Page 9

A n hour. It took Iron an entire goddamn hour to make the ten-mile trip from his family’s parking garage in Aurora proper up the road toward Anna’s house. What had started as annoying fluff quickly turned into two inches. At that rate of snowfall, it wouldn’t take long for the roads to become impassable, and while he would have loved nothing more than to take to the skies and bypass this whole mess in ten minutes, exposing himself that way wasn’t a good idea. Not yet, at any rate. He’d just gotten her to tell him her name, and even that trusting courtesy didn’t yet extend to surnames.

So, the F-150 it was.

His snow chains crunched like popcorn through the winding road’s unplowed terrain until the truck’s headlights passed across the roadside mailbox with the number he was looking for. Already, the thing had a healthy funnel of snow growing around its base. Set back from the road was a modest cabin with a quaint sloping roof, obligatory fenced-in porch, and flashlight beams darting from behind its prominent picture window.

Anna’s house.

Iron grabbed his phone, sent a quick text, and backed his truck into the driveway.

Iron: Here .

His boots barely hit the snow before the cabin’s front door opened a crack, and Anna poked her head out.

“Thanks for coming,” she yelled as her words caught on the wind and traveled closer to him.

He stalked up her porch steps but found himself stalled out on the coir doormat.

Anna stood there, wrapped in a comforter of insanely floofy proportions, with one hand gripping a phone while the other fisted a Maglite. A soft corona of flickering light from the candles lit in the room behind her haloed her hair in a gentle embrace. And damn if his angel fire didn’t stir within his core, pulsing in time to the ambient glow that wisely chose the perfect subject to illuminate.

But there was something else he saw there that he’d missed earlier.

Shadows. Ashen smudges that, through the veneer of her glasses, still pulled at the lower lids of her eyes, spotlighting an exhaustion that seemed to swallow her almost as much as the comforter around her shoulders.

“Where’s your generator?” he asked, determined to get her warm and rested as soon as possible. They both knew it was unwise to run the thing while she was sleeping, but he could at least make sure it was ready to go come morning.

“It’s in the shed behind the house. The hookup is next to the electrical meter on the right side, where the oil tank is. The generator should already be on a little rolling dolly, and there’s a rack in the shed where the gas can should be.”

“Got it. You stay inside while I get this squared away.”

Iron didn’t want to linger on her front steps because he knew the nature of mortals. The longer he stood there, the longer she’d feel compelled to keep hanging her head out in the elements. The only way she’d hurry her butt inside was if he gave her something to observe through the window, so he threw his hood up and did exactly that.

The shed was an eight-by-ten metal number that sat crookedly on a concrete slab, which was sporting cracks in more than a few spots, not to mention overgrowths of moss. He was about to yank open the doors when the unfastened combination lock hooked through the loop that was supposed to be holding the two doors together stopped him.

Iron simply stared at it, then blinked. Yup, the thing was definitely unlocked. He was about to mutter some choice words to no one in particular when a gust of biting wind whipped across his face, pressing its urgency into his actions.

“Later,” he ground out, yanking the stiff doors open while eyeing the rust that had built up on the doors’ track, wondering just how in the hell Anna expected to open this thing on a good day, let alone during a snowstorm. Once he blinked back the musty tang of algae that coated damn near everything, the generator wasn’t hard to find. It sat in the back corner like a sleeping metal giant, slightly rusted and worse for wear, but with all its knobs and pull cords intact, thank the mages.

Working quickly, he took care of the fluids as best he could, then lugged the thing through the gathering snow, leaving the dolly and its fucking office chair wheel casters behind. After he’d found the plug, secured the generator, and cranked that thing to life, he locked up the shed—properly this time—and trudged back to Anna’s front door.

She was already there to greet him, still with phone and flashlight in hand.

Stomping the snow from his boots, he slid through her front door. “Where’s your breaker box?”

“I can manage that, thanks.”

“The same way you managed to lock up your shed?”

An icy mask of indignation carved hollow lines into features already stressed with exhaustion. “Hey, need I remind you that I didn’t ask for your help? Again ? And now’s hardly the time to nitpick how I live my life. The shed is old, all right? Half the time, I can’t even get the door holes to line up correctly to even slide the lock through in the first place, never mind going through the trouble of fastening it. I don’t often have a reason to go in there, and it’s not like I have super close next-door neighbors itching to steal from me. It’s called seclusion for a reason, and one of the benefits is not having to worry about whether your groceries will be nabbed out of your trunk if you need to take more than one trip to get everything inside.”

