Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series) Read Free Page B

take his gaze off me as he walked towards me, making me feel as though I was his final destination.  As he passed me, he made no move to look away, our arms almost touching.  When he reached the door, he looked back, but then he concentrated on the door and began reciting an incantation.  I knew that a lock, just like the other three, was forming on the other side of the door.  I couldn’t figure out why there had not been a lock on the fourth door in the first place.
    I turned back to my aunt who was waiting for me to reveal my decision for this evening.  She was studying me, wondering if I would be joining them, or perhaps wondering from where she knew me.  Before I could determine my next words, I heard my name, my real name.
    “Jade!” My mother must have realized who I was.  If she realized that, then she might realize I was here because they were in danger.  Maybe we could change this past, this reality.  Maybe I could get her back.  I wouldn’t even care if I had to grow up entrenched in a battle of good and evil.  I wouldn’t care if I had to become a Guardian.  I could save her from the fire before it was too late.   My heart raced as all these thoughts collided in my head at once.  I inhaled, trying to calm myself.
    “Did you have fun with Professor Michaels tonight?” my mother was asking.  Professor Michaels?  She wasn’t talking to me after all.  My hope crashed to the floor, and I felt like the room would begin spinning, but the dizziness never came.  She was addressing the thigh-high redhead who peered out from behind the bar with my green eyes.  Such a distinct combination.  My aunt told me they knew from the minute I was born I was going to be blessed with many gifts.  I had soft tufts of red hair on my head and mysterious green eyes.  The nurses had been astounded, telling my mother most infants were born with either dark eyes or blue eyes that changed as they grew.  They were sure the bright green in my eyes was either a trick of the fluorescent lighting or the effects of some street drug my mother had taken.  However, my mother knew the truth.  I was a witch with a legacy.
    “Let’s call her Jade,” she had told my unsuspecting father.  My name was supposed to be Gretchen, after my mother’s grandmother, so my father was utterly confused by my mother’s sudden alteration to their carefully planned moniker.  “Her eyes are such a beautiful shade of green,” she explained to him in a dreamy voice sure to persuade him to her way of thinking, “I think she should have a name to match them.”  Whether he agreed to please her or for another reason, I would never know.  He had no idea my mother was a witch or his new baby girl was also, most definitely, a witch.
    Now those same green eyes were peering out at me, a look of relief on my child face.  The little girl I was still had the red hair, but the college student I had grown into did not.  I routinely dyed it a dark brown or black color.  The green eyes I occasionally turned blue with colored contacts, but those often created a feeling of vertigo due to the constant presence of my gift of aura reading.  I was not wearing the contacts tonight, so I looked into my child eyes with the same green eyes staring back at me.  It was all very surreal.
    My mother took the look of relief on little Jade’s face to be meant for her return and the intense study of me to be curiosity.
    “Jade, honey,” she cooed at the girl as she lifted her onto a bar stool next to Madilyn, “I promised you I would be back safe and sound tonight.  I hope you were a good girl for Professor Michaels.”
    “She always is,” sounded a deep male voice as the door to the back of the bar opened up and Professor Michaels entered the room.  I shivered and stepped backward a moment.  I could not remember much about this man who died tonight with my mother, but I had a bad feeling about him.  I could not see his aura, just as I could no