Her gaze jerked up to his. Confusion ran through her eyes before her gaze skipped away.
“Why?” Her soft voice was hoarse, apprehensive.
“Because you have to contain it, or it will consume us all.”
She blinked, and he saw the gleam of tears in her expressive eyes. So the fires had already claimed a life. Had it been someone close?
Her fingers clenched into a fist. “A wall,” she said, and closed her eyes.
“Now, imagine yourself holding a rope of water around that wall.” He was tempted to cross his fingers. His knowledge of fire-starters was limited, and he had no idea if this would actually work. The night air churned with heat, turning the lightly falling rain to steam long before it hit the ground. The smell of pine was growing stronger, as if the tree behind her were beginning to burn. If she didn’t get the power under control soon, everything around them would ignite.
After a moment, she nodded minutely.
“Draw the rope back into your body. Let the water cool the fire as you draw it in.”
He waited. After several long minutes, the heat began to abate. She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes and stared at him.
“It worked,” she said softly. “I controlled it.”
He forced a smile. “So you did.”
This time. She desperately needed help, though, and more importantly, training. And he didn’t have the knowledge or time to do either.
“I thought—” She shuddered and looked down at her hands. “I thought I’d kill everyone.”
“How long has it been like this?” He reached out and touched her hand. When she didn’t pull away, he gently caressed her fingers. Her skin still burned with heat. The fire may have abated, but it was still close enough to spark to life if she wasn’t careful—if he wasn’t careful.
“Forever,” she whispered. She shivered slightly and rubbed her arm with her free hand.
He took off his sweater and slipped it around her shoulders. Her shirt was torn near the top of her shoulder blade, the edges smeared dark with blood.
“What the hell happened?” he said abruptly.
She flinched and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Nothing.”
Her tone told him she was suddenly afraid. Or was it once again fear of his reaction? He frowned slightly. Her spirit might be fire, but someone had given her self-confidence a hell of a battering. Anger ran through him, and he clamped down on it, hard. His anger wouldn’t help her, and right now, she was all that mattered.
He gently thumbed away a slight trace of blood from her cheek. “I need to know. It might help us find your nephew.”
She was back to looking at anything and everything else but him. Even though he guessed it was a reaction tied in with whoever had given her confidence such a shaking, he wished she’d stop it.
“I was attacked by ghosts,” she said after a moment.
She had to mean a sylph of some kind. Ghosts, or at least those he’d come across, were generally harmless. Certainly they’d never had the capacity to physically harm anyone. Sylphs, however, were capable of interacting with the real world, and could cause all sorts of mischief—even kill if ordered to do so.
He just had to be thankful they obvio
usly hadn’t been ordered to do so tonight. “Can you describe them to me?”
Her gaze leapt to his. “You believe me?”
There was an odd mix of yearning and loneliness in her expression, and something twisted deep inside him. It was a look he understood only too well.
“Yes.” He rose abruptly. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He loped back to the inn. He heard a babble of voices around the far side of the building and guessed the guests must have gathered there. In the distance came the wail of a siren. The inn’s foyer was warm, and he glanced briefly over his shoulder. He really should get her out of the wet night air, but something told him she wasn’t ready to face the inn just yet.
He grabbed the small first aid kit he’d seen behind the desk and went back outside. The guests were beginning to mill out the front of the building now, and the wail of the fire engine was drawing closer. He wondered where it was coming from—it seemed to be taking a while to get there.