Shifting Selves

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carefully and looked around, at row after row of identical pale houses. She grimaced. “Don’t tempt me.” She pulled a small orb of fire from the air. She juggled it lightly between her hands, then brought it to her mouth, swallowing it whole and smiling.
    “So, when Carmichael sacks us, the circus is still our backup plan?”
    “Hell, yeah. I’ll look good in one of those leotards. You can be the bear tamer.” She cast a sly glance my way, one I studiously ignored. Sera had been surprisingly quiet on the subject of Mac’s and my thwarted flirtation. I’d known it couldn’t last.
    Luckily, she moved on. “You’ve made fire. Maybe not intentionally, but you know how to do it. Do you remember what it was like?”
    I remembered rage, pure rage coursing through me and obliterating everything good in its path, everything that might care what was right and wrong. I eased myself onto my back till I was staring up at the cloudless blue sky. “Yeah, but I don’t remember how the fire started.”
    “It’s not that different from what you do. You find the components of water and pull them to you.” I demonstrated easily, letting a stream of water encircle her head. “What are the components of fire? Oxygen, heat, and fuel. Well...” She waved her hand, indicating the air surrounding us. “Oxygen is rarely a problem.” She took my hand and held it to her forehead. “Heat never is, either. We run hot, though we still tend to feel cold when the temperature drops too much.” Eyebrows knit together, she quickly felt my forehead. “Not as warm as me, but yeah. You’re warmer than average.”
    I felt my own forehead and wondered how I’d never noticed it before. Elementals don’t often go to doctors, since no modern medicine was as effective as exposure to our element, but I’d been in contact with many other elementals, must have felt their skin and heat.
    But I hadn’t, not really. I remembered my mother, always hovering, always keeping my aunts from giving me extended hugs or sitting too close to me on the sofa. In college, I’d dated, but never another elemental who might interpret my heat as indicative of an illicit fiery heritage. Hell, a month ago I hadn’t even known it was possible to be what I was. There was no reason for someone to think I was anything other than the water I’d been raised to be.
    “And the fuel,” I asked, seeing the final piece clearly. “That’s the anger, isn’t it?”
    She nodded. “It’s always there, in all of us. Just a small, constantly burning flame of rage. We don’t even notice it most of the time, until we want to access it. And then...” She held out both fists, indicating first one, then the other. “Rage, plus magic.” She brought her fists together, and fire burst forth as they met.
    “Can I learn to do that? To only access it when I want to?” She turned a concerned face to me, and I continued hurriedly, “And then use that control to never, ever call it.”
    Her face was solemn, her voice quiet. “I don’t know, Aidan. I don’t know.”
    “Don’t move.”
    It took a moment to realize the voice was coming from the yard below and was directed at us. It took a fraction of a second longer to identify the sound of a shotgun being racked. I assumed that was also aimed in our direction.
    Despite the command, we both deemed it wise to raise our hands slowly into the air. “Because I think it bears repeating,” I muttered, “one, longevity’s still not the same as immortality, and two, we really fucking need to keep Simon around.”
    A few minutes later, we were in a cool garage, perched on a pair of beat-up metal folding chairs. We were not physically restrained in any way, because it wasn’t necessary. The large gun pointed at us was sufficient deterrent, should we feel the desire to sit somewhere else.
    I’d debated our options during our awkward climb from the roof down to the backyard, and again during the short march through the side yard into

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