Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series) by Sarah Reckenwald Read Free Book Online Page B

sat back down on the floor, drew my legs to my chest and mirrored my child self.
    “Why are you hiding?” I asked her.  I wasn’t sure yet if she knew she had called me here.  I/she was so young; it may not have been a conscious act.  Actually, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a conscious act.  Either I had blocked myself out of my memory or I had no idea I had ever traveled through time to save myself.  Little Jade did not know she and I were one and the same.  I sighed.  That, of course, was the whole point of this journey.  It wasn’t to save my mother, though I was going to try; it was to save myself.  The concept of time travel stuck its participants in a constant loop.  I had to call myself here at the age of three; I had to come back here at the age of seventeen; I had to save myself so that I could survive to come back and save myself.  I suddenly remembered part of what “somewhat free to travel through time” meant.  You were only allowed to interact with your own timeline once.  No wonder; this kind of calculating could confuse even a NASA analyst.
    “Something feels bad.  I’m scared,” little Jade finally whispered to me. 
    “It’s okay,” I assured her, “that’s why I’m here.  I’ll keep you safe.”  As I said the words, I knew they were true, and I knew this smaller version of me took priority over everyone else tonight.  I hated knowing that.  It seemed so self-serving, but I couldn’t let anything happen to little Jade.   Even though she was I, she was also a small, frightened child, but not a helpless child. As a firestarter and one of few witches with any abilities left in the Professor’s Pub, Jade was like a tiger cub—cute and vulnerable in some situations, but lethal in others.  I would have to coax her into using her firestarting gift if it became necessary.
    “Why are you looking at the books?” little Jade asked.
    “Well,” I wasn’t sure what to say.  I could lie, but there didn’t seem to be a point.  “Cameron asked me to do something with them,” I ended up telling her.  I seemed to be full of half-truths tonight.
    “Cameron?” she whispered again.  I wanted to hear fear in her voice.  I hated him already, but it wasn’t fear I heard.  She sounded star-struck.
    “I like Cameron,” she said.  I cringed.  I know she was just a child, but she was also me, and I didn’t want to hear myself say anything positive about the man who was holding an ice pick to my aunt’s throat.
    “You probably like everyone,” I retorted.  How odd to be mean to yourself.  It took a few minutes before she replied.  She got very quiet and pulled her knees in closer to her chest.  Her eyes showed a glimpse of anxiety and apprehension again.  I felt bad for upsetting myself.
    “I don’t like Pro fessor Michaels,” she whispered.  I could barely hear her.
    “Profess or Michaels?  But he’s a friend of Mom’s…I mean, he’s a friend of your mom’s.  Why wouldn’t you like him?”
    “His color is wrong,” she confided.  She was talking about his aura, but I hadn’t been able to get a good look at his aura before I drank the elixir infused lemonade.  I hadn’t even made note of its color.  She had to be wrong.  Maybe my gift of reading auras had not fully kicked in when I was three.
    “What do you mean?” I asked her.
    “Don’t tell,” she whispered again, “I see colors around people.  I don’t think other people see them.”
    “Why don’t you want anyone to know?” I asked.  I knew the answer to this already, but the question just came out, a natural part of the conversation.
    “My fire made Daddy go away.  I don’t want Mommy or Aunt Lynn to go away if they know,” she voiced the fear I kept with me until my teen years.  After that, I didn’t tell Aunt Lynn because I knew the more rare gifts a witch had, the more special other witches considered her.  I didn’t want to be a witch at all, so I let Aunt Lynn think I