Free Downfall by Rob Thurman

set Pop-Tarts on fire and not the kind of combustion that a fire extinguisher can put out, but full-on NYFD aiming hoses, firemen staggering out covered in blackened soot, and all looking at me horrified as if I’d walked out of the pages of a Stephen King book. I wasn’t a fire starter. I was forgetful, and timers weren’t worth my attention or they confused me. Whatever. Suck my dick.
    “Now tell me who actually made this.” Nik took another bite, a large one, and I counted the whole attempt as a success.
    “I did. I took lessons.” I ducked my head, half-embarrassed, and stared down at garbage bag number one—the brown, green-eyed Wolf, would’ve been great at frontal assault, but with a gun jammed in your face, great becomes useless. She was the one with the enormous claws and stuck that way thanks to the All Wolf interbreeding. I’d idly wondered at the time how she opened pickle jars with paws and claws instead of hands.
    Considering what I’d seen in the bathroom mirror, I should’ve asked her.
    I cleared my throat and continued. “Lucy . . . Lucienne, she’s a chef . . . next door taught me how a couple weeks ago. I thought it’d mean more to you if I was the one who cooked it.” It had taken a week and a half exactly to get right, but I’d known for weeks, hadn’t I? I’d felt it coming. The darkness that was a tsunami aimed at Nik and me, the wave twenty stories high. It brought death. It brought the end.
    I didn’t know how I was aware that our time or at least mine in this life was coming to an end. I had no idea why I could feel it or be this convinced, but I could. It felt like déjà vu.
    I’d had no real visible sign or hint this was all coming—the Lupa Wolves ascending over the city—I’d completely missed it despite the fact that Delilah’s fondest birthday wish was my guts on a platter. That my Auphe side was becoming external and would inevitably drag the inner core of me to match, I’d only noticed tonight. I’d always known in the past that Grimm, with a bowl of popcorn, would show up eventually whenever it did happen to catch my physical side show. Whenever I turned, he would try to turn me, then full Auphe, again, either to his side or an even more ruthless side, my side. I hadn’t, however, known that time was now. I hadn’t known specifically any of this until now, thanks to one silver hair. I wasn’t shocked at my obliviousness; I wasn’t that observant unless something was currently chewing through my abdomen to get to the tasty parts.
    The only thing that I had noticed was that Goodfellow had been giving me some extremely pointed and intense stares when I wasn’t looking . . . and when I was. That was more terrifying than the Grim Reaper himself knocking at my door. Not counting
that
weirdness—and I tried very hard not to—I’d not seen anything, but I’d felt something in my gut all the same. Deep within, my subconscious, home to the more Auphe pieces of me, might have noticed something my conscious hadn’t. The silver hadn’t shown up in my hair yet, but my Auphe genes felt it coming. Noticed enough to give me a warning.
    Playtime is over
.
    The Auphe in me celebrated its true self taking over, and it mourned I was determined to stop it with my death being a Black Friday Sale deal with appeal. As the Auphe in me was the main problem, it could take its woe and suck it up.
    The only bright spot in this was that when I died, I was dragging that part of me kicking and screaming withme. The Auphe died with me. Grimm would be around, but he was still half with no grasp of what a true Auphe was. I could screw him and screw the Auphe in me. With that somewhat happily vengeful thought, I moved away from the couch and propped elbows on the breakfast bar and watched my brother eat. Besides, “over” was a relative term. The feeling of dread didn’t come with a convenient timer to help me out. I did have to die—the mirror couldn’t be denied—but who