Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One) Read Free

closed it, set it on the table title-side-up, and rose from the chair. Sometimes Aiden wished there was more volcano in the man, but Buck could haul ass when the need arose.
    When Buck walked over, Aiden thought he felt the floor move. It was unkind, but Aiden was feeling a bit juvenile right now. He squinted at the room, finding the screen in front of him even more glaring.
    “And turn on the damn light.”

    Across the city, on the seventh level of a fifteen story building, the same twilight dimmed the small apartment Mieshka shared with her father. The front door closed the hallway light off and she tripped on the carpet.
    Her keys dropped to the floor with a jangle.
    She smothered a sob with her hand, leaning her forehead against the wall. Closing her eyes, she started to count. The back of her wrist rubbed her face when she got to ten. She peered down through the blur.
    Most of the light came from the balcony door, filtered through vertical fabric blinds. It was not much, but it glinted on the metal sitting next to her foot.
    She left them there.
    Her left hand trailed the wall as she walked down the hall, already shrugging a shoulder from her pack. To her left was the cramped kitchen. To her right, a bisecting hallway led to a washroom, a laundry room, and two bedrooms.
    She glanced down it, wiping her nose on her sleeve. The last door had a dim line of light between it and the floor.
    Dad was home.
    She slumped her backpack onto the couch, missing the junk mail and magazines that had piled on the arm. Unsorted laundry occupied the rest. On the coffee table, old pizza boxes stacked like a bachelor’s Jenga game. Some were starting to smell.
    Mieshka reeled the balcony blinds back on their balled cord, slid the door open, and stepped over the sill. Their view was of the next apartment and the narrow alleyway between. Every week, the sanitation department emptied the dumpsters at the end.
    A few dead plants welcomed her into the chill. The Balcony Garden Experiment had been short-lived. Plants couldn’t live with neglect.
    She hunched on the rail and watched the light fade from the alley. It was a gradual process, and one that made her huddle more and more into her hoodie. Eventually, the alley’s lights switched on, beaming an industrial yellow-orange into the gritty shadows.
    Behind her, the shuffle of socked feet announced her father’s arrival. He closed the door behind him and joined her. The railing wobbled as he leaned against it. Mieshka watched the flicker of a television set in the opposite building, one floor up. A car alarm went off, its sound muffled by distance. Eyes wandering to the dumpsters seven floors down, she thought of the pizza boxes. If she threw them, maybe she could get them in.
    “Cold out.” Her dad’s breath rose in a mist, backlit by their sidelong neighbours. He wore an old, pale blue work shirt, the top two buttons undone. His sweatpants had food stains. The orange alley light glinted off the thin metal frame of his glasses.
    She nodded, jaw tightening. She’d drawn her hood over the beanie long ago, though the chill still seeped in through the neck. Her cheeks had gone numb, and her nose. She did not shiver.
    “How was school?”
    “Fine.”
    “Any homework?”
    “Of course.” Her tone was snippy. She gritted her teeth as a lump slipped back into her throat. The cold pricked at new tears. She forced her voice to stay even. “Robin showed me the Fire Mage’s temple.”
    “Temple?”
    “Yeah. It was a memorial.” Her voice broke raw on the last vowel. She swallowed the lump, felt his eyes on her.
    The quiet thickened between them for a moment. The railing trembled under her arm. Bitterness grew in her chest.
    “Why did we come here?” Her question hung in the cold. She didn’t look at him, knowing what his answer would be. Bitterness quickly turned to anger, fuelled by an old rage that collected in her stomach like dead blood. Her nerves frayed like a bad