Free A Radiant Sky by Jocelyn Davies

save Aunt Jo. And so I did the only thing I could think to do. I ran straight into the fire.
    It was just like in my vision. The tin ceiling had peeled back in an evil grin, revealing a mouthful of smoldering wooden beams. Flames licked the walls hungrily, leaving a trail of char and soot in their wake. The floor beneath my feet was so excruciatingly hot, it felt like the soles of my shoes were melting.
    But I was half Rebel. And I’d learned how to handle fire ages ago.
    As I stretched my hands out, I could feel the cooling liquid silver pour through me, forming a protective barrier of some sort around my skin. Then before I knew it, the barrier erupted into flame itself, creating a fiery suit of armor that somehow kept me cool and dry.
    “Aunt Jo!” I called. My vision began to swim, and my eyes watered. “Where are you?” I could hear glass shattering in the distance, and the sound of someone screaming. I booked it in the direction of the screams.
    Amid the snap and crash of falling wood, someone called my name. And I used it like a beacon, homing in. I found her crouched behind the counter, with herarms over her head. The fire was closing in around her, jumping out, licking at her arms and legs and face—but remarkably, it hadn’t engulfed her completely. The area behind the counter was untouched by flame. Aunt Jo was okay. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said Aunt Jo was working some similar powers to mine. There were definitely some otherworldly forces in action, keeping the fire from encroaching on the small circle of floor where Aunt Jo sat.
    “What are you doing?” I yelled. “You have to get out!”
    “I came back here to save some papers!” Her eyes were watering from the smoke, and tears streamed down her face. “But now I can’t get out.” Through the smoke, she stared at the strange force field of fire I’d surrounded myself with. “How are you . . . ?”
    “Come on.” I extended a hand to her. “I can get you out.”
    Aunt Jo eyed it dubiously, then took a deep breath and grabbed it. The minute she made contact the cooling silver snaked up her arm, spreading over her entire body. The fire-armor enveloped both of us.
    “Skye,” she said hoarsely. “You continue to amaze me.”
    Together we made our way back through the smoldering store. Firemen were just beginning to pour in, spraying water over the flames. When we came trudging over thedoorstep, I focused on the crowd and let my mind penetrate theirs.
    Nobody saw us leave.
    I took Aunt Jo down the street to her truck, where we knelt on the ground and I grasped her hands in mine—healing her minor scratches and burns with my touch. I couldn’t help but flash back, one more time, to the night when the boiler had exploded at Love the Bean during my seventeenth birthday party. Cassie had knelt beside me in the snow behind her car, clasping my mittened hands in hers. And I had tried to explain how I felt. The panic, the fear—knowing something was happening, that I was changing, but not knowing how or why.
    The last time I’d knelt in this spot, I had been so lost, helpless. But as I held Aunt Jo’s hands in mine and felt the power surge from my fingertips into her wounds, closing them, healing them completely, all I could do was marvel at how far I’d traveled since that freezing January night.
    I might not have known everything about myself yet, might not have known every bit of truth about my parents, who they were and what they were trying to do. But I knew who I was. I was a force to be reckoned with.
    “You saved my life,” Aunt Jo wheezed, looking up at me with a shaky smile.
    “And I’d do it again, Aunt Jo,” I said. I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I would do anything for you.”
    “There you are!” Raven’s blond hair flew behind her in a sheet of corn silk as she ran to us. “What am I feeling? What is this? It’s not good. I feel . . .” She put a hand on her chest and stopped for