Ember X Read Free Page B

always go to parties.”

    She pokes my arm playfully. “But you never have fun, so just for the night, can’t you try?”

    Sighing, I nod my head. “All right, I’ll try, but it’s kind of hard to have fun when people look at you like you might murder them.”

    “No one still blames you for your dad’s death. The cops even said there was no way it could be you—that’s why they dropped the charges.”

    “Actually, they didn’t say that. They just didn’t have enough evidence to push the investigation further.”

    “Yeah, but no one thinks you really killed him,” she reassures me.

    “Everyone in this town does,” I disagree. “They think that’s why I disappeared for a week—that I was on the run from the cops.”

    “Well, maybe if you’d tell someone where you were…” She waits, but my lips stayed sealed and they’ll stay sealed until the day I die. She rolls her eyes and crooks her pinkie finger in front of her. “No one thinks you’re a killer. Now swear on it that you’ll have fun.”

    “Fine,” I grimace and hook my pinkie to hers. “I swear I’ll try to have fun.”

    She tightens her pinkie. “Not try—will.”

    “I promise I will have fun,” I say with a frown.

    She jumps up and down, clapping her hands animatedly as I fasten my studded bracelet to my wrist, then we head out the door.

    “And remember what happens if you go back on your word,” she says, skipping down the stairs, swinging her arms.

    “Yeah, yeah, the bad karma will catch up with me,” I say, lacing my boot up as I hop down the last step. Raven is very big on karma, but karma has had me by the throat since I was four when I accidently took my grandmother’s life.

    “Dude, why do you look like you’re about to commit murder?” My brother, Ian, leans against the kitchen doorway, singeing a stray thread on his hoodie with a lighter. His scraggily brown hair is hidden beneath a grey beanie and, as usual, he has paint all over his hands. He’s about the same height as me and kind of scrawny. There have been a lot of times where people thought he was younger than me.

    I shake my head and snatch the lighter from his hands. “Why do you insist on being a pyro? You’re going to hurt yourself one day. Or hurt someone else.”

    He lunges for the lighter, but I dodge around him and dash into the kitchen where the carpet switches to tile. I smash the lighter against the floor and watch it break.

    “What the heck is wrong with you?” Ian shouts, picking up the broken pieces.

    Ian is twenty-one, two years older than me, and he still lives at home. At sixteen, he declared himself a struggling artist, which meant he would forever live here, raiding the refrigerator and hanging out in the attic—his “studio.”

    He snatches my hand and grips tightly. “Why do you have to be such a bitch sometimes?”

    I tense as I feel his death coarse through me like venom. Fire everywhere, the roof of our house roaring in flames. Ian lies on the floor, dying—he wants to be there. I jerk away and suck a sharp breath through my nose. I’ve seen his death before, and each time is equally as painful. In a beautiful world full of roses and sunshine, I’d be able to change his self-inflicting death. But as far as I know, death omens are irrevocable and as permanent as the ink that stains the pages of my journal.

    He rubs the black and yellow paint off his cheeks. “Look, Em, I’m sorry, okay?” He glances at Raven, worried about her reaction. “I just haven’t been sleeping that great lately.”

    “It’s okay. And I’m sorry I broke your lighter.” I pick up the rest of the pieces of the lighter and toss them into the trash. “Are you taking your medication still?”

    He massages the back of his neck, looking tense. “I am, but I’m not sure I need to anymore. It’s been two years since Alyssa… And I’m feeling pretty good these days.”

    The fact that he can’t talk about her death proves he’s