Free Broken Elements by Mia Marshall Page B

gave one powerful tug, pulling everything back to me and sending it toward the living room. I felt the water fly over my head, cold and determined, and heard the sizzle as it beat against the remaining flames, extinguishing them instantly.
    Slowly, I raised my head, fearing that it hadn’t been enough. I needn’t have worried. Though the room was still filled with smoke, there wasn’t even the slightest flicker of a flame. Water covered everything. It soaked the carpets and the furniture and ran in rivulets down the blackened walls. Exhausted and yet oddly triumphant, I crawled into the dining room, reveling in my success. I’d done it. Screw the memories, screw the nightmares. I had just controlled a fire intended to harm me. Years of counseling couldn’t produce as satisfying a breakthrough as I enjoyed at that moment.
    Hearing a rustling near me, I pulled myself up to sitting. There, on the dining room table, sat an extremely wet cat with singed whiskers who obviously hadn’t listened to my order to get out. He cast me a baleful glance before grabbing his jeans in his mouth and dragging them outside. I followed his progress and saw Mac, standing in the kitchen doorway with a fire extinguisher he’d apparently grabbed from his trailer. He was as wet as the cat, his clothes plastered to his body and his hair dripping water. A puddle was forming where he stood, but he seemed completely unaware of that fact. He stared at me with a bemused expression.
    “Did you just re-route the Truckee River through my house?” he asked.

Chapter 5
    “Well, this complicates things,” noted Sera, looking around the charred living room. “I just ordered a new rug, and it doesn’t go at all with this new ‘damp and burnt’ design aesthetic.”
    “It’s ‘incendiary chic,’” I explained. “Only your finest domestic terrorists can really pull it off.”
    “I knew I should have bought that chandelier hand made from detonated grenades when I saw it on Etsy. I’ll never be able to pull the room together now.”
    “Don’t be so pessimistic. A few throw pillows will make all the difference.” I paused. “What’s an Etsy?” She only shook her head at my ignorance.
    We stood in the middle of the room, shivering in the chill. All the windows were open to air out the house, and we’d turned off the power until we had a chance to check the electrical damage, so the house was currently without heat. Just for fun, the gathering clouds and rapidly dropping temperature indicated it would soon be snowing, as well.
    Vivian looked between us, trying to decide if we were being enormously inappropriate or simply deranged. I wasn’t sure I could help her out, either.
    “Someone tried to kill us,” she pointed out.
    “It sure looks that way,” agreed Sera.
    “Why?” Vivian asked. Sera shrugged, unable to offer a clear answer. “I’m not okay with that.” Vivian sounded scared, but her stiff back and the stubborn set of her jaw suggested she wouldn’t be giving in to the fear anytime soon.
    Sera agreed. “It is a bit discomfiting.”
    “Whoever did this, they know where we live. Do you think they know where I live, too?” she asked. She looked nervously around the room, possibly looking for assassins hidden behind the burnt remains of the potted palm.
    “It’s a possibility,” I acknowledged. “You and Brian should probably move in here full-time. He and Simon can share the loft. Safety in numbers and all that.”
    Vivian considered this for a moment. “Wouldn’t it be safer to move to a completely different house?”
    Sera shook her head, determined. “I don’t run. It only makes you look like prey. Hey, Mac,” she called as he entered the room, hauling a bucket filled with warm, sudsy water. “Is it okay if we turn your home into a fortress?”
    He looked around the room, noting the damage that someone’s deliberate actions had caused to his home. He was not a happy man at the moment, but at least he wasn’t