Souls of Fire Read Free Page A

September, and the usual chill that set in this time of year was intensified by the aftermath of a stormy night. The air had a fresh cleansing feel to it that soothed the burning pain in my lungs and immediately started to clear my thoughts.
    Sitting on my window seat, cool air caressing my face, I tried to reason with the small part of me that actually believed in the paranormal, or in magic.
    Or in whatever inexplicable experiences are called , I thought wryly.
    The image I had seen had already irrevocably burned itself into my consciousness. It wasn’t the image itself that had made me panic. The image was harmless.
     
    A beautiful rose.
     
    As innocent an image as ever was; and as common as any rose tattooed to anyone’s body.
    Tattooed, I thought. Tattooed being the operative word! I was definitely not tattooed. Never had been and never had wanted to be. Well, maybe I had thought about it once or twice…
    So unless I had somehow managed to get really drunk at some party I didn’t even remember going to, had woken up tattooed the next morning like many before me, and had then successfully managed to repress every second of it, I definitely had a problem! There just wasn’t a reasonable explanation for a shapeless birthmark suddenly turning into a rose.
    I thought back hard. Two nights ago, I had been standing in front of the bathroom mirror after stepping out of the shower. After clearing a little round space on the mirror with the aid of my hair-dryer like I usually did in order to have a clear view of myself, I had shot a glance at my birthmark.
    I only remembered so well, because at the time I’d thought that eighteen years of hiding were enough and that I ought to be more grown up about it.
    That had been on the evening leading up to my birthday, and it had looked like it always had: shapeless! I had gone to bed early that night, before eleven o’clock ― my actual birthday ― and hadn’t really looked at my birthmark since.
    Now the shapeless mark had changed. Seemingly out of the blue, colored lines had sprung up to form outlines of petals. They danced fluidly around the once drab birthmark, forming a beautifully contoured rose in various shades: a darker red outlined the petals and filled in the areas that were supposed to be shaded. The petals themselves were of a lighter reddish-pink. Cream-colored hues depicted the sections where the light softened their color.
    The petals remained tightly shut around the bud. There was no stem, nor leaves or thorns, just the rose.
    A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to work its way up my throat.
    Changed … into a beautiful rose the moment I turned eighteen! Right … isn’t that what every girl wants: to blossom?
    The wave of hysteria worked its way through my throat and came out in a choked laugh that turned to horrible coughing.
    Admit it: you’ve finally lost your marbles! I thought. Yep, one of the first signs of losing one’s marbles: talking to yourself!!!
    The laughter that had finally clawed its way out of my throat filled the bedroom. Hysterical giggles bounced off the walls and out through the open window. The sound of my laughter finally made me snap out of the madness that had held me in its grip.
    I needed to calm down. Reasonable explanation or not, I would have to stay calm and deal with whatever it was that needed to be dealt with. I would feel better if I actually knew what that was, though.
    How was I supposed to cope with … this, I wondered. If I really wasn’t going insane, then the altered birthmark must mean something. How on earth, was I supposed to find out what it meant?
    Aren’t there people who deal with supernatural stuff? But for something like this, who are you going to call? Okay, yeah, Ghostbusters! Or Sam and Dean?
    A thought suddenly occurred to me. I recalled something I had stumbled upon earlier, but hadn’t looked at thoroughly. I jumped up from the window seat and ran to pick my bag off the floor by the mirror.