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Is your heart beating faster?

Sitting in the kitchen, at Mir's apartment, I watch Nilam and Kadri who chat quietly beside me and chop herbs for the Bloodcage potion. The snake skulls lay scattered on the table before me, and Lav grounds fern flowers in a mortar, seated in a chair opposite mine.

The sun already climbs down the sky, spilling its soft dusk light over the city outside the window. The day after we've created the Soulwrecker has gone by, uneventful: everyone needed to rest after the night of work, and I had nothing to do but lie awake in my bed and rewind what has happened at the garage over and over in my head.

Good, Fire Girl. Hold on to that emotion of yours.

I'm here.

My skin tingles at the sheer memory of Mir's lips touching my skin. I fidget on my chair, but the feeling refuses to vanish. Mir's been avoiding me since last night. I shouldn't have kissed him, should I? Perhaps he didn't like it. Or he liked it too much? Considering his law of nature.

Once we caught the immortal fire into the glass ball, alarmed Nilam and Lav bolted into the garage as they must have heard the bench being knocked over--Mir had knocked it over, hurrying away from me as though stung.

"What happened?" Lav asked, noticing blood on his lips.

"Nothing," he snarled before leaving. "Fire Girl poked me with her elbow and split my lip."

That's how lawyers obscure lies, huh? I did poke him with my elbow and I did split his lip--but not with that elbow of mine. I adjust a lock of my hair falling over my shoulder to hide the mark Mir's teeth have left on my collarbone. Yes, he did like my kiss. And he saved my life at that garage. Again.

Why won't he talk to me then? This cold uncertainly troubles me, begging to do something.

Rolling the Soulwrecker between my fingers, I glance out the window. It's the third floor, and I see the sunlight shining in the windows of the building across the street. People stroll down below, but they're not who I'm looking for now. Bogdan's ghostly silhouette is nowhere to be seen.

Why Mir hasn't told me about Bogdan? He knew I had a sigil scar, and he knew where to find my bones. He must have known about Bogdan as well... Mir has a reason for everything. He didn't want to upset me? No, Mir's not avoiding me because of our kiss, he simply suspects I can start demanding answers.

"What are you cooking?" Adélard's tall figure appears, filling up the kitchen doorway. He grimaces at the pot on the stove Nilam pours his chopped herbs into. "It smells like rats."

"How would you know what rats smelled like?" Lav sneers. "I wager your mayor's house is licked clean every day."

Ady gives her a humorous look. "Yours isn't though. And I've been to your place when you shared it with my sister."

The Soulwrecker stops between my fingers. "You have a sister, Ady?" I stare up at him, surprised.

Realizing he's said too much, Adélard tries to school his expression into neutrality, but he's not as skillful at that as Mir is. "Yes," he admits and props his side against the kitchen counter, pretending and failing to be nonchalant. "Jasna is my sister."

"Jasna? And nobody mentioned it to me before?"

"Sorry, Yaroslava, but your notorious reputation didn't really encourage me to share."

I grunt under my breath, irked. He's right, but it's still irking. And then it means Ady asked others to keep their mouths shut about it too, didn't he? I realize that more or less, I know everyone's story now--but not Ady's. What has he done to be hunted by a demon?

"Please, Lishan." Nilam chuckles without turning to us. "Do you think Morox smells better while cooking? It didn't stop you from using it though."

So Adélard Lishan used Morox? Curiosity itches its way up my throat. But what for? His secret is not about sharing a bed with Kadri, so far I figured. Who did he compel to forget then and what to forget?

As our conversation lulls, I watch Adélard toy with a signet ring on his finger, frowning at some thought of his. He looks tired--rather of thinking than of doing something. I've always believed Ady to be the blunt one, polite and careful with his words, yes, but blunt. What if I was wrong? One of those who are now in the kitchen has hidden my bones after all.

Maybe Adélard is more astute than he appears.

"Mir and I are going to the morgue to retrieve Jasna's body once it's dark outside," Adélard says, changing the subject smoothly. Astute indeed. What if Ady knows more than he says, too? He can even know something Mir doesn't want to tell me. "But since her body is registered as unidentified, we're kind of...going to steal it. Any volunteers to help?"

"Cooking," Nilam refuses.

"Helping," Kadri declines.

Before Laverna has a chance to agree as she already tilts her head in a beginning of a nod, I jump to my feet. "I'll help."

Mir doesn't talk to me, but he must talk to Ady, right? And since Ady has proved himself bad at keeping long-term secrets, I can make him talk to me.

Adélard doesn't like my idea though. The corners of his lips drift downward as he meets my eyes. "Yara, are you sure you want to come? We need to fetch Jasna's body quietly, so the killer won't suspect anything. Can you even do things quietly?"

"You're planning to walk out of a morgue with Jasna's body--which currently looks as good as a corpse--in your arms as though it's a souvenir. You have no poker face, Adélard, and you question my talents?"

Dismay crosses his feature. "I have a poker face."

"You have a courteous face, that's not the same."

"I have both."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I--" He trails off when I hold up my hand, a Soulwrecker in my palm. Greenish flames dart within the glass, casting no shadows yet shimmering as if ready to burst out.

"Does anyone, aside from Nilam, know how this thing works?" I ask.

Quitting chopping, Kadri wipes her hands with a towel hanging over her shoulder and turns to look at me. "No, why?"

Laverna's eyes glint, inquiring. Ady raises his eyebrows, confused. Only Nilam is amused when he watches me walk across the kitchen with my little tamed torch.

"Once the immortal fire is caught within this glass ball," I continue, looking over everyone with deliberate seriousness, "torn away from its original realm of the dead, it becomes a lethal weapon in ours. When the ball breaks, and the fire gets free, every living being nearby is doomed. You don't just die, your soul dies. In a blink of an eye. Obliterated forever. The plan is for me to get close to the killer, stay one on one with them, and break the glass. My pendant protects me from magic, including the fire, but everyone else?" I shrug. "What if break it now?"

I know my smile spreading across my face has turned out to be as wicked as I imagined it to, when terror washes over Ady's face, Kadri's eyes widen, and Laverna goes pale.

"I'll drop it right now and break it"--I roll the glass between my fingers again--"if you, Ady, refuse my help with the morgue."

"You won't dare."

"Won't I? Watch me." And with a light motion, I toss the ball up into the air.

Before anyone manages to react, to leap forward and catch it, the Soulwrecker pierces the air with supernatural swiftness and tumbles to the kitchen floor with a soft thud. It doesn't break, doesn't crack, and the flames keep circling within the glass.

Ady, Kadri, and Lav stare at the ball, their expressions ashen. I guess their hearts are hammering now in trepidation, too. Nilam is the only one who still looks relaxed and entertained with my show. "You should have seen your faces," he says, laughter bubbles out of him.

"As I said." I nod at Ady's posture stiffened with shock. "No poker face."

"You did know it wouldn't break, didn't you?" Wariness creeps into Kadri's voice as the color slowly returns to her cheeks.

"Of course." I swallow the hurt pinching my chest for a moment. How can they still doubt me? "Why do you think we're waiting for the full moon? A Soulwrecker can only be broken at a single hour of each month. An hour before dawn, at the night of the full moon."

Finally wrapping his mind over the fact that I was only joking, Adélard scowls. "Fine, Fire Girl. Let's go to the morgue."

I smile. Here comes my chance to uncover Adélard's secrets.

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