She let her eyes fall closed for a moment, took a deep breath, then opened them again. Her gaze landed on his face, but her attention was somewhere else. “Look, the shed’s on the list, too.” Her hand flew up to cut him off. “Yes, it’s a long list. Yes, it’ll all get handled eventually. But none of that is happening tonight.”

Iron wanted to go to her, to push right past her excuses and follow the track his metallic powers were pulling him along that had already identified and located the metals and wires of the breaker box within her house. Laundry room in the hallway to the right. But as soon as he lifted his foot, he was reminded of his snow-laden boots . . . and of another problem entirely.

If he took his boots off, he was stating his intention to farther enter her home, which she had not invited him to do. If he stayed on the doormat, he was resigning her to an evening of more work, more exhaustion, more goddamn survival, and it was already after midnight.

The beaten-down bravado in her gaze ripped the sigh from his lungs. “Can I stay here, at least, while you flip on the breakers? Just to ensure the generator’s working properly and you’ll be able to fire it up easily come morning. I’m not sure how old the oil is in that thing, and the gas can was only half full.”

Her eyes narrowed into slits, but there was no true fight in them. Thank the mages. “All right. Wait here.”

A moment later, a few lights flickered, the furnace groaned out of its slumber, and the low hum of the refrigerator compressor began vibrating the wooden floorboards.

Anna returned. “Seems to be working. I can’t run the entire house on the generator, so I have to pick and choose which amenities to fire up when. But it’s better than nothing. At least I can run the water pump and septic when I need to. I’m a simple girl, but if you take away my indoor plumbing, I’m a bear to deal with.”

“More so than usual?” Iron lifted a brow and waited . . . waited for her to jest with him again. He liked her fighting much more than freezing.

She hitched her comforter higher. “Yeah, but more like a giant panda or something.”

“A giant panda? Not a grizzly?”

“Nah. I’m not physically violent, just really passive aggressive. I always got the sense that pandas were given the luxury of black masks so they could silently judge other animals and people.”

“You know, I can’t say that I find fault in your logic.”

“Me neither.” She smiled, and damn if he didn’t enjoy the way her cheeks rose to meet the rims of her glasses, as if her joy was more than enough to support the rest of her.

“Go shut everything off, then get some sleep.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m not telling. Just suggesting.”

“Oh, like you were suggesting I take better care of my shed or my car’s brakes?”

“Nope. Because those things are on your list, and you’ve made it very clear your list is your responsibility. I’m not privy to the list, so I can’t comment on it. But I figured I was allowed to comment on the breakers since that’s what I came to help with. The sleep thing just seemed like something you’d benefit from, being human and all.”

Anna shook her head. “You’re something else, you know that?”

Heat crept up the back of Iron’s neck, a heat that was very much fueled by more than mere blood vessels. Inside, his fire was roiling in and around itself, pressing beneath his skin for release.

Iron swallowed, dipped his head, and offered a quick “You know how to reach me” before about-facing and getting his ass out the door. Fuck, he hadn’t even touched her, and his fire was already reaching to claim that which it had never known but couldn’t exist without.

And hell if he’d risk his uncontrollable angel fire coming out surrounded by a goddamn log cabin. No, he had to get out of there while his actions were still ruled by some form of higher reasoning.

There was time. He’d take his time with her, get to know her leisurely. Maybe even do what the mortals did and ask her out on a few dates. Then, slowly, he’d find a way to explain things, and they’d learn together, understand and answer questions in a calm and safe way.

He was Iron. He was a sentinel of the Empyrean. He was?—

His boots skidded to a halt when he saw the rows of thick tree branches that had fallen in front of his truck, blocking him in.

He was about to tear off his glove, bring his power forth, and torch the suckers when something urged him to look back at the house. Sure enough, the corner of one gauzy curtain was peeled back and Anna’s curious form was watching him through the window. Not even a hint of shyness there. Oh no. That girl wanted him to know she was keeping tabs on him.

Which also meant he couldn’t use his celestial strength to pitch each of those logs into the woods, let alone scorch everything to cinders.

A sharp wrapping of knuckles on glass had him squinting back at her. To his surprise, she lifted the stiff window, ducked her head out into the snowy wind, cupped her mouth, and yelled, “Caber toss!”

The comment would have been hilarious, if not for the unfortunate truth it highlighted about his circumstances—a truth he was painfully aware that Anna now knew as well.

Until the storm was over and the road could get cleared by more conventional means, Iron was going nowhere.

Unless he revealed the truth to her, and for a woman who could barely manage to keep her own life in order, he wasn’t sure she’d be able to survive being dragged into his.