NORA

“I smell something,” Nora tells Teacher as she ducks out of his range. He lets her retreat, so she takes the chance to wipe the sweat from her forehead. It’s been dripping into her eyes for a while now. It stings like mad but she knows better than to deal with it when she’s in the middle of a fight.

Teacher pauses across the room, frowning at the window, his nostrils working. He smells it, too. It’s faint but unmistakable.

It’s the smell of something burning.

“Take a break. Drink some water,” he tells her. “I’m going to go check on them.” He disappears into a shadow on the wall.

Nora heads for the kitchen. As she fills up a glass at the sink, dread starts to creep through her. Just last night she was woken up by one of Cel’s nightmares. She’d been first to reach the room, and when she’d burst in, Cel’s hands had been fisted in the covers, glowing with flame. Nora had shaken her awake and snuffed the fire on the blanket out by folding it onto itself. Luckily, the fire had been small. They are usually small, but Uncle Arthur and Teacher have been watching Cel more closely of late, far too closely for Nora’s liking, like they’re afraid of something.

This is where it begins, the age when firecores are most unstable, Teacher had warned Nora. Help us keep an eye on her.

“Don’t I always?” Nora mutters under her breath.

A siren shrieks through the building, and she nearly bolts out of her skin. It’s an ear-piercing sound, and she has a headache from it immediately.

That dread in her gut grows stronger.

Sipping from her waterglass, Nora peeks into the main hall and glances both ways. People’s heads poke out of other apartment doors. The neighbor across the hall glares at Nora.

“Bursuli,” the lady sneers, “did you burn breakfast or something?”

Nora wants to stick her tongue out and show off her favorite finger. She settles for looking confused.

“What'd you say?” she says in Busuruli, her head cocked innocently.

The woman scoffs and goes back into her apartment.

Should’ve called her something nasty, Nora thinks uncharitably. She knows all kinds of Busuruli swear-words from her Aunt Bhaanu. Nothing sticks in a kid’s memory quite like a bad word. Just as the others start trailing toward the stairwell--the alarm really is unbearable--a man flings opens the door to the upper floor and smoke floods the hall.

Behind him, flames roar so loud Nora can hear them over the alarm.

“GET OUT! THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE! GET OUT!” The man starts down the stairs, but another person comes flying up behind him. On fire, the newcomer screams and stumbles, sending them both hurtling down the stairs. Nora doesn’t look away in time. When the first man’s head hits the floor, it snaps sideways. The sound of breaking bone makes her head spin.

For a just a moment, she’s back in the tallest tower of The Primrose Palace next to her sister at the window, watching soldiers kill each other on a beach of pink sand.

A scream startles her back to reality. The woman across the hall has come back out. She hollers again, gawking at the two men at the base of the stairs and the fire already spreading through the hall towards them.

Wincing as the woman lets out another pointless shriek, Nora gets an idea. She glances right and confirms that the others aren’t looking. They flee down the opposite stairwell. Smirking, Nora draws forth her shadow and shapes it into a blade.

“Hey, bitch!” she snaps, and the woman’s head whips toward her.

Nora doesn’t give her a chance to run. One expert swipe, and down the idiot goes. The woman clutches her bleeding throat and gags, but all Nora can hear is the stupid alarm and the fire.

When at last the woman stills, she feels nothing but relief.

One less noise, she thinks as she heads for the exit.

She doesn’t have to worry about her family, safe in the knowledge that they can take care of themselves.