “They aren’t even home. They left right after you did.”
So they’d never been in danger at all. That loosened something in Gabriel’s chest.
Michael was looking at Hannah. “Is he all right to go home?”
She looked doubtful. Gabriel stepped closer to his brother, putting some distance between himself and the ambulance, suddenly worried they were going to make him go to the hospital, anyway. “Michael, I’m fine.”
“Just chill out and let her be the judge, okay?”
Hannah was staring now. “Michael,” she said. “Mike Merrick.”
“Yeah?”
Her cheeks looked pink, but it might have been the strobe lights from the fire truck. “Hannah Faulkner.” She paused. “We went to school together.”
Michael was staring back at her blankly. “Hey.”
His brother, the master of conversation.
“You don’t remember me.” Her expression evened out. “I was a year behind you.”
“Oh.” Now Michael looked flustered. “Yeah. Sorry. It’s been a while.”
Then they just stood there looking at each other.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “So can I go home or what?”
She blinked and looked back at him. “Yes. Let me get one of the EMTs so your brother can sign for you to go.”
It took twenty minutes, but eventually he was sitting beside Michael in the front seat of the work truck. Now that they were alone, Gabriel wondered if his brother’s relief would morph into that anger Michael always carried around. Normally Gabriel would poke at him, provoke him into a fight.
Right now he just wanted Michael to yell, to slice into some of this guilt that had Gabriel in a choke hold.
But his brother didn’t say anything.
After they’d pulled into the driveway, Gabriel moved to slide out of the cab, but Michael caught his arm.
Gabriel braced himself.
Michael said, “Take your clothes off in the garage, and put them in the bin. Don’t touch anything until you take a shower.”
That was it?
Gabriel stared at him for a moment. It felt like he needed to clear his throat again. “Why?”
“You’ll see why when you look in a mirror.”
Michael went into the house and left him to strip down to his shorts. Here in the light of the garage, Gabriel could see his hands and forearms were blackened with soot. His clothes were practically unrecognizable. Even his shoes wouldn’t be salvageable.
They all went in the trash.
Gabriel paused with his hand on the door. The air was cold and he didn’t want to stand out here too long, but he wondered if this was it, if Michael would be waiting to lay into him now.
But his brother was just cleaning up the dinner dishes, so Gabriel went upstairs to take a shower.
Michael had been right: Soot lined his face, and his hair was full of charred bits of leaves and bark. His hands left prints all over everything. After he toweled off, he took one of those Lysol wipes to the sink and the light switch. Oh, and the door.
Destroying the evidence.
He couldn’t stop thinking about his parents.
The summer of Michael’s senior year, Seth and Tyler and the other Elementals in town had gotten serious. They’d tried to kill Michael. Their parents had taken the whole family over to Seth’s house to talk.
It had turned into a full-scale battle.
Gabriel’s anger had started a fire. At twelve, he’d had no control of his abilities.
His parents hadn’t made it out of that house alive.
And tonight, he could have caused that kind of damage again.
Michael wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room now, but Gabriel didn’t go looking for him. He just walked out the back door and dropped into one of the Adirondack chairs on the porch. The smell of smoke hung thick in the air, but he didn’t feel any fire nearby. The firemen had been thorough.
He usually told Nick everything, but this, right on the tail of their dinner argument . . . Gabriel suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of telling his twin. Just the thought had him fidgeting, reaching for the lighter in his pocket.
But he didn’t have it. The EMTs must have kept the one in his jeans, and he hadn’t grabbed another from his bedroom.
Gabriel sighed.
The sliding door opened, and then Michael was clomping across the porch. Gabriel didn’t look at him, just kept his gaze on the tree line.
Michael dropped into the chair beside him. “Here.”
Gabriel looked over. His brother was holding out a bottle of Corona.
Shock almost knocked him out of the chair. They never had alcohol of any kind in the house. When Michael had turned twenty-one, they’d all spent about thirty seconds entertaining thoughts of wild parties supplied by their older brother.
Then they’d remembered it was Michael, a guy who said if he ever caught them drinking, he’d call the cops himself. Really, he’d driven the point home so thoroughly that by the time he and Nick started going to parties, they rarely touched the stuff.
Gabriel took the bottle from his hand. “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”
Michael tilted the bottle back and took a long draw. “I thought you could use one. I sure can.”
Gabriel took a sip, but tentatively, like Michael was going to slap it out of his hand and say, Just kidding. “Where did this even come from?”
“Liquor store.”
Well, that was typical Michael. “No, jackass, I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Michael paused to take another drink. “There’s a mini-fridge in the back corner of the garage, under the old tool bench.” His voice was careful, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to share this secret.
Gabriel didn’t look at him, hiding his own surprise. “You hid a fridge?”
“I didn’t. Dad did.” Another drink. “I found it after he died.”
They both fell silent for a while, Michael probably reliving it, Gabriel imagining it, his brother at eighteen, finding their father’s stash of beer. Gabriel wondered if Dad had only been hiding it from his sons, or if he’d kept it a secret from their mother, too.
Not like it mattered.
“Please tell me this beer isn’t five years old,” he said.
“It’s not.” Michael smiled.
And that, too, was almost enough to knock Gabriel out of the chair.
He stared out into the darkness for a moment, and then took another sip. “You’re not mad?”
Michael didn’t say anything, just took another drink.
Gabriel felt his shoulders tighten. The cold of the bottle bit at his fingertips.
“You remember that summer Chris got mono?”